[ExI] left on iran

[spike]

 > ...On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
> ... 
> So perhaps this is in some degree responsive to spike's 
> original question re the "left"... Best, Jeff Davis

Ja!  Good on em.  This is cool, this is one historical episode where US
left, right and up all meet in common cause.  I can't think of another
similar example in my lifetime.  It sure looks to me like the Iranian powers
that be stole this damn election, and did so very clumsily, offering
contradictory explanations, just silly commentary.  

I might even buy the notion that the more conservative rural types would
vote with the incumbent, and the hip urbans would vote with the challenger.
But the offical ballots didn't actually claim this.  Then having the grand
poobah comment that it would be impossible to steal 11 million votes was
silly.  They found FIFTY cities that had more votes than voters, then said
that shows that there was NOT wholesale cheating!  (Reasoning: In Iranian
elections there are usually hundreds of cities that have more votes than
voters, usually more votes than voters in MOST of the cities.)

Well har har and harrumph, but honest to evolution, I shed no tears for the
Iranians.  I really don't, I will not flap my gums at you.  But what if, in
the next US election, we find fifty US cities that have more votes than
voters?  And the outcome contradicts the entrance, the exit polls, the
street polls and the phone polls?  What would we do?  Unlike the Iranians,
WE HAVE GUNS, lots and lots of them, and I do not want to see that here.
That's part of WHY we have lots and lots of guns here.  

Do indulge my droning repetition my friends: Every year that passes since
the creation of the internet makes this more clear.  We have the technology
in our hands to create a mutually verifiable secret election, and our OWN
DAMN GOVERNMENT consistently and flatly refuses to do it.

These are the new pigs, and if we do not protest, we are complicit by our
reprehensible silence.  This is dangerous as hell.  Do think on these things
please, early and often.

spike