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Last-Place Bachmann: 'I Intend To Be America's Iron Lady'

Added 01/03/12
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Last-Place Bachmann: 'I Intend To Be America's Iron Lady'

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:42 01/03/12
video platform video management video solutions video player Michelle Bachmann's appearance yesterday on This Week with Jake Tapper was one of her more cringe-inducing performances. Not because she isn't someone incapable of delivering lines and staying on message, but because the content of her message is so obviously boilerplate campaignspeak from someone who's so clearly sliding too far down, too fast to win. Instead, she's promising a "miracle:" > TAPPER: My next guest sounds just as confident, but her path forward is a lot more murky. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann joins me from Des Moines. Congresswoman, thanks for joining us, and happy new year. BACHMANN: Happy new year to you. Great to be on with you this morning, Jake. TAPPER: So the last time you and I spoke, you had just won the Iowa straw poll. The Des Moines Register poll had you tied for first place with Mitt Romney with 22 percent of the vote. Now that same poll has you with 7 percent of the vote. What happened to your campaign? BACHMANN: Well, we've had a very good campaign. And I think what's happened is, a lot of candidates have come in, and Iowa voters and national voters have taken a look at all of the other candidates. But we have done I think what no other candidate has done, and that is, after the last debate, we've gone across all of Iowa, all 99 counties, and we've actually done heavy, heavy retail politics where we've gone into cafes and into living rooms of Iowans, and we've made a very strong connection with a lot of people. And if you look at the polls, it's upwards of 40 percent to 50 percent of Iowans haven't made their decision yet. And I think the polls, what they're reflecting will be very different from what we're seeing on Tuesday night, because people make their decision, quite honestly, in the caucus room. Iowa is very different. People gather in living rooms. They gather in elementary schools and churches, and they make their decision on the spot with their neighbors. And we have done, like I said, what no other candidate has done the last two weeks. We've put over -- almost 7,000 miles on our bus, and we've literally gone from town to town to town meeting with people directly. And we saw thousands of people switch their vote just in the last couple of weeks, so we think there's going to be a very profound shift that people see on Tuesday night. TAPPER: Well, one of the -- one of the dilemmas that you've had is that a lot of the voters that you are competing for, conservative voters, Christian evangelicals in some cases, are also being wooed by Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. And Santorum has momentum right now. He is at third place in the Des Moines Register poll. And if you look at the last two days, he's in second place. He has strong social conservative credentials. He's fluent in foreign affairs. He won statewide twice in a key swing state, Pennsylvania. So why should voters go for you and not him? BACHMANN: Well, because I'm the strongest core conservative in this race. There is no comparison with all of the other candidates and my credentials. No other candidate has current national security experience in the race. I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. I am daily involved with the issue of national security. No other candidate is. And as what we -- what we are seeing happening with Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, that will be a formidable issue immediately with the next commander-in-chief. I'm ready. No other candidate is currently ready in that issue. Gee, Michelle, I know it makes me feel better that you'll lie about Iran "obtaining" a nuke. It shows you'll say anything at all to win - always a great quality in a president. > Also, I'm the only federal tax litigation attorney in this race. When it comes to dealing with the number-one issue that's on voters' minds, which is out-of-control spending, I have that credential in spades over any other candidate, because no other candidate was leading on this issue in the halls of Congress or in Washington or nationally. I'm the one that called for saying "no" to letting Barack Obama increase the national credit card limit. Psst, Michelle honey? Try not to say things like that around sane people. It doesn't help. > And when it comes to social issues, there's no one who can -- who can compare with my record. I'm a mother of five, a foster mother to 23 children that we've raised, and also I have an unassailable record on life, on marriage, on religious liberty. So when it comes to values and issues, there is no one who comes close to where I am on those issues. But I think even more so, I'm the one that's been proven and tested in the fires of Washington, and that's why I think you saw people vote for me in the Iowa straw poll, but also it's what we have done on the ground. No other candidate has done more retail campaigning on the ground. TAPPER: But... BACHMANN: And I think we'll bear the fruit of that on Tuesday night. TAPPER: But with all due respect, Congresswoman, this is the same pitch you've been making all summer and all fall and -- and up until today, and you're in last place, according to the polls. And -- and somebody that has similar credentials to you and a similar appeal to you, Rick Santorum, is showing huge momentum. Why you over him? BACHMANN: Well, again, I think the polls take a few days to catch up. And -- and we have made that incredible deposit of going in every single county. We've drawn 300 people at a stop, 250 people at a stop, and I think a lot of that isn't yet reflected in the polls. And the main thing will be on Tuesday night. We're looking forward. We're not looking in the rear-view mirror. And what we're seeing going forward, especially with the tremendous outpouring of young people that are coming out to work on our phone banks and to go lit dropping and door-to-door is nothing short of amazing. We're -- we're number-one in the category of enthusiasm. If you look at all of the candidates, which candidate has the most enthusiasm among their supporters, I'm that candidate. I'm number-one with the 18- to 29-year-old voters, which are highly motivated, and they're doing all of the work. So I think that if you look at my past races, and polling data showed me actually losing and 8 points behind in previous races that I've had when I've run for Congress, and yet I -- I win by 8 and 13 points. So polls don't -- are -- sometimes belie the truth on the ground, and that's what we see. This isn't just about polling. This is about what we're seeing in reality, and I think Tuesday night people are going to see a miracle. TAPPER: In the last week, your campaign has gotten involved in a big kerfuffle about one of your top supporters, your chairman in Iowa defecting and going to the Ron Paul campaign. I don't want to get into the weeds on that debate. There was a back-and-forth about whether or not he was paid off. He denied that you accused him of doing that. But this is not the first time you've made a charge like this. You've also said this about other supporters with Newt Gingrich in Georgia, with Rick Santorum. Don't you risk -- making these charges, doesn't that risk voters seeing you as making a final gasp of desperation? BACHMANN: Oh, for Heaven's sake. Of course not. What this shows is the tremendous momentum that we have out of the last debate. From person after person, they said that I won the last debate in Sioux City, Iowa. And the reason why is because, when Ron Paul made his very dangerous statements, which is he was just fine with Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, or with Newt Gingrich taking $1.6 million from Freddie Mac and he was unable to defend that, I -- I took it to them. And what people saw during the last debate is that I have the ability, of all of the candidates on the stage, I have the best ability to take it to Barack Obama in the debate and hold him accountable. We had tremendous momentum coming out of the last debate, and we saw it in county after county in our 99-county tour, where people were just appalled by Ron Paul's position. They thought it was dangerous. That's why we saw literally thousands of people switching their decision on the spot, and that's what you saw, was this crush of momentum. And so we saw some different actions coming out of the Ron Paul campaign. And I think that people will be very surprised at the results on Tuesday night, because I think people will see a lot of defections away from Ron Paul because they see -- especially with the aggressive nature of the actions on the part of Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, people are seeing how important it is that we have a commander-in-chief who is conversant, prepared, knowledgeable, and has good judgment on foreign affairs. And of all of the candidates in the race, I'm best suited for that -- that portion of being commander-in- chief. TAPPER: Congresswoman, we only have a little bit of time left, so last question. In the interests of candor and being based in reality, positing that you feel that you're going to have a very good night on Tuesday and that all the polls are wrong and you're going to do well, but assuming that the polls are right, isn't that, practically speaking, the end of your campaign if you come in last on Tuesday? BACHMANN: Well, we've bought tickets to head off to South Carolina. And we are looking forward to the debates. January is a very full month. We're here for the -- for the long -- for the long race. This is a 50-state race. And we intend to participate not only in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, but to go all the way, because I intend to be the Republican nominee and defeat Barack Obama in 2012, because America needs a candidate that will be in the legacy of a Ronald Reagan and of a Margaret Thatcher. That's what I intend to do, is to be America's iron lady. TAPPER: All right. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, good luck on Tuesday. And hope you have a wonderful 2012. BACHMANN: Thank you. Same to you and your listeners.

Last-Place Bachmann: 'I Intend To Be America's Iron Lady'

Added 01/03/12
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Last-Place Bachmann: 'I Intend To Be America's Iron Lady'

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:42 01/03/12
video platform video management video solutions video player Michelle Bachmann's appearance yesterday on This Week with Jake Tapper was one of her more cringe-inducing performances. Not because she isn't someone incapable of delivering lines and staying on message, but because the content of her message is so obviously boilerplate campaignspeak from someone who's so clearly sliding too far down, too fast to win. Instead, she's promising a "miracle:" > TAPPER: My next guest sounds just as confident, but her path forward is a lot more murky. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann joins me from Des Moines. Congresswoman, thanks for joining us, and happy new year. BACHMANN: Happy new year to you. Great to be on with you this morning, Jake. TAPPER: So the last time you and I spoke, you had just won the Iowa straw poll. The Des Moines Register poll had you tied for first place with Mitt Romney with 22 percent of the vote. Now that same poll has you with 7 percent of the vote. What happened to your campaign? BACHMANN: Well, we've had a very good campaign. And I think what's happened is, a lot of candidates have come in, and Iowa voters and national voters have taken a look at all of the other candidates. But we have done I think what no other candidate has done, and that is, after the last debate, we've gone across all of Iowa, all 99 counties, and we've actually done heavy, heavy retail politics where we've gone into cafes and into living rooms of Iowans, and we've made a very strong connection with a lot of people. And if you look at the polls, it's upwards of 40 percent to 50 percent of Iowans haven't made their decision yet. And I think the polls, what they're reflecting will be very different from what we're seeing on Tuesday night, because people make their decision, quite honestly, in the caucus room. Iowa is very different. People gather in living rooms. They gather in elementary schools and churches, and they make their decision on the spot with their neighbors. And we have done, like I said, what no other candidate has done the last two weeks. We've put over -- almost 7,000 miles on our bus, and we've literally gone from town to town to town meeting with people directly. And we saw thousands of people switch their vote just in the last couple of weeks, so we think there's going to be a very profound shift that people see on Tuesday night. TAPPER: Well, one of the -- one of the dilemmas that you've had is that a lot of the voters that you are competing for, conservative voters, Christian evangelicals in some cases, are also being wooed by Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. And Santorum has momentum right now. He is at third place in the Des Moines Register poll. And if you look at the last two days, he's in second place. He has strong social conservative credentials. He's fluent in foreign affairs. He won statewide twice in a key swing state, Pennsylvania. So why should voters go for you and not him? BACHMANN: Well, because I'm the strongest core conservative in this race. There is no comparison with all of the other candidates and my credentials. No other candidate has current national security experience in the race. I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. I am daily involved with the issue of national security. No other candidate is. And as what we -- what we are seeing happening with Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, that will be a formidable issue immediately with the next commander-in-chief. I'm ready. No other candidate is currently ready in that issue. Gee, Michelle, I know it makes me feel better that you'll lie about Iran "obtaining" a nuke. It shows you'll say anything at all to win - always a great quality in a president. > Also, I'm the only federal tax litigation attorney in this race. When it comes to dealing with the number-one issue that's on voters' minds, which is out-of-control spending, I have that credential in spades over any other candidate, because no other candidate was leading on this issue in the halls of Congress or in Washington or nationally. I'm the one that called for saying "no" to letting Barack Obama increase the national credit card limit. Psst, Michelle honey? Try not to say things like that around sane people. It doesn't help. > And when it comes to social issues, there's no one who can -- who can compare with my record. I'm a mother of five, a foster mother to 23 children that we've raised, and also I have an unassailable record on life, on marriage, on religious liberty. So when it comes to values and issues, there is no one who comes close to where I am on those issues. But I think even more so, I'm the one that's been proven and tested in the fires of Washington, and that's why I think you saw people vote for me in the Iowa straw poll, but also it's what we have done on the ground. No other candidate has done more retail campaigning on the ground. TAPPER: But... BACHMANN: And I think we'll bear the fruit of that on Tuesday night. TAPPER: But with all due respect, Congresswoman, this is the same pitch you've been making all summer and all fall and -- and up until today, and you're in last place, according to the polls. And -- and somebody that has similar credentials to you and a similar appeal to you, Rick Santorum, is showing huge momentum. Why you over him? BACHMANN: Well, again, I think the polls take a few days to catch up. And -- and we have made that incredible deposit of going in every single county. We've drawn 300 people at a stop, 250 people at a stop, and I think a lot of that isn't yet reflected in the polls. And the main thing will be on Tuesday night. We're looking forward. We're not looking in the rear-view mirror. And what we're seeing going forward, especially with the tremendous outpouring of young people that are coming out to work on our phone banks and to go lit dropping and door-to-door is nothing short of amazing. We're -- we're number-one in the category of enthusiasm. If you look at all of the candidates, which candidate has the most enthusiasm among their supporters, I'm that candidate. I'm number-one with the 18- to 29-year-old voters, which are highly motivated, and they're doing all of the work. So I think that if you look at my past races, and polling data showed me actually losing and 8 points behind in previous races that I've had when I've run for Congress, and yet I -- I win by 8 and 13 points. So polls don't -- are -- sometimes belie the truth on the ground, and that's what we see. This isn't just about polling. This is about what we're seeing in reality, and I think Tuesday night people are going to see a miracle. TAPPER: In the last week, your campaign has gotten involved in a big kerfuffle about one of your top supporters, your chairman in Iowa defecting and going to the Ron Paul campaign. I don't want to get into the weeds on that debate. There was a back-and-forth about whether or not he was paid off. He denied that you accused him of doing that. But this is not the first time you've made a charge like this. You've also said this about other supporters with Newt Gingrich in Georgia, with Rick Santorum. Don't you risk -- making these charges, doesn't that risk voters seeing you as making a final gasp of desperation? BACHMANN: Oh, for Heaven's sake. Of course not. What this shows is the tremendous momentum that we have out of the last debate. From person after person, they said that I won the last debate in Sioux City, Iowa. And the reason why is because, when Ron Paul made his very dangerous statements, which is he was just fine with Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, or with Newt Gingrich taking $1.6 million from Freddie Mac and he was unable to defend that, I -- I took it to them. And what people saw during the last debate is that I have the ability, of all of the candidates on the stage, I have the best ability to take it to Barack Obama in the debate and hold him accountable. We had tremendous momentum coming out of the last debate, and we saw it in county after county in our 99-county tour, where people were just appalled by Ron Paul's position. They thought it was dangerous. That's why we saw literally thousands of people switching their decision on the spot, and that's what you saw, was this crush of momentum. And so we saw some different actions coming out of the Ron Paul campaign. And I think that people will be very surprised at the results on Tuesday night, because I think people will see a lot of defections away from Ron Paul because they see -- especially with the aggressive nature of the actions on the part of Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, people are seeing how important it is that we have a commander-in-chief who is conversant, prepared, knowledgeable, and has good judgment on foreign affairs. And of all of the candidates in the race, I'm best suited for that -- that portion of being commander-in- chief. TAPPER: Congresswoman, we only have a little bit of time left, so last question. In the interests of candor and being based in reality, positing that you feel that you're going to have a very good night on Tuesday and that all the polls are wrong and you're going to do well, but assuming that the polls are right, isn't that, practically speaking, the end of your campaign if you come in last on Tuesday? BACHMANN: Well, we've bought tickets to head off to South Carolina. And we are looking forward to the debates. January is a very full month. We're here for the -- for the long -- for the long race. This is a 50-state race. And we intend to participate not only in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, but to go all the way, because I intend to be the Republican nominee and defeat Barack Obama in 2012, because America needs a candidate that will be in the legacy of a Ronald Reagan and of a Margaret Thatcher. That's what I intend to do, is to be America's iron lady. TAPPER: All right. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, good luck on Tuesday. And hope you have a wonderful 2012. BACHMANN: Thank you. Same to you and your listeners.

Confirmed Serial Adulterer Passes Alleged Serial Harasser in G...

Added 11/14/11
11 Views

Confirmed Serial Adulterer Passes Alleged Serial Harasser in GOP Race

[LESS INFO] 11 VIEWS | ADDED 21:00:01 11/14/11
Here in a nutshell is the state of play in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes: alleged serial sexual harasser Herman Cain is being surpassed by confirmed serial adulterer Newt Gingrich . With Mitt Romney stalled and Cain hemorrhaging support from women voters, polls last week from CBS and Marist showed the former House Speaker had surged into a virtual three-way tie at the top. By Monday, new surveys from CNN and PPP showed Newt vaulting past the fading pizza maker. Nevertheless, that development should be a discomforting prospect for a Republican Party which lost the women's vote by 13 points in 2008. As his public statements and personal life show, the thrice-married Gingrich is hardly a champion for American women. That starts with Newt Gingrich's belief that marriage is an institution between one man and three women in rapid succession. In 1980, Newt was separated from his first wife and former high school geometry teacher , Jackie Battley. As she lay incoherent in her hospital bed following surgery for a reoccurrence of uterine cancer, Gingrich paid her a visit to announce he wanted a divorce. As Lee Howell , a Gingrich friend and associate at whose wedding Newt was best man, described it: > "Newt came up there with his yellow legal pad, and he had a list of things on how the divorce was going to be handled. He wanted her to sign it. She was still recovering from surgery, still sort of out of it, and he comes in with a yellow sheet of paper, handwritten, and wants her to sign it. > Newt can handle political problems, but when it comes to personal problems, he's a disaster. He handled the divorce like he did any other political decision: You've got to be tough in this business, you've got to be hard. Once you make the decision you've got to act on it. Cut your losses and move on." He moved on to wife number two, Marianne Ginther . But Marianne fared little better, getting dumped for Congressional staffer Callista Bisek after a six year affair even as Newt was leading the inquisition of Bill Clinton. As Vanity Fair summed it up last year: > According to Salon, Gingrich and the former Hill staffer (23 years his junior, mind you) would frequently dine in the Supreme Court cafeteria--an unsuspectingly sordid detail. (In 1995, Vanity Fair referred to Bisek as Gingrich's "frequent breakfast companion.") Gingrich stepped down from Congress in 1998 following an ethics scandal, among other things. The two were married two years later. Gingrich, who swapped his Baptist faith for Catholicism just in time to attack President Obama's 2009 address at Notre Dame University, later explained that his rapid fire infidelities were the actually product of his own patriotism: > "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them." Of course, the things Newt Gingrich was saying to American women weren't any better. As the New York Times recounted 16 years ago, Newt suggested menstruation should keep women out of essential roles in the American military: > "If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections, and they don't have upper-body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets -- you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know." And for Gingrich, the biggest "infection" of them all - liberalism - caused a young mother to murder her children. Back in 1994, after dumping his cancer-stricken first wife but before marrying his mistress following the adulterous affair that ended his second marriage, Newt pointed the finger at Democrats for the Susan Smith affair. It was Smith who drew Americans' initial sympathy - and subsequent scorn - for her invention of a black bogeyman to conceal her heinous crime. On October 24th, 1994, as the New York Times recalled, Smith killed her young sons, killings for which she was eventually sentenced to life in prison: > That night, investigators say, Mrs. Smith pulled her car to the edge of a deep lake, stepped out, put the gearshift in drive and let it roll down the boat ramp into the black water. Her two little boys, buckled snugly in their safety seats, died under the lake... > ..."I believed her, right up to the end," said Juliaette Kerhulas, of Mrs. Smith's story that a young black man had ordered her out of her burgundy 1990 Mazda on the night of Oct. 25, then driven away with 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander in the back seat. Ms. Kerhulas wasn't the only one who believed in her. None other than future House Speaker Newt Gingrich rushed to the defense of Smith, whose step-father ironically happened to be a prominent Republican fundraiser and member of the Christian Coalition. Even after her confession, Gingrich insisted the Smith murders showed the decay of American society under Democratic Party rule : > Enter Newt Gingrich, who rushed into action on election eve with another reliable generic culprit: society. He said the double murder "vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," expediently adding that "the only way you get change is to vote Republican." As Frank Rich recounted in August 1995: > Asked later by Tom Brokaw to elaborate, the Speaker-to-be cited "a direct nexus between the general acceptance of violence" and "the pattern that the counterculture and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society began in the late 60's." Of course, the 1960's also happened to be the time when the women's movement rose to prominence. The victories it achieved for women's political equality, economic independence and reproductive rights transformed American society and helped move the nation closer to a "more perfect union." Apparently, those epochal changes escaped Herman Cain's notice. And while Cain's is being punished in the polls for it, he is being replaced atop the GOP field by Newt Gingrich . While that may be a good thing for Tiffany's bottom line , it's a sad development for American women.

Confirmed Serial Adulterer Passes Alleged Serial Harasser in G...

Added 11/14/11
5 Views

Confirmed Serial Adulterer Passes Alleged Serial Harasser in GOP Race

[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 21:00:01 11/14/11
Here in a nutshell is the state of play in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes: alleged serial sexual harasser Herman Cain is being surpassed by confirmed serial adulterer Newt Gingrich . With Mitt Romney stalled and Cain hemorrhaging support from women voters, polls last week from CBS and Marist showed the former House Speaker had surged into a virtual three-way tie at the top. By Monday, new surveys from CNN and PPP showed Newt vaulting past the fading pizza maker. Nevertheless, that development should be a discomforting prospect for a Republican Party which lost the women's vote by 13 points in 2008. As his public statements and personal life show, the thrice-married Gingrich is hardly a champion for American women. That starts with Newt Gingrich's belief that marriage is an institution between one man and three women in rapid succession. In 1980, Newt was separated from his first wife and former high school geometry teacher , Jackie Battley. As she lay incoherent in her hospital bed following surgery for a reoccurrence of uterine cancer, Gingrich paid her a visit to announce he wanted a divorce. As Lee Howell , a Gingrich friend and associate at whose wedding Newt was best man, described it: > "Newt came up there with his yellow legal pad, and he had a list of things on how the divorce was going to be handled. He wanted her to sign it. She was still recovering from surgery, still sort of out of it, and he comes in with a yellow sheet of paper, handwritten, and wants her to sign it. > Newt can handle political problems, but when it comes to personal problems, he's a disaster. He handled the divorce like he did any other political decision: You've got to be tough in this business, you've got to be hard. Once you make the decision you've got to act on it. Cut your losses and move on." He moved on to wife number two, Marianne Ginther . But Marianne fared little better, getting dumped for Congressional staffer Callista Bisek after a six year affair even as Newt was leading the inquisition of Bill Clinton. As Vanity Fair summed it up last year: > According to Salon, Gingrich and the former Hill staffer (23 years his junior, mind you) would frequently dine in the Supreme Court cafeteria--an unsuspectingly sordid detail. (In 1995, Vanity Fair referred to Bisek as Gingrich's "frequent breakfast companion.") Gingrich stepped down from Congress in 1998 following an ethics scandal, among other things. The two were married two years later. Gingrich, who swapped his Baptist faith for Catholicism just in time to attack President Obama's 2009 address at Notre Dame University, later explained that his rapid fire infidelities were the actually product of his own patriotism: > "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them." Of course, the things Newt Gingrich was saying to American women weren't any better. As the New York Times recounted 16 years ago, Newt suggested menstruation should keep women out of essential roles in the American military: > "If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections, and they don't have upper-body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets -- you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know." And for Gingrich, the biggest "infection" of them all - liberalism - caused a young mother to murder her children. Back in 1994, after dumping his cancer-stricken first wife but before marrying his mistress following the adulterous affair that ended his second marriage, Newt pointed the finger at Democrats for the Susan Smith affair. It was Smith who drew Americans' initial sympathy - and subsequent scorn - for her invention of a black bogeyman to conceal her heinous crime. On October 24th, 1994, as the New York Times recalled, Smith killed her young sons, killings for which she was eventually sentenced to life in prison: > That night, investigators say, Mrs. Smith pulled her car to the edge of a deep lake, stepped out, put the gearshift in drive and let it roll down the boat ramp into the black water. Her two little boys, buckled snugly in their safety seats, died under the lake... > ..."I believed her, right up to the end," said Juliaette Kerhulas, of Mrs. Smith's story that a young black man had ordered her out of her burgundy 1990 Mazda on the night of Oct. 25, then driven away with 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander in the back seat. Ms. Kerhulas wasn't the only one who believed in her. None other than future House Speaker Newt Gingrich rushed to the defense of Smith, whose step-father ironically happened to be a prominent Republican fundraiser and member of the Christian Coalition. Even after her confession, Gingrich insisted the Smith murders showed the decay of American society under Democratic Party rule : > Enter Newt Gingrich, who rushed into action on election eve with another reliable generic culprit: society. He said the double murder "vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," expediently adding that "the only way you get change is to vote Republican." As Frank Rich recounted in August 1995: > Asked later by Tom Brokaw to elaborate, the Speaker-to-be cited "a direct nexus between the general acceptance of violence" and "the pattern that the counterculture and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society began in the late 60's." Of course, the 1960's also happened to be the time when the women's movement rose to prominence. The victories it achieved for women's political equality, economic independence and reproductive rights transformed American society and helped move the nation closer to a "more perfect union." Apparently, those epochal changes escaped Herman Cain's notice. And while Cain's is being punished in the polls for it, he is being replaced atop the GOP field by Newt Gingrich . While that may be a good thing for Tiffany's bottom line , it's a sad development for American women.

Education 2 O Not Afraid Of Second Life!

Added 03/15/10
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Cross Cultural Collaboration In Second Life

Added 11/12/09
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Obama In Ghana And The Metaverse Was Watching!

Added 07/25/09
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LIONESS DOWN, SPIRIT SOARS

Added 06/22/09
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LIONESS DOWN, SPIRIT SOARS

[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 11:41:00 06/22/09
Neda Agha Soltan, a 27 year old philosophy student, died by the hand of the Islamic Republic's Basij militia on Saturday. Photo: "A Voice for Neda" H er name is Neda. Her name will always be Neda. When she fell and left it behind her, it was raised by hundreds, then thousands, now millions. Not was — her name is Neda. Neda Agha Soltan was a 27 year old student of philosophy in Tehran. The bare outline of her story can only be provisionally pieced together from the unconfirmed snippets of discussion trickling out of Iran by her compatriots in freedom's cause. Perhaps one day soon, when journalism is no longer illegal in that country, her full story will be told. It is said that she was standing on the sidelines of Saturday's forbidden protest, watching beside her father teacher. A wobbly cell-phone video shows the two of them together among the crowd. He is the grey-haired man in a blue striped shirt, she wears black. If the gentle reader has not yet seen what happened to Neda (some news outlets are showing it), and is willing to have his or her heart broken yet again, then click the button while observing my strong content warning . Neda was alive at the beginning of this scene, but not at the end. Direct Video Link The original upload carried the following description:> At 19:05 June 20th Place: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know. I've gathered from reading many Iranians (who have become like autonomous solo broadcasters) these past days that her name, Neda, means "Calling" or "Voice". The man believed to be her father is calling to her as she dies, which has been translated as:> "Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, don't be afraid. [obscured by others yelling] Neda, stay with me. Neda stay with me!" Courageous women have been the backbone of these demonstrations, according to many witnesses. I listened to an Iranian professor this morning talk about the phenomenon, which is not new. "Shirzan" is the Persian word he used for them, which he said Iranians will commonly use to describe such women without fear. It means "lioness" or "lion-woman," he said. Women have been estimated to comprise around 40% of the freedom protesters during the past 10 days. No one knew whether the planned Saturday protest would go ahead or not, following the unveiled threat delivered by Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei on Friday. Everyone who considered going out of their house on Saturday knew that they could be risking their life. Mr. Moussavi had promised a statement in the afternoon, but it never came (his website has come under attack as well). Yet less than an hour after the planned meeting time of 4 pm, everyone who was following any of the many autonomous solo broadcasters (twitterers with a reliable reputation), knew that Tehran's people were in the streets again and were being foiled by huge numbers of riot police and Basijis already occupying their meeting places in the public squares. International media continued for hours saying the streets were quiet, while heads were already being cracked. CNN's not the "first name in news" anymore, and if they keep getting "Khomeni" and "Khamenei" mixed up and refering to demonstrators as "rioters" for defending themselves, they'll be the last name in news before long. While earnest news anchors were saying that no one had seen Mr. Moussavi on Saturday, those who followed the solo tweet-casters already knew that he had spoken to the demonstrators in Jeyhoon Street. Before long, his words were translated, posted and linked by the Iranian tweeters. By late night in Tehran the truth was evident to all, finally including international media. A vicious crackdown was underway, an unknown number of the freedom movement had been killed, and protests were continuing in most (if not all) Iran's major cities. Tweets from eyewitnesses circled the earth in seconds, thousands of citizen videos were uploaded to sharing sites, there are no secrets any more — at least, nothing this big can be kept secret when technology and an adept people are present. I'm in a time zone two and a half hours ahead of Tehran. At around 2 am on Sunday morning here, the screen of the AP satellite feed showed a caption warning agencies to be ready. (paraphrasing) "Standby. White House statement 3:10 pm. Standby." The time corresponded to 02:10 am Bangkok time, in other words, imminent. It was just before midnight in Tehran, and we all knew what had happened during the afternoon and evening there. The White House was finally ready to take a stronger moral stand after these latest brutal killings, I thought. It could have come days earlier, after Basijis had raided Tehran University, beating and killing a number of students in their dorms. Or, a day or two before that when Basijis shot up a crowd around one of their bases, killing at least seven. But better late than never. I waited. Nothing came across the AP feed after an hour, then after two hours of staying awake refreshing some pages of those solo broadcasters, I crashed out around dawn. Sunday afternoon, I learned what the "Standby" was all about. Can't a man enjoy his waffle(cone)? The White House statement was that the President had taken his daughters out for a Father's Day ice cream. Seriously! And that's not all. Bo got frozen Puppy Pops to go. (The photo is from an earlier ice cream excursion, I can't find any pictures from Saturday's fun.) Take a look at Patterico's juxtaposition of contemporaneous tweets out of Iran and Washington. Hey, did you know that real journalists use Twitter too? It's true! But only click on that one if you don't mind your heart being broken yet again. Earlier, President Obama had said something which seemed stronger than the previous "concern" and "bearing witness."> "I'm very concerned based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made that the government of Iran recognise that the world is watching," Obama said on US television on Friday. "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." Well, it nudged the concern and witness ideas ahead a little bit (if ya squint!). A later written statement added the mourning of innocent life lost to the bearing of witness and concern. The toughest line was, "We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people." Those brave 21st century Iranians need to hear that the free peoples of the world are with them. The placards, chants and comments of the demonstrators have often asked specifically for this, and it would mean a lot for them to hear it unambiguously from the leader of the free world. Whether he makes a strong, principled statement on the urgent need for liberty and the dignity of Iran's freedom-seeking people, or sticks with the current weak expressions of concern, makes no difference to the ruling hardliners in that country. They are blaming Britain, France, USA and all western countries for fomenting the rebellion in any case. To hell with them — speak directly to those millions of Iranians who are demanding their fundamental rights. They are the only ones who count, and the only ones listening anyway. So far, the Prophet of Cairo seems to be all Barack and no bite. His original "on the one hand, but on the other hand" stance (that dealing with Ahmedinejad or Moussavi makes no difference to him, that they are about the same) certainly did offend many of those risking life and limb for liberty, and they should expect clearer messages from a US president. For better or worse, those who want to live in a free(r) country have gathered together with Mr. Moussavi, demanding the fair election they have yet to receive. That alone means that the two are not the same. A Life Magazine photojournalist disappeared on Saturday in Tehran. You can view his gallery here , with the following notification:> A NOTE TO OUR READERS: We are saddened to report that the Iranian photojournalist, whose pictures appear in this gallery, is missing. He has not been in contact with us; this morning we received the following email from one of his relatives. We will update this space when we have more details. THE EMAIL: Hi im [photographer’s relative], when he go outside yesterday for he never came back home and also his friend and a lot of our young brave people, government arrested them [. . .] don’t let them suffer in those bloody hands. With thanks. Here's a sample of some of the proven reliable Twitter feeds. Most are in Tehran. The last two are hashtag searches (categories). #Neda sprang up on Saturday night. #IranElection is very high volume (beware of rumours and regime dis-information there).> Raymond Jahan (StopAhmadi) Iranian Student (Change_for_Iran) Alireza Sedaghat (IranElection09) TehranBureau.com (TehranBureau) madyar (madyar) Iran (IranRiggedElect) oxfordgirl (oxfordgirl) persiankiwi (persiankiwi) #Neda #IranElection If you need to get caught up on the important developments over the weekend, there's no better place at the moment than Hot Air. AllahPundit is keeping on top of things very well, and these were continually updated on Saturday and Sunday . Also very good is NYT's The Lede Blog . The blog of the National Iranian American Council is worth keeping an eye on, for nuggets like this — which stuck in my mind last week (and I had a hard time finding it again). Posted on June 17 :> 9:47 am: In response to Ahmadinejad calling Mousavi supporters “brushwood and thorns” at the victory rally Monday, Iran’s most famous classical musician has ordered that Iranian government television/radio never play his music again. Mohammad Reza Shajarian told BBC Persian in an interview:> “Don’t broadcast my voice on Seda va Sima [IRIB Music channel] ever again: my voice is like brushwood and thorns, and it will forever remain brushwood and thorns!”