We Need The Mystery, Inc. Gang! (Scooby Doo!)

Succinctly and well written.

Pretty Weird by Charlotte Clymer

Pretty damn weird. Read on Substack

[takes very deep breath]

Pretty weird that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years for her involvement in a sex trafficking operation that was all in service to one man and no other clients and that man is now dead and the Department of Justice and FBI falsely claimed they released “raw” surveillance video of the area near his jail cell the night before he was found dead, which was later discovered by Wired to have been spliced and edited and inexplicably missing three minutes of footage and that man was a close friend of Trump for 15 years and Trump is actively trying to block Maxwell’s SCOTUS appeal on her conviction under a non-prosecution agreement that was previously reached with a U.S. Attorney who later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor and Trump now claims the whole thing is somehow a Democratic hoax perpetrated by Obama and Comey even though both of Epstein’s arrests by federal authorities happened under Republican presidents—the second one under Trump himself—and yet, the entire Republican Party—including Trump—and the rightwing media apparatus supporting them were somehow tricked by Democrats into specifically campaigning LAST YEAR for transparency on the Epstein scandal and pledging to release the files on the operation and his attorney general said the client list is on her desk and under review just a few months ago but now claims the client list never existed, which prompted the most intense infighting in the MAGA movement we’ve ever seen last week and it’s really anyone’s guess at this point why this is so but for some reason, Trump has no interest in releasing the files to clear his own name and the Republican Party have collectively decided to forget they’ve spent the past six years raising a ruckus over this very thing and House Republicans—again, many of whom have campaigned for transparency on this—just unanimously voted against releasing the files, without any real justification, except for the nine House Republicans who curiously declined to vote on it and refuse to offer a credible explanation for that decision while House Democrats unanimously voted for releasing the files despite being the party that’s behind said hoax.

Pretty weird.

Busy Day In Peace & Justice History, from Crusaders Sacking Jerusalem To Strikers To Nukes, & More:

July 16, 1099
 
The Sacking of Jerusalem
Soldiers from all over Catholic Europe, known as Crusaders, overtook the defenses of Jerusalem and slaughtered both the Jewish and Muslim populations. According to Fulk of Chartres in his contemporaneous account, “Many fled to the roof of the Temple of Solomon, and were shot with arrows, so that they fell to the ground dead. In this temple almost ten thousand were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet colored to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared.”
Pope Urban II initiated this effort to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the “Infidel” (the city had been under Islamic rule for 460 years) and assured those who joined the first crusade that God would absolve them from any sin associated with the venture.
———————————————————————————————————-
July 16, 1877

Firemen and brakemen for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads refused to work, and refused to let replacements take their jobs. They managed to halt all railroad traffic at the Camden Junction just outside of Baltimore. The railroad companies had cut wages and shortened the workweek.

A contemporary artist’s rendering of the clash in Baltimore between workers
and the Maryland Sixth Regiment during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The governor had called out the troops on behalf of the railroad company.
After a second pay cut in June, Pennsylvania RR announced that the same number of workers would be expected to service twice as many trains. The work stoppage spread west and eventually became the first nationwide strike
Background and growth of the Strike 
——————————————————————————————————–
July 16, 1945

The U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project succeeded as its first hand-made experimental atomic bomb, known as the “Gadget,” was successfully detonated at the top of a 30m (100 ft.) tower in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico (at the Trinity test site now part of the White Sands Missile Range). The original $6,000 budget for the intensive and secret weapons development program during World War II eventually ballooned to a total cost of nearly $2 billion (more than $25 billion in current dollars).


“Gadget” explodes

The “Gadget” just before the Trinity test July 16, 1945.
Assembled in the McDonald Ranch house nearby, the orange-sized plutonium core, weighing 6.1 kg (13.5 lbs.), yielded an explosive force of more than 20 kilotons (equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT).
Trinity Atomic Bomb  (A good read -A.)
What it’s like there today: “My Radioactive Vacation” 
———————————————————————————————————-
July 16, 1979

The largest release of radioactive material in the U.S. occurred in the Navajo Nation. More than 1200 metric tons (1,100 tons) of uranium tailings (mining waste) and 378 million liters (100 million gallons) of radioactive water burst through a packed-mud dam near Church Rock, New Mexico. The river contaminated by the spill, the Rio Puerco, showed 7,000 times the allowable standard of radioactivity for drinking water downstream from the broken dam shortly after the breach was repaired.

A month later, only 5% of the tailings had been cleaned out.
Warnings not to drink the contaminated water were issued by officials, but non-English-speaking Navajo never heard them, having no electrical power for TV or radio. Humans and livestock continued to drink the water.

———————————————————————————————————-
July 16, 1979


Saddam Hussein became president of the Iraqi republic, secretary general of the Ba’ath Party Regional Command, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He had been the ambitious protegé of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who resigned on this day.

———————————————————————————————————-
July 16, 1983

During a time of increasing tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), and an escalating nuclear arms race, 10,000 peace activists formed a human chain linking the two superpowers’ embassies in London, England.
The same day, members of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp painted the U.S. spy plane, Blackbird, and composed this song for their activities:
[to the tune of Count Basie’s “Bye, Bye, Blackbird”]
“Here I stand paint in hand
Speaking low, here I go
Bye bye blackbird
Just a dab of paint or two
Here I stand paint in hand
Speaking low, here I go
Bye bye blackbird
Just a dab of paint or two
Grounds you for a week or two
Bye bye blackbird.
 No one in the base could undermine you
Till we did some countersigning on you
Now you’re just a silly joke
Invented by some macho bloke
Blackbird bye bye.”

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july16

Clay Jones Says

Stop Talking About Epstein by Clay Jones

Donald Trump is clearly getting frustrated Read on Substack

Donald Trump wants you to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

First, what’s with that “boys and girls” crap? Does he still envision himself as the nation’s “daddy?” Second, a perfect administration? Sorry, TACO, but we’ve seen Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, and others of your team in action. You have clearly stocked your pond with the least qualified and dumbest fish of all time.

But I get it. Trump wants people to stop talking about Epstein, when previously, he encouraged his cult to talk about Epstein. Look at this tweet from his number one idiot offshoot from 2023.

Is Trump protecting “those scum bags” or is he one of those scumbags? Hmmm? Trump and Jeffers used to party together. Trump told us they were very similar, as they both liked women, with Epstein liking them on the younger side. Was Trump talking about young women, or did he make that statement because he knew about the pedophilia? What did Trump witness, or take part in, when he flew on Epstein’s plane?

Trump talked about his administration being “perfect,” while it was his stupid and unqualified Attorney General who went on Fox News and claimed the Epstein Client List was on her desk, and then later said it never existed. How is that perfect?

But ya know, I don’t think there ever was an Epstein Client List. When did we first hear of this supposed client list?

I believe it was MAGAts who first claimed that there’s an Epstein Client List, because they used it against Biden. But it’s been said so much, “clientlistclientlistclientlistclientlistclientlist,” that it has even gaslighted liberals.

I’m seeing memes from some of my liberal friends asking why Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison if there’s not a client list. If the only evidence against her is a client list, then she wouldn’t be in prison. How would a client list convict her? There’s a whole hell of a lot more evidence against Epstein than a supposed client list.

And what would the client list be for? He wasn’t in the business of pedophilia, right? It was an activity, a hobby. It was terrible and messed up, but that’s not how Epstein made his millions. I’m sure there is a list of his clients for his finance business.

Now, Trump is being yelled at by MAGAts. How sweet is that? They really want the client list released, which probably doesn’t even exist. It’s not the first time Trump claimed something that’s not true. Trump never did prove that Obama was born in Kenya. He never proved he won the 2020 election. He still hasn’t proven White Genocide in South Africa. We haven’t even seen all the fraud DOGE supposedly found.

But to MAGAts, not releasing the Epstein Client List, or the Epstein Files, makes Trump as bad as the Deep State, which, by the way, also hasn’t been proven to exist.

There are files on Epstein, and Bondi has said she’s not releasing those either. Fuck the client list, let’s see those files. While I don’t believe there is a client list, and feel free to disagree with me, there are Epstein files. Neither Trump nor Bondi has explained to us why those aren’t being released.

The best way to distract a MAGAt is with another conspiracy theory or bigotry. Remember, MAGAts love Trump because they hate the same people. So over the weekend, Trump threatened to revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship, even though a president doesn’t have that power. Did it work to distract the MAGAts. No, it just gave them something else to rave about while still howling for the Epstein Client List.

Good luck getting your base, Donald, to stop talking about the thing you wouldn’t shut up about. Usually, MAGAts do whatever you say. Maybe you need to remind them that they’re in a cult.

Squirrels: If you’ve ever visited the White House, you probably noticed the squirrels. There are a lot of squirrels at the White House. The fences that keep me and you out are ineffective against squirrel penetration. They go wherever they want. Ronald Reagan used to collect acorns from Camp David to feed the squirrels at the White House. Ike hated them because they would bury acorns in his golf green. But, there aren’t just grey squirrels at the White House, but also black squirrels. To be more specific, black Canadian squirrels.

Things like this fascinate me. I noticed them in Central Park too, but I haven’t researched that yet.

During the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the guy in charge of the National Zoo or the Smithsonian asked Canada for some black squirrels. They’re not native to the United States, though they’re the same squirrels as our grey ones except for the black coats, which might be thicker. It’s cold in Canada, yo.

So, we traded some grey squirrels for their black squirrels, and some either escaped from the zoo, or a few were released. One version explains that they were released at the zoo, with expectations that they would stay on the zoo grounds, but again….fences. Squirrels ignore them.

Today, Washington, DC has black squirrels, and they’re not going anywhere. It’s estimated that half of the squirrels in the city are descendants of the Canadian squirrels, even though the zoo originally only got a few of them. Squirrels are rodents, and rodents screw a LOT.

Not everyone feels the way Ike did, and there’s some civic pride in the black squirrels. There was even a bar in Adams Morgan named the Black Squirrel.

And that’s why there is a black squirrel in today’s cartoon.

What I hope is that Donald Trump notices all the Black immigrants all over his lawn that he can’t do anything about. (snip-MORE)

It’s Bastille Day in France! & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/14

July 14, 1789
Bastille Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a former royal fortress converted to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God’s representative, but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French Revolution and the First Republic.

Bastille Day  for kids
July 14, 1798
A mere 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to “. . . unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States . . . or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States . . . .”
The Declaration: 
“…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….”
“An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States” 
July 14, 1887
Adrian C. “Cap” Anson, both manager and captain of the Chicago Whitestockings (National League), refused to let his baseball team take the field as long as the Newark Little Giants included their starting pitcher, George Stovey, an African-American, in the lineup. “Get that nigger off the field!” Anson was heard to say. Newark refused to allow Anson to dictate the use of their personnel, but the game was ruled a forfeit to Chicago. At the time there were only 20 black players in all of professional baseball.
The same day, the directors of the International League (which included Newark) barred any of their teams from hiring black players in the future. By the following year there were only six black players left on all the teams in four leagues. All-black teams were formed, but the last of them, the Acme Colored Giants from Celeron, New York, of the Iron and Oil (I&0) League, stopped playing in 1898. No African-American would play in white organized baseball again until Jackie Robinson nearly 50 years later.
July 14, 1955
The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 became law, the first in a series of laws that ultimately became the Clean Air Act in 1963.
This first law simply provided funding to the Public Health Service to conduct research.


History of the Clean Air Act 
July 14, 1958

King Faisal II
A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party—later dominated by Saddam Hussein. 
Read more 

YOU HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY, F*****G USE IT

One voice was yelling he was a US citizen.  The conditions are horrible.  They get their drinking water from the toilet.   Maxwell Frost is a progressive treasure.  Hugs

Ice Ice Barbie by Clay Jones

Noem is more interested in her face than in providing assistance to the Texas flood survivors Read on Substack

ICE Barbie, Kristi Noem, the Director of Homeland Security, is failing at her job miserably.

A portrait of Noem is going to be displayed in the South Dakota Capitol building, and there are three options. Who gives a shit, right? Kristi Noem, that’s who. Noem went on Instagram and posted to her creepy followers, “Which one do you like for the official Governor’s portrait to hang in the South Dakota State Capitol? Thank you David Uhl!” She added the three paintings of herself on horseback by artist David Uhl.”

She did this five days ago, during the floods in Texas that have killed at least 120 so far.

Here are the other two portraits.

I wonder how much South Dakota tax money was spent on this.

Before Noem’s survey about herself, Puppy-Killah Kristi did her stupid photo-op in El Salvador with the notorious prison behind her, with Trump deportees as props. She was in full makeup while making sure her shiny $10,000 Rolex was visible, which is probably less than her teeth cost.

She’s done other photos with guns, posing as an ICE agent. In one of them, she wasn’t holding the gun correctly and got roasted for it online. I bet she can’t ride a horse either.

We should be relieved that she didn’t shoot that ICE agent in the face. In her defense, she does know how to shoot a gun because that’s how she murdered her puppy. So there, critics.

Kristi is the kind of person that if you went out to dinner with her, she’d humbly say at some point, “Enough of me talking about myself. Now let’s hear you talk about me.” She can’t get over herself. She might be the female equivalent of Donald Trump. She already has the fake hair, and now she just needs the ridiculous tie, the orange make-up, and an adult diaper that hasn’t been changed since his first flip-flop on tariffs.

Remember, Kristi used to look like this…

…before she looked like this.

She definitely went for the Melania look, which is an improvement over the look for hunting wolves from a helicopter. She even got free dental work while she was governor, on the condition that she make a commercial for the Texas dentist who did her work.

It seems that’s the only time she’s interested in Texas, when she can get free dental work, but not when there’s a disaster.

According to The New York Times, two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line.

An anonymous source close to the issue said the lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers.

FEMA, which is a part of Homeland Security (I have to include that because trolls are commenting on this cartoon on Facebook asking, “What’s DHS got to do with FEMA?”), laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Noem, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired, and about a week after the floods started.

Where was ICE Barbie? She was probably spending her time looking at herself in a mirror, or maybe she confused Texas for one of the seven Native American tribes that banned her from their reservations.

Adam Zyglis: There’s a part of this cartoon that is my standing in solidarity with my colleague Adam Zyglis. So what happened with Adam? Adam, who works for the Buffalo News, drew a cartoon mocking Republican hypocrisy, asking for federal aid after protesting against federal disaster relief for other states. This has upset Republicans, which shows more hypocrisy for the gang that shouts “snowflake” at their political opponents. They even cried on Fox News about it.

Now, an event at the Buffalo History Museum by the Buffalo News Guild, which was to feature Adam among other journalists, has been postponed because of “credible” death threats toward Adam and his family.

And just today, a MAGAt posted on one of my client’s shares of a cartoon of mine about how Democrats are the violent ones. (snip-MORE, and it’s great)

Well, I Think AG Bondi’s Filing Cabinet May Overtake This One As The World’s Most Famous… in Peace & Justice History for 7/12

July 12, 1974

John Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate a citizen’s civil rights. Ehrlichman had approved a recommendation for a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing on a memo: “If done under your assurance that it is not traceable.” Looking for information to discredit Ellsberg, agents of President Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the office of his psychiatrist.

John Ehrlichman

Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst, had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public scrutiny. The world’s most famous filing cabinet 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july12

Tom Homan rips violent clashes at California pot farm where illegal minors were working, blames Dems’ ‘Nazi’ rhetoric

There is a video at the link below.  I watched this.  ICE went in to terrorize and prove they could.  They had a military style attack helicopter.  This is going to get worse.   They are the tRump admin Gestapo, armed thugs who follow no rules attacking people who have violated no criminal laws.  Even if they were undocumented they had broken no laws as crossing the border illegally is a civil offense like speeding.  Hugs

https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/us-news/tom-homan-rips-violent-clash-at-california-pot-farm-as-proof-ice-protests-will-turn-deadly-blames-dems-nazi-rhetoric/

The MOMocrats

There’s a podcast, as well as this written piece. The bit at the end is priceless!

Tragedy and Travesty by Donna Schwartz Mills

This week, we got to experience both. Read on Substack

We did not record a podcast last week because Donna was traveling to Austin, where her family was celebrating Fourth of July AND the arrival of a new baby (her grand-niece!).

She expected hot, humid weather. What she got was four days of torrential rain, and the specter of over one hundred deaths from flooding in the nearby hill counties – including children at a sleep away camp that was overcome by the deluge.

One week later, this tragedy is ongoing. People are wondering how much DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA factored into it. Journalist Marisa Kabas has reported that as of Monday, only 86 FEMA employees were on the ground in Texas (they usually deploy hundreds of people to disaster zones like this). “We are doing a lot less than normal,” a FEMA staffer told her.

No shit.

In the meantime, $450 million from FEMA’s budget has been allocated to that concentration camp in the swamps of Florida. And Trump’s big, ugly budget bill allocates billions to expand ICE and build more “detention centers” throughout the country.

ICE continues to terrorize immigrant communities, kidnapping law-abiding parents, gardeners, day laborers, and others who just happen to have brown skin (including US citizens).Donna returned home to Los Angeles in time for a show of military cosplay in MacArthur Park. No one got hurt in that one – but it felt like a dress rehearsal for something worse.

We talked about that and more in this week’s podcast.

Screenshot from podcast
View the podcast
Audio podcast player
Listen to the podcast

We Can Be Heroes

We are living through history and it really sucks. Aliza says that the best way to deal with the continual onslaught of terrible events is to DO something. Anything. Volunteer in the community. Participate in events. Write postcards for candidates, donate to good causes.

And allow yourself the down time you need to muster up the energy to do it again.

We talked about some of the everyday heroes who are helping us all muster through this.

Like Joshua Aaron, the developer of the ICEBlock app that alerts people of ICE activity in their area. (Currently just for iPhones; we are anxiously awaiting news that this app will become available to Android users.)

The ACLU has done heroic work for over a century. After recording this week’s podcast, we were dismayed to learn that their Mobile Justice app Aliza has relied upon for years is no longer available.

To ensure compliance with a growing number of consumer privacy laws and the ACLU’s own privacy policies and to minimize risk with surveillance technologies currently used by law enforcement, the national office has made the decision not to renew our contract with Quadrant 2, the vendor behind Mobile Justice, and shut down the app on February 28, 2025.

But the ACLU is still a source of valuable information. Here are a couple of pages that you may want to bookmark:

There are things you can do as a bystander, too. This Yahoo article talks about New York City, but much of it applies anywhere in the U.S. It’s completely legal to film an ICE encounter, and the article has great suggestions for how to narrate and what details to include. There is advice on how your video can help, but it’s also important not to post your videos online without the consent of the person being detained.

The National Immigrant Justice Center is just one of many organizations with so much information on how to handle encounters with ICE or DHS, whether you are the target or a bystander.

The coalition of anti-authoritarian groups that has risen since the start of this regime continue to organize. The next big nationwide gathering is “Good Trouble Lives On,” which will be held in honor of the late John Lewis, around the July 17 anniversary of his death. Find an event near you here.

And in case you’re one of those “DO SOMETHING” people who love to bash Democrats, remember that they ARE doing something. A LOT. If you want to know what, you should follow Ariella Elm on any of the socials. She makes posts like the ones below, and daily posts like this one that list the wins for democracy and actions all over the country that are helping stem the tide of fascism, and we need to thank and elevate these soldiers for democracy.


One Last Thing

A camera decided it would rather check out than sit through another overheated tirade from Stephen Miller, as the White House deputy chief’s Wednesday night interview on Fox News faded to black midway through him extolling the virtues of a “turbocharged” ICE.

2 Pieces of News from “them” Magazine-

A Drag Queen Was Detained by ICE in San Francisco. Activists Are Fighting to Get Her Back

Hilary Rivers was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing in June.

By Samantha Riedel

Community activists in San Francisco are rallying to support Hilary Rivers, an immigrant drag queen who was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing nearly two weeks ago — one of the latest LGBTQ+ victims of the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportations.

Rivers fled his home in Guatemala due to “traumatic and severe” persecution for being gay, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week. (His legal name is not being widely reported to protect his confidentiality, advocates told the nonprofit news platform 48Hills.org shortly following the drag performer’s arrest.) On June 26, Rivers attended a scheduled asylum hearing, where the government’s motion to dismiss his case was denied; Rivers was then arrested by ICE agents as he left the courtroom. That combination — in which the government attempts to dismiss an asylum case, then immediately arrests the asylum seeker for deportation — has become an increasingly common tactic for U.S. immigration police in the past several months, and one that is sometimes conducted with cooperation from courthouses themselves. (snip-MORE)

==========

Hoaxers Have Falsely Blamed Trans People for Violent “Terror Attacks” 12 Times Since 2022

A new analysis from Wired saw such cases after plane crashes, shootings, and more.

By Samantha Riedel

Transgender pilot Jo Ellis was falsely accused of killing 67 people earlier this year — and unfortunately, she isn’t alone: right-wing hoaxers have blamed trans people for at least 12 incidents of violent death in the U.S. since 2022, according to a new analysis in Wired.

Ellis, a part-time pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, filed suit against right wing influencer Matt Wallace in April, after Wallace shared false claims that Ellis was responsible for the January helicopter crash at Ronald Reagan International Airport that killed dozens. The crash was later determined to be an accident caused by years of poor safety practices at the airport. But Ellis soon found herself on the receiving end of right-wing hatred thanks in part to people like Wallace, who posted on Elon Musk’s X platform that the crash “may have been another trans terror attack.”

Wallace has since deleted the post about Ellis, as Wired noted. But the key word in that post was “another.” In the past two years, right-wing disinformation accounts — such as Chaya Raichik’s “Libs of TikTok” — have spread similar false accusations against trans people on at least a dozen occasions, according to Wired’s analysis of news reports across that period. (snip-MORE)