This Can't Be Happening!

(Prefacing remarks: My dealer writes to thank me
for letting them fix the airbag on my Suby Outback.
Apparently I was driving my car for many years with
a defective airbag that was a potentially lethal weapon.
In the event of deployment
it would have malfunctioned,
perforating a body
with little projectiles of shrapnel.
Good thing my car was “made with love.”)
 

Total Recall
 
6 billion recalled for defective wiring.
Official notice:
Global Crisis Sensor and Reactive Systems failure.
Read on:
During any global crisis,
(such as catastrophic climate events
or flagrant acts of terror)
if you were born after 1945,
your body, regardless of model,
will go into sleep-mode,
shut down entirely
or self-destruct.
Cause: Global Crisis Sensor overload and
total back-up systems failure.
90% of models will fail
due to design error.
Retro-repair adjustment and upgrade
will begin ASAP at your licensed dealership.
Date to be announced.
In the meantime,
DO NOT RESPOND TO ANY GLOBAL CRISIS.
BACK OFF AND STOKE BARBECUE
HAVE A FEW DRINKS
TAKE A WALK
WATCH TV
SHOP
TAKE A NAP
ATTEND A WORKSHOP.
REPEAT: DO NOT RESPOND TO ANY GLOBAL CRISIS
DUE TO PREDICTABLE SYSTEMS OVERLOAD.
WATCH FOR FUTURE UPDATES.
 
 
—Gary Lindorff

A few years ago, I contacted my local police department asking them to send an officer over to put down a doe that had been hit by a car on the street in front of my house. She had suffered a left front and right rear leg break but had somehow flopped herself well into the yard and was on the ground suffering. When a cop arrived, and began to approach her with his pistol I warned him off, saying the deer would hurt herself more trying to get away.

“Oh,” he replied. “Okay, I’ll get a rifle.” He returned to his SUV, and pulled out, to my astonishment, an AR-4, a military-style assault rifle, which he then used to shoot the deer with a clean shot between the eyes.

When I asked him about having that weapon available in his patrol vehicle, he replied matter-of-factly that all police in almost all departments in the country have them readily available.

Now for the record, I live in a suburban community where the only crimes we have are fights in or outside of bars, and the occasional breaking-and-entering burglary. Yet when a friend of mine whose late brother, a Vietnam veteran with serious PTSD mental issues and drug problems, while visiting his home here, called 911 and said he was going to kill himself with a pistol, my friend came home to find his house blocked off by a swarm of police vehicles, and surrounded by cops armed with assault rifles, and with snipers in position in four spots around the home. Informing the police that he had already removed the bullets and magazine from his brother’s licensed pistol, and that as well his disabled, wheelchair-bound wife was inside that home, he convinced them to allow him to enter the home and bring out his brother out with him, and the incident ended peacefully.

Get assault rifles out of the hands of the public…and of the police
 

But it demonstrates to me that this country’s police have completely lost any sense that they are supposed to be “peace officers,” as we once called them (when’s the last time you’ve heard that old-fashioned term?).

After the latest bloody slaugher of dozens of people by a whacko with an assault rifle in Orlando, there are the usual calls to ban assault weapons in the US. That makes perfect sense to me. Assault rifles are not appropriate to hunting, unless you are trying to eliminate some species the way we nearly exterminated the Plains Bison in the late 19th century. I’ve heard hunters claim that an assault rifle is “more humane” because it’s rapid fire capability allows the hunter who has wounded some poor animal to finish it off before it runs off to die some miserable death elsewhere in the woods. But that’s absurd logic. If the hunter cares that much about the welfare of his target, he should wait for a cleaner shot. In fact, thinking that way probably encourages more hunters to take wild shots earlier, knowing that they can get off more as needed. The other argument made by gun advocates is that assault weapons are needed by fearful homeowners who want to protect themselves, their families and their property from would be home invaders. But assault weapons are a very poor choice for that job, as they are far more likely to cause what the military calls “collateral damage,” injuring family members while trying to hit any of the invaders.

One unintended consequence of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a death penalty case that rebuked actions of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice and prosecutors in Philadelphia for conflict of interest was to possibly open a new avenue for activist-journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal to appeal his own 1982 murder conviction because his appellate proceedings were tainted by alarmingly similar conflict of interest, involving the same appellate jurist who was a former DA.

That ruling by America’s highest court sharply criticized former Chief Justice of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court Ronald Castille for his participation in a 2014 death penalty deliberation because that justice had approved seeking that ultimate penalty when he served as the District Attorney of Philadelphia before becoming a state supreme court member.

That U.S. Supreme Court rebuke cited judicial conduct rules in Pennsylvania applicable to judges who had previously worked for a governmental agency like a District Attorney. Those conduct rules urged judges to remove themselves from “a proceeding if [their] impartiality might reasonably be questioned” because of their former position with such a governmental agency.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the recent 5-3 ruling that rebuked Castille, stated that an “unconstitutional potential for bias exists when the same person serves as both accuser and adjudicator in a case.”

Paris Protest For Abu-Jamal. Jacques Lederer (left) and Abu-Jamal Collectif head Jacky Hortaut (right) – LBW Photo
 

Paris protestors for 21 years have held demonstrations monthly to criticize the lack of impartiality by judges in Pennsylvania, particularly judges once employed as prosecutors and/or in law enforcement. Those protestors have also condemned misconduct by prosecutors in Philadelphia like prosecutors unlawfully withholding evidence favorable to defendants.

Few people thought, back in 1941, that the Japanese military could defeat or pose a serious threat to the US military. Yet, by April 8, 1942, only five months into the war, United States’ forces stationed on Luzon, our Philippine colony, had surrendered to a upstart Asian colonial power, the empire of Japan. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the US commander in the Far East, had fled in ignominous defeat from the colony to Australia a month before. The remaining Filipino and American prisoners of war were left behind and forced in a death march of 65 miles to move to POW camps, where they remained under brutal conditions for the rest of the war. The name “Bataan” has since come to symbolize the depths of depravity following defeat.

Bataan was invoked again by journalists to describe the conditions at the Brooklyn campaign headquarters of then-Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the wake of an improbable and unexpectedly harsh finding by the inspector general (IG) of the State Department. The State Department’s own watchdog found its former boss, Secretary Clinton, to have clearly violated the rules and procedures of her own agency and the legal requirements of the National Freedom of Information Act. Clinton, the IG’s report said, posed “significant security risks” through her decision to use a private email server for professional business while she was secretary of state.

The IG’s report promises to be the centerpiece of the Republican attack on the Democrats in the fall election if Secretary Clinton grabs the party’s presidential nomination.

Like Gen. MacArthur fleeing capture by advancing Japanese forces in the Philippines, Hillary’s campaign, after the IG’s report, is waiting for the FBI probe shoe to drop
 

While her damage-control operation — a fixture in the Clinton political machine through decades of scandals — has gone into full gear, and a largely supportive corporate media has predictably tried to play down the import of the IG’s report, there is still a major FBI investigation underway of the same misconduct by former Secretary Clinton, which has included granting immunity from at least one key member of her staff who handled her home communications system — a staffer who already took the Fifth over the issue at a House hearing. If the FBI were to indict Clinton, her situation would start to resemble General MacArthur’s in the spring of 1942 — surrounded with no way out but to flee the scene.

Some of Clinton’s mass media friends have attempted, predictably, to link these developments to the continuing assault by what she once called, “ … a vast right wing conspiracy.” The problem with this defense lies in the very nature of the IG process.

Most agencies of the Unites States government have inspector general offices. The IGs operate independently within each agency to investigate waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse of federal resources. IGs have wide investigative latitude. The State Department IG is a direct appointment of the president of the United States, Barack Obama, hardly part of a vast right wing conspiracy. (FBI Director James Comey, while a former Republican-appointed federal prosecutor, was also appointed to his current post in 2013 by Obama.)

I could talk about the sanctity of queer nightclubs. Queer nightclubs are to queer civil rights as black southern churches are to black civil rights.

I could point out that Donald Trump’s asinine statements about Muslims and a radicalizing second generation are exactly the kind of ignorant bigotry that spurs these sorts of hate crimes to begin with.

I won’t though, because we all know that this has already been done and will continue to be done until this devastating event’s emotional significance is reduced to meaningless babble on repeat.

However, what has yet to come is the inevitable discussion about the mental state of Omar Mateen and the role that might have played in the shooting. Already, there is foreshadowing of this discussion as journalists report those around him describing him as “bipolar” or “erratic.”

I’m nipping it in the bud. We cannot go down that path. It’s distracting and unproductive because mass shootings are not just about mental health. Of course, mental health plays a role, but guess what plays an even larger role? GUNS.

Liberal and conservative politicians alike focus on mental health as a strategy to avoid discussing the true heart of the gun control debate. 

FLASH! The Los Angeles Times, actually a Hillary Clinton backer, reports that not just under 3.5 million votes, as reported on election night, but 8.5 million votes were actually cast in the California Democratic primary — a turnout of 47%. According to the LA Times article, the Secretary of State of California, Alex Padilla, concedes that 2.5 million of those votes, mostly mail-in ballots from young people and hispanic voters, or Bernie’s strongpoint, have been counted, and another 2 million have yet to be counted by local county officials.

But Padilla has also suspiciously not reported on what the results were of those other millions of votes that have been counted thus far since election day. (This even though his office did report the count of early mail-in votes on election day before people had even finished voting.)

All the votes are legitimate and need to be counted — by hand. As long as a ballot was received by the end of the day Friday, June 10, and were postmarked by election day, they are valid.

The LA Times said that people should prepare to see the vote totals of not just the presidential race, but also down-ticket races, change dramatically.

A tsunami of 5 million mailed-in and provisional ballots could reverse the result of Californi's Democratic Primary
 

The problem is that the Secretary of State by law has 30 days to certify the votes and declare winners. That would be July 8! So far, most reporting on the uncounted votes has been limited to the alternative media. The NY Times and the big TV and radio news organizations haven’t said a word about it. The Washington Post did mention the uncounted votes, buy scoffed at the notion that they could change the results, making the bogus argument that Clinton had won among early mail-in voters by 58-44% — but of course she was way ahead in the polls then before Sanders really began campaigning in California, and the uncounted votes are also last-minute voters when Sanders was tied or ahead in the polls.

Don’t just take my word for it. Check it out at the Los Angeles Times.

Clearly, Sanders, who met with a group of key advisors and friends at his home in Burlington, VT Sunday evening, came out to announce that he was continuing his campaign for the Democratic nomination, probably right through to the July 25 convention. No doubt, he has the continuing California vote count in mind, as well as the potential for either a Justice Department indictment of Clinton in for violating national security law and FOIA through her use of a private email server as Secretary of State, or a scathing report on the FBI’s investigation of that issue, combined with her poor polling performance against Donald Trump. While he didn’t say what his plans going forward are, he has not rejected or so far even commented on an offer by Green Party activists, including presumptive Green presidential nominee Jill Stein, for him to accept that party’s nomination to be its candidate in the general election.

Hear Lindorff and Green activist and former 2004 Ralph Nader presidential campaign press spokesman Kevin Zeese discuss the political implications of a possible Sanders general election campaign for president as the Green Party’s candidate, To play this interview, which took place on Wednesday afternoon on the Progressive Radio Network’s “This Can’t Be Happening!” program, click HERE
 

You ran a great race, achieving something that most of us thought would be impossible, running as an “avowed” socialist in today’s United States of America, against one of the most hardened and tested political machines in the country, the Clintons, and winning 22 primaries and caucuses with a total of over 12 million votes. And while Hillary and her minions threw everything they had at you, including voter suppression efforts, lies about your voting record in the Senate, unfair assistance from the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic officials, and manipulation of the media, you came excruciatingly close to knocking her off and winning the nomination.

Okay, you didn’t make it to the finish line.

Now the pressure is on you, from the corporate media that originally ignored you, then attacked you and finally resorted to outright corruption the night before the June 7 primary by prematurely calling the race for Clinton in hopes of depressing your turnout in the last six primaries, and now to a meeting tomorrow with President Obama, who will try and convince you to give up, and to endorse Hillary Clinton.

But while it’s true that way back at the start of your seemingly Quixotic campaign, you did promise to endorse her if you lost, that campaign has since evolved beyond even your imagination into a powerful movement for “political revolution,” with millions of people behind it. Also over the intervening months, you have both seen how unprincipled your opponent can be, and have also done a masterful job of highlighting just how corrupted she has become as a person and politician. You’ve pointed out how she has been bought by the too-big-to-fail bankers, who have paid her legal bribes totaling millions of dollars, euphemistically calling them “speaking fees.” You’ve denounced her acceptance of hundreds of millions of dollars of legal bribes in the form of campaign contributions from key industries like the drug companies, the military contractors, the oil giants and even the for-profit prison industry. While you graciously declined early on and waited, in my view, way too long to go after Hillary for her improper and illegal use, for years, of a private email server during her four-year tenure as Secretary of State, late in the primary battle you finally did point out that she was acting in an illegal way (one that now has her as the first presumptive presidential candidate in memory running while being actively investigated by the FBI). You also intimated — correctly in my humble view as an investigative reporter — that this move of hers to avoid the Freedom of Information Act was linked to her efforts to peddle influence to US corporate executives and foreign leaders in return for cash going into the Clinton Foundation coffers — a sordid arrangement reeking of corruption and self-dealing.

You’ve been right in all of this campaign criticism, and you have successfully exposed Hillary Clinton as the bought-and-paid candidate of big money, a woman who will say whatever she thinks it takes to get herself elected but who, in the end, will be serving the interests of those who paid for her election, not of the American people.

How could you now even think about turning around and doing what you originally said you would do and endorsing her? How could you, after exposing Clinton as the candidate of big banks, big pharma, big military and rich people, ask your millions of supporters — including people who dropped their hard-earned $27 into your campaign, often multiple times, to the tune, I believe, of over $200 million — suddenly turn around and ask them to back her in the general election?

If you were to endorse Hillary Clinton at this point, you would be destroying everything you have accomplished in this amazing campaign. Many people — especially the young people for whom your movement may have been a first-ever experience at political action — would surely become cynical about politics. Others would just write you off as just another self-serving politician accepting a deal. Most would ignore any call for unity anyhow, making it doubly pointless and destructive for you to make it. So what would you accomplish then, except perhaps to be repaid for your submission with some offer of a plum post on an important Senate Committee (assuming that the Republicans, in a race against Clinton, don’t end up staying in control of the Senate, making such a promised plum into a prune)?

Fortunately there is another path, and I’m sure you’ve been at least thinking about it. That is to run in the general election, this time going up against both Hillary and Trump (as well as the Libertarians and the Conservatives, who will be vying with Trump for the country’s right-leaning voters).

A Sanders/Stein Green Party presidential ticket could win, and could institutionalize Bernie’s ‘political revolution’
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The pipe is longer than long.
No one knows where it starts
Or where it ends.
It carries our dreams.
It carries our stories.
You can put your ear to it and hear beautiful singing.
That is the sound of the spirit running through it,
The spirit of the beautiful beasts
Who used to people this land.
We make offerings to it,
Offerings of flowers and hair,
For without it we would not be here.
The pipe is our mother, our father,
It is our teacher,
It is our communion.
It is where we will go when we die:
Our spirits will be sucked in.
When the pipe sweats
We collect the droplets
To baptize our newborns,
And to anoint the dead,
To heal the sick.

When Donald Trump announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in June 2015 he unleashed a tirade against illegal immigrants from Mexico, libeling most of those immigrants as criminals and “rapists.”

Given Trump’s alleged concern about rapists running rampant and his silence on a California state court judge’s recent issuance of an insulting six-month sentence to a violent rapist, Trump’s unprecedented onslaught against rulings by a federal judge in California of Mexican-American ancestry is especially troubling.

Perhaps Trump’s silence on the wrist-slap sentence for that violent rapist revolves around the fact that this rapist is not one of those Mexican immigrants that Trump rails against for committing crimes.

Rather, that convicted rapist is a young white male whose crime occurred while he attended Stanford, a top-rated private university, on an athletic scholarship. The judge in that rape case is also a white male and an alumnus of the same prestigious university.

The victim of that violent rapist is a woman and Trump has oozed a litany of offensive remarks about women during the campaign that has made him the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential candidate. Trump did speak out on behalf on a woman killed during a 2015 crime but that killer was an a different story. The killer was an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

Trump doesn’t like native-born Mexican-American Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s procedural rulings in a case against him, so he declares him racially biased
 

Trump denies that bigotry motivates his assault on that Mexican-American federal judge while he seamlessly declares that judge’s “unfair” rulings against him are motivated by that judge’s allegedly race-based retaliation against Trump.

Philadelphia — Reading the papers and listening to radio reports about the Democratic primary race, which is reaching its climax Tuesday in California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota, I’m having a powerful sense of deja vu harking back to my years living and working as a journalist in China during the mid-1990s.

These news reports all feel like the regurgitation of a party line, with Associated Press not even waiting for June 7 to announce in a bold headline that “Clinton has Delegates to Win Democratic Nomination”. As the usually cautious news agency wrote late on June 6 in a report datelined Los Angeles and immediately picked up and aired uncritically by ABC’s, NBC.s and CNN’s national news desks:
 

Striding into history, Hillary Clinton will become the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major U.S. political party, capturing commitments Monday from the number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

Clinton’s rise to presumptive nominee arrived nearly eight years to the day after she conceded her first White House campaign to Barack Obama. Back then, she famously noted her inability to ‘shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling.’

…The former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee on Monday with a decisive weekend victory in Puerto Rico and a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates. Those are party officials and officeholders, many of them eager to wrap up the primary amid preference polls showing her in a tightening race with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

“Clinton has 1,812 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses. She also has the support of 571 superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count.”
 

So there you have it. California, the largest state in the nation, with nine percent of the nation’s population and a demographic that closely mirrors the nation’s, could vote on Tuesday to reject the Democratic Party’s “presumptive” nominee, along with five other states, perhaps bringing Bernie Sanders to within less than 200 pledged delegate votes of Hillary Clinton’s total, but because of the 400 super delegates who said way back 10 months before the first primary vote was cast that they would back Clinton — all of them unelected, and many actually lobbyists who have their delegate positions because they bought them — and a hundred more, most of whom were bought by the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton according to this party-line corporate media, will still become the party’s nominee for president.

And this is supposed to be a democratic process in a democratic country!

What a sad joke.

What's wrong with this NY Times story? (Hint: Hillary Clinton still hasn't won the Democratic nomination and could still lose it)