Sun, Sept 4

2019—Proving that his Hurricane Dorian prediction was perfect, Donald J. Trump displays a fake map. 1992—Ex-South Vietnamese fighter pilot Ly Tong hijacks an Air Vietnam Airbus out of Bangkok. As it flies low and slow over Ho Chi Minh City, he drops revolutionary propaganda, then safely parachutes—but into captivity. 1976—George W.[MD] Bush is arrested for DUI in Kennebunk, Maine. 1973—R. Nixon’s flunkies John Ehrlichman and G. Gordon Liddy are indicted for felonious burgling. 1967—“I just had the greatest brainwashing … [in] Vietnam,” says Gov. George Romney (R-Mich.). 1957—Ford’s Edsel debuts. 1957—Gov. Orval Faubus [Dem.] orders the Alabama National Guard to keep nine Black children from …

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Sat, Sept 3

2003—Because life is sacred, Florida poisons Paul Hill, who shotgunned Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard because life is sacred. Rinse & repeat. 1991—Locked doors, dead phones, and a lack of fire alarms kill 25 workers in a North Carolina chicken plant. 1971—As Richard Nixon speaks at a Milk Producers’ convention in Chicago, an aide pockets his fee: a $5,000 bribe, which will pay the Plumbers who are, this day, breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist—at Nixon’s behest. 1955—Mamie Till Mobley holds an open-casket funeral for her murdered and mutilated son Emmett. 1950—American advisors arrive in Saigon to support NATO: France wants Vietnam, …

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Fri, Sept 2

1983—Mississippi’s execution of Jimmy Lee Gray goes poorly; executioner T. Berry Bruce is drunk. Officials clear the witness room after eight minutes, as Gray gasps, moans, and bangs his head on a steel pole. 1945—VJ Day—Japan surrenders to General “Dugout Doug” MacArthur aboard a battleship named after Harry S Truman’s home state. 1945—Cribbing freely from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnam to be sovereign and independent. 1939—G-Man J. Edgar Hoover creates a “Custodial Detention Index,” a list of left wingers to detain without trial in case of “national emergency.” 1935—Recently rousted from Washington, D.C. by General Douglas MacArthur, 259 veterans working …

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Thurs, Sept 1

2019—Meteorologist-in-Chief Donald J. Trump tweets that Hurricane Dorian will hit Alabama hard. 2005—New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin calls for George W.[MD] Bush and FEMA to “get off your asses and do something” about his flooded city. 1989—Narcs trying to score crack near the White House for a George H.[H.]W. Bush presidential photo-op get the drug on their third try but not the film—their camera operator gets mugged by a homeless person. 1989—Bible-thumping huckster Jim Bakker’s fraud trial is briefly interrupted when, professing that he’s hallucinating, he’s taken to a mental institution in handcuffs and leg shackles. 1983—The USSR shoots down KAL Flight 007. Among the …

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Tax Dodger Donates $1.6 Billion to
the Guy Who Owns the Supreme Court

by Jake Johnson A right-wing dark money group controlled by Leonard Leo—a legal activist who has played an outsized role in packing the U.S. Supreme Court with conservative ideologues—was the beneficiary of a massive, possibly unprecedented donation of $1.6 billion from a shadowy electronics mogul with ties to the Koch network. The enormous infusion of cash, first reported Monday by the New York Times, could bolster and embolden right-wing efforts to drag the U.S. judicial and political systems even further to the right for decades to come, imperiling the climate, what’s left of abortion rights, the franchise, and other freedoms that have come under growing …

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Trumpster Nation

by W.D. Ehrhart Recently, I had occasion to drive the length of the Pennsylvania Turnpike all the way to the Ohio border. Western Pennsylvania is beautiful and mountainous. It is also, for the most part, solid Trump Country. Indeed, aside from Philadelphia and its suburban counties, and less dependably Pittsburgh, the entire state is as red as a male cardinal. I did not see a single billboard supporting Democrat John Fetterman’s bid to win a U.S. Senate seat. And the only billboard mentioning current Democratic state attorney general Josh Shapiro’s run for the governorship was sponsored by his Republican opponent and Trump-endorsed Doug Mastriano, that …

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