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(Jumping from one frying pan straight into another.)

With the elections in Iran less than two days away, I remembered 2009 marked the 30th anniversary of the overthrow of the Shah and the ushering in of the Ayatollah - going from one repressive regime to another in a matter of months.

And in 2009 there is talk of an ouster of the fundamentalist regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a swing towards moderation and an unprecedented youth vote, probably too young to remember those days in 1979.

Word on the streets in Tehran is moderation and reform - women having an equal say in government, doing away with the repressive restrictions. Losing the stranglehold the fundamentalists have had these past 30 years.

But it's interesting to look back during those first 3 months of the overthrow (January to March 1979) to hear what was unfolding. News reports and speculations and finally an interview via Face The Nation with the Ayatollah Khomeni.

A quick look back. Later on in the year it would mean American hostages - and we'll cover that in the coming months.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 28, 2008. Rachel runs through the gamut of Republican dirty tricks to make sure that as few people vote as possible, and a key demographic they're likely to target again this year is of course the youth vote. Rachel talks to Matthew Segal about the number of young people who are likely to vote this year and what their impact might be if they're all allowed to vote. Matthew became an activist after going through the debacle at Kenyon College where students waited in line as long as ten hours to vote and where the last of them emerged as late as 4am.

It's so important that everyone band together and try to fight against as many of these tactics as we can. Whether it be warning people about the dirty tricks to drive people away from the polls so they don't fall for them to following the example of the students at Kenyon College who made sure they voted despite those lines.

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The Show: ABC's 20/20 Friday 10th October. The message: young people are too dumb to vote and should stay home instead. That's the thrust of a segment by John Stossel, self-proclaimed "libertarian" and regular contributor to the hard-right's fanzine, Commentary.

Watch it here.

The folks at Future Majority are understandably ticked, calling the segment an attack on the very idea of American democracy.

There is a lot that is wrong with this piece. Yes, there are many uninformed voters, but that category is not limited to young people, who are unfortunately the main target of this piece. Anyone who has ever watched Jay Leno could tell you that many Americans are uninformed about current events. Unfortunately, some see that as an excuse to rob people of their constitutional rights, and Stossel and ABC are happy to play along.

But all is not as it appears in this report. In talking with HeadCount, the group featured in the piece, it's clear that Stossel and 20/20 were not interested in giving the young people they interviewed a fair shake. They had a narrative to their story and stuck by it - facts be damned. More than that, they worked -um, creatively - to make sure their point of view dominated the piece.

According to Head Count, Stossel's team cherry-picked responses for their piece, giving the impression that respondents were far less knowledgeable than they were. "Far more ... were knowledgeable than implied by the report" and:

Many interviewees were knowledgeable about some issues, but less so when it came to other issues. The young voter responses included in the report were cherry-picked by Stossel and ABC producers to highlight only the incorrect answers.

Indeed, the show's one producer got into an argument with one young voter when the producer tried to say that the length of single term for a congressional representative was four years. The "young and dumb" voter had the correct answer of two years.

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  Given Obama's huge edge with younger voters, the McCain campaign is trying to capture a portion of that demographic with some admirable, though pathetic, youth outreach efforts. From the "Straight Talk Express" version of "Cribs" to the riveting "Pork Invaders" video game, Jon Stewart shows why McCain just doesn't get it.

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STEWART: "McCain, you know I love you, but you're f*cking old."