Tinfoil hat time…?
Mike Connell is dead.
From the Akron Beacon Journal:
[Mike] Connell was a prominent Republican political consultant. He founded New Media Communications in Richfield, [Ohio] which developed campaign Web sites for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and President George W. Bush.
But that’s not all he was.
Mike Connell was known as the “Republican IT guru” for Karl Rove. Connell’s subsidiary, GovTech Solutions, set up the state of Ohio’s 2004 election results computer network for Kenneth Blackwell, the infamous former Secretary of State. Lately, though, according to Velvet Revolution, an investigative legal and reporting group, […]Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.”
Maybe they did.
Velvet Revolution goes on to say:
A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to Velvet Revolution (VR) in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.
I’ve been following the Ohio vote fraud controversy, which involves several court cases, including King Lincoln v. Blackwell, on and off over the past three years, through Greg Palast, through BradBlog, RawStory, and other sources. It’s only begun to blow open during the past year or so as the 2008 election neared. We all feared that the same thing could happen again.
So why should we care now? I mean, the good guys won and the bad guys lost on November 4, right? There was such a tsunami of voters that they couldn’t cheat electronically, right?
Perhaps, but what about the next time?
These guys need to be nabbed. Rove, Blackwell, all of them.
More to the point, we need comprehensive election reform. We need to get rid of ancient voting machines that everyone’s known for decades that they don’t work, or machines that are electronically faulty and can be easily hacked. We need to stop denying the vote to others so that the ‘right’ candidate wins. We need to have our citizenry go in and out and about their business on Election Day instead of taking an entire day in order to vote. We cannot continue to vote as if we were living in the ballot box-stuffing 19th century and not the egalitarian 21st, especially for our Americans of color. If it means going back to the ordinary paper ballot, then so be it. Up is up and down is down. Always.
Karl Rove said repeatedly, even on his blog, that John McCain was going to come out from behind and win over Barack Obama. However, after October 31, when Connell was forced to answer a subpoena, Rove mysteriously shut up. Judge Solomon Oliver of the Federal Court in Cleveland ordered Connell to give a formal deposition on November 3, the day before the election. Two Bush/Cheney 2004 attorneys had been dispatched to ‘counsel’ Connell at this and at other appearances, but their stonewalling did not work. For two hours, Connell was interrogated about “‘Man in the Middle’ attacks, the use of Trojan horses to control election results by remote, and the role of Triad in election manipulations.”
Not surprisingly, Connell intimates claimed that the White House was becoming increasingly jittery about the programmer giving evidence about his activities, which also included destroying White House and campaign e-mails and setting up an alternate e-mail universe. On November 1, Velvet Revolution stated:
[..] Connell must now know that the [j]ig is up–he can’t steal this election. If he has set up the network for such a theft, he knows that he has to shut it down prior to Tuesday because he will get caught. People must now be held accountable and Connell has a unique opportunity to do that by cooperating in full and telling what he knows about election rigging, White House email destruction, front groups, and orders from Karl Rove and others to do illegal things.
The White House wasn’t the only organization becoming concerned about the Connell case. The McCain campaign even kept track of developments by visiting RoveCybergate.com, Velvet Revolution’s dedicated website.
Larisa Alexandrovna of OpEd News, who regularly reports on RawStory about the case, commented yesterday afternoon about Connell’s death:
He [Connell] has flown his private plane for years without incident. I know he was going to DC last night, but I don’t know why. He apparently ran out of gas, something I find hard to believe. I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully.
