Remember the interpreter? Fred Burks? The one who offered testimony buttressing the argument that Bush uses an earpiece?

You may want to read what Daniel Hopsicker has to say about him.

But before you peruse Hopsicker, let me offer a few words of caution.

Hopsicker, as most of you know, has been investigating the Florida connections to the 9/11 disaster. Along the way, he has uncovered many surprising data nuggets surrounding the activities of Mohammed Atta.

This work made Hopsicker a big player within the community of individuals who insist that we have not yet heard the full story about the World Trade Center attacks. That community is growing -- and growing nasty.

If you followed JFK assassination research, you know that people attracted to that field often became prickly and surly as the years passed. Unable to change the history books, the conspiracy investigators took their frustrations out on each other. They turned their community into a stormy realm where everyone hated everyone else -- a realm where people screamed "spook!" at each other as a way of punishing perceived rivals and enforcing conformity of thought.

This sort of behavior makes a terrible impression on outsiders, of course.

And that behavior now characterizes the 9/11 researchers. If you look at some of their recent literature, you'll see that, deep down, they're no longer very upset by the unpleasantness in New York. What really gets 'em fuming are fellow researchers who proffer scenarios at a variance with their own favored theories.

Those theories now come in a bewildering variety of flavors. There are people who think a missile hit the Pentagon. People who think the jets that hit the WTC fired missiles. People who think the twin towers had explosives planted inside.

And then there are those (including yours truly) who scoff at all such notions, but nevertheless suspect we have not yet been told anywhere near the whole story about Atta, Osama, and a host of other key players.

Since 9/11 theorists now routinely toss the "spook" label at anyone who does not happen to inhabit their own narrow strip of conspiracy acres, the preceding paragraph has probably made me a potential target.

Now, I told you all of that to set the stage for Hopsicker's snipings at Fred Burks.

I did not know until recently that Burks had established his own perch among the 9/11 theorists. You can find his web site on the subject here.

Here's where things get sticky: Fred has been associated with Michael Ruppert, another 9/11 iconoclast. Hopsicker does not agree with Ruppert. (Neither do I.) Hosicker tends to spook-bait Ruppert, who is perhaps the biggest of the big wheels within that fractious community. And since Burks is friendly with Ruppert, then Burks himself must also be a secret hireling of The Enemy -- or so implies Hopsicker:

...we wondered: who the f- is Fred?

And we were, of course, shocked -- shocked! -- when we discovered that Fred -- and this is a coincidence! -- used to work for, and sometimes still does, President George W. Bush, who was the beneficiary of a campaign by Fred to get people to pray for him.

We thought: isn't that precious. Then we read this quote from Fred: "I'll be sitting in a room with President Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia helping them to communicate with each other by interpreting. Several other top government leaders from the US and Indonesia will be present. What I like to do in these meetings whenever I'm not interpreting is to channel divine love to everyone present."

Now we thought: isn't that creepy.

Creepy? Not really. Kinda silly, kinda new-agey, yeah. But I've seen every damn movie David Lynch ever made, and I know creepy when I see it. It takes a lot more than Fred Burks' evocation of "divine love" to creep me out. Especially if the only proof that Fred Burks "works" for W comes down to that interpreting gig.

So why have I told you folks this long shaggy-dog story? A few reasons:

1. Readers deserve to know a bit more about Burks, since his name gets mentioned in a number of promptergate articles. Right now, I see no pressing reason to place much stock in Hopsicker's fears.

2. After the election, I may write further on the alternate theories of 9/11 -- although I hesitate to do so. That terrain has become a swamp.

3. The Hopsicker/Burks spat demonstrates the dangers of the conspiracy-spotter's mind-set. Hopsicker is a smart guy who has done valuable work. Alas, the earwig of paranoia has burrowed into the cerebellum of many a good man.

So far, the promptergate bloggers are a jolly, cooperative bunch. Let's make sure that our small community avoids the ugly divisiveness that has assailed others. Permalink

The latest from David Lindorff includes this eye-opener:

The latest dodge and obfuscation has been to cite an article in the pro-Bush Moonie paper, the Washington Times (long known for its penchant for misinformation) claiming on no evidence whatsoever that, the Kerry camp was behind planted stories about Bush wearing a wire for the debates.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Neither I nor any of the alert people who first called attention to this story after seeing the rectangular bulge in the jacket during the first debate had any help or even contact from the Kerry camp.

Well, I was frantically pushing the meme even before Lindorff brought his fine journalistic skills to the issue. No-one in the Kerry camp spoke to me about it -- unless by "Kerry camp" you include any and all Kerry voters. My girlfriend, a Kerry supporter, first noticed the bulge during debate number one; her observation prodded me down the path I've taken.

I went searching for the Moonie Times story to which Lindorff makes reference. He may have referred to this squib in a story about potential "October Surprises":

One such rumor has it that the Kerry campaign is about to spring evidence that Mr. Bush somehow was "wired," so aides could instruct him during the debates.

Well, Big John did give W a pat on the back after the second debate...

Doonesbury is one of the few media voices to give this story some coverage. The result is one of Trudeau's more hilarious offerings...

On related fronts:

Shrub scrubs. We mentioned that the White House has scrubbed its website clean of embarrassing photos, videos and text. Turns out all such efforts are not just ethically dubious, but potentially illegal. Check out this report, by a blogger who happens to be a fellow Los Angeleno.

Left eye open; right eye blind. A couple of days ago, we told you about Charlie Booker's piece for the U.K. Guardian. Booker finally managed to get Matt Drudge to link to a promptergate story -- no small trick, since Drudge has avoided this issue the way W avoids admission of error. Drudge made a huge deal out of Booker's final paragraph, which spoke wistfully of Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth and John Hinckley Jr.

An obvious joke. Poor taste? You bet. If I were Booker's editor, I'd have crossed out that text faster than a dart reaches the target.

Some did not take those words as humor, however. According to this piece, the Secret Service has been looking into the matter.

Funny, innit? When Ann Coulter called for the assassination of Bill Clinton, in terms even less oblique than those employed by Mr. Booker, the Secret Service did not pounce. Some writers have standards -- and some have double standards. Permalink

You want a conspiracy, folks? Just look at the way this election is shaping up.

I'll still cover every detail of the bulge business (see the "second voice" post directly beneath this one!). But we also need a site -- actually, a few dozen sites -- devoted to tracking the many allegations of vote-stealing dirty tricks. These stories are growing by the hour:

In Nebraska, dead people were found to have applied for absentee ballots. In Ohio, a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was found to have offered crack cocaine to a known drug addict in exchange for completed voter registration forms, which he duly submitted in the names of Mary Poppins, Janet Jackson and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal serial killer.

The disease is spreading all over the country. One, two, many Floridas...

South Dakota:

Questionable absentee ballots across the state lead to criminal charges.

Six Republican notary publics face misdemeanors in connection with absentee ballot applications filled out on South Dakota college campuses.

Here's a neat trick in swing-state Pennsylvania:

Then there’s Pennsylvania, where Republicans are trying to relocate 63 Philadelphia polling places, 59 in largely minority neighborhoods. Republicans claim those polling places are not adequate for voters, but didn’t file their complaint until Friday. Since voters who go to the wrong polling place will not be able to vote, the last-minute nature of the complaint (which is expected to fail) sure makes it look like an attempt to suppress minority voting:

"I've never witnessed a more wanton example of an effort to discourage minority voters from participating in an election," Kerry campaign spokesman Mark Nevins told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's despicable."

Also in Pennsylvania:

Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

"We were told that if they wanted to register Democrat, there was no way we were to register them to vote," said Michele Tharp, of Meadville, who said she was sent out to canvass door-to-door and outside businesses in Meadville, Crawford County. "We were only to register Republicans."

Sproul's been up to dirty work in Oregon, Nevada, West Virginia, and elsewhere:

Substitute teacher Adam Banse wanted a summer job with flexible hours, so he signed up to knock on doors in suburban Minneapolis and register people to vote.

He quit after two hours. "They said if you bring back a bunch of Democratic cards, you'll be fired," Banse contends. "At that point, I said, `Whoa. Something's wrong here.'"

Still more on Sproul:

A political consulting firm owned by the former head of the Arizona Republican Party, which contacted several libraries regarding voter registration drives, has come under scrutiny after a former employee told authorities that thousands of voter registration forms submitted by Democrats were destroyed. Oregon officials are now investigating Voters Outreach of America, a group run by the Nathan Sproul-owned Sproul & Associates, which received $500,000 from the Republican party.

You'll also want to check out this fine investigative piece by Capitol Hill Blue on Sproul.

Meanwhile, back in Florida (naturally):

the elections office contacted police after Democrats complained about men videotaping people in front of the office all day. U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown and coalition members confronted them in the evening. But Scheu said the videotaping was allowed on a public sidewalk across the street.
"We're powerless to stop them," Scheu said.

Owner Fred Hillerich of Price Rite Investigations of Jacksonville declined to say who hired his firm to videotape events at the office. But he said he had done the work elsewhere before, and "I ain't doing anything to nobody."

"I'm sure it is, it's intimidation," said the Rev. Willie M. Bolden, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference official who joined others questioning Hillerich. "They're doing all kinds of things across the state."

More from Florida (expect to see a LOT more):

Gordon Sasser first got the feeling that something strange was going on when the telephone pierced the silence of a weekday afternoon at his house on the swampy fringes of Tallahassee, northern Florida.

An automated voice had some surprising news: did he know that he could now cast his presidential vote by phone, and could do so right now, using the keypad? Mr Sasser’s suspicion that somebody was trying to trick him into thinking he was casting a vote - presumably so that he wouldn’t cast a real one - was far from unique.

James Scruggs, another Tallahassee resident, remembers a similar unease about the young woman who phoned him at home, insistently offering to collect his absentee ballot to ensure its safe delivery.

Then there was the elderly woman who called the local elections office last week to register her husband for an absentee vote. According to office staff, as she hung up she made a point of thanking them: she wouldn’t have thought to get in touch about her husband, she said, if it hadn’t been for their helpful call the night before, when someone had taken her own details, assuring her that she was now registered and would receive a ballot.

But the elections office makes no such calls.

Ohio:

The state's Democrats had filed a lawsuit challenging Blackwell's directive instructing county elections boards not to give ballots to voters who come to the wrong precinct and to send them to the correct polling place on Election Day.

Blackwell has said allowing voters to cast a ballot wherever they show up, even if they're not registered to vote there, is a recipe for Election Day chaos.

The Ohio Democratic Party and a coalition of labor and voter rights groups had argued that Blackwell's order discriminated against the poor and minorities, who tend to move more frequently.

More on intimidation of voters in Ohio:

The Republican Party plans to station thousands of recruits at Ohio polling places during next month's election to challenge newly registered voters.

One election officials said Ohio has never seen what's about to happen, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Saturday...

The massive GOP campaign has forced officials to prepare for unprecedented disruptions in the voting process, as well as alarm and complaints among voters, many of whom are expected to feel intimidated by the Republican effort.

Yes, even in California:

Santa Clara County, CA - Pollworkers in Santa Clara County are being trained not to offer voters a chance to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has learned. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley mandated in May that all polling places offer a paper ballot option, which would allow people concerned about e-voting machine reliability a chance to vote on paper ballots at the polls. But pollworkers in Santa Clara County are being instructed not to tell voters that this option is available. Instead, they will make paper ballots available only if voters specifically request them.

Ed Cherlin, a pollworker being trained in Santa Clara County, said he was very disturbed to learn that he was not supposed to mention the paper option. "I object to the government telling me that I can't tell people about their rights," he said.

You've just seen the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Those of you who have devoted whole websites to the "bulge" factor -- maybe you should start tracking this stuff as well. Permalink

Another bulge-watcher has just made the "second voice" audio excerpt from debate three more easily available. Listen for yourself here.

My reaction? Intrigued, but not persuaded. A mystery voice is definitely there -- you can hear it most prominently at about the two minute mark. You don't hear this oddity when Kerry or the moderator speaks. And in these days of digital recordings, I would hesitate to ascribe this phenomenon to the "pre-echo" that we used to hear in old-fashioned oxide tape.

That said: Provenance of this audio excerpt remains a question. We do not hear this mystery voice on the CSPAN feed. If this audio was picked up from a broadcast source, there may have been some bleed from a nearby station.

Beyond that, listen once more to the cadence of Bush's speaking style. Phrase...pause...phrase...pause. Isn't this bizarre verbal behavior evidence in and of itself? Especially with the "mystery voice" phenomenon buzzing subtly in the background, the listener cannot escape the impression that Bush is receiving cues from afar.

Also, you can see here the video of Bush appearing to adjust his earpiece. (Yet another site devoted to this controversy!) Permalink

"There is nothing like a meme..." Especially when it's a meme with data. And right now, we have additional data to buttress the oft-heard report that Bush did community service in 1973 (while he still was in the Texas Air National Guard) because of a drug violation.

Check out this very important article by Meg Laughlin. An excerpt:

"I was working full time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project P.U.L.L.," Bush said in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep." "My friend John White...asked me to come help him run the program. ... I was intrigued by John's offer. ...Now I had a chance to help people."

But White's administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush's father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.

"We didn't know what kind of trouble he'd been in, only that he'd done something that required him to put in the time," said Althia Turner, White's administrative assistant.

"John said he was doing a favor for George's father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there," said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.

Josh Marshall picks up this meme on his site. Marshall reminds us that questions of Bush's community service brought an exceptionally testy response from administration spokesman Scott McClellan.

The story of Bush's drug use, and the resultant community service, was first leaked to the late James Hatfield, author of "Fortunate Son." The source, Hatfield's publisher has claimed, was none other than Bush's master strategist, Karl Rove. Hatfield, of course, had a criminal past. When this sordid past became public knowledge, the book -- and the drug allegation -- were discredited.

Incidentally, during this time of volunteer service, Bush received National Guard pay for nonexistent drills.

One poster to Democrats.com noted this startling irregularity:

Here is a remarkable passage from Bill Minutaglio's First Son, George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, Random House, NY, 1999 Pg. 151.

"David Anderson was another PULL employee, two years older than Bush, and he especially liked the fact that Bush had made arrangements to take some of the PULL kids such as Jimmy up for their first airplane ride.

"The day of the ride, Bush asked his sixteen-year-old brother, Marvin, to come along. One of the PULL kids started popping off, making noise, once they were up in the air. Bush stalled the engine for a second, and the passengers, scared to death, grew quiet."

At the time of this flight - 1973 - Bush had been GROUNDED by the Air Force for failing to take (or pass) his annual flight physical.

Did Bush even have a civilian pilot's license?

If Bush had been grounded, how could his civilian license be unaffected?

Did Bush commit a crime by flying an airplane without a current civilian license?

Apart from the law, did Bush endanger the lives of these children by taking them up in a plane when he was unfit to fly?

One follow-up question: Would the parents of this kids have appreciated seeing the youngsters "get high" with a guy doing community service for coke use?

Looks like September 11, 2001 was not the only time Bush endangered children!

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For some selected answers to that question, read this piece by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst. She gives a number of reasons, including this one:

feel they dare not oppose this or any war because talking about peace, objecting to war's human cost, or even referring to the United Nations has become associated in their minds with the Antichrist and eternal damnation, thanks to fictional works based on Thessalonians such as the Left Behind books and video (this video makes clear the fearful reasoning behind the knee-jerk reactions of many pro-war Christians against peace itself, peacemakers of any kind [poignant indeed in light of Jesus' teaching, "Blessed are the peacemakers"], the Middle East "road map," international dialogue and cooperation, and any form of human rights accountability),

These words get near the correct answer.

The American fundamentalist has entered into a world of perfect paranoia; any data which does not fit into the fundamentalist-approved scenario is a viewed as a lie told by a "liberal" media commandeered by Satan himself. Outsiders cannot even begin to conceive of the influence wielded by Tim LaHaye and his fear-mongering comrades.

I saw much the same thing happen in the 1970s. Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth swept the country by storm -- but it was an underground storm (if you'll forgive such a skewed metaphor). The thing had nationwide impact precisely because intelligent people thought it unworthy of response.

If Bush wins, he'll have LaHaye to thank. Permalink

Matt Drudge finally linked to a story discussing the mystery bulge!

Of course, he did not sully his page with mention of the controversy itself. The link (in red) featured these words:

UK GUARDIAN: 'John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?'...

Drudge is trying to convince his readers that anti-Bush writers are all bloodthirsty bastards. I should note that all three (yes, I said all three) of the persons named were of the right; Hinckley was the son of a Bush family friend.

The link went to this hilarious article by Charlie Brooker. A few excerpts:

Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he's listening to something we can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement...

And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole "wire" debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.

Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired. Perhaps he's just gone gaga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll never know the truth.

The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy theories, ones with far less evidence to support them.

That last bit works as a nice jab against double-standardized Drudge himself.

A suggestion, Mr. Brooker: Never joke about assassination. We cannot fairly castigate Ann Coulter for this sort of remark while at the same time exempting you. Aside from that ill-considered jest in the final paragraph, yours was a terrific article -- one of the best to come out of the "promptergate" controversy. Permalink

I just found out (via Xymphora) about "the May-Day Mystery," the decades-old hermetic game (but is it just a game?) played out via Arizona newsprint.

Over the past decade or two (or three?), a mysterious group called "the Orphanage" has spent a lot of money on full-page ads (or, as they prefer, "announcements") offering clues to some fabulous, esoteric mystery. The clues involve music, art, literature, multi-lingual puns, and references to historical figures. Interpret the clues correctly and you may find gold, or the elixer of life, or Buddhahood, or the secret of world domination, or the phone number of the world's best fellatrice, or...well, something.

Let me admit, albeit with some facial crimson, that I'm a hopeless addict when it comes to hermetic theatricals of this sort, though I know better than to take them too seriously. I may well dive into this mystery -- after the election. First things first.

If you want to get an early start, either download this Word Document, or head to this web page. Permalink

A poster to Is Bush Wired offered an intriguing comment and link. I have not yet gone through the sign-in rigmarole myself, so I cannot verify at present if the "second voice" operates as described.

See -- or rather hear -- for yourself. And if anyone can store the "incriminating" video in a more convenient place, by all means do so! Here's the data:

BUSH IS WIRED, and there’s archived video of the last debate where voices can clearly be heard. Video of the debate is on the website of Seattle station, KING5. You will have to register to access most stuff beyond the home page, but I'd just use a junk Hotmail or Yahoo account as the e-mail as you'll get a LOT of spam when you do register.
Go to www.king5.com, click on "Decision 2004" on the left menu bar, or go directly to:
http://www.king5.com/news/specials/politics/
Middle of the page, about 2/3 of the way down, look for the link "Final presidential debate", or go here:
http://www.king5.com/sharedcontent/washington/
politics_video/101304ccktpolVidDebate.2ce78bc0.html

Now click on "part one" and the video of the debate will launch.
The direct link to the video page is here - although it probably won't work directly unless an online account is created:
http://www.king5.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.kgw.com/101304debate.wmv
The question of “Economic security” starts at 10:15 with the question to Senator Kerry. Bush’s reply comes in at 12:48, with the statement, “Well his rhetoric doesn’t match his record”

Starting at about 13:00 to 14:00 when Bush starts spouting facts, PAY ATTENTION TO THE BACKGROUND NOISE. You can clearly hear a voice and if you listen closely, you can hear Bush pause as the voice states these facts via, of course, the wired box into his ear.

I heard this on a work PC with a pretty decent processor (P4 – 1.2 GHz), good sound card, and using iPod earbud type headphones. I’d think headphones are required to hear the sound correctly – or good speakers. Now I’m the first to debunk any of these “conspiracy” theories, but there is the sound, clear as day… and it’s not just on a Seattle station but other video feeds / archives as well. I think if enough people get together and extract these sounds the blog community can overshadow the Bush Administration’s cover up of this. I mean, my God, he can’t even answer a simple debate question without a wired feed, how’s he going to run this country???

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All, I know some of you are irritated by all the non-promptergate postings today. The truth is, I'm not quite sure how to handle the "bulge" allegations that reached my mailbox this morning. There are new pics claiming to show Bush with a bulge on non-debate occasions. Here's one; make up your own mind.

Our friends at Is Bush Wired? have privately expressed the opinion that these photos should not receive widespread attention, since they are "iffier" than those seen heretofore. We don't want to seem like low-grade conspiracy theorists seeing gunmen in every shadow in every photo taken on the grassy knoll.

A fair point. But...I would argue that information will out. Maybe the best thing to do is to offer the photos with all due caveats, and allow the readers to make up their own minds. Personally, I am not persuaded by the latest one, but...who knows? Maybe...

Similarly, some have argued against paying much attention to the allegations that previous presidents used these devices. New claims, for example, have come out about Ronald Reagan. (I'll be looking into that.) For my part, I remain convinced that finding a verifiable precedent will do much to put this story on the front pages.

Some have challenged me when I said that the Crossfire hosts prevented Jon Stewart from answering a "bulge" question from the audience. See the exchange for yourself at http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2652831.

Thee is a movement to ask Amy Goodman at Democracy Now to give some air time to David Lindorff. I second the notion. You can easily send story ideas to her here.

There's a new site devoted this stuff. I haven't been able to access it yet, due to internet problems...

Britain's "The Spectator" published a piece on W's unpopularity in that country. The title: "We'd like to see the back of Bush." Hell, some of us would like to frisk that area!



Permalink

Former Reagan NSC aide Wayne Madsen reports that his sources tell him the October Surprise will be a strike against Iran. Odd, isn't it? The Iranian government just said that it endorses Bush over Kerry! Permalink

This article, by former BBC writer Lynn Landes, alleges that Associated Press has unprecedented authority over the election night vote totals:

The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.

And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity. Computer scientists have long warned that computer voting is an invitation to vote fraud and system failure. An examination of Diebold election software by several computer scientists, including Dr. Avi Rubin and his staff, proved that secret backdoors can be built into computer programs that allow votes to be easily manipulated without detection.

One scenario: "Massaged" totals fed to AP will affect the vote on the west coast by giving iffy wins to such states as Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota. Even if the data is corrected as the night progresses, depressed Democratic voters in Nevada and Oregon may not see much point in going to the polls. This could be a particular problem in Oregon, where an anti-gay marriage ballot proposition will fetch a heavy Jesus-voter turnout. Permalink

You know about the scurrilous tactics of the Rovians this election. You've heard, for example, of the illegal registration drives, which threw out Democratic registration forms.

Now we have fake "election officials" collecting absentee forms from voters in Florida. Democratic votes -- headed straight for the round file.

If, in spite of these horrors, Kerry manages to pull off a win, must we continue to operate under the delusion that these assaults on our democratic rights are isolated incidents? They've occurred again and again and again, all over the country.

What we face here is nothing less than a criminal conspiracy. Which means that the ringleaders -- a group which may well include Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove -- can, should and must be prosecuted under the RICO statutes.

Kerry, as a former prosecutor, knows how to break a conspiracy wide open: Grab some small fish and pressure them until they agree to testify against the higher-ups. Permalink

I always offer a caveat when linking to Daniel Hopsicker's work, but this piece is worth reading nonetheless. Did we lose Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora because the job was "outsourced," as Kerry has claimed? General Tommy Franks says no. Hopsicker offers an interesting counter to Franks' argument. Just how did the world's most wanted man manage to walk away from an assault by the world's most powerful military? Permalink

Can you hear me now? Good, because I have something to say about how cel phone usage may impact the polling data you've been reading.

You've probably heard about the phenomenon of CPO (cel phone only) voters -- that is, folks in the electorate who use cel phones as their sole means of telephonic communication. Pollsters cannot count these people, because they are forbidden by law from dialing cel phones.

Many believe that CPO-ers are youthful and skew Democratic. But pollsters insist that cel phoners are so few -- estimates run between four to seven percent of the population -- that poll results are not seriously affected by their inability to speak to this segment of our society.

So far, I've yet to hear anyone address the topic of "Quasi-CPOS," a category which has included yours truly.

Many millions of computer users have not joined the broadband revolution. These people tend to use their land lines for their dial-up internet connection.

Sure, they give out their land line number as their "home phone" when filling out forms; they may even place that number on business cards. Ocassionally, they even use the land line for good old-fashioned talking -- especially when the call is local, and the hours are between 5 and 7 p.m. But friends and family soon learn that if you want to get through to someone, use the cel phone number -- because the land line is being used for email or for reading the latest scoop from Harry Knowles.

The pollsters can call these telephone numbers, but how often do they get through? Personally, I rarely activated the ringer for my land line.

Two further questions: Do the Quasi-CPOs tend to vote Democratic? I think so, but no-one can be sure. Logic tells us that QCPOs are probably urban types, young, plugged into the information age -- but they have yet to "make it" in our society. That's why they haven't made the switch to DSL or cable. They're smart folks on a tight budget.

Would the Democratic-leaning CPO percentage rise if we counted QCPOs in that category? You be the judge! Permalink

If you haven't read it yet, go directly to Salon's expose of Carlton Sherwood, the hack-tacular sleazeball "journalist" who mounted the fake-filled attack on Kerry which Sinclair will broadcast (in part) tonight. I've spoken of Carlton as a Moon-man, but this piece details his previous lying attacks on the Vietnam War Memorial.

The Salon piece may not adequately place Sherwood's deception in the proper context. Young people today probably do not comprehend the degree to which the far right loathed "the wall," which has since gained enormous public acceptance. Then, as now, the Right routinely used deceit to gain their way, and Carlton was one of their most dependable in-house liars. Permalink

This blog has done a wonderful job detailing how the White House has been cleansing its official site of any audio, video, still photos or text which might prove embarrassing to Fearless Leader.

You know -- stuff like that "I don't care about Bin Laden" clip. Zip, click, whoosh -- it's gone. You never saw it. Anyone who tells you it once existed is just one of those damned librul liars.

I'm reminded of the way Stalin's lads used to "edit" historical photos (using crude pre-Adobe methods) in which Trotsky appeared. By comparison, most humble bloggers such as yours truly feel that removing even our most humiliating posts would be unfair. Better for the world to see us warts-n-all.

I wonder if any of the scrubbed photos contain the sort of anomalies that would be of particular interest to Cannonfire readers...? Permalink

George Tenet, until recently the head of the CIA, admits in public that the invasion of Iraq was "wrong." Yet millions of beans-for-brain G.O.P. supporters think they know something about Middle East politics that Tenet doesn't. Permalink

I still favor the "earpiece theory of the Bush bulge. (And I hope you'll read the post below this one, which outlines the simple step you can take to make sure this story makes the front pages.)

But the defibrillator theory of Bush's bulge has been growing like...er...some sort of a bulge. And now it even has its own website. I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this bit, which has appeared on a number of diffeent sites:

After watching the third presidential debate Wednesday night, Dr. W. Kendall Tongier, M.D. of Dallas, Texas posted on the Dallas Morning News Web site about his concerns that the President may have had a stroke. The anesthesiologist, who has been in practice for 15 years, wrote: "Having watched the first two debates from start to finish, I was looking forward to listening to a spirited debate between Bush and Kerry. Unfortunately, I barely heard a word that was said. Instead, I found myself staring at and concentrating on the President's drooping mouth.

"As a physician and a professor, I tend to pick up on signs and symptoms of physical problems better than most other people. I am highly concerned with what I saw. The drooping left side of the President's face, his mouth and nasolabial fold (the crease in the face running from the nostril to the side of mouth) may be indicative of a recent stroke, TIA (transient ischemic attack)) or, possibly botox injections. I sincerely hope this was nothing more than botox injections. The other options are truly scary given an upcoming election for President in three weeks."

In a phone interview, Dr. Tongier stressed that he's not a neurologist, and no doctor can make a diagnosis from a 90-minute debate. But he did explain why he found Bush's face so distracting Wednesday night: "It struck me across the face to the point where I wasn't really listening to the debate. It looked like the left side of his mouth was downturned. You know how he sneers at times. At first I thought that's what it was, but it didn't change when his face was at rest. It changed when he talked, but you'd expect that. It's the loss of muscle tone there that's really kind of concerning. And it was pretty much persistent throughout the entire debate."

Some have also wondered whether Bush's mysterious on-then-off trip to Crawford, TX had any links to health concerns. This site
reports that Bush's resting heart rate is 45. Is that true, and is it stable? Permalink

Promptergate (or whatever you prefer to call it) shows signs of re-entering the national dialogue in a big way. Large news organizations are interested.

Our biggest chance for a breakthrough concerns the allegation from White House insiders that Bill Clinton used an earpiece as well -- for security purposes, not during debates.

If Bill confirms this claim, the case against W as a debate cheater will gain an immense degree of credibility among swing voters.

And if that happens, Bush will lose.

So right now, all our efforts should go in one direction: We must beg Clinton to speak up. You need invest only a few seconds. You can get a message through to him via Hillary, using this convenient form.

What should you say? Mail to politicians always has more impact when individually worded. However, if you are really pressed for time, you can cut and paste this message:

Dear Senator Clinton,

Two sources, one of them a Secret Service agent, have alleged that several presidents -- including Bill Clinton -- used hidden earpieces for security purposes. Can you or your husband confirm this assertion? The matter is extremely important. (No-one is claiming that your husband used such a device during any debates.)

I think we are more likely to get a response if we make it clear that we are not accusing Bill Clinton of any wrongdoing in this regard.

The Clinton Presidential Center (a.k.a., the Library) can be contacted here. I presume they will pass along messages to President Clinton.

The matter is urgent. If Clinton says "Yes, presidents do sometimes use earpieces," the tale of Bush and the bulge will almost certainly hop onto front pages everywhere. If you want to take one simple step right now to impact the election -- you know what to do.

By the by: If you want to make sure the "real" media treats this story right, this page makes it easy to make sure your voice is heard.
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Daily Kos has published a transcript of the anti-Kerry propaganda piece "Stolen Honor," which Sinclair Broadcasting planned to pipe into millions of homes just before the election. (For a good commentary on this brouhaha, see here.) This "documentary" begins with our genial host, one Carlton Sherwood, introducing himself thus:

SHERWOOD: My name is Carlton Sherwood and I am a journalist. As an investigative reporter I have written about corruption in government, corporations and the military. I have helped to expose doctors who were actually ordering the starvation of handicapped infants, and charlatans who preached faith from the pulpit, but who practiced greed and deception in their personal lives. In every case the guilty party dishonored their professions and they were made to answer for the hurt they caused.

What unbelievable hypocrisy! Sherwood was himself the hireling of the world's worst spiritual charlatan.

Sherwood is a paid apologist for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, one of the most corrupt and megalomaniacal figures ever to assail the field of religion. Sherwood also worked for Moon's newspaper, the Washington Times, a conservative propaganda sheet that loses an astounding amount of money each year. (Some estimates run as high as $100 million a year.) Where does Moon get that kind of dough? Various exposes have linked Moon's finances to money laundering, organized crime, and Japanese fascists.

Why, I wonder, didn't Sherwood include that info on his televised resume? Why didn't he tell viewers that his egg-and-cheese money has come from Moon's filthy cashbox?

If you think Sherwood is just another crusader for journalistic truth, take a look at this excerpt -- and notice how our host tries to ape Michael Moore's tone:

SHERWOOD: Wait a second, I asked myself, did I hear that right? Was I or my fellow marines being accused of the same atrocities John Kerry had committed? Later in his testimony he claimed that American soldiers in Vietnam were guilty of even more heinous acts of barbarism:

KERRY PICTURE FROM TESTIMONY

KERRY VOICEOVER: "...they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam."

"Quotation can be slander, if you gerrymander," as Oscar Wilde once put it. By editing out the first part of Kerry's remarks, Sherwood has -- to put the matter bluntly -- lied.

CSPAN broadcast the complete video record of Kerry's testimony (or almost-complete: some sections exist only as audio). What Carlton neglects to mention is that Kerry did not report that he had personally witnessed these atrocities -- in fact, Kerry made clear that he had not seen such things. Rather, Kerry told the committee that he had attended a rally called "Winter Soldiers," and that during this event various vets described participating in, or being an eyewitness to, war crimes.

Many of the same soldiers told many of the same stories in "Conversations With Americans," a book which made quite an impression on me when I first read it. Over the years, both that book and the "Winter Soldiers" testimony have been questioned. Some critics doubt the bona fides of some of the veterans who reported atrocities. I do not have space here to present both sides of that debate; I would simply point out that Abu Ghraib has reminded us, once again, of what happens in war.

That controversy does not affect the truthfulness of Kerry's testimony to the committee. All he said on that occasion is that he was present at a public gathering where men who announced themselves as Vietnam veterans described certain experiences.

No one denies that such a rally took place. No-one has ever accused Kerry of misreporting what those men said. No-one on that committee expected one private citizen (and that's all Kerry was at that time) to double-check everything he heard from speakers at a public event. That is a job for journalists and government investigators.

Kerry was an observer at that event. He later told Congress what he heard. And that's it. That's the story. Any Republican who tries to tell you otherwise is twisting the testimony.

Whether the "Winter Soldiers" spoke accurately or not, one thing is certain: They did not accuse every American soldier of participating in atrocities. To say "atrocities occurred" is not the same as saying "everyone in the military is guilty." That simple point of logic seems to escape Republicans.

We should also take note of the cute little hoax Sherwood sneaks into the beginning: "Was I or my fellow marines being accused of the same atrocities John Kerry had committed?"

Kerry did not testify that he had personally committed atrocities of this sort. As noted earlier, Sherwood deceptively snipped out the section in which Kerry testified that he had not even seen such things.

True, during a debate with John O'Neill on the Dick Cavitt show -- a debate Kerry was generally thought to have won -- Kerry did say that he later discovered that the rules of engagement under which he operated contravened the Geneva accords. This is a valid criticism of the command structure.

As I recall that era (I was quite young but precocious, and liked to hear from guys who had returned from Vietnam), a lot of soldiers criticized the command structure. I suspect that nearly every soldier in nearly every war has complained about the way the war was run.

None of this substantiates the inane claim that Kerry accused Carlton Sherwood or his Marine buddies of participating in atrocities.

G.O.P. flacks would have you believe that John Kerry attacked his fellow veterans during his testimony. In fact, Kerry's testimony emphasized that the veterans were getting a raw deal from the government -- in particular from the V.A. At the time, few other voices spoke up for veterans' rights.

The reactionary propagandists want you to think Kerry burned babies, while all other Americans acted like angels.

Alas, the above excerpts represent only the opening section of Sherwood's stroll down deception avenue. The rest is just as bad. Salon's piece on "Stolen Honor" does not begin to convey the profundity of this film's lies. Sherwood has once again "Mooned" America -- and in the process of mooning, he has displayed the orifice from which he extracted his facts.
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Check out this fine piece in the L.A. City Beat (the hip freebie publication here in Los Angeles, where the L.A. Weekly has become, I am sorry to say, an institution). It details all the Rovian shennanigans we have seen, and can expect to see, in this election. A similar theme sounds in this October Surprise overview by the Plaid Adder in the Democratic Underground.

Both stories, incidentally, make mention of "wiregate"... Permalink

This clip purports to display the bulge during Bush's visit to the 9/11 commission hearings. You have to look carefully when he turns around. Make your own judgments; I am told that the thing is much more apparent at higher resolutions...

For a good overview of the "bulge" aspect of the 9/11 testimony, check out this article by Michel Chossudovsky and Ronald England. A few excerpts:

There is reason to believe, however, that the behind closed doors meeting was being monitored by key advisers and that Bush was being briefed through an earpiece connected to an audio receiver. (see photo below).

Bush's earpiece has been known for some time to White House accredited journalists. The issue, however, was only recently brought to public attention after the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate. (For details see Is Bush Wired? Is he prompted through an earpiece? 8 October 2004 http://globalresearch.ca/articles/IBW410A.html ).

Bush uses a 'passive transducer earpiece', through which he is fed a script that has been transmitted to and then from a device hidden on his body; photographs from the first presidential debate on 30 September show what appears to be a box, placed underneath his jacket and between his shoulder blades. (New Statesman, 18 October 2004)

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For a long time now, I felt that the first sign of the "Bush bulge" story gaining credibility would come when apologists started running columns devoted to the theme of "Let's say W did wear an earpiece -- is that really so bad?"

The first such column has already seen print. See this piece by Mercury News writer Dan Gillmor. An excerpt:

I would argue that in this case the rules need updating. Voters would have been better off if the candidates had all kinds of technology at their disposal, so they could double-check their own facts and precisely rebut opponents' misstatements.

In the Information Age, the ability to find relevant information quickly and use it intuitively will be at least as important as the ability to memorize numbers or slogans.This will be as true for everyday people as presidents and their staffs, and powerful tools will soon be at our beck and call.

Technological aids of this sort aren't new, though their use has sometimes been contested. Remember the debate when children first started taking calculators to school? It was assumed (with some truth) that kids would forget how to add and multiply the old-fashioned way, using a pencil and paper.

This argument so thoroughly annoyed one reader that he (or she) offered this open letter:

Mr. Dan Gilmore asks why so many people are disturbed by the possibility that President Bush might have been cheating in the debate by using a secret earpiece for coaching during the debates. Mr. Gilmore compares the rule against such aides to the rule some teachers have prohibiting use of calculators in math class.

Why, really, would it a problem for the President of the United States to have a secret voice telling him what to say during a Presidential debate?

Well, Mr. Gilmore, let how many reasons would you like to have?

First, may I begin by telling you why children sometimes need to learn to do math without calculators. Let's imagine that little Georgina always uses a calculator for math. She grows up and becomes President. One day, while she is visiting an elementary school to read with the kids, the US is attacked by terrorists. They have hijacked two jet planes are clearly intent upon crashing those planes into buildings where large numbers of people work. The voice in the President's ear rapidly describes the situation and concludes, "Oh NO! What shall we do first? We one fighter jet in a position to intercept. It is located exactly between the two of the planes. It can stop either but not both. It looks like USAir 347 can hit a building where about 5000 people work. It's 7:30 in the morning and we estimate that 10% of those people would be at work. The other plane seems aimed for a building where only 4,000 people work but it is the a time zone where it's 8:30 and we think at 90% of those people would in the building. What shall we do? We have only 60 seconds to decide. After that there will be no time for any interception at all. Oh NO! They are now reporting several more planes. One is flying straight at..."

The little voice goes silent and President Georgina spends the next seven minutes trying to think where she can go for a calculator. The fighter flies circles and waits for orders.

Oh well, let's not worry about that. Who would ever imagine the possibility that anyone would hijack jet planes in order to crash them into buildings.

Now, why would it be inappropriate for a President to use a little voice telling him to say during a Presidential debate? Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. If the debater has a little voice, how will I, as a voter, know if I like this President's ability to think and respond in an quick and independent manner?

2. If debaters have little voices, how will I know if I'm voting for an intelligent person or selecting the intelligence and reason of a good actor's little voice?

3. How do we ask the world to respect a President who needs a little voice when debating? Would the President, himself, negotiate with other world leaders or would that also be the work of a little voice?

4. What if, in the middle of a world crisis, the little voice turned out to be a member of a long-silent terrorist sleeper cell?

5. What if the little voice died in the middle of a world crisis?

6. What if the little voice is really the secret employee of a evil megalomaniac financial genius bent on world domination?

7. Finally, from another perspective, how will I, as a teacher, answer the student who first wants a calculator for math tests and then asks why she has to do independent work in classroom debates if Presidential candidates are allowed to have little voices?

I could mention more things but I'd need to have some information. You know, the sort of things you find in those boring newspapers with the big words and in those awful thick intelligence reports. My little voice usually helps me with things like that he's too much to drink tonight and he's about to pass out. I'd order a pizza so he'd have some food to help him sober up but I lost my calculator and I wouldn't have a clue how much to add for a tip.

I'll have to sign off now. I sure hope my little voice wakes up before my stupid teacher makes me solve any more terrorist jet plane math problems.

Necessarily Anonymous

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I can't post much now, but I thought I might drop in and inform readers that there are rumblings on the "Bush bulge" front. I'm told that the video of Bush in front of the 9/11 commission show definite signs of incipient Quasimodo-ishness.

More than that. Remember this part of the key Salon story (the one which leads off with a few words from yours truly)?

Atkinson also says that it's not just Bush who's been coached -- Bill Clinton, too, received ear-prompting. John Ashcroft is "quite notorious for using wireless headsets," and Janet Reno used a system during the siege at Waco, Texas. Atkinson has documented the dozens of radio frequencies that the White House uses for its communications, and has pointed to the make and model of the prompter devices popular in the government. One of these devices is the RC-216 Receive-A-Cue system, manufactured and sold by Comtek Communications in Salt Lake City.

This info neatly details with the alleged communication from the Secret Service agent -- who specified that Clinton used an earpiece for security purposes, but NOT during debates. (One wonders, though, if he had help when he had to bluff his way through that State of the Union address in which his teleprompter went mysteriously blank.)

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of this. If Clinton confirms that, in general, presidents do indeed use hidden earpieces, then "promptergate" receives a masssive dose of credibility. There will be a you-ain't-seen-nothin'-yet flurry of news coverage.

Of course, if that confirmation is forthcoming, the Right will use the occasion to indulge in their usual orgy of Clinton-hate, but I think we can prevent the issue from being diverted. Clinton is not on the ticket this year. Bush is.

How to get movement on this issue? My suggestion: Write to Hillary via her senate email address. It'll take you only a second.

If she gets a thousand letters asking her "Did Bill Clinton use an earpiece for security purposes?" she may well have to answer, or at least ask her husband to answer. Make sure that she understands that this question is not phrased as an attack on her husband.

I'll have further ideas and contact info later.

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Aside from my general notes below on the bulge bafflement and its relationship to the larger issue of conspiracy theory, we should also take note of two items of interest.

This piece may be of interest, although even some converts to this thesis now accept that protrusion as a shoulder blade.

There's a new site devoted to this controversy: BushBulge.com. I like the Bush/C3PO photo comparison.

A reader to Is Bush Wired? makes a terrific suggestion vis-a-vis the alleged Secret Service Agent's anonymous confession (referenced in an earlier post). The tale makes reference to Bill Clinton as another president who wore a wire for security purposes, although not in a debate situation. Which means that Clinton can confirm this story. At least in substantial part. He cannot confirm that Bush was wired for the debates, but he can confirm whether presidents do wear wires in a general sense.

I was intrigued by the way the bulge popped up during the famous/infamous Jon Stewart segment of Crossfire. An audience member directed a question on the subject to Stewart. The host pounced and declared the matter a non-story. It's just a wrinkle in the jacket, we were told.

Most of those who have seen the photos disagree. So do many who have heard the audio. Why not let Stewart speak for himself?

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What if massive vote irregularities hit us again? Some say they are already cropping up. My own suggestion as to how to deal with vote fraud --unrelenting civil unrest and a general strike until a fair revote takes place -- seems to have attracted few converts. Here's another possibility: An emergency recount commission. It can happen, but we all need to get behind this idea right now. Permalink

Since the promptergate/mystery bulge controversy has elicited the usual snide allusions to black helicopters and Elvis sightings, I thought I would offer a few remarks on the general topic of conspiracy.

Like masturbation, theorizing about the evil schemes of our political adversaries is a common vice which most practitioners discuss in embarrassed tones. Most – but not all. Some folks are paranoia addicts; for them, suspicion is smack.

What separates the legitimate researcher into subterranean politics from the fear-junkie grasping after his next fix? I offer two basic guidelines:

1. We can categorize most conspiracy theories as either “right” or “left.”

2. The theories proffered by right-wingers have a much worse track record than do the theories proposed by left-wingers.

The first tenet has exceptions. Some conspiratorial notions are neither right nor left but off the map. For example, the once-popular Roswell silliness escapes easy political classification. The same can be said for many of the more outrageous allegations to come out of the World Trade Center disaster, or for the speculations in The Da Vinci Code.

In most cases, however, the “right/left” filing system really does work. Let’s look at some popular scenarios on both sides and see how they have stood the test of time. Yes, I fully admit that my selection is subjective and biased. I look forward to perusing any alternative lists readers might wish to offer.

Ten theories by Right-wingers:

1. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The classic anti-Semitic canard was cobbled together by Matheiu Golovinski, a right-wing émigré in Paris operating under the direction of the Tsar’s political police. It has been debunked many times.

2. The Satanic Panic. Is a worldwide cabal of Satanists raping and eating our children? Hell no!

3. “The Soviets are coming!” As late as 1995 – 1995! –reactionaries were telling lecture audiences that Soviet troops were massing along the U.S./Mexican border, just waiting for the “go” signal to come streaming in.

4. Whitewater. The scandal that wasn’t.

5. The Illuminati controls the world! Actually, the Illuminati was an anti-royalist society in Bavaria, squelched by the same Emperor played by Jeffrey Jones in Amadeus.

6. Was the Holocaust a hoax? In a word: No.

7. The Catholic Church assassinated Lincoln! This one dates back to a book of buncombe flung together by one Charles Chiniquy, an unstable defrocked priest with a grudge against his former church. Many fundamentalist Protestants still recommend his text.

8. The China/Soviet split was a fraud! So, at least, ran a theory popular within certain CIA circles throughout the 1960s. The prime mover behind this idea was counterintelligence chieftain James Jesus Angleton, a patriotic paranoid who nearly destroyed the agency he had hoped to serve.

9. Hillary and/or Bill killed Vince Foster (not to mention dozens of other alleged “enemies”). Taxpayers spent tons of money investigating this allegation, and ended up with little more than a chemical analysis of baloney.

10. The Communist Party in the United States was a powerful entity which had subverted much of Hollywood. Some folks (Ann Coulter, for example) still want you to believe this drivel. The reality: The CPUSA never had any real power or influence, and might well have died out if not for the dues paid by FBI and police infiltrators.

Compare the above to this list of ten conspiracy theories offered by left-wingers:

1. The CIA aids -- or at least overlooks the activities of -- drug kingpins useful to the Agency. The CIA had always denied this claim until a few years ago, when the Inspector General released a report which (in its unheralded second half) confirmed some of our worst fears. For further reading: The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy, Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott, and Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee.

2. Watergate. Would Dick Nixon use spooks and Cuban operatives to spy on rivals? At one time, only the most paranoid Democrats would have answered yes.

3. Were hard rightists within the intel community behind the assassinations of the 1960s (JFK, RFK, MLK)? There’s no way I can summarize here the many arguments that have gone back and forth on this topic.

4. The CIA’s mind control experiments. In the 1960s, this was a rumor few dared to credit. In the 1970s, a small flood of documents on Project MKULTRA proved the point.

5. October Surprise. Did key members of the Reagan campaign make a secret deal to keep the American hostages in Iranian hands until Carter lost the election? Establishment pundits cackled at this notion. We haven’t heard much cackling since the allegation was confirmed by French intelligence chieftain Alexandre de Marenches, Russian prime minister Sergei V. Stepashin, Israeli secret agent Ari Ben-Menashe, former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli prime minister Yitshak Shamir.

6. Was the Soviet military threat inflated? In the 1970s, left-wingers who made this suggestion were mocked. We now know that when the CIA’s main analysts provided data the hawks found insufficiently useful, George H.W. Bush assembled a “Team B” which churned out hyperbolic assessments of the USSR’s armaments.

7. Yamashita’s gold. Did the Japanese hide an astonishing cache of loot during World War II? And has that loot funded right-wing activities in more recent times? Don’t answer until you’ve read the books of Sterling Seagrave.

8. The CIA and the Nazis. Did the Agency rely on such unsavory characters as Hitler’s spy Reinhard Gehlen? Did Gehlen and company manipulate our view of the cold war? A number of books, including Christopher Simpson’s Blowback, have substantiated an idea once considered mere fable.

9. Did the Bush family do business with Nazis before, during and after the war? Yes – and the scandal goes far beyond what you will read in Kitty Kelley’s bestseller. John Buchanan has the documentation.

10. Did George W. Bush invade Iraq under false premises in order to grab dwindling oil resources? Most Americans deride this notion. Most Iraqis don’t.

I emphasize once again that the above lists represent nothing more than the first ten “right-wing” and “left-wing” theories that popped into my noggin.

Even so, I think most people would agree that list numero uno contains a greater number of outrageous and untrue notions than you’ll find on list number two. The left-wing theorists have a far from perfect batting average, but they often hit at least a double, while their reactionary counterparts rarely manage to get on base. More importantly, the left-wing theorists usually try to construct an argument based on evidence, while their rightist analogs tend to eschew footnotes in favor of high decibel levels and appeals to emotion.

Black helicopters? Post-mortum Elvis sightings? Those are red-state beliefs.

Theorists on both sides, alas, tend toward name-calling whenever any scoffer assails a much-beloved thesis. I would argue that the right-wingers are a little quicker to calumniate, and much nastier in their opprobrium. I will also admit that on both sides of the aisle, the conspiratorial viewpoint tends to transform adherents into creatures who are obsessed, insular, anti-social and just plain unpleasant.

Bottom line: Whenever someone decries “mystery bulge” allegations (or similar claims) as the stuff of conspiracy theory, you can counter by pointing out that not all theories are created equal. Many have proven risible; some have contained a measure of truth. Although the left-leaning theorists have proven all too capable of wild leaps and foolish presumptions (my own fallibilities remain on humiliating display in previous postings to this column), they have nevertheless amassed the better track record. They don’t ask for immediate credence – just a hearing.
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Today in Salon, we have a story about the increasing income disparity between whites and blacks. On the same page, Salon also links to a news story purporting to prove that black support for Bush has doubled since 2000!

Just what does this guy have to do to turn voters off? Even drooling in public seems only to have improved his standing... Permalink

Robert Scheer has an article pregnant with possibilities in today's L.A. Times. (I've linked to the Daily Kos version of the piece to spare you the sign-in rigmarole; scroll down.) The CIA has compiled a 9/11 report which names names in the administration -- which the commissions refused to do. Scheer has spoken to someone who has seen this report; apparently, it looks bad -- very bad -- for Team Bush.

Two questions:

1. Will this document be leaked before the election?

I would bet "yes," even though the W brigade hopes to squelch the thing. The war between the Agency and the White House -- a meme once discussed only feverish speculators such as yours truly -- has made the mainstream news pages. Even Robert Novak devoted a column to it. My prediction: Although Congress won't succeed in shaking this apple from the tree, it will "just happen" to fall into the lap of a reporter -- maybe a week from now.

2. Will people pay attention to it?

That's a toughie. This country's unending hordes of Jesus zombies ignore all data that does not conform to the scripts in their heads. Those who care only about April 15 issues tend to rationalize away all other concerns. Many people shy away from stories involving the intelligence community because such matters tend to be involved and confusing.

Perhaps that's where we bloggers and other aficionados of the "internets" come in. We're going to have to read the information (once it becomes available), simplify it, and shout it -- over and over and over -- until the message becomes unavoidable. Permalink

The other popular bulge explanation involves a portable defibrillator, such as the one manufactured by Lifecor. A commentator on Is Bush Wired makes two claims along those lines:

1. That tbe Bush family has a history of Atrial Fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat.

2. That W is particularly at risk because he takes presciption drugs for depression and paranoia.

The first point can be proven. From a July 17, 2000 Salon story:

In 1992, President Bush's reelection bid began badly when he vomited and collapsed in Japan at a dinner party thrown by the country's prime minister. From then on, the campaign was dogged with mostly unconfirmed rumors of his ill health. It was speculated, for example, that atrial fibrillation medications he took were affecting his mental acuity. What else would explain his pallid and lackluster performance at debates and appearances, particularly compared to the robust physical health and voracious appetite exuded by opponent Bill Clinton? The Bush campaign headquarters vigorously denied every ill health charge but it didn't change the fact that it wasn't only the economy that was ailing -- it was also Bush's physical image. His election results were equally anemic.

This goes a long ways toward explaining why W would keep any medical issues out of the public's eye.

The second allegation harkens back to this story (already mentioned in this column) from Capitol Hill Blue:

President George W. Bush is taking anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Many wonder why, if this story is true, it has appeared only in a small semi-alternative publication. I would note that Iran-contra was first reported in an obscure Lebanese paper. More to the point, Tubb has never denied the report, even though it has circulated widely. Permalink