August 8, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon resigned from office, the first U.S. president ever to do so. The House Judiciary Committee had, with bipartisan support (the Democrats and one-third of the Republican members), voted for three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.A week later, one of the White House tapes was finally made public, showing the President’s direct involvement in the Watergate scandal cover-up: “…call the FBI and say that we wish, for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period…” – Nixon to Chief of Staff Haldeman, June 23, 1972 (six days after the Watergate break-in) He officially left office August 9, and was fully pardoned one month later by his successor, President Gerald Ford. Asked years later about some of his administration’s questionable activities, Nixon said, “Well, when the president does that, it isn’t illegal.” The headlines in Washington that day
August 8, 1999 A 53-mile peace walk commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended near Clam Lake, Wisconsin, at the site of the U.S. Navy’s Project Elf (extremely low frequency) submarine communications transmitter. Twelve of the demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, adding to the nearly 500 previously arrested for sit-ins, Citizen Inspections, blockades and disarmament actions at the transmitter site in Ashland County.
Here’s to people staying off Democrats’s necks as they fight this in the same fashion. Gerrymandering hurts my heart; I live in a state gerrymandered to just barely inside the law. I don’t like it for any state no matter the majority, but. If one’s gonna do it, they all ought to.
Of course, if we had instant runoff voting and no parties, this wouldn’t be a thing. Everyone would have someone to vote For. And we’d be a democratic republic today. -A
What do Republicans cheat at more, golf or elections? It’s a tough call. But cheating at one of those things means that they’ll cheat at the other.
Republicans in Texas are trying to reshape their congressional districts, even though it’s not the time redistricting is normally done. Usually, that’s shortly after the results of the census are published (which is once a decade), and states redistrict according to the new population size, and to fit with possible changes, such as new districts or losing them.
During the last census, Texas picked up two congressional seats because its population grew during the 2010s. Since the Texas legislature is controlled by Republicans, they were able to draw up the district maps. Naturally, they redraw them to favor Republicans. It’s not like they would do it honestly. They’re Republicans.
This is called gerrymandering, and Texas is one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. Wisconsin is number one.
Texas now has 38 congressional districts, with 25 of them going to Republicans, 12 going to Democrats, and one is currently vacant. But even after winning a huge majority after gerrymandering, 25 congressional seats are not enough for Texas Republicans, so they want to redraw the lines again in their favor.
Texas will be blue someday, or at least a swing state. The best way to keep people from sending Democrats to Congress is to take away Democratic candidates. After gerrymandering, voters are not choosing the candidate. The candidates are choosing the voters. It’s horrible, rotten, unfair, and neither party should do it. But Republicans don’t care if they cheat.
After Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 in what experts say was the most secure election in American history, Republicans cried foul and set out to change election laws in every state. In Georgia, for example, where Biden won in 2020, and Blue areas are growing, Republicans changed voting laws, and Trump won over Kamala Harris in 2024 by just 2.20 percent. In Texas, they focused on changing the laws, not for every district, just the districts that had a majority of Black voters. They tried to make it as hard as hell to vote in Houston.
Republicans said all these changes were for election “integrity.” But how much integrity do you have when you make it illegal to give an old lady a bottle of water while she’s waiting in line for nine hours in the Georgia heat? It’s a fact that when fewer people vote, Republicans win.
The 2024 election, which Trump “won,” had fewer voters than in 2020, when Biden won. (snip-MORE)
The Treasury Department reported that Trump’s tariffs brought in over $28 billion in revenue last May. Naturally, this got MAGAts hyped up and excited as they think this is “winning.”
Hey, it doesn’t matter that Trump’s tax cuts for asshole billionaires will lead to even larger deficits, we’re getting all this revenue from foreign nations. They got more “winning” last week when the European Union agreed on a tariff on their goods of 15 percent. Holy Wowzers. That’s a lot of winning.
What MAGAts don’t realize is that the $28 billion wasn’t paid for by China, Mexico, Canada, or even Penguin Island. They don’t understand that the 15 percent on EU stuff won’t be paid for by the EU. American consumers pay for the tariffs. Even if you suck at economics, and it’s a hard subject, learning how tariffs work can be easy.
In easy terms, a tariff is a tax. While Donald Trump is cutting taxes, he’s also raising them.
Let’s say I live in Denmark and I sell wooden shoes. That’s Denmark, right? Or was it Holland? I just looked it up, and it’s Holland. The shoes are called “Klompens,” probably because you klomp around in them. Anywaysies, I’m in Europe and I sell stupid shoes. When I sell them to stores in the United States, Trump forces me to pay a 15 percent tariff. How do I make up that 15 percent, because I don’t want to eat it. I raise the price of my Klompens by 15 percent. The store doesn’t want to eat that 15 percent either, so guess what they do. They raise the price of the shoes they bought from me by at least 15 percent. That means American customers of those stupid, ugly wooden shoes pay the tariffs.
The way this can hurt me is that people may not want to purchase my stupid, ugly wooden shoes, and will tell me to get the klomp out of here. Fortunately, American consumers may not even notice the price increase. We still purchase iPhones even though every new version costs more than the last one, and the only changes are that they come in more colors and with “enhanced” AI, like we need more of that shit. Siri doesn’t let me talk to myself anymore. I’m sticking with my 12 until it dies of natural causes or I accidentally murder it deliberately. So far, it’s fine, knock on Klompens. (snip-MORE)
The Advance wrote with today’s cartoon: Reporting this past week by Adele Uphaus that a member of the Fredericksburg School Board took a first-class flight to a conference in Atlanta, had school division transportation personnel shuttle her to the airport in Richmond, and was traveling with School Board clerk Angie Roenke’s credit card which was shut down due to “possible purchase card usage issues” drew a great deal of attention. As did Uphaus’ reporting on July 8about travel to Hawaii by another Board member. Yes — Clay Jones noticed.
I have covered this subject not just once but twice before. This is the third version, and it’s based on some new reporting by Adele Uphaus.
I know that if I ever flew first class on my last employer’s dime, I would have some ‘splaining to do. After every convention, the editor who managed expenses would call me into her office and review everything on my expense report, which typically had very low expenses. The editor’s presumption with each review was that you were trying to steal from the company. It was about as enjoyable as a body cavity search, unless you’re into those kinds of things.
Anyway, I don’t get how a school board member is flying first class and getting away with it while teachers are buying their own school supplies. (snip-MORE)
August 4, 1964 The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick. One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992: ” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.” Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
August 4, 1964 FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote. The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations. Watch a video Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964: Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman. • 400 attended mass meeting in Marks. • Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result. Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten. • Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez • $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets. This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.) Read more
August 4, 1985 Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.
A transgender woman and several friends were harassed and assaulted in Austin, Texas last weekend, and one bystander who stepped in to defend them was hospitalized, in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime.
On July 26, the trans woman — who has requested anonymity during the ongoing investigation — and several friends visited Barton Springs, a public swimming hole in Austin’s Zilker Park, as Chron reported Wednesday. During their visit, three men they didn’t know flirted heavily with members of the group, the woman told Chron, but soon began harassing and pointing at her, making remarks about not “support[ing] that lifestyle.”
The three men then reportedly began shoving members of the group and poking the women “near their breasts,” according to a Reddit user who posted about the incident on Monday, claiming to be a friend of one of the victims. At that point, a bystander — identified as Jarod — intervened, and was attacked himself.
“The three men then proceeded to get violent and aggressive, yelling at us and getting in our faces until one of them decided to start swinging and punched Jarod in the jaw, knocking him unconscious,” the anonymous trans woman told Chron. “I quickly ran over to him in an attempt to help Jarod out but was then punched in the face by the assailant in the orange shorts.” The men then shoved another of the women to the ground and left the scene soon after, according to video footage of the incident posted to social media.
The Austin Police Department (APD) released a statement on Tuesday stating that the alleged assault was under investigation and could be declared a hate crime by the city’s Hate Crime Review Committee. “APD remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a secure and inclusive Austin community,” the department stated. (Community leaders called for APD to be investigated for excessive force in March this year, after videos circulated online that appeared to show officers throwing a trans woman onto the ground during an arrest.)
Austin-area drag performer Brigitte Bandit posted about the assault on Instagram Monday, asking locals for help identifying the attackers. In a follow-up post the next day, Bandit stated that the men had been identified and the information had been shared privately with the victims. “I will not be posting their information without consent of the people involved in the attack,” Bandit wrote, adding, “[l]et’s let them decide which routes they decide [are] best.” (snip-MORE. Also embedded tweet. Then, if you click through, you’ll see they’ve gotten the suspects ID’d.)
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