Madsen Redux

I thought I felt my ears burning. The logs confirm that I'm being talked about at Democratic Underground. It seems our old pal Wayne Madsen has published an article at Online Journal alleging:

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.

Informed sources say the damnedest things. I briefly came up in the DU discussion because of what I had to say about Madsen here, here, and here when last year he accused Bush of inconveniencing troops by having Thanksgiving dinner in Iraq at 6 am. The sole source of Madsen's diatribe was a single typo in the Washington Post. (It's a good thing he didn't mention the plastic turkey.)

Some of the esteemed DUers are trying to vet Madsen as a credible reporter and so came across my ealier posts. Well watch out people!

They are of several minds on the matter:

Madsen has been one of my favorite research/investigative reporters for years, and while his timing sometimes sucks, because it's not in his hands, his basic research is far more solid than 99.9% of anything else you'll hear from "staff" reporters ANYWHERE!!

Doesn't say much about the 99.9%. Though you've got to remember that CBS is in that 99.9%, so maybe he's on to something.

Wayne Madsen has been researching and writing articles long before you even had a CLUE what kinds of things our "elected" officials were up to.

Wayne Madsen is PASSIONATE about what he does. And to some extent, some journalists' passion can come through pretty strong, and will tend to cast dispersions on the underlying research.

Among other things.

Unfortunately I think Madsen is king of true stories that won't see the "light of day" -- won't go mainstream -- for at least 20 years.

On the other hand some are more skeptical:

Seriously, folks, the author hooks you with a smoking gun and then strays into murky territory, tying all of the shadowy elements one to another before he trails off into thin air. Why didn't he link together the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and the JASON Society? The end of his essay leaves the reader hanging and fails to draw a conclusion. Shoddy writing, at best. A reporter? Ha! The author sets you up for a wild goose chase and doesn't give you any leads you can verify or investigate.

After the article, it lists all of these impressive credentials to make the author seem important.

Smoking gun or red herring? The article has too many elements of a red herring.

But they want it to be true so badly. Ay, there's the rub.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Update: I am not a professor at Tufts University as someone at DU guessed and I have never written for Men's News Daily as someone at Air America surmised. Before anyone gets too nuts googling my name, I'm not the fur art guy either.

For those following along, Madsen has an update to his original article.

Update II: I can't resist returning to those DU boards to see what's being said, and so desperately too. This is good:

I wouldn't worry about Brian O'Connell (who posted that). Whatever dude is the attitude I'd take. He seems to have a long running anti-Madsen thing going. Whatever dude. Just blow him off.

Someone is presenting evidence that the reporter he's pinning his hopes to is a little, er, wacky with the facts and his response is to suggest a "whatever dude" attitude. You've got to love that he's suggesting striking a slacker pose as a defense. I guess I'm a little bit of buzzkill at their fantasy party.