Leading opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi isn’t an Iranian Nelson Mandela or a Lech Walesa. He’s not so much leading a revolt as he is skillfully surfing a wave of public displeasure.
Of course he won the election. Iran’s government wouldn’t have shut down the phone system and the Internet if their guy had gotten a majority.
The Iranian people spoke. They told Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to go away.
Daily Archives: June 19, 2009
diagnosing the conservative malady
Leonard Pitts sums it up well:
By contrast, modern conservatism is defined by an Alice-through-the-looking-glass incoherence: small government except when it is growing larger than ever, fiscal restraint except when we are spending like Michael Jackson in a Disney gift shop, foreign policy pragmatism except when we are trying to transform the Middle East.
Indeed, sometimes it feels as if it is no longer defined by principles at all, nor by energy and ideas, but rather, by a limitless ability to feel put upon and slighted.
To be a conservative these days is, or so they would have you believe, like being black in Birmingham in 1952. It is to be the victim of media, culture and law that hate you just for being.
Your first thought is to reason them out of it, but it is notoriously hard to reason people out of victimology because it: a) feels good, b) demands deference, c) relieves them of any responsibility for their own fouled-up condition. Victimology is as addictive as crack —- and as mentally damaging.
For proof, look no further than a man who thinks David Letterman belongs on a list of homophobes, anti-Semites and bigots “because he made a joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter.”
It is an asinine argument but I guess it makes sense to him. After all, he’s a conservative.
And nobody knows the trouble they’ve seen.
Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she’s so worried that information from next year’s national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.
the supreme liar speaks
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader sternly warned of a crackdown if protesters continue days of massive street rallies, escalating the government’s showdown with demonstrators demanding a new presidential election.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his first response to the protests that the country’s disputed presidential vote had not been rigged, siding with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and offering no concessions to the opposition. He effectively ruled out any chance for a new vote, lauding the June 12 election as an expression of the people’s will.
in honor of friday …
“you’re not artistic and you have no integrity”
“The Pitch” is comedy writing at its best.
