Actually I got your premise.

And it makes no sense. From all the reports I had read before Obama's speech Ahmadenijad was going to win easily. There was no need to rig the election. Believe it or not, Iranian elections have always been pretty straightforward, because the clerics never let anyone run who they didn't want to, so there was never any need to rig the vote. The Ayatollah was actually opposed to Ahmadenijad winning four years ago, yet he still did. I don't think they wanted Khatemi either, yet he also won.

After the speech, the reformers surged, which the Ayatollah and Ahmadenijad apparently didn't see coming. Which is why their rigging of the election was so badly done. If they had known that they were gonna need to fix the actual votes and not just the candidates who could run to start with they would never have allowed Mousavi to run in the first place.

As far as Israel, I am not understanding your thoughts there, except that it seems you actually are not in favor of peace in the middle east. You seem to dismiss the progress quite readily.

How is it, if Obama's threatens to cut off funding for Israel if Netanyahu doesn't concede to his wishes he can turn around and get more militant, the exact opposite stance? Are you suggesting that Israel thinks it could survive without our support, so the threat is meaningless? Or are you suggesting that Netanyahu is doubly suicidal? I would think neither is true. Regardless, even if Netanyahu is so foolish as to attack Iran, I do not want my country to support that.

Not that I really like quoting other's in my bits, but for sake of exactness:

Palin says: if they deem it necessary, let it happen.

Its views like this that show why Palin is the dumbest national figure in American political history. She shows a breathtaking ignorance of the world with her simpleton views. We have just spent the last eight years unifying the Arab world against us and against Israel with our horrible cowboy diplomacy that she apparently still thinks works. They are not fractured anymore, and they will all turn on Israel if the attack anyone full scale. Before Israel succeeded because they too fractured. That just isn't the way it is any more. Even if it was, who the hell is Israel to go around pre-emptively attacking countries? Didn't they see how badly that went when Bush did it?

You really need to stop citing Sarah Palin. It undercuts everything you say.

So basically, you don't actually want peace in the middle east. You just want Israel to slaughter the Palestinians to a man. And then you want Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

It is that, or making the two state solution work. There is no third option.

That is the reading I remember. The reformist surge does coincide with Obama's speech, so it probably had some effect, but I won't go so far as to make the direct correlation. There were a lot of things going on that had nothing to do with us. Ahmadenijad made some really major campaign screw ups of a macacca level. Mousavi turned out to be a much better campaigner that Ahmadenijad expected.

I don't believe the Ayatollah of the other hard line clerics were active participants in the vote rigging. If they really didn't want Mousavi then they wouldn't have let him run in the first place. But for whatever reason after Ahmadenijad fixed it, they're going along with his coup. So they're likely just accomplices after the fact.

I'm tired and gonna go watch TV for a while. It has been a good debate.

But I'm sorry, I cannot see how you can advocate the exact same kind of bullish cowboy diplomacy tactics that have eroded all the progress made up until 2000 after it is clear how horribly they have failed. We are thousands of miles away from all of it, so our massive clusterfuck can be survived. If Israel decides to take the same path, then they are screwed, and it won't matter if we support them or not for the last few months they'll still be in existence afterward. And an Israeli poll makes no difference, other than to show that if they really are that arrogant, they have yet another major humbling moment coming.

Obama knows this. Sarah Palin hasn't the brains to even have considered it.

Good night. Again, good debate.

Because neither of those are worth the pixels on my screen.

The first one seems to assume that the rigging was pre election, through early poll closing or not having enough ballots. Nobody is claiming that happened. Exactly the opposite actually. The vote fix came after the vote, and he didn't address that at all.

The second one relied on a three week old poll. Which contradicts two other polls that are more recent. If you want to discount those two, how can you do so with just another poll, especially an older one?

Is the best pro result arguments out there? If so, I'd say the debate is over.

Unfortunately, absolutely nothing. We gotta stay out of this one completely.

And folks, please. Stop comparing Iran with us in 2000. Its immature navel gazing, and there is simply no comparison.