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8:34

Megan - I feel like, in honor of this feature's history, I should complain about being hungover, but mostly I have cotton mouth and am tired from getting up early to move my car.

8:38

Moe Tkacik - Hi dude. Did you know that Myanmar aka Burma has a new capital city and the North Koreans are helping them build tunnels underneath it? Cool, huh? This piece of news is sorta buried on the WSJ homepage because of the much more serious development of Myanmar finally getting a pro soccer team. And yeah, I'm not hungover either, but that's just because my tolerance is even better than it was when I was blogging. You know, I've taken some time out to really focus on my drinking.

8:40

Moe Tkacik - This reminds me I wanted to read about Steve Jobs' liver transplant, because that's more uplifting than the deadly Metro crash, which is more uplifting than the rogue VA prostate unit I read about Sunday, which is taken together all one giant heatwarming heroic animal story next to the latest news from Iran.

8:40

Megan - Everyone needs a hobby... You know, I do vaguely remember that Burma was getting a new capital somewhere far, far away from those pesky "people" they rule. But a pro-soccer team, that's a development protocol I can really get behind.

8:42

Megan - Yeah, they've scheduled Ahmadenijad's swearing in, and vowed to teach the protesters a lesson, and started charging for the privilege of being killed by the government. The average cost of the latter is about $3,000-$5,000. Bullets are expensive, you know.

8:45

Moe Tkacik - Ha, can they blame any of our weapons embargo things for that? Anyway here is a bright spot: the Andrew Sullivan of Iran turns out to be…some Israeli dude with a call-in radio show.

8:47

Moe Tkacik - Huh this is interesting:
Mr. Amir minces no word in expressing his outrage over a statement by Meir Dagan, the chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, who told a parliamentary committee last week that the extent of fraud in Iran's contested presidential elections was no worse than what happens in liberal democracies.

8:48

Megan - Well, sounds like the Israelis are sweating it that we might be nicer to Iran without making them drop the whole "drive the Jews into the sea" thingie if Mousavi does take power. Or else they're really, really pissed about our electoral system. Or someone really dislikes Netanyahu.

8:49

Moe Tkacik - I guess that clears up all those nagging questions about how Ahmedinejad would have had to carry not only all his old supporters but 44% of reformists as well or whatever.

8:52

Megan - There are nagging questions? Wait, I got it! Dagan is just an American neocon who wants to believe that Ahmadenijad won so he can continue justifying violence against the nation insofar as that's what he already wanted to see happen!

8:57

Moe Tkacik - Yesterday when the Revolutionary Guard admitted "irregularities" in 50 precincts or whatever, the headline of the New York Times was something along the lines of "Revolutionary Guard Concedes Massive Fraud In Triumphant Turnaround!" while the Washington Post was like "Sorry Guys, It Ain't Happening." And so despite its continued decline (and executive editor Marcus Brauchli's dismissal of my suggestion, on seeing him at a wedding last week, that he tap Gene Weingarten to run their upcoming weddings section) I'm…maintaining my loyalty to the paper's homepage for the absolute shit all it's worth.

9:00

Moe Tkacik - Glad to see Russia, China and Venezuela agreeing with Mossad on something though.

9:00

Megan - Moe, you may be the person who saves print media, if they let you. Tapping Weingarten to run the weddings section is sheer genius. I mean, do people actually read that shit other than a) to mock it or b) to envy it? And in the era of Bridezilla and that stupid wedding dress show on TLC my roommate watches, really, I think the mockers are winning.

And, yes, the Washington Post is right about this. How much has changed for people in China since Tiananmen Square?

9:02

Moe Tkacik - Well this is hugely different from Tiananmen, which is just what has softened my "I fucking hate the internet and why can't it die along with all my old brain cells" stance.

9:04

Megan - True, insofar as it's more than a student protest, which makes it different than the other protests the Iranian regime has previously suppressed with violence. But that doesn't mean the regime won't keep to its promise to put these protests down with violent action, or that it won't work. Tanks don't have to roll into Tehran as they did into Prague to keep the regime in power.

9:06

Moe Tkacik - And yeah, that's what I told him. The whole thing about launching a fucking weddings section in a place like DC where everyone is possessed of sufficient cultural capital to hold off their weddings until they have accumulate sufficient educational and professional brand names to be in the running for the New York Times weddings section is that the only way to do it is actively espouse antagonism towards all those people.

9:07

Megan - Someone should be giving odds on their eventual divorce -- like in annotations to the wedding story!

9:10

Moe Tkacik - Oh and Iran is different from Tiananmen because among many other things they can't repress the memory of repressing the will of the people. And Khamenei is not going to figure out how to grow the economy 9% a year for the next decade either.

9:13

Moe Tkacik - Like the hope in China is that this new Zhao Ziyang memoir actually gets some non-Beijingers to believe that Tiananmen, like, actually happened.

9:13

Megan - Isn't that what they have oil for?

Also, actually, there's some indications that Khamenei is ill and all of this is being done to smooth the way for his son to succeed him as Supreme Leader. The son is an Ahmadenijad supporter; former President Rafsanjani was for Mousavi and it's the body to which he belongs that gets to formally decide.

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