Behind Iran's Election Results

On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, Vice President Joe Biden hinted that Iran's election results last week didn't seem quite right... politicos shake their heads over the odor of corruption and huffing news outlets question their validity.

Of course, our own elections have been rife with questionable results.... think of the Supremes deciding the 2000 presidential contest.... while our hackable electronic ballot systems are nothing to brag about.

What we have here seems to be very wishful thinking, and an attitude of "do as I say, not as I do."

Americans want Middle East peace, they want President Ahmadinejad and his scary rhetoric shown the door.... just like we did to Bush/Cheney in 2004.... oh yes, we didn't do that to The Decider and Darth Dick. Instead, while the world held it's breath, we elected them to a second term, after they lied us into the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation's history, the war in Iraq.... the Middle-East-destabilizing war in Iraq.

Well, now we know how the world felt. According to the Washington Post, the rumors of Ahmadinejad's political demise were very premature. As reported by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty in "The Iranian People Speak," it appears the "election results in Iran may reflect the will of the people."

On what do they base such an outlandish statement.... on a scientific national poll conducted in Iran three weeks before the election. Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate two to one, and those results reflect the election's results. The poll was "conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award." Oh.

That's not what we want to believe. Our instant-gratification conditioning hasn't the patience. But, closing our minds and living in a blame-game la-la land won't change the reality.... nor a system where all Iranian candidates are chosen by a non-elected supreme leader. Here is where the poll's results are very interesting, and encouraging. And, far from the expected safe answers one might expect in a country with an oppressive regime in power.

While preferring Ahmadinejad, for now, four out of five indicated in answer to the poll's questions that they wanted to elect the supreme leader, chose free elections and a free press as priorities, and 77 percent "favored normal relations and trade with the United States." Those weren't safe answers.

So, while choosing Ahmadinejad.... change is in the air. Isn't that what we should be talking about, and encouraging?

In Iran, there are now major protests by supporters of the opposing candidate. One thing all the ballyhoo has done is to evidently unsettle the supreme leader. He's now calling for an investigation into the election. But then, why not. He can't lose. He picked all the candidates.

McCain's Waterloo

Just how mentally fit is John McCain?

This week Christopher Hitchens, no-holds-barred writer and unapologetic supporter of the invasion of Iraq, endorsed Barack Obama. As his headline blares in Slate, "McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is just a disgrace."

Referring to the town hall debate, he observed that McCain seemed to be "someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses...

Hitchens continues, "McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendos and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendos and slanders for him."

In this same town hall debate, McCain called Obama "that one" and today in Waterloo, Iowa on "Meet the Press" with Tom Brokaw he was unable to remember the name of his endorser George Schultz who he finally had to refer to as "one other."

It was a jumpy, forced-jovial, even rude McCain facing Brokaw as he dismissed the endorsement of Obama on last week's "Meet the Press" by GOP Secretary of State Colin Powell.

McCain countered by listing his own five former secretaries of state who endorsed him.... "Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, Larry Eagleburger, and Al Haig".... and then, ".....uh," and he started listing them over again. When he couldn't come up with the name of the 5th, the said "and one other."

Then, as Brokaw started to move on to another subject, McCain burst out "George Schultz!"

McCain "dismissed the sour poll numbers that show him trailing in his White House race against Democrat Barack Obama and said his campaign is 'doing fine.' " (WaPo)

He rejected the widespread consensus.... even among a host of influential conservatives.... that Sarah Palin is not qualified for the job and is hurting his campaign.... " 'I don't defend her. I praise her. She is exactly what Washington needs,' he said, and was equally dismissive of criticism about the Republican Party spending $150,000 on her wardrobe at high-end retailers.

But, as Judith Warner points out today about Palin and the status of women in politics in "No Ordinary Woman," (NYTimes) "...women will truly have arrived when the most mediocre among us will be able to do just as well as the most mediocre of men."

Based on that sad observation, it seems McCain-Palin are a matched set.

Vote! It matters!

A Spooky Transition....

The winner of the presidential contest will face a scary Herculean task on November 5.

An "Arduous Transition Awaits Next President" (WaPo) spells out the steep climb facing the incumbent.

Thanks to the Bush administration's radical-ideology agenda buttressed with monstrously failed policies.

McCain promises to "reach across the aisle" and "new blood" in his administration (why not in his campaign tactics and campaign staff now?). The narrow agenda of McCain's campaign is designed to strengthen the GOP's far-right base. It's a matter of record that McSame voted with the Bush far-right corporate-favoring administration 90 percent of the time.

Obama also has promises to keep, and miles to go.... But, Obama already has in place an extensive transition team to enable him to hit the ground running. For all of his big talk, McCain admittedly hasn't been able to strongly focus on the transition as he searches for a winning gimmick.... like his "you betacha" VP choice.... like Joe the Plumber.... and deploys his divisive Ayers-smear Swiftboating tactics in the home stretch.

As Republican Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War and a former Secretary of State for the current administration, said so succinctly this morning on NBC's Meet the Press with his endorsement of Obama... "after watching Sarah Palin for seven weeks I don't think she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the Vice President."

A no-where-close-to-ready Sarah Palin was 72-year-old McCain's first big "presidential" decision. Why should we believe his judgment starting November 5 would be any better?

November 4. Vote. It matters!