5:47 pm CST
Roy Tompkins sent me the following Kafkaesque news story (my comments are in bold):

Homeland Security Agents Visit Toy Store

ST. HELENS, Ore. - So far as she knows, Pufferbelly Toys owner Stephanie Cox hasn't been passing any state secrets to sinister foreign governments, or violating obscure clauses in the Patriot Act.

So she was taken aback by a mysterious phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to her small store in this quiet Columbia River town just north of Portland.

"I was shaking in my shoes," Cox said of the September phone call. "My first thought was the government can shut your business down on a whim, in my opinion. If I'm closed even for a day that would cause undue stress."

"My first thought was the government can shut your business down on a whim …"

This one sentence, spoken by a frightened toy shop owner, speaks volumes about how far this once-free nation has fallen.

When the two agents arrived at the store, the lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time.

Actually, the Rubik’s Cube fad reached its peak some time in the 1980s. It has since fallen from favor. And no wonder. I tried to solve the damn puzzle one time and got so obsessed with it that I even bought a book to help me figure the damned thing out. After weeks of painstaking work, I almost had it solved when, somehow, I made a small mistake and found myself back at Square One. I then did the sensible thing. I carried the Cube to the garage and destroyed it with a sledge hammer. What fun.

He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

After the agents left, Cox called the manufacturer of the Magic Cube, the Toysmith Group, which is based in Auburn, Wash. A representative told her that Rubik's Cube patent had expired, and the Magic Cube did not infringe on the rival toy's trademark.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

Let me get this straight. The Rubik's Cube patent expired. The Rubik's Cube fad expired, years ago. And yet we are supposed to believe that a frivolous trademark infringement complaint over a toy that nobody (in their right mind) wants has such "significant economic implications" that it is of concern to the Department of Homeland Security?!?!?

Six weeks after her brush with Homeland Security, Cox told The Oregonian she is still bewildered by the experience.

"Aren't there any terrorists out there?" she said.

No, Stephanie, there are not—unless you count the agents of Homeland Security who go around terrorizing innocent Americans such as yourself.

2:10 pm CST
More election fear-mongering:

CIA, FBI Authenticate New Al Qaeda Terror Tape

The 9/11 Coverup Continues:

Bush Tied to Multiple 9/11 Conspirators

9/11 "black box" cover-up at Ground Zero?

2:05 pm CST
A READER WRITES:  Dear Mack:  Have really enjoyed both the talk-radio interviews, and looking at your site.  BTW, Besides 90.1 FM in Austin, RBN can also be heard on 96.3, 91.1, and 100.1 which are all various locations for RadioFreeAustin transmitters around the area.  I get the impression you're in Round Rock.  The LBJ Library is very creepy.

Thanks for writing! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the interviews with Jack and Alex. Also glad you like my site. Thanks too for the other RBN frequencies. I've written them down to use the next time I'm driving around the Austin area and lose the signal.

2:02 pm CST
If you listened to yesterday's Alex Jones Show, right before my interview Alex interviewed BBC reporter Greg Palast about breaking news on voter Florida fraud. In case you missed it, the interview has been transcribed. Here is an excerpt:

Palast: [They're] mis-registering people. Dig this one. You'll love this one, Alex. Four thousand students were re-registered. They signed forms to decriminalize the use of marihuana for medical purposes. What they didn't know is that they signed the back of registration forms. A couple of Republican Party operatives then filled out the front of the forms with their signatures on it, switched these people to the Republican Party. But most importantly, registered them at wrong addresses. And what that means, is if you are wrongly addressed or if you're double registered, you lose your vote in both places. So you vote becomes disqualified.

[...]

Palast: Well, there is no question - we're seeing them knocking off the military voters, knocking off black voters. These are the same guys who are supposed to be on this phony felony lists and they were supposed to put them back on. They're still off. Now we've got a new one. Our BBC cameras caught guys in black cars with blacked-out windows with telephoto lenses filming all the voters going in and out of the African-American voting precincts. And we got one of these guys on camera. You know he says he is a professional, licensed PI. And you can imagine what this must cost.

AJ: So the government has hired private thugs.

GP: We know it's private. It's pretty clearly related to the Republican Party as a question of - the idea is voter intimidation. And what they want to do is make people upset and nervous as they try to vote. Maybe they'll be nailed for some other crime or an unpaid utility bill, a parking ticket. They are getting out the word that we are going to be photographing you, we are going to get you.

AJ: You told me during the break that some 50,000 ballots are missing.

GP: 58,000 absentee ballots have gone missing in Broward County. And we already had a few weeks ago, when Teresa Lapore (butterfly ballot designer) was counting votes in Palm Beach, she counted 37,000 votes when only 31,000 ballots were cast. The absentee ballot scans in this election are going to be beyond imagination. We are looking at close to 15 million absentee ballots, Alex. Most people don't realize, you send in that absentee ballot, you're just counting on them to open it and count it. AJ: Greg, do you think this is all going to be contested?

GP: No. I think that the Democrats are - I've watched them. And I've met with John Edwards. I've met with the chairman of the party. They are completely unprepared. They've got a bunch of hotshot lawyers. They think that if you run lawyers around on election day, that you are going to be able to stop this wholesale theft.

[...]

[Y]ou have to understand that the rest of the world is watching this. They watched my report last night on BBC with the pictures of the black cars and the guys with the telephoto lenses, the caging lists, the military guys losing their votes. The rest of the world thinks that we have a police state.

Read the Complete Transcript Here

5:22 pm CST
Had a great time on the Alex Jones Show today. The interview will repeated later tonight at 9 pm CDT and again at 1 am at the link below.

11:49 am CST
Today is the day. As I write this, the Alex Jones Show is in progress and I am waiting for the phone call that will put me on the air. That should occur at 12:30 CDT. You can listen live HERE.

Alex wrote the introduction to The Bush Junta, and we will be discussing (you guessed it) The Bush Junta-also taking calls from listeners.

On the subject of The Bush Junta, a satisfied reader had THIS to say about the book.

4:02 pm CST
MOSH
Eminem's new video: Too hot for MTV

3:54 pm CST
There continues to be outrage over last week's killing of a young woman by police attempting to control an "unruly" crowd of Red Sox fans in Boston. As Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson point out in this commentary, only a few persons in the crowd were unruly and the degree of their unruliness has been greatly exaggerated by the police and the media. At any rate, it certainly did not justify a police officer shooting an innocent bystander in the face with a "non-lethal" weapon. Protesters are demanding these weapons be banned, but that will only partially solve the problem. For the police will still have guns and there will still be police who are trigger-happy. What needs to change is the way police are trained, and the first lesson they should be taught is that it is they who serve us, not the other way around. They should also be taught that every situation does not require the use of force, and that, when excessive force is used, they will be punished.

Here are two more commentaries on this subject:

Boston's Killer Cops: Death of a Fan

Another Police State Killing

And here's another recent story concerning out-of-control thug cops:

Police Fire Taser at Pregnant Woman

3:45 pm CST
Today's News Roundup:

Kidnapping Care's Margaret Hassan: CIA-Mossad Op?

British Agents Engineered Capture of Care International's Margaret Hassan

WTC Rescue Hero Sues Bush and Others under RICO Statute

Bush-Cheney Surprise: Pre-Election Strike on Iran?

Uri Dowbenko: Associated Press (AP): The Phony News Conspiracy

Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

3:32 pm CST
CAMPAIGN UPDATE:


Someone is worried about the Jokey-Cranky Mutant-Clown Presidential Ticket. Jokey-Cranky signs have been disappearing in neighborhoods around the country. The ever-combative Cranky has THIS to say about that, among other things.