Open Sesame

     It looks as if the AP news wire and the Clintonistas are engaging in a little bit of futurism.
     Yesterday during the theft of California primaries, Common Dreams broke a story that had already broken the night before on Twitter, one that I'd sniffed out immediately Monday night. Now, AP calling the nomination for Clinton in advance of the primaries was bad enough as she did not have then, nor does she now have, the number of delegates to clinch the nomination. The AP was calling the nomination on behalf of Hillary because of future pledged super delegates.
     This is also a type of egregious collusion as the super delegates do not actually get to vote on a nominee until July 25th at the convention in Philly. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
     The three images that compose the lead image used by the AP's Twitter feed were dated as having been made by Clinton staffers over the weekend (specifically, they're all dated Saturday June 4th). Even more damning is that each of the files were named "secret win."
     "Secret win"?
     So, there's clear collusion that the Clinton campaign was manufacturing news four days in advance and then feeding the "news" to the AP, which gobbled it up like a bum on a bologna sandwich without even checking the provenance, the file names or anything. And they disseminated it the day before the primaries.
     The intent of this was clear: It was meant to manufacture inevitability and consensus, that Clinton was already the nominee and that the convention in Philly is really just a formality.
     Secondly, and more insidiously, it was designed to discourage Sanders voters whom the Clinton campaign and the AP were essentially telling to stay home, it doesn't even matter if your man takes California.
     The AP, its Twitter feed or anyone representing the AP has yet to print a retraction and instead are pretending as if there was no "oversight' and a complete abandonment of journalistic principles. Most sickeningly, it actually worked. This is what Lee Fang said on Twitter:

As intended, seeing a lot of CA folks on social media today saying they won't vote.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) June 7, 2016

     Granted, this is just one trusted journalist doing a spot audit on social media but it would begin to explain how and why a man who was running neck and neck with Hillary in California could lose by a whopping 13 points.
     Well, here are some more reasons:
     Greg Palast has been so hot and bothered by the Olympic-level corruption that always coincidentally benefits Hillary Clinton that he's been writing more than one article a day. This is the latest one, written during the California primary, How California is being stolen from Sanders right now.
     In it, Palast lists complaints from California voters, many of them voters of color and Bernie fans, who had had crossover ballots deliberately withheld from them and offered what Palast calls the "placebo" provisional ballot. Now, lest you think Greg and I are resorting to hyperbole in charging California election officials with willfully and deliberately withholding crossover ballots that would've allowed NPP voters to vote for a Democrat, let me explain how this is so. This is from the Election Officer Training Manual, page 49:

"A No Party Preference voter will need to request a crossover ballot from the Roster Index Officer. (Do not offer them a crossover ballot if they do not ask)."

     That's right. They have to ask for a crossover ballot in just such a way as if attempting to make contact with a fellow spy in a film noir WW II era movie. Yes, we're actually talking "open sesame". This is the state of electoral science in the year 2016. We've been doing this as a nation for over 190 years. You'd think we'd fucking have it down pat by now.
     It gets worse.
     In Palast's report, he lists examples of not just individual voters who'd been purged from the voter rolls but even their entire streets. After being told they weren't allowed to vote, they were shunted to a random polling place and when they arrived, they were told there they still couldn't vote.
     There's, technically, no smoking gun to prove willful collusion between Camp Clinton and the CA Secretary of State's Office. But we've seen this level of collusion before in Florida during the 2000 election and again in Ohio in 2004. And in their mailers to California voters, it can't be said they'd gone out of their way to explain the Byzantine and hugger mugger election process to voters. (Palast chides the Sanders campaign for not doing it, either, but that wasn't their job. That's why every state has a Secretary of State). And it's obvious through their level of disclosure that the California Secretary of State's Office was about as transparent as a granite wall with lead siding (I refer you again to page 49 of the Election Officer's Handbook, published through the CA SoS's office).
     And it's reasonable to assume, since Gov. Jerry Brown endorsed Clinton before the primaries, Alex Padilla's office would want to keep their boss happy since the Democratic establishment as a whole, especially in CA, would have a vested interest in keeping Bernie voters in the dark.
     In summation, the Clinton campaign was arrogant enough to count their super delegate chickens before they were hatched, they showed the whole rotten clutch to the AP, who saw in it chickens and announced to anxious Hillary supporters on Twitter that their Goldwater Girl had at last secured the nomination. End of story.
     If the Sanders campaign had resorted to even a tenth of the sleazy tactics the Clinton camp has, Hillary bots would be shaking pigeon shit off the rafters with their screams. They, too, would be denouncing the super delegate system which is plainly made up of unelected party insiders who pledge votes months before the first primaries and caucuses against the voice of the people and are largely made up of the kinds of corporate lobbyists currently infesting Clinton's campaign just as they had in 2008 and no doubt will again in 2020.
     Seriously, folks, this is the most overtly corrupt presidential election I've ever seen in my life and it's starting to make 2000 and 2004 look like clinics in civics by conspicuous relief.