Reuters reports that tens of thousands of Iranians are demonstrating in the streets of Tehran in protest of the recent election results, which look fraudulent to just about everybody (more on the exception below). People are demonstrating in spite of an Interior Ministry ban on rallying, which I assume means people protest at some personal risk.

I admire the protesting Iranians. At least they give a damn. Here, politicians steal critical elections and we shrug our shoulders and pretend it didn’t happen.

Of course, we have our own version of the Iranian security police, which are the wingnut bullies in media and elsewhere who abusively shout down anyone who dares point out, you know, facts. We also have some pretense at a mediating process, meaning cases are sent to courts. But we know how that turns out.

It’s been, what, seven months since the November elections? And has Al Franken been seated in the Senate yet? The endless dispute has nothing whatsoever to do with determining the will of the people, of course. It’s about using the courts and anything else to block the will of the people and advance a minority, extremist agenda.

This shows our political system is about as corrupt as Iran’s. The only difference is that we’re a little more subtle about it.

The wingnuts are screaming because CBS republished a New Republic article that compared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George W. Bush. But if you read the article, I’d say the New Republic makes a good case for the comparison. In fact, I bet many of you can think of similarities between Ahmadinejad and Bush (rememeber when we used to call him “Bunnypants”?) without reading the article. And the similarities are getting more obvious all the time.

The Washington Post is running an article that suggests maybe the Iranian elections weren’t stolen, but I don’t think anyone is buying it. Juan Cole certainly isn’t.