This is a tale of our upside-down election world. Please read it from the bottom up.

UPDATE #3: Having ruled out the possibility that one of the other candidates was whispering to himself, MSNBC has added an update to its blog post concluding that someone in the audience must have been whispering near an "open mic." This is apparently based on nothing other than MSNBC's inability to come up with any other explanation, other than the obvious one. This now reads like a report on an election result that varies wildly from the exit polls. Such a result (if in the United States, abroad the opposite would be true) clearly proves that the exit polls must have been wrong! How do you know? Why, by ruling out the possibility that it was caused by Huckabee whispering to himself. In case shame takes over and the latest MSNBC conclusion gets purged, here it is:

"After reviewing the tapes, NBC determined that an open mic picked up a whisper from the audience. It is unclear who it is that says it, but it was not said by any of the candidates, was not heard in the hall and, more importantly, not heard by the candidates."

How do we know it was not heard by the candidates (not even the one who appears to hear it and repeat it)? Why, because MCNBC tells us so.

Seriously, I can't prove Romney was prompted, but that's the far more likely conclusion than MCNBC's. Maybe if they hired OJ to find the real whisperer I'd take them seriously. If the next debate has strip searches and cavity searches prior to the opening bell, I'll consider even watching it.

UPDATE #2: MSNBC has posted a new blog post acknowledging that people want to know what happened but not offering any explanation. The post claims that MSNBC does not know whose voice is heard whispering, and that MSNBC is reviewing tapes of each of the candidates in order to determine whether it was one of them. This would tend to suggest that MSNBC does not think it was one of their staffers in a control room, and does not think it was one of their staffers feeding ideas to Russert. (I'm still unable to find the readers' comments on this on the MSNBC blog, and if they were deleted the new post says nothing about restoring them.)

UPDATE #1: MSNBC has given Raw Story an explanation that explains nothing, saying Romney's microphone was not working. That's funny: during the whisper, Romney's lips aren't moving. What difference would it have made in any way for his microphone to have been working or not working?

ORIGINAL POST: Romney's (or is it Russert's? or one of the other candidates'?) debate cheating may finally force this collection of evidence of Bush's cheating into the news. Why did MNBC delete its blog post about it (and the reader comments that preceded and were referred to in the blog post)? Please CONTACT THE MEDIA.

We know Bush cheated.

We know almost certainly that somebody just cheated in this latest debate.

We can be pretty sure the media questioners cheat, which - among other reasons - makes them reluctant to report on candidate cheating.

We can suspect that the person who cheated in the latest debate was Romney, but it could have been Russert or one of the other candidates. This blog points out that the whisper begins mighty soon to be a prompt for Russert.

If there's an innocent explanation, such as a random person near an open mic, why the coverup on the blog and the nonsense explanation?