In the tense aftermath of Iran’s fiercely contested presidential election between the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reform candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi . . .

the Associated Press is reporting that . . .

according to Iran’s Interior Ministry, the final count from Iran’s presidential election gave 62.6 percent of the vote to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and 33.75 to Mir Hossein Mousavi, “a former prime minister who has become the hero of a youth-driven movement seeking greater liberties.”

Ahmadinejad only got 62 percent of the vote?  Those slackers who “counted the votes” for him obviously didn’t count them with enough enthusiasm.  Government hacks counting the votes for Saddam Hussein always gave him at least 95 percent of the vote.  Government hacks counting the votes for Ferdinand Marcos always gave him at least 98 percent of the vote.  Government hacks counting the votes for Idi Amin always gave him at least 150 percent of the votes.      

Ahmadinejad only got a feeble 62 percent of the vote, but that was plenty good enough for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei . . .

who is urging Iranians to unite behind Ahmadinejad.  He told the nation that  Ahmadinejad’s “landslide win” over reformer Mousavi in Iran’s presidential election was a “divine assessment” and a “real feast”.

On a dark D.C. highway, cold wind in my hair,

Heavy smell of corruption, rising up through the air,

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light . . .

My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim,

I had to stop for the night.

Pelosi stood in the doorway;

She didn’t look too well.

And I was thinking to myself,

This could be Heaven, but it’s always been Hell.

She lit a bailout candle, and she showed me the way,

Past the bankers in the corridor,

She knew what to say…

Welcome to the new Hotel Obama.

Such a lovely place,

Such a lovely face.

Plenty of change at the new Hotel Obama,

Any time of year,

You can find it here.

For the next sixty seconds, this blog will conduct a test of the Netroots Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.

Progressives in your area, in voluntary cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and other mental health authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of a mental health emergency.

If this had been an actual mental health emergency, you would have been . . .

BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP–BEEP

We interrupt this test to bring you breaking mental health emergency news.  

As this chart reveals . . .

a serious mental health crisis is now gripping America.  It’s official.  Nationwide studies confirm that the brainwave activity of every Republican has flat-lined.  Brainwave activity spikes briefly when Republicans feel the urge to yell LIBERAL FASCIST SOCIALISM, but then flat-lines again, until the next time a few Democrats indicate they actually give a flying fuck about average Americans.  When this happens, Pavlov’s dog salivates again, a brief brainwave surge occurs somewhere in Republican skulls, and we all have to listen to another outbreak of LIBERAL FASCIST SOCIALISM bellowing.

Running down around the towns along the shore,

When I was sixteen and on my own.

No, I couldn’t tell you what the hell those brakes were for,

I was just trying to hear my song . . .

Now I’m sitting by the highway,

Down by that highway side.

Everybody’s going somewhere,

Just as fast as they can ride.

I guess they’ve got a lot to do,

Before they can rest assured.

Their lives are justified.

I’ve been up and down that highway,

But no matter what I see,

I can’t help feeling,

We’ll never get where we want to be.

A friend said, close your eyes, and try a few of these,

I thought I was flying like a bird,

So far above my sorrow,

But when I looked down,

I was on my knees.

RePugs said close your eyes, America . . .

And try a few of these tax cuts for the rich, the wealth will trickle down.  And America believed them.  

In Why We Can’t Have Change Buhdy argued that there is just not much Obama can do to bring Change about . . .

There is plain and simple, just not much he can do to bring Change about. There is not…yet…much he can do to bring Change about for one basic reason. One basic reason, which then blooms into a thousand flowers all smelling like DC bullshit in the spring.

The one card Obama has to play in the DC Realpolitik Poker Game is….us.  The Power of the People.  A steady 65% approval rating, and that is a HARD 65%.  The People who support him REALLY support him. And his many and varied opponents know it. He has that, and the limited (even post-Bush) power of the Executive Branch.

He brings that to the table.  But sitting across from him, arrayed around the table far outnumbering him….is the entire structure of the United States Government.

The entire structure of the United States government is broken, and everyone knows it. That’s why Obama got elected.  Americans elected him President to fix that broken government.  He has far more than one card to play, he’s sitting at that poker table in Washington with a Royal Flush, but he won’t lay it down on the table.

In 2004, no one had ever heard of Obama.  Yet somehow, he won the Presidency of the United States only four years later.  Why?  Because he promised Change.  Because 65 million Americans believed him when he said we have to put the politics of the past behind us, and voted for him.  But he’s not putting the politics of the past behind us, he’s letting the politics of the past, the politics of bullshit posturing in Congress, prevent him from doing what needs to be done.  

I’m not buying any arguments that Obama can’t bring Change.  The problem we have here is that he won’t bring Change.  Not real change.  He knows, and said so many times on the campaign trail, that the overwhelming challenges we face require new solutions.  Yet the only solutions he talks about involve playing the same old politics of the past with a broken Congress that’s about as popular as syphilis.  

So you . . . thought you . . .

Might like to go to the show,

To feel the warm thrill of confusion,

That space cadet glow.

I’ve got some bad news for you, Sunshine,

Change isn’t well, it stayed back at the hotel,

And it sent us along, as a surrogate band,

We’re going to find out where you folks really stand.  

So far, it’s quite clear where ardent admirers of Obama stand . . .  

They stand for ardent admiration of Obama.

Can they support no torture prosecutions?

Can they support no investigations of BushCo’s 8 year crime rampage?

Can they support trillions of dollars for Wall Street criminals?

Can they support indefinite detentions, more government secrecy, and more NSA spying on Americans?  

Yes they can!

Meanwhile, as Obama’s ardent admirers clap louder for superficial change, the hard core RePug base is waiting for a great leader to emerge.  Someone who’ll wave the flag like it’s never been waved before, who’ll carry the cross into that bloody mess of a Holy Land, who’ll smite those heathen Muslims so Jews can live in peace until they die and burn in Hell for eternity, who’ll punish the enemies of Christianism and conservatism, who’ll boldly go where no RePug has ever gone before, even that halfwit wolf-killing governor of Alaska.  

They’re damn well not waiting quietly, they’re celebrating murder while they’re waiting, spewing racism while they’re waiting, inciting hatred while they’re waiting . . .

Waiting to cut out the deadwood.

Waiting to clean up the city.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Waiting to put on a black shirt.

Waiting to weed out the weaklings.

Waiting to smash in their windows

And kick in their doors.

Waiting for another 9/11.  It might not happen for 10 years.  Or it might happen tomorrow.  And then the shit will hit the fan like this country hasn’t seen since the Civil War.  

On the way to Baghdad in 2003, in the aftermath of “prolonged, ferocious combat” in the Euphrates Valley around Najaf, General David Petraeus talked about the invasion with journalist and historian Rick Atkinson.  When the interview was over, Petraeus hooked his thumbs into his flak vest and adjusted the weight on his shoulders.  “Tell me how this ends,” he said.

The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley could have told him how it ends.  It ends in death and desolation, it ends in ruin.  No ruler, no matter how powerful, no matter how arrogant, can escape the judgment of history.  It does not redeem tyrants, it exposes them as posturing frauds . . .  

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone,

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay,

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.  

Round the decay of that colossal wreck Dick Cheney, the boundless crimes of his torturers are being exposed and laid bare.  But with a sneer of cold command  . . .

he has told America to look upon his mighty works, and despair that Obama will not keep America “safe” like Dick Cheney did, with rape and sodomy and torture.

I know why you’re here . . .

You’re here because you know something.  What you know is hard to explain, but you feel it.  You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with America.  Something very wrong.  You know what it is, but no one in power will do anything about it.  And that frustrates you, your frustration is like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.  

I know what you’ve been doing . . . why you hardly sleep, why you live the way you do, and why day after day, you read progressive blogs.  You’re looking for him.  You’re looking for a progressive leader.  I know because I was once looking for the same thing.  And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him.  I was looking for the leadership within me, the leadership within each of us.  

How do we achieve real change?  It’s the question that drives us.  It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I do.

But no one in power will ask it . . .

They’re afraid of the answer.  

So they keep taking the blue pill.  Most Americans are afraid of the answer too, so they keep taking the blue pill.   When Republicans are in power, it has an R on it.  When Democrats are in power, it has a D on it.  

But it’s the same blue pill.

Took a look down that Netroots Road,

Right away I made my choice.

Headed out to my big two-wheeler,

I was tired of my own voice.

Took a bead on a brighter future,

And just rolled that power on . . .

Digby observes that the American economy is essentially in the hands of the High Priests of the Federal Reserve, who do not answer to anyone, least of all to the great unwashed masses who allegedly aren’t equipped to handle something so important as money.

Considering the fact that America’s banking system has become the Clusterfuck of All Time, it seems to me that the High Priests of the Temple of Bernanke are the ones who can’t handle money.  Or keep track of it.  Or reveal how many trillions of dollars they’ve printed and who they’re handing all those trillions of dollars to.

Congressman Grayson:

The Federal Reserve has refused multiple inquiries from both the House and the Senate to disclose who is receiving trillions of dollars from the central banking system.  The Federal Reserve has redacted the central terms of the no-bid contracts it has issued to Wall Street firms like Blackrock and PIMCO, without disclosure required of the Treasury, and is participating in new and exotic programs like the trillion-dollar TALF to leverage the Treasury’s balance sheet.  With discussions of allocating even more power to the Federal Reserve as the ‘systemic risk regulator’ of the credit markets, more oversight over the central bank’s operations is clearly necessary.

Even more oversight than there already is???

Wow.  I didn’t know it was possible to have even more oversight over that Temple of Secrets and its Branch Temples on Wall Street than we already have.  But I know this much. . .

The High Priests will be very offended.  They’d already ordained themselves as Supreme High Pontiff Systemic Risk Regulators and now some heathen asshole in Congress is suggesting that they should be subject to even more blasphemous oversight.  

Thunder on the mountain, and there’s fires on the moon,

A ruckus in the alley and the sun will be here soon.

Or maybe not.

There’s been a ruckus in the alley for 30 years, but too many Democrats still keep bringing bouquets of bipartisan flowers to gun fights.  They keep getting riddled with bullets, over and over again, but they still don’t seem to have a clue that their Bouquet of Bipartisan Flowers Strategy isn’t worth a flying fuck and never has been.  

Thunder on the mountain, rollin’ like a drum,

Gonna fight for change here, it’s where the music’s coming from,

We don’t need any guide, we already know the way . . .

Seeking the truth is the way.  Seekers of truth are not conspiracy theorists, they are not purists, they don’t wear tinfoil fucking hats, they don’t need permission from Kos or anyone else to seek the truth about 9/11, about stolen elections, and about every other BushCo crime Cheney and his thugs keep high-fiving each other about while Eric Holder does nothing and Obama kisses the CIA’s ass and the Pentagon’s ass and the NSA’s ass and calls it change we can believe in.

In “Reclaiming America’s Soul”, Paul Krugman rejects the arguments of torture apologists . . .

Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.  These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions – not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws. We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward – because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.