Tweets From Tehran Streets
June 14th, 2009
The streets of Tehran are in chaos following Friday’s highly charged elections that brought out 85% of eligible voters. The government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rushed to release the results Saturday showing a landslide victory that stunned supporters of the primary opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi. In what most anticipated would be a close election, some believing Mousavi would emerge victorious, the governments announcement that Ahmadinejad received 62.6% of the vote to Mousavi’s 33.75 was hardly believable. Read the rest of this entry »
When President-elect Barack Obama met with then President George W. Bush at the White House last November they spoke of providing short term liquidity for the beleaguered auto industry. Conveying the hopes of Obama, John Podesta reported 
The First Hundred Days is an arbitrary benchmark political commentators have used to judge the early success of new administrations since the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You can bet that columnists from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post along with other liberal print publications and the television news divisions at NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN have all prepared carefully crafted presentations exclaiming the accomplishments of the chosen one. Today’s events, however, will make “brilliance” a hard sell on this 98th day, promising the 99th, the eve of the event, will be filled with questions of the President’s incompetance and deception.
Reacting to the widespread protests over government budgetary policy, billed as “Tea Parties” and held on “Tax Day” April 15, Janeane Garofalo, a sometimes actress, liberal radio host, and truly clueless political commentator, blasted the protesters on Keith Olberman’s “Countdown” on MSNBC referring to the protesters as
AIG CEO Edward Liddy took on the ills of the insurance giant with a sense of public service not seen since titans of industry answered the same call during the great depression. His compensation for this task: $1 per year. None the less, the Congress needed a scapegoat to avoid scrutiny from passing a Stimulus Package that included a clause protecting those bonus payments paid by AIG that prompted the public outrage and these congressional hearings. While none of the congressmen grilling Liddy bothered to read the mammoth $787 billion stimulus bill before voting to pass it, they were more than happy to turn the public’s outrage over the $165 million in bonuses toward Liddy rather than having it reflect on their own incompetence and deception. 
The throngs of youth and hopeful who had faith in Candidate Obama’s promise of change will dwindle as President Obama prepares to sign a bill crafted in Democratic committees on Thursday and rammed through Congress by Democratic majorities a day latter before anyone could possibly review the details of the monstrous package that exceeded 1,000 pages. It appears approximately $500 billion will be spent on infrastructure, education and public housing as dictated by Democrats. The only portion that will find it’s way into the economy immediately is the $287 billion in tax relief pleaded for by Republicans. The Congressional Budget Office called the plan a spending bill rather than a stimulus plan and added that future growth would be better served by doing nothing than the drag borrowing for the massive spending bill will cause. 
Shiites, Kurds, Christians and, most importantly, the Sunnis who boycotted the 2005 elections turned out in mass to participate in Iraq’s provincial elections today. Faced with threats of violence thousands or Iraqi security forces sealed the country’s borders, shut airports and banned vehicles in polling areas. Iraqi election officials gained accolades of U.N. and other foreign observers sent to monitor the election process. While the event was marred by mortar shells falling in Takrit, Saddam’s former home town, and a car bombing in Tuz Kharmatu where ethnic strife continues between rival Kurds and Turkman factions, proud Iraqis, men and women alike, crowded polling places, often with children in tow, to express their belief in their emerging democracy. 
Christians represent a dwindling minority of the Iraqi population. But those that remain were able to celebrate Christmas as an official holiday for the first time this year. While estimates vary greatly it is believed there are still a few hundred thousand Christians remaining in the country. Christian leaders in Iraq have stated the number has declined by two-thirds since the U.S. invasion of 2003. But this Christmas has come without the extreme levels of violence that drove so many out of Iraq during the same period in 2004 and subsequent years. 
Whenever I talk to Obama supporters, with little exception, they seem to impart their hopes and wishes upon the the vision of the candidate with little or no regard for what he has said or done. But then, he has made promises in his speeches that cover nearly every possible scenario. Whether it be NAFTA, health care, taxation, energy, the war in Iraq, his associations with shady characters, anti-American pastors, unrepentant terrorists or the bailout bill, he has constantly changed his story to cater to the feedback of the polls; move over Bill Clinton, there is a new master of chamillion politics. 
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, Democrat from California, began dragging Wall Street titans from failed institutions in front of his committee on Monday to answer for the world wide credit crisis that has devastated markets around the globe. There is no doubt, as confirmed by their own testimony, that greed in these institutions ran rampant with generous bonuses being dolled out to parting executives even as those institutions became insolvent and headed toward bankruptcy. These true confessions make for great theater and give those affected by the rapidly declining economy a target for their disgust and frustration but ignore the fact that the primary cause of the failures were the non-performing portfolios dominated by sub-prime mortgages generated in staggering dollar amounts under guidelines set by the quasi-government mortgage institutions of Fannie Mae [FNME] and Freddie Mack [FMAC].