White House elevates its rhetoric on Iranian election fraud.

Allahpundit has a post up about the White House’s sudden, if guarded escalation of its anti-election fraud in Iran rhetoric – I can’t imagine why we’re suddenly seeing that; can you? – and ended it with this question:

Exit question: How would Saddam be reacting to all this if he was still in charge in Iraq?

The answer to that is actually simple: he wouldn’t be, because this wouldn’t be happening. The people of Iran aren’t stupid; they wouldn’t even flirt with the idea of a civil war if they were still sharing a border with a genocidal, expansionist regime that killed at least 200K of their countrymen in the last war. Saddam Hussein used poison gas in that war, after all. Somebody that vile couldn’t be trusted not to leap on a distracted Iran and start rending.  ‘Course, that’s no longer a worry, given that we took the murdering tyrant out and hanged him a while back; not to mention, shooting down his sons in the street like the mad dogs that they were.  So now they share a border (for the moment) with the Great Satan, who everybody knows has precisely zero interest in invading them.

Gee.  Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?

Moe Lane

PS: Good job, whoever it was in the State Department that told Twitter to keep the lines open.

Crossposted to RedState.

So. I needed new tags for the car.

Getting them from the MVA of Maryland took one week, three physical visits by myself, multiple physical visits from the people who sold us the car, numerous telephone calls, at least two websearches, the procurement of widely diverse pieces of documentation, multiple amounts of shuffling from one desk to another, an angry conversation with a supervisor, and a signed letter from my wife permitting the staffers to even talk with me before I could get them. And why did this take so long? Because their computer system can’t update its records to handle the concept that people actually still get married, that’s why. The best part? Everybody involved knew this all along, but we had to go through it all anyway.

And that was for a new set of license plates. Imagine the glitches that will crop up to interfere with federal oversight over your emergency appendectomy.

Crossposted to RedState.

‘You don’t want any more than that on marble.’

[UPDATE, April 25, 2010]: They made the video private on YT, but you can watch it here.

Trust me, you’ll get it if you watch for long enough.  You want to let it tell its story in its own time*.

My only problem with pointing out Top Gear 10: The Complete Season 10 is that I can’t quite believe that the other episodes can measure up to that clip, which is made up of crystalline awesome suspended in an energetic liquid-dude solution. Really, the only way that they could have improved it was to have a cameo by Iron Man.

Moe Lane

Continue reading ‘You don’t want any more than that on marble.’

Dodd upset over questions about wife’s conflict of interest.

No word yet whether he was sipping wine from a jeweled chalice and gnawing on a drumstick at the time.

There are times when you don’t need to go past the title and subtitle:

Dodd Says Questions About Wife’s Role in Health Care Industry ‘Offensive’
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., whose wife Jackie Clegg Dodd sits on the boards of four health care companies, disputes the suggestion that his wife’s career could pose a conflict of interest.

It really does say it all, doesn’t it? We’re facing a ‘universal health care system’ scheduled to cost us at least 1 trillion and decrease the number of uninsured by maybe one-third; and the guy who is helping get that boondoggle enacted into law is also the guy who’s been playing games with his financial disclosures. Again.

And yet, bringing up the minor little detail that his wife is on the board of four health care companies is apparently Beyond the Pale, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Well, it’s not.  This is not an aristocracy, and Dodd is not a Duke: his actions are ultimately accountable to the population of both Connecticut, and the nation.  If he cannot grasp that concept, he does not have to keep being a Senator.

Speaking of which

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Cory Doctorow earns his corn on Iran Twittering. [UPDATE]

[UPDATE] Alternate site here (via Instapundit).

Via @Fausta, via Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, the #iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners:

  1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
  2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
  3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
  4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

There’s more.

Letterman apology, take two.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Big Hollywood and Instapundit readers.  If you’d like some lighter fare after this, try this.

Compare this:

…to this:

A certain attitude adjustment can be detected there; amazing what a spot of actual activism will do, yes? Particularly when it’s directed at advertisers.  The general reaction elsewhere to this one is ‘kinda real‘; see also Cynthia Yockey, Michelle Malkin, Little Miss Attila, the Rhetorician, The Other McCain, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Big Hollywood, Wizbang, & Dan Collins.  Also, Governor Palin has already accepted the apology:

“Of course it’s accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who ‘joke’ about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve,” she said.

“Letterman certainly has the right to ‘joke’ about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,” Palin said. “This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America’s Right to Free Speech – in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.”

And I don’t think that these guys are going to stop.  Given that Letterman should have started with a “Sorry you were offended” last week, instead of smirking it off, well: I can see why they wouldn’t.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The Corzine campaign and the GOP have something in common.

We both want to link the (for-now) Governor of New Jersey to the President. Admittedly, their reasons are not ours; but that’s why we have elections. And the White House is worried about this one, to the point that they brought in Corzine to discuss it with Rahm Emanuel:

A senior Obama administration official familiar with the meeting said Emanuel did not express concern with the Corzine campaign, but rather wanted to gather intelligence on Corzine’s gameplan as the governor sought advice and help from the Obama political operation. The administration official, who requested anonymity when discussing the private meeting, said the president and national party leadership are well aware Corzine is in a tough fight, but believe he will be able to turn it around – particularly with core Democratic voters – as he begins to campaign heavily this summer.

“We’re invested in this victory and we’re confident of it,” the official said.

Asked about the discussions, Corzine campaign spokesman Sean Darcy said in a statement today: “The Vice President’s two recent visits here mere days ago entirely disproves this gossip item.”

He declined to elaborate.

Continue reading The Corzine campaign and the GOP have something in common.