October 8, 2004

Who was feeding him his lines? [insert name of incredibly stupid person here]?

Posted By Chris Crosby at 2:23 PM

Reader Jeremy Walker alerts me to this interesting Salon article (get a Day Pass to read it, it's fast and easy) providing ample evidence that Bush might've been fed lines through an earpiece during the first debate. (Yes, Bush is even STUPIDER that THAT normally. Brrr...)

Don't forget to look for the bulge on his back during tonight's debate! * 20 comments

20 Comments:

Ok, nobody else has posted, so I will make the obvious joke.

The only bulge I want to check out is on Edwards! Merrow!

By Anonymous, at 11:35 PM

Nobody reads heinlein anymore. (sigh)

By Anonymous, at 6:38 AM

WHOO! Unsupported Acusations and wild assumptions kick my ass! Go team dipshit!

By Anonymous, at 11:50 AM

I don't know.. he failed pretty horribly even with the bulge.. You would think if it was a listening device they would have had a team of guys on the other end coming up with a lot better answers.

By Anonymous, at 2:10 PM

The debates are mostly prescripted anyhow, which makes the performance sadder, even without taking in this rumor, which is still, a rumor.

PBS ran a special on it not too long ago, but in sum, it's a shame how much control the two singular political parties have over the debate, the questions asked, the issues covered, the possibility of objections, and who asks the questions.

Several years back, they were controlled by a 3rd party, the League of Women voters, but the parties attempted influence even then...hrm, but it honestly wouldn't be poltiics if they hadn't tried. The League doesn't control the official debates anymore, however: the two parties do.

By Anonymous, at 6:30 PM

By chanspot, at 6:31 PM

nah, Bush is simplity too stupid to know how to repeat correctly

By Anonymous, at 7:20 PM

Haha, the first thing I thought of when I saw that bulge was the Puppet Masters. You're not alone, fellow anonymous poster!

By Anonymous, at 8:02 PM

I did watch the first debate, but I was too busy marvelling at how rediculous he was being. "And if I had to do it again, I would do things the exact same way."? You mean you would ignore the weapons inspectors, ignore the U.N. and tell your people it would be easy and everyone in Iraq would love you? Right...

I also noticed that in today's comic, Sawyer looks quite hot. (I'm a girl before people start having a problem with that statement).

By Anonymous, at 3:40 AM

This is more than a battle of the bulge.
See his eyes? May as well call him a deformed alien.

By Anonymous, at 9:24 PM

Prescripted, huh? I can see it now.

KERRY: ... Nuclear proliferation.

ROVE, BUSH, AND CHENEY: WTFNO THAT'S NOT IN THE SCRIPT

By Anonymous, at 11:18 PM

Wow, it's a spine! A backbone! Wow, it's really rare to see one of those nowadays.

I like that, "providing ample evidence" even though the technology exists to shrink a reciever down to the size of a pea... But of course, the administration would have to rely on some sort of large back unit, because obviously that makes more sense... somehow...

If your going to cite a credible source, make sure it's not one that's publicly backed by the DNC, hmm?

By Anonymous, at 10:18 AM

To those who are skeptical, I should point out that the article itself was skeptical: it didn't say Bush cheated, it said hey there was this really strange lump on his back, the Republican part specifically required that there would be no back shots during the debate, that at one point Bush interrupted himself to say "let me finish" when no one had said anything, and that there is a past history of journalists having some interesting radio signal stories with Bush at press conferences and such, it seems like maybe there is something fishy going on. And as for the bulge being too big A) It wasn't all that big, B) it wasn't even visible except in that one shot, so it did do a pretty good job of staying hidden, and C) an earphone and receiver could be made small enough to fit, but could a scrambler (to keep anyone from overhearing the transmission)?
Jeremy, the guy who sent the link to Chris, who was cool enough to then post it here and start this discussion.

By Anonymous, at 11:44 AM

Okay, no offense, but this rumor is dumb. Look at it this way.

Let us assume for a moment that Bush did cheat using an audio prompter in the debate. Bush is the President of the United States of America- he has access to the best technology on earth to do that with. Commercial companies can produce a cellular phone practically the size of a matchbook, so why is Bush using a reciever that requires a battery pack attached to his back where any accidental turn toward Kerry or the audience could potentially reveal its' presence?

A far more reasonable explination is that Bush was wearing a bulletproof vest during the debate, and what you're seeing there is part of it.

- HC

By Anonymous, at 7:29 AM

Jeremy:

As I type this, I am listening to the Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack on a standard Apple iPod.

It has the technology and processing power to read data off of a hard drive in one of a number of different formats, translate it into audio, and drive a pair of headphones for upwards of 2 hours straight. I find it difficult to believe that to produce audio from an incoming scrambled or encrypted signal would require much more processing power. If taped under my armpit or placed in an inside pocket while I was wearing a suit, this would be more or less completley concealed from view from the outside.

Not only that, but there is an even smaller version commercially available.

I'm a Democrat myself, and I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but I also feel that this sort of virtually-groundless and easily debunked conspiracy theory ultimately hurts our cause by giving Republican pundits more ammunition and support for the standard-issue "all Liberals are insane" claims.

- HC

By Anonymous, at 7:50 AM

Duvet (the Opening) is awesome...

By Anonymous, at 8:34 AM

I'm still going to vote Badnarik on the second.. even if the media doesn't give him any coverage..

http://badnarik.org/newsfromthetrail.php?p=1390

By Anonymous, at 11:47 AM

/shrug, I'm no expert on radio signal transmissions, but I do know a bit about computers and you are completely right, processing the signal would require less hardware than an ipod. But while trying to scam the mainstream American media is pretty much child's play these days, you still want to be certain that no wires are visible, and that no signals can be picked up by anyone else.

Amusingly enough several people have said that he could have put any necessary hardware somewhere else, while others have suggested that the bulge was just a bulletproof vest. However, these two explanations can actually explain why he might have a tansmission device there: if he was wearing a vest, his upper back may have been the only viable placement option.

Like I said, I'm no expert, and I'm also no journalist. The people at Salon.com are though (and I don't mean teleprompter readers, I mean actual journalists), and as part of their further research in to this story, they talked with experts who clearly know a lot more than any of us here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/10/15/wired/index.html

Ultimately, I'm not certain Bush used a prompter. But at the same time, some big questions exist which make me very concerned:

1) Why hasn't the White House explained the bulge? Their press secretary actually responded that Bush was an alien and the bulge was from his masters on Mars, but refused to give any sort of real response (not even a meaningless "it was a security device that you don't have clearance to understand" or something).

2) Why did the Republican Party specifically prohibit cameras behind the candidates? We all know the debates have been corrupted ever since they stopped being run by a third party (the league of women voters), so it makes sense that nobody in that puppet organization questioned the Republican request at the time. But now that it's an issue, I have yet to hear an explanation (maybe they were worried Bush's ass was too big or something?).

3) Why did Bush interrupt himself, when no one had said anything to him, to say "hold on now" (or something like that) during the debate? At the time he claimed that he somehow got confused by the light singals and some sort of body language from the moderator. Now I'll be the first to grant that our president is a complete and utter moron, but I think even he can understand the concept of red light/green light, and he clearly had up until that point in the debate.

4) Why have surveillance hobbyists and experts picked up transmissions with real-time policy discussion occuring as the president spoke at past events? Now, I'll grant that having someone read you the lines of your speech is little worse than reading a teleprompter, or just reading some note cards. Hell, Brando started doing this in every movie he was in apparently. But there have been reports of transmissions taken from when the president was supposedly speaking extemporaneously, and if this is the case (Salon reports they are trying to acquire some of these recordings for verification) why would the president act any differently with the debates?

Again I'm going to paraphrase Salon, because I think they are awesome, but what it comes down to is that it's plausible Bush was wired, and its plausible he was not. Perhaps we will never know. But you can be certain of one thing: if people refuse to ask questions, to challenge the words of authority figures, to research and to investigate, then we will never know the answer to this question.

By Anonymous, at 12:57 AM

In response:

First of all, as for a large radio 'pack'- let me reiterate that commercial companies can make a cellular phone (which is, essentially, a reciever/decoder/transmitter package) the size of an Altoids tin. It's not entirely out of the question that our intelligence agencies have access to better technology for building the same things. Even with a bulky bulletproof vest underneath, sewing a pocket on the inside of a suit that could conceal this and not be visible from the outside would be child's play, particularly if the equipment used was modified or custom-built. Given this, it seems illogical to use something that requires a big battery pack that any photographer can see to operate.

> 1) Why hasn't the White House explained the bulge?

Most likely, they either thought that this rumor would die on its' own eventually, or were afraid to give out information that could potentially be used to identify the type of body armor the president was wearing- useful information to anyone who wanted to assassinate him. That's sensitive information, and it's information that any of the new terrorists we've created in Iraq would love to get their hands on.

> 2) Why did the Republican Party specifically
> prohibit cameras behind the candidates?

Because they didn't want the news to be showing any Kerry-in-front-of-a-cheering-crowd money shots.

> 3) Why did Bush interrupt himself, when no one had
> said anything to him, to say "hold on now" (or
> something like that) during the debate?

If I remember correctly, he also looked over at the (offscreen) moderator when he said that. Given that, the assumption that he was reacting to something that didn't make it on TV seems fully reasonable.

> 4) Why have surveillance hobbyists and experts
> picked up transmissions with real-time policy
> discussion occuring as the president spoke at past
> events?

It's fairly well-known that Bush's press conferences are fully scripted anyway; the way I see it, this isn't any different from a teleprompter. A supporting theory I've heard (whose accuracy I cannot vouch for) is that Bush has a minor form of dyslexia which makes it difficult for him to use a text-based teleprompter. If this is the case, I can't begrudge him the right to use an audio prompter instead.

I am not against questioning our leaders; however, I think chasing after a conspiracy theory about a teleprompter during the debates is ultimately a waste of energy. There are far better avenues to attack Bush from without making it easier for Coultier, Limbaugh, Savage, and their ilk to paint all liberals with a "paranoid conspiracy theorist" brush. The Dow dropped below 10,000 yesterday- all signs currently indicate that the improvement in the economy earlier this year was a bubble and not an actual recovery. Another few quarters and we're officially in a depression, rather than merely a recession. Likewise, even as things continue to go downhill in Iraq, the Bush administration is already making noise about regime change in Iran and threatening military action in Pakistan- meanwhile, Kim Jong Il still has more powerful weapons of mass destruction than the ones we were so eager to take from Saddam. Our military is stretched thin across Iraq and Afghanistan already; where are we going to get the troops for Bush's next liberation? The answer is as simple as it is frightening- The Draft.

The election draws closer by the day; the issues that will really decide it are the status of the economy and the war in Iraq. These are the issues that are going to convince weak Republican supporters that Bush is an unfit leader; these issues are where we should be focusing our energy, not questionable theories about transmitters during the debates.

- HC

By Anonymous, at 2:42 PM

I was wondering who was running for the Libertarian party. Wow, it's like they're the only sane people talking in politics anywhere. I like how they're rational and don't promote fear for political gain.
-Gabe
The reason that White House hasn't said anything about the bulge is because it would acuatly reduce the dignity of humanity as a whole to dignify such a stupid question with a response.

By Anonymous, at 6:52 AM