Volume 265 | No. 3

Mon, Oct 26

2016—Bloomberg reports that Frederick Trump, Donald’s grandpa, once ran a brothel in British Columbia. 2010—Arizona kills Jeffrey Landrigan, using drugs imported illegally. 2003—Iraqi resistance fighters nearly get Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz with a rocket in Baghdad. 1972—Four years after helping to scuttle peace talks and get Richard Nixon elected, Henry Kissinger announces that “Peace is at hand.” 1971—Governor Reagan, calling the White House, refers to “those monkeys from those African countries…damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes,” which President Nixon finds hilarious. 1966—Aboard the carrier U.S.S. Oriskany off Vietnam, a sailor throws an accidentally-ignited flare into a locker full of warheads. Explosions ensue, 44 …

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Sun, Oct 25

2001—Sen. Russ Feingold votes “nay” on the “PATRIOT” Act. 1983—U.S. troops protect us (and distract from the loss of 241 Marines in Beirut) by invading Grenada. 1978—In response to GOP malfeasance, FISA is enacted—thereby enabling future GOP malfeasance. 1973—Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and other unelected officials raise America’s military readiness level to DEF CON 3 as Nixon sleeps. 1962—Nuclear-armed jets scramble from Duluth AFB because a guard, thinking it’s an infiltrator, has shot a bear climbing a fence. 1960—Martin Luther King, Jr. gets four months at hard labor in Decatur, Ga. on old traffic charges. 1944—Adm. Sprague’s task force “Taffy 3,” surprised by a far-larger …

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Let’s Hear It For More Good Trouble

On June 27, 2015—ten days after nine Black worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina were murdered by a white supremacist—an artist and activist then known as Bree Newsome scaled a flagpole on the grounds of that state’s capitol and hauled down the Confederate battle flag. “In the name of Jesus, this flag has to come down,” she said as she was being arrested. “You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.” Two weeks later the legislature of South Carolina—which had been defending the Confederate flag’s presence for decades—essentially ratified Newsome’s …

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Unleashed

This fortnight certainly got off to a rousing start. Based on their scrutiny of his tax returns for the past two decades, a team of ten reporters for the New York Times demonstrated that Donald J. Trump has, after a six-pack of bankruptcies, finally stumbled onto a business model that works for him: “turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign.” After reading “The Swamp That Trump Built”—only the most recent in a long line of exposés which once might have been sufficient to trigger incarceration—an irate George Washington rose from …

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Why I’m Not Voting for Donald Trump

Just a few days ago, an e-mail acquaintance of mine sent me this: “Gotta admit I’m voting for Trump because I fear what happens if he loses. Who is Trump running against? I don’t think that Joe’s cognitive skills are up to the task. I think almost everything he says has been scripted for him. “Harris? I’m not even sure Joe picked her. Look at the horrible claims she made against him while she was still campaigning—and now they’re buds? I have to believe that powers behind the scenes have designs on how they’ll direct Joe on what his policies will be. If, for some …

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Trump and the QAnon Death Cult

To the Editor: Blend a sudden global respiratory viral pandemic with an incompetent, science-denying Donald Trump downplaying the virus as a liberal hoax, add a full measure of disgust for pedophilia, and beat vigorously on social media. Swallowing this delicious mixture is comforting for many folks, who prefer it to the menace of a death avoided only by masks and separation. QAnon makes it clear we are threatened, instead, by an identifiable, hidden, global cabal of child-violating liberal elites. Instead of separation and fear, the global threat is to be fought by the enlightened, intimate groups of QAnon adherents. QAnon offers clear answers and familiar, …

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