Soob

Lost in the haze of what's become a sordid, political slimefest (Spitzer, McGreevy) is a political event that's occurred in one arm of the "Axis of Evil." To wit:
Iran's held elections. Unsurprisingly, the most conservative of sorts took the day. But before you doubt the resilience of Iran's moderate resistance (and thence order naval born air strikes) consider this lengthy but enlightening analysis. A snippet:

Given what they had to work with, the reformists actually did better than expected (especially for seats where there were common candidates between the two main reformist/centrist groups: The Reformist Coalition and National Confidence Party). This election should give reformist and centrist parties a boost in positively assessing their participation in the election process and continuing to organize throughout Iran.

In the provinces they won about 35 seats and they are reportedly in contest for another 15 seats or so in the second round (they had 39 seats in the Seventh Majles).The way it looks, it is their higher than expected performance in the provinces that may be causing a bit of post-election engineering or tampering in Tehran results.

Reality and reality as it's presented to fit an agenda are two mutually exclusive elements.

Addendum: The commentary following the post is especially enlightening.