Paint your faces green...?

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Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want
Iran's election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory is what voters wanted. The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.


Or just sitting next to one?

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Easily Grossed Out? You Might Be A Conservative!
To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers then surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS, as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues.

Significant Errors in Afghan Airstrikes

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Boston Libertarian Examiner: The ever changing story: Anatomy of a typical US military propaganda campaign.
One month later, after the bombings of a village in western Afghanistan that killed up wards of 150 civilians, we now get this half assed admission of culpability on the part of the US military.

The US military is now saying that "errors" were made in the air strikes last May 4th that resulted in over a hundred civilian deaths. Oh, they are still claiming that most killed were "Taliban" (what the Pentagon and their pocket poodle American media call anyone who take up arms against the holy selfless Paladins of the US military in Afghanistan). And they are still hinting that this "Taliban" is responsible but this new story, a month later, is in stark contrast to first initial responses of the US military on this bombing- which were, in my opinion, outright lies made up out of whole cloth.

No room for the real crooks?

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Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic
In a recent interview about our economic meltdown moment, economist James Galbraith spoke of widespread fraud in the financial system, pointing out that, in response to the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, "there were 1,000 felony convictions for S&L insiders and about 700 or so went to jail. This is a bigger crisis, so you could easily be talking about a larger number of convictions."

Here's what's strange, though, at least for now: The only significant person to be brought up on charges, tried, and sent to jail, as far as I know, has been Ponzi-schemer par excellence Bernie Madoff. A few smaller-scale Ponzi-schemers are lined up behind him, possibly on their way to jail as well. As for the rest of the looters at the top of our semi-collapsed financial system, all of them, as far as I can tell, have either been allowed to go about their business or, at least, take their booty, including bonuses, and head for home to await better times.

Glorious leader appears on TV

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QUENTIN LETTS watches the PM's fightback on TV
We had a lot of hand movements. He might, I think, have been doing some cat's cradle games with his family of late. His hands certainly seemed to be doing that sort of thing in front of the camera yesterday morning. It was like watching a man doing charades, trying to convey the idea of changing a car's headlights. Or maybe fiddling with an old TV set's horizontal control knobs.

He then started doing synchronised pointing, both forefingers stabbing the air. Toro! Ole! I think it was intended to make him look assertive; Gordon the man of action. It worked pretty well. From time to time his left eyebrow went walkabout but otherwise this was a more convincingly statesmanlike premier than we saw in that awful YouTube film.

'To be honest, what I've seen offends my Presbyterian conscience,' he said, talking about the MPs' expenses fiddles. He returned to this theme, talking about how he had been brought up in a family where 'integrity and telling the truth was what mattered'. Those who have longed for Mr Brown to show the electorate more of his 'back story' will be pleased by this development. Others might worry that the voters will look at the way he has squandered so many billions of pounds of our money in the past year and think, 'so how come THAT didn't offend your Presbyterian conscience, chum?'