There have been terrabyte gobs of information spent on this subject and you may have missed a thing or two.  Here’s a quick rundown of the best of from the last 72 hours.

• Boston Globe brings up the most striking (and shocking) photos from the clash in Iran
• BBC has another set here.
• Juan Cole’s initial assessment of fraud still stands
• 538 breaks down the local election numbers and shows fraud, fraud, fraud
• These are some of the most Retweeted YouTubes mostly showing violence, more violence, yet more violence, and crowds
• Check out Jim Sciutto from ABC, one of the few MSM on the scene
• This video shows a crowd of people taking on the secret police
• Ben Domenech makes some excellent points here on Saturday
• Tehran Bureau has some great updates on their website and Twitter
• Entertaining video detailing why the election was fraudulent
• Here’s a crazy pic on the plainclothes thugs
• After much dispute as to whether the Monday rally was on or not this video surfaced showing thousands of protesters
• Some excellent raw footage of the rally and the threats here

The twitter hashtag #iranelection has been clocking thousands of tweets per hour.  Here’s what you may have missed:

• Twitter has been the medium of choice mostly because Internet connections are so slow and unreliable.  (2kbps) which is just enough to get a 140 tweet off
• @ev, founder of Twitter, has been validating the authenticity of twitterers within Iran himself
• Blogs have posted a list of twitterers and aggregate feeds to help keep people abreast
• The govt has been shutting down Internet connections fast.  Folks across the world are providing ssh tunnels and proxy servers for Iranians to use.
• Twitter has been the seedbed of some mischief as well giving out websites for people to take down the Khomeni, A-jad, and news media sites
• There are about a dozen reliable twitterers out of Tehran right now giving on the ground information.  Some of it reliable, some of it questionable all of it intense and engaging
• The twitpics have been coming fast and furious.
• Twitter just changed a scheduled server outage to accomadate the Iranian Tweeters

Stay tuned for more

Recall a few years ago how documents damning George W. Bush as a lazy do-nothing National Guardsmen turned out to be all out fakes created in Microsoft Word?  Did Dan Rather make his way to Tehran to certify the latest election results?

The Tehran Buereu (a self-declared independent news source) has posted an interesting graph showing that the election results between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are in an almost perfect plot line across all points at which results were given.

In short, somebody in the election bureau used an equation early on in the day and seems to have applied the same ratio at other intervals on up to the final result.

Here’s the graphic which they post here:

They note:

Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own. For example, in the present elections, Mr. Mousavi is an Azeri and speaks Turkish. The Azeries make up 1/4 of all the eligible voters in Iran and in his trips to Azerbaijan province, where most of the Azeri population lives, Mr. Mousavi had been greeted by huge rallies in support of his campaign. Likewise, Mr. Karroubi, the other reformist candidate, is a Lor. But according to the data released by Iran’s Interior Ministry, in both cases, Mr. Ahmadinejad has far outdone both candidates in their own provinces of birth and among their own ethnic populations.

Juan Cole makes some excellent points here.

view a slide show of this weekend’s RPV convention here

Will Virginia field the first wave of comebacks for the GOP this coming November or will the momentum of Obama-mania continue unabated through 2009 and on into the next federal elections? Saturday’s convention in Richmond for the Republican Party of Virginia holds some interesting lessons for us all.

At the best attended convention in nearly 15 years, Republicans gathered at the Richmond Coliseum to crown their next set of candidates for the upcoming 2009 elections. (Virginia is one of the few states to hold off-year elections for state level offices.) All politics is local as they say, so what follows is a series of lessons learned from the debates leading up to the convention and the final results. Glean from it what you will:

(Note to newcomers: Virginia has a closed convention approach to picking party nominees. Delegates from around the state gather and vote in secret ballot deciding their candidates for elected offices. This year there was three majors spots up for bid: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General.)

* Attorney General – I’m starting with the AG spot for obvious reasons that will follow. This year a three-way fight ensued between State Senator Ken Cuccinelli and local elected officials John Brownlee and David Foster. This battle was a microcosm of every conservative angst and internal melee since November. Cuccinelli was the favored candidate going into the election but was countered heavily by the moderate “egg-shell walking” / Vichy Republicans. “Too conservative to be elected”, they declared. “Social conservatism” is dead!” they’d shout. They were wrong. To be fair Brownlee has strong social conservative credentials but Cuccinelli has the ear and heart of the social conservative base in a major way. Cuccinelli made his pitch on Saturday to an enthused crowd of over 7000 as big yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags went flying around the floor. Insiders around the stadium took bets that a second and third ballot would keep us well into the evening. It took one vote and Cuccinelli walked away victorious with over 55% of the vote in a three-way race. The Post did their usual “pro-life” extremist explanation but Cuccinelli is the tea party candidate to be sure. Cuccinelli has a lot of learning to do on the new media side of things but he has consistently won his elections as Senator in increasingly blue Fairfax County since 2002. LESSON LEARNED: moderates nervous about perceptions are using November’s losses to oust social conservatives. The truth: social conservatives are some of the strongest supporters and will work hard to elect full spectrum conservatives.

* Governor - Republicans have lost the Governor’s mansion in the last two tries. in 2006, popular Democratic governor Mark Warner passed the baton to his Lieutenant Governor, Tim Kaine, with relative ease while he went on to defeat Jim Gilmore for Senate. This year Republicans chose former Attorney General Bob McDonnell to take back the helm. A strong former prosecutor, McDonnell is just about the best looking candidate you can ask for with a strong conservative record on all fronts. McDonnell ran unopposed so Saturday was pretty much a coronation for the front man of the ticket. Bob also has some of the most compelling campaign video promos I’ve ever seen along with a decent website:

* Lt. Governor - Early on there was talk of Bill Bolling (the current Republican Lieutenant Governor) taking on McDonnell for the nomination but unity seems to be the latest meme for a struggling RPV and Bolling conceded to run for re-election instead. Bolling was opposed by a minor “pain-in-the-butt candidate” who conceded and endorsed Bolling before the first ballot was in.

The McDonnell/Bolling/Cucinelli is one of the strongest tickets in a long while. The Democratic primary takes place on June 9th and looks to be a lock for Clintonista Terry McAuliffe to take on McDonnell.

Lessons Learned: Historically, unity has not been the game plan for the RPV but the convention goers left with relative excitement, few hurt feelings and deeper war chests. McDonnell and Bolling and their supporters tend to walk on eggshells around Cuccinelli supports and many in their camps admit to nervousness about the AG candidate bringing them down. Cuccinelli needs to walk strongly into the tea party motif, own it and demonstrate that November’s losses had more to do with Obama, Bush, McCain and the economy than Sarah Palin and social conservative heavies.

Stay tuned…

MESSAGE FROM CHUCK DEVORE:

I’ve opposed all the mega-billion dollar bailouts – they reward failure and bad decisions and leave us and our children to pay the trillion dollars in new debt. And, if you think this out of control spending is bad now with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barbara Boxer in Congress and President Bush in the White House, just wait until Obama is President and even more liberal Democrats run Congress.

Now we hear about the new Congressional visitor center, the one Harry Reid said would allow his colleagues to no longer have to “smell the tourists” – the one that cost $621 million, was over three years late and was $350 million over budget – can Washington do anything right? Of course, Barbara Boxer supported it.

Is it any wonder that the Government Accountability Office said December 2, in its initial report about the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, that loopholes and lack of oversight put our money at “heightened risk” of being wasted by bankers who, no doubt, will still get their big bonuses with our money. Of course, Barbara Boxer supported this too.

Lastly, the Big Three automakers are asking for money too, now up to $34 billion, up from $25 billion a few weeks ago – never mind that 61 percent of Americans wisely oppose this waste of their money – with 67 percent opposition here in the West. Of course, Barbara Boxer supports this bailout too.

Something smells in Washington – but we can do something about it.

Watch our web-ad and pass it along – let’s go viral with our displeasure with the stink in Washington!

Read more about Chuck here or at ChuckDeVore.com

Bottom line: This race is almost over. Tensions are high. Expectations are tempered but the general feeling is that Proposition 8 will prevail.

Read the whole interview here

In an interview with CQPolitics, Dew said he is undaunted about Matheson’s favored status in the race. The owner of a home construction company for more than 30 years, he says he has been through three recessions in his life and has awakened more than once not knowing how he would pay for things for his family and business.

Dew knows that this is an uphill climb but recent internal polling shows the Matheson within striking distance.

Here’s a recent Bill Dew ad taking Matheson to task:

VISIT BILLDEW.COM to help!

(full disclosure, I work as a consultant to the Bill Dew campaign)

Be sure to visit http://www.billdew.com/ for more information.

Democrat Matheson is the son of a former Governor of Utah and has done well to establish his name in the district. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Matheson’s previous GOP opponents have run terrible campaigns.

Enter Bill Dew, relative newcomer to politics, but backed by an experienced team of campaigners in an attempt to paint Utah in deeper shades of red. (Full disclosure I’m an advisor to the campaign myself)

However, reality hits hard when you realize that Dew is still down in the polls. But like Christmas in October, Jim Matheson has stepped in to give Bill Dew a gift.

Last week in St. George, Utah, Dew and Matheson squared off in a debate. Bill Dew did something no other challenger had done before: exposed Matheson’s votes in the open. Matheson was none too happy and accused Bill of lying. We had video rolling on the event and today the Dew campaign released the following web ad:

(WATCH THE VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP!)

You see, Jim Matheson plays a certain game again and again in Congress. He votes party line with liberals in committee and the floor, enabling the worst type of amendments and bills to make it to the floor. Once he knows its going to pass he votes against the bill to save face with his voters in Utah. Meanwhile legislation goes into force that has Matheson’s fingerprints all over it… even though he voted no!

Bill Dew could use your help. Spread the word!

VISIT BILLDEW.COM