Friday, March 21, 2008

Big Dan's Big News Mar 22, 2008


The word "Dittohead" means "tell me what to think, Rush!" When they call Rush Limbaugh's show, they proudly proclaim, "I am a 'dittohead'." On right: 2 "dittoheads"...

● Will corporate fascist spokesman Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud? In case you missed it, Rush Limbaugh, the nation's top-rated talk radio host, was urging Republicans in Texas and Ohio to skip their party's primary on March 4 and instead cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the fight between her and Barack Obama. And that Tuesday, as media in both states reported, thousands of Republicans did just what Limbaugh and others had suggested -- they changed parties to vote for Clinton.

● Ex-US Attorney Cites GOP Voter Abuse. The Justice Department issued a directive to every U.S. Attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud in their states during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006, even though evidence of such abuses was extremely thin or non-existent, a former federal prosecutor says in a new book. David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, recalled receiving an e-mail in late summer 2002 from the Department of Justice suggesting "in no uncertain terms" that U.S. attorneys should immediately begin working with local and state election officials "to offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases," Iglesias writes in his forthcoming In Justice: Inside the Scandal that Rocked the Bush Administration.

● IRONY! Sequoia Voting Systems Website Hacked

● Sequoia Voting Systems’ Claims About Third Party Reviews and Testing of Its Election Equipment – Their Misleading Half-Truths vs. The Facts

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Kindly old man" McCain, getting a pass in the media for everything...don't pick on him!



● Will McCain Get a Pass on Racist Video Made by His Campaign? Of course, he will! He's just a "kindly old man" (age 72, 76 by the time he would finish his stolen presidency)! Give him a break!

● McCain Aide Suspended For Pushing Racially-Charged Obama-Wright Video. A McCain campaign aide actively pushed an incendiary, racially-charged video that uses the controversial words of Barack Obama's pastor to tar Obama as unpatriotic -- despite the fact that McCain himself has suggested that Obama shouldn't be held accountable for Wright's views.

● Corporate media blatantly bashing Obama so much, vs. Hillary & McCain, that EVEN CHRIS WALLACE OF FOX NEWS SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT IT: Fox’s Chris Wallace Takes Fox And Friends ‘To Task’ For ‘Two Hours Of Obama Bashing’

● ABC's Ross falsely claimed that McCain has already released his tax returns. Noting the National Archives' release of Sen. Hillary Clinton's daily schedule during her time as first lady, ABC's Brian Ross stated, "Senator Clinton, unlike Senators [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain, has still not released any of her tax returns." In fact, McCain reportedly has not released any of his tax returns.

● Webb: McCain Refuses To Co-Sponsor GI Bill For Post-9/11 Veterans

● PolitiFact knows McCain's Iran statement is "[f]alse" -- but doesn't want to "pile on". In noting Senator John McCain's false statement on Iran, PolitiFact.com asserted: "We're not trying to pile on to Sen. John McCain over his misstatement on the link between Iran and al-Qaida. Maybe he was confused just for a moment. He did correct himself quickly." PolitiFact did not mention, however, that McCain made the same error twice, and that he had made it the previous day.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey! Guess what? A dozen U.S. soldiers died in Iraq (so far) because Cheney's company Kellogg, Brown, & Root electrocuted them in their showers...NO BIG DEAL!!! Is KBR's murdering of U.S. troops included in the casualty count? Then it's over 4,000! Maybe Obama's pastor killed them!


● At least a dozen soldiers and Marines have been electrocuted in Iraq over the five years of the war, and investigators now are trying to learn what role improper grounding of electrical wires played in those deaths. And Houston-based KBR — which builds bases and maintains housing for U.S. troops in Iraq — is at the center of the probe, with questions being raised about its responsibility to repair known wiring problems.

● During his two tours of duty serving as a special forces soldier in Iraq, Ryan D. Maseth had cheated death on more than a few occasions. While protecting a Baghdad polling place in December 2005, he ran toward enemy fire to help his fellow soldiers and to repel the attack. And after a Humvee in his convoy once hit an improvised explosive device, Maseth escaped injury and apprehended the perpetrators. But little did the staff sergeant know that when he stepped into the shower at his military base in Baghdad two months ago, he was putting his life at risk.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a great article about how the Bear Stearns taxpayer bailout is another example of what Naomi Klein calls "Disaster Capitalism"; using a crisis to enrich corporate interests:

● Some background: During the housing boom, banks doled out home loans to financially strapped borrowers, often on predatory terms. On the creditor side, these same banks packaged many of the loans as complex securities and sold them off to unwitting investors, generating a handsome profit on the paper transactions. At the same time, Wall Street used campaign contributions to coerce Congress into blocking anti-predatory-lending bills and repealing a landmark law regulating how banks could buy and sell securities. Predictably, many borrowers are now defaulting on their loans, meaning losses for financial institutions that hold mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed responded with what author Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism -- the age-old practice of using a crisis to enrich corporate interests. In this case, the Fed is using the housing emergency to justify giving taxpayer cash to Wall Street in exchange for its worthless mortgages.


The Shock Doctrine:



Thursday, March 20, 2008

Big Dan's Big News Mar 21, 2008


● The video below provides bits of the backstory for our discovery of a potentially devastating method of rigging MAIL IN VOTES, AUDITS and RECOUNTS. What you will see in THESE videos is the backstory that helped us figure out the mechanics of how a massive ballot-tampering operation could be accomplished with just a few key people.





● Jim March, John Brakey and Michael Shelby have pulled a coup in Arizona. They have studied and reported on the presidential primary election in the largest county in that state, Maricopa, with 56% of the AZ vote. The report they've published sets new ground in how to monitor the security and sanity of an election. THERE ARE THREE REASONS TO READ THIS REPORT.....


● Sequoia Voting Systems’ Claims About Third Party Reviews and Testing of Its Election Equipment – Their Misleading Half-Truths vs. The Facts

● Pennsylvania's Online Voter Registration Data Found Vulnerable. Private Information Left Online, Available to All...

Here's what someone who steals elections thinks of the American people. Cheney says, "So?" when told that 2/3 of Americans are against the Iraq War. Therefore, Cheney does not represent Americans and doesn't care, either...:



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News:

● Somebody doesn't want Obama to beat Hillary! Obama's passport files breached at State Dept. The State Department Thursday fired two contract employees and suspended a third because they snooped into Sen. Barack Obama's passport files. The Department confirmed the firings today but admitted the repeated breaches of Obama's files occurred in January of this year. There was no immediate explanation for the delay in action or announcement of the action.

● Hillary's Ties to Religious Fundamentalists. Election 2008: When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, Hillary Clinton is a lot more vulnerable than Barack Obama.

● Should telecommunication companies receive retroactive immunity for their role in helping the government eavesdrop on American phone calls and e-mails? As Congress and President Bush duel over the answer to that question, NOW on PBS interviews a whistleblower with exclusive insight into the role played by one of those companies.

● 3 governors hold out on federal ID law

● White House Press Secretary Perino: Americans' say in Iraq war ended in 2004

● IRAQ WAR COSTS CENSORED. Pentagon removes $3 trillion price tag for war from web site after exposure

● Military veterans to deliver citizen arrest warrants for Bush and Cheney. Backed by family members and supporters all across the nation, U.S. military veterans will serve citizen arrest warrants for George Bush and Dick Cheney tomorrow in Washington, D.C. The warrants are "for multiple violations of the Constitution and international war crimes," according to a statement issued by Veterans for Peace, a national organization of men and women who served in wars and military conflicts beginning with the Spanish Civil War in 1936 through the present war in Iraq.

● We've all seen a blizzard of articles noting the five-year anniversary of the act of aggression launched against Iraq at the order of George W. Bush. There have been great slag-heaps of mendacity among these commemorations -- none more foul than the stinking torrent of lies that poured forth through the blood-flecked teeth of Bush himself on Wednesday -- but also some excellent analyses of the true situation in Iraq in this fifth year of hell.

● One picture tells the whole story. It's a photo of five grim looking men in gray suits staring ahead blankly like they were in the dock with Saddam awaiting sentencing. Every one of them looks downcast and dejected; shoulders rounded and jaws set. This is what desperation looks like, which is why the photo was kept off the front pages of the leading newspapers. The group took no questions and, as far as the media was concerned, the meeting never happened. But it did happen; and it happened on Monday at the White House at 2PM. That's when President Bush convened the Working Group on Financial Markets, also known as the Plunge Protection Team, to explain their strategy for dealing with deteriorating conditions in the financial markets. The details of the meeting remain unknown, but judging by the sudden (and irrational) recovery in the stock market on Tuesday; their plan must have succeeded. The Plunge Protection Team is a panel that includes Fed Chairman Ben Bernankee, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, and acting Commodity Futures Trading Commission head Walter Lukken.


Keith Olbermann: Bear-Stearns-Gate

Big Dan's Big News Mar. 20, 2007

Hey everyone out there talking about Obama's pastor and Obama smoking cigarettes, "Fuck You!!!" You should have your voting privileges revoked!!!

Fed Bailout of Bear Stearns First of its Kind Since Great Depression

The nation’s fifth largest investment bank Bear Stearns nearly collapsed last week. It was saved only after the Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to help JPMorgan purchase the eighty-five-year-old firm. The Fed has become the lender of last resort for other investment banks in a move that marks one of the broadest expansions of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s. We speak with Nomi Prins, an author and former investment banker at Bear Stearns, and Max Fraad Wolff, an economist and writer.

AMY GOODMAN: We are seeing some of the worst crises we have seen in decades, whether we’re talking about the economy, whether we’re talking about the war, and those two issues, we’re going to take on today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, we are. Well, Wall Street and the nation’s economy is in a state of crisis. The nation’s fifth largest investment bank Bear Stearns nearly collapsed last week. It was saved only after the Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to help JPMorgan purchase the eighty-five-year-old firm.

As part of the deal, the Fed put up $30 billion to guarantee Bear Stearns’s riskiest investments. For the first time ever, the Federal Reserve has become the lender of last resort for other investment banks in an effort to prevent firms from going under. It is a move that marks one of the broadest expansions of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s. At least ten investment funds, including the fund Carlyle Capital run by the Carlyle Group, have recently collapsed or been forced to sell assets.

Consumers are feeling the effects of the economic crisis everywhere. Food prices are rising. Gas prices have reached all-time highs. The dollar is weakening. Credit card debt is expanding. Home prices are falling. And foreclosures continue to rise.

AMY GOODMAN: A year ago, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson predicted the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis was “largely contained.” But now, Alan Greenspan is admitting the current economic crisis will likely be the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

And then, there’s the occupation of Iraq, which has just entered its sixth year. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz projects the war will cost at least $3 trillion.

We’re joined right now by two guests. Nomi Prins is with us. She’s a former investment banker turned journalist. She used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns. She is the author of two books: Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How “Conservatives” Are Picking Your Pocket. She’s now a senior fellow at the think tank Demos. Max Fraad Wolff is an economist and writer. He is an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, New School University, here in New York. He’s a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post, Asia Times and The Indypendent.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Nomi Prins, this story is personal for you. You worked at Bear Stearns.

Democracy NOW! DISH channels 9410 & 9415, DirecTV channel 275; TALKING ABOUT IMPORTANT NEWS!!!!!

DN! transcript or DN! video

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Rightwingnuts making excuses for McCain's "Al Queda" gaffe............

● Cafferty on McCain ‘gaffe’: ‘What kind of leadership is that?’

● To Let Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Story. Today, National Security Network held a press conference call discussing John McCain’s erroneous assertion that Iran was “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” into Iraq. The hosts, including CAPAF’s Brian Katulis, VoteVets’ John Soltz, and NSN’s Ilan Goldenberg, also discussed what this misstatement says about McCain’s fitness to be commander-in-chief.

● Right Wing Bloggers: McCain Was Wrong to Say He Was Wrong!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News:

● AP president: US arrests journalist in Iraq to 'control' information

● Shill Osama Bin Laden "monitoring" group SITE, led by Israeli Rita Katz, pimps ANOTHER FAKE "Bin Laden" video and/or Bin Laden statement...WAKE UP, PEOPLE! Look up "Rita Katz" & SITE...this group should be investigated!!!!!!

● Soldier tells Mom: "My goal is to come home with both my legs"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEPA: Bill Clinton in Coughlin High School!!!


● WILKES-BARRE – For 38 minutes Wednesday evening, President Bill Clinton told more than 1,000 people gathered inside the Coughlin High School gymnasium why his wife should be the next president of the United States.

● Clinton visits W-B to support ‘best candidate’

● Prison may have overpaid contractor. A company that has done more than $1.2 million in repairs at the Luzerne County prison appears to have overbilled the county at least $78,235 for work that should have been covered under a flat-fee contract.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------