Right When Nader Announces Support For Edwards, National Inquirer "Swiftboats" Him!

Right when Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards starts turning anti-corporate in his message and picks up support from Ralph Nader, the celeb-rag newspaper National Inquirer "swiftboats" him! Of course, the National Inquirer is a celebrity smear rag, but don't you find this timing more than a coincidence???

In other news, 256 prisoners held at prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the private military contractor, CACI. The suit alleges the prisoners were repeatedly sodomized, threatened with rape, kept naked in their cells, subjected to electric shock, attacked by unmuzzled dogs and subjected to serious pain inflicted on sensitive body parts. The suit alleges that employees of CACI directed soldiers to mistreat the prisoners.

Click here for DN! transcript or DN! video

Big Dan's Big News Dec 19, 2007

(click on chart to see 2004 exit poll discrepancies; voting news in red below)

· Longtime readers of this site know that the history of TPM is rather intertwined with the history of the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. In case you don't remember, that's the case where the state Republican party (almost certainly with the knowledge and probably with the cooperation of the national party) hired a phone bank to jam the phones of the Dems' and the local firefighters' GOTV phone banks. The guy close to the center of the whole scam was the media operative/consultant hired to run the operation, Allen Raymond. And he's written a new tell-all book, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative.(h/t z)

· More on the "New England Phone Jammer": A former GOP political operative who ran an illegal election-day scheme to jam the phone lines of New Hampshire Democrats during the state's tight 2002 U.S. Senate election said in a new book and an interview that he believes the scandal reaches higher into the Republican Party. Raymond's book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" (Christ! Does anyone think this is a huge story? A REPUBLICAN WRITES A BOOK ABOUT HOW REPUBLICANS STEAL ELECTIONS!)

· Ohio Will Likely Face Big Vote-Counting Problems in 2008; Election officials in the presidential battleground state will have no one but themselves to blame because they ignored real solutions for months.

· BREAKING: Colorado's Republican Sec. of State Decertifies E-Voting Machines After Failed Testing; All Voting Systems by ES&S Completely Decertified; DRE Touch-Screens from Sequoia Banned; Optical-Scan Paper Systems by Hart InterCivic Banned; All Systems by Diebold/Premier Conditionally ALLOWED for Use!; SoS Admits Federal Certification Process, Now Overseen by Former CO SoS on Behalf of EAC, 'Has Been Very Weak to Date'...(bd: WE have ES&S e-vote machines here in Luzerne County, and I keep seeing them being decertified all across the country!)

· BREAKING: Judge Orders Release of Pima County, AZ Voting Database; Diebold's GEMS Tabulator Files, Containing Data from '06 Election, Ordered Released to Democratic Party Experts for Scrutiny, Possible Release to Full Public; Decision Seen as Important Victory for Election Integrity Advocates...

· Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (contains a history of e-vote machines that will scare you!)

· Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006

· Bush: Iraq doesn’t have nukes…obviously. (Laughter) Yesterday at a speech in Virginia, President Bush was forced to correct his own misinformation campaign when a questioner mistakenly said that Iraq currently has nuclear weapons: Q But I’m concerned about the nations like Iraq, who now have nuclear weapons – THE PRESIDENT: Iran. Q Iran and Iraq both. THE PRESIDENT: Not Iraq. (Laughter.)

· Gonzales, Cheney's Lawyer Plotted Over CIA Torture Tapes

· Remember "the terrorists" who were going to supposedly blow up the Sears Tower? One Aquitted, Mistrial For The Other Six

· Buyers at Risk: Christmas Season of Toxic Recalls; Who is out there protecting Americans from these hidden hazards? Practically no one.

Tim Grier Answers People's Questions

(futuristic picture of what it's going to look like Friday @ 10am @ Luzerne County Courthouse!)

After applauding local NEPA activist Tim Grier for bushwhacking the Luzerne County commissioners during their debit-card-debacle, with an unrelated complaint (good timing!) which is holding up $93.5 million in county borrowing due to Tim wanting to know exactly what they're doing with all that money (what's wrong with that?), I made this statement of reservation about him...having had my hopes dashed before, believing in people to good to be true:

"Good for you, Tim Grier! I just hope you're as legit as you seem to be, and you don't have an ulterior motive. What is suspicious to me, is that he met with Republican minority commissioner Steve Urban before he launched this bushwhacking. Tim Grier SEEMS to be on the up-and-up, time will tell."(click on this for original article)

Tim was kind enough to reply in the flesh on my blog:

Big Dan,

I just stumbled across your blog. A couple points:

I have no connection to Commissioner Urban or anyone else at the courthouse. I am just tired of getting ripped of, and I found a way to hold them accountable. Commissioner Urban just happens to be the only elected person that I haven't caught reaching for my wallet yet, and he is approachable, so I asked him for some info so I could make my case. That is the extent of his involvement.

I am glad you saw through the "he doesn't own property, so he's got no rights" ruse. I hope to slap that one down by the end of the week, and my fight will continue. Yeah, 200 years ago you had to own property to vote, too, but we realized what a $#*$#@* injustice that was.

If you or anyone you know can make it to the courthouse on Friday at 10 AM, I am planning on lecturing the thieves-that-be during the Commissioners meeting, and I could use a little applause in the background.

thanks/take care - t.g.
t.g. 12.17.07 - 10:38 am #

Do you hear that everybody? Tim will be at the Luzerne County Courthouse on Friday at 10 AM, planning to lecture the "thieves-that-be" during the Commissioners meeting, and he could use a little applause in the background! You better be there!

More on the Luzerne County shennanigans:

After saying Tim Grier's complaint would cause county workers to be laid off, commissioner Skrepenak reverses…Did Tim Grier "Call his bluff?" How come they aren't laying off workers now, but they said they were going to???

Protesters insist Commissioner Skrepenak resign

Unbelievable! Prison board orders Hyder to account for $2,763.08 in charges