This is why Sarah Palin is not credible (Video)

and crib notes to answers questions? are you kidding me? and she aspires to be President? sorry, she is an utter joke.



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Meet the Press, October 4, 2009 (Video and Transcript)

President Obama warns Tehran that it must grant complete access to UN inspectors within two weeks. Will Iran meet these conditions? Plus, pressure mounts to articulate the way forward in Afghanistan. We'll talk exclusively to U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. In addition, a political roundtable: David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, Rachel Maddow and Mike Murphy.

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MTP: Take Two, 2010 Mid-Term Elections

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President Obama On Progress Made During P5+1 Meeting (Video)

Upon conclusion of the P5+1 meeting regarding Iran, President Obama sends a strong message on behalf of the international community: Iran must take “concrete action” in regards to its nuclear program. October 1, 2009.



Transcript

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G20: President Obama's statement on Iran's secret nuclear facility (Video/Transcript)

President Obama with President Sakrozy and Prime Minister Brown


MSNBC Video

Transcript

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Wow, we are becoming like Iran

One thing about the GOP, when they have NOTHING to say it is back to the scare tactic playbook.

As we see them trying to scare us to death on health care, they are now comparing our country to Iran. And this coming from the most conservative mouthpiece in the senate, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show today to continue his near daily rants against President Obama. DeMint, who has repeatedly boasted that he will “break” Obama by defeating health care reform, has made a habit of comparing government under Obama to fascism. This time, DeMint told Hewitt that immigrants from Iran tell him that America is going “down the road” to the type of government they had fled from:

DEMINT: And we’ve seen a lot of countries over the years collapse when they’ve gone down the road that we’re going down. Probably the most heart-wrenching experiences I’ve had over the last several days is when naturalized American citizens who have immigrated here from Germany, Iran and other countries, they come up to me and they say why are we doing what so many have fled from? Why don’t Americans see what we’re doing? And I’ve realized that these people who’ve lived under socialist type economies, and totalitarianism, they know where we’re headed if we don’t turn things around.

Listen to this highly intelligent Senator, ,here.

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Ahmadinejad says Obama is acting like Bush

OH, PUHLEAZE. Nobody, I mean, nobody is believing that old trick card from a very old playbook. for real.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama of behaving like his White House predecessor and called on him to apologize for what he called U.S. interference following Iran's elections.

Obama has ramped up his previously muted criticism, saying he was "appalled and outraged" by a crackdown on protests which followed Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

"Mr. Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously (former U.S. President George W.) Bush used to say," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Before the election, the Obama administration had indicated that it was interested in reaching out to Iran, after years of a diplomatic freeze following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran has given no clear signal that it is interested in Obama's overture, and in the wake of the election, the U.S. leader has slowly ratcheted up his criticism of Iran.

Meanwhile, 70 university professors were detained in Iran in a widening government crackdown on protesters, according to a Web site affiliated with opposition politician Mir Hossein Mousavi, who says he was robbed of victory in a rigged presidential election.

The professors were detained on Wednesday, immediately after meeting with Mousavi, the Kalemeh site said. The report said it is not clear where the detainees were taken.

Mousavi said for the first time Thursday that he is being isolated by authorities and pressured to drop his presidential election challenge. read more here....

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Senator John Kerry schools Joe Scarborough on Iran and Politics (Video)

You got that joe?

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More VOTES cast in Iran Presidential Election than PEOPLE?

And there was NO CHEATING involved?

Iran's Revolutionary Guard threatened to crush any protests as the Guardian Council announced Monday that voting irregularities found in 50 constituencies would have had no impact on the outcome of the presidential election.

There will be a "revolutionary confrontation" if demonstrators take to the streets again, Iran's elite military force said in a statement on Monday.

Demonstrators must "end the sabotage and rioting activities," said the statement, adding that the protests by supporters of reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi amount to a "conspiracy" against Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide re-election on June 12 has spurred allegations of vote-rigging and sent tens of thousands of supporters from both sides into the streets for massive protests.

Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the 12-member cleric Guardian Council, was quoted on state TV as saying a probe into the disputed election results has found that in 50 constituencies there were more votes cast than there were registered voters.

But that "has no effect on the results of the election," which saw Ahmadinejad winning by a 2-to-1 margin, Kadkhodaei said. read more here....

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Obama to Iran, "...we are bearing witness to the Iranian people..."

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

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Obama's Statement on Iranian Violence

From White House

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples' belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

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I hope blood will NOT be shed tomorrow in Iran, pray for the protestors

Since the Supreme Leader Ayatollah declared there was NO CHEATING in Iran's presidentail election and is prepared to put the HAMMER down on protestors tomorrow, the protestor's are MARCHING IN THE STREETS TOMORROW.

President Obama says to Ayatollah, "The World is Watching You".

I absolutely do. First of all, let's understand that this notion that somehow these hundreds of thousands of people who are pouring into the streets in Iran are somehow responding to the West or the United States, that's an old distraction that I think has been trotted out periodically. And that's just not going to fly.

What you're seeing in Iran are hundreds of thousands of people who believe their voices were not heard and who are peacefully protesting and seeking justice. And the world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way. Already we've seen violence out there. I've said this throughout the week, I want to repeat it, that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that's a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for. And I'm very concerned, based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made, that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are -- through peaceful means -- trying to be heard will I think send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is and is not.

But the last point I want to make on this -- this is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran; this is an issue of the Iranian people. The fact that they are on the streets, under pretty severe duress, at great risk to themselves, is a sign that there's something in that society that wants to open up. And, you know, we respect Iran's sovereignty and we respect the fact that ultimately the Iranian people have to make these decisions.

But I hope that the world understands that this is not something that has to do with the outside world; this has to do with what's happening in Iran. And I think ultimately the Iranian people will obtain justice. read more here....

Congress condemns violence against protestors in Iran

And now some pictures from Al Rodgers, "Tehran Street Photos -- On the Brink"





Continuous Live Blogging of Protestors in Iran, Here

••

And finally as I think about the protestors in Iran, I can only think of the fear they must feel but the importance of what they must continue to do.

Dear Lord:

Shield the Iranian Protestors from harm's way as they march their way, continuing on to getting their voices heard. Don't let the Ayatollah kill them in cold blood. Freedom and democracy is a right for every living being. Protect them as they continue to march their way to freedom. Iran we are truly praying for you.

~icebergslim~

The Supreme Leader in Iran has spoken. The line in the sand has been drawn.

Basically, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei states that Ahmadinejad won the election and that anything going forward as protests, people will peril at their own risk.

People in Iran must make a decision. Keep protesting and remain the opposition or fall in line. It will get ugly because the protestors are still protesting. And funny that Ahmadinejad is still out of Iran. I don't expect to see that character until things settle in Iran, one way or the other. Correction, Ahmadinejad is there, behind the Supreme Leader in the videos below.

Here is the translation of the Supreme Leaders's speech. Live blogging from Huffington Post continues, here.

More information, here.

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500,000 in the streets of Tehran, Iran.....now here comes the......

THREATS.

The sense of threat against the opposition was growing. Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.

"We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution," Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan or the country as a whole, Reuters said.

Huffington Post has been doing a magnificent job live blogging everything. Read it all, here.


More pictures from Al Rodgers, here.

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Iran, on the brink of revolution from Keith Olbermann's Countdown (Video)

Iranian protesters duel in streets, online
Grand Ayatollah Montazeri confirms split.

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President Obama on the situation in Iran (Video)

Q: Mr. President, on Iran, does the disputed election results affect — there’s been violence in the street — in any way change your willingness to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad without preconditions? And also, do you have anything to say, any message to send to people who are on the streets protesting, who believe their votes were stolen and who are being attacked violently?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran. And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football — or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television. I think that the democratic process — free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they’re, rightfully, troubled.

My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election. But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I’ve always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad’s statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy — diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries — is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

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Shots fired at protesters in Iran

This is turning very ugly. Live blogging here. And photos from Al Rodgers here.

A rally Monday by pro-reform presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi turned violent when gunshots were fired, apparently by pro-government militia.

An Associated Press photographer saw one person shot dead and several others who appeared to be seriously wounded in Tehran's Azadi Square. The shooting came from a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.

"There has been sporadic shooting out there ... I can see people running here," added a reporter of Iran's English-language Press TV.

An Iranian news photographer said protesters had attacked the compound, and that members of the Basij religious militia then opened fire.

Hundreds of thousands of Mousavi backers had defied an Interior Ministry ban to cheer their leader in his first public appearance since elections he claims were marred by fraud. The government says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election with 63 percent of the vote.

Monday's outpouring swelled as people poured from buildings and side streets wearing the trademark green of Mousavi's campaign.

Before the shooting, Mousavi had paused on the edge of Tehran's Azadi, or Freedom, Square to address the crowd, which was more than five miles long. They roared back: "Long live Mousavi."

"This is not election. This is selection," read one English-language sign at the demonstration. Other marchers held signs proclaiming "We want our vote!" and raising their fingers in a V-for-victory salute.

"We want our president, not the one who was forced on us," said 28-year-old Sara, who gave only her first name because of fears of reprisals from authorities. read more here....

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Republicans blaming stolen Iran election on Obama

What a stretch???? Is this idiotic or what? When in doubt, blame it on Obama

On Friday, the Iranian government announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidential election, though observers, including his main challenger, cited irregularities — like text messaging being shut off and websites being dismantled — to call the results a fraud. But neoconservatives Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney blamed the election results on President Obama:

Richard Perle, a neoconservative and former Pentagon adviser, said Obama must share the blame for Ahmadinejad’s power grab. “Normally, when you unclench your fist it benefits the hardliners, because Obama appeared to be saying we can do business with you even with your present policies.” [...]

“It underscores the folly of the president’s basic premise that the problem we have with bad actors around the world is that they don’t understand us,” said Frank Gaffney, of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank. “These people are thugs and they have been emboldened by our weakness.”

Then Mitt Romney chimes in with the same talking points on This Week with George Stephanapoulous:

"[T]he comments by the president last week that there was a robust debate going on in Iran was obviously entirely wrong-headed. What has occurred is that the election is a fraud, the results are inaccurate, and you're seeing a brutal repression of the people as they protest.

"The president ought to come out and state exactly those words, indicate that this has been a terribly managed decision by the autocratic regime in Iran.

"It's very clear that the president's policies of going around the world and apologizing for America aren't working.... [J]ust sweet talk and criticizing America is not going to enhance freedom in the world."

Read it all here...

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They are going OFF in Iran (Video and Pictures)

Let's be real here.

We know that when you have unprecedented voting as in 80% in Iran that means CHANGE. We know this, we saw it on November 4, 2008, when Barack Obama became the next President of the United States.

So, to say Ahmadinejad won that election is well, bogus. Now the international community is looking at Iran and just letting it happen. In the meantime, the powers that be, are doing everything to keep the unrest down, but the information is getting out as to what is actually happening and it is not good. Folks voted and their votes were denied, not counted.

The challenger, Mosavi, is under house arrest. Here is Mosavi's letter to Iran. More here:

Mock not. As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message. Here's the Twitter from a Moussavi supporter:

ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.

It's increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and the old guard mullahs were caught off-guard by this technology and how it helped galvanize the opposition movement in the last few weeks. That's why they didn't see what those of us surgically attached to modems could spot a mile away: something was happening in Iran. If Drum is right, the mullahs believed their own propaganda about victory until reality hit them so hard so fast, they miscalculated badly and over-reached.

And why is the mainstream media not on this story? Oh, yeah, right, they cut all their budgets for international coverage and don't have a voice, so we are relegated to re-runs of stuff like, Larry King Live, while one of the biggest news stories of 2009 is breaking. This is why the public has no trust in the MSM.

On-going information here
Live Blog of information here
Huffington Post Live Blog
Ahmadinejad Math Doesn't Add Up
Ben Smith
Stealing the Election in Iran
Second Revolution?




More Al Rodgers Pictures Here

More Video here

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President Obama's remarks on the swift passing of regulating the tobacco industry and comments on the Iran election (Video)

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President Obama's message to the Iranian People (Video)

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