THIS MODERN WORLD

No, I don’t mean the sock he stuffed in that flight suit, but rather the odd boxy-shape under the back of his suit jacket during the first debate. (Also note the snaky cable-like shape that appears to run up to his neck).

If he had a transmitter of some sort, it would at least explain that strange moment in which he barked out, “Let me finish!” — even though he had time left on the clock and, well, no one had interrupted him. No one we could hear, at any rate.

Salon picks up the story:

Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry? That’s the latest rumor flooding the Internet, unleashed last week in the wake of an image caught by a television camera during the Miami debate. The image shows a large solid object between Bush’s shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer.

The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it’s safe to say he wasn’t packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the debate?

— snip —

Was it possible the bulge had been Photoshopped onto Bush’s back by a lone conspiracy buff? It turns out that all of the video of the debate was recorded and sent out by Fox News, the pool broadcaster for the event. Fox sent feeds from multiple cameras to the other networks, which did their own on-air presentations and editing.

To watch the debate again, I ventured to the Web site of the most sober network I could think of: C-SPAN. And sure enough, at minute 23 on the video of the debate, you can clearly see the bulge between the president’s shoulder blades.

— snip —

So what was it? Jacob McKenna, a spyware expert and the owner of the Spy Store, a high-tech surveillance shop in Spokane, Wash., looked at the Bush image on his computer monitor. “There’s certainly something on his back, and it appears to be electronic,” he said. McKenna said that, given its shape, the bulge could be the inductor portion of a two-way push-to-talk system. McKenna noted that such a system makes use of a tiny microchip-based earplug radio that is pushed way down into the ear canal, where it is virtually invisible. He also said a weak signal could be scrambled and be undetected by another broadcaster.

Mystery-bulge bloggers argue that the president may have begun using such technology earlier in his term. Because Bush is famously prone to malapropisms and reportedly dyslexic, which could make successful use of a teleprompter problematic, they say the president and his handlers may have turned to a technique often used by television reporters on remote stand-ups. A reporter tapes a story and, while on camera, plays it back into an earpiece, repeating lines just after hearing them, managing to sound spontaneous and error free.

Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up — and broadcast to surprised viewers — the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies — notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush’s appearance. “They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera,” Schechter said. “The Democrats weren’t doing that at their convention.”

There’s more at the isbushwired site.

My guess is, even if he is wired, they’ll be hiding it better tonight. Still, it might be fun to see if you think he’s listening to voices only he can hear. And — assuming for the moment that this is true — if I were on the Kerry campaign, I’d be working doubletime today to figure out a way to either jam the signal or to break in on it. Imagine Bush trying to stay focused while someone recited old Beat poetry in his ear, or maybe just read names out of the phone book. What could he do? Complain that someone was unfairly interferring with the system he’d set up in order to cheat?

This is, of course, why I am a cartoonist and not a paid political advisor.

When the United States invaded Iraq last year to disarm Saddam Hussein’s regime, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or any facilities to build them, according to a definitive report released Wednesday.

The 1,000-page report by chief weapons searcher Charles Duelfer, a document that President Bush said would represent the last word on the issue, confirms earlier findings and undermines much of the Bush administration’s case about the Iraq weapons threat, though it does say Saddam intended to restart his weapons programs once United Nations sanctions were lifted.

Story here. As August notes, this probably isn’t what Bush was hoping for last June:

Q Mr. President, a year ago in Evian, there was an expectation that in the ensuing months, weapons such as chemical or biological weapons, would be found in Iraq. I wonder if you can share with the American people your conclusions, based on what you’ve learned over the past 15 months, sir, as to whether those weapons were — existed and they were hidden, were they destroyed, were they somehow spirited out of the country, or perhaps they weren’t there before the war, and whether you had a chance to share this with your G8 partners.

THE PRESIDENT: Right, no — Bob, it’s a good question. I don’t know — I haven’t reached a final conclusion yet because the inspectors — inspection teams aren’t back yet. I do know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons. I do know he’s a dangerous person. I know he used weapons against his own people and against the neighborhood. But we’ll wait until Charlie gets back with the final report, and then I’ll be glad to report.

And the really convenient thing is, there’s a major debate tomorrow night, at which Bush can gladly report that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Per reader requests, Smirky/Snarly buttons are now available as well.

Freeway Free Speech Day is October 13. Details.

From a reader in Japan:

I live in Japan, just got my absentee ballot from VA and was required to fill the whole thing out in easily-erasable #2 pencil!! Gee, I’m glad I went through the trouble of ordering that absentee ballot and paying about $2 to mail it back…not only will it not be counted unless the race is close, it could be counted as a vote for anyone.

And if this is on the level, it’s pretty horrifying. It’s allegedly a scan of the Michigan absentee ballot — note the misaligned arrows in the Presidential section.

Update from a Michigan reader:

It’s not MICHIGAN’s absentee ballot; it’s Gratiot county’s (not my county, BTW). It’s a small county (pop. 42000; maybe 25000 voters?) in the center of the state (where my bro-in-law is from). The printer made a mistake; they’ve sent out corrected ballots already (from the comments at LiveJournal). Chances are that any misprinted ballots would have to be hand counted. Gratiot County is probably 80% Republican, so a likely max of 5000 Kerry votes, of which maybe 500 would be absentee, most of whom will use the corrected ballot. If they somehow manage to get some court to agree that connecting the arrow by Kerry-Edwards is somehow a vote for Bush, it would probably cost Kerry 100-150 votes. If the Dems in that part of the state are on the ball, they’ll let everyone know to use the corrected ballot. Possibly significant, but most likely not. The Repugs have much more efficient ways to steal elections.

It’s why I used the word “allegedly” — it’s always wise to approach things one comes across online with a grain of salt.