the problem with the "they have osama" scenario for me would be that the only way I can see it working is if in fact the WTC was a conspiracy from the beginning and Osama an agent somewhat on the order of the Operation Northwoods, and of course if that was the case I doubt Osama would have agreed to show up later to his execution.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the reason Bush & co haven't mentioned Owhoseyamama is because they have elected to take the ostrich approach to the whole debacle. If they never mention him again, maybe, just maybe people will begin to forget why he started sending troops to war in the first place.

Bryan, when you're playing 500 Rummy, you don't know every card that's going to turn up. You know what you have in your hand, and you know approximately how you want things to turn out; so, with that in mind, you make use of whatever comes along.

Well, that could be the October surprise. I don't
think the Army under Bush has been competent enough to find Osama, but it's always possible.

Or maybe he's just joining his boys in harassing the Crawford paper that endorsed Kerry last month:

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial40.htm

You have a much higher degree of faith in the basic competence of this administration that I do. Their core strengths are misinformation, disregarding expert advice, and offending and insulting all persons, foreign and domestic, who don't accept the party line without question.

I believe Osama is being ignored for the same reasons that Iraq got invaded and North Korea didn't: Too hard, and no money to be made.

Teresa,
I don't think it's Osama--I did hear on a radio show a couple of days ago from one author (Richard Miniter) that he did think there was a 50-50 chance they would get Mosawi before the election....

How credible he is, I have no idea.

I don't know what they can do. All I know is that for a long time now, there's something they should have been doing, and they haven't been doing it.

(That's not "should" as in "doing their jobs"; it's "should" as in "behaving in a way that's consistent with their other known behavior.")

For some reason I have this sinking feeling that the October Surprise is going to take place Nov 2, and will consist of framing the Dems for some giant irregularity in some state's voting--say, Ohio's--thereby preempting any Dem legitimacy and throwing the election back to the Supreme Court again.

Extra-tinny tinfoil here.

The problem I have with them having Osama is that I can't see it happening without a leak, somewhere. Forgetting the leaky administration, why would Al Qaeda keep it secret?

Maybe if he was dead, then AQ might want to keep it secret for a while, but there's been enough time for their propaganda machine to bolster the faithful for the bad news.

If he's alive, then I might believe that the Bushies have a line on where Osama actually is, and are hoping to snatch him. That's the kind of faith over reality thinking that characterises this administration. In this case I think there's a 50-50 chance they'll blow it, and OSL will escape again.

So, okay, I'll put up $5 against yours, T. My nearly three quid says that they won't manage to pull Osama bin Laden out of the hat before November 2nd.

Edit: OBL, but you knew that, right?

From a non-US viewpoint...

The trouble with catching Osama is that he is a Symbol of the War Against Terrorism (caps intended). Catching Osama implies to the many in the populace not following the details that the war on terrorism should therefore be over, and leads to such fiddling little questions as:

If you have Osama in custody, why is there still terrorism happening in Iraq?
(and Jakarta, and..)

If you have Osama in custody, do we really need a "war president" any more?

If you have Osama in custody, then do we finally have closure on 9/11?

Far, far safer to have Osama be, like Sauron, the bad guy you never see, and can always invoke.

Unless it looks like you're going to lose the election, of course, then all bets are off. Disclaimer: I've been too busy focusing on elections in my section of the world to keep up with the polls, but it doesn't look like a predicted Kerry landslide, more's the pity.

Can I be an ostrich too? The thought of an October surprise is altogether too disquieting.
From a logical standpoint, there are 2 possible types of surprises -- a success or a scare.
Success possibilities -- producing Mr O. or someone of his ilk (strong), photo-op with newly elected Afghanistan prez (weak), getting a hostage released (unlikely, unless it's really the CIA that kidnapped that CARE director).
Scare possibilities -- staging a (fake) terrorist attack in the US, or staging a foiled fake terrorist attack.
I'm obviously overlooking possibilities here. Way too long since I read The Prince.

I don't think that's extra tinfoilly at all, Stephanie. Things like that are already happening.

* Voters in Ohio are getting calls from the election department "reminding" them that their precinct is somewhere it isn't (many places will only count provisional votes that are filed in the proper precinct, so if you're legally eligible to vote, but cast your ballot at the wrong location, you're out of luck).
* I heard that some senior Florida voters have had helpful "election officials" offer to file their absentee ballots for them.
* There really are touchscreen voting machines in Arizona where people are complaining they chose Kerry and a checkmark appears for Bush! [Fortunately, voters are allowed to redo until they get it right, but it's taking multiple tries.]

It's ugly already; the GOP is already laying the groundwork that we won't know the results that evening -- it's going to be a long and bloody battle.

But those are challenges to ballots being cast; not an October Surprise which aims to change which candidate people actually vote for.

I'll bet against you, Teresa, under the same circumstances that would make me vote for Dubya on November 2...those being that I awaken that morning to discover that my head has become a cabbage.

Well, if Bush is really gonna be in Texas during prime campaign time, I'm almost ready to vote for a Black Ops terra attack somewhere in the vicinity of (but not too close to) wherever Kerry is at the time.

Tinfoil is the new black!

From Asia Times, which has proven to be surprisingly reliable in the past, a surprising spin on Zarqawi: http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html

Too hard, no money to be made, and too difficult to keep it quiet. It's a close thing, but those factors tip the balance for me, so if you're taking multiple bets, Teresa, I'm in too. Loser donates five bucks to charity of winner's choosing?

Nel, Xopher, you're on.

And if there's no October Surprise? That's worth a lot more than $10 to me.

The problem with them having Osama is that they haven't demonstrated that much patience in the past. They blew our undercover guy in Al Qaeda's identity, simply because they wanted to reassure us that the most recent threat level hike was genuine and not a political ploy. If they see potential political gain in something, they tend to go for it immediately if not sooner. It really seems to me that if they'd caught him, Bush would have insisted on trumpeting it to the world immediately, and screw the long-term benefit. This is not a man with good impulse control, and Rove can't override him when he wants his way (see Fallujah, attack on).

I think the not-mentioning-Osama phenomenon is better explained in terms of Bush's inability to admit mistakes, and concomitant unwillingness to be questioned about why we left Afghanistan to go into Iraq. Hence his infamous "I don't spend that much time thinking about him . . . I'm just not that concerned about him." Besides, having Osama "out there" somewhere helps create the psychological atmosphere of fear and dependence that Bush is counting on to get elected.

As for what the October Surprise will be, we've got the Sinclair smear job, which I've no doubt Rove is behind 100%. The voter suppression activities going on in all the battleground states are also classic Rove. The other possibilities are another terrorist attack; the threat of a terrorist attack in Democratic voting areas; and further Kerry smears (or some combination of the above). The only thing I'm sure of is that there are no depths to which Rove would not go; his ability to pull off something sufficiently horrific is what's in question.

Oh, the reason I was poking around that site: I was trying to find an old report of theirs that Bin Laden has been in Pakistani custody for many months, waiting for just the best time to publicly "capture" him. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that happen this week. Who knows? So much of this "War oon Terrorism" stuff seems scripted.

Nothing so complicated, Sennoma. If I win, I promise to do something virtuous with it.

I see that Zara Baxter and Lis Riba were posting my thoughts while I was so carefully composing them.

But Larry Brennan's idea is the really scary one.

The problem with some of the alternative OS theories is that they don't account for the Crawford trip - which of course doesn't mean they're not correct, but does mean there would have to be yet another thing going on if one of them is in fact correct.

I don't have a strong feeling about what is going on (my analytical spider-sense has been overloaded recently and just buzzes faintly all the time), but I do have an alternative theory to offer. There has been a lot of speculation recently about Bush's medical condition, some of it even plausible. It occurs to me that the Crawford ranch might be a better place to perform secret medical examinations or procedures than the White House.

No, I don't think I'll take that second bet. I think they have some kind of stunt planned; I'm thinking it'll just be another lame visit to the boys in Iraq with a plastic turkey, followed by a full-scale assault on Fallujah.

I'm kind of hoping that the real October surprise will be Colin Powell shaking off the influence of Cheney's mind-control and going public with the truth about the Bush White House.

Did I imagine a late report that the Crawford trip was cancelled, and Bush is now scheduled to be in Florida on Saturday?

Not only is my memory going, but all the news sounds like it's just made up anyway.

Perhaps it's just Bush reverting to form? When the going gets tough, the tough go on vacation?

Or does Bush need to be out of the public eye for a while to come down off pills-n-booze?

My money says Terror Attack, New York City, eight a.m. Eastern time, November 2nd. Stay off the subway.

Sign that it's coming: Condition Red set at five p.m. Eastern Time on the 1st (just in time to hit the Six O'Clock News, not enough time for Kerry to react).

My plan is to Not Be In New York at that moment.

I, on the other hand, live and work in Hoboken, and don't get off work until 6:00. So technically I won't be in New York, but...

Would any sane candidate take a weekend off this close to the big day?

Bush would. He did it in 2000. Same deal, weekends off right in the middle of the most frenzied period of the campaign.

See "Bush Travels--October 2000":

http://www2.gwu.edu/~action/bushcal10.html

James, that's my bet too.

Does everybody like my shiny new hat? It is ever so pretty. I've gotta get me some matching tinfoil shoes.

I think Rove would have laid the ground for OBL if he had him. That he doesn't seem to be laying any ground is making me awfully twitchy. Sure, Sinclair, but that's pocket change for Rove.

I also think Bush has something going on medically. Skipping his physical, the funny mouth downturn and spittle in debate 3, lagging, lots of eye twitches, lots more difficulting speaking. Booze? Stroke? I dunno.

My new favorite theory on OBL is from Matthew Yglesias's blog. Namely that the Pakistanis realized that Osama is so popular in Pakistan that the government would not survive his capture by the Americans, so they quietly captured and killed him, stashing the body where the Americans would never find it.

That actually kind of makes sense. And how long does anyone think the Bushies would be able to keep quiet about capturing Bin Laden?

Let me wrap Occam's razor in tinfoil for a moment and see how it cuts. My guess is that OBL is buried under many many tons of rubble somewhere in Tora Bora, where it is impossible for anyone to ever definitively prove that he is dead. This would mean that all post-Afghanistan war video and audiotapes of OBL are fakes. That the CIA has called them genuine is understandable, since it has a strong reality-based contingent which wanted to emphasize the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, (as opposed to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.)

But it's not in the interests of anyone who might know the truth (if it is the truth) to tell this story. If Bush held a press conference and said, "OBL is probably dead, but we can't be sure," he'd be snickered out of the room. Neither would the CIA (and by extension the intelligence community) or Al-Qaeda get good PR out of it.

As for Crawford, I guess we'll see. I'm sure Bush is up to no good though.

I can't find the breadcrumb trail, but there was a report in a Spanish-language newspaper that said bin Laden was holed up in the woolly west of China, and Bush & co. were deep in high-level top-secret negotiations as to what, exactly, Bush would give China as part of a second term if they go in and fetch him out before the election.

But the foreshadowing on this one—remember how Bush rolled over so abjectly for that spy plane back in early 2001?—is such that I'd have to kick it back as implausible.

I also think Bush has something going on medically. Skipping his physical, the funny mouth downturn and spittle in debate 3, lagging, lots of eye twitches, lots more difficulty speaking. Booze? Stroke? I dunno.

I'd guess Parkinson's or something related, myself, but I'm only an amateur diagnostician.

I think you all underestimate the perks that Bush gets having the war go on indefinitely with no clear end, no clear enemy, and no clear attacks on US soil.

Bush Senior managed to win the first gulf war and get troops home a year or so before the election. He lost to Clinton because with the war over, voters turned their focus to a sucky economy.

"W" is actually in a better situation. The war has stagnated to the point where there are no goals or deadlines that would flag the president as "failing". "More of the same" works in his favor. It keeps voters focused on the phantom menace called "terrorism" and glosses over the deficit, the budget, the unemployment, the economy.

Bush would actually probably benefit most from a "more of the same" situation between now and election day.

Putting Osama on display might actually take some voter's concerns off of terrorism and cause them to look at domesic issues. And Bush would not want that.

That, plus the incompetency with which we've managed so far, I find it hard to believe that we've captured/killed Osama and have managed to keep it secret this long. Possible, but unlikely.

Of course, if you want Bush out of office, it would probably be wise to prepare for any contingency.

Dan:

George W. Bush with Parkinson's?

Surely the universe's sense of humor wouldn't be so poetic.

...

Okay, forget I said that last part.

It occurs to me that the Crawford ranch might be a better place to perform secret medical examinations or procedures than the White House.

Secret medical examinations? Crawford isn't that close to Roswell, but then it's a lot nearer than Washington.

Tinfoil is the new black!

Yeah, just wait until the tinfoil helicopters come for you. You'll be sorry.

Josh, my father has been diagnosed with Alzheimers and Parkinson's and it certainly seems like an appropriate thing. Now he won't be able to hurt people anymore and someone else will be controlling him.

As to W, here's a set of videos -- one from 1994 where he appears sharp, and one from the debates where he appears dotty:

http://www.adbuzz.com/bushbuzz.htm

I'd vote he's heading into dementia.

My take?

Osama is part of the Bush clan's connections; they may have been a bit pissed at him for the scale of the attack (and at what they regarded as consequent unnecessary digression in Afghanistan), but 9/11 cleared all the domestic obstacles to their agenda for a vital two, two and a half years.

(They won't have known what was coming, but they knew something was coming, and figured they could use it.)

'The War' exists solely to further that -- primarily domestic -- agenda.

So I have no trouble believing that there's a one-remove agreement to not do that again, or to not do that again at an embarrassing time; Osama will have no trouble with the US getting into a position he's sure will destroy it, and otherwise he's got pretty much everything he wants.

So do the Thugs; the Theocrats have to wait for a couple more Supremes, and the Thieves are doing pretty well but not as well as they expect to. (They never do.)

The Crawford trip is, I think, easily explained -- Dubya can deal with decidedly finite amounts of stress, and he very probably isn't well at all. So they have to let him de-stress, or risk having him lose it in public.

If he does that, the ~50% of the electorate which really doesn't mind the mass disenfranchisment of Democrats in the interest of the current junta retaining power would start to mind, and they can't have that just yet.

I think the October Surprise will be a scary-sounding terror alert, probably targeted at heavily Democratic areas. And then they fix the vote, if necessary, which it may not be because half the country would vote for Bush even if Kerry spotted a disguised bin Laden in Ohio and personally dispatched or apprehended him.

For Bush, bin Laden makes no difference. If there's a terrorist attack, it proves that he needs to stay in office because there's a war on; if there isn't, it proves what a good job he's doing protecting us.

As for Crawford, I think he's so sure he'll win he doesn't need to bother campaigning any more.

I ran across a link to Will Ferrell impersonating Bush. It's pretty funny, yet pretty close to target. Perhaps bush is going to Crawford to tape something very similiar.
http://whitehousewest.com/

There are 2 rather more likely scenarios re OBL:

He was killed in Afghanistan but buried in rubble, or died somewhere when his kidneys gave out and his body was hidden.

or

He was found and killed in Pakistan, but Musharraf coverd it up so a) he continues to get US aid and b) he isn't overthown by the fundamentalist wing there that woudl see him killing OBL as betrayal.

Anthrax. Remember that? Just about right for an OS.

BTW, I agree with Graydon that Bush's big problem is stress. He can't be so isolated that he doesn't know how badly things are going. His advisers were supposed to handle the hard stuff, but it turns out that they were all (with the possible exception of Rumsfeld) almost as clueless as he is. For the first time in his life, there's nobody to step in and clean up his mess.

For another example of Presidential stress, look at before and after pictures of Jimmy Carter. Four years of the Presidency looked like twenty years on his face.

I have it on good authority that if Kerry is elected our fair nation will be overrun by hungry, abandoned-orphan-raising, grandma-eating, moon-howling, sleigh-chasing wolves!

You can't get scarier than that, at least without imagining Dick Cheney naked.

Stefan,

According to Atrios, when they showed that ad on Crossfire, the audience laughed.

He's now calling it the "puppies" ad . . .

Yeah, I figure it will only play as intended to ranchers, and maybe grannies from Eastern Europe.

Me, I like wolves. I love seeing coyotes trotting around the grounds of the Intel plant across the street. (So does my dog, although I suspect for different reasons.)

Re: what kind of October Surprise to expect in the next week.

Keep in mind, if there *is* a terrorist attack in the US, that could seriously backfire on Bush. Democrats have already started to hammer Bush about the fact that Condi Rice and other top officials have been giving speeches in swing states rather than doing their jobs.

So if we are attacked, there could be a serious "who's minding the store?" backfire on the administration.

I don't think Bush has OBL. I watched him very carefully in the first debate when Kerry first mentioned that he still hadn't caught OBL. Bush made a tiny grimace, and that was it. I simply don't believe the man would have been able to avoid smirking if they had OBL on ice somewhere.

Tinfoil-hat stuff is a fun diversion, and all, but I don't really buy any of it. Bush is slated to take the weekend off because 1) he really doesn't like the work, and 2) it's part of Rove's well-known strategy of trying to create an air of inevitability. It's the same reason Bush wasted a bunch of time in 2000 campaigning in California-- they think that if they project an air of confidence, people will vote for him out of a sort of bandwagon effect.

It's really important to remember the wonderfully apt description John DiIulio hung on the political arm of the Bush White House: "Mayberry Machiavellis." Particularly the first word.

Let's look closely at Karl Rove's record: in 2000 he used a gigantic war chest, a fired-up right-wing media machine, and a relatively complacent centrist media to run against one of the most ineptly run campaigns ever by an incumbent, and he lost the popular vote, squeaking into the White House because a bunch of elderly Jews in Palm Beach voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake.

Karl Rove is not Lex Luthor. He's not a James Bond supervillain. He's a hack political strategist with a fairly limited repetoire of dirty tricks who parlayed huge systemic advantages into a squeaker victory in the Electoral College.

The sooner Democrats and liberals manage to get a grip, and accept that Karl Rove is not, in fact, the nearly omnipotent spawn of Satan and Shub-Niggurath, the sooner they can begin to focus on the business of actually winning the election, and fixing the mess that Bush has made of the country.

It's conceivable that there might be some large-scale "October Surprise" coming down the pike, straight out of a bad tv miniseries. I very much doubt it, though. The most I expect is a fraudulent terror alert of some sort, and maybe not even that-- just the usual mix of slimy attack ads, voter intimidation, and media manipulation.

Focus on dealing with that stuff, and stop worrying about cartoon melodrama plots.

lightning mentions Anthrax.

Now that could lead to the mass destruction of absentee/mail-in ballots from heavily democratic districts. (Think Metro Portland.)

And I'm looking forward to the tinfoil helicopters. I've got tomato sauce squirt guns all loaded and set to go - they won't know what hit 'em!

And what ever happened to Mullah Omar?

Shorter "Wolves" ad: Vote for Bush, or the DINGO WILL EAT YOUR BABY.

Chad --

Rove isn't, of himself, the problem.

The problem is hundreds of state officials who see nothing wrong with rigging the vote -- ballots in the trash, shredded registrations, touch screens reported to check 'Bush' when you press 'Kerry', false 'your voting place has moved' phone calls, and the other stuff that hasn't made it to any kind of national attention yet.

This is all organized and funded and planned. The folks 'fired' for getting caught in one state are put to work in another state.

So, sure, Rove isn't a super villain. He doesn't need to be a super villain, because a very large, diffuse, and successfully secret -- at least to the extent of avoiding any kind of media outcry -- effort to keep Democratic votes from being counted is already well under way.

I'd submit that not counting the votes is equivalent to wanting to destroy the United States, in political terms -- no more 'we the people'.

It's not any one evil mastermind; the evil mastermind reputation is just a symptom of the existence of hundreds and thousands of people who hate and despise 'we the people' and want to get rid of it.

That's worth worrying about. They aren't all, or even mostly, idiots.

My biggest OS fear has been a Dick Cheney 'heart attack' followed by his 'forced' replacement on the ticket by John McCain the next morning.

On the other hand, there's always the riveting cinema of the attempted assassination of a major administration figure, quickly shown to be 'al-Qaida' in origin.

Please pass the tinfoil. It's starting to leak into my head again.

Fred Ramesey: On the other hand, there's always the riveting cinema of the attempted assassination of a major administration figure, quickly shown to be 'al-Qaida' in origin.

Well, that would be one way for them to get rid of Colin Powell before he writes his book.

> replacement on the ticket by John McCain the next morning.

John McCain's endorsement of Bush tells me that McCain is far more political and far less altruistic than his "maverick" image tells.

I'll bet the first taker the standard amount that McCain's either been promised something on the order of a cabinet position, OR he figures he can't tick off the republicans too much cause he wants to run for president in '08

winnings to be paid when he's named to the cabinet in 05 or when McCain enters the primaries in 08, whichever comes first.

Had he run instead of Bush in 04, I might have even voted for him, but I think he's shown he's about as "maverick" as a broken-down gelding who just wants his carrot.

Sometimes this whole two-party system really sucks in its polarization effects.

One argument about OBL theory: early and absentee voting has been going on for several days already in a number of states. In an election this close, if you have OBL why wait until after a bunch of votes have been cast to pull him out?

Hm, post earlier didn't take. I'll take you up on the bet, Teresa.

I'm wavering between the 'ostrich' and 'we have always been at war with Middleastasia' theories, myself. But I don't believe this Administration is smart or capable enough to keep a bin Laden capture under wraps this well.

I can't see McCain having anything to do with a Bush administration, VP, cabinent, or otherwise. He's just playing along because he doesn't want to run as an independent for president.

I've posited elsewhere that the October surprise will be an announcement that they're on the verge of catching Osama and it's a sure thing as long as no one dares mess with the team in charge, cf. Kissinger's "peace is at hand" announcement close to the 1972 election. (Will people fall for this? Why not? They've been falling for all the other crap this administration has been shoveling at them.)

Nah. If they catch bin Laden, it works against the argument of "if you vote for Kerry, the terrorists will nuke your city." If Osama's in custody, he can't nuke your city.

Of course, some other terrorist could still do it. Hmm.

It doesn't feel right to me either.

And even if they did it, it's theatre, it's a trick, but if they produce him they actually did catch him. It isn't anything like as evil as the manipulation of the votes. I don't even think it would sway all that many people, if they've bought it they've bought it already, would people who don't intend to vote for the pro-torture candidate change their minds because he caught one head of a hydra?

Why mess with the voters' heads when they can mess with the votes directly?

Counting the votes and abiding by the result whether you like it or not is what democracy is about.

I think he's going in for secret surgery to get the rectangular growth between his shoulderblades removed.

The problem is hundreds of state officials who see nothing wrong with rigging the vote -- ballots in the trash, shredded registrations, touch screens reported to check 'Bush' when you press 'Kerry', false 'your voting place has moved' phone calls, and the other stuff that hasn't made it to any kind of national attention yet.

That's exactly my point.
Spending time and energy fretting about "October Surprise" scenarios is useless. They haven't really shown the competence needed to actually use any of the nefarious tricks that people here are proposing, and beyond that, they don't need to. They've got plenty of old-fashioned tricks to use that don't require supervillain powers.

And you know what? All of those tricks (with the possible exception of the electronic voting machines) can be countered by classical means. You put trained observers at the polling places to make sure that votes aren't being discarded, you make your own phone calls telling people the correct place to vote, you give people rides to the polling places, and have lawyers standing by to stomp on underhanded attempts to stop people from casting their votes.

People have tried to rig elections before, and we know how to stop them. These are well-known tricks, and the counter-moves are also well known. And they can be countered, so long as Democrats aren't spending time and energy fretting about some sort of cackling-supervillain "October Surprise" super-trick.

I'm sorry for the slightly sharp words, but this pre-emptive despair drives me nuts. We haven't even voted yet, and people are already moaning about how hopeless everything is. Woe is us, for some shadowy They are going to pull Osama out of a hat, or burn the Reichstag, or fake all the vote counts and give the Presidency to Giblets. It's a short step from there to "Why bother voting? I'm moving to Canada to hunker down in Alberta and wait for the Apocalypse."

"They" are not supervillains. "They" do not have magic powers, not even collectively. What "They" do have is a large numer of people pulling perfectly ordinary political tricks, and that's something that you can stop. Unless you make the mistake of buying into the myth of Republican hypercometence, and fool yourself into thinking it's already over.

Here's what worries me.

Quite a few people writing here whose judgement I respect have said in the past that the Bush crew don't expect to ever lose power, and will stop at nothing to keep it, because if they lose, they lose all.

It looks possible that Kerry could win the election. If the Democrats get out the new voters, the people not counted in polls of 'likely voters', he might even win by a clear margin.

If these points are correct, which from this side of the Atlantic I'm in no position to verify, then any 'October Surprise' is likely to be big.

One possibility is a diplomatic triumph, on the order of that 'China hands over OBL, praises War on Some Terrorism and promises to keep buying dollars' scenario Kip mentioned. That would actually be a good thing in its own right, even though it would help Bush.

Two other possibilities that come to mind are less cheerful. One is a stunning, bold military strike - a US-backed Israeli air raid on the Iranian nuclear reactor would fit the bill. This would create some problems, but who cares, when Empire creates reality?

Another, of course, is the one James D. Macdonald raises: a terrorist attack on the US. It would have to be real, not just a scare, and even if the plan is for it to be foiled at the last minute I don't see them as capable of pulling it off without getting blamed for it. If it does happen, God forbid, then it's endgame. I don't think we're in black helicopter time yet.

But I do suspect something big is coming down.

So my $10 for Teresa's choice of good cause is on Iranian nuclear physicists being SOL this week. It's a bet I truly hope to lose, and to lose by no October Surprise after all being the win.

Here's another weird thing: Karl Rove was in Waco (attending my church, O the embarrassment) on Oct. 10. I find that somewhat strange (both the timing and the lack of a lightning bolt when he entered the building).

if you have osama in custody, why is there still terrorism happening in iraq? :-)

Cheers,
Lenny

Being a Texas native, I clearly remember when Bush took that nice long 1-month hiatus on his ranch....his day off doesn't surprise me, I have to say. My opinion is that Osama was never a top priority of the Bush administration, with the exception of the first week or two right after 9/11. They were after Saddam right from the get-go, and the 9/11 fiasco gave them just the excuse to do it. Of course, they made it look like they really wanted to target Afghanistan by throwing a few troops there and waving some flags, but now that Saddam is taken down, they will sit back for some time and lick their chops. Every once in a while, they'll get bored and raise the security level. :)

Whew. Some insiders are stepping forward to tell the truth:

Wolf Packs for Truth

I think we can separate the questions "Is there going to be an October surprise?" and "Why is Bush going on vacation with so few days to go before the election?"

There probably is going to be an October surprise of some sort, although if it's on the level of effectiveness of the puppies ad, I don't know how much good it'll do them. I have to agree that watching for it is probably taking our eyes off the ball, which currently rests in the court of the Republicans who are trying not to count (koffkoffotherlymelaninedkoffkoff) votes.

Bush is on vacation because he's not capable of the sustained effort of showing up for work and doing his job without running away, and he's had to do that for probably the only extended period of his residency the past few weeks.

Anyone who buys a "sudden" capture and then votes for Bush really *deserves* Bush -- it's unfortunate that the rest of us have had to suffer him as well.

Remember how a Saddam trial was started, and cut off cold the minute he was allowed to open his mouth?

If the US is taking charge of binLaden, he will be kept off camera until after the election -- take that to the bank. It is the only way Bush can maintain the illusions he cherishes and uses to lie.

Scorpio
Eccentricity

Okay, Mythago. That makes four (you, Nel, Xopher, and Sennoma), which is the limit of my budget. Ken MacLeod has $10 that says they're going to raid the Iranian nuclear facility; no takers yet.

Alexandre, I wondered about the verification of those tapes. I'm willing to believe our guys know more than anyone else about detecting audio forgery, but that also has to mean that they know more than anyone else about committing it.

Graydon, you said:

Osama is part of the Bush clan's connections; they may have been a bit pissed at him for the scale of the attack (and at what they regarded as consequent unnecessary digression in Afghanistan), but 9/11 cleared all the domestic obstacles to their agenda for a vital two, two and a half years.

(They won't have known what was coming, but they knew something was coming, and figured they could use it.)Pass me the tinfoil; I've been thinking the same thing.

Have you seen that minute-by-minute analysis of the morning of 9/11, with accompanying videotape footage of Bush? Watching that was what finally pushed me over the line into conspiracy theory. (I'm honestly angry about it. Conspiracy theory is an intellectual lee shore.) Thing is, Bush isn't terribly surprised. He isn't curious, either. He mostly looks like a man who doesn't know his lines.

I remember that morning. As soon as I heard there'd been two planes, I knew it was an attack. I phoned Jim Macdonald to tell him, and he first words out of his mouth were, "Someone just lost their country."

I also remember being wary of the possibility of further attacks. If you don't know who just hit you, you don't know whether they're about to hit you again. But if Bush & Co. were plotting to pin the blame on Saddam mere hours later, they were no longer in diagnostic mode. so they can't have been terribly worried about the real culprit.

Like you, I think that Bush knew something was going to happen, but was blindsided by the magnitude of the attack.

I also agree that Rove isn't our biggest problem. We now have hundreds or thousands of officials and operatives out there who've shaken off any reluctance they might once have had about explicitly rigging the vote. They've done it, and they know other people who've done it. They'll have less hesitation in the future.

I know but cannot comprehend this mindset. This is happening down at the level where you don't get rich for doing it. A lot of the work of vote rigging is being done by little guys. What do they imagine will come of it? To

The fact that you're on their side is no guarantee that they're on your side,

These guys are not your friends. If they don't believe in government by the consent of the governed, they sure as hell don't believe in government by the consent of you.

"If you let me do what I want, I'll tell you all the things you most want to hear" is the kind of promise that gets made in the back seat of a car -- and is worth about as much.

Chad, you're right. If I can figure out how to access Movable Type from the computer I'm on right now, can I repost that as an addendum?

Ken, ever since that fake mob attacked and stopped the ballot recount in Florida, and it came out that they were funded by the Republican national organization, which hadn't even gone to the trouble of covering its tracks, I've figured they don't think they're ever going to fall out of power. It's impossible to be sure of that in a democracy; therefore.

Scorpio, if Bush were an individual affliction as he's an individual choice, some voters might deserve him. The country doesn't deserve him.

Ken, ever since that fake mob attacked and stopped the ballot recount in Florida, and it came out that they were funded by the Republican national organization, which hadn't even gone to the trouble of covering its tracks, I've figured they don't think they're ever going to fall out of power.

You've said that before, and it's never made any sense to me. They gambled that if they won that election, they'd have at least four years before anyone would be in a position to investigate them for it, and by that time no one would care. There's no plan to hold power forever required to make their actions make sense.

People have tried to rig elections before, and we know how to stop them. These are well-known tricks, and the counter-moves are also well known. And they can be countered, so long as Democrats aren't spending time and energy fretting about some sort of cackling-supervillain "October Surprise" super-trick.

Chad, thanks for the reality check. Might as well spend our energy fixing what we can fix, i.e., making sure the votes get cast and counted as fairly as possible. I still think there is some kind of October surprise in the works, but your point that energy is best spent where it has a chance to have a direct effect is well taken.

Teresa, my mom told me shortly after 9/11 that she thought Bush was involved--she said it was the smirk and body language when he got off the air force one plane. She said she'd seen the same thing with school boys who just got away with something. Took me a long time to agree with her, but now I do; it was Moore for me, too.

Here's another fun tinfoil idea. Anybody hear how DeLay used his influence to track democrat planes through the FAA? Now, why would he do that? Me, I think of Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan. Both dead in planes at extremely crucial election times. Wellstone's replacement lost. Carnahan won despite being dead. Still, makes me wonder. Both were big losses.

But here's another OS. This one is ours. My county--Jackson County Missouri--has registered 25,000 new voters since our primaries in August. Nearby Clay County has registered near 10,000. According to the paper, we're nearing our census amount of potential voters. Missouri is one of the swing states. Short Show-Me politics: urban votes Dem, rural votes Repub. Those new voters are all urban. Surprise!

Chad, you're right. If I can figure out how to access Movable Type from the computer I'm on right now, can I repost that as an addendum?

Sure, go right ahead.
I was tempted to extend one or the other of those comments with a lengthy Red Sox metaphor, but my inner Yankee fan just won't let me.

I'll take:

Bush is tired/sick.

plus

Dead Iranian Scientists.

Alex

Ken MacLeod has $10 that says they're going to raid the Iranian nuclear facility; no takers yet.

Not being a betting man I may be doing this all wrong, but I'm not looking for takers. I'm just saying, if that isn't the October Surprise, I'll donate ten bucks to whatever good cause TNH asks me to.

I think Dead Iranian Scientists is a given. I can't see the US or Israel being willing to sit by while Iran develops a viable nuclear weapons capability. But I expect that will happen after the election, not before.

I don't think Bin Laden died at Tora Bora. The Arab media's "nya-nya-you-missed-us" coverage at the time was quite convincing, as were a couple of the later OBL videos. But there hasn't been one of those videos since places like Asia Times started reporting that OBL was in Pakistani custody, which is quite a while ago now.

On vote-fixing. It happens, on a small scale, all the time. In Canada, I've seem local returning officers be far more stringent in making sure votes for one candidate are marked properly than are votes for another.

I remember, back when I was a naive university student, scrutineering for the candidate I favoured at a local polling station. Two disreputable-looking men carried an unconscious foul-smelling old guy into the polling station. Trying to do my best for my candidate, I immediately challenged the old guy's right to vote while unconscious. The returning officer looked mildly surprised, and said, "you can challenge the vote if you want, but this is one of yours." Oh.

So, yeah. I'm sure the Republicans are fixing a whole pile of votes. I'm also sure the Democrats are fixing an approximately equal number of votes. That's not conspiracy. It is, alas, how the system works.

I'm really not into conspiracy theories. I don't think there's any great conspiracy happening now, either. But I do think those in power often choose when to make information public, and how best (from the point of view of their interests) to do it. I think there's a lot of that going on behind the scenes right now.

I'm getting the same sort of feeling now that I did just before Richard Nixon's re-election. The guy may manage to get re-elected (and I think Bush will manage to squeak through), but I can't see his house of cards standing for another four years. I think it is all going to come crashing down on his head somehow before his second term ends.

Speaking of October surprises, I was reminded today that on October 19, 1998, Byron "Low-tax" Looper shot and killed his opponent for a seat in the Tennessee State Senate. His plan to win by default, as a write-in candidate (his opponent's widow) won in a landslide. Wikipedia has full details, if anyone is curious and thinks Google will take too long.

No I'm not suggesting Rove will try anything like this. Really.

Further tinfoil hattitude: two black helicopters just went by, in a line that looked to be roughly Crawford-to-TSTC-airfield (the only one around here big enough to handle Air Force One). This forms a nice symmetry with the one I saw last night going roughly TSTC-to-Crawford. However, Bush wasn't on it: he was in Florida this morning.

Ah, TexAnne, but what if the one in Florida is a doppelganger? The same doppelganger they used for the later debates . . .

Once you get into the swing of it, this conspiracy theorizing just comes so easily.

I have an odd hobby. Working in libraries, I like to read old magazine. Really old magazines. I was flipping through the 1951 Readers Digests, and found an article on vote rigging, and fixing elections, and corruptions. If anyone is interested, I can try to find it again. The more things change...

The problem is, as people have noted, the current crop of Republicans are behaving as if they know they will be able to stay in office no matter what. Hopefully, they are fooling themselves, but I am worried.

My personal worry scenario is that when all the dust has cleared, the Republicans will not let go their grip on the White House, and that shortly after he is sworn in for a 2nd term, Bush will die, and Cheney will officially be Prez. After all, there is still the 20 year curse, and it's not certain if Reagan broke it, or merely ducked it by surviving his assassimation attempt.

Ooh, Maines, I think you've got it! I didn't watch very long because I don't want cooties, but he did seem relatively lucid. So yeah, it couldn't have been the real Goob, right? (Thank goodness for the recent discussion of Welsh; I've been wondering how to pronounce "GWB.")

"If you let me do what I want, I'll tell you all the things you most want to hear" is the kind of promise that gets made in the back seat of a car -- and is worth about as much.

At least in the back seat of a car, the screwing has a chance of being pleasant.

Sigh, and I think of "really old magazines" as being 18th century. Old magazines are 19th century and early 20th century.

No, magazines are an ephemeral medium. Old magazines are two or three issues ago. Really old magazines are last year and before.

Teresa, you and I have had this conversation, so you know that I know to about a 90% certainty what the surprise is. But I have no money to put down on it. :)

As to Bush's health -- that doesn't take a rocket scientist. But it does take someone who has early-onset (middle-age) Alzheimer's running in the family to see the signs are clear. It runs in my family: I know those signs like the lines on my own hand. The most damning? Watch how he deteriorates or shows more clear signs (the mouth drop, the confusion) as the evening progresses or his day progresses. This type of Alzheimer's becomes more apparent when the patient starts to tire at all, usually the early evening. There are drugs that perk up the patient (Debate #3) but show signs of innapropriate reactions (inappropriate humor, inappropriate reaction to emotions, etc.) as well as a touch of mania (hyperactivity). Sound familiar, boys & girls? You have Debate #3 in a nutshell.

I've been watching this happen to Bush for the last few years and been telling people how clear the progression has been. Until recently, everyone told me I was imagining it. God forbid I was right about something, eh?

BTW, Teresa, the drug is Provigil. Friend to both thee and me for other reasons.

Report that bin Laden is in China and that the Bush administration is negotiating for his capture:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7077.htm

No idea what the reliability factor is on this.

A couple posts above, Magenta referred to the '20-year' curse on the US Presidency.

I don't want to let that pass without noting that the man elected in 2000 was not allowed to fill out his term.

Al Gore shows that the curse still holds.

Elizabeth, we need to do lunch. dragonet@kc.rr.com. I live in Hyde Park, work at home most days.

Seriously, I'm so sick and disturbed by all this (plus the evil, evil local political advertising, goodness they're mean), I may have to skip reading the paper and maybe blogs until it ends. Except for yours and Scorpio's that is.

The Chinese are claiming low reliability on the link I posted above. But then, they would, wouldn't they. To quote Trudeau, an especially tricky people.

I presume everyone has seen this discussion of the inaccuracies and distortions in the latest Bush/Cheney "Wolves" TV ad?

Ken, I expect you can find something virtuous to do with it.

Nancy, we've talked, but what I have are conjectures, not knowledge. As I said earlier, all I know is that things that should have been happening have not happened.

Thomas, I don't want to be right about this. It would only encourage me to think I was right about some other things, and I don't want to believe those, either.

In the midst of this group exercise in rational paranoia this really disturbing thought occurred to me. When Bush loses the election, he'll still be President for 3 more months. What can he do in that time to insure that his agenda continues? How will Rove, Cheney and the Boys arrange the transfer to make it as hard as possible for Kerry to reverse things?

Do multiple layers of tinfoil help?

A less helpful, but really really funny, take on the Wolves ad.

The PoorMan's parody is funny.
Have you seen the Democratic response ad (on democrats.org): Eagles (and Ostriches)?

Susan has more evidence re:an surprise Iranian attack:

According to White House and Washington Beltway insiders, the Bush administration, worried that it could lose the presidential election to Senator John F. Kerry, has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country, including the main underground research site at Natanz in central Iran and another in Isfahan. Targets of the planned U.S. attack reportedly include mosques in Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan known by the U.S. to headquarter Iran's top mullahs.

The Iran attack plan was reportedly drawn up after internal polling indicated that if the Bush administration launched a so- called anti-terrorist attack on Iran some two weeks before the election, Bush would be assured of a landslide win against Kerry. Reports of a pre-emptive strike on Iran come amid concerns by a number of political observers that the Bush administration would concoct an "October Surprise" to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

I'm not sure how seriously to take that article. A quick Google-browse of Wayne Madsen (the guy who wrote the original article) gives me the impression he may be a LaRoucheite - which wouldn't necessarily mean that he's wrong, but it would make one wonder.

Coming in way too late to get a piece of the action (do we have to bet cash?) but I'd lay very strong odds against.

First, I observe that The Administration has been talking up the doom we can expect from al Qaeda. It's just been Cheney talking it up instead of Bush. He's the one constantly pressing how terrorists might poison our water, smuggle nuclear weapons into our cities, etc. Bush can't do it because he's got his "America is Safer" schtick going on instead. Fear and reassurance, classic bad cop/good cop.

Second, I don't place as much stock as you do in the competence of our government to keep something that big secret. The soldiers who captured him would have to know; various foreign officials would have to know; too many people outside the inner circle would have to know. And then when you revealed him, you'd have to have a plausible cover story for where he's been all this time and stage some sort of theatrics, and the people involved in that deception would know. Somebody would talk; it's the nature of secrets. Heck, even Bush might let it slip -- he's been known to gaffe occcasionally. And if word got out too soon that this was a set-up, it would destroy everything.

Third, why not reveal him if you've got him? They didn't waste any time with Saddam. The major reason behind Bush's popularity slip is because he's been believed to be slacking on the War on Terror and focusing on irrelevant wars. If he could have kept his popularity many months or a year ago by showing a success of this magnitude, why not take the fanfare? He'd have defused one of Kerry's biggest criticisms before the campaigning even surfaced. I just don't see the benefit in holding Osama bin Laden in the back for a rainy day, when bringing him to the front would have virtually guaranteed a sunny season.

And fourth, I just don't think it's in Bush's nature. Karl Rove, others, yes. There are sneaky conservatives who might think of something like this. (Just as there are sneaky liberals who would. When did Clinton crack down on Iraq? When he needed a distraction from Monicagate.) But the Commander in Chief? You said it yourself in your essay a couple days ago: Bush's defining trait is that he knows he's always right. And if you know you're always right, and you have proof that you're right because you grabbed Osama bin Laden, why would you hide that? Why would you abide a whole year of unwarranted criticism? You wouldn't. You'd trumpet it to the world. No, the only scenario in which this makes any sense would be one in which even Bush didn't know we had Osama -- and I don't think that's plausible. He hasn't created a hands-off culture, he's created a culture of people like him.

So I'm afraid I don't see it happening. The Iranian strike makes a scary sort of sense the more I think about it (though I think there would've been more lead-up if it were a real possibility) but Osama? You just don't keep Osama bin Laden in a closet somewhere. The cost of secrecy is too high, the difference in benefit too low, vs. bringing him to light as soon as you've got him.

Another wolf ad parody:

http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/

Link, I hope.

I don't see an attack on Iran. I think it would cost Bush the election and I think he knows it.

Why should tinfoil become the new black?
Is your government telling you jack?
"We don't have to explain.
Only foes would complain.
We're the empire -- no need to look back."

When will tinfoil become the new black?
When your country's been under attack,
And you cannot forget
You're a terrorist threat
If you're caught with the dread Al-Manac.

US honor is catching some flack
From your leader's reality-lack
'Cause there's evidence there,
But he just doesn't care;
Could be tinfoil is now the new black.

There's a mystery box on his back
And continuous speech is a lack.
Could it be that his soul's
Under fundie control?
That's when tinfoil must be the new black.

I agree with Steve Eley...Bush has more to lose by revealing a capture of Osama this close to the election. If he were to play Osama as his trump card he would have done it earlier in the year. Doing it now would lead people to believe he was hiding it for some time. I'm afraid you may lose your 5 dollars. Also consider the deployment of troops in Iraq versus Afghanistan. We invaded both countries, both filled with militant factions, yet we put more focus on Iraq. Bush has business ties with the Bin Laden family resulting in millions of profit from shady business in foreign oil. That is why there are ten times more troops there. When you hear college students on the news spewing their ignorance saying the war on Iraq was about oil is ludicrous. The war on Iraq is a distraction from the profit Bush built earlier in his life on dealings with family members tied to Bin Laden...fair to say...tied to Al Q. With all this information as merely a suggestion of guilt, it still fills me with enough doubt to elect change. I believe it is a bad move to switch presidents in the middle of a war. I mean do we remember the nightmare of Vietnam. However with that still in mind, I am still in support of change. I cannot listen to four more years of the same arrogant boastings from the crooked business man at the helm of what he thinks is a bottomless pit of money funding some sort of World Police. I support Kerry despite his inability to identify with the American People. He exceeds at pointing out Bush's vast mistakes and misleadings and that is enough for me to cast my vote in the proper direction.

Nancy, if you see my mouth drooping and my talk confused, you should just tell me to go to bed. I'm partially paralyzed on the left and when I get tired, stressed, or sicker than usual, I drag my left foot, drop things from my left hand, and have aphasia.

But in good post-stroke news, a month ago I unconsciously walked, turned, walked backward, turned, and walked again, while talking, without wobbling at all. I got out on the sidewalk and thought "What the heck was that!?" So I've been practicing and the doctor was very impressed when she saw me do it. She says my brain is still making new connections, even 17 years after the stroke.

Could it be some amplification on this?

Alex

Whatever happened to tracking down the anthrax attacks, and whosoever was/were responsible for them? After the investigation pointed at US Government facilities for source and knowledge of US processing techniques, the hourds seemed to fade out of existence and the Fed's attention evaporate, too.

Hmm. Sort of like "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden." The two had NOTHING to do overtly with one another, except that the Bush regime has dropped them as Real Threats on their -own-, preferring to use scare terrorist thug intimidation Protection Racket tactics instead, of saying all the Bad Things that will happen if not keeping Bush in Washington as titular leader in charge of the Danelaw with more and mor Danegeld charges to the peasants to pacify the "threats" the Protection Racketeers claim they are necessary to avert/mitigate.

Stinks like rotting gurry of ordure spun as red herring to me.

Bushies claimed that Middle Eastern Governments and Terrorists were reponsible for the anthrax. It always seemed to me like right wing US citizen extremist bigot crackpots, such as the ones who had sent fake anthrax threat letters to Planned Parenthood Clinics over the years, and not like the suicide bombings and such more characteristic of terrorists in southeast Asia and North Africa and the land bridge between them.

But Bush doesn't let things like logic and scientific method of observations and hypotheses and correlations get in the way of his Beliefs. He doesn't read anything that might disagre with his views, and depends upon OTHER people to look at Primary Evidence and information and to do literature searches, AND EDIT THEIR RESULTS and redact them to what he feels like digesting, before they are to present anything to him.

His cronies put Creationist inanity into the Grand Canyon center promoting a book that claims that flood in the Noah story created the Grand Canyon! Our tax dollars at work, promoting utter crackpot pseudoscience.

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/kerry101804.htm

looks like slurs and slimebucket brigade work to me. Someone just got booted within the past year or so from Massachusetts as an ex-Yugoslavia mass murder and atrocity participant. I don;t remember the name of the person, but the INS had had no problem letting him into the USA and failing to do much of a background search on him, or -care- about it, and certainly the BUSH INS wasn't interested in digging up the information or doing background checking. It was other sources, including Massachusetts Democrats--and Kerry is a Massachusett Democrat, who if I recall correctly, raised the ruckus about the fellow and deported him to a hot seat back in Europe.