Say it with me now... Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).

Last week, Andy Madadian, the Iranian-Armenian singer-songwriter now based in Los Angeles, recorded a video with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora for his fellow countrymen, singing the verses of the Ben E. King classic in Persian.

The sign on the right at the beginning reads mâ yeki hastim, "we are one".

Google Translate has now added Persian to its list of working language ahead of schedule. It's still very rough, but online automatic translation isn't generally pretty (try translating English to Japanese back to English, for example).

Also, a candlelight vigil for slain protesters in Iran is scheduled tonight at Pfluger Bridge, 9 PM tonight. Since it's a memorial and not a protest, wear dark clothing and bring candles, not signs or flags. As they did the same for us after the September 11 attacks, I say we owe them the favor.

It's hard for me to follow the news, but naturally, I've been taking a great deal of interest in the events in Iran; I've studied Farsi, since I used to be married to someone from there. It could be that this obviously stolen election may be the best thing to happen for the country--hopefully. Either there will be another Velvet Revolution or another Tiananmen Square, twenty years after both events.

First: I take back everything bad I've ever said about Twitter. I just wish I had more reason to use the thing.

Second: the real bloggers are doing a much better job covering Iran than I ever will, and Andrew Sullivan and Team HuffPo are no exceptions. (Also includes some Rumi, a poet I've been trying to get more into lately.)

Third: Allahu akbar, and Ahmadinejad : Khamenei :: Bush : Cheney and Rove.

Fourth: thank God we didn't bomb Iran, Sen. McCain.

Fifth: why is the US media's reporting this thing so half-assed? They talked about what went down in 1979 non-stop, though we did have fifty-two hostages there for over a year. It was one of the first world news-thing I followed closely, and I was all of eight years old.