From Peter Roff at US News & World Report

5. Help the reformers and dissidents level the playing field in the battle of ideas.

Why Obama would fumble this historic opportunity?

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Naturally, Ron Paul casted the lone decenting vote.

More Obama alone.

Even Amnesty International…..wow.

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At HuffPo with Parvez Sharma

A: I don’t think he is the only hope and the best option but I do think that’s what these people want and need right now. They can’t aim for a huge change and started marching against the Islamic republic of Iran, but they can get to the point they like with these changes and these small changes. Plus I think right now the issue is more how they’ve been treated and lied to and.. So they want there right back more than anything and in this process Moussavi has suddenly become the face and the leader. They voted for him and now they want their vote to be realized. I also think he is a bit different now, not that his way of thinking or ideas has totally changed and his super open minded person but he has changed, and I strongly believe his wife is the power behind all that.

Emphasis mine. There has been much mention of Moussavi’s wife. This communication gives weight to the argument that Moussavi does indeed represent change from the existing regime. It’s interesting to hear how many women are among the demonstrators.

These people are very brave and know that thie lives hang in the balance. There is some indication that elements of the military won’t fire upon the protestors. Is this more prevelant than the regime wants us to know.

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Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are distancing themselves from Obama.

From Jennifer Rubin:

And that is why, ultimately, the Obama approach collapses upon itself. This is a president who prefers whenever possible to avoid military action, who isn’t willing to pay for a defense build-up and who is squeamish about using other ”sticks.” He believes in speeches and talk, which he envisions – because he is the luminous Obama — turning the hearts and minds of leaders and peoples previously not inclined to pay attention to us. But how does that work if Obama’s persona shrivels to that of a cold-hearted technocrat obsessed with engaging a loathsome regime? Who will listen to him then and be emboldened by his calls for change if he projects not moral vision, but embarrassing timidity and submissiveness toward one of the most reactionary regimes on the planet?

Obama has unmasked his own rhetoric as fraudulent. And for what — for the nonexistent chance to persuade the mullahs to give up their nukes?

From Charles Krauthammer:

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.

If his inner circle is filled with sycophants and only the like minded from his Chicago, leftist world, he sees everything through an anti-Israel filter. Nevermind the messiah angle. Its a vacuum that considers Obama’s ego far too heavily.

UPDATE: Egypt joins Cananda, France and Germany in codemning Iran and siding with the protestors. H/T to Gateway Pundit.

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With Ayatollah Kahmenei’s official pronouncement in support of Ahmadenijad and warning to clear the streets, it should be clear to all that the Iranian regime has put into place the assets necessary to end public opposition. Gateway Pundit’s pictures of Hamas and Hezbollah shock troops deployed in Iran only means that they are there to do violence against Iranian citizens. The Iranian regime understands western news cycles. The weekend is upon us and will provide them the weakest news coverage.

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AJ Strata has a marvelously detailed post this morning on the frightening increase in unemployment in states lie Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, New York and Pennsylvania. All states went for Obama last year. Say’s Strata who provides some excellent graphics:

The liberal economic experiment to use the government to stimulate job creation is an utter and complete failure. Obama and the Dems may have inherited a problem, but their answers to the problems were all wrong. And that realization will come to hit the American public as this unemployment debacle runs through out the summer of 2009

I wonder what will happen when some of the fall-out begins from the closing of auto dealerships. These will be felt in more rural area, and Democrats and Obama really don’t care about those areas.

Its time for local grassroots efforts by Republicans in those districts to go on the offensive to defeat Democrat congressional candidates. The Ron Paul voters whom voted for Obama will not be voting for Democrats next fall.

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Senator Charles Grassley says he will publically hold up nominees until he gets the answers he wants.

In the past, you’ve probably heard about secret holds in the Senate, in which a single senator hides behind the rules to block a nomination while remaining anonymous. Grassley wouldn’t do that. Fastidious about keeping the public informed on what he’s doing, if Grassley tries to stop a nominee, he’ll do it out in the open, by name, and he’ll tell the White House exactly why he’s doing it. And he’ll keep doing it until he gets what he wants.

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Don’t we have to have congressional hearings on these sorts of things? Or is it a special prosecutor? I’m never sure.

From Ed Morrissey:

Obama badly wants these Americorps workers in big cities for his get-out-the-vote efforts. He knows that it is here where Democrats will maintain his Presidency in 2112. Obama won in Florida because of his efforts in Orlando and Miami area counties as a 20% swing in voting occurred.

We are seeing a pattern, no longer just a single data point. IGs work independently to protect taxpayers from corruption and abuse from its own government agencies. A coordinated attack on IGs certainly suggests hostility to that mission, which isn’t the Hope and Change Obama promised on the campaign trail.

Obama badly wants these Americorps workers in big cities for his get-out-the-vote efforts. Thus he needs the IGs in his pocket. He knows that it is here where Democrats will maintain his Presidency in 2112. Obama won in Florida because of his efforts in Orlando and Miami area counties as a 20% swing in voting occurred.

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Yes, say two activists interviewed last night by Gateway Pundit

Here are key points that GP learned in his interview with Kianoosh Sanjari and Benafsheh Zand-Bonazzi:

** Ayatollah Khomenei’s grand-daughter was arrested during a recent demonstration.

** The people of Iran will not forgive Barack Obama for siding with the evil regime.

** The protesters are communicating anyway they can. The regime has been trying to shut down communications. At the rally each day the protesters carry signs that announce the next rally. This is how they are communicating.

It was an honor to finally speak with Kianoosh Sanjari tonight.
I have been following his story since the time he was arrested and sent to Evin Prison in 2006.
What a great young man. What a hero.

It was fairly clear that Obama would go with his socialist agenda domestically, yet most observers didn’t predict the assault on private businesses. Most thought that Obama would back off on Iraq and increase our military presence in Afghanistan. The Gitmo closings and legal alterations for terrorist that make life easier for terrorists has exceeded what he said he would do.

Now Obama has his first real foreign policy test. And we have learned two things about Obama in his philosophies on the Middle East. One, he likes to lecture and use a perverted set of historical facts and moral ecquivelances. Second, he is no friend of Israel. And he has been diabolical in his methods. First he provided soothing assurances to American Jews and in a trip to Israel. Yet, while his rhetoric still emphasizes the “special relationship between the US and Israel,” his actions have been the opposite. First by endorsing the Saudi peace plan. Second. by warning Israel not to attack Iran. Third, his failure to recognize the history of Israel and instead advancing a false timeline that favors the argument of those who desire “driving it into the sea.”

So in the young presidency of Obama, folks are beginning to draw the conclusion that there is a clear distinction between what he says and what he does. Is it going similarly here? Does his lack of support for for the Iranian protestors mean he favors the Mullahs and their lust for nuclear weapons? Why? Is it because he needs Ahmadenijah for his grand bargain? And does this grand bargain somehow involve Israel? Besides his words, which have been shown to be empty, nothing in Obama’s past or associations indicates he is remotely supportive of the Jewsih state. Why would he start now?

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From Michael Barone:

Obama is said to be following a realist foreign policy. Don’t worry about human rights; propitiate evil dictators and make deals with them. But if the issue is to avoid a nuclear-armed Iran aiming its weapons at its neighbors, what is realistic? It seems to me Obama is giving up a small but nontrivial chance of advancing regime change for a zero chance of achieving a change in regime behavior. That sounds to me like a rigid adherence to ideology—the ideology in this case being opposition to George W. Bush’s rhetorical and sometimes successful drive to advance democracy and freedom—rather than a pragmatic attempt to take advantage of an unexpected development—the demonstrations against an election result morphing into an existential challenge to an evil regime. From the candidate of hope and change we get a commitment of hopelessness and the status quo. What do all our idealists on the left who cheered candidate Obama and are cheering the Iranian demonstrators think of this?

Is that what Obama is about here – just being against George Bush?

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