So, things with Ollie are progressing nicely. He’s a very good boy, he’s hilarious, and he’s made a good difference here in the house. Anyway. He was a little bit broken when he came; the wonderful family who gave him to me had rescued him from a kill shelter, where he was dropped for biting. They got him in 2020, everybody was pretty sure he was not older than a year, and he’d been abused and left with one or both rear legs that get sore. So, while Corgis are naturally snappy and usually are trained out of that, Ollie’s instincts are distrust and biting. The family who gave him to me were working with him, but he bit their toddler for reasons but still, so he had to move away. They think he’s around 5 now. I’ve been working with him more on trust and behavior. He has never demonstrated thinking of biting me, nor our son who lives here, and they play hard together! It really only takes a little time and a lot of consistency. And positive attention. Turns out, Ollie knows just how to behave himself, is a superlative watchdog (so now we’re working on barking after I’ve said something’s OK,) and is fun to play with. I wouldn’t want to be a stranger who just reached out to pet him, or to break in the house, but if I’m there, he’s not going to bite unless he sees that things are not right. I do worry he’ll never enjoy riding in a car; he gets really agitated and frightened in the car; it takes him some time to get past it once we’re home.
So yesterday (I’m scheduling this for early AM posting,) we went for our morning jaunt. He’s just hilarious on walks! Even though he’s been altered most of his life, he marks. Most of our doggies continued to mark after being spayed or neutered; even Corky, who was female. Anyway, I usually call walks “taking Ollie to check and reply to his messages,” since of course that’s what it is for doggies; they sniff, then mark (or not) then along comes the next reader-sniffer. Today, we stopped at a buried fiber optic marker, and he sniffed and sniffed and sniffed. He was very thorough, like individual bits of blades of grass thorough. Suddenly, he lifted his head, and turned to look at a house behind us. Then he glanced up at me, then sniffed the same spot again, but not as long. He then turned bodily to look at that house (I have no idea if they have a dog there,) then turned and sniffed again, then zoooomm we were off to the end of the block, Ollie apparently airborne. I’m still dying to know what on earth he learned there! I know we should be careful what we wish for, but I wish he could talk.
Trump wins another golf tournament while the world burns Read on Substack
Donald Trump spent the weekend in his “billionaire bubble,” as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer likes to say (he’s not always ridiculous), avoiding the stock market crash he created with his stupid tariffs, a ceremony honoring four soldiers who died in a training accident in Lithuania (which Trump couldn’t find on a map), and hundreds of thousands of Americans in every state protesting his administration.
Sometimes you want to get away, but Trump didn’t take Southwest. He took Air Force One (sic) to South Florida to play golf…again. So far, taxpayers have spent $26 million for Trump to play golf since his inauguration (sic). He’s on track to surpass the $151.5 million we paid for him to play golf during his first term (sic).
Naturally, Trump played on a course he owns so he can collect the money the government spends for him to play golf there. He also made an appearance at a LIV tournament hosted at one of his resorts, which was paid for by Saudi Arabia. Remember when Republicans accused Biden of collecting money from foreign governments without any proof? How many howled this weekend about Trump doing business with the Saudis? Too many to count, right? That was sarcasm.
Trump also played in a tournament, which he said he won. The White House announced with “BREAKING,” that he won the Senior Club Championship at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter.
When asked by a reporter how the tournament went, Trump said, “Very good because I won. It’s good to win. You heard I won, right? Did you hear I won? Just to back it up from there, I won. I like to win.” He was then asked about his handicap, which was clearly displayed when he said “he won” 17 times.
Trump did answer, “Very low. I have a very low handicap.” OK, maybe he didn’t answer. This is like in the film Rain Man, when Raymond Babbitt says, “I’m an excellent driver,” which had only been done in his driveway, much like Trump being a good golfer only on his courses. This win is as suspicious as The Grinch winning the Who’s Christmas Cheer Award.
This golf win is amazing because it’s Trump’s third win this year. That’s three tournament wins within four months. Trump is on golf fire because he won two tournaments last year, and he didn’t even play the first round in one of those. He won two other tournaments two years ago. Of course, all these wins were on his golf courses. He’s not just winning tournaments as he was also voted the 2024 Trump International Golf Club Most Improved Player. He’s 78 years old, and he’s improving?
That would be like me winning the Clay Jones 2024 Most Awesome Cartoonist in the World award. I could probably say something like Trump did: “Such a great honor!”
What’s weird about all these tournament wins is that there are never any videos of them. Even the photo Laura Loomer posted on Twitter/X, to suck up to Trump, was taken from a long distance, meaning an amateur took it because they wouldn’t allow a real photojournalist near the “tournament.”
Even those palm trees had to sign an NDA. Why didn’t they just take the photo from the International Space Station?
Rick Reilly, the author of Commander In Cheat, tweeted in all caps after a Trump tournament win last month, “REALLY? THAT’S AMAZING, SIR! CONGRATS TO YOU, THE CADDIES WHO KICK YOUR BALL OUT OF THE ROUGH, THE STOOLIES WHO LET YOU WIN OR GET THROWN OUT OF THE CLUB, THE SPINELESS PRO AT YOUR CLUB WHO DOESN’T WANT TO GET FIRED, AND THE 100S OF FEET OF GIMMIES YOU GIVE YOURSELF! BRAVO!
After that “win,” Reilly said, “He’s never won a championship at a course he doesn’t own and operate. He’s played in Pebble Beach. He’s played in the Tahoe one, where there are rules and judges and cameras. And in those, he’s never finished in the top half. So, he wins when anybody who disagrees that he won is out of the club. That’s how he gets it.”
Reilly also said that Trump has a “turbo-charged golf cart” so he can get ahead of the competition and put some distance between him and his opponents, giving him “time to cheat.”
Think about it. Other golfers who share Trump’s politics see the president of the United States (sic) kicking the ball on a course he owns and then winning the tournament aren’t going to call him out. Trump once stole a child’s golf ball, and when the kid tried to speak up, his father silenced him. For Republicans, it’s OK if Trump steals little boys’ balls.
After Trump’s win in January, Shark Tank host and Trump sycophant Kevin O’Leary tweeted the announcement saying Trump won with a “sizzling” round of 68, later saying, “It was a great day.” Except when Trump’s name was posted at the top of the leaderboard, all the players and attendees were taken by surprise because nobody had seen Trump that day. How “sizzling” is it to win a tournament you didn’t play in? How fast is that golf cart?
The point of all this is just how petty Trump is and that it’s supported and enabled by his cult and staff. The White House and Laura Loomer are sending him congratulations like these things are real. Is there someone assigned to applaud every morning when he successfully puts his pants on all by himself? I’m surprised the White House doesn’t announce, “BREAKING!” every time he wipes his own ass (does he?). His golf “wins” are about as transparent as DOGE. There’s as much evidence of Trump’s tournament “wins” as there’s evidence of 200-year-olds collecting Social Security.
The other point is how obtuse and out of touch he is with the country. While the economy is tanking and people are protesting in every city and soldiers are being buried, he’s kissing Saudi ass and pretending to play golf.
Trump’s golf resorts need fewer bed bugs and more alligators.
Creative note: I’ve seen way too many cartoons with the graph arrow-thingy being Trump’s tie. Just be glad I didn’t do a mind-if-I-play-through cartoon.
Music note: I didn’t listen to any music today, but did I mention I lost my Airpods in Washington? I’m still bummed about it.
(Sorry, Scottie, the entire thing is poetic, but there are cats! And dogs. The reading is easy, no worries, and plenty of photos. Just enjoy! -A)
You’ve read of several kinds of Cat, And my opinion now is that You should need no interpreter You To understand their character. You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me by Worriedman, Read on Substack
THE AD-DRESSING OF CATS – TS Eliot
And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind. For some are sane and some are mad And some are good and some are bad And some are better, some are worse — But all may be described in verse. You’ve seen them both at work and games, And learnt about their proper names, Their habits and their habitat: But
How would you ad-dress a Cat?
So first, your memory I’ll jog, And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.
Now Dogs pretend they like to fight; They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole, What you would call a simple soul.
Of course I’m not including Pekes, And such fantastic canine freaks. The usual Dog about the Town Is much inclined to play the clown, And far from showing too much pride Is frequently undignified. He’s very easily taken in — Just chuck him underneath the chin Or slap his back or shake his paw, And he will gambol and guffaw. He’s such an easy-going lout, He’ll answer any hail or shout.
Again I must remind you that A Dog’s a Dog
— A CAT’S A CAT.
With Cats, some say, one rule is true: Don’t speak till you are spoken to. Myself, I do not hold with that – I say, you should ad-dress a Cat. But always keep in mind that he Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat, Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door, Whom I have often met before (He comes to see me in my flat) I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!
I’ve heard them call him James Buz-James —
But we’ve not got so far as names. Before a Cat will condescend To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem Is needed, like a dish of cream;
And you might now and then supply Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie, Some potted grouse, or salmon paste — He’s sure to have his personal taste. (I know a Cat, who makes a habit Of eating nothing else but rabbit, And when he’s finished, licks his paws So’s not to waste the onion sauce.) A Cat’s entitled to expect These evidences of respect. And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.
So this is this, and that is that: And there’s how you AD-DRESS A CAT
Trump is putting tariffs on places where there are no exports…or humans. Read on Substack
The two major things about tariffs that Donald Trump doesn’t know are that tariffs are taxes and trade wars don’t work.
Trump may finally be starting to understand it’s American consumers who pay for tariffs, as he said in February that we may feel a little “disturbance” from them, and the “ultimate fruits of tariffs will be worth the pain.” In Trumpese, that means there’s going to be a HUGE disturbance (like living next door to a frat house) and pain, similar to a barbed wire catheter.
The people who don’t feel pain from tariffs are rich people, especially billionaire assholes like Trump and Elon Musk. Dickless fucos don’t have to worry about barbed wire catheters.
Trump called yesterday “Liberation Day,” which doesn’t make sense at all when it leads to Americans paying higher prices. By the way, I was in a grocery store last night, and the cheapest dozen of eggs was $5.35, and they got as high as $7 plus.
In yesterday’s announcement, Trump said, “For years, hardworking American citizens who were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”
This is bullshit because the United States has the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We have the largest economy in the world (thanks, Joe Biden). Our GDP is $90,000. By comparison with another rich nation, Germany’s is $58,000. This is also how Trump acts at tax time, crying that his buildings aren’t worth the amount he claims on loan applications.
Tariffs don’t reduce our taxes. It’s an additional tax. For the dunderheads who may be reading this, let’s say you increase tariffs on products coming from Heard Island, where only penguins live. Since penguins don’t actually export anything, we’ll have to make something up. Let’s say they export shiny rocks because I think I read somewhere that before a dude penguin can shag a nice lady penguin, he has to give her a shiny rock. So, these penguins are exporting shiny impressive rocks for wooing, and suddenly they have to pay a ten percent export tax to sell in the United States. The importer, NOT the exporting penguins, has to pay this tax. Do you think Walmart eats this ten percent? Of course not. You do, or whoever shops where they sell shiny penguin rocks from Heard Island (and McDonald Island.
Also, you can’t pay off the national debt with tariffs. The tariffs are designed to discourage Americans from purchasing foreign goods. If that works, then nobody’s going to pay those tariffs. The other idea is to force other nations to lower their tariffs, and if that works, then we lower ours again, and nobody’s paying for those high tariffs.
Ya see, kids, if the shiny rocks become too expensive for American consumers, then they stop buying them, and then the penguins will stop exporting them. That’s called supply and demand.
By the way, the shiny-rock trick works with humans, too. The rocks are just more expensive.
I’m not an expert on tariffs (nor shiny rocks), but it seems I understand it a lot better than the President (sic) of the United States. Feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong on any of this.
Trump also said during his announcement, “The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 percent tariff on motorcycles. Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60 percent. India charges 70 percent, Vietnam charges 75 percent, and others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs.”
All that’s complicated as tariffs from a specific nation aren’t usually a flat rate, but are different per product. First, Trump’s numbers are wrong. Secondly, while we have low tariffs for imported cars, we charge a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks, which is higher than what Europe charges for imported cars.
Trump ignores that Europe is our largest trading partner, and if they retaliate with “reciprocal” tariffs, then that hurts American manufacturers, and then DOGE won’t be the only one firing American workers.
Trump said, “Toyota sells 1 million foreign-made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little. None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.”
More lies. Our cars can go into other countries. China loves large American cars while Japan, which is a smaller nation geographically, does not. It’s not that our cars can’t be sold in Japan, but it’s that Japanese drivers don’t want them. Until two years ago, General Motors sold more cars in China than they did in the United States.
Trump said, “And with countries like Canada, you know, we subsidize a lot of countries and keep them going and keep them in business. In the case of Mexico, it’s $300 billion a year. In the case of Canada, it’s close to $200 billion a year.”
Lies. Our trade deficit with Mexico is NOT $300 billion but instead, it’s $172 billion. With Canada, it’s NOT $200 billion, but instead, $45 billion. These numbers are extremely easy to look up.
Trump said, “Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first, the first can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price. But after that it gets bad, and then it gets up to 275, 300 percent.”
The truth is, this was the case, but it was renegotiated in the North American Free Trade Agreement during Trump’s first term (sic).
Trump also gave a history lesson. “Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then, in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy; it would have been a much different story.”
Trump sucks at history because the reasons are known. Lower-income people pay tariffs, so an income tax was added with the expectation wealthier Americans would take more of the burden, but as we have learned since 1913, Billionaire assholes aren’t all that ethical. I heard about one billionaire who doesn’t pay his contractors, lawyers, or taxes.
Trump says the Great Depression wouldn’t have hit if America “had stayed with the tariff policy,” yet it’s the tariff policy, the Smoot-Hawley Act, that raised tariffs, started a trade war that decreased world trade by 66 percent, and contributed to the Great Depression and World War II. Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law. The Northwest Progressive Institute ranks Hoover as our 39th best president. It ranks Trump dead last, and he hasn’t even started his depression and World War III yet.
Bragging about tariffs from his first term (sic), Trump said, “If you look at China, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term.”
Lies. He took in $75 billion from China, paid by American consumers, and had to bail out American farmers at the cost of $28 billion to American taxpayers after China retaliated. What you wanna bet those farmers voted for Trump? Yee-haw, fuckers.
Now, what do penguins have to do with any of this?
Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several “external territories” of Australia that Trump has hit with ten percent tariffs. The World Bank’s data says the United States imported $1.4 million of products from Heard Island and McDonald Island in 2022, nearly all of which were “machinery and electrical” imports.
What makes those numbers suspect is that it’s believed no human has set foot on either island in the past decade. With the islands closer to Antartica than to Perth, it takes a two-week boat ride to get to the islands (they don’t have airports). The life you find on these islands are seals and birds, and the birds are mostly four species of penguins. Those penguins are king, gentoo, macaroni, and eastern rockhopper. I did not know there was a macaroni penguin. That’s the kind of shit that distracts me from finishing a blog because I have to Google “macaroni penguins.” Holy crap, they have huge yellow eyebrows.
The tariffs on two of the most remote islands in the world where no products are exported from, or where humans don’t even visit, proves that the Trump administration hasn’t fully studied tariffs. If they’re placing tariffs on penguins, then how much have they studied the tariffs they’re placing on the French or British? How high are the tariffs on Thighland and Yo-Semite? Shit, don’t steal that for a cartoon, my political-cartooning colleagues!
Also, these tariffs are NOT reciprocal, as Trump claims. It’s not like those penguins were charging us a ten percent tariff to start this trade war.
Penguins are notorious for not paying their debts. If you loan a penguin ten bucks, you will never see that ten bucks again, and he’ll probably waste it all on anchovies. How are we supposed to collect tariff taxes from freeloading flightless birds? All those penguins in zoos are on welfare and don’t pay for food or housing. And I hear the seals aren’t much better. They do more arfing than tariff-paying. The Internal Australian Revenue Service has reported it has never received a payment from penguins, and not even in shiny rocks. Penguins are almost as bad at paying their bills as Donald Trump.
We’ll see penguins fly before we ever see a check.
Creative note: I would have done something on a McDonald’s tariff, Trump’s favorite food, if penguins weren’t a part of the story.
When I went to Peace buttons Monday night, their site was down, or something, so no P&J 4/1 morning. However, keep scrolling; it’ll be after 4/2! -A
April 2, 1917 Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, took her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The first woman ever elected to Congress, she became the only member to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars. Rankin lost her seat in the next election but was re-elected twenty years later when she opposed entry into World War II. She again served just one term. Though American women weren’t guaranteed the right to vote for three more years with passage of the 19th amendment, women in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Washington had full voting rights even before statehood. Rankin was instrumental in passing laws that made married women citizens in their own right. Jeannette Rankin biography
April 2, 1966 One hundred thousand Vietnamese demonstrated in DaNang against both the U.S. and their South Vietnamese governments. Civil unrest spread also to Hue and the capital, Saigon.
April 2, 1970 Massachusetts, in the midst of the Vietnam war, enacted a law which exempted its citizens from having to fight in an undeclared war. The U.S. Congress had never formally declared war on North Vietnam as required by Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
April 1, 1841 Brook Farm, perhaps history’s most well-known utopian community, was founded by George and Sophia Ripley near West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Its primary appeal was to young Bostonians who were uncomfortable with the materialism of American life, and the community was a refuge for dozens of transcendentalists, including authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Following four days of demonstrations against the Military Services Act that devolved into rioting in Quebec City, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden sent in troops from Ontario to stop the violence. Orders from the soldiers were read only in English to the mostly Francophone demonstrators, and when the they didn’t disperse, the troops fired, killing four and wounding 70. [see March 28, 1918] A memorial in Quebec to those who died protesting conscription into World War I More about Brook Farm
April 1, 1932 500 schoolchildren, in the depth of the Depression, paraded through Chicago’s downtown section to the Board of Education offices, demanding that the school system provide them with food.
April 1, 1955 The African National Congress had called on parents to withdraw their children by this day from South African schools in resistance to the Bantu Education Act. That 1953 law transferred education of the Bantu (blacks) from religious missions to state-controlled schools. Mission education, argued then-Minister of Bantu Education Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, not only tended to create “false expectations” amongst the natives, but was also in direct conflict with South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid policies. Whites, who were in complete control of government and society, comprised only 14% of South Africa’s population. Verwoerd presented to Parliament: “When I have control of native education, I will reform it so that natives will be taught from childhood to realize that equality with Europeans is not for them. There is no place for him (the black child) in European society above the level of certain forms of labour…What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?”
April 1, 1983 Tens of thousands in the United Kingdom formed a “peace chain” 22.5 kilometers (14 miles) long to express their opposition to nuclear weapons. The chain started at the American airbase at Greenham Common, passed the Aldermaston nuclear research center, and ended at the ordnance factory in Burghfield. At the same time 15,000 people took part in the first of a series of anti-nuclear marches in West Germany. They were protesting the siting of American cruise missiles on West German territory. Contemporaneous coverage of the Peace Chain
April 1, 1985 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered an end to the dumping of sludge off the New Jersey coast into the Atlantic Ocean. 21st century sludge
Booker began the all-night speech by making his intentions clear:
“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy. These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”
While we were writing this piece, Booker was every bit as impassioned as he condemned the Republican budget plan that would slash Medicaid and the social safety net so billionaires and corporations could have (more) huge tax cuts, adding trillions to the US debt, asking, “If you’re a Christian conservative, how can you hurt the weak to benefit the rich and powerful? The people of the United States have to stand up and say ‘NO!’”
This man does not look like he’s been speaking for more than 14 hours. Here’s the AP’s live feed. Watching this, we’re even feeling some hope — especially if other senators follow up with marathon speeches of their own.
(And it’s still running! -A)
Also too, we’re going to go ahead and call this a filibuster anyway, if only because the Washington Postwent out of its way to explain in its subhead (archive link) that it’s not actually a filibuster because Booker isn’t delaying a vote on legislation. Just seems like the sort of nitpick best saved for the body of the article, which is where all the other outlets have placed it. So why did we mention it in our subhed? Because fuck WaPo is why.
Booker received help throughout the night — and still, this morning — from other senators, because he is allowed to take questions, which tend to come in the form of brief speeches ending with a question mark. But it’s not just a tactic to help him preserve his voice; it’s also a chance for fellow Democrats to show their unity, with multiple voices pointing out how completely not normal the last two months have been. Booker and other senators called out Trump and co-president Elon Musk for multiple assaults on democracy, like their attempts to shut down federal agencies created by Congress, to cancel spending authorized by Congress, to withhold grants to nonprofits that were already awarded, to fire large segments of the federal workforce without regard to worker protections, and to effectively dissolve America’s alliances by siding with Russia against Ukraine and our European allies. And much more.
We should also note that, unlike the longest talking filibuster on record, old racist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond’s 25-hour filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights bill, Mr. Booker doesn’t have the opportunity to take restroom breaks. Now that’s impressive.
“Senator McCain, I know you wouldn’t sanction this, I know you would be screaming, I’ve seen how angry you can get, John McCain. I’ve seen you tear people apart on this floor, Democrat and Republican, for doing the same stupid thing over and over again. Listen to John McCain explain why he voted ‘no’ the last time the Republican Party tried to unite and tear down health care with no idea how to fix it, threatening to put millions of Americans in financial crisis and health care crisis. I can’t believe we are here again.”
Booker returned again and again to that theme: Why on earth are we allowing this madness to happen? How on earth are we in a situation where a US president is threatening to invade our allies and help our adversaries?
As we wrap up here, Booker’s voice is beginning to get a little raspy, but his overall energy isn’t flagging so far. At the moment, he’s having a colloquy with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) about the importance of US foreign assistance, which Trump and musk have unconstitutionally slashed. Coons called attention to how those cuts have left us unable to provide help to the victims of the earthquake in Myanmar — and Booker immediately pointed out that by wrecking America’s soft power, Trump has handed all that influence to China.
We hope Booker keeps going a couple more hours. And that as many of his Democratic colleagues follow his example with filibusters of their own. (snip)
March 31, 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain before August of all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity under penalty of death.
March 31, 1776 Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John (later to be the second U.S. president): I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.
March 31, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, ordered a partial bombing halt in Vietnam, and appointed W. Averell Harriman to seek peace negotiations with North Vietnam.
March 31, 1970 The Oakland, California, Induction Center revealed that over the prior six months, half those drafted for the Vietnam War had failed to appear, and 11% of those who reported then refused induction into the U.S. Army. Later that Spring 2500 University of California-Berkeley students at once turned in their draft cards to the Oakland Center.
March 31, 1972 Protesters – singing, blowing horns and carrying banners – launched the latest leg of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 56-mile Easter march from London to Aldermaston, Berkshire, England. The banner used in the 1960s Aldermaston marches.
March 31, 1985 Throughout Australia, 300,000 demonstrated in peace and anti-nuclear rallies.
March 31, 1991 Before dawn on Easter, five Plowshares activists boarded the USS Gettysburg, an Aegis-equipped Cruiser docked at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. They proceeded to hammer and pour blood on covers of vertical launching systems for cruise missiles. “We witness against the American enslavement to war at the Bath Iron Works, geographically near the President’s home.” They also left an indictment charging President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with war crimes and violations of God’s law and international law, including the killing of thousands of Iraqis. Remembering Aegis Plowshares
March 31, 1997 Four East Timorese were arrested in Warton, England, at the British Aerospace factory where Hawk fighter jets were built for the Indonesian military, who used them in the ongoing occupation and genocide of their homeland.
March 31, 2004 Air America, intended as a liberal voice in network talk radio, made its debut on five stations.