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Sandwich guy targets most vilely deserving target ever
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Sandwich Guy Redux: In Your Fascist Face

When Pigs Fly Dept: The "remarkable failure" of prosecutors to indict the D.C. "hero with a hero" who hurled his sub at a neighborhood thug prompted glad praise that, "Ham sandwiches are finally getting a break." It also reflected a growing resistance to a fascist takeover that, with its inept efforts to turn small breaches - an open beer, a wrong door, a nap in the car - into felony charges, has judges, lawyer and an aggrieved populace denouncing it as merely, malignantly "fucking with people for no reason."

In the now-famous "assault with a deli weapon," Sean Dunn, a 37-year-old decorated Afghanistan veteran and former trial attorney and foreign affairs specialist with the DOJ, got up in the face of one masked, armed, burly goon among many in D.C., yelled, “Fuck you! You fucking fascists! Why are you here?" and hurled his wrapped sandwich, reportedly salami, at said goon's bullet-proof-vested chest before sprinting away. About 30 federal agents, with little else to do, chased down, handcuffed and arrested him. He was quickly released, but the next day, in the well-worn name of totalitarian pageantry, the DOJ recorded dozens of stormtroopers swarming his apartment, guns drawn Bin-Laden-like, to re-arrest him and charge him with felony assault for what U.S. Attorney Boxwine Pirro called "a serious crime," but definitely not like the Jan. 6 now-pardoned rioters who assaulted over 140 cops.

Despite the perp's later confession - "I did it. I threw a sandwich" - and the maxim that, given the famously low bar for grand jury hearings, resolute prosecutors can successfully find cause to indict a ham sandwich - the grand jury summoned to put away the "Hoagie Hero" basically responded to the evidence presented with, "Sandwich? What sandwich? I don't see no sandwich," and rejected the call to charge him with a felony. The "exceedingly rare," "sharp rebuke by ordinary citizens" fed up with the dystopian mayhem inflicted on them by bulked-up bullies on all sides rendered Dunn "America’s most famous food thrower since a bunch of guys in Boston hurled tea into the harbor." Like the refusal of LA residents to indict anti-ICE protesters, it showed most Americans reject the regime's cynical attempt to escalate minor scuffles into felony assaults, in the words of one attorney, as "horseshit."

To date, prosecutors have accused at least 17 people of felony “assaulting,” “resisting” or “impeding” a federal agent doing their "duty" since Trump declared his imaginary "crime crisis." As phalanxes of bored, masked, ill-trained cops - FBI, DEA, DHS, USBP - join D.C. police on patrols, the charges get preposterous, and the people get pissed. They caught Mark Bigelow with, gasp, "an open container of alcohol" in his parked van; when he struggled with cops shoving him into a squad car, he allegedly "struck" one. The same day, another mob went to investigate possible fireworks or gunfire; as they dispersed a crowd, Terrance Wilson "struck" an officer with his elbow; when his friend tried to retrieve her sweatshirt as he was carted away, she too diabolically "struck" an officer. When Rios Esquivel inadvertently took the wrong exit door at the zoo, multiple agents grabbed him for another felony.

As Pirro wildly pushes prosecutors to bring cases to court "with the most serious charges they can pursue" and tries to keep them in jail pending trial to impress Daddy with "big numbers" - helped by the ending of cashless bail - attorneys say the courts are "buckling." One DC public defender, "It’s a real mess." Meanwhile, prosecutorial failures to retool garden-variety encounters into fake "assault narratives" pile up. Prosecutors tried three times to indict Lori Reid for felony "assault" on a cop's hand at a protest; after grand juries kept calling bullshit, they reduced it to a misdemeanor. After Alvin Summers drove his car near the Mall where he shouldn't, police charged he "speed-walked away" and, when caught, "grabbed (a cop) by the upper body with force"; the grand jury rejected their testimony after seeing body-cam video, which doesn't lie like they do. And then there was Dunn's lethal sub.

Many judges have likewise grown skeptical. Trump-appointed Judge Thomas Cullen dismissed a farcical regime lawsuit against all 15 federal judges in Maryland to limit their power over immigration as a "Constitutional free-for-all," blasting the "concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it." In an assault case, Judge Zia Faruqui charged, "Masked and anonymous law enforcement are terrorizing innocent and hardworking residents (to) smear good people and build upon their false narrative they are capturing ‘bad criminals.'" Friday, multiple judges handed Trump big court losses: They ruled most of the tariffs illegal, blocked Ice Barbie from stripping protections from 600,000 Venezuelans - she slammed them as "unelected activists," like her - and blocked government's "startling' claim they can do "expedited removal" of migrants with no due process.

Still, all good inside the MAGA bubble. At a cringe, pointless gathering of bootlickers "that would make Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin blush," Cabinet members called their dear bigoted autocrat, with a "big beautiful face," the "transformational president of the American worker," thanked him for "saving college football" and "the whales," said he should def get the "Noble (sic) Prize," and declared "we're in a revolution," like the one "in 1863 or so." Their beaming idiot king bragged "I have the right to do anything I want," so he did. He illegally returned a massive portrait of Gen. Robert E Lee, a slave holding his horse, to the library at West Point. He offered military funeral honors to Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt. Using his "weapon of choice" of fake mortgage fraud allegations, he tried to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for being a black woman doing her job at the Fed; in response, she sued him.

Meanwhile, his lunatic Brain-Worm Health Secretary - not a doctor or scientist - dismantles the CDC, fires its leaders, prompts mass resignations and the charge he's using CDC "to generate policies (that) do not reflect scientific reality and (will) hurt rather than improve the public’s health." This week he suggested anti-depressants may have led the Minneapolis shooter to gun down praying children, flubbed statistics on autism and diabetes, said we should "stop trusting the experts, which is not a feature of science or democracy," and diagnosed kids he walked past at an airport with "mitochondrial challenges," which one expert called "wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff." Others: "I'm sorry but what?", "This batshit asshole should not be anywhere near the levers of power," and, "Scientist here. Maybe those kids just don’t like you because you’re staring at them like a creep who wants to give them measles."."

Enter, in his defense, Stephen Goebbels Voldemort Miller, who calls RFK Jr. "a crown jewel of this administration" and "one of the world's foremost voices (and) experts on public health." Also, the CDC lacked "credibility" and was run by "partisan bureaucrats." America was a "killing field" before Trump launched his "liberation." D.C. was "body after body after body." Chicago has "shut down" their police, "handcuffed law enforcement." Democrats should be “jumping up and down saying, ‘Thank you, President Trump, for saving our lives.'" The "Democrat Party (is) devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers...(It) is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization." And Sean Dunn, now charged with a misdemeanor, goes to court Sept. 4. For now, Banksy-inspired posters celebrating his tasty heroism bedeck D.C; its latest iteration hits Miller on his bald head. Let freedom ring.

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Protesters march with an anti-fossil fuel banner during the...
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'Climate Vandalism, Pure and Simple': Defiant BP to Reopen North Sea Oil Field

As the United Kingdom on Monday faced the onset of its fourth heatwave of this summer, climate campaigners continued to call out BP for its decision to plow ahead with reopening the Murlach oil field in the North Sea, despite fossil fuels pushing up global temperatures and the U.K. government's efforts to limit extraction in the region.

"This is climate vandalism, pure and simple," Kate Blagojevic, Europe team lead at the group 350.org, said in a Monday statement. "BP is putting its profit margins above the survival of communities, ecosystems, and future generations. Every barrel of oil from this project pushes us closer to climate breakdown, more floods, more fires, more heatwaves."

"The era of fossil fuels is over, and BP's desperate attempts to wring out the last drops of oil from the North Sea are a reckless betrayal of the public and the planet. They should be winding down, not doubling down," she declared.

Greenpeace U.K. policy director Doug Parr was similarly critical, saying in a statement that "the North Sea is on death's door. Reserves are drying up, and what's left and untapped is barely enough to keep it on life support."

The Telegraph on Sunday noted recent research from the government's North Sea Transition Authority that found there were over 3 billion barrels of oil and gas in fields already in production, 6 billion barrels in known potential developments, and 3.5 billion barrels in identified exploration zones.

According to the newspaper, BP said the Murlach field contains 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic meters of gas, and is "expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day," due to new technologies that weren't around when it was shut down over two decades ago.

Parr said that "3 billion barrels wouldn't last more than a few years at current rates of consumption, and even that assumes it is economic to extract. Whatever the political rhetoric, the oil and gas is pretty much gone, and soon, so too will the jobs of thousands of workers."

"Unless we want to remain dependent on overseas imports and watch an entire industry collapse with no plan for workers," he added, "the only sensible thing to do is to pivot the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out—wind."

Although the U.K's current Labour Party leaders have pledged to avoid new licensing for fossil fuel projects in the North Sea, "BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month," The Telegraph explained.

A spokesperson for Ed Miliband, U.K. secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said Sunday that "we are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis."

"We are delivering a fair and orderly transition in the North Sea, with the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and two first-of-a-kind carbon capture and storage clusters," the spokesperson added.

Miliband in June announced new guidance for environmental impact assessments of proposed oil and gas projects in licensed fields, which came in response to last year's landmark U.K. Supreme Court ruling. After that decision, Judge Andrew Stewart of Scotland's Court of Session ruled in January that Equinor and Shell, which are respectively behind the Rosebank oil and gas field and the Jackdaw gas project, can't move ahead with extraction.

The June guidance means offshore developers can now submit applications for extractions in fields that are already licensed, including Rosebank and Jackdaw. In response to that development earlier this year, Mel Evans, Greenpeace U.K.'s head of climate, said that "it's only right for the government to take into account the emissions from burning oil and gas when deciding whether to approve fossil fuel projects currently pending."

"Since Rosebank and other drilling sites will pump out a lot of carbon while providing little benefit to the economy and no help to bill payers, they should fail the criteria ministers have just set out," Evans added. "Real energy security and future-proofed jobs for energy workers can only come through homegrown, cheap renewable energy, and that's what ministers should focus on."

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Apple Valley Hospital In San Bernardino County Copes With Rise In Covid-19 Cases As ICU Reaches 200% Capacity
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New Senate Report Details How Private Equity 'Devastates' Hospital Systems

A US senator on Wednesday released a report that detailed how private equity firms have ruined hospitals in his home state and across the country.

The report from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) documented what happened when three Connecticut hospitals—Waterbury Hospital, Rockville General, and Manchester Memorial—were bought by Prospect Medical Holdings, a private equity-backed healthcare firm.

Interviews conducted with staff members of these hospitals told a consistent story about how Prospect cut corners in nearly every conceivable aspect and worsened the care patients received at the hospitals.

Ramona, an operating room assistant at Waterbury Hospital cited in the report, explained how Prospect went to extreme lengths to avoid spending money. She explained to Murphy that Prospect at one point stopped paying vendors, which resulted in supplies eventually growing "so scarce patients were sometimes left on the operating table while staff scrambled" to find the necessary equipment.

Staff members eventually started buying supplies themselves, with some even going so far as to buy food for their patients to ensure that they did not go hungry.

A nurse named Anne-Marie, who has worked at Manchester Memorial for over three decades, told Murphy's staff that it was only through the dedication of staff members that her hospital was able to continue functioning at all.

"You know, I'm very fortunate where I work that we still care and patients can't believe what a good job we do despite all of the obstacles and hurdles we've been given," she said. "We still show up every day and we're committed to our communities, thankfully."

Prospect didn't just skimp on buying supplies for the hospitals but also on maintaining the buildings themselves. A unit secretary at Waterbury Hospital named Carmen told Murphy's staff of two instances where the ceiling at the building literally fell down due to years of neglect.

"We were lucky enough that the patient had already been discharged and where it fell, it would have missed the stretcher and the patient," she said of the first instance. "The other time it fell in the trauma room, it was only on top of the computers... so we called maintenance, and they came and fixed it, [which means] putting a little hose where the water is and putting buckets to catch the water…it's happened a lot."

The deterioration of patient care at Waterbury became obvious by 2019, when the report noted that it "recorded the highest rates of patient readmission in the state."

Things got even worse for the hospitals when Leonard Green & Partners, the private equity firm that at the time owned Prospect, decided to sell the land where the hospitals reside to a real estate investment firm that then leased the land back at high rates. The final blow came when Leonard Green sold off its stake in Prospect, which the report says left "nothing but debt and destruction" in its wake.

"After Leonard Green's exit, Rockville Hospital was losing so much money, they cut all but emergency and outpatient mental health services without the required state authorization, leaving many patients with no full-service hospital nearby," the report stated.

Prospect itself filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, and the fate of all three hospitals is now "in the hands of a bankruptcy judge in Texas," the report added.

Murphy's report also emphasized that the story of private equity stripping hospitals for parts is not unique to his state.

"The story of these three Connecticut hospitals is playing out in healthcare systems all over the country," it said. "Private equity comes in, squeezes the life out of hospitals and doctor's offices, and then leaves patients and communities in the lurch."

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Federal workers Rally in Washington against firings amid union protest
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Trump Order Ramps Up Assault on Union Rights of Federal Workers

In the lead-up to Labor Day in the United States, President Donald Trump on Thursday escalated his attack on the union rights of federal employees at a list of agencies with an executive order that claims to "enhance" national security.

Trump previously issued an order intended to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government employees in March, provoking an ongoing court fight. A federal judge blocked the president's edict—but then earlier this month, a panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the administration to proceed.

Government agencies were directed not to terminate any collective bargaining agreements while the litigation over Trump's March order continued, but some have begun to do so, according to Government Executive. On Monday, the 9th Circuit said in a filing that it would vote on whether the full court will rehear the case.

Amid that court fight, Trump issued Thursday's order, which calls for an end to collective bargaining for unionized workers at the Bureau of Reclamation's hydropower units; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service; National Weather Service; Patent and Trademark Office; and US Agency for Global Media.

Like the earlier order, this one cites the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. As Government Executive reported Thursday:

Matt Biggs, national president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, whose union represents a portion of NASA's workforce along with the American Federation of Government Employees, suggested that the administration's targeting of NASA—IFPTE's largest union—was in retaliation for its own lawsuit challenging the spring iteration of the executive order, filed last month.

"It's not surprising, sadly," Biggs said. "What is surprising is that on the eve of Labor Day weekend, when workers are to be celebrated, the Trump administration has doubled down on being the most anti-labor, anti-worker administration in US history. We will continue to fight in the courts, on the Hill, and at the grassroots levels against this."

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which also sued over the March order, said that "President Trump's decision to issue a Labor Day proclamation shortly after stripping union rights from thousands of civil servants, a third of whom are veterans, should show American workers what he really thinks about them."

"This latest executive order is another clear example of retaliation against federal employee union members who have bravely stood up against his anti-worker, anti-American plan to dismantle the federal government," Kelley declared, taking aim at the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

"Several agencies including NASA and the National Weather Service have already been hollowed out by reckless DOGE cuts, so for the administration to further disenfranchise the remaining workers in the name of 'efficiency' is immoral and abhorrent," the union leader said. "AFGE is preparing an immediate response and will continue to fight relentlessly to protect the rights of our members, federal employees, and their union."

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As Trump Eyes Chicago Takeover, Progressives Say 'We Must Fight Back'
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As Trump Eyes Chicago Takeover, Progressives Say 'We Must Fight Back'

Progressive voices and Democratic leaders this week are letting it be known they will not take President Donald Trump's threat to target the city of Chicago for his next federal takeover and deployment of federal troops lying down.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday, alongside Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and US Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), held a press conference to let Trump know that Chicago residents want no part of his plan to deploy the military into their city.

"The last thing that Chicagoans want is someone from the outside of our city, who doesn't know our city, trying to dictate and tell us what our city needs," said Johnson. "As the mayor of this city, I can tell you that Chicagoans are not calling for military occupation."

Pritzker, meanwhile, bluntly warned Trump against sending troops to his state's largest city.

"This is not about fighting crime," Pritzker said of Trump's plans to deploy the military in Chicago. "This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals."

Illinois politicians weren't the only ones who are vowing to resist Trump's designs on Chicago, as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned that the president had ambitions to deploy troops to all major American cities.

"First it was LA, then DC, and now Chicago," she wrote in a social media post Tuesday. "None of us are safe from Trump's authoritarian rule. We must fight back against this takeover of our cities."

Progressive organization Our Revolution, has started circulating a petition demanding that Congress vote against any Trump request to extend his control over the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department beyond the legally allowed period of 30 days.

Progressives' vows of defiance come as The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting new details about Trump's designs on the Windy City. According to the paper, the administration is planning to use a suburban naval base just outside the city to house federal immigration officials and potentially National Guard troops starting in September.

An email sent this week by US Navy Cpt. Stephen Yargosz obtained by The Chicago Sun-Times claimed that the deployment will be focused on "downtown Chicago," despite the fact that the downtown area is not where most violent crimes in the city occur.

Yargosz also said in his email that there are "not many details" right now about deploying the National Guard in Chicago, but "mainly a lot of concerns and questions."

The Chicago Sun-Times report also noted that all of these plans are being done without any input from or consultation with local officials, who have said that they are completely in the dark about what the president is plotting.

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US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea speaks
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Entire UN Security Council Except US Says Gaza Famine 'Man-Made' as 10 More People Starve to Death

Every member nation of the United Nations Security Council except the United States on Wednesday affirmed that Israel's engineered famine in Gaza is "man-made" as 10 more Palestinians died of starvation amid what UN experts warned is a worsening crisis.

Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members issued a joint statement calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas, and lifting of all Israeli restrictions on aid delivery into the embattled strip, where hundreds of Palestinians have died from starvation and hundreds of thousands more are starving.

"Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately," they said. "Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course."

"We express our profound alarm and distress at the IPC data on Gaza, published last Friday. It clearly and unequivocally confirms famine," the statement said, referring to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's declaration of Phase 5, or a famine "catastrophe," in the strip.

"We trust the IPC's work and methodology," the 14 countries declared. "This is the first time famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region. Every day, more persons are dying as a result of malnutrition, many of them children."

"This is a man-made crisis," the statement stresses. "The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law."

Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the UN's International Court of Justice, denies the existence of famine in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Court of Justice for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.

The 14 countries issuing the joint statement are: Algeria, China, Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, and the United Kingdom.

While acknowledging that "hunger is a real issue in Gaza and that there are significant humanitarian needs which must be met," US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea rejected the resolution and the IPC's findings.

"We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity," Shea told the Security Council. "Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn't pass the test on either."

Shea also repeated the debunked claim that the IPC's "normal standards were changed for [the IPC famine] declaration."

The Security Council's affirmation that the Gaza famine is man-made mirrors the findings of food experts who have accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the strip.

The UN Palestinian Rights Bureau and UN humanitarian officials also warned Wednesday that the famine in Gaza is "only getting worse."

"Over half a million people currently face starvation, destitution, and death," the humanitarian experts said. "By the end of September, that number could exceed 640,000."

"Failure to act now will have irreversible consequences," they added.

Wednesday's UN actions came as Israel intensified Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, the campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from Gaza, possibly into a reportedly proposed concentration camp that would be built over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.

The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) on Wednesday reported 10 more Palestinian deaths "due to famine and malnutrition" over the past 24 hours, including two children, bringing the number of famine victims to at least 313, 119 of them children.

All told, Israel's 691-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the GHM.

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