1971—Nixon’s Special Counsel Charles Colson circulates the first White House “Enemies List.”

1970—Staging fails on the Kittery side of the Piscataqua River Bridge project. Four men fall 75 feet to their deaths, seven others are injured.

1968—Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, tells a Long Island audience, “The enemy has lost whatever chance he had of taking South Vietnam by military force.”

1968—Cops and the Guard shut down “Resurrection City U.S.A.” in D.C. with dogs and smoke grenades.

1947—Private pilot Kenneth Arnold reports “flying saucers” over Washington state.

1924—The Democratic National Convention begins. It ends 17 days later, having voted down an anti-Klan plank.

1902—Deadline looming, Joseph Conrad upsets an oil lamp and accidentally burns the second installment of The End of the Tether.

1524—Countess Helena von Lupfen orders Stühlingen peasants to collect snail shells for her maids, triggering the German Peasants War.

June 24th 2020, 8:14 am

Sun, June 21

The New Hampshire Gazette

2006—Fox News, citing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), reports that WMD have been found in Iraq.

2005—Edgar Ray Killen, 80, is found guilty of manslaughter in the case of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney.

2004—SpaceShipOne reaches an altitude of 100 kilometers; Mike Melvill becomes the first civilian astronaut.

1994—As Jose Martin and his wife drive near Madrid, a 3-lb. meteorite crashes through their windshield, bends the steering wheel, and lands in the back seat. She is unscathed, he gets a broken finger.

1989—The U.S. Supreme Court rules flag-burning is legal.

1964—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are murdered in Mississippi by the KKK.

1942—A Japanese sub shells Fort Stevens, Ore., damaging a phone cable.

1935—The top cop busts a cap at a Eureka, Calif. sawmill; chaos ensues but a jammed machine gun keeps the death toll down to three strikers.

1919—Germans scuttle their captive fleet at Scapa Flow. Brits shoot nine Germans in lifeboats.

1877—Ten Molly Maguires, miners arrested by private detectives and prosecuted by private attorneys for the coal companies, are hanged by Pennsylvania officials, private executioners apparently being unavailable. Pardons for two arrive minutes too late.

1788—New Hampshire ratifies the U.S. Constitution. You’re welcome.

June 23rd 2020, 4:33 pm

Mon, June 22

The New Hampshire Gazette

2009—Republican Governor Mark Sanford’s spokesman says South Carolina’s Chief Executive is hiking the Appalachian Trail.

2005—The Republican-led House, undeterred by futility, passes a Flag Protection Amendment.®

2004—On the floor of the Senate, Veep Dick “Dick” Cheney tells Sen. Pat Leahy, “Go f__k yourself.”

2004—In Iraq, yet another cash-laden C-130 arrives. This one’s got the biggest load, though: $2,401,600,000.

2002—Enron execs admit they hid $1.5 billion in illegal profits gouged from California ratepayers.

1977—Nixon’s ex-AG John Mitchell begins a 19-month prison sentence.

1972—UPI’s Helen Thomas gets a call from Martha Mitchell: “I’m a captive…”; the phone goes dead. On the scene, Nixon’s lawyer orders that the AG’s wife be sedated by injection.

1970—The 24th Amendment gives 18-year-olds the vote.

1969—In Ohio, the Cuyahoga River burns for 20 minutes.

1964—The U.S. Supreme Court rules the Post Office can’t ban Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

1950—Retired FBI agents help a paranoid fabric importer publish Red Channels, a pamphlet claiming radio and TV are full of Commies.

1942—Congress adopts the Flag Code,® thus replacing the embarrassingly Nazi-like “Flag Salute” with FDR’s hand-on-heart gesture.

June 23rd 2020, 4:33 pm

Tues, June 23

The New Hampshire Gazette

2016—During W.Va.’s worst flooding in 100 years, a burning house is filmed floating down a creek.

2008—James Hansen warns Congress about global warming—again.

2005—Roller coaster safety expert Richard H. Brown, 64, dies of injuries received in a fall in his own driveway.

2001—“Dark Winter”—a war game simulation of a smallpox outbreak in the U.S.—shows lack of preparation for pandemic would result in chaos.

2001—CNN reports on threat of “imminent attack” by bin Laden.

1988—NASA’s James Hansen warns Congress of the seriousness of the threat of global warming.

1976—Edwin Walker, former Army General and Lee Harvey Oswald target, is arrested for fondling an undercover cop in a Dallas men’s room.

1972—Nixon’s own tape recorder catches him telling H.R. Haldeman to order the CIA to block an FBI investigation of his Watergate crime.

1955—Bill Loeb writes in the Union Leader that Ike has “done more to destroy the respect, honor and power of the U.S. than any President in its history.” He ain’t seen nothing yet.

1950—A Douglas DC-4 with 58 aboard vanishes over Lake Michigan.

1947—The U.S. Senate puts the screws to labor by overriding Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1937—George Orwell, wounded, flees Spain with his wife after Communists suppress anarchists.

June 23rd 2020, 4:33 pm

Sat. June 20

The New Hampshire Gazette

2005—Veep Dick “Dick” Cheney tells Larry King the insurgency in Iraq is “in the last throes.”

1970—The Soviet sub K-108, diving off Kamchatka, bashes into the sail of the U.S.S. Tautog giving it a permanent 2-degree bend.

1965—Navy Lts. Clinton B. Johnson and Charles Hartman, flying prop-driven Douglas A-1 Skyraiders, down a MiG jet fighter over Vietnam.

1963—The White House-Kremlin “Hot Line” is installed.

1962—For the second time in less than a fortnight, a Thor rocket malfunctions and drops an A-bomb into the South Pacific.

1953—Lt. Gen. John W. “Iron Mike” O’Daniel arrives in Saigon to confer with French General Henri Navarre on how to bring peace to Vietnam.

1947—Truman vetoes Taft-Hartley. Within three days Congress betrays labor by overriding his veto.

1943—KKK and pals attack striking African-American auto workers in Detroit; 34 die, 1,300 are arrested.

1942—Four prisoners in Nazi uniforms drive out Auschwitz’s main gate in the commandant’s car.

1941—The sub U.S.S. 0-9 sinks east of the Isles of Shoals with 33 aboard.

1940—NAACP official Elbert Williams becomes the organization’s first martyr, in Brownsville, Tenn.

1790—T. Jefferson, J. Madison, and A. Hamilton make a deal: a Capitol on the Potomac, with states’ debts.

June 23rd 2020, 4:33 pm

Echoes of 1942

The New Hampshire Gazette

Somewhere in my house is an envelope containing my grandfather’s World War II certificate for a Class C gas-rationing sticker. I last saw it a quarter of a century ago, before my father tucked it away again, probably in one of the trunks in the upstairs closets.

Gasoline was one of the first commodities rationed by the Office of Price Administration after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They called it “mileage” rationing, and gasoline was not the item they were saving. What we were lacking was rubber, since the Japanese had taken early control of the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia. Metal soon became scarce, too. Restricting the use of gasoline indirectly kept drivers from wearing out their tires, and their cars.

The New Hampshire Gazette

Dear Editor,

Everyone is pleased the May unemployment rate dropped to 13.3 percent from 14.7. But no one was more pleased than the President who crowed, “There’s a great thing that’s happening for our country.” Not to be outdone by his own rhetoric, he concluded his June 5th presser with, “Today is probably, if you think of it, the greatest comeback in American history.”

Nevermind that 30 million people are still unemployed, and Black and Asian American unemployment actually rose.

I don’t trust Trump’s celebratory numbers.

Remember when Florida’s Governor DeSantis announced on May 20th that a Department of Health data analyst was fired for insubordination? In fact, she refused orders to manipulate the database that keeps track of epidemiological data. She refused to make it say Florida was safe to reopen business when the underlying data didn’t support that conclusion. She had the professional ethics and moral strength to say “no,” although it cost her job. Do those who feed us good employment news from the White House have as much integrity?

The Labor Department has said, due to limitations in data gathering (many unemployed people are misclassified as being employed), the true unemployment rate could be three percent higher than currently estimated.

Bruce Joffe

Piedmont, Calif.

Bruce:

We share your essential mistrust of any message emanating from this administration. We had missed, though, the Labor Department’s candid caveat. Thank you.

The Editor

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

Let Them Eat Weapons: Trump’s Bizarre Arms Race

The New Hampshire Gazette

by Lawrence Wittner

In late May of this year, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for arms control bragged before a Washington think tank that the U.S. government was prepared to outspend Russia and China to win a new nuclear arms race. “The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here,” he remarked. “We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion.”

This comment was not out of line for a Trump administration official. Indeed, back in December 2016, shortly after his election, Trump himself proclaimed that the United States would “greatly strengthen and expand” the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program, adding provocatively: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” In a fresh challenge to Russia and China, delivered in October 2018, Trump again extolled his decision to win the nuclear arms race, explaining: “We have more money than anybody else, by far.”

And, in fact, the Trump administration has followed through on its promise to pour American tax dollars into the arms race through a vast expansion of the U.S. military budget. In 2019 alone (the last year for which worldwide spending figures are available), federal spending on the U.S. military soared to $732 billion. (Other military analysts, who included military-related spending, put the figure at $1.25 trillion.) As a result, the United States, with about 4 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 38 percent of world military spending. Although it’s certainly true that other nations engaged in military buildups as well, China accounted for only 14 percent of global military spending that year, while Russia accounted for only three percent. Indeed, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.

The vast military superiority enjoyed by the United States, however, was not nearly enough for the Trump administration. In February 2020, the administration introduced a 2021 fiscal year budget proposal that would devote 55 percent of the federal government’s $1.3 trillion discretionary spending to the military. By 2030, the military proportion of the federal budget would rise to 62 percent.

Today, about four months later, this top priority for military spending might strike many Americans as bizarre. After all, a disease pandemic continues to plague the nation (with more than 117,850 deaths thus far), a large portion of the economy has collapsed, unemployment has reached the catastrophic levels of the Great Depression, and American cities are torn by strife. Wouldn’t this be an appropriate time to focus America’s financial resources on public healthcare, educational opportunity, decent housing, and a major jobs program—or, in the words of the U.S. constitution, to “promote the general welfare”? But Republican officials argue that these and other public assistance measures are “too expensive.”

What are not “too expensive” are the administration’s big ticket weapons programs, which, even by military standards, are of dubious value. Not surprisingly, Trump continued pouring money into purchasing Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft, which, though an operational disaster, had cost U.S. taxpayers $1.4 trillion by 2017. Another pet project, quickly embraced by Trump, was the newest and costliest U.S. aircraft carrier, delivered with fanfare to the Navy in late May 2017 for $13 billion. Its only problem was that it had difficulty launching planes from its deck and facilitating their landing. Yet another very expensive military project is U.S. missile defense. Originally derided as “Star Wars” when Ronald Reagan began promoting it in the 1980s, it has become an obsession with Republicans, who have managed to secure more than $250 billion in U.S. government funding for it thus far. Nevertheless, it continues to fail most of its tests against intercontinental ballistic missiles, despite the fact that these tests are heavily scripted.

One of the most cutting-edged of the U.S. government’s current military weapons projects is the hypersonic missile. Capable of travelling five times faster than the speed of sound (3,800 mph), hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads are immensely appealing to the military establishments of Russia, China, and the United States. In this case, too, however, there is a serious problem: Given the missile’s incredible speed, it produces immense heat while traveling through the atmosphere, thus diverting or destroying it before it reaches its target. Even so, this weapons project should produce yet another bonanza for Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms manufacturer, which has already received $3.5 billion for preliminary work on it.

Of course, the Trump administration has not forgotten about an array of its high tech weapons that do work. America’s 5,800 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from land, sea, and air, provide staggering firepower—more than enough to destroy most life on earth. The current nuclear arsenal, however, is viewed as insufficient by the Trump administration, which is engaged in a vast “modernization” program to rebuild the entire nuclear weapons complex, including new production facilities, warheads, bombs, and delivery systems. The price tag for this enormous nuclear buildup, which will occur over the next three decades, has been estimated as at least $1.5 trillion.

Against a backdrop of economic and social collapse, plus potential global destruction, the obvious thing to do is to pull out of this immensely costly and bizarre arms race and, instead, foster arms control and disarmament agreements with other nations. But Trump seems determined to cast off whatever progress in this direction his predecessors have made, scrapping the INF Treaty, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, terminating the New START Treaty, and scuttling the Open Skies Treaty. For a variety of reasons—rewarding giant corporations, getting reelected, and dominating the world—Trump remains fixated on “winning” the arms race.

When it comes to increasingly desperate Americans, their lives and livelihoods spiraling downward, his message seems to be: Let them eat weapons!

–=≈=–

Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

Ewing Says Black Lives Matter—But…

The New Hampshire Gazette

To the Editor:

Of course black lives matter; all lives matter. So why are people condemned and fired for saying, “All Lives Matter”? Because “Black Lives Matter” is a term used to advance the far left “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) political movement. Americans sympathize with suffering or unjustly treated people and are unknowingly seduced into supporting the BLM political movement.

The BLM movement is the Democrat Party’s new enforcement arm. Like the KKK, Jim Crow Laws, and officials like Bull Connors, the BLM movement uses intimidation and violence to coerce support for, and to suppress opposition to, Democrat politicians and policies.

But neither the actions nor the policies of the BLM movement indicate an interest in improving the lives of most Black Americans.

The riots encouraged by BLM and allowed by Democrat Mayors since the horrible, unacceptable killing of George Floyd have killed many blacks and injured thousands. Thousands more blacks have had their property stolen or destroyed, and/or lost their jobs or businesses. “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t care.

Annually black murderers kill about 90 percent of the thousands of black murder victims; “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t care.

“Black Lives Matter” policies make black lives more difficult and dangerous.

BLM supports illegal immigration which stifles black economic success and makes poor neighborhoods more dangerous.

BLM exacerbates the problems of poverty and fatherless children by advocating further erosion, started by Democrat Welfare Laws, of the traditional family.

BLM advocates the release of convicted felons who often return to victimize poor neighborhoods.

BLM demands defunding police departments, and many Democrat politicians are joining this demand. Defunding the police will make poor and middle income neighborhoods even more dangerous, reduce local investment, and destroy job opportunities.

The “institutional racism” (poor schools, lack of economic opportunities, institutional injustice, and dangerous neighborhoods) that harms most blacks occurs almost exclusively in Democrat controlled cities. For decades Democrat politicians have figuratively had their knees on the throats of inner city blacks, ruining millions of lives.

Yet “Black Lives Matter” supports the Democrat politicians, including Mayors, City Councilors, Governors, Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents who have done nothing to improve the lives of inner city blacks. Donations to BlackLivesMatter.com go to the DNC, Democrat committees, Democrat politicians, and other Democrat causes.

BLM opposes Republicans who fight for things that Black Americans need: strong economic growth providing good jobs, safe neighborhoods, equal justice, and school choice so children can escape bad and/or dangerous schools.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement only cares about the black problems and black deaths that can be used to increase its political power; it isn’t interested in fixing the problems that harm black people.

Don Ewing

Meredith, N.H.

Don:

More mental gymnastics? Has somebody been getting into the Geritol again?

When black people join in self-defense under the banner “Black Lives Matter,” they do so out of dire necessity. In your view, though, that puts them in the same moral category as the Klan, Jim Crow, and Bull Connors. Interesting take.

To summarize, you’re saying that because Black Lives Matter opposes Orange Hitler, it’s bad for black people. Uh huh…. We’re starting to think that perhaps you have a garage full of monkeys and typewriters. One last thing, though, before we abandon all hope.

“Donations to BlackLivesMatter.com go to the DNC…” That’s not true, as you could easily have learned if you gave a damn. It’s another lie from an inexhaustible fount of lies, Candace Owens, who works for Turning Point, USA, a GOP feed-lot that does its best to make sure Republican-susceptible kids come out of college dumber than they went in.

The Editor

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

Vocabulary Lesson

The New Hampshire Gazette

Idiocracy, n;
(1) the political system of the United States;
(2) the system of governance in practice in the United States;
(3) the culture resulting from such a political system of governance.

Related:
Idiocrat, practitioner of said system;
Idiocratic, adj;
Idiocratically, adv.

Example:“Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Brett Kavanaugh are living proof that the United States of America is an idiocracy.”

— W.D. Ehrhart

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

Insurgency Now

The New Hampshire Gazette

Twelve score and four years ago, smugglers, land grabbers, farmers, and shoe makers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in a curiously narrow vision of Liberty, and dedicated—nominally—to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great difference of opinion, testing whether that nation can endure much longer while ten Army posts continue to honor the names of men who fought against it in a great Civil War.

It would be altogether fitting and proper for us the living to re-dedicate those places. We could give them new names, in honor of others—men, or women, who struggled to complete, rather than halt, the as-yet unfinished work of creating a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The question is whether such changes can be made without that difference of opinion boiling over into a Civil War re-enactment with life ammunition—an outcome certainly better avoided. One American in forty ended up dead during the first go-round. If a remake produced a similar result, the loss would be equivalent to the combined populations of New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, South Dakota, and Guam.

When we first wrote about this issue, on August 2nd, it seemed inconceivable that the Pentagon would ever rename even a relatively minor post such as Fort A.P. Hill—though there were plenty of reasons why it should.

It goes without saying that Hill was both a traitor and a loser; that’s true of the whole lot now under discussion. Certain additional factors make Hill a poor role model. One of the most notorious carousers in his West Point class, he had to repeat a year to make up for the time it took him to recover from an epic case of gonorrhea. Though he was effective early on in his Confederate career, he was frequently placed under arrest by his superiors. At several crucial times, however, he was unable to perform his duties due to the lingering effects of his youthful indiscretion.

The logistics involved in expunging Hill’s name alone—post signage, stationery, organizational charts, &c., &c.—would be considerable. But what of, say, Fort Benning? More than twice the size of Fort Hill, Benning houses more people than Manchester.

As things now stand, though, the nation is in the uncomfortable—one might say, untenable—position of honoring the man who justified Georgia’s secession thusly:

“What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. …[If abolition comes] we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that?…our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth; and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. …Suppose they elevated Fred Douglass, your escaped slave, to the presidency? What would be your position in such an event? I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that.”

As recently as February, an Army spokesperson had told the website Task & Purpose that it had “no plans to rename any street or installation, including those named for Confederate generals.”

On June 8th, though, Politico reported that the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Army were now “open to a bi-partisan discussion on the topic.”

This surprising announcement came after a week of stories about U.S. military forces taking controversial actions in the nation’s Capitol.

Perhaps most jarring was a pair of District of Columbia National Guard helicopters hovering over protestors at an extremely low altitude, battering them with rotor wash, tree limbs, and loose street debris. One was a Lakota medevac chopper, marked with large red crosses.

“Misuse of the red cross symbol is prohibited even during peacetime by the First Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is a party,” Rachel E. VanLandingham, a former Air Force attorney and professor at the Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, told the Washington Post.

National Guard units are typically under the control of state governors. Since the District of Columbia has no governor, its Guard reports directly to the President. We have not seen any reporting to indicate that the orders for this violation of came directly from the Oval Office—yet.

Members of Congress and retired officers expressed alarm at the scene. Trump, safe within a newly-erected Green Zone around the White House, tweeted praise for the pilots.

Trump had thoughts about renaming Army posts, too. The very idea of renaming “These Monumental and very Powerful Bases,” he tweeted in his inimitable style, which “have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom” was out of the question. His administration would “not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”

“Respect our Military!” Perfect. He’s not channeling his inner Eric Cartman, he is Eric Cartman: a petulant, two-dimensional cartoon character—with the authority to unilaterally launch nuclear weapons.

On the same day Trump tweeted a demand for respect for “his” military, Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee were dissing him. They allowed to pass by a voice vote an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act—put forward by Sen. Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, no less—that would strip Confederate names from military bases within the next three years.

Tomorrow, President Cartman will visit Tulsa, which is currently experiencing a spike in coronavirus infections. There he will try to assuage the emptiness within by basking in the admiration—and exhalations—of thousands of supporters.

Que sera, sera.

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

Flotsam & Jetsam

The New Hampshire Gazette

“Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?”

– Helen Keller

–=≈=–

“Sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.”

– Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973

–=≈=–

“What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

– Voltaire

–=≈=–

“Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.”

– Brian O’Nolan

–=≈=–

“Be held truthful that your lies may count.”

– Addison Mizzner

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

The New Hampshire Gazette Volume 264, No. 20, June 19, 2020

The New Hampshire Gazette

June 19, 2020 — To download this issue of our paper, just click on the image at right.

June 19th 2020, 5:24 pm

1857—A riot erupts between New York City’s two police departments. Corrupt Democratic Mayor Fernando Wood’s recently-abolished Municipal Police retains its hold on City Hall.

June 15th 2020, 8:12 am

Sun. June 14

The New Hampshire Gazette

2016—Lane Graves, 2, is killed by an alligator at Disney World. In response, Disney installs signs warning that alligators are present.

2001—Dennis Koslowski throws a $2.1 million party on Sardinia for his wife Karen’s 40th birthday. Half the cost is covered by Tyco International.

1954—Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1951—Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Booze) accuses President Eisenhower and General George Marshall of serving the policies of the Kremlin.

1949—The U.S. sends Albert II, a rhesus monkey, into space.

1943—The Supreme Court rules that children cannot be forced to salute the flag if it offends their religious beliefs.

1928—Ernesto “Che” Guevara is born in Argentina.

1924—The KKK attacks an IWW labor hall in San Pedro, Calif. Two kids scalded by coffee are left motherless when Lizzie Sunstedt later dies.

1922—In D.C., 5,000 African Americans march silently for an anti-lynching bill which has passed the House. Democrats filibuster it, though.

1905—Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin mutiny.

1864—Inept General Leonidas Polk, CSA, aka “The Fighting Bishop,” is KIA by a 3-inch Federal shell.

1662—Henry Vane, former Governor of Massachusetts [1636-37] is beheaded in the Tower of London.

June 14th 2020, 8:15 am

Sat. June 13

The New Hampshire Gazette

2005—Congress apologizes for having failed to pass 200 anti-lynching bills between 1882 and 1968.

2003—“His [Joe Wilson’s] wife is in the [CIA] and is a WMD analyst,” Dep. Sec. of State Richard Armitage tells Bob Woodward. “How about that s__t?”

1989—President George Herbert [Hoover] Walker Bush vetoes a raise in the minimum wage.

1985—Thomas L. Slade and son William are among passengers hijacked on a flight from Beirut, their second such experience in three days.

1983—Pioneer 10 exits the solar system.

1971—Pentagon Papers are published.

1968—A U.S. helicopter crew blasts a Vietnamese command post, killing Saigon’s Police Chief. It’s an accident.

1966—The Supreme Court rules that cops can’t make you talk.

1944—News reports say Rep. Francis E. Walter (D-Penn.) gave FDR a letter-opener made from the arm bone of a dead Japanese soldier. Walter becomes chair of HUAC in 1955.

1944—German V-1 “buzz-bomb” attacks on England start.

1942—The German sub U-202 lands eight Nazi saboteurs at Amagansett on Long Island.

1934—Hollywood producers conspire to enact a code to protect their profits from prudes.

1920—Fuddy-duddies at the U.S. Post Office rule that children may no longer be shipped by Parcel Post.

June 13th 2020, 8:08 am

Fri. June 12

The New Hampshire Gazette

2003—George W.[MD] Bush finds a way to fall off a Segway.

2003—Condoleeza Rice admits Pres. George W.[MD] Bush’s State of the Union claim that Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger was “wrong.”

1991—Washington, D.C. hosts a “National Victory Celebration,” complete with Abrams tanks and 8,800 active duty troops. In 85° heat, the tanks wreck Constitution Ave.

1967—Israeli planes and boats attack the unarmed U.S. spy ship Liberty with rockets, machine guns, and napalm; 34 sailors are killed, 171 wounded.

1966—Over Barstow, five USAF jets fly in formation for a photo at the request of GE marketers. Two crash, including the Valkyrie, worth $5 billion in today’s money. Two pilots die.

1956—Tech. Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr. becomes the first U.S. serviceman to die in Vietnam. He’s murdered by a fellow American airman.

1952—“I would never send troops [to Vietnam],” says Pres. Eisenhower.

1944—FDR signs the GI Bill. The president of the U. of Chicago warns that “colleges would become educational hobo jungles.”

1943—The Zoot Suit Riots end after military brass put L.A. off-limits and civil authorities impose a dress code.

1917—A 1,200-foot electrical cable, insulated by oil-covered cloth and being lowered into Butte’s Granite Mountain mine for safety purposes, lands in a heap 2,400 feet down. As a miner inspects it his helmet lamp sets it alight; 168 miners die in the inferno.

June 8th 2020, 8:52 am

Sun. June 7

The New Hampshire Gazette

2018—Attacked by a bobcat in her Georgia driveway, DeDe Phillips, 46, strangles the rabid animal.

1997—Activists are arrested for passing out the Bill of Rights outside the pro-nuclear Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos.

1971—The Armed Forces Journal publishes an article saying “our army…in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse.”

1971—Busted for “disturbing the peace,” [i.e., wearing a jacket with “Fuck The Draft” on the back in a California courthouse], Paul Cohen is sprung by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1969—Marine PFC Dan Bullock is killed in ’Nam. He is 15.

1966—Walking for voting rights and freedom, James Meredith, 32, gets three blasts from a shotgun in Hernando, Miss. He’s 86 now.

1960—A BOMARC missile at a site in N.J. catches fire, melting the 10-kiloton nuclear warhead on board; eleven ounces of plutonium go missing.

1943—In L.A., 5,000 soldiers, sailors, and civilians strip and beat zoot-suited Hispanics.

1924—George Mallory disappears near the summit of Mt. Everest.

1920—KKK Imperial Wizard William J. Simmons hires two PR experts: membership explodes.

1917—Messines, Belgium and 10,000 Germans vanish as British engineers detonate 19 huge mines. The explosion is heard in Dublin.

June 7th 2020, 8:07 am

Sat. June 6

The New Hampshire Gazette

2013—News reports show that yesterday’s stories about NSA spying are just the tip of the iceberg.

2002—Donald Rumsfeld tells the unknowing that unknown unknowns are “things we do not know we don’t know.” He should know.

2001—Florida man Vance Flosenzier drags a seven-foot shark from shallow water; paramedics drag his nephew Jesse Arbogast’s arm from its mouth; doctors successfully re-attach the arm.

1989—Nuclear weapon manufacturing ends at Rocky Flats, Colo. when FBI and EPA agents raid the joint.

1989—Greenpeace reports there are 50 nuclear weapons and nine reactors on the ocean floor.

1988—At a food irradiation plant in Georgia, “unbreakable” cesium capsules break, nuking ten workers.

1980—Nuke-armed B-52s go on alert for the second time in three days after a computer glitch signals a Soviet attack on the U.S.

1978—Voters nuke California’s tax base and future by passing Prop. 13.

1975—Governor Mel Thomson calls for the N.H. National Guard to be armed with nuclear weapons.

1949—Orwell publishes 1984. Originally a novel, it became non-fiction.

1944—GIs, Brits, Canadians, &c. hit the beach at Normandy, France.

1907—The U. of Bern denies Einstein a PhD: his theories about time and space are radical and his assumptions “more artistic than actual Physics.”

June 6th 2020, 11:55 am

A Statement on George Floyd, from the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Gazette

“Like most of us, we at the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire are outraged because of the murder of George Floyd. We are outraged because of his murder and because of other recent displays of the type of injustices African Americans bear daily. We are outraged and we are made weary. Part of our outrage is as you might expect: We are the Black Heritage Trail and Black Lives do Matter. But our outrage is not only because our focus is the history of Black Americans.

“What we learn from this history in our state helps me articulate another aspect of our outrage. In this state, before it was a state, before there was a country for any state to exist in, there was an African man, Prince Johonnett, who volunteered to fight with other future Americans in the Revolutionary War. He fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He is not the only African who fought for the idea and the ideals of our nation. For many Black Americans, the idea of America, all too often, is primarily aspirational. When we choose to be patriotic, an amazing choice, given most readings of history, we are making a conscious decision to believe in a hope, in a promise. It is to choose to walk forward in faith, oftentimes against common sense, propelled forward by the ideal of America, as yet unborn. Our outrage is a patriotic outrage. For us to sit back and accept this would be to betray the bravery and sacrifice of Mr. Johonnett and others.

“Whatever else we, as citizens, as supporters of the Trail, as human beings do, The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire will continue to do the work of telling the stories of Africans in our state. We will continue to encourage conversations about these critical issues; we will support each other as we continue to move forward in this work, and in all of our work, especially when that work aspires to strengthen community and provide support to the people who make community possible.

“Thank you for your support of the Trail. May you and your circle of intimates be blessed with health and peace.”

Sincerely, Reverend Robert H. Thompson, President of the Board, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire

–=≈=–

Lynch Law Passage Blocked

Exactly six score years ago, journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, born into slavery, wrote of an “unwritten law” justifying what she called “our national crime:” lynching.

For forty years she worked to make that crime impossible to ignore. When she died in 1931, there was still no Federal law against it. Nor is there today.

Yesterday George Floyd was memorialized. Also yesterday, an anti-lynching bill was blocked in the U.S. Senate. Rand Paul [R-Ky.] insisted that his motives were pure and that he abhors racism. He objected, he said, because the bill defines lynching too broadly and thereby runs the risk of creating, not preventing, injustice.

–=≈=–

Celebrate D-Day by Being a Jerk

According to the most fatuous news release we’ve seen in years, “ReopenNH is calling on all Granite Staters to Storm the Beaches this weekend to peacefully liberate New Hampshire from the arbitrary and unlawful edicts of Gov. Chris Sununu and his team of bureaucrats. ReopenNH’s peaceful rally will take place at [Never mind.] on Saturday, June 6, from noon to 4 p.m.”

From whence, one would hope, caring family members would lead participants away for a quiet talk.

“We’re asking Granite Staters to help us celebrate D-Day and the freedoms that our ancestors were willing to fight and die for, which many have taken for granted,” said Andrew J. Manuse, chairman of ReopenNH, displaying an awe-inspiring ability to interpret history in the dumbest way imaginable.

“Our forefathers were willing to storm the beaches of Normandy under enemy fire to liberate our mother countries overseas and prevent the spread of tyranny to our land. Let us not lose the spirit that made America the envy of the world.”

No, let us lose our damn minds, instead—Woops! Too late!

“We must have the same passion for protecting the rights of individuals, businesses, religious organizations, and nonprofit groups and not let government or unruly mobs trample our liberty,” Manuse added. “Remember, our Constitution was written to protect the rights of minorities, so even if it seems like Granite Staters are facing an insurmountable force, we should rest assured that the Rule of Law and God Almighty are on our side.”

We wish misfortune on no one, but if Zeus—were ever to make himself manifest, tomorrow…[bites tongue.]

–=≈=–

Congress and Fleet streets, at 1:15 p.m. on Monday, May 25th. Every Memorial Day for a century and a half, a parade has passed through this intersection. Not this accursed year, though.

It Was All Going to Be So Splendid…

EVERETT, Wash., Sept. 4, 2018—The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted Boeing’s [NYSE: BA] KC-46 tanker program a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC), verifying that its refueling and mission avionics systems meet FAA requirements. The milestone marks completion of KC-46 FAA certification.

To receive its STC, Boeing’s team completed a series of lab, ground and flight tests, which commenced in 2015. As part of the required flight testing, the team validated the KC-46’s boom and drogue aerial refueling systems met FAA certification criteria. [Emphasis added.]

Our Boeing/Air Force test team did an outstanding job successfully leading us through all the requirements, and we appreciate the FAA’s collaboration as well,” said Mike Gibbons, Boeing KC-46A tanker vice president and program manager. “This milestone is important in that it is one of the last major hurdles in advance of first delivery to the U.S. Air Force. … [Emphasis added.]

Six aircraft have supported various segments of STC and MTC testing. Overall they have completed 3,500 flight hours and offloaded more than three million pounds of fuel during refueling flights with F-16, F/A-18, AV-8B, C-17, A-10, KC-10, KC-135 and KC-46 aircraft.

…Boeing is currently on contract for the first 34 of an expected 179 tankers for the U.S. Air Force.

– The Boeing Company

–=≈=–

Now nothing stands in the way of the KC-46 entering service. This is a rather remarkable achievement for a program that only began in 2011 and which even late last year was struggling to resolve problems with parts of its refueling system. The Air Force is now scheduled to receive its first production tanker this month with the remaining 17 aircraft required under the original contract to be delivered no later than April 2019.

– Dan Gouré, Real Clear Defense, September 12, 2018;

“The KC-46 Is on the Cusp of Transforming U.S. Air Mobility”

–=≈=–

The head of U.S. Transportation Command has warned that delays to the new KC-46 Pegasus tanker could require the military to rethink its plans for aerial refueling.

Gen. Stephen Lyons, speaking to the Atlantic Council last month, said issues with developing and fielding the KC-46 could further complicate refueling efforts if the Air Force sticks to its plan to retire legacy tankers, according to Defense News.

Officials had already planned on retiring some older KC-135 and KC-10 tankers as they field the new tanker. But leaders have also made it clear the KC-46 will not see action in combat until problems with the boom camera are resolved.

The boom issue is one of several that have plagued the new Boeing-built plane, which has been fielded to some active-component units and one Guard wing, the 157th Air Refueling Wing in New Hampshire. The 157th received its first two KC-46 tankers in August and is slated to receive additional planes this year.

– National Guard Association of the U.S., February 4, 2020

–=≈=–

The U.S. military’s top transportation commander is urging the Air Force to keep more of its legacy air-refuelers in service until more of the Boeing-built KC-46 Pegasus aircraft are delivered and operational.

Speaking at a congressional hearing last week, Gen. Stephen Lyons, the head of U.S. Transportation Command, said the service should rethink its plan to retire 13 KC-135s and 10 KC-10s during fiscal 2021, warning that failure to do so would create ‘a capacity bathtub with significant impacts to Combatant Command daily competition and wartime missions.’

…The KC-46, the newest tanker in the fleet, has been plagued with issues since delivery began in 2018, including problems with the remote vision system for the refueling boom. Officials believe a fix for the remote vision system will be ready in the coming weeks. [Emphasis added.]

Air Force leaders proposed cuts to the legacy fleet in order to fund other projects. But Lyons argued that keeping the 23 tankers in service would only cost about $110 million, according to Breaking Defense.

The Air Guard has 17 air refueling wings, most of them fly the aging KC-135. One, New Hampshire’s 157th Air Refueling Wing, flies the new KC-46.

– National Guard Association of the U.S., March 3, 2020

–=≈=–

Why The Air Force’s Latest Flight Plan For Its KC-46 Tankers Looks Likely To Finally Deliver Success

It is now nearly 20 years since the U.S. Air Force decided it needed to replace its aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers, and settled on a modified version of the Boeing 767 jetliner as the logical solution. At the time, most of the tankers in the fleet were already over 35 years old.

What followed was one of the most Byzantine, convoluted stories in the history of military acquisition. First the Air Force tried to lease 100 of the planes from Boeing. Then it was forced by Congress to conduct a competition which derailed and had to be rerun. Then it encountered major delays in fielding the plane it selected.

The good news is that in the end, it got what looks to be the most capable and efficient aerial refueler ever built. It began accepting that plane, the KC-46 Pegasus, at air bases in Kansas, Oklahoma and New Hampshire last year. As originally planned, Pegasus is based on the 767 airframe built by Boeing (a contributor to my think tank). [Emphasis added.]

– Loren Thompson,

Senior Contributor, Aerospace & Defense, Forbes.com, April 9, 2020

–=≈=–

WASHINGTON – New Hampshire’s U.S. senators are among three calling for the Government Accountability Office to investigate ongoing delays keeping the new KC-46 refueling tankers from being used in operational missions. …

In the letter, the Senators wrote, ‘The KC-46 aerial refueling tanker modernization program, currently assessed at a cost of about $43 billion, is one of the Air Force’s highest acquisition priorities… The Air Force started accepting aircraft in January 2019 with these critical deficiencies. While the Air Force has already accepted over 30 aircraft, U.S. Transportation Command has decided not to use the aircraft in operations until the critical deficiencies are fixed, which is not expected to occur until 2023.’” [Emphasis added.]

– Portsmouth Herald,

Friday, May 22, 2020

–=≈=–

RIP, Irene Triplett

Sadly, we report the death of Irene Tripplett, of Wilkesboro, N.C. Ninety years old, she was the last-known surviving child of a veteran of the Civil War.

In a war that famously saw brother fighting brother, Irene’s father took things a step farther. Moses Triplett fought on both sides. Originally a private in the Confederate Army, he deserted as his unit was on the march, about a week before the Battle of Gettysburg. It was the smart move: less than ten percent of his outfit survived. Swapping the gray for the blue, he spent the last year of the war with the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry.

Moses married his second wife in 1924, when he was 78. His wife Elida Hall was just 27. Irene came along in 1930. Her life story could have been written by William Faulkner or Erskine Caldwell.

“I didn’t care for neither one [of my parents], to tell you the truth about it,” she said, in a Washington Post article published Thursday. “I wanted to get away from both of them. I wanted to get me a house and crawl in it all by myself.”

She dropped out of sixth grade; the other children called her father “the traitor.” Cognitively-impaired, according to the Post, Irene and her mother lived for many years in a rat-infested county poorhouse. At least her last years were spent in a private nursing home, which seems to have been an improvement; its director told the Post, “I never saw her angry. Everything was funny.”

There’s one other bright spot in this rather depressing story: with Irene’s demise, a burden has been lifted from the taxpayer; a line item removed from the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs. As the helpless adult child of a veteran, she had been receiving a pension of $73.13 a month; 155 years after Appomattox, the Civil War is paid for.

–=≈=–

Pining for the Newsprint

This makes our sixth consecutive issue published solely in this nebulous and intangible space since March 13th—the last time we sullied fresh newsprint. Like many others fortunate enough not to work in a meat-packing plant or, god help us, an infectious disease ward, we’ve been spending most of our time rattling around the office.

That’s quite a change from the old routine. Over the decades we’ve grown quite fond of frequent, brief, impromptu sidewalk conferences with readers, advertisers, and miscellaneous ne’er-do-wells. There’s no telling to what extent these random interactions have helped to shape the paper. The volunteer distribution system which has served us so well these many years evolved from one such meeting outside Portsmouth Health Food. Thanks, Deb—we have not forgotten. As for the urban grazing, well…. In this town? [Sighs.] C’est la vie…at least the pants fit better now.

Lord knows we can’t complain about any lack of stimulation. It’s always been a challenge trying to keep up with events, but these goings-on? This is…just literally insane.

On the upside, it gives us something to think about other than how many papers we haven’t been able to put on the street. [At this point, 30,000.]

Ossifer Krupke, in full riot gear including a 9 mm Sig Sauer self-firing pistola acquired as surplus from the Policia Nacional de Colombia [returned as defective, actually, but let’s not split hairs] and a few jelly donuts squished between his body armor and his Under Armor,® was on patrol Tuesday, May 26th when he encountered the above-depicted flag displayed vertically with the union on the right instead of the left. Eternal vigilance being the price of upholding the fetishization of material objects which symbolize the values of a purported republic in the absence of any perceptible functionality. Since property is the only thing left protected by the Constitution, Krupke had no choice but to bust this parcel of real estate.

June 5th 2020, 6:17 pm

The New Hampshire Gazette Volume 264, No. 19, June 5, 2020

The New Hampshire Gazette

June 5, 2020 — To download this issue of our paper, just click on the image at right.