The Only Iranian Election Post You Need To Read

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From Reza Aslan:


On Friday, Iranians go to the polls to choose a new president in an election that will have profound consequences throughout the globe, not least in the United States, where President Obama has expressed a desire for a thaw in relations with Iran.

Although some 400 candidates signed up to run for the office, the election has become a four-way race, with the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing off against the even more conservative former commander of Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaie; the popular reformist and former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi; and the perennial populist and leftist candidate—Iran’s very own Ralph Nader—Mehdi Karroubi. With only a few days to go, however, the contest is shaping up into a two-man contest—and an unusually bitter, increasingly raucous, and utterly absorbing one at that—between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi.

Four years ago Ahmadinejad burst onto the political scene in Iran as a relatively unknown figure who shocked Iranians, and the world, by beating the powerful cleric and absurdly wealthy businessman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1 billion—to become Iran’s first non-cleric president. Back then, Ahmadinejad ran on a platform of reforming the economy and rooting out corruption in the government.

Four years later, thanks both to a precipitous drop in oil prices and his administration’s reckless financial policies, Iran’s economy is on the verge of total collapse. As a result, Ahmadinejad has reinvented himself as the one candidate who could most effectively reach out to Barack Obama and responsibly open up the country to the international community—something all candidates agree must be done but with vastly different ideas about how to do so. In fact, Ahmadinejad’s campaign slogan is Ma Mitavanim…Farsi for “Yes, we can!”

...Perhaps the biggest surprise of these elections is the role the Internet is playing in the campaigns. Taking a page from the Obama playbook, all four candidates are on Facebook and Twitter (Mousavi’s Facebook page boasts more than 30,000 supporters). Huge, spontaneous rallies have been coordinate by text message.

It seems that, as with the previous elections, large urban centers, including conservative cities like Isfahan and Mashad, will go to Mousavi (it is difficult to find an Ahmadinejad supporter in Tehran!), while poorer and more rural voters are overwhelmingly supporting Ahmadinejad.


The article goes on, with insight from Iranian citizens. Must read.

via The Daily Beast

Merry Memorial Day And All

We Assume The History Books In The District Need Updating

Ah, prom season.

It's the time of year when doucheteens across the country max out their parents' credit cards to rent snazzy outfits and fancy limousines to attend an overpriced party in their HS gym to bump and grind to the rap music, followed by bumping and grinding in a cheap motel. That is America.

Montgomery County, GA has a very special kind of prom. The kind where white and black folk are segregated. Hoorayz for 2009!!!

From NY Times:


Waiting out the final weeks of the school year, they begin rightfully to revel in the shared thrill of moving on. It is no different in south-central Georgia’s Montgomery County, made up of a few small towns set between fields of wire grass and sweet onion. The music is turned up. Homework languishes. The future looms large. But for the 54 students in the class of 2009 at Montgomery County High School, so, too, does the past. On May 1 — a balmy Friday evening — the white students held their senior prom. And the following night — a balmy Saturday — the black students had theirs.

...Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change.

...Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. “Most of the students do want to have a prom together,” says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. “But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”

“It’s awkward,” acknowledges JonPaul Edge, a senior who is white. “I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together. We hang out. We play sports together. We go to class together. I don’t think anybody at our school is racist.” Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. “It’s how it’s always been,” he says. “It’s just a tradition.”


The whole piece is a great read, but these few lines really stand out:


Earlier this month, on the Friday night of the white prom, Kera Nobles, a senior who is black, and six of her black classmates drove over to the local community center where it was being held. Standing amid a crowd of about 80 parents, siblings and grandparents, they snapped pictures and whooped appreciatively as their white friends — blow-dried, boutonniered and glittering in a way that only high-school seniors can — did their “senior walk,” parading in elegant pairs into the prom. “We got stared at a little, being there,” said one black student, “but it wasn’t too bad.”

After the last couple were announced, after they watched the white people’s father-daughter dance and then, along with the other bystanders, were ushered by chaperones out the door, Kera and her friends piled into a nearby KFC to eat. Whatever elation they felt for their dressed-up classmates was quickly wearing off.


We immediately thought of this:




Story via Jesus' General (MUST read piece here as well)

A Children's Treasury Of Horrible Day Of Silence Videos

This past Friday (when your editor was going on 48 hours of no sleep in a Biloxi casino) various gay youths around the world celebrated the Day of Silence, which is a holiday where young homosexuals give their teachers and fellow students a break by shutting the fuck up.

Here's a collection of the worst videos we've found so far:








And for the win: A young Maddow wannabe. See how far you can make it.

Merry Ramadan, America!!!

Build your own Blingee



We're all Mooslims now. Barack Obama is POTUS, thus requiring you to read this post facing to the East.

If you're like us, you spent it swilling fancy liberal wines watching the event on MSNBC...because...come on:





Chris Matthews, just...WOW.

The Chief Justice of SCOTUS fucked up the oath, which prompted this:



And this:



Other than that, Diane Sawyer got trashed, Rick Warren prays to Mexican Jesus, and we're jealous of the Obama girls.

Congrats, Britain. You Really Outdid Yourself

Instead of emergency services being called every 8 seconds, this New Year's eve, you shaved it down to 7:

Violence scarred celebrations and led to a bloody New Year across the country as emergency services endured a chaotic end to 2008.

Ambulance control centres reported receiving 999 calls as often as once every seven seconds - the second highest volume of calls since the Millennium - as binge drinkers turned nasty in the freezing temperatures.

Many of the calls related either to alcohol-fuelled assaults or excessive drunkenness.


Included are images of our favorite excessive drunken moments: