The Dissonantly Cognitive

As much as it makes my head want to explode, it's still fascinating to observe the disconnect in the US corporate media between the Ukrainian and American electoral experience.

In the Ukraine, that exit polls conflicted with election results is highly suggestive of fraud. In the United States, the same suggests exit polls should be scrapped for their unreliability.

In the Ukraine, media manipulation is said to have weighed the election in favour of the governing party. In the US, it's called "fair and balanced" coverage.

In the Ukraine, intimidation of voters taints the official outcome. In the United States, it's playing "hardball."

In the Ukraine, it doesn't strain credulity to believe the opposition leader could be poisoned. In the United States, Paul Wellstone's death was a "tragic accident."

As The New York Times reported, Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, citing "the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places," said "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."

Journalist Greg Palast writes:

This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month. Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.

At least they can't take our irony from us.

And maybe we can take something back from them. To that end, everyone ought to read this potentially huge story today from investigative reporter Wayne Madsen:

According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush.

The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program.

There have been media reports from around the country concerning the locking down of precincts while votes were being tallied. In one unprecedented action in Warren County, Ohio, election officials locked down the facility where votes were being counted. The officials said this was in response to a Level 10 high-threat terrorist warning being issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI for Warren County. George Bush won 72 percent of the vote in Warren County, much larger than his percentage of victory statewide.

The money to rig the election in favor of Bush reportedly came from an entity called Five Star Trust, largely based in Houston but a worldwide entity that is directly tied to the Saudi Royal Family. Five Star Trust was termed "a well-protected vehicle" that has been used to support both Bush and Osama bin Laden in the US and around the world.

And what the hell; let's add to the mix the bizarre suicide, in a stand-off with police earlier this week, of CyberNET CEO Barton Watson. Just the previous week, it had been announced that CyberNET of Grand Rapids, Michigan was the subject of a massive fraud probe. CyberNET, coincidentally, is a supplier of open-source code to electronic voting companies. It's a confusing story to follow, but there's an ongoing discussion at Democratic Underground (though some seen keen to shut it down for some reason), here and here.

It's a shame America's dissonantly cognitive are sleeping through this, thanks in large part to their lullaby-media. It's just getting interesting. If only our heads can keep from exploding.