Rule 5 Rescue: Sandra Bullock

For one reason or another, I missed my weekend Full Metal Roundup. Actually, I'm wondering if the genre's run its course. Smitty does a fabulous job with the linkages, but perhaps some of the reach-around efforts among other bloggers haven't been reaching all the way around? In any case, readers can share their thoughts on continued babe blogging at American Power in the comments.

I thought I'd post Sandra Bullock's cover shot from the new Harper's Bazaar. The inspiration comes from The Rhetorican, who's posted the "Trailer for “The Proposal”." The previews look good, and my wife and I haven't been to the movies together for some time. Maybe this weekend if we can find a babysitter:

Recognition for continued "Rule 5" diligence goes out to The Classical Liberal, and his post, "Gabrielle Anwar presents Rule 5 Sunday!"

See also, No Sheeples Here!, "Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around For Saturday, June 13, 2009," and Duece at The Skepticrats, "Rule 5 Friday: Gee, this post smells terrific!"

And for sure, some of the best recent "Rule 5" blogging is over at The Daley Gator, for example, "The Incredibly Sexy Angela Basset!"

Thanks also to Dan Collins and Dan Riehl for the linkage!

As always, please visit some of my other blogging friends and allies:

The Western Experience, The Snooper Report, The Oklahoma Patriot, Right Wing Sparkle, Conservatism With Heart, Duck of Minerva, Wolf Howling, Right Wing Nation, Stephen Green, The Tygrrrr Express, The News Factor, Gayle's Place, Israel Matsav, The BoBo Files, Grant Jones, Tapline, New Testament News, Wizbang, William Jacobson, Steven Givler, The Astute Blogger, Chris Wysocki, Moonbattery, Sweating Through the Fog, Three Beers Later, PA Pundits, Paco Enterprises, Ken Davenport, Sister Toldjah, Blazing Cat Fur, The Daley Gator, Just One Minute, Dave's World, Sparks From the Anvil, Right Truth, Dave's Notepad, Pat's Daily Rants, Bob's Bar & Grill, Power Line, Melanie Morgan, Dave in Boca, Neo-Neocon, Right in a Left World, Flag Gazer, Politics and Critical Thinking, Riehl World View, Midnight Blue, Caroline Glick, The Average American, The Griper, FouseSquawk, The Other McCain, Cheat Seeking Missiles, Roger Simon, Classical Values, Samantha Speaks, Grizzly Mama, The Capitol Tribune, The Patriot Room, The Real World, RADARSITE, Serr8d's Cutting Edge, Bloviating Zeppelin, Born Again Redneck The Educated Shoprat, Gateway Pundit, Political Pistachio, Liberty Pundit, Not One Red Cent, Phyllis Chesler, Right View from the Left Coast, Generation Patriot, Macsmind, Flopping Aces, Edge's Conservative Movies, Stop the ACLU, The Conservative Manifesto, Gates of Vienna, Joust The Facts, Panhandle Poet, The Red Hunter, Maggie's Farm, The Next Right, This Ain't Hell, Stop the ACLU, Right Wing Nuthouse, Melissa Clouthier, Paula in Israel, Pamela Geller, Vanessa's Blog, St. Blogustine, Yid With Lid, Pondering Penguin, Betsy's Page, The Anchoress, Ace of Spades HQ, Right Wing Sparkle, Thunder Run, The Classic Liberal, Conservative Grapevine, Cassy Fiano, Jim Treacher, NetRightNation, Q and O, Urban Grounds, Ed Driscoll, Cold Fury, Michelle Malkin, Neptunus Lex, Neo-Neocon, The Astute Bloggers, The Liberty Papers, The Monkey Cage, Law and Order Teacher, Mike's America, AubreyJ, Dan Collins, The Jungle Hut, Wake Up America, Dan Riehl, Nikki's Blog, Big Girl Pants, Maggie's Notebook, Hummers & Cigarettes, Mark Goluskin, Jawa Report, Darleen Click, The Skepticrats, Fausta's Blog, Clueless Emma, Obob's World, Seymour Nuts, Red State, Dr. Sanity, The Desert Glows Green, Not One Red Cent, Vinegar and Honey, Sarge Charlie, Thoughts With Attitude, Kim Priestap, Swedish Meatballs Confidential, Five Feet of Fury, Amy Proctor, Blonde Sagacity, Liberty Papers, TigerHawk, Point of a Gun, Right Wing News, And So it Goes in Shreveport, Nice Deb, Becky Brindle, GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD, Fishersville Mike, Ann Althouse, The Blog Prof, Monique Stuart, No Sheeples Here!, Dana at CSPT, Glenn Reynolds, Obi’s Sister, Right Truth, Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels, Chicago Ray, Ace of Spades HQ, Natalie's Blog, Jimmie Bise, Little Miss Attila, Moe Lane, Private Pigg, Pundit & Pundette, The Rhetorican, R.S. McCain, Saber Point, Stephen Kruiser, and Suzanna Logan.

Chris Wysocki Gets Results!

My friend Chris Wysocki, who runs the conservative WyBlog, is getting results for his Letterman-boycott blogging:

The response I received from Embassy Suites regarding the Letterman Sponsor boycott has been noticed by the media. TVweek.com says "Conservatives Call For Boycott of Letterman Advertisers-Embassy Suites Says It Has Pulled its Ads from CBS.com." They mention me by name!

Click through to read the whole thing.

The Baltimore Sun also cites Chris. That's major recognition. Congratulations Chris!

Rupert Murdoch to Sell Weekly Standard

Via Jacob Heilbrunn:

The Weekly Standard has been the flagship publication of the neoconservative movement since it first appeared in 1995. William Kristol and Fred Barnes have been at the heart of the magazine, whose influence soared during the Bush administration, when it championed invading Iraq. The news that Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., is selling the magazine to the billionaire Philip Anschutz, who also owns the Washington Examiner, raises some questions about the magazine’s future direction.

Will Kristol and Barnes remain at the helm? Or will the magazine turn toward a more traditional conservatism?

The neoconservative movement has recently suffered several blows. The sun has set on the pugnacious New York Sun, which served as a valuable outlet for neoconservative journalists and authors. The American Enterprise Institute has ousted several neoconservatives, including Joshua Muravchik, from its roster of fellows. But no magazine, it can be safely said, has become more important to the fate of the movement than the Weekly Standard.

The Standard’s contribution has been to inject a dose of youth into the movement, a kind of Viagra. It didn’t specialize in long, academic treatises of the kind that Commentary published, with their mandarin language. (Only now is Commentary being overhauled by its new editor John Podhoretz, who has brought on a number of new writers, such as the always stimulating Max Boot, to enliven it.) Instead, the Standard aggressively tried to steer the political conversation in Washington in the direction of neocon doctrine, and, to a surprising degree, succeeded. Some of that success can be ascribed to Barnes, who is a seasoned and savvy journalist with a keen ability to pucture the pretensions of the liberal elite. But the Standard’s greatest feat was to play a decisive role in shaping the debate during the run-up to the Iraq War, when magazines such as the New Republic followed its lead in promoting the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

To a "surprising degree," succeeded?

Strange, that ... maybe we should be "surprised" at how unhinged is the demonization of the neocons?

More at the link.

Twitter and Change

It was one of those times when the stars aligned around a particular phenomenon.

Getting away from blogging for a while, I went out last night to the Barnes and Noble at Irvine's Spectrum Center. While there, I read Time's recent cover story, "How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live."

The technology's impressive, and I've been meaning to get all signed up for some time; but I was impressed with the discussion that placed Twitter in the context of American entrepreneurial dynamism - and especially in the context of economic innovation and first-mover advantages in international political economy:

The speed with which users have extended Twitter's platform points to a larger truth about modern innovation. When we talk about innovation and global competitiveness, we tend to fall back on the easy metric of patents and Ph.D.s. It turns out the U.S. share of both has been in steady decline since peaking in the early '70s. (In 1970, more than 50% of the world's graduate degrees in science and engineering were issued by U.S. universities.) Since the mid-'80s, a long progression of doomsayers have warned that our declining market share in the patents-and-Ph.D.s business augurs dark times for American innovation. The specific threats have changed. It was the Japanese who would destroy us in the '80s; now it's China and India.

But what actually happened to American innovation during that period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn't build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

I just thought this passage was so cool from the perspective of political science.

So coming home last night, I did a little blogging and then signed up. My Twitter username is "AmPowerBlog." I couldn't have joined at a more interesting time. As I was playing around with it, all the big news was coming in from Iran, and the best stuff was on Twitter. I mean really, as I noted today, the biggest names in journalism - especially CNN - went basically AWOL.

Kathleen at RightWingSparkle summed up what it was like last night:

I stayed up until 3am last night reading the tweets on twitter from Iran. It was just fascinating to me that while the Iranian government was trying to block the people from Iran from letting the world know what was happening by trying to shut down all social networking, the people were still managing to tweet and post video on Youtube.

Then, this afternoon, Serr8d linked to an awesome comment at Protein Wisdom regarding the dymamism and creative destruction at the frontiers of social networking:

Here’s my social media exegesis: Mass communications tools, since Gutenberg, have shared a fundamental and foundational commonality; they’re all top-down hierarchies that necessarily result in a unidirectional, linear, deterministic flow of information. The information promulgated through those tools is just that: promulgated. There can be no realistic expectation that the audience can participate. Letters to the editor, for example, are strictly moderated and therefore inauthentic replacements for the kind of communication that typifies natural human interactions.

And these tools have long since jumped the shark. Ask any advertiser and they’ll tell you about the waning effectiveness of TV. @themediaisdying is a twitter user documenting the death of traditional media organizations. Witness the RIAA and MPAA thrashing about in a futile effort to maintain the apparatus of their top-down, breadth-first information promulgating structures ....

In very short order, Twitter will, in my estimation, eclipse Google. Let me offer an example. I arrive in Los Angeles and find myself with time to explore. I consult Google, which tells me about restaurants, museums, and so forth, replete with descriptions, ratings, photos and other static media. It’s the algorithm that makes it possible. Technology delivers this information. It is arms-length information. I don’t know who created this information and I have little in the way of intimacy with those content creators to aid determining their intentions. The information has very possibly been spun by media professionals: publicists, crisis management professionals, marketing copywriters and strategists.

Right now there are around 30 million twitter users. Twitter adoption is growing logarithmically. Just six months ago, there were 6 million twitter users. In six months there could be over 200 million (like facebook, which could qualify it among the top six largest industrial countries in the world). Revisiting my hypothetical, I arrive in Los Angeles and I go to twitter search and now I get suggestions about where to dine and what to see from actual people. I could even tweet a request for suggestions and get an avalanche of answers. I can evaluate those responses the way I would evaluate suggestions from any actual person. I can read their tweets. I can get a sense, quickly, for the their authenticity. Happyfeet could warn me about what joints have the highest prevalence of dirty socialists.

That’s just the most facile and yet useful example. Twitter has directed me to untold number of exceptionally interesting articles, blog posts and people. I’ve met profoundly interesting people like Todd Gailun and I’ve had the chance to talk back to Karl Rove (who authors his own tweets). I’ve been afforded this access by merit of my participation and the knowledge granted has an immediacy that is breathtaking. The plane crash in Denver last December was tweeted by someone on the plane from their phone as it happened. Find someone closer to the story than that! Find a way to obtain such knowledge more quickly!

But back to the paradigm shift and why classical liberals and libertarians must embrace it in my view. We are, I contend, seeing a near perfect recapitulation of the events that transpired in the middle of the 18th century in America and France. Rigid hierarchies are once again being rejected in favor of something more liberal. The backlash represented by everything from post-modernism to adbusters and Naomi Klein to anti-corporatism to just anyone whose worked for a corporation and recognized how soul-crushingly shitty it is to do so, is the same esprit that fueled the American and French revolutions. It is merely playing out in a different venue. To borrow from Jeff, this backlash doesn’t represent a legitimate prescriptive; it is merely a backlash. The solutions offered up by those who have most readily embraced these new social media tools amount to, as Wired puts it, The New Socialism, which is to say, the same old shit. As I mentioned above, socialism is just the other side of the Enlightenment paradigm coin from capitalism.

As these new social tools infiltrate the enterprise, they will subvert the hierarchies that have characterized the management of an enterprise since Adam Smith. I can explain exactly how it will happen because I’ve seen it. I sell enterprise 2.0 / innovation tools and to large organizations. What will rise in replacement of these hierarchies is what remains to be seen. To those socialist economists who say that the market should be managed just like the inside of the enterprise, I say, you have it precisely backward. The market should not be made to look more like the enterprise, the enterprise should be made to look more like the market.

There's more at the link.

By the way, I'm kind of stoked that Allahpundit just now tweeted one of my posts, and it's only my second day on Twitter!

Rovian Islamism? Sullivan Equates Bush Administration, Sarah Palin to Iranian Thuggery!

Recall my post from this morning, "Andrew Sullivan's Anti-Mormon Bigotry"?

Well, Sullivan's up to real nastiness again with, "The Rovian Islamist":

Ahmadinejad's bag of tricks is eerily like that of Karl Rove - the constant use of fear, the exploitation of religion, the demonization of liberals, the deployment of Potemkin symbolism like Sarah Palin ...

Think of this regime as Cheney and Rove in a police state setting, and you see what's been going on. (Of course, Rove and Cheney live within a democratic system utterly unlike Iran, and there's no evidence they would violate democratic norms as Khamenei just did. But their demagoguery, abuse of the state, dedication to conflict abroad, co-optation of the armed forces, and manipulation of rural and religious voters all have parallels in Red State Iran.) We keep expecting to see some kind of shame or some attempt at rational dialogue. They have nothing but contempt for that kind of talk. If they're going to lie, it's gonna be a Big Lie. Like this sham of an election.

This is a sick, awful man. I will continue blogging on Sullivan's totally bankrupt nihilism.

Spread these posts, readers. This is nothing short of journalistic terrorism. Sullivan's words are intended to injure, even kill, all under the cloak of the First Amendement.

Via Memeorandum.

Added: William Jacobson, "Ahmadinejad Stole The Election, Just Like Bush."

Twitter Out of Iran: #CNNFail

From Change_for_Iran on Twitter:

... in this photo: our beloved ex president Khatam arrested; I really hope this is fake ...

See also, the Mousavi photostream at Flickr, care of The Lede.

The rise of alternative media, amid the collapse of much mainstream reporting, is shaping events on the ground. See, Daniel Terdiman / Webware.com, "‘#CNNFail’: Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence." Also, "'Traditional media have completely failed us' (Iranians turn to brave citizen journalists)," and "#CNNfail: Twitter Blasts CNN Over Iran Election‎."

This shot from Getty Images, "The Protest Turns Bloody":

More at Memeorandum.

The Los Angeles Times has actually had decent coverage. See, Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, "Iran election anger boils; Ahmadinejad defends results."

Also ...

* Betsy Newmark, "What Should We Do About a Rigged Election?"

* Gateway Pundit, "President Ahmadinejad Wears the Opposition's Colors at Acceptance Speech," and "Regime Unleashed - Gunshots & Beatings in Tehran (Video)."

* Gay Patriot, "Obama Administration: Where Reality Doesn’t Get in the Way of Foreign Policy."

* Hot Air, "At the brink: Ahmadinejad Refuses to Guarantee Mousavi’s Safety."

* Jihad Watch, "Obama Will Keep Trying to Appease Iran Despite Rigged Election."

* National Iranian American Council, "Election Uunrest, Day Two."

* Dan Riehl, "#CNNFail."

* Outside the Beltway, "Reality on Iran from Flynt Leverett."

* TigerHawk, "Is it 1956 or 1989 in Iran?"

* Yid With Lid, "Pictures and Latest News From Today's Iranian Protests."

Also, the left reacts, Think Progress, "The Right Wing Claims Ahmadinejad’s Reelection Was A Fraud, But Obama’s Responsible For It Anyway," and Newshoggers, "Still Confused About The Iranian Election."

Social Network Stalking? Grace Explosion Gone, Repsac3 Lurking...

Do you remove unwanted "friends" from Facebook? I just removed Grace Explosion from my network. Grace used to be a regular commenter here. But she's way over the top, into tin-foil hat territory.

I did a blanket approval of all my pending "friend" requests when I joined Facebook. My bad. It turns out that about 80 people had submitted my e-mail for approval. Ominously, in addition to Grace Explosion, Repsac3 was approved at the time. While I think Grace means well, Repsac3 has an unhinged obssession with conservatives - and with my blogging especially. As some readers know, he's started an entire blog to harrass and ridicule me, American Nihilist. He's also got about three other blogs devoted largely to me and a few other conservatives. The man's sick. He and his fully-clinical co-bloggers have published my work information to initiate a campaign of intimidation, for example:

If the Coward or any of his followers harass you online you, contact President Eloy Oakley at (562) 938-4122 or Executive VP of Academic Affairs Donald Berz at (562) 938-4127 and describe the harassment. For serious online abuse or defamation, there is always this option (case file in progress).

If there's a genuine "case file" in progress, I haven't heard anything about it. This is mostly about intimidation. (O)CT(O)PUS, the author of that post, is now mounting a jihad against traditionals and Christians, "Revelations: Who Are the Hate Groups and Why We Should Be Very Afraid."

Well, (O)CT(O)PUS is getting over into the Frank Rich unhingeness zone.

I'm attacked because of my views. I don't threaten. I don't harrass. And I certainly don't advocate killing anyone (in fact I've denounced the recent murders repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms). As always, I speak out against racism and bigotry in all its forms. But for my neoconservative traditionalism, I'm attacked as a "hater."

On that note, I can't help feeling for Pamela Geller, who routinely gets attacked for her advocacy. See this unhinged anti-Semitic mysoginist screed, for example, from Jerry Marlow of the Hayner Hoyt Corporation, "Conservative woman as a whole are dumb fuckers, you fit right in you stupid bitch. I saw [sic] burn the whole lot of you at the stake as heretics."

By the way, regular readers might take a look at this piece from the Wall Street Journal, "Bloggers, Beware: What You Write Can Get You Sued."

It's truly the Wild West out there, folks. But never give in. Fight the good, moral fight. Not one of us has anything to do with the recent wave of violence, but the Charles Johnsons, Frank Riches, and Andrew Sullivans of the world would shackle us to the village stocks and leave us to die faster than you can say Carrie Prejean.

Andrew Sullivan's Anti-Mormon Bigotry

There's never any consistency to Andrew Sullivan. But that's to be expected from a man who may well be suffering from HIV-related dimentia. Here's a guy, after the passage of California's Proposition 8, who told anti-Mormon rioters to "chill." He's also recently written that his passion for gay-blogging arises not out of "a sense of victimhood." But on the Obama administration's recent defense of the federal DOMA, Sullivan sent this tweet:

This is typical for Sullivan's extremist attacks on "Christianists."

See also, William Jacobson, "Anti-Mormonism Again In Gay Marriage Debate."
Related Hypocrisy: Frank Rich, "The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers," via Memeorandum. And don't miss Dan Riehl's response, "Frank Rich In The New Pravda Times."

Conservatism and the University Curriculum

Here's Peter Berkowitz, at the Wall Street Journal:

The political science departments at elite private universities such as Harvard and Yale, at leading small liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore and Williams, and at distinguished large public universities like the University of Maryland and the University of California, Berkeley, offer undergraduates a variety of courses on a range of topics. But one topic the undergraduates at these institutions -- and at the vast majority of other universities and colleges -- are unlikely to find covered is conservatism.

There is no legitimate intellectual justification for this omission. The exclusion of conservative ideas from the curriculum contravenes the requirements of a liberal education and an objective study of political science.

Political science departments are generally divided into the subfields of American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Conservative ideas are relevant in all four, but the obvious areas within the political science discipline to teach about the great tradition of conservative ideas and thinkers are American politics and political theory. That rarely happens today.

To be sure, a political science department may feature a course on American political thought that includes a few papers from "The Federalist" and some chapters from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America."

But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism's relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom. And for 30 years it has been animated by a fascinating quarrel between traditionalists, libertarians and neoconservatives.

While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.

More at the link.

Added, Kenneth Anderson, "'If They Can Find Time for Feminist Theory, They Can Find Time for Edmund Burke' " ..., via Memeorandum.

Election Turmoil Complicates U.S. Overture to Iran (VIDEO)

From the Los Angeles Times, "Iran Election Result Makes a U.S. Overture More Difficult:

The reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a stinging setback to the Obama administration's hopes of cultivating a better relationship with the Islamic Republic.

U.S. officials insisted Saturday that they intended to press forward with their effort to engage Iran, despite their misgivings about the outcome of the election. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said U.S. officials were "watching and waiting," and hoping that "the outcome reflects the will of the Iranian people."

Yet the disputed victory by Ahmadinejad was clearly a disappointment for the administration, coming one day after President Obama hailed the public debate in Iran as a sign that its people were open to "new possibilities."

Former U.S. officials and other experts said the outcome could make it even harder for the United States to work with Iran.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran U.S. intelligence official now at the Brookings Institution think tank, said that if the divisions from the election lingered, Iran would be less able to begin diplomacy.

"Iran in turmoil will not be ready to engage Obama," he said.

If the world comes to see Iran's government as illegitimate, diplomatic outreach and new incentives from the United States will come to look like a questionable idea.

More at the link.

Daniel Pipes has an updated analysis, "Assessing the Iranian Election." This is key:

Ahmadinejad symbolizes the rejection of Barack Obama's overtures to Iran and, as such, his selection represents a slap in the face of the American president's pro-Islamist policies.

Meanwhile, here's this from CNN, "Ahmadinejad to Hold Victory Rally Amid Protests." And from the Washington Post, "Ahmadinejad Vows New Start As Clashes Flare."

See also, "Reformists Arrested Following Street Clashes in Iran."

And check Memeorandum for updates.

Riots in Iran: Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy

Here's Borzou Daragahi's report from Tehran:

Huge swaths of the capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early morning Sunday as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second four-year term amid allegations of widespread fraud and a strident challenge of the vote results by his main challenger, who was reportedly placed under house arrest.

As Ahmadinejad promised a "bright and glorious future" for Iran in a televised address, supporters of his reformist rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi clashed with police and militiamen in riot gear and throughout Tehran in the most serious clashes in the capital since a student uprising 10 years ago.

Searing smoke and the smell of burning trash bins and tear gas filled the night sky. Protesters poured into key squares around the capital, burning tires, erecting banners and hurling stones at riot police on motorcycles, who responded with truncheons.

In the same streets and squares where young Iranians were dancing and waving green banners in support of Mousavi days ago, baton-wielding police chased and beat mobs of hundreds of demonstrators chanting, "Down with dictatorship!" and "Give me my vote back!

Official results released by the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of the incumbent president, showed Ahmadinejad with more than 63% of the vote, a surprise performance given turnout figures of 80% and city dwellers mostly opposed to Ahmadinejad massing in lines for hours. Mousavi received 35% of the vote, according to the results.

Both Mousavi and fellow reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi strongly disputed the results in public statements.

Karroubi, a former speaker of parliament, called the results "engineered" and "ridiculous."

Mousavi, after security forces prevented journalists from attending an early afternoon news conference he tried to hold, released a statement alleging a conspiracy to manipulate the vote results, which he claimed showed he was the winner. "I will not submit to this dangerous charade," he insisted.

He had submitted a long list of alleged irregularities, including thousands of his poll monitors being barred from the voting stations, the previous night. Iran allows no independent observers to monitor the vote.

As the day drew to a close, both campaigns reported that the candidates were under house arrest. The offices of Mousavi and Karroubi had been shuttered earlier, as were affiliated websites that had emerged as critical information tools in the face of the Ahmadinejad camp's sway over state-controlled broadcasting.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, ignored the dispute over Friday's vote and hailed the 80% turnout as a great victory for the nation against the plots of its enemies.

"Your epic Friday was a striking and unprecedented event, in which the political growth, determined political visage and the civic capability and potential of the Iranian nation were beautifully and splendidly displayed before the eyes of the world," he said in a speech broadcast on state television.

Even as the results were released and effusively praised, demonstrators allied with Mousavi defied Iran's restrictions on unauthorized public gatherings and began setting fire to garbage bins and assembling in rowdy protests.

Many young protesters, some wearing surgical masks to guard against tear gas attacks, set fire to garbage bins and blocked traffic along several major streets as older Iranians stood along the sidelines cheering them on, occasionally joining in the chanting.

Passing drivers honked in support. A woman with her head scarf ripped off screamed defiantly at the stunned security officers who had just beaten her. Riot police chased demonstrators and some passersby down streets, beating and bloodying those who refused to move, and running off as the demonstrators fought back with rocks.

Shopkeepers urged panicked pedestrians into their stores for protection, in one instance locking the gate as a group of black-clad truncheon-wielding riot police approached menacingly.

The blogosphere has erupted in response to the news.

Check the New York Times, "Protests Roil Tehran After Disputed Vote." And especially, Fox News, "Iran's Controversial Election Results Raises Questions Over Its Relations to U.S."

John Podhoretz discusses the implications:

For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about the real Iran—the one whose youth is Westernized, desirous of connection with the United States, and tired of living in a theocracy. It’s too soon to know whether the protests today in Iran represent the fruition of the ideas about popular sentiment and the possibility of an uprising. But it is clear that this is a time of testing for the idea that the mullahcracy can be shaken to its foundations by an aggrieved populace. If it can’t, then the regime will prove itself stronger than some of its most heated critics say it is, and the world will have to adjust accordingly. If this is Tienanmen II, and the regime crushes it, there will be no easy approach to regime change. And there will be no pretending any longer that Iran’s regime isn’t a unified, hardline, irridentist, and enormously dangerous one.

See also the Foreign Policy blogs, especially The Cable and Passport. Wayne White writes:

I question the prudence of simply plowing ahead on engagement as if nothing has changed the potential state of play between Tehran and Washington ...

Meanwhile, while American officials* are "shocked" at the results, the administration will continue full steam ahead, "Obama Administration Officials Say Efforts to Engage Iran Will Move Forward."

* Correction appended.

Understanding Ideology

James Joyner provides a very useful post for understanding the recent wave of ideologically-motivated murders, "Right Wing Extremists." Especially good are these diagrams, drawn from Conservative-Resources.com, "Right Wing vs. Left Wing":

I teach ideology, and most textbooks in comparative politics include some version of the graphs above.

That said, for various reasons I worry less about the extreme right wing in American politics. As I noted previously, "it's my personal belief that radical left-wing ideology is the greatest threat to the country today."

That said, we'd probably have less confusion over who's on the left or the right if folks better understood the various ways to graph the ideological continuum. James makes a good point below, although he needs to clarify this point about "racism is neither right-wing nor left-wing ..." Textbook definitions of Nazi ideology distinguish it from fascism with respect to theories of racial millenarianism. That said, it's true that anti-Semitic ideology today is found on both the extreme left and extreme right:

I prefer to think of ideology as a circle, rather than a line. Left and Right have meaning but, as one gets to the extremes on either side — depicted as anarchism in the top chart and “Everyone Against Everyone” in the second — the views diverge.

I actually prefer the bottom figure best in that it groups authoritarian states — Communism, Theocracy, and Fascism — very tightly and depicts, for example, Socialism and Libertarianism are near opposites. Additionally, it contrasts all governmental/ideological forms with Anarchy, or the absence of government. Those who murder to carry out their political agenda are in that category; their particular ideas otherwise don’t much matter.

Finally, I should note that racism is neither right-wing nor left-wing (nor, for that matter, is it centrist or anarchist). It exists at all points on the spectrum and isn’t a political ideology at all. Von Brunn’s hatred of Jews isn’t what makes him a right-winger but rather his views on politics.

It Takes a Village to Debate Bill O'Reilly?

Yep, according to Joan Walsh, " It takes a village to debate Bill O'Reilly!":

I was surprised when so many people I respect told me not to appear on "The O'Reilly Factor." I'd attacked Bill O'Reilly for his jihad against Dr. George Tiller, and he asked me on to discuss my "accusations." I thought that was fair. I could explain my point of view to his face; to say no felt like being a punk. But smart and supportive friends, family, co-workers, Twitterers and media stars all over the country reached out and suggested I skip it.

I thought about it, but not for long. I like doing TV. I'm not terrible at it. I criticized him, I should have the guts to repeat it to his face. I also need to say that when I announced I'd said yes, every one of the doubters, and more, sent me great advice and good wishes. (Thanks to Media Matters who, unbidden, just had staff start sending me clips to watch, about O'Reilly's lies. And if you're not on Twitter, well, Twitter rocked for me.) My daughter coached me; so did my litigator ex-husband, so did my friend and Salon co-conspirator Kerry Lauerman. It takes a village to debate Bill O'Reilly!

His producers also helped by doing that thing they do: "Hey, Bill really respects you for coming on the show! He wants to have a conversation! It'll be fine!"

More at the link. (Also, Digby calls O'Reilly a monster ... but really, for wanting to prevent late-term abortions, and being willing to stand up for his views? Kind of like how Carrie Prejean was treated, no?)

I've already said O'Reilly's pretty much a bully (see, "O'Reilly Hammers Pro-Choice Extremist Joan Walsh!"). But Walsh is as much an "extremist" as O'Reilly. She says he's "driven by demons. God bless him and save him." But really, if she believes in God, why does she think the unborn have no right to life?

This is a strange, even awful woman ...

Care of Memeorandum.

George H.W. Bush and the Bucket List

Anyone up for some skydiving:

Analyzing the Iranian Election?

Call me cynical, but I never thought the outcome of Iran's (disputed) presidential election was in doubt. Persian authoritarianism is alive and well, and no doubt Iran's ruling mullahs would do the old PRI in Mexico proud.

Dave Schuler pretty much sums up my thinking at Below the Beltway:

The election was illegitimate from the get-go. The “irregularities” didn’t begin yesterday. The Iranian system is one in which the elected officials have little or no real power, only candidates that have been approved by Iran’s actual rulers appear on ballots, and the mullahs, Iran’s real rulers, control the election process and the media from stem to stern.

All we can say now is than in Iran the people have spoken. The people that matter, anyway.

There's a huge buzz on the election, naturally, given the long-running hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. A particularly interesting take is found at Duck of Minerva, for what it's worth, "Estimating the Degree of Election Fraud in Iran: Nate Silver, Are You Out There?"

But see Daniel Drezner's related post, "Just Repeat to Yourself, "Obama is Not God," And You Will Feel Much, Much Better [UPDATED]."

What's Up With David Weigel?

You have to really shake your head at the ideological alliances of today.

Take David Weigel, who's got a piece up today on the GOP, "‘Right-Wing’ Rhetoric on Hold After Museum Shooting." It's a pretty strong attack on those who take exception to the left's smear against the conservative movement as a bunch of "Christian fascist eliminationists."

Weigel's a reporter at The Washington Independent, but previously he was a contributing editor at the libertarian Reason Magazine. In the latter position he'd be expected to advocate small government and the protection of liberties from the expansion of state power. On the whole, Reason would appear to support the libertarian wing of the GOP. But often the ideological lines get blurred, and some hardline libertarian activists are essentially "unpatriotic paleoconservatives" who veer over into hardline leftist territory - and, of course, some of that activity includes not just opposition to robust national defense, but even things like 9/11 trutherism and tin-foil hats.

So it's interesting that Weigel's moved from the Reason bench over to the hard-left Washington Independent, where such Bush-bashing nihilists as Spencer Ackerman also hold court. Such "libertarians" also include the America- and Israel-hating Daniel Larison, and the "liberaltarian" posse at Ordinary Gentlemen. These guys riff on (pothead) Will Wilkinson quite a bit. And they also gain sustenance from the likes of Andrew Sullivan. "Sully," of course, is a deranged Obamaton who feeds on the writings of Charles Johson at Little Green Footballs.

The respectable Matt Welch put the kibosh on these strange dalliances in a recent post. He notes:

The focus on political teams blurs one central, overriding truth: When it comes to bailout/stimulus/econ, there is no significant break in policy between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, no matter how much it benefits enthusiasts and detractors from pretending there's a sharp break between the two.

Welch, of course, is no fan of neoconservative foreign policy, so he naturally opposes the forward role of the U.S. in conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq. But he's good to distance himself from all the crazed left-liberal hoochy-kootchy.

Anyway, I mention all this just as hardline leftist Steve Benen is citing David Weigel in support of his attacks on the conservative movement.

Folks need to be careful about their allegiances.

I don't know David Weigel personally (although my blog-buddy Robert Stacy McCain calls him a good friend). No matter. Connecting the dots here - even with an admittedly broad brush - gives you some idea of what's really going on with the left-libertarian coalitions today: It's all anti-(neo)conservatism, all the time.

Thank goodness Sarah Palin's a neocon!

Politicizing Gun Murders

I was thinking about the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, when Collective Soul's, "Shine," came on the radio yesterday. Why didn't leftists call for a boycott of the band, or rock-and-roll altogether, in light of the killings? The band released a statement?

Well, Matt Lewis, in discussing the smearing of conservatives in light of George Tiller and James von Brunn, raises the Virgina Tech shootings in his post, "The Left Politicizes Gun Murders":

If we're going to look at using these events as a catalyst to change policy, perhaps we should consider talking about the issue of mental health. For example, the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was declared mentally ill in Virginia but was still free to attend classes, and ultimately kill his fellow students. Clearly, the failure here was a mental health issue - not a "gun" issue. If we are going to begin looking to pass legislation to curb these violent incidents, why don't we consider doing something that might actually work - like looking at changing laws regarding mental health issues?

Because taking up the cause of mental health does not advance the cause of liberalism.

Or changing the laws rergarding listenting to rock-and-roll?

See also, Dan Riehl, "The Hate Was of Bush and The Right."

Related: See also, "When Desperation Gets Ugly," and "‘Right-Wing’ Rhetoric on Hold After Museum Shooting," via Memeorandum.

Gay Radicals Pissed After Obama Defends DOMA

I just love the picture below, from CBS's, "Gay Rights Groups Irate After Obama Administration Lauds Defense of Marriage Act." If anyone finds a larger copy, e-mail it to me.

I wrote previously on Barack Obama's utter fear of the Gay Rights Third Rail of American Politics: "Obama's Stunning Failure on Gays in the Military."

Basically, the president's a pussy when it comes to REALLY pushing for change - and hey, wasn't he supposed to be all about change?

This is good for conservatives. Go ahead, Obama, lose the far-left wing base. Right now leftists have constantly ridiculed the GOP for becoming a rump party of hicks and yahoos, but then the same folks who demonize the right can't even get the attention of their own "Lightworker"?

But don't take if from me. Check out all the commentary at Memeorandum, especially John Aravosis' post, "Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children." All of these blogs are on the case:

Political Punch, Ben Smith's Blog, Daily Kos, The Daily Dish, skippy the bush kangaroo, #gay, Hot Air, Polimom, Too, QandO, Pam's House Blend, The Bilerico Project, Pharyngula, The Atlantic Politics Channel, WyBlog, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!, Instapundit, The Impolitic, Runnin' Scared, MyDD and Stinque

Apparently, the administration is interpreting DOMA narrowly; and most explosively, the president has rejected the claim that gay rights are in the same class as interracial marriage (e.g., Loving v. Virgina). That's got to hurt (take that Pam Spaulding and Andrew Sullivan!). But frankly, I've made that very argument many times here. See, in particular, "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right."

O'Reilly Hammers Pro-Choice Extremist Joan Walsh!

Bill O'Reilly hammered Joan Walsh today. It was great television, but does O'Reilly come off as a bully? Walsh was pathetic when pinned down on the right to life for late-term unborn babies, but liberals probably hate O'Reilly so much not just for his views, but for his in your face finger-pointing!

I love it:

It's Not in the Way That Your Love Set Me Free...

Some songs bring back very specific memories. Toto's "Hold the Line" reminds me of a partying buddy in high school. His name was John. He was a kind of hippy geek, but I loved him (and I was a skater geek, of course). We'd practically stop the car to play air guitar to this song ... Enjoy Toto:

TOTO - Hold the Line @ Yahoo! Video