Open thread: Iran
I’m trying with some of my “friends” on facebook to get some commentary going on our website. I have some friends that are either there in Iran or know people that are. Hopefully I can get some people over there to comment over here.
Please discuss any thing. What is going on? What we aren’t seeing in the US. What we should know?
Why did the Democratic Party not take to the streets after Bush stole not one, but both presidential elections ?
We hadn’t picked out a color yet.
We met in a bar and vowed to launch an armed revolution, but we quickly realized that none of us owned any firearms.
anon @ 3
None of those Iranian protesters look armed, but they got a revolution?
Andrew Sullivan has been live blogging some of the action.
On CNN at 6 p.m., they just received a message from someone in Iran saying that whatever liquid they are dropping from helicopters may not be water. People are getting skin burns. Now they say it may be boiling water or acid. THIS HAS NOT BEEN CONFIRMED.
I’m really hoping something good comes out of all this in Iran. Hard to say what will happen.
We hadn’t picked out a color yet.
lol
I followed the story all day. I have followed all week. You know we learned about the American Revolution, Liberty or Death, and all that… I hope that if the time every comes I have that kind of courage.
Cohen at the NYT was on the street today in Tehran. Somehow he filed a story. Read it ASAP!
I have worn green everyday this week except for Thurs. (black). Wearing green to dinner this evening.
Read the Iranian blogger’s post lest night. It’s on Sullivan’s site titled “Before-the-Battle”. It explains everything.
“DON’T TAKE ANY GUFF FROM THOSE FASCIST SWINE!”
-HST
As for the silly Bush ‘stole’ comment you have to assume this person has no ability to think.
In both elections all legal procedures were followed and the Democrat lost. If Al Gore could have carried his own state the election would have changed. Kerry was and is not up to the job.
Iran depends on how severe the Clerics want to get and how frustrated the people in the street become. Musavi is not exactly the best messenger for reversing the fact the country has a botched election process where only approved candidates can compete.
In other words Musavi could hardly be a threat to the clerics or he would have not been approved. Still, it took a few hours to count a huge amount of paper ballots and certify a winner.
The public option for health care will not be that efficient.
Mike Protack
We hadn’t picked out a color yet.
Seems the Iranians take their elections more seriously than we do ours.
Could it be that there are actual differences between their candidates ?
Protack – you are so, so wrong about 2004. I was actually on the ground in Columbus, OH for 7 days before the election, working for the Kerry campaign. On election day, the heavily Democratic precincts in the black neighborhoods and other strong – D areas did not have enough voting machines, causing 4-6 hour waits. Many of these voters could not afford to wait that long (they had jobs to go to, many that paid minimum wage). In the heavily GOP areas, they had more voting machines than they needed. And this was all at the direction of Sec of State Ken Blackwell, a rethug. I learned that day how to steal an election.
MJ, you forget that enough African Americans switched over to Bush that it was impossible for Kerry to win. There was no stealing any election. It is interesting that it is laudable for Iranians and Iraqis to wait in line while voting but it is too much for Americans even if they keep the polls open for every single person.
I agree that more polling machines should have been available in some precincts. Based upon historic numbers, an appropriate number were available. In fact Democrats not Republican made the calls. The state does not determine the machines in the county. The local board does. Democrats ran those areas and got at least what they requested. They then kept those few areas which needed more time open late even for those who were not in line but may had left. That is not suppressing any votes. The turnout in fact was record.
Delacrat is either making a sad joke or is a crack pot. We even had international observers who say there was no theft in 2004. In 2000, it happen to be Democrats who were changing the rules and divining votes not Republicans. Independent account after independent account gives Bush the victory on the election day count and then add the absentee ballots from overseas and it is even larger than the official count not smaller.
International Observers (pdf file) said no such thing. They did say that they were not even allowed into polling places in Ohio.
I would love to know the mechanisms by which Republicans can steal elections.
Please come up with something more believable than the sort of stuff we get from the ‘9/11 Goofer’ crowd.
Also, please tell me about your experiences in vote fraud investigation.
Rehashing shit from 10 years ago? Dudes are dying 2day. Come on.
Another strong indication of election fraud in OH, and a handful of other key states, was the huge discrepancy between the exit polling data and the actual data, going from four percentage points for Kerry to two percentage points for Bush, a swing of six points.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud.html
Also, Walden Dell, CEO of the Diebold Voting Machine Company and resident of Ohio, committed to deliver the Ohio vote for George W Bush.
Moreover, Republican Secretary of State Blackwell, who also committed to deliver Ohio to Bush, ordered the lock down of voting records to that they would not be accessible to the public.
Other states whose results were highly questionable were PA and FL.
So there is credible evidence that the 2004 election was rigged for Bush, and we all know the story of the 2000 election.
So it is not just Iran that has these election problems!
Let us all remember that these are the people Reagan/Bush helped prop-up by selling arms to them in the 1980’s and that Poppy Bush completed the crime and the cover-up by his Christmas pardons of the Iran-Contra criminals.
But, hey, support the troops!
David, actually Blackwell set the rules for the election, not individual counties (that’s why the secretary of state runs the elections; county clerks follow state rules in OH). In fact, he tried to force a change in the weight of the paper that was used for absentee ballots and was shot down by the OH courts. Sorry dear friend, I was there and I saw it live. You’re just repeating the FIXed Noise lies.
Art, my agency runs the Voter Observer Program for the Federal govt, in conjunction with the DOJ. I have served on many of these teams in the South, not only observing the elections but investigating voter fraud.
Next question Mr. Smarty Pants.
MJ, you would make a valuable contribution here by commenting on the FL 2000 and the OH 2004 election fraud charges, based on your own first and/or second hand knowledge.
Republican David, you rarely give attribution to your statements, straining credibility, like this one:
“In 2000, it happen to be Democrats who were changing the rules and divining votes not Republicans.”
In the FL 2000 election, you are correct that recounts gave the election to Bush, but these were after the fact. SCOTUS actually gave the election to Bush with an unprecedented decision over which they had no authority, as election law is a state function, and should have resided with the FL Supreme Court. There also remains the fact that voters were disenfranchised illegally, voters were blocked from voting due to inadequate voting machines, and absentee ballots were qualified in an arbitrary manner.
FL 2000 and OH 2004 were two great examples of how elections in an advanced democracy should not be run, as instigated primarily by corrupt Republican operatives, in my view! Now this is not to say that the Dems have not done their fair share in state and local elections, but nothing as egregious as the Karl Rove driven Republicans were in these two cited Presidential elections.