Trump, Vote Rigging and the Series of Suspicious Deaths
Intro The Ukrainian presidential elections in 2004 where mired in corruption and violence, the country was on fire. The pro European opposition candidate narrowly lost to the pro Russia oligarch Victor Yanukovych whose overthrow in 2015 led to the bloody conflict in Ukraine and and a new cold war between Russia and the West.
What's been overlooked is how there are some familiar some of these faces are in the Republican campaigns of 2004,2008 and 2016.
Helping Yanukovych's Presidential campaign where some major GOP linked groups, these included:
3eDC: a lobbying firm run Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. The pair have engaged in number of shady ventures over the years involving lobbying and political consulting. Stone was a key figure in the Watergate scandal.
New Media Communications:: run by CEO Mike Connell, who was accused of rigging GOP elections
Integrated Web Strategy:: another Connell affiliated company that works with Chamber of Commerce Institute of Legal Reform, which has been found by courts to have engaged in illegal election manipulations
Campaign Solutions:: run by Mike Connell's wife, Becki Donatelli
Airnet Group:, parent company of Smartech Corporation, owned by Jeff Averbeck, which was employed by Mike Connell in the controversial diversion of the state of Ohio's official vote prior to certification of a contested majority favoring George Bush over Democratic opponent John Kerry.
Dynology Corp:, which has a heavily military client list: "a majority of our staff hold security clearances that allow access to Secret and Top Secret classified government information."
U.S 2004 Presidential election In December 2008 IT expert Mike Connell was killed in a plane Crash in Akron Ohio days before he was due to testify in lawsuit into vote rigging.
His notes,phone and laptop have never been recovered.
The nature of the assistance given to GOP's operative during the time is also suspicious the Bush white house used a private email server (sound familiar?) and private email addresses for the president and other senior Republicans millions of these emails where lost before
More recently allegations have surfaced about the way the voting machines Ohio where set up and their apparently lax security which could have led to vote counts being altered.
New Media communications also IT support for the Bush and McCain campaigns.
Connell's wife owns Donatelli group which also was also linked to voting controversies in Florida 2004 election to do with election machine software effecting the vote counts. Florida was/is a key swing state, which Bush won by a very small margin that year despite exit polls showing wins for Kerry.
Roger Stone helped spread a false rumour that elections officials in Florida where interfering with the vote recountprompting protesters to storm the offices where the recount was taking place. Stone had been sent to Florida on the express orders of senior Republicans.
CBS (2008): Beginning as a political campaign worker and congressional staffer, Connell became a key Republican media consultant who developed Internet strategies for the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney campaigns. He was founder and CEO of Cleveland-based New Media Communications, which built Web sites for President Bush and former presidential nominee John McCain, according to the company's Web site. He was also chief IT consultant for Karl Rove.
Connell's ties to the Bush family extend back to working on campaigns for George H.W. Bush and former Fla. Governor Jeb Bush, for whom he built the campaign site jeb.org. In 1999 he told the Cleveland magazine Inside Business, "I'm loyal to my network, I'm loyal to my friends, and I'm loyal to the Bush family."
He was also quoted as saying, when asked to predict the Internet's role in the upcoming presidential race, "There are things we will be doing on Election Day that haven't even been dreamt of yet."
The rise of the Republican Party in Washington in the '90s, and especially after the 2000 election, meant that Connell's network of connections was expanding as well. Having worked with Ohio Congressman Bob Ney and Governor Bob Taft, Connell's IT skills were sought after for the campaigns and Congressional sites for dozens of GOP candidates and officeholders. The New Media Communications Web site (now turned off, with a memorial to Connell in its place) boasted, "New Media's client list reads like a 'Who's Who' of Republican politics."
In 2000, Connell co-founded with his wife Heather GovTech Solutions to pursue government contracts.
GovTech's clients for databases, content management systems and other services included the White House, the Energy Department, several Republican-led Congressional committees and a few dozen congressional members' Web sites.
The Center for Public Integrity reported that in 2002 and 2004, the General Services Administration allowed federal agencies to purchase services directly from GovTech without a full bidding process. In 2004 Connell helped form an online advertising firm called Connell Donatelli, which administered the Web site for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a 527 developed to attack Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Connell's central role in building the IT infrastructure of the White House and his association with Karl Rove has brought him into the controversy surrounding missing White House e-mails relating to the firing of U.S. Attorneys and other topics, and the fate of e-mail communications sent by Rove and other administration staffers which were sent via a Republican Party Web site, gwb43.com, rather than through a whitehouse.gov address.
Connell built the gwb43.com site, which shares mail servers with GovTech.
Connell's Internet expertise also led him to be subpoenaed earlier this year to testify in an Ohio federal court regarding alleged voter fraud in the 2004 election. Despite exit polls showing a lead by Democratic nominee John Kerry of more than 4 percent, Mr. Bush won the state's vote by 2.5 percent, along with its crucial electoral votes.
Much has been written about problems at the polls in Ohio that year, where voters in many (predominantly Democratic) precincts were forced to wait hours because of a shortage of working voting machines. A lawsuit being pursued by attorney Clifford Arneback seeks to answer questions about this and other ballot problems. [For example, in Franklin County Mr. Bush received 4,258 votes in a precinct where only 638 voters cast ballots.]
Questions have also been raised about how votes from Ohio counties were tabulated. Computer expert Stephen Spoonamore, a Republican who works in detecting fraud in network architecture and protecting computer infrastructures, has testified that the
Ohio election returns he saw were indicative of a "KingPin Attack," in which a computer is inserted into the communications flow of an IT system, with the intent to change data as it passes to its destination. It was later learned that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's office had routed Internet traffic from county election offices through out-of-state servers based at SMARTech in Chattanooga, Tenn. SMARTech hosts dozens of GOP Web domains. Last month, U.S. Judge Soloman Oliver refused Connell's request to quash a subpoena connected to the lawsuit, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, and demanded his testimony relating to his IT work.
In [a previous] his deposition given in November, Connell denied any knowledge of vote rigging.
The Ukraine connection Sydney Morning Herald (2004): Pens filled with disappearing ink. Hospital patients forced to vote in exchange for treatment. Students instructed to show their ballots to professors.
These are just some of the tricks used to skew Ukraine's disputed presidential election, observers say.
As the Supreme Court grappled for a third day today with the country's spiralling election crisis, legal experts, election monitors, and politicians said it could take weeks to unravel the knot of irregularities.
The Central Election Commission declared Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich the winner of the November 21 runoff for the presidency with a margin of 3 per cent - or some 880,000 votes - ahead of the top opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. International observers noted numerous election flaws and described them as blatantly counter to Ukrainian laws and international standards. Those allegations are the basis of the case the opposition has presented to the Supreme Court asking it to name Yushchenko the winner.
The examples filed to the Supreme Court focus on eight eastern and southern regions with more than 15 million votes, almost half of the total cast in the runoff.
Yushchenko's lawyers and observers pointed to turnout figures that exceeded 127 per cent in some precincts. Observers mainly attributed this to pro-Yanukovich activists who travelled across the country and voted many times as absentees.
"You can achieve 127 per cent ... if you have several well-organised groups to travel around," said Peter Novotny, the head of the 1,000-strong observer mission of the European Network of Election Monitors, who described the vote as "an outright fraud."
Prison officials were reported to have forced inmates to vote for the government candidate. One Western observer who spoke on condition of anonymity said some hospital patients were told to vote for a specific candidate if they wanted treatment.
Students said they were stripped of their right to a secret ballot, or face the loss of privileges.
"We had to, or we could have lost our rooms on campus" said Serhiy, a student from Yanukovich's eastern stronghold of Donetsk, who only gave his first name for fear of reprisals.
Ukraine's opposition has produced transcripts of telephone conversations between pro-Yanukovich officials, allegedly taped by Ukraine's Security Service, that purportedly document vote-rigging. One exchange, published on the Ukrayinska Pravda Web site, went like this:
Official 1: "Why is the voting rate in the Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk regions so low?"
Official 2: "We're increasing it now."
Official 1: "Don't drag things out."
In the Ukrainian election similar allegations where made with regards to vote rigging where made when tapes where released of Yanjkoich discussing tampering with ballots
The opposition leader at the time called the election 'rigged'.
Suspicions where aroused when exit polls and final vote tallies turned widely different the same issue that alarmed voters in the U.S the same year.
Bloomberg (2017): Jim Slattery arrived at the Stalin-era presidential headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, with an unusual gift for the nation’s strongman leader: a bust of Abraham Lincoln.
What Slattery didn’t know was that another American operative was helping the president defend the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko, an act widely condemned in the Western world.
His name: Paul Manafort, future presidential campaign manager for Donald Trump. Today, Manafort sits at the center of the concentric circles of worry and suspicion over what President Trump has called “this Russia thing.” What began with questions about Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has Democrats, and even some Republicans, now warning of Trump’s Watergate.
Until recently, Manafort had receded into the background as the uproar over Trump’s firing of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and then the FBI director, James Comey, began to shake the White House.
But the Manafort story—a tale of pro-Russia players, political tradecraft and cunning financial maneuvers—has never gone away. The reason, in a word, is money. Manafort, who less than a year ago was playing a central role in the Trump campaign, made millions of dollars over a decade promoting Kremlin-friendly interests in Ukraine and beyond. No other Trump associate has profited as handsomely from ties to Russia-linked businessmen and politicians.
In the decade before he worked for Trump, Manafort’s efforts did for Moscow what its finest political minds had failed to do: help get a pro-Russian candidate installed in Kiev. It culminated in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the revival of Cold War tensions, Western sanctions on Russia’s energy and banking sectors and Russia’s campaign to get those sanctions removed. Manafort, 68, had claimed Yanukovych was the one Ukrainian who could lead his country closer to the West at a pace Putin could stand, according to Dan Fried, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for the region which includes Ukraine. But that proved false.
Manafort, who denies any contact with Russian government officials, never registered as a lobbyist for a foreign government for his Ukrainian work. His spokesman said Manafort had “received formal guidance recently from the authorities” on registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for some of his work, none of which, he contended, was for the Russian government.
Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating what they call a “criminal organization” set up by Yanukovych via bribes and theft of state assets before he fled to Moscow after the killing of more than 100 protesters in 2014, and they are looking at what role Manafort may have played in the suspected scheme. They’ve repeatedly asked the FBI for help to question Manafort as part of their inquiry into a New York law firm in connection to a report that largely defended the Tymoshenko prosecution.
“We’re waiting for a response,” says Serhiy Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s head of special prosecutions, his desk piled high with papers.
For Manafort—who resigned from the Trump campaign after six months amid reports of his work in Ukraine—ties to pro-Russian politicians go back to 2005. He played a key role in transforming Yanukovych, who was convicted in his youth of robbery and assault, into a popular candidate who clinched the presidency in 2010.
“Manafort raised very sensitive issues to spin Yanukovych more effectively,” says Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament. “He used damaging techniques to divide Ukrainian society and help Putin to achieve a simple goal.” Manafort, who speaks neither Russian nor Ukrainian, developed a close working relationship with Yanukovych, discussing—through an interpreter—politics and strategy during sauna sessions and tennis matches at the opulent Mezhyhirya palace, according to a person who worked on Yanukovych’s election campaigns.
In the five-year period from 2007 to 2012, Manafort was paid at least $12.7 million, according to a handwritten Party of Regions ledger found later in its head office. Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau and the FBI are investigating whether the ledger reflected any illegal payments to Manafort and to others. Manafort’s spokesman says that after being paid he had many expenses and so the payment figure does not represent profit. One payment to Manafort on the ledger matches an invoice he signed in 2009 to sell $750,000 of computers to a Belize-registered company called Neocom Systems Ltd., according to documents obtained by Leshchenko from Manafort’s Kiev office.
Belize is investigating. Doug Singh, who runs International Corporate Services (ICS), which registered Neocom in 2007, says he’s received multiple requests for records from Belize’s Financial Intelligence Unit, which investigates money laundering. Belize authorities declined further comment. Evgeniy Kaseev, listed as a director of Neocom, couldn’t be reached for comment. Manafort’s spokesman disputed the authenticity of the invoice and said Manafort is unfamiliar with it.
Manafort’s contacts with pro-Russian politicians go beyond Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Viktor Medvedchuk said he met Manafort in 2014. Medvedchuk is so close to the Kremlin that Putin is godfather to his daughter and he is under U.S. sanctions because of his role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. In a written response to questions, he said of Manafort that he was “the best, both among foreign and domestic political consultants. The events of the past year in the United States have only strengthened my opinion.” He said he had not had contact with Manafort since then. Manafort’s spokesman confirmed the 2014 meeting but said he didn’t recall interacting with Medvedchuk directly.
Even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and Yanukovych fled to Russia, Manafort returned to Ukraine 17 times, earning at least $1 million to help reelect pro-Russia politicians, according to a party official who worked with him. Manafort’s spokesman declined to comment on that payment.
The idea of working in Ukraine first came to Manafort in 2004 from Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who controls aluminum producer Rusal, according to a person familiar with the situation. Ukraine was in the throes of the Orange Revolution—protests over allegations of electoral fraud in Yanukovych’s November 2004 victory. The Supreme Court ordered a new election. Manafort’s then-partner, Rick Davis, went to Kiev and concluded it was too late to help. Yanukovych’s pro-Western rival Viktor Yushchenko won. Manafort Timeline: March 2006 - Helps Party of Regions win parliamentary elections, paving the way for Viktor Yanukovych to become prime minister.
January 2010 - Helps Yanukovych win the presidency.
October 2011 - Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is jailed.
November 2013 - Yanukovych terminates negotiations with the EU over Ukraine’s association agreement, sparking widespread protests.
February 2014 - More than 100 protesters are shot in Kiev’s Independence Square. Soon after, Yanukovych flees to Moscow.
March 2014 - Putin annexes Crimea. The EU and U.S. impose travel bans and asset freezes on Russian and Ukrainian officials.
October 2014 - Advises the Opposition Bloc in snap parliamentary elections, and it wins 10 percent of the vote.
April 2016 - Joins Trump’s presidential campaign. Resigns six months later.
April/May 2017 - U.S. investigators demand Manafort’s bank records. The Senate requests details of his contact with Russian officials. Manhattan prosecutors probe his real estate transactions.
Manafort arrived in 2005 to advise Ukraine’s richest man, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who was worried his business interests might be seized by President Yushchenko. That same year, Davis Manafort Partners Inc. registered a company in Moscow at an address used by more than 80 other firms. It’s unclear whether the company actually functioned, and Manafort’s spokesman said no such office was opened. While working in Ukraine, Manafort earned millions from a side private equity fund with Deripaska, according to a lawsuit by Deripaska, who is suing Manafort in the Cayman Islands over the soured business partnership. Deripaska declined to comment.
Akhmetov, then a major financial backer of the Party of Regions, asked Manafort to help Yanukovych’s 2006 parliamentary election campaign. Manafort hired as many as 40 top-flight U.S. campaign workers, some of whom later worked on the Trump campaign, including Tim Unes, who organized Trump’s rallies, and Rick Gates. Crucial to the strategy—and new to Ukraine—was research from focus groups and better polling to drive messaging. Among the issues: the rights of Russian-speakers and opposition to Ukraine’s joining NATO.
“He was going for visceral issues and an emotional reaction,” says Kateryna Yushchenko, the American-born wife of former President Viktor Yushchenko and a onetime State Department and White House official. “When I confronted his people about it, they said, ‘That’s politics.’ I said this isn’t like gun rights or abortion. Here it could lead to war.”
Even though he hired Manafort, Yanukovych retained Russian advisers from Moscow, including Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of Putin’s United Russia faction, and Sergei Glazyev, Putin’s current adviser on Ukraine, according to Taras Chornovil, a top Party of Regions official until 2008. A spokesman for Glazyev confirmed he advised Yanukovych from 2004 to 2009 but didn’t consult with Manafort.
The Party of Regions emerged from the 2006 election with the largest number of seats in parliament; Yanukovych became prime minister. His victory was short-lived, however. His political struggle with President Yushchenko resulted in elections a year later. This time Manafort ran a cookie-cutter campaign. In one ad, a Party of Regions poster showed what was purportedly a smiling blonde Ukrainian girl holding a bright yellow umbrella under the slogan “Stability and Prosperity.” In reality, Manafort’s advisers had plucked a stock photograph of an American girl.
His party did well but Yanukovych was pushed into opposition after Tymoshenko cobbled together a ruling coalition. In 2008, then-President Yushchenko announced a campaign for eventual Ukrainian membership in NATO. To exploit widespread opposition to NATO, Manafort’s team brought a truck to the parliament filled with anti-NATO balloons and instructed parliamentarians to each take one into the chamber.
Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO ended with its 2010 presidential election. With Manafort guiding him, Yanukovych won narrowly. Manafort prepared Yanukovych’s first visit as head of state to Washington that April. He advised Yanukovych to give up Ukraine’s remaining stock of highly enriched uranium, according to a person close to the situation. Ukraine had given up its nuclear weapons in 1994 and there was little sacrifice involved in yielding the uranium. But it helped Yanukovych clinch a major prize: a photo of him beaming alongside President Barack Obama.
Manafort was closely involved in recruiting the firm of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLC on behalf of the Ukrainian Justice Ministry to write a lengthy report on Tymoshenko’s prosecution. He met with Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych to go over the contract with Skadden and emailed with Skadden partner Greg Craig, according to documents uncovered by Ukrainian prosecutors. The ministry agreed to pay Skadden a mere $12,000, just below the threshold requiring it to go to a public tender. But much more money was to come to Skadden.
Manafort was prepping the Party of Regions for another parliamentary election in October 2012, bringing in Tony Fabrizio, who would later become the Trump campaign’s chief pollster. International monitors said the elections were marked by the abuse of state resources and lack of transparency in party financing.
Manafort advised Yanukovych to push ahead with an association agreement with the EU. But the EU insisted he release Tymoshenko, while Putin pressured him to abandon the deal. In November 2013, Yanukovych terminated negotiations with the EU. The move triggered widespread protests.
Months after Russia annexed Crimea, Manafort returned to Ukraine to advise the pro-Russian anti-NATO party, now known as the Opposition Bloc, for the 2014 parliamentary elections, again bringing Fabrizio on board. Nestor Shufrych, one of the party leaders, says Manafort pushed for them to be the voice of Russians in the east. Shufrych thought they had no chance but they got nearly 10 percent, with 29 seats. Manafort personally approved the list of candidates, according to another party official. Shufrych says the party paid Manafort roughly $1 million. The two celebrated over a bottle of cognac at Manafort’s Kiev office.
The new disclosures are required under a law that was passed to combat Nazi propaganda during World War II, known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The disclosure requirements are more stringent than domestic lobbying forms and include more information, including details like itemized meetings and phone calls.
Also in the filing is a flyer that the firm distributed, touting reforms to the voting process in Ukraine to make it more "free, fair and transparent." For example, one new rule increased the vote threshold a party is required to have before they could be admitted to parliament from 3 percent to 5 percent. Another nixed the option to "vote against all" on the ballot. During the contract with Mercury, Manafort also attended meetings with Paula Dobriansky, a former State Department official during the Bush administration, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Nadia Diuk, a vice president at the National Endowment for Democracy.
The disclosures also detail all the other contacts Mercury made on behalf of the Centre, including reaching out to dozens of news outlets and meeting with government officials, staffers and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, think tanks and nonprofit organizations.
The documents also bring to light details first uncovered by The Associated Press last August about what Manafort did to influence U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia.
His relationships with pro-Russia figures and work in the Trump campaign have been central to the controversy swirling around accusations that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election in Trump’s favor. Similar filings by Manafort could be forthcoming, his spokesman told The Hill earlier this month.
Even before the 2016 elections, Manafort “has been in discussions with federal authorities about the advisability of registering under FARA for some of his past political work,” said spokesman Jason Maloni.
“Mr. Manafort received formal guidance recently from the authorities and he is taking appropriate steps in response to the guidance.”
Violating FARA is considered a felony, though only a handful of prosecutions have been pursued since the law's formation. It is considered a compliance-based statute, so even filling out registration paperwork late can get firms and individuals out of trouble with the Justice Department. FARA is more broad than the LDA, and covers consulting and public relations efforts, in addition to traditional lobbying.
Mercury and the Podesta Group had been registered for the Centre under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which dictates domestic lobbying disclosure. The two firms made a total of $2.2 million during the two years of work.
Both firms had signed statements from the Centre, saying that it received no funds or support from a foreign government or party — something lawyers advised the firms would preclude them from registering under FARA.
However, following a series of AP reports that included details about how Manafort and his associate Rick Gates directed strategy while operating as advisers for the Party of Regions, the firms have decided to register with the Justice Department retroactively.
U.S 2016 Presidential election Trumps Key campaign staff Cater Page ,Paul Manafort and Roger Stone had an huge impact on Trump's political campaign in both it's message,strategy and day to day operating it's very likely these three had a key impact in shifting the GOP's position on Russian sanctions and the Ukraine crisis.
The Washington Post (2017): A 2004 article at Slate details the allegations against Yanukovych, including stuffing ballot boxes and use of police to intimidate Yushchenko supporters. The rampant fraud led to a series of protests dubbed the Orange Revolution -- and a second ballot, which Yushchenko won.
At some point over the next two years, Yanukovych hired an American consultant to help the Party of Regions in the parliamentary elections. A cable released by
Wikileaks noted the addition to Yanukovych's team.
Enjoying a lead in the polls since the fall 2005 Orange team split, ex-PM Yanukovych's Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party. Tapping the deep pockets of Donetsk clan godfather Rinat Akhmetov, Regions has hired veteran K street political help for its "extreme makeover" effort. According to the Internet news site Glavred.info, Davis, Manafort & Freedman is among the political consultants that have been hired to do the nipping and tucking.
Davis, Manafort & Freedman was, as you'd expect, Paul Manafort's firm.
Business Insider (2017): Before the GOP's national security committee meeting last July, Trump had said multiple times that he thought the West should respond more forcefully to Russian aggression.
He gave a speech in Ukraine in September 2015, at the Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting, where he said "our president is not strong and he is not doing what he should be doing for the Ukraine." He mentioned that he thought Europe should be "leading some of the charge" against Russia's aggression, too.
But his tone on Ukraine and Crimea appeared to shift after he hired Manafort to manage his campaign in April 2016, as Politico's Michael Crowley has reported.
At the end of July, for instance, Trump told ABC that "the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also." Days earlier, he had told reporters that he "would be looking at" the possibility of lifting sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea.
Manafort served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012, and he helped the Russia-friendly strongman Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency in 2010. Yanukovych was ousted on corruption charges in 2014 and fled to Russia under the protection of the Kremlin.
Secret ledgers uncovered by an anti-corruption centre in Kiev and obtained by The New York Times revealed that Yanukovych's political party, the pro-Russia Party of Regions, earmarked $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort for his work from 2007 to 2012.
Manafort has denied ever having collected the earmarked payments. But the unverified dossier on which top US leaders have been briefed alleges that Yanukovych "confided directly to Putin that he authorized kickback payments to Manafort," who "had been commercially active in Ukraine right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."
Quartz (2016): In early May 2016, the Missouri state legislature submitted a bill to the governor requiring that citizens must show photo ID in order to vote. Democrats staged an all-night filibuster opposing the measure, noting that it could potentially disenfranchise over 220,000 voters who who lack proper ID. Missouri attorney Steve Harman noted the bill would most likely affect black Missourians—11% of the population—and that it echoed the political aims of Jim Crow. As is true in most states, there has never been a case of voter fraud in Missouri history, leading many legislators to question the true intent of the law.
Missouri is known as “the bellwether state,” having voted for the winning candidate in all but one presidential election between 1904 and 2008. Obama lost the state in both elections, but in 2008, he lost by a mere 3903 votes. Imagine what that result would have looked like had 220,000 voters—among them his black Democratic base—been unable to cast their ballots.
In swing states like Missouri, voter ID laws that disenfranchise non-white voters could potentially influence the outcome of national elections. In this case, purple states like Missouri may in the future turn blazing red.
Missouri’s law will not be passed in time to impact the 2016 race.
But it is part of a growing trend of states that have passed or moved toward restrictive voter ID laws as America’s population grows increasingly diverse. In 2016, 17 states will have new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Of these states, Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin have been identified as swing states. Others are newly ambiguous: Texas, a state that has voted Republican since 1980, is now less of a sure bet. After GOP frontrunner Donald Trump proclaimed Mexicans “rapists” in the summer of 2015, applications for citizenship and voter registration among Texan Latino immigrants soared, and polls have shown a tight race. But will the new voters be able to cast their ballots? Under current regulations, an estimated 771,300 Texan Latinos, many of them recent immigrants, lack the required ID.
Buzzfeed (2017): The dead man was Scot Young. The one-time multimillionaire and fixer to the world’s super-rich had been telling friends, family, and the police for years that he was being targeted by a team of Russian hitmen – ever since his fortune vanished overnight in a mysterious Moscow property deal. He was the ninth in a circle of friends and business associates to die in suspicious circumstances. But when the police entered his penthouse that night, they didn’t even dust for fingerprints. They declared his death a suicide on the spot and closed the case.
A two-year investigation by BuzzFeed News has now uncovered explosive evidence pointing to Russia that the police overlooked. A massive trove of documents, phone records, and secret recordings shows Young was part of a circle of nine men, including the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who all died suspiciously on British soil after making powerful enemies in Russia. The files reveal that Young lived in the shadow of the Russian security services and mafia groups after fronting for Berezovsky.
Scott Young is one of 14 people suspected of being assassinated on the orders of the Russian state on U.K soil. CNN (2017): The brazen daytime slaying of a Russian politician outside a Ukrainian hotel this week brings to eight the number of high-profile Russians who have died over the past five months since the US presidential election on November 8.
Steele dossier allegations: The Steel dossier shed new light on the Trump-Russia controversy much of this
has been corroborated. Page 4:
Dossier claims Paul Manafort & Carter Page were colluding w/Russians.
Dossier claims Wikileaks is a front for the Kremlin.
Dossier claims Russia had moles within the Dem Party.
Page 9:
Dossier claims that Russia has krompat on Trump in addition to material on Clinton.
Dossier claims Cater Page held secret meetings on sanctions.
independent.ie (2017): An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up, it's been claimed. Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on December 26 in mysterious circumstances. Mr Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.
He has been described as a key liaison between Mr Sechin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr Steele wrote in an intelligence report dated July 19, 2016, he had a source close to Mr Sechin, who had disclosed alleged links between Mr Trump's supporters and Moscow. The death of Mr Erovinkin has prompted speculation it is linked to Mr Steele's explosive dossier, which was made public earlier this month.
Talking Points Memo (2017) Congress is investigating whether any private voter information allegedly stolen by Russian hackers was passed to or used by the Trump campaign, Time reported Thursday. Ken Menzel, general counsel of the Illinois State Board of Elections, told Time that 90,000 state voter records were obtained through cyberattacks on their system, 90 percent of which contained drivers license numbers and a quarter of which contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers. Two anonymous sources close to congressional investigations into Russia’s election interference say lawmakers want to know if any of this stolen data eventually ended up in the hands of Trump’s team.
Time did not specify which of the five congressional committees looking into Russian interference in the election is investigating this specific thread.
This report is the latest indication that Russia’s cyberattacks on the United States’ electoral infrastructure, which include efforts to delete or alter voter data in Illinois and targeted attacks on election systems in 21 states, are becoming a focus of congressional and federal probes into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/congress-investigating-trump-team-used-voter-information-stolen-russians Conclusions:
The issues that come up again and again are:
- Suspicious campaign financing (dark money, shell companies, bribes)
- Vote hacking/fraud (leaked NSA report, voter disenfranchisement, obstructing democratic processes)
- Fake news (Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, Twitter bots, Alt Right sites)
- Suspicious deaths (Connell, Scott Young,Russian officials)
The real question is how far does the Russia-Trump web spread? And has this plan been a long time in the making?
Was Wellstone Assassinated by EMF? Author Unknown Permalink Related Topic(s): Congress; Democratic; Government; Internet; Military; People; People; Republican opednews.com - Advertisement -
Was Wellstone Assassinated by EMF? Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident' finds its scapegoats, many questions remain
By Jackson Thoreau
OpEdNews.Com
I'm for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers. - Sen. Paul Wellstone
Shortly before he died in a mysterious airplane crash 11 days prior to the 2002 elections, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone met with Vice President Dick Cheney, probably the Bush administration's most evil public face.
Cheney was rounding up Senate support for the October 2002 vote on giving the administration carte blanche to invade Iraq, with or without blessing from the United Nations. Cheney strong-armed opposing politicians like the most vindictive of mafioso leaders, and opponents usually gave in.
But not Wellstone. Whatever you thought of his progressive brand of politics, he wasn't a wimp. And that's what made him more than dangerous in the eyes of people like Cheney.
At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota."
Wellstone cast his vote for his conscience and against the Iraq measure, the lone Democrat involved in a tough 2002 election campaign to do so. And a few weeks later on Oct. 25, as he appeared to be winning his re-election bid, Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia Markuson, three campaign staffers, and two pilots died in a plane crash in Minnesota.
Talk about "severe ramifications."
My first hunch upon hearing about the tragedy was that the Beech King Air A-100 was tampered with by right wingers, possibly the CIA, either directly or through electromagnetic rays or some psychic mind games.
And nothing I have heard or read since then has made me drift from that hunch.
I'm not alone. The Duluth News Tribune featured a column by Jim Fetzer, a University of Minnesota-Duluth philosophy professor and author, in November 2003. Fetzer wrote that an FBI "recovery team" headed out to investigate the Wellstone plane crash BEFORE the plane went down. "I calculate that this team would have had to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time the Wellstone plane was taking off," Fetzer wrote.
That apparent prior knowledge was similar to Dallas police putting out an all-points bulletin for accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at 12:43 p.m. in 1963 for shooting a police officer. The problem was the officer was not shot until 23 minutes later.
Fetzer also noted that Wellstone's plane was "exceptional, the pilots well-qualified, and the weather posed no significant problems." He wrote that "we have to consider other, less palatable, alternatives, such as small bombs, gas canisters or electromagnetic pulse, radio frequency or High Energy Radio Frequency weapons designed to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field. An abrupt cessation of communication between the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18 a.m., the same time an odd cell phone phenomenon occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity. This suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed."
Michael Ruppert, publisher of From the Wilderness, wrote that the day after the crash he received a message from a former CIA operative who was familiar with those kinds of assassinations. The message read, "As I said earlier, having played ball [and still playing in some respects] with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that."
Ruppert also interviewed two Democratic Congress representatives who said they believed Wellstone was murdered. One said, "I don't think there's anyone on the Hill who doesn't suspect it. It's too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious. My guess is that some of the less courageous members of the party are thinking about becoming Republicans right now."
Even National Transportation Safety Board officials found aspects of Wellstone's accident puzzling. An article in the Duluth News Tribune a few days after the tragedy said that "for some still unexplained reason - [the plane] turned off course and crashed." It quoted Carol Carmody, the NTSB's acting chair and reportedly a former CIA employee, as saying, "We find the whole turn curious."
NTSB blames pilots
But in November 2003, the NTSB blamed the two pilots of Wellstone's plane, Richard Conry and Michael Guess, for the crash. The pilots flew too high and too fast when they began a left turn toward the runway, then let it slow to dangerous levels, the NTSB said.
The NTSB also accused Conry and Guess of not even monitoring the instruments. "One of them should have been monitoring the instruments," said Bill Bramble, a human performance investigator for the NTSB.
Still, NTSB board member Richard Healing called the conclusion "speculative," pointing out that the report did not say how the pilots missed the red flags or why they failed to make adjustments.
"We don't know why," Healing said. "It's quite speculative."
The conclusion was especially disturbing considering the NTSB's own simulations, which included flying a plane at abnormally slow speeds and being unable to bring it down. That by itself should have forced consideration of other possible causes.
The NTSB said that Conry made mistakes on previous flights that were covered by his co-pilots and was convicted of mail fraud related to a home-building business in 1990. But Wellstone had used Aviation Charter since 1992 and had flown numerous other times with Conry, with whom he was reportedly comfortable. Conry passed a proficiency test just two days before the tragedy, and some attorneys said regulations did not require revocation of a pilot's license because of a criminal conviction unless it involved drugs or alcohol.
While the NTSB said some fellow pilots questioned the skill levels of Conry and Guess, Conry had more than 5,000 hours of flying time, according to his management company, Aviation Charter Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn..
Family members of Wellstone reached a $25 million settlement in mid-2003 with Aviation Charter.
Several pilots said the NTSB was just looking for scapegoats. "It is hard to believe that two experienced pilots would fail to monitor airspeed," one said.
As in the case of JFK, the scapegoats who took the blame were conveniently dead.
And many questions remained.
Electromagnetic pulse device suspected
More people than Fetzer and I believe that Wellstone's plane could have been hit with an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] device that caused the aircraft to suddenly turn off course.
Electromagnetic pulses from military craft may have been responsible for several civilian airline disasters in the late 1990s, according to an article in The London Observer. In particular, Swissair 111 in 1998 and TWA 800 in 1996 both took the same route over Long Island, experienced trouble in the same region, suffered catastrophic electrical malfunctions, and were flying at a time when military exercises involving submarines and U.S. Navy P3 fighter planes were being conducted.
Experts have even testified before Congress about concerns that terrorists may use EMPs, which they said were capable of short-circuiting computers, satellites, radios, radar, and traffic lights. An EMP shockwave can be produced by a device small enough to fit in a briefcase, they said. Stanley Jakubiak, senior civilian official for nuclear command, control, communications, and EMP policy for the Defense Department, admitted in 1999 Congressional testimony that the feds have studied EMPs for years.
U.S. Marine Corp Major M. CaJohn went farther than that in a 1988 report, writing that officials had sought remedies for the effects of EMPs at least since the early 1960s. The Air Force built an EMP testing facility called TRESTLE in 1980 at Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Navy also erected an EMP testing facility called EMPRESS I at Point Patience on the Patuxent River in Maryland. Other agencies have their own EMP facilities.
Fetzer also reports on other instances and reports, including nuclear tests by Soviets and Americans in the 1960s resulting in gigantic releases of electromagnetic energy. There is also this 1998 U.S. Department of Justice document describing these devices:
http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/sl298.txt .
First developed in the 19th century, EMPs now are relatively easy to obtain. Anyone can acquire an EMP generator through the Internet, such as at
http://www.amazing1.com/emp.htm.
Theoretically, a person a few miles from the runway could bombard the aircraft with an intense electromagnetic pulse, which could cause an electrical failure, instantly knock out radio communication, disrupt normal engine ignition, and cause loss of steering control. The steering control surfaces on these airplanes are controlled by individual electrical actuators that are mechanically linked to the rudder, ailerons, and flaps.
This type of sabotage would leave no physical evidence on the aircraft, although it's possible that people at the airport or in the general vicinity might have noticed electrical anomalies like radio noises, a crashed computer, telephone disruption, and so on.
A Texas software engineer wrote me that EMPs damage systems by generating an electrical pulse in the system wiring. Therefore, a component would not have to be directly exposed to an EMP to be damaged. An aircraft struck by an EMP pulse would not likely die, unless the plane was hit by an extremely powerful EMP pulse.
"More likely, an EMP strike would disable delicate electronic systems, leaving electrical systems intact," the engineer wrote. "After being struck by an EMP, the aircraft would likely function more or less normally, but without any control systems, instruments, or radios. This would account for the assertion that the Wellstone plane's engines were still running when the plane hit the ground."
Another electrical engineer wrote, "You don't need anything as elaborate as an EMP generator. Standard issue radio transmitters can screw up a landing."
Lawrence Judd, an Illinois attorney, wrote the NTSB to ask whether it has or will investigate the possibility that EMF weapons were used to bring down the planes of Senators Wellstone and Carnahan. Robert Benzon wrote him back, thusly, "The NTSB is unaware of any mobile EM force or EM pulse weapon system capable of disabling an aircraft at the ground-to-air ranges that existed in either of the accidents you mention in your email."
But Fetzer noted that what the NTSB may or may not be "aware of" depends on its state of actual or feigned ignorance. "In this day and age, there is no excuse for any such lack of knowledge about increasingly familiar weapons," Fetzer wrote me in an email. "It reminds me of the Warren Report's conclusion that there was no credible evidence of conspiracy in the death of JFK. It all depends on what you are willing to consider credible. Today, such a statement would be considered laughable - similarly that of the NTSB."
Weird cell phone interference reported
John Ongaro, a Minnesota lobbyist, wrote to Fetzer about his experience the day Wellstone died. Ongaro said he was driving to the same funeral that Wellstone and his party were flying to in Eveleth, Minn. While traveling north on Hwy. 53 near the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport in the same area as Wellstone's plane, he received a call on his cell phone at precisely the same time Wellstone's King Air veered off course.
"This call was in a league of its own," Ongaro said. "When I answered it, what I heard sounded like a cross between a roar and a loud humming noise. The noise seemed to be oscillating, and I could not make out any words being spoken. Instead, just this loud, grotesque, sometimes screeching and humming noise."
What he heard may very well have been electronic interference from an EMP or microwave weapon.
One writer to talk show host Jeff Rense suggested a scenario involving "black op specialists" in a van or truck full of radio/instrument landing jamming equipment. "As Wellstone's plane approaches the airport, the VOILS jamming equipment is activated, and a 'decoy' VOR signal is sent to the plane, thus tricking the plane's instruments [and the pilot] into believing the airport is somewhere several degrees off the true course to the runway," S.H. wrote. "The pilot follows that signal straight into the ground. The non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming equipment, casually leaves the area, looking just like any other TV repair truck or moving van."
Witnesses hear an explosion, see a flash of light
One witness of Wellstone's crash, Megen Williams, who lived near the Eveleth airport, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that she heard "a diving noise and then an explosion" as she prepared for work as a nurse in her home near the crash site. At first, she thought it was blasting at a nearby iron ore mine, and she didn't call authorities.
Another local resident, Rodney Allen, said the plane flew right over his house. "It was so close the windows were shaking," Allen said. He added that the craft was "crabbing to the right," then less than a minute later, he felt an impact and heard what he thought sounded like a loud rifle shot. St. Paul Pioneer Press, Oct. 26, 2002
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was last seen on air traffic control radar at 10:21 a.m., flying at an elevation of 1,800 feet. Radar tapes indicate Wellstone's plane had descended to about 400 feet and was traveling at only 85 knots near the end of its flight.
Another person saw a blond-haired man on CNN saying he observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane.
Don Sipola, a former president of the Eveleth Virginia Municipal Airport Commission, said "something" caused Wellstone's plan to veer off course at low altittude. "This was a real steep bank, not a nice, gentle don't-spill-the-coffee descent," Siploa said. "This is more like a space shuttle coming down. This was not a controlled descent into the ground."
The pilots of Wellstone's plane radioed that they were two miles out, clicked up the runway lights, and had the airstrip in sight, said Traci Chacich, the airport's office manager. That was the last that airport employees heard from them.
Weather not that bad
Some officials and media reports blamed bad weather, but witnesses said conditions were not that bad at the time of Wellstone's accident. It was cloudy with a little ice, but there was little wind. Other pilots landed without problem during that same time and said the conditions were not bad. Airport visibility was about 3 miles at the time the plane went down, which was adequate.
Another pilot who landed a slightly larger twin-engine plane at the same airport that same day a couple of hours before Wellstone's plane crashed, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he experienced no significant problems. There was very light ice, "but nothing to be alarmed about," pilot Ray Juntunen said. "It shouldn't have been a problem."
According to the NTSB, Wellstone's pilots received warnings of icing at 9,000 to 11,000 feet and were allowed to descend to 4,000 feet. Juntunen said he was able to see the airport from five miles out, and another pilot landed 30 minutes later and said the clouds were a little lower, but still not bad.
Frank Hilldrup, lead investigator for the NTSB, said the landing gear of Wellstone's plane appeared to be down.
The King Air had a reputation as one of the safest turboprops around, many manufacturers and pilot said. Some 50 accidents involving King Air A100s had occurred between 1975 and 2002, according to the FAA. Five were fatal, but three of those weren't the plane's fault.
Wellstone was target of apparent assassination in 2000
Wellstone was the target of an apparent assassination plot before. In 2000, as he visited Colombia to survey conditions there, a bomb was found along his route from the airport. He was also sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate by a helicopter above him while watching the Colombian police demonstrate its fumigation of coca plants. Officials called the incident an accident.
Wellstone was a vocal opponent of military aid to the Colombian government. While there, he visited human rights activists who said the government did not protect civilians. Wellstone told reporters he thought his Colombian hosts created the bomb story to dissuade him from traveling to certain areas of the country. "I don't know whether I was targeted, but I certainly know that the human rights activists are targeted," Wellstone said.
Among the weird events since Wellstone's death was that his successor in the U.S. Senate, Republican Norm Coleman, was named chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. As Fetzer said, that's a practically unheard of position for a freshman senator with no previous experience. Could that be why Congress has not opened a formal investigation into Wellstone's death?
For my part, I'm not a big conspiracy nut who worries about this kind of thing all the time - just an average one like Oliver Stone who knows there's something sinister and weird going on in our world. I have done extensive research into the JFK assassination in Dallas. The right wing of the CIA was heavily involved in that, from Oswald's CIA connections to the Dallas mayor at that time being the brother of the former CIA deputy director who lost his job after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and blamed that on JFK. The Dallas mayor may even have approved the change in the parade route on that fateful day so it would go right by the grassy knoll and building where Oswald and probably other snipers were, where JFK met his death.
I have interviewed numerous people who reported weird things that occurred during that time, such as key witnesses dying in strange ways like mysterious plane crashes and being run over by trains in the middle of the night. I have written numerous stories on this and covered it in my book on Dallas history - and have received my share of threatening phone calls, mail opened, and the like to know I was stepping on some powerful toes.
There were also numerous JFK murder witnesses committing suicide in the months after that tragedy. The CIA has done extensive mind control work for decades - I know at least one psychic personally who started working for the CIA in the 1980s - and could possibly convince someone through such mind games to commit suicide. Could they psychically work on making a plane crash? Who knows? Anything is possible.
Similarities with Carnahan, Kennedy crashes
What about Democratic Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was killed during a close Senate race when his small plane crashed right before the 2000 election? What about John F. Kennedy Jr., who had intelligence, political ambitions, charisma, and the name, dying in a 1999 plane crash?
In both of those cases, the planes were already descending towards their landing and then suddenly wandered off their approach paths and crashed, similar to Wellstone's craft. In all three cases, radio contact appears to have been cut off while the planes were still in the air, possibly indicating electrical failures on board.
In Kennedy's case, at least one witness saw a flash in the sky and heard an explosion before the plane went down, as in Wellstone's situation. Kennedy's plane was also left unguarded at Teeterborough Airport in New Jersey, and almost anyone could have placed something inside it.
The list of high-profile Democratic politicians killed in plane crashes goes on - Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in 1996, Rep. Mickey Leland of Texas in 1989, Rep. Jerry Litton of Missouri in 1976 [who was also involved in a hard-fought election at the time], House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska in 1972. High-profile Republicans have died in crashes, including Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania and Sen. John Tower of Texas in 1991, but not as many as Democrats.
In fact, of 22 air crashes involving state and federal officials, including one ambassador and one cabinet official, From the Wilderness found that 14 - 64 percent - were Democrats and eight - 36 percent - were Republicans.
Add to that Raytheon Co., one of the biggest U.S. military contractors and manufacturer of the plane that crashed with Wellstone in it, being a huge donor to Republicans, and the mind continues to wonder. U.S. House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, for instance, received $48,201 alone from Raytheon in 1997-98. The Republican National Committee received at least $170,000 from Raytheon since 1999. Raytheon donates to Democrats, too, but more than twice as much money goes to Republicans.
Raytheon has all kinds of CIA connections, as does Bush, whose father, remember, was once director of the CIA. One of the more intriguing discoveries that emerged from the NTSB's own investigation of this case was that Raytheon not only not only manufactured EM force and EM pulse weapons, but also manufactured the King Air A100. No other entity would have been better positioned to have taken it down. See
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2003/AAR0303.htm for more details.
Bush, for his part, issued some strange comments immediately after Wellstone's crash, even for him. He called Wellstone - who was an articulate, energetic, intelligent political science professor for 21 years before he was a senator - a "plain-spoken fellow." He said he wanted to issue his "condolences for the loss of the Senate." Did he mean the Democrats' sudden loss of the Senate, which occurred the day Wellstone died? Did he know something more than he let on?
Bush once called Wellstone a 'chicken sh*t'
There was no love lost between the Bush clan and Wellstone. In 1990, as Wellstone challenged the Persian Gulf War preparations, Bush Sr. even referred to Wellstone as a "chicken sh*t." When Wellstone first met Bush Jr. in 2001, the latter disrespectfully called him "Pablo."
As The Nation said in May 2002, getting rid of Wellstone was a passion for Bush, Karl Rove, and Cheney. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide told The Nation. "This one is political and personal for them."
No senator had a more consistent record of voting against Bush administration proposals in 2001. Wellstone voted against the Homeland Security Act and many of Bush's judicial nominees. He pushed for stronger environmental programs, for genuine measures to counter corporate fraud, and for investigations into Sept. 11 and $350 million that was missing from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Freepers' comments I read about this tragedy were mostly tasteful - on the surface - though some jokes and conspiratorial posts were published on their right-wing site. Right after the news of the crash, some posted comments like "prayers for control of the Senate." Several comments were removed by the moderator. One that was not said, "You do realize that as we sit here praying for one of our biggest political enemies' safety, President Bush will be blamed by the Democrats [including the rabid leftists at DU and other brain-sucking sites] for the crash."
Another joked, "Maybe it was shot down by a right wing militia. We've got to ban handguns." And another said, "Ted Kennedy may have been on [the plane]." Then there was this ramble: "Politically speaking, would this be good or bad news for the GOP if he's dead? I could see him winning now like Carnahan in 2000 so that Gov. Jesse could appoint his successor. I'm thinking this is probably not good news."
And this comment: "Any bets on how quickly the Democrats will have his wife take his place on the ballot?" Hello? Sen. Wellstone's wife died in the tragedy, remember? Another post predicted that "[Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota] Coleman's campaign is dead." And then there was this message: "I pray that Wellstone and all of his aides survive, and live to see themselves defeated handily on Nov 5th...unless this is yet another of Tom 'Caligula' Daschle's election schemes." Someone else added, "Carnahan II? Ventura is the governor, not a D...this time."
Such conservatives' glee at the demise of probably the most powerful real progressive in the country was entirely evident in such comments. Many contained themselves, but we know what they're really thinking, don't we?
And a few days after Wellstone's death, right wingers were selling and displaying on their vehicles insensitive bumper stickers with messages like, "He's dead, get over it." How's that for "compassionate conservatism?"
More good stories
There are many good stories on the Wellstone crash out there. Those include:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/FuturisticWeaponry.pdf http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/news/opinion/7306797.htm http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110102_wellstone.html http://news.mpr.org/features/2003/03/03_zdechlikm_wellstone/ http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=14399 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00206.htm http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=78&contentid=652&page=2 Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet site at
http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthoebook.html. Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at
http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html. He can be contacted at
[email protected] or
[email protected].
Edit : I realize that this is a (too) long post so I add this quick summary at the top:
Summary : I bought a small portable laser scanned projector : and quality of image is great : That gives me great confidence that magic leap may (despite what everyone now thinks) use such a scanned laser technology and impress everyone when they release their product!
Background: After seeing Kguttag's analysis of Magic leap videos resolution and discussing extensively as if and when FSD and laser sources have a realistic chance of being included technologies in a magic leap device (with a couple of fair arguments that can be summarized in the following statement: If this was a consumer-grade mature technology (FSD, green lasers, fitting in a HUD), it would already be possible to buy the components to build one => therefore FSD is not ready, or may never be ready for a HUD, compared to existing marketed technologies like oled, DLP, etc...) I had the chance of reading a comment from view-from-afar that a small company, microvision, was already making some sort of laser projection. (and I also understood that as Karl guttag was involved in the DLP technology development at Texas Instruments, he may be an expert, but may be somehow partly biased).
I raised an eybrow and gave it a quick look : seemed like their technology was indeed projecting a laser, but using a very tiny mirror being excited to resonnant frequency, instead of a tiny fiber optic being scanned (=excited) to a resonnant frequency, and that their products had some flaws (poor brightness, some sparkling) and overlooked it.
Until 3 weeks ago, when celluon (that I was already following since their (not perfect...) attempt at a mobile projected laser keyboard) came up with a new handheld pico projector ( with android OS in it).
Reviews from those who where not really unbiased (they seemed to own stocks of microvision) were overexcited of the image quality of this little picobit portable laser projector despite the android OS.
Although there was ( and I guess there still is) no independant review of this little laser projector, I saw that the engine (= lasers + mirror assembly) was actually manufactured by SONY (and, for me SONY = quality).
So I ordered one and thought : " well, if this image is really not good ( low resolution, low brightness, and sparkly) as Kguttag claimed regarding earlier versions of laser projectors, I will wire it via HDMI to my raspberry PI, and that will make a fancy films/lights display in my room if I synchronize it ; to give similar colors than my 4K tv in the back of the TV, a bit like philips/ microsoft ambient light concept, should be easy as image will naturally always be in focus (due to the laser scanned nature of the light source)"
Boy was I right to order one : the lasers are bright enough for a head up display : check ; the thing doesn't consume too much power and is mobile : check ; there is no laser sparkle : check; it's relatively cheap : check
As a consequence : are scanned lasers consumer-ready to be incorporated in a head-up display? The ones that are already available and sold in this celluon picobit laser picoprojector are.
Is the fiber scanned display powered by lasers claimed by magic leap in their patents as ready as these lasers scanned by a micromirror? I don't know, but it certainly is NOT an impossible, always too expensive, 10 years + away technology : it is possible now. And it already works!
My take on this ? I am now confident to bet that magic leap hardware display technology (and not just the software content) is going to be astonishingly impressive and maybe based on scanned lasers ( maybe not scanned fiber optics yet, though, but who knows?), despite what everyone seems to be so sure of after the "quick glance at a device claimed to be a PEQ" by an unwanted journalist from "the information"
Before someone asks : I don't have share, stocks, options, whatever in SONY, Texas Instruments, celluon, microvision or magic leap ( even though, magic leap shares, if anyone have a way to buy some, contact me ;) )
And quality of this scanned laser projector is so good for me, that I basically use it to project ( 2meter x 1meter 1080p (downscaled to a 1900 x 700 resolution)) movies on my ceiling over my bed because it is practical, no heavier than a fat smartphone and silent, and with good enough battery life to watch movies : I am probably not going to use it as an ambient light system on my raspberry pi until magic leap product gets released ;)
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