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All Palin all the time and loving it, revisited

"We're savoring the joy of bloggers, politicians and media types who think McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as running mate is the best thing since sliced sourdough bread," we captioned this image in our August 2008 post dissecting opponents' false claims that the Alaska Governor favored teaching Creationism in science classes. "Not to mention the bewilderment of their counterparts on the other side of the aisle," we continued, "who, like the proverbial deer — moose? —  in the headlights, obviously didn't see it coming down the road to the White House.  Above, "This moose made it across safely, though several hundred other moose end up in collisions with vehicles on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, causing injuries, deaths and property damage." (AP Photo/The Peninsula Clarion, M. Scott Moon)

No, she doesn't think Creationism or Intelligent Design belongs in the science classroom, as we determined to our satisfaction way back in August of 2008 (see below). But tongues will wag in a desperate attempt to discredit Sarah Palin as her blockbuster Going Rogue: An American Life bursts upon a waiting, breath-bated world this week. A relevant excerpt:

Palin complains of several brushes with McCain's 2008 campaign manager. In one, he took her to task for her views on evolution: "'But your dad's a science teacher,' Schmidt objected. 'Yes.' 'Then you know science proves evolution,' added Schmidt. I said, 'But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt.' Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows... But I felt I was on solid factual ground."

Pope Benedict XVI has often made very much the same point. Now, rather than reinventing the wheel, we herewith republish "All Palin all the time and loving it," written in the heat of battle during the first flush of our smittenness with the Woman Warrior from Wasilla:

August 30, 2008. "My only worry about Governor Palin had been what I would call a hysterical misreading of her views regarding the teaching of creationism in public schools, but Charles Johnson has put my fears to rest," we wrote in the comments at Dr. Helen's totally excellent "My Thoughts on Sarah Palin." More on her thoughts below, but first, here's what Charles Johnson had to say about how some of our fellow citizens on the left side of the aisle have distorted and will attempt to distort Palin's views:

LGF readers are probably aware that I am no creationist; in fact, I am strongly opposed to the teaching of “intelligent design” or “creation science,” or any other name the advocates for creationism concoct in their relentless quest to promote pseudo-science.

So I was disturbed to learn of Sarah Palin’s apparent support for creationism. However, as I posted in a comment earlier, she does not appear to be the fanatical type who wants to force or sneak the teaching of creationism into public school science classrooms.

But this is going to be a point of attack for the left, as Wired Magazine’s Brandon Keim demonstrates in this article: McCain’s VP Wants Creationism Taught in School.

Looks like Palin made an off-the-cuff statement during a debate on a hot topic, didn’t really expect the criticism she’d get, and then softened her position considerably in a follow-up interview. But to quote just the first part of her statements on creationism and ignore the second is misleading; because in the clarification she’s describing a position that doesn’t cause me (a staunch anti-creationist) any discomfort.

Phew. Now back to Dr. Helen (cross-posted at PJM), who thinks "Palin would focus on helping Americans achieve their dreams by staying out of their way":

For me, Sarah Palin represents many right-leaning libertarian ideas that I personally support: low taxes, gun rights, and smaller government …

While Democrats want to expand government programs to “help women,” I believe that smaller government and the policies of the libertarian right help women in many ways that are often ignored …

It seems that more and more women are going into business for themselves; in fact, a recent study shows that women are emerging as a fast-growing sector of new small business owners. That matches my experience: I hear women at my gym all the time talking about their start-up home businesses, such as working with Ebay selling furniture and other items. Some are making a very good living at it. A living, I am afraid, that will be eaten up by regulation and taxes if they are deemed “too successful” by the Obama camp. I hope Palin has more sympathy for entrepreneurs and those who run their own businesses, for they are the backbone of this country. Their success should be rewarded — not discouraged.

Lots of good, commonsense stuff. Plus, a great punchline: "And unlike some female politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Palin made it herself without the help of a career politician husband to give her an added advantage." You go, self-made woman!

The warring tribes of post-9/11

Republication of our September 11, 2006 post "A virtual lamp beside the golden door, revisited": "It’s been nearly three years since 9/11," wrote Michele of A Small Victory two years back, inviting her readers to add their own two cents' worth to her Voices 2004. "Where do you stand right now as far as emotional recovery goes? Have you moved on? Healed? How does your emotional view of 9/11 differ now from three years ago? Do you find yourself more hopeful than you were then?" We're republishing our response, which seems to have stood the test of time, in that we still agree with ourselves.

How would Osama answer the question "Do you find yourself more hopeful than you were then?" We think he would be of two minds: 1) Yes and 2) No.

1) Yes. Surely the evil genius whose own demons made him wake the sleeping giant* must be gratified to see the Orwellian inversion that has taken place in some large portion of the popular imagination, where the lunatic ravings of homegrown academics blinded by their hatred of America — the Susan Sontags and Noam Chomskys of this world — have metastacized into a toxic worldwide anti-American hysteria that threatens to derail the War on Islamic Extremism (Condi Rice's term for the War on Terror). We could write volumes about that. We have, in fact, written blog volumes about that. Listen to Sontag's solipsistic, a-historical, hyperventilating pontifications from her New Yorker essay published in the aftermath of 9/11:

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. [Note to Ms. Sontag: Our response was our own. It was visceral. We didn't wait for some public figure to tell us what to think or how to feel.] Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? [Note to Ms. Sontag: You haven't a clue re the terrorists' motives. See Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer et al.]

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall.

2) No. Despite the appeal of Sontag & Company's "arguments" to all who would blame America first, Osama must be worried about our country's pesky refusal to cut and run.  9/11 was, in fact, like Pearl Harbor in that the enemy realized he had awakened a sleeping giant.* In fact, the enemy has awakened two sleeping giants. America stands taller than ever on the world stage, staring down the nattering appeasement crowd on the one hand, and tearing down the terrorist networks and support systems on the other, thanks to the great leadership of President George W. Bush, his remarkable team of seasoned advisors, our superb military and the Coalition of the Willing.

But 9/11 awoke another sleeping giant, one that may have been slouching towards some kind of cyberBethlehem waiting to be born even as world attention was focused elsewhere. We're speaking, of course, of the blogosphere. A virtual lamp beside the golden door, this new medium was a beacon to the virtual "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" in the wake of 9/11, giving voice to those who had been voiceless — Iraqi bloggers, milbloggers, homefront bloggers and bloggers of every stripe, seekers of wisdom and truth who weren't buying what effete academic elites and mainstream media pack journalists were selling anymore

Update: Antivenin links.

*Note. "In the movies Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor, [Japanese naval commander] Yamamoto's character says, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.' Considerable doubt exists, though, whether he actually ever said (or wrote) anything like that; it was probably invented for the movies, although it may well have encapsulated some of his real feelings about it," according to Nationmaster Encyclopedia. Update post 2004 election: False but accurate?

"When they laugh at Sarah Palin, we feel them laughing at us"

"We're ordinary barbarians here. No one controls us. We're a horde," writes R.A. Mansour, co-editor of Conservatives 4 Palin, an unaffiliated group blog that speaks to our heart and mind as a member of the "pooh-poohed-by-the-anti-Palin-pooh-bahs" community. We love C4Ps banner (detail, above). Echoes of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World."

"Sarah Palin is our voice. When they laugh at her, we feel them laughing at us. Someday we'll have the last laugh," writes R.A. Mansour of Conservatives4Palin:

The latest Rasmussen polling numbers were quite instructive. Palin's biggest group of supporters are young, unmarried, and not social conservative evangelicals. Her supporters do not view her as the social conservative candidate. Social conservatives prefer Huckabee as a candidate in 2012; however, they think just as highly of Sarah Palin as they do Huckabee. Sarah Palin's considerable base of supporters are attracted to her because she is the Beltway Outsider. She is the ordinary American who is fed up with the arrogant and incompetent Beltway elites who got us into the mess we're in and yet still show such disdain for the ordinary hardworking people who want nothing more than for their government to be "on their side and not in their way."

"Like virtually all political observers, I was at first surprised by Governor Palin's decision to hand the reins of Alaska governance over to Lieutenant Governor Parnell," admits Nebraska-based libertarianTim Lindell, another C4P co-editor whose perfect-pitch "Palin is now free to exercise her real power" in the Alaska Dispatch catches the commentariat mid flight, "wheeling and swooping" in self-protective unison:

On the national stage, it sent the entirety of the political and chattering classes hurtling into the air like a flock of geese flushed by a hunter, flapping wildly and honking their displeasure.

"More importantly, the news was burning up the venue in which Palin's core of supporters and advocates resides — the conservative blogs," continues Lindell:

And it was the subject of endless discussion in the places where her national constituency gather and live … at backyard Fourth of July barbeques, in the bleachers at Little League baseball games, at small-town fireworks displays, in the kitchens and around the dining tables of family gatherings over the holiday weekend. These are people who don't obsessively follow politics but are beginning to awaken with a deep sense of disgust for the condition of our national political discourse … and an equally deep sense of disgust for the politicians of both parties that have brought us here, and for the media that enabled them. To these folks, who often refer to Palin as "Our Sarah," each attack by the Beltway class simply slaps another layer of concrete on their support for her …

In our jaded and cynical times, we expect politicians to speak in the language of vagueness and spin, making it necessary to sift through endless verbal dross to find nuggets of truth. But Palin speaks plainly [same point made by Politico's Roger Simon in "The sins of Sarah Palin" the other day] and spoke clearly about her reasons in her Friday announcement, reasons both personal and political.

The WSJs John Fund has the story behind the story, great stuff:

People close to Sarah Palin say national political reporters and pundits have missed the real reasons for her surprising decision to resign as Alaska governor. The national media have dismissed or downplayed her real motives, which had little to do with any plans to run for president in 2012.

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. "Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me. "She was fully aware she would be branded a 'quitter.' She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself."

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy.

Meanwhile, stuck in their anti-Palin Pauline-Kael bubbles, national political reporters continue to miss the point. One example that caught our eye: Reporting on the Iowa GOPs invitation for Palin to headline their annual Reagan Day Dinner, CBS led with "Despite announcing her resignation, Sarah Palin is still a sought-after asset in the Republican Party." As we wrote years ago re "out-of-touch elites who have fallen for their own rhetoric" regarding GWs persistent popularity in the wake of iraq and the 9/11 hearings, "Because of, not in spite of, stupid!"

Update: Marketing and branding expert John Tantillo agrees:

She made a choice that came out of the deepest part of herself (her core brand) — no wonder the political class was left scratching its collective head. They hadn't taken her claims of loving her family seriously. But the wives and mothers who make up Palin's supporters got it …

She's a woman who means what she says and does what she believes.

It's her "core brand," stupid!

Update: "Over at sisu, there's a great piece on Governor Palin," blogs KT Cat at The Scratching Post. Thanks, Maximum Leader!

Update II: Maggie's links!

Pooh-poohed by the anti-Palin pooh-bahs

"Twitter's constantly updating record of up-to-the-minute reaction has in some instances threatened to usurp media coverage of breaking news [and] helped many celebrities, athletes and politicians bypass the media to get their message directly to their audience," says an AP report that ironically demonstrates its own usurpation by clinging to the false premise that "Those direct, near-instantaneous dispatches are far less reliable than old-fashioned journalism." (Twitter bird logo above)

Northeast Corridor Conservatives still don't get it. Sarah Palin's unorthodox behavior continues to drive them and their fellow travelers on the left side of the aisle to distraction, even as she consults — so Gretchen Carlson of Fox & Friends reported the other day — with the likes of Dick Cheney, Fred Thompson, Charlie Crist and other GOP bigwigs behind the scenes and communicates directly with us fans through Twitter. Roger Simon of Politico explains the disconnect in his playfully ironic hit piece "The sins of Sarah Palin":

Sarah Palin is a sinner. She has violated several commandments and thoroughly deserves the savage beating that she is now getting from political mandarins and media elites …

Thou shalt not surprise the media … When you do what the media have predicted, you are “savvy.” You are a “skilled” and “adept” politician. If you surprise the media, however, you are “out of control” and “bizarre” and even “egotistical” …

Thou shalt not upset the pooh-bahs … Doesn’t she know that the highest form of political communication today is to exactly regurgitate a speech written for you by a speechwriter who has crafted, vetted and polled every phrase, line and word?

But listen to Palin. Listen to how “rambling” and “disjointed” she is. Once upon a time in American politics, this was known as being “plain-spoken,” but that time has gone. An entire industry of political consultants has grown up to make sure politicians are never plain-spoken. Sarah Palin does not get this. Which is to say she is not very bright …

Thou shalt pander to the few, not speak to the many … It is only a “certain element” of the party that finds her energizing, fresh, tough and willing to stand up to the mandarins and the media. Clearly, Palin must “grow” beyond that base to win over ... whom?

"When Twitter experiences an outage, users see the 'fail whale' error message created by Australian artist and designer Yiying Lu," says Wikipedia, "a whimsical illustration of red birds [They look orange to us. – ed] using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean. The message reads: 'Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.'" The image itself has developed a huge and enthusiastic following and has its own online store, as breathlessly described in " How An Unknown Artist's Work Became a Social Media Brand Thanks To the Power of Community." Not to mention the power of unfettered capitalism!

Speaking as a member of that "certain element" reflexively pooh-poohed by the pooh-bahs, we have found 1. Sarah Palin to be refreshingly energizing and authentic from that day last August when she emerged onto the national stage "while pampered liberals slept," as we wrote back then, and 2. Barack Obama to be tediously dispiriting and disingenuous from that day in December of 2006 when he feigned shock, shock at all the attention he was getting after his Oprah endorsement and gratuitously implied that persons like us who do not share his political views are racists. We can report now from anecdotal observation that elitist memes of the moribund MSM and their allies in government and academia, desperately trying to keep the dead weight of the Barackian leviathon (see Fail Whale image above) afloat, are losing the ear of the plain-spoken community at an accelerating rate. We used to be able to tolerate the occasional fuddy-duddy on a Fox News panel, but now, even fave opinionator Charles Krauthammer is making our remote finger twitchy.

Obama: Freedom of speech? Who needs it?

"'Freedom from Fear' (left) and 'Freedom from Want' are two of Norman Rockwell's 'The Four Freedoms' series inspired by FDR's rousing wartime State of the Union address in 1941," we captioned these images from a 2004 post. "Reproduced in four consecutive issues of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, the original paintings by America's favorite illustrator toured the United States, raising over $130 million for the war effort. (Norman Rockwell Museum photos)"

"Who would have thunk it? George Bush turns out to be [Actually always was. –ed] the truer proponent of freedom," twitters Fred Thompson. Joshua Muravchik explains:

The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear."

"'Freedom of Speech' left and 'Freedom to Worship' complete the series," we wrote in 2004. "We remember having reproductions of the illustrations hanging on the walls of our grade-school classrooms in the fifties and thinking even then they seemed quaintly old-fashioned. In today's world, again at war with those who would stomp on our freedoms, we see them with fresh eyes. Because Rockwell's subject matter was usually on the corny side, serious art critics tended to look down upon the artist's accomplishment, but beyond the anecdotal component — much loved by the average American — his compositional and painterly skills were quite remarkable.

Contrast Obama's anemic assertion last January that democracy is less important than "freedom from want and freedom from fear" — not to mention his tepid response to earth-shaking events in Iran and his ongoing "sledging strategy of intimidation" designed to discredit domestic dissent, from Fox News and talk radio on down to us bloggers and anti-statist tea partiers — with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's rousing State of the Union January 6, 1941:

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

As we twittered in response to Fred Thompson's observation above, "How telling Obama left out 2 of FDRs 4 freedoms: freedom of speech & freedom of worship!"

"The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier"

Cast your vote for Google to change their logo for one day in solidarity with the people of Iran yearning to breathe free.

How come Twitter's still getting through while other social networking services have been stifled by Iranian authorities? We'd been meaning to google that but didn't have to. Instead, the answer came to us by way of Iranian twitterer Elzone from Tehran: "Times' Kristof: How Iranian protesters are evading the gov't Twitter shutdown," a classic tale of the American Dream come true. "It is these Chinese supporters of Falun Gong who are the best hope for Iranians trying to reach blocked sites," explains Nicholas Kristof:

The protesters’ arsenal, such as those tweets on Twitter.com, depends on the Internet or other communications channels. So the Iranian government is blocking certain Web sites and evicting foreign reporters or keeping them away from the action.

The push to remove witnesses may be the prelude to a Tehran Tiananmen. Yet a secret Internet lifeline remains, and it’s a tribute to the crazy, globalized world we live in. [Or maybe, Mr. Kristof, it's a tribute to the golden door of opportunity the US opened to freedom-seekers fleeing tryranny. – ed] The lifeline was designed by Chinese computer engineers in America to evade Communist Party censorship of a repressed Chinese spiritual group, the Falun Gong … usage of the consortium’s software has tripled in the last week. It set a record on Wednesday of more than 200 million hits from Iran, representing more than 400,000 people …

Here's how it works:

Mr. Zhou, the son of a Chinese army general, said that he and his colleagues began to develop such software after the 1999 Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong (which the authorities denounce as a cult). One result was a free software called Freegate, small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site.

Freegate amounts to a dissident’s cyberkit. E-mails sent with it can be encrypted. And after a session is complete, a press of a button eliminates any sign that it was used on that computer …

Responding to the growing use of Freegate in Iran, the consortium introduced a Farsi-language version last July — and usage there skyrocketed.

"Noticed green avatars all around in support of #IranElection? See who started this great idea," twitters Mr Tweet himself, answering another question that's been on our mind, even as we've gone from pink to green (Our own avatar, before and after, above).

"If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an 'Internet freedom initiative' pending in Congress," Kristof gently chides the President who "chose not to choose on Iran":

This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it.

As tayastorm twittered from Tehran this morning, "fight back government's propaganda in twitter! if we lost here we have no other place."

Note: Check out all the latest Iran tweets here. This just in as we write: BBC confirm reformists detained, former Vice-President Abtahi, Mustafa Tajzadeh and Saeed Hajjarian. Our own twitter contributions here.

Update: Luis Gil (elzote), the Iranian who alerted us about the Kristof article, is now following us on Twitter! As Elisson twittered a month back, "How recursive is that?"

An Army of Twitterers

"Sometimes I write a post and think, This is going to get huge traffic. Then I post it and watch in disbelief as people collectively shrug their shoulders and ignore it," writes Michael Hyatt in "The Sovereignty of Readers." Image is from his post "Some Twitterers Worth Following,"

"Do you think he could be blander?' scoffs Ann Althouse regarding the maddeningly bloodless language the Leader of the Free World used today to express "deep concerns" about Iran's hotly disputed election:

What I will repeat … is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me, and it's of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people. And my hope is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to express their aspirations."

Some swoon at the President's "soaring rhetoric," but "When it comes down to words, our man [McCain] gets to the point three times faster than his opponent," we blogged back in the heat of the fall campaign:

Obama: "I am a person who believes [fill in the blank]" = 6 words

McCain: "I believe [fill in the blank]" = 2 words

"Must be that 'nuance' thing the Democrat elites are forever patting themselves on the back about," we'd chaffed at the time, noting "We ourselves have always been of the brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit school of intelligence assessment." As we wrote in Althouse's comments this afternoon:

Muscular prose reflects muscular thinking (Churchill, Reagan, GW). Flabby prose reflects flabby thinking (Chamberlain, Carter, Obama). Never use one metaphorically-charged noun or active verb when a string of colorless nouns and passive verbs will do.

We're with Frank J of IMHO, who twitters "If you wanted someone to speak forcefully on Iran, you should have elected a president with testicles." But like the White House itself with regard to Iran, "We have to deal with the American president that we have rather than the American president that we wish we had." Speaking of presidents we kind of wish we had, ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper engaged John McCain in an "impromptu twitterview" (140 or fewer characters per tweet) on the Iranian Tea Party this morning:

Tapper: what would u say were u president? how much of a concern wd it be that "the west" supporting protestors cd be demonized? Thx

McCain: we heard that during the Cold War when the left didn't want us criticizing the Soviet Union b/c we could have been "demonized" …

Tapper: So if President Obama called u and asked your advice what would u tell him?

McCain: speak up for these young Iranians who deserve a free and fair election.

While the American President that we do have "chose not to choose on Iran," as Jonah Goldberg put it, the folks at Twitter chose to "put themselves on the side of free expression, to let the battleground of ideas have it out," in the words of Research Director at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society Rob Fari, as Forbes reports:

But when the site's 90-minute maintenance window was announced Monday afternoon — in the midst of the service's use in organizing thousands of Iranian dissidents protesting alleged fraud in the national election — the result was a flood of thousands of requests to the site asking that Twitter delay the maintenance downtime …

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog post on the site that Twitter had worked out a deal with its network provider, NTT America, to delay the maintenance.

Now we are being told that the State Department put in a word on the side of the angels [good on you, Mr. President, if that's so]. From Reuters:

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran's internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

Meddling while not meddling. Vintage Obama. More from the Washington Times:

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly declined to discuss the department's specific actions regarding Iran, but he said that officials were in touch with Twitter "all weekend." He also said that regular contacts between Foggy Bottom and the site on various issues had taken place long before the Iranian election.

Mary Katharine at the Standard weighs in on the relative weight of Government interference vs the Army of Davids Twitterers and the wisdom of crowds:

Well, if that ain't the cheapest, most effective government intervention I've seen all year …

The #nomaintenance campaign among Twitter's own users likely had something to do with the postponement, as well, especially given than Twitter users, in aggregate, likely pinpointed the problem and communicated it to Twitter's higher-ups much faster and more effectively than the State Department could have.

The bottom line, from that Forbes article:

"The buzzy startup's employees had likely recognized that supporting the dissidents in this case was also a savvy business decision, argues Rafal Rohozinski, a founder of the Infowar Monitor research group.

Unlike other Internet firms like Google, Microsoft  and Yahoo!, which have all been forced to choose in important cases between the interests of their users and those of the authoritarians who limit the rights of those users, Twitter's role as a protest tool fits snugly with its business motives, he contends.

"They're proving that 140 characters can build an instant mass market" he says. "I'm sure that raises their value as a company."

The Invisible Hand. Was there ever a more colorful metaphor for the self-regulating nature of the marketplace?

Update: "Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul,' The Anchoress quotes Emily Dickinson in one of her blockbuster linkathons (including us), "Twittering Liberty … and Hope," calling her readers to "Pray for the people of Iran; pray for good to triumph. Pray for their safety, their fortitude, their energy, their 'thing with feathers,' which is hope."

Update II: "The first female President," The News Junkie at Maggie's quips with a link.

Update III: And the winner is …

"The forty-fifth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) Award goes to Sissy Willis of SISU," writes Morgan Freeberg of House of Eratosthenes [via Brutally Honest] re our "Muscular prose reflects muscular thinking (Churchill, Reagan, GW)" paragraph, above.

The man obviously has taste.

"At home chillin' with the wife"

"If you wanna find out about Republicans just like us, you just tune in to MSNBC," quips AlfonZo Rachel (right) in PJTVs blockbuster "Everyday Normal Republicans," now showing at a YouTube near you.

"At home chillin' with the wife! Hope your weekend is goin' good!," twitters AlfonZo Rachel, the chocolate-cookie half (above photo) of PJTVs to-die-for "Everyday Normal Republicans!" the best thing since sliced Oreos (no inside, no outside). We were thrilled to learn that he is "following" us on twitter [Ed note: We are using lower case t for twitter now that it's become the generic "kleenex" of social networking sites].

"I almost forgot. All black Republicans are traitors to their own race," cracks Steven Crowder, who plays the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Robert Culp character to Zo's Bill Cosby in this thoroughly modern iteration of the colorblind Sixties TV comedy hit "I Spy."

Even as the moribund David Letterman brand of politically correct humorless humor exits stage left in a cloud of ignominy, a sweet and savory new brand of wordplayful, colorblind comedy takes center stage. Our friends on the left side of the aisle won't know what hit them.

"It's hard as a progressive actor to get into this conservatively warped character, but I thought that came across as pretty genuine," deadpans Crowder in a masterful coda that impales the heart of the liberal project.

"I have a TERRIBLE crush on Zo," twitters The Anchoress this morning, noting with gusto:

Crowder looks a lot like my son buster!

They ARE a couple of cuties! "Sarah, Mary Katharine and now Carrie," we blogged a month back, delighting in the bevy of fresh distaff faces springing forth from the right side of the aisle:

Talk about beauty in unexpected places, not to mention the cojones* to go where no man has gone before. The ladies are leaving the Democrats' lame "Party of No" in the dust.

Welcome to the theater of operations, gentlemen.

"Cheney has emerged as the ultimate antidote to Obama"

"How much do we love Cheney? Thiiiiis much!" twittered blog buddy Stoutcat of Grand Rants amidst the cacophony of 140-or-fewer-character sound bites that filled the twittersphere with song yesterday. (Unattributed photo from All American Patriots)

"Cheney has emerged as the ultimate antidote to Obama," Fox News VP Bill Sammon told Laura Ingraham last night. We caught the quotable quote — together with C-Span reruns of our Dick's dulcet discourse on the Bush Administration's pro-active response to terrorism yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute (full text and video), together with toe-curling snippets of Mayor Shinn's President Obama's bloviating, finger-pointing presponse staged at the National Archives against a blow-up of the US Constitution [A blow-up of the US Constitution? How apt. –ed] — in the wee hours this morning. Here's Bill:

In fact, I think this is the debate conservatives were longing for throughout the campaign … and as a result [of Cheney's effectiveness] Democrats will redouble their efforts to destroy Dick Cheney's reputation.

While the usual suspects continue to feel a "thrill going up [their] leg" at the sound of their master's voice, others — like the Telegraph's James Delingpole, smitten at first with Barack Obama's "measured, steady voice with its pleasant but authoritative timbre" — are beginning to see the light:

Never mind the bizarre reputation Obama has acquired as a great public speaker: his speeches are fast beginning to sound almost as excruciating as anything in his predecessor's "enhanced interrogation program" …

Now, it's becoming clear that this carefully worked, glacial poise is all there is to Obama. He's just a hollow man spouting empty rhetoric [Better late than never. We've been onto the "Purple prose that is Obama's presidency" for some time now].

Compare and contrast the flatulent pomposity [The fellow DOES have a way with words!] of Obama's speech with Cheney's angry, from-the-heart, tell-it-like-it-is reposte.

Spooked by the ring of truth behind Dick Cheney's words, President Obama is quietly slipping into "Bush clothing," as Charles Krauthammer explains:

The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

"Not to be picky, NYT, but O's speech was prebuttal to Cheney's since Dick's was sched. 1st and O's sched. to step on it," Mary Katherine Ham chided the "Paper of Record" yesterday. Indeed, Obama may have scheduled his anti-terrorism anti-man-caused-disaster speech to step on "my Dick's" message, but, as we twittered back to mkhammer, "Instead, O stepped IN it."

Mary Katharine Ham, the shining fresh face of the anti-statist party

 

Mary Katharine Ham of The Weekly Standard, the fresh new face of the right side of the aisle. The lady's not for conning. Eat your heart out, Rahm Emanuel.

"Just walked into my first WH Correspondents dinner, ever, in between Gov. Mark Warner and Ludacris. Weird night in D.C. Ha," twitters the shining fresh face of the anti-statist party, our own smart-as-a-whip and totally adorable Mary Katharine Ham, known on Twitter as mkhammer. She has the looks of a fancy-free school girl, the "relentless, unflagging optimism" of a Jack Kemp and the ability to articulate the notion of a nation of laws, not of men, in debate with the best of what the other side has to offer on the Number One cable show out there, the unwatchable O'Reilly Factor. When she's on, we always have to mute when O'Reilly or her sparring partner of the day bloviates, but she is always a joy. You ask why we twitter? Mkhammer's news reports and insights alone make it worthwhile.

Now this tweet from WaPo A-list beltway gossip columnist Howard Kurtz, who offers "some pics of the big afternoon pre-party on my Facebook page," noting that it's a "Good day to put out bad news as all journos otherwise engaged":

Todd Palin seemed like a very nice gent, for the record. I just wasn't expecting to see him at this shindig  …

Sometime in the last few yrs the WH dinner turned into spring prom week for Beltway nerds. And Hollywood decided it was a stop on the tour …

I'm virtually certain MSNBC has never covered the WH dinner live before. Bush loyalists, take note!

Fun stuff. We're delighted to learn that C-SPAN is covering the event live. Will be looking for Mary Katharine. Can't wait to see her dress, her escort, her sparkling presence amongst the jaded and corrupted powers that be.

Update: "'Nerdprom' prompts Twitter buzz" [#nerdprom is the tag given to the event by twittering dinner attendees]:

CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry said Twitter has become one of the new status symbols, tweeting: "new status symbol at #whca #nerd prom: @howardkurtz reminded me last nite he has over 6k followers. must catch up!"

We've got 115 followers and counting. Where it all may lead, who knows? Annie Gottlieb links to Ad Age's provocative "The Coming End of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Socialism" with her usual wry wit in 140 characters or less:

Twitter cd just disappear? 'Cause no one's making money from all this tweeting. Venture capital supports addiction

Now we hear the folks who brought you Twitter are fixing to release "something new and entirely different" called Squirrel, a "service that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a merchant." The business of America is business. Sounds like a good idea to us.

Update: Talk about fun stuff, Instalanche!

Update II: "We need 100,000 MK Ham's," writes Dorothy Jane in the comments. Or, as the Professor might put it, An ARMY of MK Hams.

Update III: "Thousand thanks for writing such nice things about me. You're too kind, but I'll try my best to be fresh, shining and ALWAYS anti-statist!" twitters the fresh, shining and ALWAYS anti-statist mkhammer.

Update IV: Once more with feeling from the Professor: "The delightfulness of Mary Katharine Ham.