Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell -2

Taking the Fall

After agreeing initially to give critical information in a vote-rigging case in Ohio, Connell, for whatever reasons, apparently had a change of heart and hesitated. Given the potential disastrous consequences of defying his former bosses, it is perhaps understandable that he should have second thoughts.

Back in Ohio courts, King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell was an ongoing case filed on August 31, 2006 and dragged on and on. The former Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell the defendant, was accused of "having conspired to deprive and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote and have, in fact, deprived and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote by, in a selective and discriminatory manner, unfairly allocate election resources (such as voting machines), institute a system of provisional ballots, purge voter registrations, and broke the bi-partisan chain of custody ballots."

Clifford Bryan, writing for Examiner.com, outlines the charges in the case.

It has since been alleged that at several points on election night, the Ohio secretary of state’s official Web site, which was responsible for reporting the results, was being hosted by a server in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Blackwell had hired a company called GDC Limited to run the IT systems, which had subcontracted the job to Michael Connell’s company, GovTech. Connell had in turn sub-contracted SMARTech, an IT firm based in Chattanooga, to act, it was claimed, as a backup server.

“By looking at the URLs on the Web site, we discovered that there were three points on election night when SMARTech’s computers took over from the secretary of state,” says Arnebeck [ the prosecuting attorney of the case]. “It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.”

“We decided to try to bring a racketeering claim against Rove under Ohio law,” says Cliff Arnebeck, “We detected a pattern of criminal activity, and we identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.”

It is worth a moment to stop and take a closer look at Clifford Arnebeck. Like Stephen Spoonamore, the IT specialist that investigated the technical aspects of the electronic vote rigging, Arnebeck was also a Republican and had, in the past, even done some volunteer work for the Republican Party. The son of a postal worker, Arnebeck attended Wesleyan College and Harvard Law School. In 1990 he challenged incumbent Congressman Chalmers Wylie in the GOP primary, but lost badly. Since that time, he became involved in groups that sought to reform the system, including setting term limits and methods for insuring honest elections. And like Spoonamore, Arnebeck saw this issue not as a partisan one but of an ethical issue.

Meanwhile in the summer of 2008, with the presidential election heating up, for Mike Connell, the noose was obviously tightening and events were beginning to take a life of their own. In an attempt to extricate himself from the world of politics, he had sold two of his businesses, including GovTech. He reportedly returned to his religious roots, attending Catholic Mass much more often.

The OhioNewsBureau reported in July of 2004, Attorney Arnebeck asked Nancy H. Rogers, the former dean of the law school at The Ohio State University and interim Attorney General, was asked to provide immunity protection services to Connell.

This request was prompted by information from a confidential source that Karl Rove had threatened that if Mike Connell didn't "take the fall" for cyber-rigging the 2004 election in Ohio, his wife, Heather, would be sued for lobbying law violations.

Clearly the White House was anxious about Connell's testimony and what it would undoubtedly reveal. Meanwhile, the question on everybody's mind was whether Connell would remain loyal to his bosses and possibly perjure himself or would he reveal all that he knew.

Even the attorneys prosecuting the case were unsure what he would do. Throughout the fall of 2008, his plane was being tracked by Arnebeck and his associates so they could serve him with a subpoena.

Here is a video clip of an interview with Arnebeck made in October 2008.

On October 8, 2008, the axe fell. Connell was served with his subpoena at College Park Airfield outside Washington, D.C. Under the terms of the supoena, he was ordered to produce all documents related to the case.

Connell was defiant when challenged. He responded by hiring three high-powered GOP-connected attorneys, including Bill Todd, former counsel to Bush/Cheney '04. Connell's attorneys filed a motion to quash the subpoena and an affidavit stating that his information is confidential.

Convinced that Connell had the vital information n the case, Arnebeck attempted to secure a court order to enforce the subpoena. The judge agreed and, on October 31, Mr. Connell, appearing before a federal judge in Ohio was ordered to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3^rd, the day before the presidential election.

"A Really Nice Christmas Present"

What became of the Connell's sworn deposition? (Even online references are not easy to find.) It was a two-hour closed-door session in Cleveland. A report of the hearing comes from Ohio News. At the hearing, Connell was relaxed but not especially cooperative. Justice Solomon Oliver of the Northern District Court carefully limited the range of the questions that Arnebeck could ask.

For example, threats allegedly made by Rove were off-limits. Connell's lawyers were adamant that the suit was nothing more than a witch hunt. According to reporter John Michael Spinelli, the unimpressed judge advised the prosecution:

"I understand the theories, some of the theories of this case, and I understand some of the emotion around this 2004 election and other elections, but you are not going to win your case for 2004 with this deposition, not right now. And so I am just trying to be clear, you are not going to pack two and a half years of litigation into this deposition." He warned Arnebeck to stick to the issues discussed and not make up for lost time in a case that has very little to show for itself so far. "I can't say that any more strongly than I'm saying that to you now. So you are going to have to be reasonable, and you are going to have to stop at some point. There may be a day when you can come back, and there may be a day when you can follow up."

That day, the day to ask Connell follow-up questions, would never come. Within six weeks, Mike Connell would be dead.. and silent. It surely must have been a relief to many inside the White House.


As quoted in Simon Worrall's excellent article The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, Connell’s younger sister, Shannon, says:

Mike had been deposed, but he hadn’t been called as a witness yet,” she says of the possibility that her brother was murdered. “He was incredibly loyal to the people he worked for, but he would never have lied under oath. For want of a better expression, I think they played him. His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney."

The Velvet Revolution Theory

Two weeks prior to the election of 2008, when it was still uncertain what Connell would or would not reveal in his deposition, Rove had been proclaiming that John McCain could win the ten deciding states and become president. McCain was 

confidently telling everyone that he would win with a surge in the wee hours of election night. McCain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he can “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night. Of course, there's nothing particularly unusual or suspicious about a candidate having a strong sense of self-confidence, even when all the projections show him or her trailing behind.

Velvet Revolution has its own theory about what happened next.

Michael Connell was forced to appear before Solomon Oliver, a Clinton appointed Afro-American federal Judge in Cleveland. After Attorney Cliff Arnebeck accused Connell in open court of rigging elections for Karl Rove, the judge ordered Connell to submit to a sworn deposition 18 hours before the polls were to open. On Monday at noon, Connell was placed under oath and grilled about election fraud, Man in the Middle attacks, Trojan horse manipulations and threats from Rove.

And guess what happened? Connell didn't know a thing! He had no knowledge of any secret steps to change the vote-counts, in any past elections--or in the election to come. He stonewalled like a champion, denying everything.

It was a remarkable performance; but what was even more remarkable was the abrupt reversal, just hours later, by Karl Rove. Rove wrote on his blog late Monday that Obama would win by a landslide--even in those states he had previously predicted McCain would win.

In other words, Rove pulled the plug, because he felt the heat, and knew that using Connell to rig this election too would be too risky.

Manmade Emergencies

The most intriguing question isn't whether Connell helped to steal the elections of 2004 or whether he was silenced for threatening to reveal what he knew. The most interesting question isn't who or how it was done.

The most interesting question for future historians might be this: did the threat that Connell's deposition posed (and subsequent possible subpoenas) cause the power elite inside the upper echelons of the Republican party to have a re-think of their plan for the 2008 elections. And related to that question, what would have been the national reaction if McCain had won by the same slim margin that carried Bush to re-election back in 2004.

It is hard to know but if the Velvet Revolution's theory is true, then it is possible that the Republican administration had already made plans for widespread civil unrest as a result of the election result. Paul Joseph Watson, writing for Prison Planet, wrote back in September 2008,

U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control” – which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.

The article goes on the cite an Army Times report:

This shocking admission was calmly reported on September 8th by the Army Times website, which reports that from the beginning of next month the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team “Will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”

The article notes that the deployment “marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

The purpose of the unit’s patrols includes helping “with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

Of course, this is speculation built upon speculation. Some have theorized that this troop deployment was in preparation for some kind of terrorist attack which might have been used to swing the election. Others have also postulated that the deployment of troops for crowd control was related to the economic meltdown and was used to intimidate the legislative branch into passing the unprecedented Bush bailout known as TARP, The Troubled Asset Relief Program, which cost the U.S. taxpayers as much as $300 billion.

Perhaps it served many purposes. We may, of course, never know the reasons behind the move or whether it is in any way related.

If, however, The Velvet Revolution theory is true, then, in the end, Connell's apparently worthless deposition, the only testimony he would ever give -- would have at least served one noble purpose. 

It helped to put a truly democratically-elected president in the White House.

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The final installment of this series will cover the crash investigation, it flaws and will lay out the case for a conspiracy in the death of Connell.
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Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell - 1

At about 6 p.m. on Friday December 19, 2008 a single-engine 1997 Piper Saratoga aircraft, with only the pilot aboard, crashed into a residential area in Uniontown, Ohio as it was preparing to land at Akron-Canton airport. Upon arriving to the scene, fire crews found only burning wreckage of the plane scattered between homes on Charolais Street. The pilot had been thrown upon impact and had died instantly of massive blunt force trauma, his belongings scattered in the yards.

First responders arrived on the scene immediately after the crash. Even then, irregularities began. Simon Worrall in an article The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, writes of those first minutes:

Capt. Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department was the first person to arrive at the scene. “We received a 911 call, so we contacted the tower and asked what size plane it was and how many souls were on board,” he recalls. “But we were informed that the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available.”

This was to be the first of many abnormalities in a case that would send shock waves through the blogosphere with speculations of sabotage and foul play. In the bewildering reality-bending world of conspiracy theories, the events that surround the Connell crash belong in a class all their own.

The Wizard

First and foremost, it was the identity of the pilot that was to cause much of the stir. The name Mike Connell might not have rung any bells in most American homes but, to the Washington establish, particularly amongst the Republican politicians, Connell was a wizard. As president and CEO of Ohio-based New Media Communications Inc., Connell had deep ties to some of the top names in Washington. He offered them something that they desperately wanted: control over their Internet image, the power to market that image and the ability to operate a digital campaign strategy.

Its own company description, written in the vacuous language of the tech world, seems innocuous enough.

New Media Communications designs, develops, and implements web sites and marketing strategies for political advocacy and commercial organizations. The company' services include strategic planning, design, programming, as well as a variety of interactive marketing services that include banner ad creation and placement, e-mail direct marketing, market research, and analysis of digital campaigns. New Media Communications also offers hosting, site optimization, and database integration. It mainly serves entities associated with the Republican Party.

Chris Landers, writing for Business Insider, sheds more light on New Media Communications. Back in 1998, Connell's company got its first high profile client, Jeb Bush, son to one former president and brother to the future one. "New Media designed the www.jeb.org site that made Jeb Bush the first candidate online in the 1998 Florida gubernatorial race."

Additionally, Connell, along with his wife, Heather, formed another company, GovTech Solutions "to pursue government accounts rather than political business."

In some cases, New Media and GovTech Solutions have had contracts with the same clients. New Media might design a campaign Web site for a candidate who, once elected, would contract with GovTech to design a federally funded official site. At least four of the seven New Media clients who won House races in 2004 also used GovTech as the designer for their congressional sites.

By 2004, GovTech had served as Web designer for the official, federally funded Web pages of 37 members of Congress. And the following year, according to House financial statements, GovTech received more than $144,000 in business from 21 Republican House members and Republican-led committees.

In 2002 and 2004, GovTech received authorization from the General Services Administration that allowed federal agencies to purchase services directly from the company without going through the full bidding process.

In short, Connell, as the cyber-tech wizard for the Republican party machine, had become an indispensible player in the Republican machine. And for this, Connell was well-paid.

Between October 2002 and the first half of this year, the General Services Administration reported more than $800,000 paid to GovTech by federal agencies. The company has designed Web sites for the White House, Department of Energy, and the 2004 meeting of the Group of 8 in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, among others.

However, for investigators he would also become a person of interest. His insider knowledge of possible corruption in vote tampering was just beginning to be exploited by investigating attorneys. The information he could have provided the courts would have been instrumental in cracking open one of the biggest voter rigging scandals in American history.

Yet, the full story of Connell's involvement virtually died the moment aircraft slammed into the side of house and exploded in flames.

Climbing the Ladder

Connell was born into a large Irish Roman Catholic family in Peoria, Illinois in 1963. Some have speculated that it was his strong religious advocacy for pro-life that might have been his Achilles' heel, driving him to work alongside people with darker motives. His faith was something he felt strongly about.

Early in his career as a whiz kid, Connell worked with Republican Congressman Jim Leach as his finance director and as a director of voter programs for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana.

In 1998, Connell was contracted to develop a voter contact database for George Bush, Sr. From that point, Connell was the IT man of choice for the Bush family. He would go on to work with Jeb Bush in Florida and when George Bush, Jr. threw in his hat for the presidential race, Connell would help set up the official web site for the candidate.

Connell's fortunes began to prosper. At the ripe old age of 30, Connell would hold the keys to secrets for the Republican Party. According to SourceWatch,

New Media's GOP clients are a "'Who's Who' of Republican politics", having provided campaign web services and Internet strategy for Bush-Cheney 2000/2004, as well as Dick Armey, Spencer Abraham for Senate 2000, Heather Wilson for Congress 2000/2002/2004, Rick Santorum for Senate 2000/2006, and John Thune for Senate 2002/2004 to name just a few. New Media also designed GOP.com for the Republican National Committee, RGA.org for the Republican Governors Association, and between two and three dozen state GOP sites.

In April 2001, Connell spun-off GovTech Solutions from New Media to handle its growing list of federal government clients, such as MajorityWhip.gov for Tom DeLayand Johnny Isakson. Business filings in the state of Ohio show that Govtech's founding members were Connell's wife Heather, and the well-known GOP operative and Chairman of the DCI Group, Thomas J. Synhorst. By 2004, Govtech's clients would grow to include more than 20 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, GOP.gov, the web site of the House Republican Conference, and the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, Way and Means, and Administration committees. The latter was acquired while House Administration was chaired by former-U.S. Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, who was convicted in 2006 of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

It was, however, his working relationship with Karl Rove, Senior Advisor and later Deputy Chief of Staff to the President that was to be his most troubling aspect of his rise. Connell helped to set up GWB43.com, the site Karl Rove used for 95-percent of his email communication, using a server owned by SMARTech Corporation. The purpose of using this facility to send and store e-mails by Rove and dozens of other White House staffers.- as opposed to the normal White House servers- was to evade investigators and the Freedom of Information.

Investigators believe that these servers in the basement of building in Tennessee would also be used in a much more astounding way in the 2004: to help steal the presidential election of 2004.

Friendly Servers

Over time, Connell began to find himself involved in the seamier side of politics. Even as far back as 1990, he was fired for "clearly unethical" behavior" from Indiana Senator Coates ' campaign. In addition to his legitimate business, Connell also had a hand in creating Web site for the notorious Swift Boat Veterans’ for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry.

Obviously Connell was having mixed feelings about the things he was being asked to do. “Mike was known as the GOP’s Mister Fix-It,” says Stephen Spoonamore, an IT security expert and friend of Connell’s.

This development of this relationship is detailed in Simon Worrall's The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru,.

The two men had gotten to know each other at Spoonamore’s Washington, D.C. offices in late 2005. “The two of us hit it off,” recalls Spoonamore. “We were the same age, the same generation. We had a lot of friends in common.” At the end of the meeting, Connell broached a delicate topic. “Mike asked me, ‘How easy is it to destroy all records of e-mail?’ ” recalls Spoonamore. “He sort of gestured toward the White House and said, ‘Because I have clients down the street who are working on that problem.’ And I stepped back and said, ‘If you are talking about White House e-mail destruction, I want nothing to do with it.’ ”

A year later, at an IT conference in London, Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election: “He said, ‘I’m afraid that in my zeal to save the babies, the system I built may have been abused.’ ”

For all its complications the theorized method is pretty straightforward. Basically, the results of vote are electronically hijacked, sent to a "friendly" server, manipulated to achieve the desired outcome, and then forwarded back to the official counting stations.

According to writers Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell hired Connell in 2004 to create a real-time computer data compilation for counting Ohio's votes. Under Connell's supervision, results from the Ohio Secretary of State election servers were suddenly re-routed to the GOP controlled servers at Smartech in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga where the votes were flipped from Kerry to Bush.

At 12:20 am on the night of the 2004 election exit polls and initial vote counts showed John Kerry the clear winner of Ohio's presidential campaign. The Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the presidency.

But from then until around 2am, the flow of information mysteriously ceased. After that, the vote count shifted dramatically to George W. Bush, ultimately giving him a second term. In the end there was a 6.7 percent diversion---in Bush's favor---between highly professional, nationally funded exit polls and the final official vote count as tabulated by Blackwell and Connell.

Between Theory and Evidence

It is no exaggeration to say that Ohio was a key component in the 2004 presidential election. Had Bush lost Ohio or Florida, he in turn would have lost his 286-252 edge in the Electoral College and would have gone down in defeat.

According to Writer Micheal Parenti in his article, The Stolen Presidential Elections, in Florida alone, independent investigations would later reveal serious irregularities directed mostly against ethnic minorities and low-income residents who generally voted heavily Democratic. But then there were a lot of suspicious and serious problems with the way the election was run.

Parenti lists a few of them:

Under orders from Governor Jeb Bush …state troopers near polling sites delayed people for hours while searching their cars. Some precincts required two photo IDs which many citizens do not have. The requirement under Florida law was only one photo ID. Passed just before the election, this law itself posed a special difficulty for low-income or elderly voters who did not have drivers licenses or other photo IDs. Uncounted ballot boxes went missing or were found in unexplained places or were never collected from certain African-American precincts. During the recount, GOP agitators shipped in from Washington D.C. by the Republican national leadership stormed the Dale County Canvassing Board, punched and kicked one of the officials, shouted and banged on their office doors, and generally created a climate of intimidation that caused the board to abandon its recount and accept the dubious pro-Bush tally.

The Ohio investigation, involving the suspicions that results from that state had been re-routed and altered, had been stymied by the lack of solid evidence. It is easy enough to theorize but what was actually needed was testimony from an insider. That insider was to be Mike Connell.

According to Simon Worall's article, it was Stephen Spoonamore who encouraged Connell to come clean. To Spoonamore, it was obvious that Connell was having pangs of conscience.

Three days later, in the back of a cab heading toward the airport, Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew.

“I actually took Mike’s hand and said, ‘If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?’

And he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

The problem was, of course, bringing him to the courts to testify.

Here is part of an interesting interview conducted by Velvet Revolution with Spoonamore, in which he shares his ideas about American politics and the problems. (It was recorded about the time of the events we are discussing- last 2008.)

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In Part 2, I will continue with the Connell story, the lawsuit he became embroiled in and what followed.

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Seriously–Part II

Wonderland

Amid the traumatic national shock that followed the Tucson shooting, many people from both sides of the political spectrum, attempted to learn if the suspected shooter 22-year-old Jared Loughner was politically motivated or whether this was the act of an attention-seeking mentally-disturbed individual.

There was enough evidence on both sides of the argument.

The congressional elections between Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Tea Party Republican candidate, Jesse Kelly had been hotly contested. Many thought the tone, the level of rhetoric around the nation had become excessive. Some questioned whether the fact that Giffords is Arizona's first Jewish Congresswoman might have been a motive.

Others saw a conspiracy elsewhere, citing the campaigning style of Giffords' opponent, Kelly, as less than commendable. For example, Kelly ran an ad urging his supporters to "get on target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

Note it doesn't say, help vote Giffords out of office.

More suspiciously, according to Arizona Capitol Reports (subscription-only newsletter), Jesse Kelly was apparently so eager to challenge her again, that he requested a legal inquiry as to whether he could run again if Giffords lost her seat:

Attorney Lee Miller, who serves as legal counsel for the Arizona Republican Party, told our reporter Kelly’s campaign contacted him earlier this week to find out how the seat would be filled if Giffords couldn’t serve.

On the other hand, Most people who knew Jared Loughner confirmed that he was troubled. Almost immediately, stories began to emerge from classmates and friends of obvious mental instability.

Videos of text posted on a YouTube channel set up in the name of Jared Lee Loughner show a deep distrust of the government and religion, describing US laws as "treasonous" and speaking repeatedly of his wish to create a new currency. "The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar," he wrote. "No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in God!" His Internet postings also indicated an interest in hardline ideology, listing Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's The Communist Manifesto and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf among his favourite books. http://goo.gl/6uJ4M

There's something for every finger-pointer there, it seems. Based on this reading list, the Conservatives and Liberals could both happily make claims about the shooter's political ideology. Because everybody knows that whoever reads Mein Kampf must be a Nazi and whoever reads The Communist Manifesto has to a card-carrying commie. That's taken for granted, isn't it?

Other books, such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Brave New World,” “Animal Farm” and “Fahrenheit 451,” suggest an interest in or antagonism against oppressive regimes committed to stifling all individual initiative and thought. Still, where does "The Wizard of Oz," “Peter Pan" or "Alice in Wonderland" fit in? http://goo.gl/WT3mv

Mea Culpa?

Regarding criticism about the use of cross-hairs to "target" Democratic candidates running against Tea Party candidates, (as well as some of her remarks), former vice-presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin - excuse the expression- came under fire. Her video-taped response turned out to be a public relations disaster.

In it, Palin dramatized her outrage at the very idea that she could be responsible. It was a smear by the liberal media, she told us, this, on the very day of mourning for victims of the attack. How, she asked, could she be blamed for the criminal actions of a lunatic. (This was in no way a mea culpa thingy.) This claim that people cannot be held responsible for actions done in their name smacked of a shrugging off of responsibility and to the more legally-minded, seemed demonstrably untrue. There is a well-established legal definition of incitement to violence, and it involves three parts:

(1) that the person is directly being encouraged (or “incited”) to commit some act of violence, and

(2) there is a clear and present danger that the person will commit the act, and

(3) that the person does, in fact, commit the act.

Whether Palin was actually guilty of this is another question.

I, like a lot of Americans, found the whole video presentation by Palin disturbing and a little perplexing. Side-step the bizarre application of the phrase "blood libel," a term once used by militant bigoted Christians to slander Jews. And forget the poor timing. Ignore, if you, can, the narcissism of her victim-hood. Excusing all those other errors in judgment and lapses in taste and sensitivity, one is still left with an ambitious person with a clear inability to accept even the possibility either her words or deeds were ill-advised. (I am not speaking of an apology of some kind of admission of guilt.) That lack of self-reflection alone should disqualify any candidate for high office.

This was not the only time her careless manner of speaking has landed her in hot water. When Palin talked about "hunting down" Julian Assange like a terrorist- (despite the fact he still hasn't be charged, tried or convicted) it could be easy to say, she is merely ignorant of due process. Still, she wasn't hunting the co-founder of Wikileaks to give him a gift, she was really talking about hunting, as she does in Alaska.. to caribou. In other words, she was referring to the assassination of an innocent man.

But then Beck is hardly any better. In the past, Beck has "joked" about putting poison in Nancy Pelosi's wine. Taking on an Oscar-winning film maker, he once said: "Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it."

It is easy enough to write this off as irresponsible and rather childish behavior from an adult who presumably should know better. I have heard people tell me, "Oh, get over it. It's only a joke. He isn't serious." But, given the fact that Beck seems to take himself seriously and expects others to do the same, given the fact that Beck isn't speaking on some lonely AM radio station in the middle of nowhere but on an international cable network, it is a serious matter indeed. People watch and people believe.

Whether either of these two choose to admit it or not, if nothing else, this kind of talk sets a tone, a kind of tacit acceptance of violence, a climate in which people are permitted to make entirely specious claims, to resort to name-calling and to use thinly veiled threats and intimidation- whether actual or implied- to express themselves.

Following the shooting of Giffords in which six innocent bystanders were killed, there were calls for a lowering of the violent rhetoric. If there was a moment of self-reflection, a consideration that foolish words can lead to thoughtless actions, it certainly didn't last long. These calls were, for the most part, ignored. The best response the Far Right could give was to point fingers at the Left and shout, "You do it too!" and then, it was business as usual.

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of Beck's favorite themes is the liberal Nazi takeover that is secretly (well, nearly) plotting to take over the country. Any proposal or any piece of legislation, any line from a speech, with the magical use of Beck cross-eyed history lessons and pseudo-journalistic style, can be magically transformed into a Nazi bogyman.

A fair question: What could be the motive for people like Beck to paint the president as a Nazi? To harp day in and day out about a threat that a fascist state is about to emerge, that the progressives are about to round up all the conservatives and put them into labor camps. Any day, so he claims. Does he think this kind of talk enhances his credibility? Is credibility even an important issue for Beck?

In Defiance of Godwin's Law

If you've never heard of it before, Godwin's law is a tongue-in-cheek observation made by Mike Godwin in 1989 which has become an Internet adage. The law states: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.

The rule, please note, doesn't make any comment upon whether the statement is valid or not, merely that as the longer the argument continues, the greater the likelihood that the Nazi bogeyman will appear. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact. Other corollaries to this rule state that the person who first uses this comparison usually loses the argument because it has a tendency to boomerang on the proponents.

This point may or may not have escaped the executives at Fox News.

As a matter of fact, Fox News is constantly using the Nazi analogies, especially Glenn Beck. In my previous blog post I quoted Dana Millibank of the Washington Post noted,

"In his first 18 months on Fox News, from early 2009 through the middle of this year, [Beck] and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24 mentions."

In November of 2010, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes defended a recently aired Fox expose on George Soros titled “The Puppet Master,” which accused the Jewish financier of funding a conspiratorial “shadow government” and manipulating regimes and currencies to his own benefit. (As another blogger noted, the very term "puppet-master" is highly charged racial term, dating back to Nazi claims that political leaders in Germany, and later America and Britain, were puppets of the Jews.) According to liberal pundits and some Jewish leaders who condemned the broadcast, the news story flirted with anti-Semitic stereotypes.

And this in turn led four hundred rabbis from almost all of the main branches of Judaism in the US to take out two full page ads, one in the Wall Street journal and another in Forward, calling upon Rupert Murdoch, owner of New Corp's Fox News to take action against what they see as excessive use of the Holocaust and Nazi analogies to disparage his mostly liberal political opponents.

The main problem with using this comparison, is, as Godwin's law states, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact. It wasn't that everybody was forbidden to use these terms and those comparisons except for Jews, as Roger Ailes attempted to suggest. Rather, the problem is that every time you compare this event or that government proposal to a Nazi Holocaust, you disrespect, you desensitize, and you blur the meanings ever so slightly. When everything is a Nazi plot, an atrocity, then nothing is. When everybody you disagree with become Hitler's twin, then nobody is a Nazi.

Control of the Comparison

Strangely enough when these excesses by conservative media or politicians are brought to the publics attentions, it can easily be twisted. Especially with compliant media organizations. Case in point:

Say What? Democrat Compares Republicans to Nazis

The newfound civility didn’t last long. Political rhetoric in Congress doesn’t get much nastier than the words of one House Democrat during the debate on repealing the health care law.

In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

“They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there. “The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover," Cohen said. http://goo.gl/lqqEC

That serves a warning to any Progressive politician who dares to make the parallels that Beck and others make on a daily basis. Basically the message is: "We can talk about Nazis, the Holocaust, eugenic experiments, prison camps and death panels, we can make phony comparisons about Obama and Hitler, but anyone on the Left should refrain." In other words, the control over that imagery and those comparisons belong solely to the Right.

The argument from the Far Right is Cohen is an elected official and shouldn't be throwing around phrases carelessly. If, they say, Palin is to be held to a certain standard then why shouldn't politicians on the Left as well? It's a good point.

And besides, they say, who really takes THAT Beck character seriously? Seriously or not, some people seem to enjoy watching him, for whatever reason. Through late January and into early February 2010, Glenn Beck drew nearly three million viewers each night. That's quite an audience. What about Cohen? Congressman Cohen's speech was given to to a mostly empty House chamber where Republican efforts to repeal the health care law was taking place. Still there was widespread condemnation for Cohen's remarks. For Beck's remarks, a shrug.

But it's true: Beck isn't an elected official. It's the nice thing about being a "personality." You don't have the same kind of scrutiny and you don't have the restraints. That responsibility stuff can sure be a hindrance to free speech. Despite his non-elected status, Beck certainly enjoys campaigning although nobody is quite certain what he is running for.

In August of 2009, Beck told his audiences in town hall meetings on health care, that the Obama administration had plans that should that "should horrify America . . . particularly if you're elderly, handicapped or have a very, very young child." In his typical hackneyed version of history, both inaccurate and revisionist, Beck connected Woodrow Wilson, the progressive, with the Nazi eugenic experiments and German scientist's attempt at a master race. He went on: "The builder of the master race was only part of the problem in Germany, made possible after they began to devalue life. They tried to figure out how much is a life worth, and put a price on how much each individual was worth -- and some were worth more than others." http://goo.gl/Z5JE

Beck explained to his flock - without the slightest supporting facts- that Obama and his advisors favored health care rationing and then, bringing in allegations made by Sarah Palin about Obama and death panels, capping it with "so bureaucrats could decide who was worthy to live."

This isn't any thing new for Beck. Besides his tours, he delivers the same message (or something similarly outrageous) every day on his radio talk show or on his TV show.

When Beck equates the president's policies with Nazi eugenics, it's perfectly acceptable. And it's perfectly acceptable to pound that lie into the public's head day after day. But when a Democrat mentions this Big Lie approach, made famous by the Nazis, then suddenly it becomes a nasty attack on the Republicans.

A little research shows that Congressman Cohen had it slightly wrong however. It was not Joseph Goebbels who coined the phrase, "the big lie." It was Hitler himself in his book "Mein Kampf." Here is the relevant passage:

...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

Congressman Cohen's words seem fairly appropriate, after all. "The Big Lie" is not merely an untruth that is repeated every day but it is some distortion so monumentally large that the idea that it could be false is beyond the capacity of simple minds to imagine. To take an example for Orwell, Peace is War. Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is Power .

Why, apart from fear-mongering and sensationalism, does Fox News constantly compare the left and progressives with the Nazis? Let me know what's your best theory.

Update

Monsanto confirmed they will not be advertising on Glenn Beck’s show in the future. In statements sent to the StopBeck effort, Monsanto advised:

“We purchased ad time via the local cable company – but not that specific program.”

Addressing our request that Monsanto refrain from advertising on Glenn Beck’s show going forward, Monsanto’s spokesperson added:

“We’ve verified that there are no additional ads scheduled for the Glenn Beck show. The show is not in our future media schedule.”http://goo.gl/dF5hY

Good news happens every day.. but you sometimes have to search for it.

LiveJournal Tags: Glenn Beck,fox new,Rupert Murdoch,News Corp,Nazi,Tea Party

Seriously

On any given day, one can find American conservative radio and television host and political commentator, Glenn Beck diagramming and explicating his theories. Or in the guise of a disembodied voice on his radio talk show.  Essentially he has become the star-child for Fox News, but not without giving some credence to criticism that Fox is not really a news organization but a propaganda/ entertainment network.

Today Beck might be feverishly lecturing about the imminent overthrow of the United States government, how Soros and secret organizations are plotting and conspiring. He seems to take himself very seriously and can easily work himself into a self-indulgent weep about the state of things. Behavior that would shame your average nine-year old is generally on display; sometimes he can get carried away and sound threatening. Most of the time, Beck's schtick is a fascinating example of what passes for informative broadcasting at Fox.

Beck and the Televangelists

His technique is taken, nearly directly, from the televangelists of the 1970s and 80s. It was used back then mostly to scare little old ladies in Des Moines with an excitable nature, who had too much time and money on their hands . These preachers were quite the hoot for smug teenagers like me who would watch their theatrics with a mix of revulsion and amusement. I could feel the magnetism of it, the desire to believe and at the same moment, I couldn't stifle the occasional giggle.

The stage would be darkened, except for the blackboard and a podium and the preacher would take the Bible- always very heavy and well-worn - and cook up an impressive batch of mind-melting End Times extravaganzas. Taking a large helping from the Book of Revelations,(can't beat it for imagery) add a couple of dollops of the Book of Daniel or better yet, a few of the more obscure books from the Old Testament, (easy on the Hebrew stuff, This is Christianity) then a pitch of random current events, both major and minor, and sprinkle in some suggested prejudice and stereotypes and presto! you have a convincing end of the world prophecy. Served sizzling hot.

There was never any real moral teaching involved. Oddly, the preacher never ended his mish-mash with a moral homily, as one might expect. The conclusion was merely an affirmation that the Bible was always correct, in its own mystical way, and the end was coming. Get your house in order because there's nothing to be done about it.

On a more cynical note, the performance was highly effective at separating the fools from their money. Grannies with sheltered lives and sizable bank accounts would work themselves up into a tizzy about all their imagined sins and scramble to write out their checks.

In Beck's case, you don't have the end of the world: you get the more secular version, the Fall of the American Republic. Part of Beck's appeal is his outrageousness which tends to attract the curious but also the disenfranchised and right-wing extremists. He offers them explanations and validations to their conspiracy theories, filling in gaps with his often inaccurate history and incorrect information. Even his fellow Fox New host Bill O'Rielly noted that Beck succeeds because he is willing to go five steps further than he does. And that's saying a lot.

Obama and the Fuhrer

According to Washington Post's Dana Millibank, writer of an unauthorized biography of Beck, "Tears of a Clown":

At the heart of Beck's technique of amplifying fringe theories is his obsession with Nazism. For much of the past 70 years, there has been an unwritten rule in U.S. political debate: Avoid Hitler accusations. Once you liken your opponent to the Nazis, any form of rational discussion becomes impossible. But Beck, it seems, has a Nazi fetish. In his first 18 months on Fox News, from early 2009 through the middle of this year, he and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24 mentions.

With some spectacular sleight of hand, Beck can warp anything done or said by Obama into a neo-Nazi plot. Beck doesn't mind being bizarre about his claims.

Beck has compared the health care reform to "Mein Kampf," stated that Al Gore was using the same tactics to warn against climate change as Hitler used against the Jews, and even told his audiences that Obama's call to form a "civilian national security force" would be tantamount to forming an SS army.

The truth is a lot less dramatic and threatening. But then, isn't it always?

As a senator and during his campaign, Obama called his fellow citizens to greater public service.

"Loving your country shouldn't just mean watching fireworks on the 4th of July," he said in a speech in Colorado Springs, Colo. "Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. If you do, your life will be richer, our country will be stronger."

Obama reflected on how the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy both made public service hallmarks of their administration and how the nation was the better for such efforts.

"I won't just ask for your vote as a candidate," he said. "I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I'm president of the United States. This won't be a call issued in one speech or one program. I want this to be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve."

Doesn't sound all THAT much like the Fuhrer to me. Still, despite the inaccuracy and intentional misrepresentations, the honeyed words of Glenn Beck are referenced by countless right wing bloggers as the gospel, all without question and with as much anxiety as those little old ladies in Des Moines on Sunday night.

All this could be written off as mere modern age huckster-ism with a political slant. Generally harmless and always hammy. And yet, like most thrills in life, Beck's type of show tends to suffer from diminishing returns. After you've compared everything to Nazi Germany and everybody to Goebbels or Himmler or Eva Braun, where can you go next?

Who's Laughing Now?

There's a serious side to all that nonsense.  That serious consideration changes Sarah Palin from a ditzy unqualified source of amusement to somebody that needs to be retired and out of the eye of the public ASAP.

We must not forget that these people, who may not be dangerous as individuals, could have a very harmful effect by attracting and validating the views of extremists. Whether they intend to or not- and that's debatable- people like Palin and Beck can become focal points for all types of radical and violent groups. And recently when this point was brought home with the shooting of Giffords, Palin's response was denial and shifting of responsibility.

We can laugh when Palin mangles the English language with her misplaced relative clauses and made-up vocabulary. We can chuckle at Bachmann when she attempts to recite early American history from high schools classes she apparently slept through. We can giggle when Beck tells his audience that the United States purchased Alaska in the 1950s. (I enjoy poking fun at Palin on this blog if only because she takes herself so seriously. Come by on Thursdays.)

You may say that these people are simply trying to be famous. That's obvious. But they are also attempting to create a nationalist political movement, which is essentially anti-government, even, as some have charged, seditious. Celebrating Conservatism, listed as a member of the national Tea Party Patriots organization, holds armed rallies in celebration of their Second Amendment rights. As one human rights activist wrote:

"You have to wonder: If these teabaggers' views are so extreme that they have to carry guns to emphasize how much they can't tolerate your beliefs, what do they suggest be done with everyone who disagrees with them if they actually gained the power they demand?"

Not a bad question to ponder.

The Tea Party movement is well-financed by the second largest privately held company in the United States with an annual revenue of about $98 billion. The Koch brothers most assuredly have their own political agenda, dovetailing neatly with their corporate needs. In a New Yorker article, Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

This kind of backing and that kind of following means people like Beck and Palin and Bachmann and all the others must be taken very seriously.

As history demonstrates, laughing often ends in a gasp.

 

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To continue to Part II of "Seriously" click on this link:

http://nomadicjoe.blogspot.com/2011/02/seriouslypart-ii.html

 

LiveJournal Tags: Glenn Beck,Sarah Palin,Fox News,Tea Party,Fascism,Koch,Politics

WikiLeaks

In the last couple of weeks, Wikileaks has been making quite a ruckus, by publishing on its Internet website and to five prestigious newspapers classified diplomatic cables, communications between the State Department and 274 overseas embassies and missions.

Washington's reaction at the breach of security has been  extraordinary. Politicians were calling for the extradition and trial of Assange, the co-founder of Wikilleaks, on espionage charges. Pundits on FoxNews, never known for its calm rational delivery, were calling for a "hit" or a treason trial for Julian Assange. (Assange is, by the way, an Australian citizen and the idea of treason in outside of his own country  is laughable.) By the end of the week, even attention-seeking Sarah Palin and professed Christian and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee jumped on the lynching party bandwagon.

Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse, the situation escalated out of control with a massive cyber-attack on Wikileaks. Attorney General Eric Holder was reported to have contacted companies and warned about conducting business with organizations engaged in "criminal activity" despite the fact, neither Wikileaks nor Assange had been charged- much less, found guilty.

Businesses like MasterCard, Amazon and Paypal canceled their contracts with the organization. This, in turn, provoked a group of hackers, known as Anon, to launch a wave of cyber-attacks, causing the shutdown of the companies' websites.  To top it off, an international warrant had been issued for Assange on some questionable sexual assault charges in Sweden.

It was a humiliating spectacle all around, especially from an administration that had once promised to offer a new approach and a new openness. Assange now sits in a British jail, denied bail and facing potential extradition to Sweden for questioning on those charges with the possibility of a further extradition to stand trial on espionage charges in the United States. Prior to his arrest, Assange slyly hijacked a quote by a young Rupert Murdoch from 1958, ”In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

With few notable exceptions, most of the released cables from Wikileaks (as far as the ones I have read)  have been of a fairly predictable sort, dispatches of supposedly inside information for those "on the ground" from all over the world. Meeting with an African leader, details about the drug trade in Afghanistan, or brief sketches of some of world leaders. Over all, however, one searches in vain for anything in the way of "dirt" or anything seriously stunning.

When politicians and government officials- in response to the leaks- speak of damage to national security and a risk to our vital interests, I really wonder what I am somehow missing. Undoubtedly there must be examples, but I still haven't found much in the way of shattering news. Are they embarrassing? Yes, a little perhaps, but I feel sure that most nations, were their private dispatches revealed to the world, would feel a tad humiliated. However after a random perusal of the cables, I have to admit to feeling disappointed, even to the point of wondering what all the fuss has been about.

While I have come to believe that if one looks at the leaked cables with indifferent eye, there are few surprises. Admittedly, I was surprised- and then annoyed at being surprised- about the excessive coziness of corporations and their ability to influence American foreign policy in, say, Nigeria or Russia. I was horrified at the Collateral Murder video, and hope to see an investigation of the matter by the Pentagon. But all in all, so far, the biggest surprise is probably the lack of any jolts and shocks. I had imagined far worse.

Yes, it's true that the Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey may have had his ego bruised slightly from some of the unflattering descriptions he read of himself in the dispatches. Of course, what with politics as they are in Turkey, one would presume he has heard much worse being said about him. And the opposition party came off hardly much better. It is also important to keep in mind that just because a State Department official relates some bit of tiddle-taddle or some roving gossip, that shouldn't make it any more accurate than, say, two fairly well-informed neighbors chatting at a coffee house. After all, when one is eavesdropping- which we are in effect doing when we read these cables- we really shouldn't be surprised if we hear something that offends our sensibilities. That could have been the reason they were considered private correspondence in the first place.

There are reasons why nations, as well as people, are not as wholly open and direct with one another and there is especially a value to, at least, some degree of secrecy when conducting complicated and difficult diplomacy.

And yet, it occurs to me that prosecution of the leakers will soon hit a snag in logic. The key source of these leaks of nearly the 250, 000 cables appears, if reports are true, to have been a Private First Class Bradley Manning. Not a debonair Russian agent or a deeply embedded mole inside the State Department.

According to a Guardian in the UK, it has been estimated that "more than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. "

Another Guardian article states "A diplomatic dispatch marked Sipdis [meaning that the information is appropriate for release to the U.S. government inter-agency community. ] is automatically downloaded on to its embassy's classified website. From there it can be accessed not only by anyone in the state department, but also by anyone in the US military who has a computer connected to Siprnet [the official government computer network]. Millions of US soldiers and officials have "secret" security clearance."

Millions? And to think, Benjamin Franklin once said, Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

But what about millions of people? With that kind of access, how secret can a secret be?

Thus, it begs the question, how can documents of such importance, documents that, in light of the leaks, are now considered to be of critical value to national security, have been kept under such unsecured conditions. Either the information in the documents was vital and was to be kept compartmentalized, or the documents were not of great importance and open to many. Until the cables were leaked they were deemed as classified or secret yet were treated in a manner that was anything but secure. This fact points to some real problem with argument of state secrecy.

This implicated soldier was not some specially trained hacker who found some incredibly complicated means of accessing the information. “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing.." he explained.

Given all the hysteria, this hardly sounds like top secret or even restricted information at all. So perhaps, instead of asking how a low level soldier was able so easily able to access confidential information perhaps the more important question is how did so much of this information receive this designation in the first place.

Perhaps to answer this question more completely, we have to look beyond the series of events of the last few weeks. I started out by asking how the policy for classifying official documents might have changed in light of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. What I learned was rather surprising and I'd like to share this with you in my next post.

LiveJournal Tags: WikiLeaks,Assange,Secrecy,US Politics,Freedom of Speech,First Amendment,Journalism