Iran again

It's not clear what it will lead to, but the big news coming out of Iran is that the Guardian Council, which I gather is a sort of wise overseer of the government, has agreed to a recount of the votes.

It could, of course, mean that this too will be a sham designed to legitimate the fraud; but I sense that it may be an honest move.

Meanwhile, despite criticism from politically motivated clowns on the right who say he should be declaring outrage, Obama has taken just the right stance: saying that we have no way of knowing whether the election results are valid, since we had no monitors in the country, but that Iranians need to feel their ballots matter, and he urged a recount. He also deplored the violence and the crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. He also said he didn't want to say anything that would inject the U.S. into Iranian internal divisions. It would be a mistake to make it seem that the protests were a U.S. backed uprising.

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

Just the right touch of restraint, respect for the people, but holding to the values of self-determination and the right to peaceful protest.

Ralph

Iran investigation?

After appearing to completely accept the (probably) fraudulent re-election of Ahmadenijad, the Supreme Islamic Leader Khamenei met with reform candidate Mousavi and then announced an investigation of his claims of election fraud.

The question is: does this mean anything? Here's Nico Pitney's take on it (HuffingtonPost):

Understanding Khamenei's voter fraud shift. It's still unclear why Khamenei decided to announce a probe of possible election fraud, or what that investigation might look like. (It was strange enough that he came out on Sunday and re-blessed Ahmadinejad's victory.)

Justifiably skeptical readers note that, at the very least, this announcement can buy the Supreme Leader time and relieve some of the urgency felt by pro-Mousavi Iranians.

Another emailer, Reza, is even more pessimistic: "Please put the Supreme Leader's request to probe the election results in perspective for your readers. The body that will be probing election is appointed by the Supreme Leader and all its members are hardliners and backers of Ahmadinejad and his policies. This is nothing but a sham in an attempt to extinguish the fever for change that's taking hold in the country."

This may very well be true. On the other hand, Khamenei is most certainly feeling pressure from various quarters -- popular unrest, the more ideologically-moderate camp of former President Rafsanjani, a host of Ayatollahs, and so on -- to address the election allegations. And it's unclear at this point how Khamenei addresses any of those pressures by having a sham probe give a seal of approval to the results.

So, we wait. Khamenei is in a delicate balance: he wants to retain the power of the clerics, yet if he crushes the reform movement in an obvious way -- as in this clumsily stolen elections and the reaction to the protests up to now -- then his international standing is seriously jeopardized, just when Iran is making a bid for acceptance.

The European Union was too quick to recognize Ahmanedijad's "victory." The Obama administration is taking the better stance of waiting.

Ralph

The amazing Obama

Blogger Tom Engelhardt of TomGram writes about Obama's amazing political skills.

And the president himself, well, if you didn't watch his speech in Cairo, you should have. The guy's impressive. Truly. He can speak to multiple audiences -- Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, as well as a staggering range of Americans -- and somehow just about everyone comes away hearing something they like, feeling he's somehow on their side.

And it doesn't even feel like pandering. It feels like thoughtfulness. It feels like intelligence.

If, in a Star-Trekkian mode . . . you could transport yourself back to early 2003 and tell just about any American what's coming, you might have found yourself institutionalized. If you had said that the new norm would be a black president with Reagan-like popularity, Kennedy-like charisma, and Roosevelt-like skills in the political arena, leading a majority Democratic Congress in search of universal health care, solutions to global warming, energy conservation, and bullet trains, your listener might, at best, have responded with his or her own joke: "A priest, a rabbi, and a penguin walk into a bar..."

But it's true, and he is for real.

Ralph

Senator Whitehouse

Remember the name: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). A lot of us regreted when Senator Lincoln Chafee -- the lone liberal Republican senator -- lost his bid for re-election in 2006.

But no more. The man who defeated him, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehous is proving himself to be a formidable member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is conducting an investigation into the bush administration's torture policy. In his position, he has read all the classified reports concerning the interrogations, particularly of Zubaydah, who was famously waterboarded. This led Whitehouse to make this astounding statement in a speech on the Senate floor last week:

I want my colleagues and the American public to know that, measured against the information I’ve been able to gain access to, the story-line that we have been led to believe, the story-line about waterboarding that we have been sold, is false in every one of its dimensions, and I ask that my colleagues be patient and be prepared to listen to the evidence when all is said and done before they wrap themselves in that story-line.

This is the clearest refutation yet of dick cheney's claims in his effort to write his version of history into the books before the real evidence is released.

I've watched Whitehouse in committee hearings. He is impressive. More than anyone I know, he impresses me as future presidential material. But could a man with the name of Whitehouse really be elected to live and preside in the White House? I suppose so, but if you were writing a novel, your editor would say "no way; you've got to change his name."

Ralph

Iran blows up

Juan Cole has a good analysis of what probably happened in the Iranian election.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran/

His conclusion is that the election was a "last-minute and clumsy fraud," by a central government that was caught by surprise but was determined not to let reformist candidate Moussavi win.

It's the pattern of supposed voting that makes no sense. Ahmadinejad reportly won by a 63% majority that was spread rather uniformly across the country, in cities as well as countryside. It makes no sense that Ahmadinejad would have run equally strongly in areas where he was popular as in areas where his challenger had aroused the most enthusiasm.

Urban youth and women were especially strong supporters of Moussavi, and they turned out in huge numbers to vote -- and yet the official results show that their support for the reform candidate was less than their vote for the reform candidate in 1997 and 2001.

Cole points out that a carefully planned theft of the election would at least have conceded his home region of Tabriz to Moussavi. But official results have Ahmadinejad winning Tabriz by 57%.

Will it have much pracical significance? Some say not, since the president does not have much power; the government is run by the theocrat, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

What does seem evident at this point is that the obvious fraud has galvanized the resistance; there is even some talk among correspondents of a possible overthrow of Khamenei -- or at least a loss of power possibly leading to replacing him, if not the government.

What remains to be seen is how far the violent resistance will go. As of this moment it seems to be escalating. This, combined with the crackdown on the international media and the blacking out of all email communciation, suggest a very serious problem and certainly a black eye on the Iranian government's attempt for acceptance on the world stage.

Ralph

Want to do that one over, all you nay-sayers?

As reported on HuffingtonPost by Rachel Wiener:

When a Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism was released earlier this year, the conservative media responded with outrage and mockery. In light of Wednesday's attack at the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum, Fox News' anchor Shep Smith pointed out that "they warned us for a reason." Media Matters has looked back at how those warnings were ignored.

"There are no Timothy McVeighs out there right now," declared James Dobson on Fox News in April. "They're making a big deal out of something that hasn't happened and may not happen."

Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros dismissed the report's findings as a "made up threat."

Joe Scarborough reacted with both anger and indignation, expressing shock that the report was "targeting veterans returning from war" while also laughing hysterically when it was brought up: "This is a funny story this is a laughably -- they're nuts, Janet Napolitano has gone nuts -- this is funny."

At least one Fox newsman has said "we ought to take a second look at the report.''

Yes, indeed. And while you're at it, take a look in the mirror, all those of you who want Obama to fail and don't care what happens to this country as long as you get to bleat out your unthinking, ranting, knee-jerk criticisms.

Ralph

Two frivilous questions

1. What's with George H. W. and Barbara Bush? Both octogenarians seem to be flirting with sexy young people. A couple of days ago, there was a pic of Poppy with a sexy young actress in a bikini sitting on his lap and a story about, for his 86 birthday, he's going sky-diving in tandem with a sexy young woman TV newscaster.

I know it used to be his tradition to go skydiving on his birthday. But have you taken leave of your senses, Poppy? Not six months ago, watching you hobble in to Obama's inauguration was a painful sight. You could hardly walk. Diving out of the plane should be no problem, but have you thought about landing on those old bones?

Not to be outdone, today there's a pic up of Barbara at her 84th birthday celebration with a handsome young man standing next to her chair in nothing but a speedo. He has one of those perfect bodies out of Men's Health Magazine, all sexy and gym-buffed. It said he was an actor from a production of A Chorus Line. Nice that they had invited him to the party, but almost naked?

What's going on, Poppy and Bar? Or is this 76 year old just jealous?

2. This one's been nagging me for some time. Why is it that, in 9 out of 10 pics of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, they always have their mouths open? I don't mean pics where they were obviously snapped in the middle of talking. It's a scoffing, mouth-open expression that seems to be laughing at the simple souls that they think they're putting one over on -- meaning all the rest of us. For both, it seems to be their default facial expression.

It's not just a mean selection of pics by liberal photo editors. I've watched the same thing in live action of them on TV.

Maybe they're just happy souls, and I'm too biased to see any goodness in them; but I think I'm a pretty good reader of expressions. And they both convey that same arrogant, derisive, glib quality that I despise in anyone.

Ralph