(Click through on the Desmond Tutu link, and join me in what I’m pretty sure will be your first thought when you see the page. And enjoy your beverage while reading. -A.)
August 19, 1791 Benjamin Banneker Benjamin Banneker, the first recognized African-American scientist, a son of former slaves, sent a copy of his just-published Almanac to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal about “the injustice of a state of slavery.” More about Benjamin Banneker, his achievements and his letter to the president ===================================================== August 19, 1953 Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq Royalist troops surrounded, bombarded and burned the residence of the Mohammed Mosaddeq, the recently dismissed elected Iranian Prime Minister. After having briefly fled his country for Italy due to the rioting over his unconstitutional dismissal of Mosaddeq, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was returned to the Peacock throne with dictatorial power. All this was done with the planning, financing and assistance of the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6. Background on Mosaddeq Stephen Kinzer on the U.S.-Iran relationship in perspective =============================================== August 19, 1958 The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council in Oklahoma City, led by Clara Luper, a high school history teacher, began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, inspired by success in Wichita, Kansas. [see August 11, 1958]. Clara Luper TV interview with Clara Luper More about Clara ================================================ August 19, 1970 The U.S. deployed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles near Greeley, Colorado. It was the first missile with multiple (then three-170 kiloton) nuclear warheads known as MIRVs (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles). The MIRV: each cone is a warhead All the details about this fearsome armament ================================================== August 19, 1989 Anglican Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu was among hundreds of black demonstrators, members of Mass Democratic Movement who were whipped and blasted with sand stirred up by helicopters as they attempted to picnic on a “whites-only” beach near Cape Town, South Africa. Desmond Mpilo Tutu
A good place to pick up important info quickly; all linked/cited for sourcing.
Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin’s Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats by TPM
INSIDE: Pam Bondi … Adam Schiff … Letitia James Read on Substack
A Classic Example of Political Corruption
Ed Martin had no prior experience as a prosecutor when he became acting D.C. U.S. attorney earlier this year. And it shows.
Since his nomination to the permanent position was aborted because of lack of Senate GOP support, Martin has been triple-hatting at Main Justice as (i) U.S. pardon attorney; (ii) the chief of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group” — the unintentionally revealing name of the outfit that’s charged with politicizing the Justice Department; and (iii) most recently as Bondi’s “special attorney” overseeing the politically motivated mortgage fraud investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
It was in that third role that Martin was apparently serving when he went on Fox News and admitted that he’s using the pretext of the clearly bogus mortgage fraud probes to conduct an open-ended witch hunt into Schiff and James. “We’re also gonna look at everything else they’ve been doing,” Martin said on air:
Most legal experts think the mortgage fraud claims don’t amount to anything on the facts or on the law. But don’t underestimate the potency of ongoing criminal investigations hanging over anyone, especially elected officials, particularly when the investigations are used as justification for a wide-ranging probe of unspecified other wrongdoing.
Even if charges never come, this is a classic example of political corruption — and of authoritarian capture of the independence of federal prosecutors. Martin has embarked on a fishing expedition and he’ll keep it going for as long as it’s useful to the White House.
Speaking of Letitia James …
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $500 million civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump has been held up on appeal for nearly a year, apparently because of deep divisions and three dueling written opinions on the five-justice appeals court panel, the WSJ reports.
Thread of the Day
With a new series of edicts, FBI Director Kash Patel is further degrading the bureau and converting into something akin to a national police department (which is NOT what the FBI has historically been):
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2025/08/17: Activist Nadine Seiler holds a sign that reads “What Trump order won’t you obey” stands in front of a National Guard vehicle as protesters gather at Columbus Circle following President Donald Trump’s announcement to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal control. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A Recipe for Disaster
Red states are jumping on the bandwagon to send their national guards to the nation’s capital and show plurality Black D.C. who’s boss. West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina (still smarting from the last time it tried to overthrow D.C.) are first in line to engage in performative strong-arming of Democratic cities.
But the most alarming news to come out over a generally alarming weekend is that the national guardsmen may be armed, a reversal of an earlier decision that deployed the D.C. National Guard on the streets without weaponry on their persons or in the vehicles.
The ingredients could be in place for a cocktail of violence: federal agents and national guardsmen with little to no training in street policing being sent with guns into a peaceful urban area (that many of them are not even from) and expected to stir up trouble. It puts everyone — D.C. residents, local police, guardsmen, and federal agents — in an impossible situation.
One glimmer of good news was that the Trump administration was hauled into court Friday over its attempt to take over the D.C. police department and, under pressure from a federal judge, backed off its maximalist position.
ICYMI
Religion Dispatches: Latest ICE Recruitment Materials Include Overt Neo-Nazi Reference and Nazi-Nazi Script
Sign of the Times: The New Fascism Comes With Merch
The Florida GOP scrubbed its online store of a new line of merchandise touting the state’s new “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained it was an unapproved use of its branding.
Texas Dems Expected Back This Week
With California Democrats proceeding with their own mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today, giving Republicans a quorum in the legislature to push through their redistricting plan. Texas Democrats succeeded in blocking the redistricting push in the first special session of the legislature. But when it ended, Friday Gov. Greg Abbott (R) immediately called a second special session, setting the stage for passing a new, more GOP friendly congressional district map to help national Republicans hold their House majority in next year’s midterms.
Quote of the Day
“Trump has completely ceded narrative control to Putin. What Ukraine is just basically getting as a concession is for the Russians to stop fighting. And this is Putin’s way all the way through the 25 years of his presidency, which is: ‘I’m going to beat you up and my concession is that I stopped beating you up.’”–former Trump I National Security Council official Fiona Hill
D’oh!
Guests at a hotel in Anchorage found sensitive documents from the Trump-Putin summit on a public printer, NPR reports.
D.C. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, Trump appointees who have had out-sized influence in the first months of the Trump II presidency, cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee dissented.
“The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the President from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation’s commitment to a government of laws,” Pillard wrote.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
TPM’s Layla A. Jones: The Trump Administration Is Laying the Groundwork for a Full Takeover of Federal Data
Judge Blocks FTC Probe of Media Matters
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of D.C. sided with Media Matters in blocking a politically motived Federal Trade Commission investigation of the liberal watchdog group.
“This case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” Sooknanan ruled.
Media Matters has been struggling financially under the weight of bogus right-wing investigations into whether its reporting on antisemitic content on X/Twitter amounted to anticompetitive conduct. It also faces related serial lawsuits by Elon Musk.
“It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”
A Rare Example of Organized Left-Wing Violence?
The purported attack at an ICE detention center in Texas last month caught my eye as an possible example of organized left-wing violence, a relative rarity since the 1970s. When I say “organized,” I don’t necessarily mean well-organized. The ragtag group’s alleged attack seemed especially hapless, even according to the official law enforcement account of the incident. Adding to the weirdness, the alleged perpetrators — among them two transgender women activists — appeared to be from in and around Dallas, which wouldn’t be my first choice for hotbeds of anti-fascism.
The WaPo’s Robert Klemko has dug a bit more into the “secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists” who “initially united around trans and queer identity issues.” He did a jailhouse interview with the group’s alleged ringleader, a former Marine Corps reservist of mixed Japanese and Korean descent who trained “very young, naive leftists,” as one witness put it, in close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights at his mother’s taekwondo studio in suburban Dallas.
I have been waiting for the show to clip this interview. I watched it live when he was interviewed. I was blown away by Frost. He is the kind of Democratic elected members we need and the kind of candidates we should vote for. Please give the interview a watch. Hugs
100% Christian hate. No one loves more than bigot Christians can hate. This would be a non-story except Kegseth is the head of the military with the authority to remove any group from the military he doesn’t like. Think about the idea that woman shouldn’t vote according to his preacher yet females in the military at every level have authority over men … so if they can’t be trusted to vote …? But Kegseth thinks the US military needs to be an all white male thuggish killing machines like the Russian military who are getting their asses kicked by the inclusive Ukrainian military. The Christian bigotry prevents people like him from seeing the truth. The idea of heavily muscled men facing each other on a field of battle is far in the past. Military tech is way more far advanced. It needs twink kids in the basement playing on gaming machines, it needs females who can out think every man around. Kegseth’s idea of manliness and the military makes me suspect him of having a man fetish, an Arnold Schwarzenegger fetish. It idealizes something that is not true and doesn’t exist. This man grew up on far too many he man cartoons and movies. Hugs.
“We have to overturn Obergefell. Many people will say, ‘That ship’s sailed, man. Gay people are married. We can’t go back.’ Gay marriage does not exist in the world. It can’t, any more than a square triangle can exist. God created marriage. I had premarital counseling today, I opened up the bible to Genesis I and showed them where God created marriage. He made them male and female. He set it.
“You want us to persist in having lies at the fundamental level of our nation? What’s that going to do to our country, other than have it crumble and have judgment be upon it? You have to remember that there’s a God in heaven who has thoughts on these matters.
“Of course, it has to go because it’s non-reality. We have to become sane again as a nation. And because we’ve gotten ourself so deep into this sin, there’s no clean way to do it.” – Pete Hegseth’s pastor Brooks Potteiger, who last appeared here when he called for God to burn down a “demonic” network’s headquarters for featuring a gay couple on a reality show.
Pottigier’s church is part of Pastor Doug Wilson’s Christian nationalist network, which advocates for a full-Gilead theocracy in which women cannot vote and homosexuality is criminalized. Last week Hegseth retweeted a video in which Wilson called for all of those things.
Brooks Potteiger, who is Pete Hegseth's pastor, says that Obergefell must be overturned because "gay marriage does not exist in the world. It can't, any more than a square triangle can exist." pic.twitter.com/KA38SwN5sq
That is pretty much religion all over the world. And they mostly all believe they are the only true religion. Buddhism seems the most benign of all of them.
If Obergefell is overturned, same sex marriage will not go away but we will go back to the bad old days where there will be a patchwork of states where SSM will be valid.
I do wonder for example if someone was married in Oklahoma will their marriage be voided and would need to remarry in SSM state or will they be grandfathered in.
Yeah, me, neither. Also! I am not, and never was, a KISS fan. I always thought they were bubble gum. Needless to say, I enjoy Clay Jones’s commentary re KISS!
I’m a KISS fan, to an extent. When I was in the 4th or 5th grade, a friend introduced me to KISS, and I was hooked. I had posters and albums. I wanted to be Ace Frehley and started playing guitar. I was obsessed with KISS. Other than my guitar obsession (I’m still obsessed), all that was over by the time I hit the 8th grade. With a bit more maturity, I had become more interested in not just the current music of the time, like Van Halen, but another friend had introduced me to The Beatles, and I think I discovered the Rolling Stones on my own. I started paying attention to my mom’s music and got into CCR.
A few years later, I was walking through the music department of K-Mart, and saw the album cover for KISS’s latest album, Lick It Up, and learned that they had a couple of replacement members and had taken the makeup off. This was huge news in KISS world, but I was out of the KISS ARMY (that was the fan club) by that point.
And that’s the thing about KISS. Their audience was mostly little boys, such as myself. While KISS looked like a dangerous rock and roll band, at least at the beginning, they had become more of a marketing product than a rock and roll band. In addition to the posters I had, KISS were marketing lunch boxes, action figures, trading cards, bed sheets, pillows, comic books, and even had made a TV movie, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, which might be the worst TV movie ever.
KISS may have been serious about their music, but they weren’t taken seriously, which is difficult to obtain when each member is face-painted like a clown. The Insane Clown Posse is probably more respected. And while there are some gems in their catalog, most of their songs actually sucked. KISS chased trends. They started as a rock band striving to be on Led Zeppelin’s level, but they didn’t have the songwriting chops or musicianship, despite Ace Frehley being a badass (when he was sober enough to play on the albums, and didn’t force the band to use a hidden replacement for his lead guitar playing). KISS went from trying to be the next Beatles to producing a disco track, to chasing hair metal in the 80s, to writing songs with Michael Bolton and Bryan Adams, to making a grunge album. Critics didn’t like them, and they never made the cover of Rolling Stone during their prime (but did make it decades later for an article that was mostly retrospective).
They were more noted for their theatrics, fire-breathing, blood-spitting, and smoke pouring out of Frehley’s guitar than for their music.
Most musicians in respected rock bands are invited to play on other artists’ albums, such as Bob Seger, members of Fleetwood Mac, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and every member of The Eagles. Even members of Cheap Trick got invites, and even lured Beatles producer George Martin to produce their albums. But I can’t think of a member of KISS who has ever played on another artist’s album. After leaving KISS, Ace Frehley called John Waite (the Missing You guy) to see if he’d like to start a band with him, and never got a return call. And Ace was the most successful solo artist to come out of the band (though his last album was embarrassing). Peter Criss’ albums are unlistenable.
Gene Simmons was not a good songwriter (sample lyric: “Let me put my log into your fire”), and his bass playing is still mocked today (they often used a hidden replacement, or Paul and Ace would play bass on the songs they wrote). Paul Stanley had an operatic voice (that didn’t have a natural sound), but he tried too hard to show it off, and his guitar playing and songwriting were cheesy. Peter Criss was more of a jazz drummer than a heavy rock guy like John Bonham of Zeppelin, and he had timing issues, but his voice had an amazing sound, especially considering that he was tone deaf. Ace Frehley, who is unfortunately a racist who used to get drunk and bang on his Jewish bandmates’ hotel room doors dressed as a Nazi (really. They used to call him RACE Frehley), inspired millions with his guitar playing, but his skills decreased due to his laziness and addictions. By hiring studio musicians to pretend to be Criss, Frehley, and Simmons on their albums and hiding it from the fans, KISS didn’t even take themselves seriously.
KISS was never a great band. So why are they the first to be honored by Donald Trump since he made himself the head of the Kennedy Center? Because Trump has no culture (ketchup on burnt steaks), and he has the maturity of a 12-year-old boy.
Trump will be hosting the ceremony for these “honors,” which will be interesting. People will probably tune in because folks love a good train wreck.
Each member of KISS expressed how honored and humbled they are for receiving these “honors,” but boys…being “honored” by Donald Trump isn’t really an honor.
That’s another difference between KISS and bands taken seriously. Musicians sue Trump to stop playing their music at his rallies.
And, yes. KISS has a song glorifying pedophilia. Gene Simmons wrote it. I had to adjust the lyrics for space, but those cited in the cartoon say,
“I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age, But when I saw you coming out of the school that day, That day I knew, I knew, I’ve got to have you, I’ve got to have you.”
Even as a kid, I thought it was weird that Gene only saw Christine because he was hanging outside her school. (snip-MORE)
Scottie's Playtime 