Israel

What? Other Countries Have Elections Too?

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RealClearWorld predicts the five most important elections of 2009. The countries involved are Afghanistan, Japan, Germany, Iran, and Israel; you'll have to read the article to see the arguments for the elections' importance—and to find out what a "Jamaican coalition" is.

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Books Editor Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia.

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  1. Isn’t Venezuela having one in about a week?

  2. Xeones

    I bought some Jamaican Coalition from this guy named Crocodile last week…

  3. BDB

    Iran, by far, will be the most interesting.

  4. Xeones

    Isn’t Khatami looking at another bid?

  5. SugarFree

    “What? Other Countries Have Elections Too?”

    They just do it to annoy us.

  6. Reinmoose

    I was really looking forward to reading about how important or pivotal the Japanese and German elections would be this year, but all I got was a “it probably won’t be any different than it is now.”
    What a waste of an article theme. Just stick with the ones about which you have something to say

  7. Officer Barbrady

    Nothing to see here. Move along.

  8. Episiarch

    Leela: Look, I know there are no car chases but this is important. One of these two men will become president of the world.

    Fry: What do we care? We live in the United States.

    Leela: The United States is part of the world.

    Fry: Wow! I have been gone a long time.

  9. Balloon Maker

    Bunch of Commie-Nazis if you ask me

  10. BDB

    “Xeones | February 9, 2009, 9:57am | #
    Isn’t Khatami looking at another bid?”

    Yes, and he’s favored right now because of the oil price collapse. It’s making Ahmadenijad look like an idiot (well, he is one anyway, but this makes him look like more of one).

    Nobody in Iran gives a rats ass about the Palestinians or Israel when their own economy is in shambles.

  11. BDB

    IOW, A-mad is kind of turning out to be the George W. Bush of Iran. He hated him because he’s so similar.

  12. John Mighty

    I cant help but wonder if elections in those countries are bought and paid for like the US.

    RT
    http://www.Privacy-Center.net

  13. Curious George

    Yeah I’ll be real surprised if the Christian Democrats win in Iran. Is this a joke or what?

    In Iran a free election consists of voting for the mullahs or pulling the switch that drops the poison gas into the voting booth.

  14. I wonder how much money THE UNITED STATES is pouring into these elections to tip them one way or another.

  15. thoreau

    Actually, Iranians elected a reformer in 1997 and 2001, but the President only has as much power as the mullahs allow him to have. Even Ahmadinejad is to some extent a figurehead. He’s an idiot, and a vocal one, and the guys trying to keep the trains running on time (for their own power, of course) don’t like him.

    Then again, Ahmadinejad is the sort of Real Iranian that you can sit down and eat a kabob with. Khatami is an elitist who wants to raise taxes on guys like Reza the Plumber. (Whose actual name is of course Ali, and he isn’t a plumber, but soon he’ll be in Baghdad as a “journalist” reporting “the good news from the Jihad.”)

  16. BDB

    “In Iran a free election consists of voting for the mullahs or pulling the switch that drops the poison gas into the voting booth.”

    Does your understanding of foreign politics consist of reading Little Green Footballs?

    Elections in Iran are fair*. Whether they MATTER or not, well…tell me, is A-mad a powerless figurehead or The Next Hitler(tm)?

    *Provided you aren’t purged from the ballot. But if you make it on, as Khatami did, you can win.

  17. BDB

    It’s a weird and compicated system with both democratic and authoritarian elements in it. But it isn’t Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It is more like Venezuela.

  18. joe

    I never knew that libertarianish parties were yellow.

    Or that the Christian Democrats were black. I though anarchists were black, and centrist/center-right parties were blue.

  19. BDB

    “Or that the Christian Democrats were black. I though anarchists were black, and centrist/center-right parties were blue.”

    Except in America. Where are left party is blue and our right party is red (!)

    I guess its kind of like how we write dates “backwards” and won’t use the metric system.

  20. BDB

    I always thought Fascist parties were colored black.

  21. J sub D

    I never knew that libertarianish parties were yellow.

    Or that the Christian Democrats were black. I though anarchists were black, and centrist/center-right parties were blue.

    Libertarians are a raucous plaid. One that ran and bled when it went through the washer convention.

  22. joe

    BDB,

    Fascist parties are brown.

  23. joe

    Huh, wikipedia sez black has been used for fascist parties, too, as well as conservative parties.

  24. Jonah Goldberg

    “joe | February 9, 2009, 11:59am | #
    Huh, wikipedia sez black has been used for fascist parties, too, as well as conservative parties.”

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

  25. joe

    Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?

  26. cuernimus

    Libertarians need to be black, for it is the color of our cold uncaring hearts.

  27. jtuf

    BDB,

    I roommed with an Iranian student in college for a semester. He told me that in Iran, if the clerics don’t like who wins, they close down all the newspapers that supported him and call a new election.

  28. tassawwuf burrfoot

    no color says ‘counterrevolutionary and reactionary’ like Gold…”& put some frilly cuffs on that, while you’re at it…”

  29. Not a Libertarian but You Migh

    Liberalism (in the classical and European sense) has been associated with yellow and orange.

    In Britain, of course, Toryism and thus conservatism have been associated with dark blue.

    I would imagine that this association was passed along to Commonwealth countries.

    [As an aside, is the Australian Liberal Party associated with any particular color?]

    Red obviously has long been associated with communism, socialism and social democracy. [as well, I would assume with many social liberal parties]

    I would guess that continental center-right parties are associated with the color black as many of these parties are Christian Democrat parties and thus have or did have a clerical alignment.

    The red and blue associations really didn’t not exist in the US until the fall of 2000 and are only there now due to their random assignment by the Major Television networks in displays of the Electoral College.

    Did these color assignments by the networks previously have any rhyme or reason?

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