AHMADINEJAHD WINS AGAIN!!!!

@genoves,

genoves wrote:

I don't know if your dichotomy is accurate, Foofie.

I think it can be shown(by analysis of the demography of the vote for Bush) that the country types in the USA are not those in the hinterlands but also those in the many many suburbs ringing the cities of the USA.

These people. I am sure, are far more knowledgeable than your Iranian country type. The latest World Almanac gives 77% as the percentage of Literacy in Iran. That means, of course, that a large number of country folk in Iran are illiterate. Since there are only about 200 TV sets per 1000 people, it means that many of the country types get little up to date news.

The same cannot be said for the suburbs and the country in the USA!

The Democrats traditionally dominate the lower income less educated class, while Republicans are better educated and generally have higher incomes. There are also Democrats, well educated with high incomes with apparently guilt complexes that vote Democrat, but most have in the past been less educated and make less money than Republicans, I think that is the case anyway. More research needs doing on this. Better educated may explain why conservative talk radio scores big, inquisitive well informed people want to know what is going on with the details of issues, but liberals bomb, because their constituents are listening to music or don't care. Hannity's man on the street segment proves most liberals can't even name who the vice president is most of the time.

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Okie-Note

Obama bites rich hands that fed him
By: Jeanne Cummings
May 5, 2009 08:01 PM EST

For a politician who sometimes got accused of playing class warfare, candidate Barack Obama sure made a lot of well-to-do friends during the 2008 campaign.

The big question now is whether President Barack Obama can keep them.

One striking, if little-noted, trend of the past presidential election was that Obama won the affluent vote " those making more than $200,000 annually " with 52 percent. Moving down the income scale a bit, he and John McCain essentially tied among those making between $100,000 and $200,000.

In 2008, exit polls showed the percentage of voters earning more than $100,000 had jumped to a historic high of 26 percent, compared with just 9 percent in 1996. Obama’s strong showing among this bloc reversed a decades-old pattern in which the more money someone made, the more likely he or she was to vote Republican.

But these voters are not being repaid for their support " more like the other way around.

Beyond the obviously wealthy voters, people who in many places are no more than upper middle class find themselves targeted to pay for a wide range of Obama policies aimed at leveling the economic playing field.

“The notion that people who are in those income brackets are Republican isn’t true anymore,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“In part,” he added, “that’s because of the way they made their money” " in high-tech, legal or service professions that skew liberal, rather than through traditional Main Street businesses that skew conservative.

Obama’s gamble that he can ask affluent progressives to pay more without complaint has been made riskier by the collapse of home prices and stock portfolios.

Many well-to-do voters who may have been in a magnanimous frame of mind when they cast their ballots last November are not nearly so rich now.

*******************************************************************

And wait until the Bush tax cuts expire and Obama puts more taxes on these people. It will show up clearly in the elections of 2010.

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And Okie- note-

The most striking pattern is our estimate that Obama would've won almost all the states, if only low-income voters were counted. This is our best estimate for each individual state; however, given the uncertainty in these estimates in small states such as Idaho and North Dakota, we wouldn't claim with certainty that there was such a clean sweep.
*********************************************************************

Why not? Most of them had been told by ACORN that he would take care of them. They got the word--Welfare for all--vote for Barack.

The Middle Class will note this carefully and will vote against the Left wing in November 2010.

1 Reply

@genoves,

Thats IF there is any Middle Class left. Obama is right now trying to wipe it out. And he has a pretty good start.

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@okie,

Quote:

My primary point is this, Obama should have spoken out for fair elections right off the bat, plain and simple, there is nothing wrong with that,

, What would that have done ? Its not about us and its only MONDAY MORNING quarterbacking that the election was probably rigged.
Was Obama supposed to state when the polls opened "
"SUre hope you dont cheat like hell in this election'.?

Anyway, as far as what Obama should be saying youre merely trying to argue a point built solely upon degrees and Obama seems always to be one step ahead of the bitter GOPlegislators.(The entire argument has been that he should or should not have been siding with the Mousavi ites, and I say that would be a mistake)

Im certain that our official words to the regime were discussed with our allies (as opposed to Bush's MO), and the fact that the toughest talking allies were those who still MAINTAIN RELATIONS WITH IRAN.
We, alas, do not have official relations with Iran so anything said will come in (officially) over the transom.

I think that the best we can hope for is a widening schism between the groups of twelver clerics and the elected govt and the "appointed guardian govt". Theres already a nice schism brewing between Ravsanjani and Khamenei and that has been called "Sheite Shakespeare", or better yet, it parallels the relations between the "Corleones and the Tattaglias" (If youre Godfather savvy)

As far as you pronouncements about me, you are all wet. Lets just try to keep the discussion about the topic , we can trade insults on another thread where its more appropriate.

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@genoves,

Quote:

I think Farmerman has forgotten that Obama's father was a Muslim--his stepfather was a Muslim and his close kin in Kenya are Muslims

IRRELEVANT to the subject.
The best thing that happened yesterday was Obama putting Sen McCain in his place with a "Im the president of the US, ..."

Its a bitch when the object of your derision is always one step ahead of your side.

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http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/lb0623cd20090622081736.jpg

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Okie wrote:

The Democrats traditionally dominate the lower income less educated class, while Republicans are better educated and generally have higher incomes.

**** like this is hilarious--priceless humor that you just couldn't make up on your own. Tell us, Okie, how this resonates with the standard conservative crapola about the universities and colleges in this nation being hotbeds of liberal perversion and propaganda. Tell us, Okie, how this reconciles with the anti-intellectualism of American conservatives. So, Republicans are better educated, but they whine about liberal institutions of higher education and exploit a feeling of antipathy for intellectuals? God, you crack me up. Go look up cognitive dissonance, Okie, and then get a mirror . . .

1 Reply

It no longer matters whether or not the election were rigged, because now so many millions of people believe that it was rigged. The problem now is what is going to happen with the protests, and how the theocracy will react. For the latter, i sadly conclude that there will be no meeting people halfway, because the theocracy is in the grip of religious fanatics. The only likely eventual result of splits among the Mullahs will be that more sane, moderate voices will be stilled. Once again, i hope i am wrong--but i don't think so.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

The odds are slim that these demonstrations will grow into a full scale revolution, but if there is to be any chance we will need to see general strikes throughout the nation that can bring the country to a grinding halt. I'm not sure the opposition is wide spread enough for this to happen.

State tv reported yesterday (? or the day before) that 30% of the workforce did not show up for work. The latest Mousavi demonstration is planned to be a shopping trip to the bazar with no actual shopping -- thus allowing shop keepers to close up and "shoppers" to take to the streets. Watching...

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

This is such a tragedy--the economic fairy tale world of the state corporations smothers talent and innovation. A generation of Persian human talent has already been lost, and it looks as though another generation's energy, intelligence and talent may be lost. I am, obviously, not hopeful. I wish i were wrong--i hope i am wrong.

I hope you are too. Here, this will cheer you up. You'll want the sound up.

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@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

It appears to me that the protesters in Iran tend to represent the cosmopolitan types. The country types tend to be backing the regime.

I read that this is actually a myth. Apparently the "country types" in Iran tend to be ethnic minorities who do not back Ahmedinejad. In fact, it's the swing in some of those "country" provinces from moderate and reform candidates to the conservatives that experts are pointing to as evidence of vote fraud. I'm off to find where I read that.

1 Reply

@FreeDuck,

Here it is:

http://tehranbureau.com/irans-rural-vote-and-election-fraud/

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@FreeDuck,

FreeDuck wrote:

Here it is:

http://tehranbureau.com/irans-rural-vote-and-election-fraud/

And from an analysis on the election numbers (pdf):

Quote:

Data collected by Chatham House supports the contention of academic experts on rural Iranian politics that rural voters have not been the dedicated Ahmadinejad supporters occasionally described in Western media. This is supported by the fact that much of Iran's rural population is comprised of ethnic minorities: Lors, Baluch, Kurdish, and Arab among others. These ethnic minorities have a history both of voting reformist and of voting for members of their own ethnic group. For example, they were an important segment of Khatami's vote in 1997 and 2001 and voted largely for Karroubi and Mustafa Moin in 2005.

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@FreeDuck,

I agree it is terrible that an election was won on fraudulent means, an absolute tragedy that those in Iran can not protest without violence or death being the result, nor have a means of taking the dispute to the courts.

However, I am trying to figure why it is the opposition is any better than the one currently in power? Is he more moderate in terms of freedoms from supreme leaders? Will Iran go back to the way I understand it was before the Islamic Revolution in 1979?. I honestly don't have any idea which is why I am asking. I do know that in terms of nuclear power and how they feel about Israel and the US, the two sides appear to be little different, if what I have read so far on the subject is true. Although honestly I am really very ignorant on the whole subject and history of Iran and I am curious (in a few and simple words as possible (setanta)) about why the opposition is felt to better than the one currently in power in Iran in terms of how those who have been denied civil freedoms and in terms on how the opposition would deal with the west.

1 Reply

@revel,

For the US, the opposition may not be much better, though my understanding is that they are more progressive in terms of getting along with other countries and civil rights. For the people of Iran, there is a big difference which is simply that they chose one and got the other. If they don't get the government they elected then even that flimsy veil of self-determination that the elections provided is lifted, and they know that they live in a dictatorship. That's a huge difference for them.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Okie wrote:
The Democrats traditionally dominate the lower income less educated class, while Republicans are better educated and generally have higher incomes.

**** like this is hilarious

Hilarious and TRUE!

1 Reply

@FreeDuck,

If Mousavi was thought to be any threat to the continued reign of the Mullahs, he would not have been allowed to run for the presidency.

His history as the former Prime Minister certainly doesn't suggest a moderate reformist and Obama was not off base when he questioned whether there was any significant difference between Mousavi and Ahmendinijad.

It's certainly possible that during his 20 years in the Iranian political desert he had a radical change of heart and mind, but if so, he did a good job hiding it from the Mullahs once he returned.

If he had won the election instead of Ahmendidjad I don't believe we would have seen a significant change in the government which is why it was so stupid for the regime to rig the election. If Mousavi has won, their control of Iran would not have measurably diminished and a large percentage of the population that is reform minded would have been mollified.

One of the reason it is impossible to predict world events with any certainty. Throughout the ages significant people have made the illogical decision and huge changes result.

Pure speculation, but as something of an insider perhaps he saw that there were schisms in the regime that could be exploited and the dramatic reaction to the election results offered him a once in a lifetime opportunity to exploit those schisms and come out truly on top. A pretty ballsy move if the case.

In the unlikely event that there is a successful revolution and Mousavi ends up as the leader of the new government, there's virtually no chance that he will reproduce the oppressive environment. Such a revolution will have to have the support of a sizeable faction of the military. Students, women's right activists and intellectuals, no matter how well armed with guns and fervor are not going to defeat the Baseej and The Revolutionary Guard.

However, should they obtain the support they need from the military, and overthrow the regime; they will have accomplished quite a feat. They will certainly not be prepared to allow Mousavi the Tyrant fill the vacuum. He will have to become Mousavi the Democrat or the victorious people will can his ass in a minute.

A post-revolution military coup is perhaps another story.

Unfortunately, I think all post-revolution speculation is moot. It's a terrible shame.

We're brought up, at least in this country, to believe that people taking a stand for what is right and displaying uncommon bravery to obtain it will succeed. Sometime it does happen, but very often it does not, and when it does, and we look more deeply into the hows and whys we find a far more complex and far less pristine situation that we wanted to imagine.

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@H2O MAN,

Quote:

... while Republicans are better educated... .

And to prove your point you're ready to put yourself forward as a shining example of this.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I agree with that.

Mousavi himself said something to the effect that he followed the people, not the other way around. If he moved to the center or made significant changes in his political persona, it was because he guessed the mood of the public and was trying to win.

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AHMADINEJAHD WINS AGAIN!!!!

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