Investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker Greg Palast gut-punched audiences at the Left Forum this weekend with news of body-slamming abuse of the press by thugs and many other ways the 99 percent are being victimized by the rapacious GOP, and others.

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Late last May, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was body slammed to the ground, his glasses broken, by the man Montanans the next day elected to represent their state in Congress, Republican Greg Gianforte. Jacobs had had the temerity to ask the candidate what he thought about Trumpcare.

To be fair, Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault (meaning that he can still vote, unlike a felon) and apologized later.

Of course, 70 percent of voters had already voted by mail in this special election to replace Ryan Zinke, who left Congress to join the DT's "cabinet" as Secretary of the Interior. There's no telling how the vote would have changed had the entire election taken place after the body slam, but studies show that those who vote early are usually committed to and decided on their candidate.

Who knows? Is assault of the press the new normal when a reporter asks an unwelcome question? Like "Please tell the truth, you s.o.b. pig." Not that they'd stoop to that language. Their subjects might.

Like most dedicated journalists, he and Jacobs "learned to go closer when told to move back," said investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker Greg Palast at the Left Forum yesterday.

He should know. He's been bodily removed before from conservative venues for requesting the truth from scumbags. See Danny Schechter's 2003 film "Counting on Democracy," where you can revisit one such tragicomic episode.

Flying down to the humid, tepid red state Georgia to check out the shenanigans keeping the winner from winning in the sixth district, which includes parts of Atlanta, Palast was body-slammed by three thugs for asking Congressional candidate Karen Handel, former "purgin general"/Sos of her state, about GOP corruption of that election--at the registration level.

It was former Confederate Memorial Day, changed since last year to Memorial Day.

It had been okay to ask about Democratic corruption previously, though the answer had been evasive. Sure they're stealing the election. We must uphold the Constitution, said Handel, who had stepped down from her SoS post in 2012 to run for Georgia governor and lost.

And the network channels covered another event, framing Palast as a crackpot harassing a candidate. Why is she purging blacks from the voter rolls? he had tried to ask. There's a video at gregpalast.com recording abusive cries of "Get out of here, you idiot liberal!"

So, just back from the red clay state, Palast said that the winner in the sixth district so far is Jim Crow. Yee-hah!

The sixth district had put Newt Gingrich into office for two decades when demographics were slightly different; if you're bored, blink and things will change. When Tom Price, a subsequent U.S. Rep, was appointed by the DT to Trump's "cabinet" as HHS Secretary, a special election held in April to replace him pitted Democrat Jon Ossoff against former SoS Karen Handel and others. Ossoff was winning by 53 percent when the machinery went down for several hours and resurfaced showing him now at 48 percent. Handel came in a distant second with 19 percent of the vote. Now they're running neck and neck since skullduggery has elevated Handel to tying in the polls with Ossoff.

The district, now a "different world," said Palast, has diversified. "People of color" now try to vote there, and 40,000 of them were left off of the voter rolls in April. Photocopies of their registration forms were produced, but it's illegal to photocopy! 80 to 85 percent of Koreans now vote Democratic there. Small wonder that they were left off of the registration lists; when one woman was threatened for asking why, she was told to stay out of trouble. The group's advocacy office shut down.

That's why Ossoff won't win, said Palast. Asians will receive provisional ballots.

GEORGIA 6 IS AMERICA, Palast later said. Get used to winning elections by more than 51 percent. What do we do?

In Detroit in Election 2016 the optical scanners weren't working and so the ballots were placed on a shelves behind them as if they had been counted.

"Donald Trump is crazy like a fox," he said. Kansas SoS Kris Kobach, an architect of the Muslim travel ban, a Harvard-Oxford-Yale graduate, is now vice chair of Trump's Election Integrity Commission, to attend to the three million citizens who voted twice in 2016. He has the list. One million Hillary voters swam across the Rio Grande. Kobach will require proof of citizenship to vote. Take out your passports, indigent minorities, from your safe deposit boxes!

"He'll tell you who can and can't vote." He'll have access to all Homeland Security files.

The kicker is that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wanted to join the Interstate Crosscheck group.

Once again, as in Florida 2000, double names are being removed via the state voter databases: John Jones's vote won't count because Jonathan Q. Jones halfway across the state voted. Of course, social security numbers don't matter.

Russia's tapping into John Podesta's email meant nothing. Who among the people has ever heard of him?

Souls to the Polls is one remaining vestige of democracy we must keep even if it is a component of early voting.

As far as being cheated out of the presidency, at least Gore allowed SCOTUS to intervene. Hillary didn't--because of hanky-panky during the primaries? She had the standing that Jill Stein didn't to protect black votes in Michigan. Why didn't she want recounts in Ohio and Pennsylvania? She had the election close enough to steal.

Maybe she didn't want to spend two terms in the jaws of impeachment proceedings and cries of "Lock her up!"

Audience questions elicited Gore's hatred of Palast as an "s.o.b." Also that the DT is "in hock up to his a--."

Trump has paid federal income taxes once, thanks to a loophole widened by the billionaire Mercer family.

Billionaires, the puppeteers, need the DT in office, after all.

Paul the Vulture Singer, one of GP's favorite billionaires, visited Trump in the oval office recently.

And how to get rid of him? The incandescent new Palast associate Mohammed Naeem, a millennial, is organizing a group The Uncounted to reach out to his cohorts, a group bigger than the baby boomers.

"They can't steal all the votes all the time. We're not quite there."

Palast's daughter, in college in Savannah, Georgia, finally succeeded in registering to vote after three months of persistence. Eight thousand of her colleagues weren't so . . . lucky. Her dad offered further advice: if you register twice, you'll be able to vote.

And Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) wanted to know why all of this information didn't make it to the New York Times.

Then the real body slam happened, to all of us. We are two states away from a Constitutional Convention the GOP will hold to rewrite the Constitution. They can write away SCOTUS. They will be financed by the Kochs.

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.