Cronkite? Walter freaking CRONKITE?

According to Drudge, Walter Cronkite just opined that Karl Rove jiggered up the most recent video "calling card" from Osama Bin Laden. This has to be the, and I mean THE most bizarre statement of this bizarre political season. I thought only the wildest of the bloggers -- such as yours truly -- would allow themselves to consider such a possibility. Does anyone else recall when Cronkite was the point man among Warren Commission defenders?

Bulge-gate: An additional note

Lots of news about bulge-gate; please scroll down a bit to see it all. You'll also want to read this exchange on why the Washington media has not covered the story. There's more to come, very soon...

Osama's latest: Is it real?

Since I've promised to hold my pessimism in check, I will not discuss the impact of the latest Osama tape on the election. Instead, let's address questions of authenticity. This tape -- a reminder that the leader of the terrorist wolf-pack remains at large -- arrives at an awfully convenient time.

But is it real?

To set the stage, recall Karl Rove's "wink" to Sean Hannity regarding the likelihood of an October Surprise or two. Then take a look at Buzzflash's analysis of the timing. First, the Defense Department reminded us that OBL is still alive, and then the Bush campaign began pushing 9/11 in a big way. (This barrage included the "Ashley" ad, a piece of pure treacle which emphasizes the "Bush as Daddy" meme: "He's the most powerful man in the world -- and all he wants is to keep me safe...")

The administration, we learn, somehow attained a copy independently of Al Jazeera, which received the tape anonymously in Pakistan. The White House offered instant confirmation the tape as authentic. We have yet to learn the basis for this conclusion.

The message makes a garbled reference to the "My Pet Goat" embarrassment, which many right-wingers associate with Michael Moore (as though he were somehow to blame). The text seems to indicate that Bin Laden wants a Kerry victory. Obviously, any attempt by Bin Laden to sway the electorate could only help Bush. (Incidentally, Bill Maher certainly did not aid Kerry's cause when he compared Bin Laden's "talking points" to themes sounded at the Democratic National Convention.)

Everything Bin Laden says in this tape provides conservative pundits with high-octane fuel.

Given these circumstances, we should feel no surprise that at least one website has already pronounced the latest Bin Laden video to be a fake. Check out the photographic comparison for yourself, and ask if we are dealing with the same man. Provisionally, I am not persuaded -- and yet, the eyebrows do seem rather different.

I would also note that the use of photographic doubles has a long history. For example, those who know the Vicki Morgan scandal well may recall that several published reports described a video showing "Vicki" using a sexual device on "Ronald Reagan." That video, I am told, was concocted by an Eastern bloc intelligence service, using lookalikes.

Talk Left notes these differences between the latest video and previous ones:

-- no quotes from the Koran or Islamic rhetoric
-- no automatic weapon in view
-- no al Qaeda commanders with him

The comment about Osama's rhetoric seems particularly relevant. In Arabic-speaking countries, Osama Bin Laden is known for his eloquent, "poetic" style of speech, yet nothing in the current communication seems particularly poetic. To the contrary, he is downright prosaic.

Admittedly, the translation may not convey his words adequately, and not all of the video has been transcribed.

Moreover, Osama now shows a sudden interest in United States domestic issues, such as the Patriot act, on which he sounds suspiciously like a left-wing Democrat. He makes no reference to issues of interest primarily to Muslims -- issues such as India or Chechnya.

Oh...and for what it is worth: The pseudonymous "Brad Menfil," the alleged G.O.P. deep insider who has sent scoops about bulge-gate to Indymedia, has returned to the stage. Now he is saying that the latest OBL message is a fake.

This is the worst thing my Repulican friends have ever done. What you saw yesterday was not Bin Laden. I repeat, it was not Bin Laden. It was a clever Republican hoax used to distract our attention from the missing explosives and help rally support around a dying campaign.

The news media picked it up and followed a predictable script. "Would this help Bush?" "Can Kerry say anything?"

Well, I can say something. That video was a hoax. The bearded man in the video is an actor and this plan has been in the making for about 3 months now. Since no credible evidence exist that Bin Laden is anywhere near a studio, the first chink in this armor is the "comfortable settings."

That Bin Laden can no longer stand for more than one minute at a time, gives away the authenticity of this newest video. Bin Laden is a diabetic and has had three toes removed from his left foot and almost his whole right foot has been removed as well.

Ah, but is "Brad" himself a hoax? Frankly, nearly everyone involved in researching bulge-gate thinks this "inside" source is either a Bush plant (if that phrase is forgivable) or a simple fabulist. I have passed his words along to you even though they are probably of very little value.

Even so, we need not accept the tape as gospel just because a dubious source calls it a fake.

Republican vote-thieves reach new depths

Lots of news on the vote suppression front.

In the past, I have used temperate language when referring to Republicans. But the latest atrocities against democracy have repulsed me so thoroughly, I no longer recognize the humanity of the criminals responsible. And I have the same disdain for their complacent -- complicit? -- leadership.

Pennsylvania: GOP scumbags, using what appeared to be authentic county stationery, sent out a leaflet informing Republicans to vote on November 2 and Democrats a day later.

Also, students signing what they thought was a medical marijuana petition are told that they have registered as Republicans.

Colorado: The state's HAVA (Help America Vote Act) compliance director, Drew Durham, turns out to be a racist of the vilest sort. (I wonder if this guy is any relation to the infamous Doug Durham, who infiltrated the American Indian Movement in the 1970s? Both hail from Texas...)

Also, someone has been sending in registration forms for people who have already registered; the affected voter can be challenged at the polls.

Florida (AIEEE!): In Jacksonville, A Republican supervisor allowed just one (1) poll booth to service a large minority population. Worse, the booth was placed downtown, in a location with miniscule parking facilities.

I may not have mentioned in a previous column (as I should have) that a "smoking e-mail" implicates Jeb Bush himself in the voter suppression effort.

This story has more on Broward county's "accidentally" missing 58,000 ballots. Previously, the loss was blamed on a "post office error." The new spin: Florida is just "too big" to pull off an election. Worse, only 14,000 of the missing ballots will be re-shipped. 58,000 - 14,000 = 44,000 Floridians robbed of their right to vote.

Ohio: Sub-human Republican monsters have sent registered letters to Democratic voters. When the letters were rejected, the Republicans argued that the person no longer lived at that address, and therefore was no longer eligible to vote.

This tactic seems to have backfired. See the trail transcript here.

Also, in Lake County, Republican criminals have sent out fake "official" letters to new registrants informing them their registrations were illegal, rendering them unable to vote.

Voters in Ohio's largest county, Cuyahoga, have to wrestle with a butterfly ballot that makes the infamous one in Florida back in 2000 seem like a model of simplicity. Arrows were printed "by mistake." Designing a ballot is not rocket science; we have good reason to suspect that such "mistakes" are intentional.

Wisconsin: In Milwaukee, racist Republican pigs sent out a leaflet from an alleged "Milwaukee Black Voters League." The pamphlet warns:

If you've already voted in any election this year you can't vote in the presidential election. If you've ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation you can't vote in the presidential election.

Moreover: "If you violate any of these laws you will get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."

Minnesota: Looks like Sproul was up to its usual shenanigans in this state too, paying workers to fetch Republican registrations while discouraging Democratic registrations.

Nationwide: Republicans are not only trying to intimidate blacks who want to vote, they are also confronting the disabled.

The right-wing press continues its disinformation campaign to convince the easily-brainwashed that it's the Democrats who have perpetrated vote fraud.

And we haven't even begun to discuss the horrors of computerized voting without a paper trail. I highly recommend downloading the documentary "Votergate."

Here's the topper: The Bush administration now claims that only the Justice Department -- and not the voters themselves -- may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act!

I finally understand why people hate Kevin Costner

I caught Bill Maher's show tonight, even though I knew that Ann Coulter was going to be on. Turns out Kevin Costner annoyed me one hell of a lot more. The guy just would not shut up, even though he rarely made sense.

Coulter was wonderfully evil. She knew she was there to play the role of The Devil, and she triumphed. Her skin even had a reddish tinge.

Advice for Kevin: Dude, if you want a forum in which you can spew non-sequiturs without regard for what other people have to say -- get a blog!

Bulge-spotting: The new national sport

Yow. Real life drags me away from the internet for one lousy day, and just look at all the material that piles up!

We have much bulge-gate material to deal with -- and more to come over the weekend, if my own researches pan out. ("Bulge-gate" is the term David Lindorff prefers, and I'll follow his lead. Some dislike the "-gate" suffix, but it always gives me a warm, nostalgic feeling...)

First: Salon runs an interview with a NASA research scientist, Dr. Robert M. Nelson, who says, in effect, "Yep, that's a bulge there." A lot of us have said the same thing, but I guess it means more coming from Dr. Nelson, because he works for NASA and is a professional photo analyst.

Now, he is certainly welcome on board -- but what new evidence does he bring? He offers up a photographic enhancement similar to one I received from a reader a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the technique involves using the sharpening tool in Photoshop, thereby strengthening the outline of whatever-the-hell lurks beneath that jacket. He used several frames to help separate signal from noise, but (as I have found through my own experiments) one can achieve much the same result using a single image.

Some may question Nelson's approach. I use Photoshop professionally every day, and I know that the "sharpen" tool can occasionally create misleading artifacts -- although (let us quickly add) this technique is standard practice in scientific imaging.

The bulge-spotters' argument may be better served if we keep these pictures as far as possible from the Adobe treatment. Any use of Photoshop, however innocent in intention, allows Bush apologists to howl that evil librul hoaxters concocted the entire controversy.

(Actually, they made that very accusation at the very beginning of this debate. Then they stopped saying anything.)

In my view, some of these photos are damning enough without enhancement.

On the other hand, I've no objection to using Photoshop to create side-by-side comparisons. One interesting example can be found here, which makes the case that W is wearing a defibrillator. I've devoted some space to this theory, but I lean against it. The "Lifecor" vest seems too big. But my mind's still not made up. Come to your own conclusion...

Rumor has it that the bulge can be seen in this video clip, as Bush walks away from the cameras after informing the world that Osama Bin Laden is still a very bad man. To my eyes, this evidence seems iffy, though not quite so lame as Bush's little speech.

If you want the opinion of a professional equipper to the spies, check out this interview with Jason Woodside, owner of San Francisco's International Spy Shop -- the Bay Area's answer to Q. He says that Bush's "poorly tailored shirt" looks more like a "wireless induction system."

As you probably already know, the latest installment of Doonesbury's "bulge-gate" series got the strip in trouble, though not because of the bulge per se. Trudeau had some fun with Cheney's penchant for potty-mouth remarks. Since the word "fuck" was not spelled out, I really don't see what the big deal is here...

Finally, we have more cryptic words from our old friend, "Brad Menfil," the alleged Republican bigwig who claims to be shocked and outraged by all the horrible things the Bush team is doing. But not shocked enough to take a stand and tell us who he really is and how he knows what what he says he knows. Lots of folks think Brad's a disinformation dispenser. But hey -- if there's nothing to the bulge story, what need of disinformation?

Democracy dying in Broward County

As you've probably heard, it's happening again in Broward County -- thousands of absentee ballots have gone missing. (Estimates vary between 10,000 and 78,000.) Local news coverage blames the post office, which is ridiculous. Those who asked for an absentee ballot cannot vote at the precinct unless they show their absentee ballot -- which they did not receive. For a good, full account of this "accident" and its ramifications, look here.

So who spread that ka-ka about Al Qaqaa?

Well, the official White House spin on the Al Qaqaa fiasco -- the "blame Russia" strategy -- is falling apart faster than a kleenex dam. Apparently, we have video footage of the explosives in situ -- after the Americans showed up.

Combine that video with the Russian denials of involvement, the descriptions by Iraqis on the scene, the utter lack of satellite imagery showing a Russian convoy -- and we can fairly say that Matt Drudge's beloved "Russia" defense is holding up about as well as a pre-viagra Bob Dole.

I'd like to focus, once more, on a little-discussed aspect of this affair. Who the hell is John A. "Jack" Shaw, undersecretary of defense, and why did he spread the "Rooskies" yarn? Who are his associates? Who are these mysterious "foreign intelligence officials" who provided Shaw with his so-called evidence?

The closer you look into these areas, the murkier they become.

As we noted in a previous post, whispers of scandal swirled around Shaw (who previously held top jobs in the Reagan and Bush administrations) earlier this year. What kind of whispers? Allegations of profiteering in Iraqi. Steering no-bid business toward favored companies. Weird undercover assignments. That sort of thing.

Well, hell -- in this war, who hasn't?

But: An L.A. Times story strongly hints that Shaw's "enabler" in all this was Joseph E. Schmitz, the inspector general of the Department of Defense. Some of us have been keeping an eye on Schmitz, who runs the "internal affairs" division of a DOD plagued by these recurrent claims of profiteering and dubious intelligence -- not to mention those nasty little prison abuse scandals.

Some of us, in fact, have been keeping an eye on the whole Schmitz family, as I have since the 1970s.

It's a strange clan. If a Tennessee Williams had grown up in Southern California's Orange County, Congressman John "Big Daddy" Schmitz and his brood might have inspired some truly feverish drama.

An admirer of McCarthy and a leading proponent of far-right conspiracy theories (even the local John Birchers eventually decided that he was too wacky), the elder John Schmitz was the American Independent party candidate for president, running under the slogan "If you're out of Schmitz, you're out of gear." His outbursts -- anti-Semitic snarlings, calls for a military coup -- fetched him ink on a regular basis.

Alas, his glorious political career ended in 1982, when his secrets spilled all over the front pages -- lurid stories about a mistress, a second family, and an infant with a mutilated penis.

John the paterfamilias hated the Bush family -- a classic "Cowboy-vs.-Yankee" reaction one might expect from the fellow who wrote the introduction for None Dare Call it Conspiracy. Even so, one of his sons, John P. Schmitz, became counsel to George Bush the elder throughout his presidency and much of his vice-presidency. His sister, Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher, made the news when she became pregnant by a 13-year-old student, whom she called one of the two "remarkable men" in her life, the other being her father.

Joseph Schmitz is the other noteworthy sibling (not counting the one with the mutilated penis; I have no idea what happened to him). A member of the Knights of Malta, the Federalist Society, the American Council on Germany and something ominously titled the American Security Network, Joseph Schmitz led the effort to keep the blame for the Abu Ghraib abuses restricted to the lower levels. (Considering his family, I doubt that he considered the photos a very big deal.)

One can say much about Joseph's tenure as the DOD's inspector general, but let us now bring our tale back to Jack Shaw, the man in the news.

Shaw has denied financial links to Qualcomm and Lucent, the companies benefiting from the deals he made. Even so, he did go to some rather extreme lengths to make sure other companies didn't get the sweetheart contracts. As the L.A. Times investigation noted:

John A. "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said.

Needless to say, this bit of James Bond-ing is not the sort of behavior one expects from an undersecretary of defense. To be frank, I've never heard of a man in his position doing anything of this sort.

Later, we read:

Shaw justified his investigations under a special agreement with
the Pentagon inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz...

Shaw frequently cited the agreement in his dealings with reporters and the military, telling them it allowed him to "wear an IG hat" to conduct investigations. In a recent letter to the inspector general, he said the agreement gave him "broad investigatory authority."

That contention is the subject of dispute, however. The agreement states that Shaw "may recommend" that the inspector general initiate audits, evaluations, investigations and inquiries, but it does not appear to give him investigative powers.

"Jack Shaw was never authorized to do any kind of investigation or auditing on his own," said one source close to Schmitz. "The agreement was not for that. He's trying to cram more authority into that agreement than it gives him."

Despite these words, the DOD exonerated Shaw of all wrongdoing.

Thus, the office which provided Shaw with the cover for his skullduggery was also the office tasked with investigating him -- and the office which cleared him. The man who ran that office, the man who had an "agreement" with Shaw, was the notable Joseph Schmitz.

Since Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Shaw appear to be quite close, perhaps Schmitz can now tell us just which "foreign intelligence service" provided Shaw with documents (still unseen by anyone other than Shaw) purporting to demonstrate Russian involvement in the the Al Qaqaa disaster. Why was this one undersecretary of defense the only one to receive such startling material? Why not the CIA? Why not anyone at the DIA? Why hasn't anyone else verified it?

And just what are Shaw's relations with those unnamed foreign intelligence officials?

Startling new 9/11 claim

The FBI says that no-one ever recovered any of the "black boxes" aboard the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center. But eyewitnesses claim otherwise, according to this report in the Philadelphia News.

Al Qaqaa, Drudge, Moon, "Jack" Shaw, Nick Berg, Mossad -- AIEEE!

As you may know from the post below -- or from the latest by Joshua Marshall -- Drudge and the Moonie Times have tried to blame the Al Qaqaa "missing explosives" debacle on those damned Russkies, who supposedly transported tons of the stuff to Syria before the Americans showed up.

I've already discussed why I consider this idea ludicrous. Why do we even bother to fund our spy satellite program if our eyes-in-the-sky can't spot a massive arms convoy?

The Iraqis also scoff at the "blame Russia" gambit. Iraqis who were on the scene after the 3rd infantry division rolled into town say that the site was unprotected and open to mass looting. Chief Iraqi scientist Dr. Muhammad Sharaa discounts the idea of the material disappearing before the invasion.

It's worth noting that even Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon's spokesman, has shied away from the version of events promoted by the Moon press.

But the story gets stranger. The Washington Times article quotes as its primary source John "Jack" Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security. And this is not the first time Shaw has found his way into the news this year.

In an earlier controversy, Shaw did not emerge as a fire-breathing neocon ideologue. Instead, he presented us with a contradictory picture.

Note, for example, this excerpt from a piece by Wayne Madsen:

According to Pentagon and Justice Department sources, U.S. investigators discovered that Ahmad Chalabi and his business partners were involved in fraudulently obtaining cellular phone licenses in Iraq. The Pentagon's Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security John (Jack) Shaw smelled a neo-con rat when the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), in late 2003, awarded cellular phone contracts to three companies - Orascom, Atheer, and Asia-Cell - with ties to Ahmed Chalabi. As with all those who challenge the impropriety and illegal activities of the neo-cons, Shaw was, in turn, charged with improperly steering Iraq cell phone contracts to Qualcomm and Lucent. However, it is Shaw, reported by his longtime colleagues to be a solid and trustworthy public servant, who has the confidence of law enforcement, Pentagon investigators, and the military brass.

That sounds like a ringing endorsement of Mr. Shaw.

However, the story has more than one side. Regarding Shaw's ties to these Iraq contracts, L.A. Times writer T. Christian Miller presented another angle on July 7 of this year:

A senior Defense Department official conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients, according to current and former Pentagon officials and documents.

John A. "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said.

In that investigation, Shaw found problems with operations at the port of Umm al Qasr, Pentagon sources said. In another, he criticized a competition sponsored by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to award cellphone licenses in Iraq.

In both cases, Shaw urged government officials to fix the alleged problems by directing multimillion-dollar contracts to companies linked to his friends, without competitive bidding, according to the Pentagon sources and documents. In the case of the port, the clients of a lobbyist friend won a no-bid contract for dredging.

The Department of Defense later exonerated Shaw, and claimed that he was never even under investigation regarding the telecommunications contracts.

I'm probably going way out on a limb here -- but perhaps we should note that telecommunications specialist Nick Berg was in Iraq at the same time Shaw was conducting his bizarre undercover "investigation." We never did learn why the American military arrested Berg, or why he acted so mysteriously in the period between his release and his re-capture by terrorists.

I have argued at some length (as have others) that Berg may have himself been involved with espionage.

Even if we discount that angle, the fact remains: "Jack" Shaw (as most know him) is an intriguing fellow. He's not friendly with the pro-Chalabi neocons (the Ledeen faction) or with the Halliburton crowd. He seems to have a separate agenda.

So why is Shaw now pushing a dubious scenario about Russkies making off with tons of explosives? Where did he get his info?

Let's take a closer look at the Washington Times piece...

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons...

Ah. And just which foreign intel service provided this material?

Perhaps I will get into trouble for mentioning this, but Qualcomm and Lucent (the two firms Shaw allegedly helped) have strong ties to Israel. And that nation defnitely counts Syria as an enemy. (For what little it may be worth, Shaw's name also came up -- though not in a very comprehensible way -- in the course of a story involving Israel's use, or misuse, of the infamous PROMIS software.)

Back to the Washington Times article. The piece goes on to speak of "documents" which have come into Shaw's hands, apparently from those very same enigmatic "foreign intelligence officials." Although the documents purportedly detail itineraries and cargo lists, I've yet to see any indication that they have been verified by anyone outside Shaw's office.

Unverified documents. Questionable data relayed via unnamed foreign intel spy shops. The conservative press pushing a dubious story. A possible Israeli connection.

Y'know, these details remind me of a movie I've seen before...

A movie set in Niger. The title, if I recall correctly, was "Yellowcake."

Hate politics: Blaming the messenger

Let me here discuss something I should have dealt with a while back. This is a recent piece which discusses the bulge, and how blogs helped bring the story to the public's attention. Not a bad article, until we get to this zinger:

Bloggers also served as a truth squad when CBS News was duped with phony documents about Bush's National Guard service. Bloggers quickly spotted the computer-age typography in documents that were purported to be from a Vietnam- era typewriter.

"Truth squad" my ass.

Those documents were never proven false, although I suspect that they are. (And let me say for the five zillionth time that Rather should not have gone on the air with documents of questionable provenance.) However, as I have pointed out many times, they were not created with a computer -- at least not with Microsoft Word, and not in the fashion claimed by right-wing bloggers.

You can prove it yourself. Fire up Word, type in a few words including the "th" superscript, and note its position in relation to the rest of the line. Now compare that result to what you see on the CBS docs. Look closely.

David Hailey, an expert in questioned documents, made this very point -- and many similar points -- in his detailed analysis, which you can read here.

I've pointed you to the pdf version of his piece. His work used to exist as an HTML page, but guess what? On the old URL for that page, you now find this message:

Hackers have consistently invaded this site, modifying and/or removing images. I have elected to close it down, but have a map (above) to the PDF version of this report.

Rightists became so pissed off at Hailey's exemplary work that they resorted to threats, name-calling, utterly deceptive counter-arguments -- and now, it seems, to computer hacking.

Looks like our conservative friends just cannot tolerate a fair and open debate when it goes against their interests. Once again, our "Christian" opposition has proven its willingness to fight filthy.

And that's how some of their most beloved lies -- e.g., the computer origin of the Rather docs, or the "Russkies-did-it" explanation of the Al QaQaa disaster -- become part of this country's agreed-upon mythology.

Moon's "cover-up"

I haven't discussed the nonsense about Al Qaqaa that we've been hearing from the rightists, because Josh Marshall, Kos and the others are doing such a terrific job on that front. But I just saw the latest from Drudge -- who now claims, by way of the Moonie Times, that those pesky Russkies carted the mysteriously-missing exposives off to Syria before American troops showed up.

Puh-LEASE.

Are we to believe that a massive Russian force could enter Iraq, carry off tons of equipment, and convoy it off to Syria -- without our knowledge? Even though we had spy satellites? And UAVs? Even though we controlled the airspace? And had weapons inspectors crawling all over the country?

Not bloody likely!

You know what this situation reminds me of? During the invasion, we heard all sorts of disinformation stories, and many of those fairy tales concerned Iraq getting help of some sort from Russia and Syria. Remember the yarn about those night vision goggles? There were about half-a-dozen dubious allegations of that sort floating around...

These tales always had a common origin: A "high official" would spin fables to one of the usual conservative propaganda outlets (Fox, the Washington Times, Drudge), and from there the lie would spread to the rest of the all-too-gullible media. Many viewers and readers didn't notice when these bits-of-buncombe were later discredited.

If the trick worked once, why not work it again?

This time, I hope, the mainstream media have wised up.

And now I've got to run outside and watch another Moon cover-up -- this one involving a telescope. My astronomy-buff girlfriend will howl at me it I miss it...

Presidential Precedent: New info?

Bulge-watchers have spent the past week or so finding new ways to look at old evidence. That situation may soon change.

I have just received private word from someone in a position to know that a former president also used a "wire," in much the same way alleged in the case of G.W. Bush.

Obviously, any evidence that other presidents have used such a device would go a long ways toward credibilizing the accusations against Dubya. And that, in turn, might well give this story new life -- perhaps even "front page" life.

Which, coming right before the election, could create an interesting situation.

Right now, this angle needs firming up -- and, preferably, multiple sourcing. I'll be trying to do that job in the next few days. In the meantime...watch this space! And pass along the word that something may be coming.

You will also want to check out David Lindorff's latest. Great work, as always.

Simpson versus Bush

I was going to post something on the Ashlee Simpson brouhaha and its paralleles to the Bush "earpiece" story. Then a reader sent this "open letter" to my mailbox. Maybe I should share it (in pertinent part; I've clipped some bits which talk about Bill O'Reilly) with you folks...

An Open letter to Keith Oberman of MSNBC.

...the thing I would really take you to task for is you long and caustic attach on Ashlee Simpson. I don't like her style much either but she's a child. Is it really appropriate to launch such a caustic attack on a child when you have given the President of the United States a free ride on his Mili-Vanilli act?

If you want to show me what you are really made of, let's give that much acid and airtime to George W's wearing of a wire in the Presidential debates.

Dear God. We are comparing a adolescent's sore throat (or stage fright) to the future of the world as we know it with a President's badly tailored shirt (or inability to answer the opposition when competing for the trust of the world's most powerful nation...

If there has ever been a true case of "so what" it's a young woman lip syncing on SNL.

If there has ever been an appalling situation, it has to be a media that winks and giggles when the President of the United States lip syncs in the Presidential debates.

If you have balls to kick a kid, please show me that you can act like a real journalist with a (sort of) full grown President...

Every media outlet that trashes Ashlee Simpson while giving our "President" a pass should scrape themselves out of the gutter and flush themselves into permanent obscurity.

More on Florida vote fraud

Lots of stuff to post today, and I have little time to do it. I may be able to get on later tonight, fortunately... Until then, bear with me if I do not spell-check.

The story you are about to read may signal a change in history. I kid (as Jack Paar used to say) thee not:

Broward County Florida 58,000 missing absentee ballots. Sun-Sentinal
Oct 27

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office pointed a finger at
the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday for nearly 60,000 missing absentee
ballots, but took the blame for having a phone system that was being
overwhelmed by calls from frustrated voters.

While the post office denied responsibility for the missing ballots,
Broward County commissioners, anxious to avoid another failed election,
offered to send county employees to help with the phones.

Just six days away from the general election, the Supervisor of
Elections Office has fielded hundreds of complaints from people that have yet
to receive their absentee ballot. Countless more have been unable to
get through to election officials to complain or get their questions
answered.

"I tried for the last week or so to call the elections office and it's
just busy continually," said Paula Zubatkin, 70, whose four-week-old
request for an absentee ballot has gone unanswered. "I want to vote."

Election officials also said they launched an investigation and found
that many of the missing ballots -- 58,000 of them -- were sent on Oct.
7 and Oct 8. The problem, they say, lies with the post office.

"That is something beyond our control," Deputy Supervisor of Elections
Gisela Salas said. "We really have no idea what's going on. It's just
taken an extraordinary amount of time. It's really inexplicable at this
point in time and the matter is under investigation by law
enforcement."

Post office officials say they are not at fault.

Devilish "Christians"

A lot of good stories about the religious right -- the zombies supporting Bush -- have appeared recently. But this piece demands attention.

Today "bulges" with news

Many come to this blog for updates on the "bulge" story -- and a lot has happened on that front (if "front" is the right word). The major data-dump can be found a couple of posts below, so scroll down. (Or better still, read the posts on vote fraud.) You'll also want to see the latest from Doonesbury -- funny, funny stuff.

I've heard rumors of an MSNBC investigation (which I've yet to see online) which allegedly debunks the bulge as a perceptual trick, because highlighting or sidelighting outlines the thing in some shots and not in others. As any photographer knows, "flat" lighting can also hide freckles and wrinkles. That doesn't meant these imperfections physically disappear.

The new "lighting the menorah" bulge photo (scroll down for the link) is unmistakable -- and the lighting is very, very flat. No trickery here!

Smile! You're on "Karl" camera!

Those who doubt my previous post on G.O.P. election-fraud strategies should take a look at this important story:

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals...

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

The BBC story comes to us via the remarkable Greg Palast, who found the incriminating lists. Palast also includes this noteworthy bit of Sherlock Holmes-ing:

In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.

The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.

On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimidate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.

Also on the Florida front: 58,000 absentee ballots intended for Broward county (a county which could put Kerry over the edge) have gone "mysteriously" missing. Just an accident. Purely an accident.

Wreck the vote -- left and right

Have you noticed the pattern? When Democrats complain of election fraud, they refer to such matters as stolen absentee ballots, trashed registration forms, faked-up "felon" lists or outright voter intimidation. Mere accusations? Nope -- proven facts. (If you doubt, just follow the links in related stories below.)

When Republicans complain, they usually refer to two things: Vandalized election offices and improperly filled-out registration forms.

Drudge links to one "vandal" story today -- an incident in the small town of Hollister, California. (Where the cited newspaper has just endorsed Kerry, incidentally.)

Think for a moment: Vandalization of this sort could be done by anyone. The results do not benefit Kerry in any way. To the contrary: Such dirty work can only help Bush, since these incidents foment rage against Democrats.

We've already seen hard proof (the Parlock tale; see earlier posts) that Republicans have staged "attacks" against themselves in order to rally their troops and to demonize the opposition.

Simple logic and past experience inform us who is really responsible for the rash of office attacks and stolen signs. Let us now apply the same logic to the other big Republican complaint: According to their propaganda, fraudulent voter registration forms have "flooded" into state offices.

If rightists can point to just one instance of (say) a registration form filled out in the name of a dead person, they can justify placing Republican "guards" at polling places, where they will intimidate likely Democratic voters. (As the movie said: "You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.")

These "guards" will issue dire warnings of stiff jail sentences if potential voters do not cough up two forms of identification -- which poor people usually don't carry. That's why they use check-cashing stores instead of banks.

Even rumors of improper Democratic registration forms (and so far, rumor is all we have) will provide an excuse for election-day thuggishness.

Republican strategists know the power of rumor. Remember how effectively they used the myth of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen? Unproven allegations that Democrats have registered cadavers serve much the same purpose.

And even these allegations turn out to be backed by proof in a few instances -- who to blame? Better question: cui bono? Who benefits? Only Republicans will benefit -- because what they really want is an excuse to send out the stormtroopers.

Peeling away the conspiracy

On ABC's "Good Morning America," W finally offered up an explanation for the bulge:

Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "

Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "

Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Gibson: "It was the shirt?"

Bush: "Yeah, absolutely."

Very funny.

But I don't think anyone's going to buy into this explanation. Take a look at the latest bulge photo, available here, on the official White House web site. He's lighting a menorah.

Go ahead. Try to convince me that that's a "poorly-tailored shirt." Try to convince any sane person of such an outrageous proposition. I've worn a lot of badly-fitting shirts in my time (because resolutions to eat healthily alternate with a life-long love for a good bowl of chili), but I've never encountered one that did anything like that.

Apologists are already claiming that the president is wearing a bullet proof vest in this photo. Come on. Is W really so insecure that he feels the need to wear a bullet-prooof vest in the White House, just to meet a few Jewish kids?

And some folks call me paranoid!

People often compare conspiracy stories to the layers of an onion. Never has the analogy proven more apt. At first, the White House blamed the French hobbit who made Bush's jacket. When that didn't work, W blamed his shirt. When that story fails to stick, he may mutter something about a "bad t-shirt." Finally, of course, we will hear vague references to an unusual skin condition...

You'll appreciate what David Lindorff has to say about this...

So now we know, if we didn't know it already, that the White House is lying.

They're getting away with it because, except for Gibson, nobody in the mainstream press that tags around after the president is pressing him on it, much less investigating the matter more aggressively by trying to get sources from inside the president's camp to come forward.

They're getting away with it because, as one reporter who has contacted friends in many of the major news outlets has been told, the mainstream press won't go after this story "because the Kerry camp hasn’t made it an issue."

Get that: the media cannot go after a story about a candidate unless the other candidate makes it an issue. Now there's a wimpy new answer to the question: what is news?

Oh, but the situation gets worse.

As noted earlier, certain rightists have fastened onto the notion that the "bulge" story is a canard spread by Kerry forces, as opposed to lone-wolf sonsabitches like yours truly. So: Let's all blame Kerry for the "invention" of this story -- and let's all blame Kerry because the story does not receive more serious attention.

It's raining in Los Angeles right now. I suppose we can blame Kerry for that, as well.

The bulge: A good illustration

Some wonder why I make a huge deal of the "bulge" story. After all, our boys are dying in Iraq -- isn't that more important?

Indeed so. But debate cheating is no small matter, and neither is presidential idiocy. Neither is a hidden medical problem -- a theory arguably buttressed by the President's recent surprise trip to Crawford (at this time...!).

You may want to download this image (it'll work nicely as a windshield broadsheet) which another researcher put together. I'm a little stunned by the sight of Bush's tailor, the wonderfully-named Georges de Paris. How did Gimli get hold of Gandalf's wig? (For more on this topic, scroll down.)

Wreck the vote

A brand new ABC poll tells us that most Americans feel that we won't know who the new president will be on election night.

Who can blame them for being cynical? With each passing day -- hell, each passing hour -- we receive a clearer picture of a nationwide conservative plot to crush all hopes of a fair vote. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now has devoted an eye-opening segment to this issue.

A round-up of a few recent warning signs:

Maine: Evelyn Smith, the Registrar of voters in Rockland, advertises her distaste for Bill Clinton and the Democratic party, although she refuses to post the required notification of voters' rights. She stands of accused of improperly refusing to acknowledge voter registration cards from people in nursing homes.

New Mexico: Voters in one county were given absentee ballots in envelopes marked "June 1."

Michigan and Ohio: A judge ruled against Democratic lawyers who wanted to count votes for federal office accidentally cast in the wrong precinct. Also see this excellent piece in Buzzflash. These rulings defy Federal law (the "Help America Vote Act"), which requires states to collect provisional ballots and try to verify them.

Pennsylvania: a "block the vote" scandal is shaking the city of brotherly love. Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel, a huge power among that state's Republicans, offered this chilling quote: "The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down." Expect challenges to every possible registered Democrat.

Florida (The horror! The horror!): This CBS analysis offers the best investigation yet -- at least by a mainstream news org -- of the perils of compu-voting. If you want to know why I consider Florida an unwinnable one-party state, look no further. Also:

Decisions by Republican election officials that could disqualify many newly registered voters based on what some consider technicalities. For instance, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, an elector for Bush in 2000, has ordered county election officials in that state to reject registration forms from voters who failed to check a citizenship status box, even if they signed a statement at the bottom affirming their U.S. citizenship.

One of the more troubling signs: Conservative propagandists have tried to whip up false fear that Democrats are using fraudulent tactics. See, for example, Phyllis Schlafly's extraordinary love letter to the paperless ballot.

Why has this become the new reactionary meme? Because the GOP's vote-stealing efforts have become so obvious, so outrageous, that the spinsters need to find ways of making the electorate think: "Yeah, well, both sides are doing it -- it all evens out."

To prove the point, check out this piece by New Hampshire conservative Jonah Goldberg:

The report that a firm in Nevada allegedly tore up the registration forms of Democrats and Independents is just one small example of how both sides play games with the rules.

No, Johnny-boy. It's an example of Republican racketeering. Tearing up registration forms is a crime, not a "game."

There is no equivalence between the parties on this issue. When Democrats talk about vote fraud, they refer to things like fake "election workers" picking up absentee ballots from the homes of elderly blacks -- and yes, just such tactics have been used. Conversely:

...when Republicans talk about "voter fraud," they are typically not talking about illegal voters or ballot-box stuffing, but about perfectly eligible voters who fail to figure out and overcome official acts of incompetence or malice, such as complicated ballots and registration forms, voter registrar errors, or poorly advertised changes in polling places.

If you're concerned about this issue (and if you're not, you're nuts), the "Fair Election" web site and the Voting Rights Project site suggests how you can take action.

More on Bush's interpreter, the bulge, 9/11, and conspiracy

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.

Interesting bulge stuff...

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.

Vote fraud! America is the new Florida

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.

"Second voice" heard during debate? You be the judge...

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!)

More on Bush cocaine story?

"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!

Why do American Christians love death?

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.

Drudge links to a "Wiregate" story...finally!

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.

Them gold-durn Rosicrucians is at it again...!

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.

"Smoking video" of Bush being prompted?

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???

Bulge stuff

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!

October Surprises and Iran -- it's a tradition

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!

Can AP rig the vote?

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.

Can a Kerry Justice Department bring a RICO suit against the Republican Party?

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.

How did Osama escape?

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?

Polls and cel phones

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!

Carlton Sherwood -- LIAR

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.

And maybe they're removing "bulge" shots as well?

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...?

We could go to war...but it would be wrong

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.

I'm learning how to spell "defibrillator"

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?

How you can win the battle of "the bulge"

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.