Was the president wired during both debates?

<smiles at OBill>

<resolves to overwhelm Joe in the near future>

October 18, 2004 - New York Times
WHITE HOUSE LETTER
Talk of Bubble Leads to Battle Over Bulge
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON

In these closing weeks of the presidential campaign, the talk at an edgy White House is of polls, turnout, swing voters and polls. There are also two story lines from the presidential debates that to the exasperation of President Bush's advisers won't go away: the bubble and the bulge.

The bulge - the strange rectangular box visible between the president's shoulder blades in the first debate - has set off so much frenzied speculation on the Internet that it has become what literary critics call an objective correlative, or an object that evokes large emotions and ideas.

The bulge is in many ways related to the bubble, which is the word Mr. Bush himself uses to describe the isolation of the presidency. In this case, Mr. Bush's critics argue that he has so walled himself off from dissent in his bubble that he was ill-prepared to take on the challenge of Senator John Kerry in their three debates.

Therefore, Mr. Bush had to make use of the bulge, which is most popularly rumored to be a radio receiver that transmitted answers from an offstage adviser into a hidden presidential earpiece. In the last two weeks, the bulge has taken on a life of its own to become a symbol to Mr. Bush's critics of all that is wrong with his presidency.

New pictures on the Internet last week showed protuberances under Mr. Bush's T-shirt at his ranch and again under his coat at the second and third debates. Some theories had the bulge as a bulletproof vest or a tracking device to help the Secret Service locate Mr. Bush should he be kidnapped.

The White House flatly denied it all, and continued to insist that the bulge wasn't there, or that it amounted to nothing.

"I think it is about the most ridiculous story of the campaign,'' said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.

"Listen, I'm there when he puts his coat on, I'm there when he takes it off, I've never seen it,'' said Mark McKinnon, Mr. Bush's chief media adviser.

"I know that the Internet claims it was all different things, but to my knowledge, it was just a poorly tailored suit,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff.

"The box was one of those shock collars,'' said Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, who was joking.

Mr. Mehlman made his comments in Arizona late on Wednesday after Mr. Bush's scowl-free performance in the final debate, and brought up the bulge without being asked. "Every time he scowled he was shocked,'' Mr. Mehlman said. "And so tonight he was great.''

The larger question is whether Mr. Bush has so retreated into the cocoon of the White House that he was stunned to be confronted by Mr. Kerry and flared with anger in the first debate. Not surprisingly, his advisers insisted that wasn't so - up to a point.

Mr. McKinnon, when asked after the debate last week if he ever disagreed with Mr. Bush, said, "Ah, yeah, sure.'' Then he paused, and laughed. "I prefer for others to go into the propeller first.''

Mr. McKinnon, who helped prepare the president for the debates, was asked what critical things he said to him. Mr. McKinnon replied, "Well, you know, that answer's not as sharp as it could be, the body language is, you know, ah, you may not be, ah, may not communicate well.''

Mr. Bush, Mr. McKinnon said, is "competitive, and he does want to improve his game, so he understands that.'' Still, Mr. McKinnon said that Mr. Bush would sometimes bark back.

"But we weigh back in and say, 'Listen, we have a consensus view here, and here's what we believe,' '' Mr. McKinnon said. "The difference over the course of these debates has had a whole lot more to do with him and his competitive instincts than with us.''

Some Republicans had a different view. "I don't think he was prepared for the determined responses and John Kerry's performance,'' said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.

David Gergen, a professor of public service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a veteran of the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses, said that all presidents lived in bubbles, but that Mr. Bush's seemed unusually thick.

"One had the sense that he was out of training in the rough-and-tumble of argument,'' Mr. Gergen said. "He's lost his edge.''

Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was considerably more caustic. "I think George Bush lives in the twilight zone,'' he said after Wednesday's debate.

As for the bulge, Mr. McAuliffe said that "if he had an earpiece on during that debate and those are the best answers that he could do, then he should be impeached and everybody who works for him should never be allowed to work again.''

Finished with his sound bite, Mr. McAuliffe grew serious. "I honestly don't think the man is going to risk his presidency taking a transmitter into the debate,'' he said. "I just can't imagine.''

BBB
Lots of bulge photos. But newly found photos of earpiece visible in Bush's ear.

http://homepage.mac.com/i/hpti/1/wimg/Shared/SlideShow/SlideShow.html?lang=en

What Bush said to Kerry after the debate
To the Bitter End
Late Innings: The debates are over. The drama's getting thick. The knives are out as the candidates climb aboard the last-chance express
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek

Oct. 25 issue - Gentlemen of Yale that they are, or were, George W. Bush and John Kerry made a show of good fellowship when the contest was over: two guys, eager to hammer each other politically, acting like they were booking a tennis date. "Where are you going to be on election night?" the president wanted to know, shaking hands after their final debate last week at Arizona State in Tempe. In Boston, Kerry told him, with Teresa, at the town house on Beacon Hill. Bush will be at the ranch in Texas to vote, then at the White House to watch returns. A few winks and arm pats, and they went their separate ways.

Interesting read BBB. I need to steal this piece for another thread. Sad as it is:

"At Each Ear a Hearer" Bulletin on the Bush Bulge
October 18, 2004
"At Each Ear a Hearer"
Bulletin on the Bush Bulge
By DAVE LINDORFF
Counter Punch

The scandal of George Bush's earpiece debate cheating device continues to grow.

I just got a look at the full Fox tape of President Bush's May '04 joint news conference with French President Jaques Chirac. In that tape, as in several other tapes I've seen, Bush can be heard seemingly getting prompting from another voice. About 12 seconds into the piece, the leading voice says, "And I look forward to working to" Bush comes in with "And I look workin'And I look forward to workin' to" The verbal slip-up makes it clear that this is no electronic echo or sound synchronization problem.

At another point, about one minute and sixteen seconds into the tape, the leading voice lets out a loud exhale of breath. Bush does not follow suit. There is no preceding voice when a reporter is heard asking a question. Also, at one minute and 28 seconds into this tape, Bush reaches up and manipulates something in his ear, at which point there is a static noise and the sound of a speaker acting up, until he removes his fingers from his ear.

There is no wire going up to his ear, indicating that the earpiece in his right ear is wireless.

Meanwhile, the ongoing saga of the President's Bulge offers some disturbing insights into the sad state of the Fourth Estate in America.

Let's start with CNN.

This once daring and innovative all-news television network, after falling into the hands of Time-Warner and particularly of late, has become so frightened by the marketing success of Fox News that it has virtually become a clone of Rupert Murdoch's semi-official Bush propaganda network. This became apparent to me when I was living in Taiwan last spring. The CNN International edition I watched in Kaohsiung was showing graphic reports of slain civilian victims of U.S. bombs in Iraq, and of dead and wounded American troops--images that my friends back home in the U.S. weren't seeing.

Obviously, CNN had the tape and felt it was newsworthy, or they wouldn't have been showing such scenes abroad, but they were hiding it all from the viewers at home.

In my personal case, I received a call last Wednesday from CNN International, which wanted to interview me for a program to be broadcast globally discussing the scandal of the bulge on President Bush's back in the debates. A limo was dispatched to my house to deliver me to a studio in Philadelphia, where my portion of an interview was uplinked to the CNN satellite.

No CNN viewer in the U.S. caught this interview. Only viewers in the rest of the world.

Here in the U.S., the only news program that bothered to interview me on this story for national TV was MSNBC, which did a short Q&A at noon on Wednesday.

Since writing my initial expose in Salon magazine, I was deluged with requests for interviews by local station news programs and talk show hosts, all of whom gave the story serious coverage. But no calls from national radio news programs--not even NPR, which never did a piece, only a commentary a week late on its On the Media program.

On the big TV networks, the story was handled as comic relief. It made Letterman, Leno and Comedy Central, but not the news programs--though they are the ones with the video archives which reporters should be combing for more evidence of Bush's high-tech speaking aids. If they bothered to do such digging, they'd find, as I have, that Bush also had that peculiar bulge on his back on other important occasions, as when he went to answer questions from the 9/11 Commission. Would Americans want to know about that? I should think they would.

The New York Times and the Washington Post both did quick stories on the bulge after the story first appeared in Salon magazine, but both have since dropped the matter, at least as far as its being a hard news story, never having made more than a few perfunctory phone calls (The Times did run a White House Letter today by one of their Washington correspondents describing the bulge as having become an "objective correlative" that raises many wider political issues among voters). Despite receiving ridiculous responses and non-responses from the White House and the Bush Campaign, both papers have obviously decided not to assign investigative reporters to the case, preferring to let the story wither away.

Here in Philadelphia, things have been even more lethargic. My own hometown paper, the once proudly investigative Philadelphia Inquirer, gave the issue of the presidential bulge a wire-service paragraph, and didn't bother to have anyone contact the local investigative reporter who had broken the story. Nor did Philadelphia's local radio talk show hosts consider interviewing me about the Salon story, though stations, both NPR affiliated and commercial, were calling last week from all over the country.

What is one to make of this lack of reportorial curiousity about evidence of a massive fraud--possible cheating by the president on three nationally televised campaign debates--on the part of the national media?

If it were just a matter of lousy news judgement, it would be bad enough, but the fact that both the Times and the Post saw the need to publish serious stories about the matter the day the story broke, and that CNN saw it as important enough to air on CNN International, shows that something worse is going on--the deliberate deep-sixing of a story embarrassing to the president.

The White House and the Bush campaign, for their part, continue to dismiss questions about what Bush was wearing in the debates, and on other occasions, by attributing the story to "the Internet." In fact, as has been the case with many of the important stories about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, the Internet is proving to be where the real journalism is happening.

David Letterman on the election: "What really scares me, is that one of them might get elected."

This fool wants to know. Doesn't it strike you rather odd that as anyone who saw the first debate could see there was something under Bush jacket. That virtually no attempt was made by the DNC, Bush or the white house to explain it. Where there should have been a demand by the public for an explanation there was virtually none. It became a joke on night time TV. This administration sure has the number of the the American public or is it sheep.

NASA analyst photos
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/index_np.html

NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate
Physicist says imaging techniques prove the president's bulge was not caused by wrinkled clothing.
By Kevin Berger
Salon
Oct. 29, 2004

George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. "I don't know what that is," he said on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. "I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."

Nelson and a scientific colleague produced the photos from a videotape, recorded by the colleague, who has chosen to remain anonymous, of the first debate. The images provide the most vivid details yet of the bulge beneath the president's suit. Amateurs have certainly had their turn at examining the bulge, but no professional with a résumé as impressive as Nelson's has ventured into public with an informed opinion. In fact, no one to date has enhanced photos of Bush's jacket to this degree of precision, and revealed what appears to be some kind of mechanical device with a wire snaking up the president's shoulder toward his neck and down his back to his waist.

Nelson stresses that he's not certain what lies beneath the president's jacket. He offers, though, "that it could be some type of electronic device -- it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner." The image of lines coursing up and down the president's back, Nelson adds, is "consistent with a wire or a tube."

Nelson used the computer software program Photoshop to enhance the texture in Bush's jacket. The process in no way alters the image but sharpens its edges and accents the creases and wrinkles. You've seen the process performed a hundred times on "CSI": pixelated images are magnified to reveal a clear definition of their shape.

Bruce Hapke, professor emeritus of planetary science in the department of geology and planetary science at the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed the Bush images employed by Nelson, whom he calls "a very highly respected scientist in his field." Hapke says Nelson's process of analyzing the images are the "exact same methods we use to analyze images taken by spacecraft of planetary surfaces. It does not introduce any artifacts into the picture in any way."

How can Nelson be certain there's some kind of mechanical device beneath Bush's jacket? It's all about light and shadows, he says. The angles at which the light in the studio hit Bush's jacket expose contours that fit no one's picture of human anatomy and wrinkled shirts. And Nelson compared the images to anatomy texts. He also experimented with wrinkling shirts in various configurations, wore them under his jacket under his bathroom light, and couldn't produce anything close to the Bush bulge.

In the enhanced photo of the first debate, Nelson says, look at the horizontal white line in middle of the president's back. You'll see a shadow. "That's telling me there's definitely a bulge," he says. "In fact, it's how we measure the depths of the craters on the moon or on Mars. We look at the angle of the light and the length of shadow they leave. In this case, that's clearly a crater that's under the horizontal line -- it's clearly a rim of a bulge protruding upward, one due to forces pushing it up from beneath."

Hapke, too, agrees that the bulge is neither anatomy nor a wrinkled shirt. "I would think it's very hard to avoid the conclusion that there's something underneath his jacket," he says. "It would certainly be consistent with some kind of radio receiver and a wire."

Nelson admits that he's a Democrat and plans to vote for John Kerry. But he takes umbrage at being accused of partisanship. "Everyone wants to think my colleague and I are just a bunch of dope-crazed ravaged Democrats who are looking to insult the president at the last minute," he says. "And that's not what this is about. This is scientific analysis. If the bulge were on Bill Clinton's back and he was lying about it, I'd have to say the same thing."

"Look, he says, "I'm putting myself at risk for exposing this. But this is too important. It's not about my reputation. If they force me into an early retirement, it'll be worth it if the public knows about this. It's outrageous statements that I read that the president is wearing nothing under there. There's clearly something there."

If that does not convince the Bush supporters that our president is a lying, two faced, cheating, sniveling moron, I wonder what will.
Wonder how he managed to get his degree?
This is the man who preaches morality to the nation. His God should be slapping him up he side of his head for his lying and cheating.

Wow.

I still want to know what's up with John Kerry patting him on the back after the last debate. Did he feel something? Is he being a gentleman, found out it's something medical like Lash postulated? Did he just figure that if it was just his word, it wouldn't be believed -- I mean of anyone, he has the highest stake in showing that it WAS something. So he felt something but is trying to put out the word in the most credible way possible -- by, say, involving a top-level imaging scientist. (Who gave him that videotape?)

Hmmmm...

sozobe
I watched all three debates and the only time that unsightly lump appeared, and I don't mean Bush, was during the first debate.

He's putting himself "at risk," and believes he might be forced into early retirement .... but he's not being partisan or anything like that. He's just being a good scientist. It is, after all, "scientific analysis."

Putting my skepticism aside ... what's the scandal here? With all the micro technology available, does anyone really think Bush would wear a circa 1970's wire?

Please tell me what I'm missing.

What would be the scandal if Bush was being fed answers in the debates rather than answering for himself?

Hmmm.... noooo idea....

Ticomaya
Open your eyes and mind and you will miss nothing. At least admit if only to yourself the possibility that Bush may have been wired.

Noone ever acused the Bush administration of doing anything properly.

Sozobe wrote


Children are expelled from schools for cheating. Should we do less to our president. Or maybe since this is the first instance,that we know of . A dunce cap and banishment to a seat in the corner will do.

So Bush was being fed answers in the first debate, wired using technology Bush found in the Oval Office left over from the Nixon Administration? I take it the only evidence you have to support your theory are some pictures, and a partisan NASA scientist playing at home with Photoshop?

Who was feeding him his responses? Barney the Scottish Terrier?

Nobody's saying it definitely happened.

This evidence isn't a slam-dunk, but it's interesting. You don't seem to have any specific critiques of the evidence, such as it is.

This guy knows what he's doing. I have a friend who works at JPL and just asked him what he thinks of the story.

Meanwhile, if it IS true, it's quite significant.

If.

Nah, Barney would have come up with better answers. But then again, perhaps the wire just malfunctioned.