Sat, Aug 29

2013—Americans learn, thanks to Edward Snowden, that the annual “Black Budget” of the “Intelligence Community” is $52.6 billion a year. 2007—Due to careless accounting, an Air Force B-52 at Minot AFB in North Dakota is loaded with six live nukes, then left unguarded overnight. 1970—A 23-member band of Native Americans scale Mount Rushmore and re-name it for Crazy Horse. 1970—L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Wilson fires a tear gas gun at Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar’s head; he gets away with murder. 1957—Despite a 24 hr., 18 min. filibuster by Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.)—father, at 22, of a mixed-race child by his family’s 16-year-old maid—the Civil …

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Fri, Aug 28

2022—A Medal of Freedom given to mobster Meyer Lansky by Pres. Truman sells at auction for $48,000. 2014—The nation suffers irreparable harm; the President wears a tan suit. 2005—Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans and the levees break. 1969—Judith Love Cohen completes the Abort Guidance System—later used to bring Apollo 13 back to Earth—while in labor in the maternity ward, then gives birth to Jack Black. 1968—Police preserve disorder at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. 1963—At the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. calls for freedom to ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … . 1955—During a visit to family in Money, Miss., fourteen …

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Thurs, Aug 27

2012—“We swept the vermin out,” boasts Chris Sununu, “[New Hampshire’s] now a solid Republican state.” 1991—An ABA panel rates Clarence Thomas. Two members find him “not qualified” for the Supreme Court; none find him “well-qualified.” 1980—FBI agents use C-4 to disarm a half-ton bomb planted in Harvey’s Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada. Result: a 50- by 30-foot crater. 1960—Whites in Jacksonville, Fla. react to Black lunch counter sit-ins with “Ax Handle Saturday.” 1949—Three FBI agents observe as a mob attacks the audience at a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, N.Y. 1927—Sigmund Freud writes a pal: the Statue of Liberty could be replaced with a monkey …

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Wed, Aug 26

2016—S.F.49er Colin Kaepernick protests against racial injustice by sitting while the National Anthem plays. 2014—At an Omaha Wendy’s, cops shoot a suspect “armed” with a fake pistol. Also killed: a soundman for “COPS,” which was on the scene. 1980—Ex-Luftwaffe pilot John Birges, trying to recoup his gambling losses, plants a half-ton bomb at Harvey’s Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nev. 1969—Five men from New Hampshire’s 197th Field Artillery are killed days before leaving Vietnam when their truck detonates a land mine. 1968—Mayor Richard Daley welcomes Democrats to the 1968 Democratic National Convention while his cops prepare to bust heads outside. 1967—Burt Munro, a 68-year old Kiwi, …

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Tues, Aug 25

1999—The FBI admits, six years after the fact, that the tear gas canisters it fired into David Koresh’s compound in Waco were incendiary—but still denies they started the fatal fire. 1995—Zany Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) announces his innovative new policy, sure to win the drug war: execute “27 or 30 or 35 people at one time.” 1985—Ronald Reagan admits that, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, he ratted on its members to the FBI. 1967—J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI sets out to “expose, disrupt, misdirect [and] discredit” the Black Panthers. 1967—A former Marine and ex-aide to George Lincoln Rockwell murders the founder …

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Mon, Aug 24

2020—Rep. Katie Porter [D-Calif.]: “You don’t know the cost to mail a postcard?” Postmaster Louis DeJoy, laughing, confesses: “I don’t.” 1970—Graduate student Robert Fassnacht is killed and three others are injured when peaceniks blow up a physics lab at the U. of Wisconsin. 1967—Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin scatter 300 one-dollar bills on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Bedlam erupts as greedy capitalists scramble. 1964—I.F. Stone reports the U.S. government and press “have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public.” 1963—The State Department orders Ambassador Lodge to encourage Vietnamese generals to stage a coup. 1954—Genial old Ike signs …

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