Tag: Volume 267 | No. 23 - Page 3 - The New Hampshire Gazette

Mon, July 31

2001—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sends a memo to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith: “We ought to have on our radar screen oil—Venezuela, the Caucasus, Indonesia—anywhere we think it may exist and how it fits into our strategies.” 1999—Eugene Shoemaker becomes the first Earthling to have his cremated remains interred on the moon. 1996—Gerald Ford and George H.[H.] Walker Bush uphold the dignity of their former office by speaking for pay before followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. 1974—Richard Nixon’s former advisor John Ehrlichman gets a free five-year stay at a felons’ country club. 1972—Tom Eagleton withdraws his candidacy; the public is shocked. 1971—The …

Sun, July 30

1975—Jimmy Hoffa is last glimpsed by anyone who’s talking. 1974—Two of 17 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee vote to impeach Nixon for contempt of Congress. 1969—“History will record that this may have been one of America’s finest hours,” says Richard Nixon in Saigon. 1956—Congress adopts “In God We Trust” as the national motto. 1945—The U.S.S. Indianapolis, having delivered the Hiroshima A-bomb to Tinian, is torpedoed and sunk on its return trip. Its sinking goes unreported due to security precautions. Drowning, exposure, and sharks claim 879 of the 1,100 aboard. 1938—Two Nazi flunkies pin a swastika-festooned medal on Henry Ford at the behest of his admirer, …

College Admissions: Foul & Fair

by W.D. Ehrhart I find myself fascinated by the current debate over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College overturning a previous 2003 case and effectively gutting affirmative action in college admissions based on racial criteria. I recently retired from high school teaching, and I watched a lot of kids go through the college admissions ordeal. I had students who scored poorly on SATs and ACTs, but who were excellent students I was never reluctant to write college recommendations for because they were smart, savvy, hard-working, and well-grounded. And I had kids with superlative standardized …

In 1996, German film-maker Roland Emmerich released the movie “Independence Day.” To his delight, and the surprise of some, the American public turned out to have a huge appetite for seeing aliens blow up the White House. Despite the passage of time—including 12 years of Republican administration—the White House is still more or less intact. Eight years later Emmerich released “The Day After Tomorrow.” This disaster flick’s big gimmick was a new global ice age triggered by the collapse of the formerly obscure Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current [AMOC]. Overnight, temperatures drop past 100° below, and a storm surge drowns New York. Then things get truly …

A New Approach to Campaign Financing

A New Approach to Campaign Financing To the Editor: There are relatively few topics on which today’s voters agree, we’re divided on so many issues. But one area my friends from practically every part of the political spectrum are agreed upon is this: we need a new approach to campaign financing. Too many elections, especially those on the state and national level, are being influenced by campaign contributions from special interest groups, from large dollar donors and from out-of-area interests. There is a large consensus on the need to reform our current means of campaign finance. One recent development is a proposal to have campaign …

Joe Manchin’s Pipe Dream

by Jim Hightower Rube Goldberg would marvel at Sen. Joe Manchin’s wacky, convoluted machinations to rig the system so fossil fuel polluters can run roughshod over nature, local people, and democracy. Goldberg was a master of satirical cartoons, drawing hilarious schematics of convoluted contraptions to do silly tasks. His “Self-Operating Napkin,” for example, involved a spoon, cracker, toucan, skyrocket, sickle, and a pendulum attached to a napkin—all operating sequentially to automatically wipe the chin of a soup eater. So here comes Joe with his own sequential machinations to (Zip! Ping! Sproing!) push his pet corporate boondoggle into law. Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline would ram a …