Brief notes

I can't post much now, but perhaps offering a few links on the continuing vote fraud scandal won't damage my schedule too much...

Mainstream: The New York Times and Newsweek finally acknowledge (in a weak, but not timely fashion) that our elections have problems. Newsweek tells us we have "four more years" to get it right. That's what they said in 2000; the problem with that attitude became clear as early as 2002.

Oklahoma not OK: The opening of this story says it all:

Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.

That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.

All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican company.

Prove vote fraud in one place, and you indicate it elsewhere. And before a debunker spouts: "But polls prove Oklahoma was a red state to begin with!:" Padding the Bush vote in a red state increased his popular vote "mandate."

A reader named Markus expanded on this information. He draws our attention to the tallies mentioned the Tulsa World, then to the "more final" figures published by CNN:

Just look at the very first county in the Tulsa World link to see an example of the problem; Kerry had 3704 votes in Adair with 70% of the vote counted (according to the local paper), but only 2560 votes after they were all counted (according to CNN link).

I'll let you double-check the figures for yourselves.

Kerry: Olbermann quotes Jesse Jackson to the effect that Kerry is supporting the Ohio recount. Olbermann goes on to make a few jokes at Kerry's expense, hoping to prod the Senator into making a public statement. Of course, if Kerry did that, he would be the target of an unparalleled campaign of derision and hate.

Olbermann versus Madsen: You can read Olbermann's blistering riposte to Wayne Madsen's work here. Olbermann makes some good points, but I think Madsen's previous story about Iran should be placed in context.

Remember the primaries? Remember when nearly every right-wing commentator (especially Safire) offered a series of abstruse scenarios, some of which came form alleged "inside" sources, whereby Hillary Clinton would commandeer the Democratic nomination? Of course, the writers of those stories knew full well that they were peddling horsecrap: Yelling "The Clintons are coming!" is always a good way to loosen wallets on the far right.

The reputation of Safire and company did not diminish when they proved terrible prophets. On the left, of course, writers are held to a higher standard.

I presume someone fed Madsen bad information on Iran. But lets face it -- a lot of us suspected that there would be a strike on Iran in the run-up to the election, and more than one writer wrote about the possibility. (There was also much talk of an Israeli strike, which would have led to our involvement.)

I am persuaded that military planners did fairly serious preparatory work on an Iran strike. Granted, there are war plans galore in the DOD -- against damn near every country -- but at certain times, analysts are asked to update these plans and treat them as a hot issue. That's when other folks get nervous. I strongly suspect that there were fairly serious rumblings about Iran in certain areas of the State department or Defense, and that one of the rumblers caught Madsen's ear.

Incidentally, the rumbling has only become worse, as you may have noticed.

Madsen has many good articles to his credit, and I still do not discount the present investigation. I note that Olbermann made no attempt to do any double-checking on the shady outfits mentioned in the story; neither, apparently, did he ask to see a copy of the check. Faking up a check is crime, and I simply do not believe that anyone would go to such lengths in a spirit of puckish prankishness.

I have much more to say -- on many a topic -- but no time to say it...!