Nine Sure-Fire Steps For Cinching An Election

1. Gerrymander the district to make sure your candidate holds onto it. That’s for starters.

2. Make sure your registrar of voters loses any voter registration forms submitted by undesirables: black or dark brown, Koreans, hijabis, turbanites, and immigrants, even if they try showing you their papers.

3. If any one comes whining about why those names don’t show on the voter rolls, shrug. Like you have no idea what they’re talking about.

4. If someone complains and winds up producing Xeroxes of the originals, slap them with a felony charge.

5. Any undesirables that slip in, zap them with crosscheck. Try matching their names as close as possible with your list of double voters. If they’re in another state, so what. You got the list. Let it do the work for you.

6. Zero in on voter registration projects early in the game. Send large men in to raid their store front, nab their computers, cut off their juice. Run them shitless out of town. Leave a for rent sign in the window. File a criminal complaint against them (you can always dismiss the charges once they’re out of business).

7. If some reporter comes around throwing questions at your candidate, send in the big guys and rough him up a little. Rabbit punches don’t show up.

8. If they still don’t get the message, shut them up for good.

            USA  USA  USA   USA.

It works good every time.

9. Remember the guy who slapped your crosscheck list together is a shoo-in for the Voter Integrity Commission.

Disclaimer:  These particular guidelines were developed in the Republic of Georgia, not the one whose capital is Tbilisi, Atlanta, Georgia, part of the world’s greatest Democracy, home of the Free World and the most expensive elections ($55 million) in the world!

For further reading:

Greg Palast, Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis.

Enjoy!

---

ALL OUT!

Oakland City Council's Special Budget Meeting Monday, June 26 at 5:30 Pm.

The Council's Conservative Caucus Is Pushing Their Cop & Gentrification Budget For A Vote 

Bring Your Friends And Neighbors Too!

Tell the City Council Oakland Police budget is Unacceptable:

 1) Send your comments to the Council before 5:29 pm  Monday!

You don’t have to attend the meeting in person to make sure your voice is heard!! Go here to make comments and fill out the requested fields for the 6/26 City Council meeting (Item 13). You will stand with the mass of folks who have been pushing the council to #DefundOPD and #InvestInCommunity (Note that written comment closes at 5:29 pm on 6/26, so make sure to do this earlier.)

2) Stay tuned! 

Oakland is able to pass budgets that do not serve the people because its councilmembers say one thing and do another. Let them know that we are watching! We are encouraging Oakland residents to watch the budget meeting online or at watch parties throughout the city. What sounds like more fun than listening to Lynnette McElhaney over dinner!?

3) Join two #DefundOPD social media campaigns. 

•We have a Defund Thunderclap set to

mass-Tweet/Facebook/Tumblr from supporters' accounts at 9 am on 6/26 IF we get 100 supporters.

•Please visit here to support and share from your accounts. We need everyone to use ALL of your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) to support the Thunderclap because they count individually.

•The final mass message takes people to this list of requests (submit written comment, #DefundOPD sign campaign, watch parties and link to stream the meeting) to put the pressure on City Council ALL DAY before Monday's meeting: 

Defund Oakland PD | Invest in Community.

MAKE YOUR OWN SIGNS

•Take a picture with your sign and post it to your social media accounts (facebook, twitter, instagram)

• Include the hashtags #DefundOPD and #oakmtg and a link to these instructions: www.defundopd.org/memo

•Tag at least one Oakland Councilmember (see below)

•Tag some friends to ask them to take their own picture and help spread this campaign!r

e Info:

More Information:

Some examples of posts you can make

BUDGET HANDOUT PDF FILE

"This Way To The Starting Gate, Ladies And Gentlemen"

When I first passed through a security barrier after 9-11, what I saw overwhelmed me with feelings of horror and disbelief.  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I kept asking everyone in particular, forgetting that the “what” needed to have a context, and that the people I was attempting to talk to had no awareness of Third Reich history following the Reichstag Fire.

Fast forward to my return to Oakland through the Los Angeles airport this week. (The LA airport, referred to as Lax has recently suffered a make-over to the tune of $509.8 million. Just two gender neutral one-seater bathrooms serve the swelling crowds. The wait line Tuesday morning consists of nine people, their faces screwed up in varying degrees of anxiety. Tip to LAX travellers: allow 20 minutes to attend to bodily needs.)

As a matter of conviction, I have made a habit of refusing to pass through Michael Chertoff’s full body scanners, devices that have made Mr. Chertoff a millionaire, in favor of a pat down conducted in full view of the public. I do this to call attention to what invading the privacy of a 84-year-old woman looks like (which is why I refuse the oxymoronic “private screening.”)

This time around, repeated shouts by TSA personnel for a “female assist” go unanswered. (“Female assist” is the operative term for the soft porn practice by the T&A of the female pat down.) During my ten-minute wait for female “assistance,” I have the benefit of standing at the frontlines where the sheepization of the American traveling public gets reinforced. Some 500 people are waiting to penetrate the “security” veil, one by one.  Constant shouts over the din of the crowd caution people to empty their pockets, remove their hats, and strip their feet of shoes.  So divested, they file docilely forward, all of them barefoot. A small child screams hysterically, in full tantrum mode, flinging her shoes out of her stroller, acting out this environment’s energy. Her mother is warned to extract both her children from the stroller (a likely repository for volatile substances) which must be passed childless, through the barrier by a stolid-faced attendant. The woman hoists one strollerless child onto her hip, grabs the tantrumee by the arm, yanks her up off the floor to haul her, still kicking and screaming, through the security barrier.

Is something wrong with this picture?

I decide to change my waiting to proactive. I block the line waiting obediently for the voyeurism of the full body scanner, making it clear I intend to maintain my stance until the promised “female assist” makes her appearance. Despite my maneuver, another few minutes elapse. At last, I cup my hands, shout through the security barrier “female assist!”

“Are you talking to me?” a “male assist” inquires from beyond the barrier.

“I didn’t think I was talking,” I wisecrack.

Shortly thereafter the promised “female assist” arrives, ushers me through the gate. Tantalizingly she describes all the assistance she intends rendering me. Directed by her litany, I spread my arms, I spread my legs. She indicates she will run her hands under my waist band, front and back. She executes her tasks with conviction, her strokes vigorous enough to dislodge my slacks from my waistline. At last she delivers the promised back and forth over my crotch. (Whereas formerly the hands were passed downward in a swift and I like to imagine embarrassed motion, this new development is intended for further customer satisfaction.) This time her hand gestures are aggressively suggestive.

“Do you have something there?” She eyes me suspiciously.

I restrain myself from using a street expression for the female genitalia. Instead I settle for, “You bet!”

My remark releases the Errinys. A supervisor strolls over. “Ma’am? Ma’am, we have to do the pat down all over again.” She begins repeating the ritual, top to bottom. I demand an explanation.

“Ma’am, you were making sarcastic remarks.” she explains.

“Sarcastic remarks are now against the law?”

“Ma’am, ma’am,” she bleats with all the assurance of an enraged school marm. “I’ll have to call my supervisor.”

Feast or famine, the third “female assist” appears. I spread my arms, I spread my legs.

Bemused, an eleven-year-old boy watches the proceedings. I want to say, “Young man, take a good look at this. Remember this.” But from the time he began remembering, his years tell him that walking through the security barrier into the maw of Michael Chertoff’s radiation-producing full-body scanner requires bare feet. My years conjure images of Jews stripped naked, waiting expectantly to enter the crematoria, of people being told they are lining up for the showers, only to discover that the soap that has been issued to each one of them is really just a stone.

---

This Week’s Roses Amidst the Thorns

How to send a politician packing: Protests in London over Grenfell fire force PM Theresa May to flee.

Chile judge jails 106 ex-agents of Pinochet’s dictatorship.

France declares all new rooftops must either be topped with plants or solar panels.

Ten percent (10%) of US energy in March was supplied by wind and solar, setting a record.

Backers of the dam opposed by Berta Cåaceres withdraw their funding completely.

Supreme Court strikes down North Carolina’s racially-gerrymandered legislative maps.

 

NRDC reaches $100 million settlement that requires Michigan and Flint to replace damaged lead pipes and to provide filter installation and education to Flint residents.

211 city mayors and 10 state governors commit to uphold the terms of the Paris Accord.

NRDC: 1069 companies, 218 universities, and 143 mayors pledge to uphold the Paris Accords.

Hawaii joins California, Washington, and New York upholding the goals of the Paris Accords.

Minnesota is the fourth state to support the Paris Agreement, joining Washington, California and New York.

Colorado’s marijuana profits go to schools and to fighting opioid addition.

Kansas rolls back Trumptype tax cuts for the wealthy because it devastated the state’s treasury.

Seeking Economic justice for all, Hawaii becomes first state to consider basic income.

To raise awareness of an unjust bail system, communities bail fathers and others out for father’s day.

Chokwe Antar Lumuba wins mayoral race in Jackson, Mississippi, Jackson’s first black mayor.

Delaware enshrines abortion rights, even if Roe/Wade gets overturned.

California reallocates $103 million to community diversion and treatment programs from the California prisons budget.

Women in Missouri, Ohio, and Texas, get creative protesting repeal of Obama Care. 

Protest: Women dressed as handmaidens after Margaret Atwood's novel

Sweden largest pension fund divests from Paris Accord violators ExxonMobil and TransCanada.

New York City begins divesting from Wells Fargo.

City of Berkeley divests from Wells Fargo.

Standing Rock Sioux receive $250,000 Henry A. Wallace award for its courage opposing the DAPL, plus up to $1 million from the Wallace Global Fund to transition toward fossil fuel independence.

Federal judge rules Army Corps of Engineers gave DAPL a waiver without the necessary EIR, but requires further advisement while the oil keeps flowing. 

What You Can Do:

Sign petition to banks to Stop Financing DAPL and Tar Sands Pipelines

TRICKLE DOWN, TRICKLE UP

The Trump carnival earned its latest booby award with the announcement of US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.  But “it’s an ill wind blows no one good,” as the saying has it. A good example is the trickle down economics practiced by the present regime. The world is up in arms and outrage, but consider: so far the carnival has awakened people like nothing before ever could. Why would another moronic gesture not elicit the same reaction?

Ken Ward writing for TheHill.com underscores that Paris is an agreement with no teeth, and as such a fig leaf “offering political cover to those who would soft-pedal the runaway climate crisis a while longer.” Ward is a valve turner who goes on trial

next week on felony charges for shutting down an oil sands pipeline. He has this to say: “Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement.”

Even before the announcement, Exxon-Mobile shareholders voted to require the company to report the impacts of climate change on its threatened business. Sixty-two percent of them demanded Exxon produce an annual report that explains how the company will be affected by global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and by reduced fuel use. This may very well be but one reflection that American voters favor remaining  in the Paris Agreement 5 to 1. That figure has to include some Trump voters.

Within hours of the Trumpet’s announcement, three states, New York, California and Washington, representing over one-fifth of U.S. Gross Domestic Product, announced they are committed to achieving the U.S. goal of reducing emissions 26-28 percent from 2005 levels and meeting or exceeding the targets of the federal Clean Power Plan. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition that will convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement and taking aggressive action on climate change. It’s clear, at least to this writer, that much more good will come from Trumpomania, than if  the US had announced its support of Paris.

 Read background on the traditional obfuscatory US position in re: climate agreements.

 

What you can do: Donate.

Unfortunately, this trickle down effect comes with a reverse osmotic trickle up effect from the regime’s swamp: Hate. Mentally disturbed Jeremy Christian managed to stab three passengers aboard a Portland commuter train when they came to the defense of two apparently Moslem young women Christian was harassing. One of them, Micah Fletcher survived. A poet, he posted this poem:

            "I, am alive,

            I spat in the eye of hate and lived.

            This is what we must do for one another

            We must live for one another

            We must fight for one another

            We must die in the name of freedom if we have to.

What you can do: Act Up Against Hate!

---

This Fortnight’s Roses Among The Thorns:

Switzerland rejects nuclear power.

Colombia grants legal rights to the polluted Atrato River.

NY AG Eric Schneiderman rules Exxon will have to turn over documents indicating what they knew about global warming and when they knew it.

Although the fight is far from over, a federal appeals court affirmed the suspension of Trump’s Muslim ban on grounds of religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.

Alabama Republican Governor, Kay Ivey, signs law giving back thousands of felons their right to vote.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs law rolling back state’s efforts to make voting more difficult.

Nevada’s Assembly votes 38 to 2 to pass AB 405 to bring back rooftop solar; another Bill 406 also passed setting Nevada toward 50% renewables by 2030.

Maryland Pollinator Habitat Bill Signed Into Law

Veterans are training to “re-deploy” to own communities to defend against Trump’s attacks.

California Senate passes the first-ever state level single payer healthcare system in the US.

Progressive candidate, Edie DesMarais wins special election to the New Hampshire House in a traditionally Republican stronghold.

Progressive candidate Christine Pelligrino wins a seat to the New York House of Representatives.