The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 256, No. 23, August 10, 2012

Vol. CCLVI, No. 23 August 10, 2012

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umenting their construction of the most expensive single-family house in America. Modeled after the original Versailles and built at a cost of about $100 million, the place has 17 kitchens and is 33 times the size of the average American home.

His enormous, tacky McPalace in Orlando, Florida — where else? — is not the only assault Siegel has committed against the American people. In the film he tersely claims to be personally responsible for making George W. Bush President.

Siegel elaborated in an interview with Susan Berfield for Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek.

“Whenever I saw a negative article about [Al] Gore,” Siegel told Berfield, “I put it in with the paychecks of my 8,000 employees. I had my managers do a survey on every employee. If they liked Bush, we made them register to vote. But not if they liked Gore. The week before [the election] we made 80,000 phone calls through my call center — they were robo-calls. On Election Day, we made sure everyone who was voting for Bush got to the polls. I didn’t know he would win by 527 votes. Afterward, we did a survey among the employees to find out who voted who wouldn’t have otherwise. One thousand of them said so.”

Nobody Here But Us Moguls Polls show that by a margin of two to one, Americans favor taxing the rich more heavily to balance the Federal budget. And why not? It’s an obvious solution.

Whenever that possibility is raised, though, Right Wingers and their media sycophants assert that there are not enough rich people to make a difference. Usu-

ally that’s all it takes to change the subject — proving that Roger “Verbal” Kint was right when he said, in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Google the phrase “tax the rich to fix the deficit” and the first half-dozen links will be to websites offering the same video. It shows Duquesne University Professor Antony Davies throwing figures around in support of the “not enough rich people” trope.

Figures don’t lie, the old saying goes, but liars can figure. To which we would add, hereditarily wealthy liars hire others to do their lying for them.

The Davies video was produced

by LearnLiberty.org. These days it’s safe to assume that any organization with the word “Liberty” in its name is determined to further enslave us all, and this case is no exception.

LearnLiberty.org says it is “[a] Project of the Institute for Humane Studies” at George Mason University in Arlington, VA, which is funded, according to SourceWatch.org, by “a number of large libertarian and right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koch Family Foundations, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Carthage Foundation” — aka all the usual well-heeled Right Wing suspects.

Oh, That $21 Trillion Davies’s flim-flam failed to fool the Tax Justice Network, though.

A global organization that has been investigating tax evasion, tax avoidance, tax competition and tax havens since 2003, TJN released a report last month titled The Price

of Offshore Revisited. “[T]he most detailed and rigorous study ever made of financial assets held in offshore financial centres and secrecy structures,” TJN found that “at least $21 trillion of unreported private financial wealth was owned by wealthy individuals via tax havens at the end of 2010.”

This equals the GDP of North and South America combined.

And the actual total could be as

high as $35 trillion.

A lot of that money surely belongs to U.S. citizens who are dodging billions in U.S. taxes.

The only fair way to describe this situation is class warfare. A relative handful of multi-millionaires has been waging economic warfare against millions of us mere peons for decades now.

So here’s the question for us: Continue to submit? Or do something?

quirement of pre-funding its retirement system for the next 75 years — in just ten years? Because that surely looks like intentional sabotage of a Constitutionallymandated Federal government function.

And another question: since it’s been forty years since Congress sent any taxpayer funding to the Postal Service, what is Congress doing even naming Post Offices?

The Szabo Saga, Part Three Frank Szabo continues to send us press releases regarding his candidacy for the office of Sheriff of Hillsborough County, despite the tone of our earlier coverage which suggested that he might be a couple of law books short of a full shelf.

Szabo vows that if he is elected he will be a “Constitutional Sher-

iff,” which seems to imply that James A. Hardy, the incumbent Sheriff, is somehow lacking in constitutionality.

If by some miracle Szabo is elected, Hillsborough County is bound to generate some interesting headlines. In an earlier communiqué, Szabo claimed that “no federal or state agency has authority in the county unless the Sheriff permits it.”

Lest there be any doubt what he means by that, on his website Szabo declares that “[i]f a County Sheriff tells the ATF to ‘take a hike,’ they have no choice. They either leave, or end up in a county jail.”

According to this latest dispatch, Szabo is reeling in endorsements from the Tea Party, Free State, and Libertarian wings

of the Republican asylum. His newest backers are: “Jack Kimball, former New Hampshire GOP State Chair and Chairman of Granite State Patriots Liberty PAC …. Tom Flaherty, organizer of the Greater Nashua Tea Party …. [and] Jane Aitken, founder of New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition and board member of Coalition of New Hampshire Tax Payers….

“Frank continues to speak at numerous GOP Committees and activist groups as well as groups concerned about the erosion of their Rights; especially gun Rights. Every event adds more excited supporters now informed of the true nature and authority of the Office of County Sheriff.”

Foreclosing on the Banks?

Count us among the excited

observers — and not just in anticipation of potential shootouts between the Sheriff and, say, the state’s Booze Police. Szabo has an approach to foreclosures that is actually refreshing.

During a July 23rd interview with Bedford Community Television’s Kathy Benuc, available online at http://bit.ly/P4bhM8, Szabo said he would scrutinize the paperwork for all foreclosures with great care and refuse to carry out any with which he found the slightest fault.

Not the Only One? If Szabo is elected he won’t be the first County Sheriff in the State who’s dubious about foreclosure paperwork.

The Fortnightly Rant

Let's Call It What It Is We have good news and we have bad news. The good news is that in their never-ending quest to suck up every nickel on the planet, our de facto global aristocracy is destroying only two things.

The bad news is that those things are the economy and the environment, and we lowly peons need them both to live.

The Aristocrats Some people would deny that a global aristocracy exists, and aristocrats are the first among them.

Being scrutinized by riffraff takes the fun out of life, you see. But traces do turn up from time to time. Herewith: a couple of examples.

On July 20th the London Evening Standard ran a story about Salvatore Calabrese’s dashed effort to win the Guinness Record for concocting the world’s oldest and most expensive drink.

Calabrese is the “drinks maestro” at London’s Playboy Club.

He had planned to use some of his own 1788 Clos de Griffier Vieux cognac in the record attempt; but prior to his attempt, a regular client stopped by with a close friend. They each enjoyed a $7,800 shot of the ancient booze.

Then, standing up, the client accidentally smashed the $78,000 bottle to the floor.

Breaking a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon could get an ordinary person thrown out of the Daniel Street Tavern, but the anonymous Playboy Club clutz was instantly forgiven.

An appalling but inconsequential sign of today’s superfluity of wealth, you say? Perhaps.

But consider David Siegel. The time-share mogul and his wife Jackie are the subjects of the new movie The Queen of Versailles, doc-

News Briefs

Gone Postal

You may be working during these dog days of August — if you’re lucky — but Members of Congress are on vacation. After all, they don’t want to pass any bills anyway, so what would be the point of hanging around D.C.?

Though it’s not really fair to say they haven’t passed any bills.

As ABC News noted on August 1st, they may not have solved the Postal Service’s pension problem, but they have passed 60 bills naming Post Offices.

Then again, if fairness actually matters, there are a couple of other things about the Congressional/Postal relationship which are kind of puzzling.

First there’s this mystery: what the hell did Congress think it was doing in 2006 when it saddled the Postal Service with the unique re-

News Briefs to page two

Page 2 - The New Hampshire Gazette - Friday, August 10, 2012

News Briefs from page one In Strafford County, Sheriff Christopher Conley issued a press release on July 2 announcing “the formation of a task force to investigate mortgage fraud throughout Carroll County — criminal fraud.

“During the past year, there have been many events, that have come to my attention or I have been involved with, affecting property owners, i.e. properties being foreclosed on that were owned outright, financial institutions that staked claim to a property but did not have a deed, note or mortgage history, persons who owned property and were told they were in arrears on a mortgage they paid.

A common thread in each case is there was no accountability by the financial institution, no one to present a reply, no decision maker to speak with.”

Conley then goes on to list a number of warning signs of possibly fraudulent foreclosures and encourages any Carroll County residents who may be victim of one to contact his office.

Sheriffs Rising Up Though we have not found any direct acknowledgement of it, circumstances suggest that Sheriff Conley and would-be Sheriff Szabo are both involved with CountySheriffProject.org, which proclaims itself “a platform to assist the people and strategic alliance partners alike, in our mutual goals of peacefully ending state and federal tyranny.”

The County Sheriff Project is the result of a collaboration between Richard Mack, former Sheriff of Graham County, AZ and current Republican challenger in Texas’s 21st Congressional District, and Clyde Cleveland, Libertarian candidate for Governor of Iowa in 2002 and founder of a company that purports to train financial advisors.

The Project held a conference in Las Vegas in January which it claims drew 100 of the nation’s 3,100 currently-serving Sheriffs.

Another conference will be held next month.

The Crazy Seat In 1970, President Richard “I Am Not a Crook” Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell for

The Creek Athletic Club gathered at their Bartlett Street headquarters on Tuesday evening August 7th for a picnic and displayed their beautiful handpumper fire engine. The engine was built in Waterford, New York in 1872 for the Eureka Engine Company of Hudson, MA where it served for 35 years. The Portsmouth Veterans Firemen’s Association acquired it in 1907.

The Creek Club had it restored about seven years ago.

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the Supreme Court. Critics called him a mediocrity, noting that 58 percent of his decisions as a district court judge were overturned on appeal. The Senate refused to confirm Carswell, which aggravated Sen. Roman Hruska [RNE].

“Even if he were mediocre,” Hruska said, “there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

No one seems to care anymore if the mediocre are represented on the Court. The important thing is that crazy aunts and uncles are — by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia!

On July 29th, Scalia allowed himself to be interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News — prima facie evidence of faulty judgment.

In a discussion of Roe v. Wade, Scalia asserted that there is no right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution. Wallace asked, “What about the right to privacy that the court found in 1965?”

“There’s no right to privacy in

the Constitution — no generalized right to privacy,” Scalia answered.

“Well, in the Griswold case, the court said there was,” Wallace said, referring to the 1965 case that struck down Connecticut’s ban on contraception.

Scalia replied, “Yeah, it did. And that was wrong.”

In the same interview Scalia suggested that because the Second Amendment specifies that Americans must be allowed to “bear” arms, ergo they may have a right to any weapon a person can lift — including hand-held rocket launchers.

So, Americans, put down those condoms — and pick up your Stinger™ missiles! Uncle Tony says it’s OK! Big Clown Shoes to Fill Thaddeus McCotter represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003 until last month. Apparently bored with Congress, he decided last year it would be a good idea to run for President. No one else seemed to agree with him, though.

McCotter dropped out, blaming the media for the tepid re-

sponse to his eleven-week campaign. He then filed to run in the Republican primary for the Congressional seat that he still held.

His multi-tasking skills must have failed him, though. Only about 15 percent of his petition signatures were valid, and the rest were Xeroxed™. After a few more farcical embarassments, McCotter finally resigned, leaving open a seat on the House Financial Services Committee.

John Boehner [R-OH] and the House Republican Steering Committee had to decide who was best qualified to follow in the big clown shoes of Thad McCotter.

Well, who better to put on a banking committee than a man who woke up one day with a $350,000 bank account that he’d forgotten all about? Rep. Frank Guinta of New Hampshire’s First District!

Republican Opposite Disorder We’d like to propose a term for the current Republican mania for flipping reality on its head. So far our best effort is Republican Opposite Disorder.

Here’s an example of Republi-

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can Opposite Disorder in action: Frank “The Bank” Guinta, although currently the Congressman representing New Hampshire’s First District, and running for a second term, does he let those petty details deter him from implying that he’s the outsider, the underdog, in this Congressional race.

“Hi,” say some robo-calls he had to have approved, “This is Frank Guinta, candidate for Congress, running against Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter. I’m running to end the broken culture of Washington.”

Now that we have identified Republican Opposite Disorder, all we need is a vaccine.

Stars Earn Stripes On Monday, NBC will present a new TV show titled Stars Earn Stripes, an “epic new reality series where eight celebrities face the challenges of real American heroes” — or so they say.

The show pairs celebrities — quite obscure ones — with activeduty service members and runs them through “training” exercises.

Having watched three 30-second

promotional clips in their entirety, we now feel qualified to say this show is destined for an Emmy.

There is an Emmy for Most Inane Show, right?

In the clips, the faux-celebrities yammer incessantly about the show’s purported authenticity. We find that quite amusing.

Much of the principal photography has no doubt been completed.

If the show were at all authentic, we’d have read a few obituaries by now.

The only stripes anyone deserves for being involved with this show are of the sort the British Navy used to administer with a cat o’ nine tails.

Whose Booze?

We have no inside information about the curious case of the 300 cases of high-end vino that may have gone missing from the New Hampshire Liquor Commission’s West End store. All we know is what we read at TheLobbyNH. com.

Eddie Edwards, Chief of the Liquor Division, reportedly says there’s something “disturbing” about inventory management

Diners on the deck at Poco’s were serenaded by The Leftist Marching Band as it paraded around town on Friday, August 3rd. Along the route the Band accepted spontaneous contributions for the “Common Table” free lunch program at St. John’s Church.

© 2012 by Dan Woodman

at the agency formerly (though only informally) known as “Dr. Green’s.” Also, Attorney General Michael Delaney is supposed to be looking into the matter, but the trail is pretty cold seven months after the grape juice went missing.

The Lobby’s Kevin Landrigan says there are dissent and division within the Liquor Commission and meetings over that conflict with the Governor and Executive Council.

What we want to know is, how can this state still be in the liquor business in this political climate without causing a nine-milliondecible howl of protest from our private-sector-besotted brethren and sisteren in the Tea Party?

Curiosity vs. Raptor NASA threw a car-sized robot named Curiosity 350 million miles into outer space and landed it safely on Mars at a cost of $2.5 billion.

The Pentagon spent that much just to acquire seven F-22 Raptor fighter planes. Except they didn’t

stop at seven, they got 195. The full tab came to $66.7 billion.

So far Curiosity seems to be working fine, though as the Brits might say it’s early days yet.

The Raptor fleet has been grounded several times, once for five months. Pilots have complained of problems with the oxygen system. And the F-22 reportedly has the highest accident rate of any fighter in service.

Rozalia Project & Piscataqua The Gundalow Company continues a summer celebration of music and speakers by hosting an evening sail with Rachael Miller, co-founder of the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, aboard the gundalow Piscataqua on August 16 from 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Rozalia Project’s mission is to find and remove marine debris — from the surface to the sea floor — through action, technology, outreach and research. Onboard their 60’ boat American Promise, Miller and her partner James Lyne visit community sailing centers, maritime museums and

yacht clubs along the east coast as part of the project’s “Trash Tour” — showing people of all ages the debris below the water’s surface to engage them as part of the solution. Their programs include underwater trash-hunting with high-tech equipment, STEM education-based activities for grades 3-12, and cleanups and research projects. For more information visit www.rozaliaproject.org.

The evening will begin with a free presentation at 5 p.m. on the gundalow dock in Prescott Park, next to the historic Sheafe Warehouse. Following this brief talk, Rachael will join ticketed passengers on a 2-hour sail, offered to the public at no charge thanks to funding from the New Hampshire Coastal Program.

Reservations are required; tickets can be obtained online at www.gundalowtickets.org or at the gundalow office at 60 Marcy Street in Portsmouth. For more information contact the Gundalow Company at (603) 4339505.

Page 4 - The New Hampshire Gazette - Friday, August 10, 2012

Buck Up, Shannon To the Editor: I awoke this morning and read the July 27th issue of your paper. I am ashamed to say that I’m a few more articles away from despair.

Mitt and the corporate oligarchy consuming our country; the deeply-moving essay “Thank you for your service,” by Bill Ehrhart; the emphatic, indoctrinated and, frankly, scary challenge by Craig Vance of Madison, WI; the woeful choices of the upcoming local and national elections….

And then there are the terrifying first-hand experiences in my own family that come to mind as I read — wealthy right-wing Republican Catholics (an oxymoron, I know), throwing obscene amounts of money (without missing their monthly tithe) at politicized organizations such as Cornerstone Action with the goal of legislating our “values.” That’s a mixologist-worthy recipe for a church/state cocktail that’s sure to result in one h$ll of a permanent hangover, ya’ll. (FYI: Republican Governor candidate Kevin Smith served as Executive Director of Cornerstone Action from 2009 to 2011.)

What can I do? I’m just one person. Why aren’t “we the people” mobilizing? Where’s the (P) people party that will mesh our voices into a powerful movement for change? I feel small. Sniff ….

Shannon Farrelly Portsmouth, NH Shannon: You know that scene in the mov-

ies when one character in a desperate situation says to another, “It’s so crazy it just might work”? Well, stay tuned.

The Editor § Guinta and the Chamber To the Editor: Congressman Frank Guinta bragged in a newsletter about getting an award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He claimed it was because of his “pro-jobs” voting record, but it unquestionably had more to do with the 100 percent rating the U.S. Chamber gave him. The only New England congressman with 100 percent, he joined a tiny minority — eight percent of U.S. House members (from mainly southern and western states) — with a perfect score as lackeys to Big Oil, Big Pharma, and the other multi-nationals that the U.S. Chambers lobbies for.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not like your local Chamber. In New Hampshire, many major local chambers are not even members, including Dover, Manchester, Merrimack, Hudson, Nashua, and Souhegan Valley. In 2010 the VP of the Greater Hudson Chamber, Jerry Mayotte, said, “I could not find one positive thing to say about being involved in the U.S. Chamber” (Nashua Telegraph, 10/17/10).

The U.S. Chamber is a lobbying front for its big corporate donors, and its agenda harms middleclass Americans. In 2008 only 45 corporations donated almost half of its $140 million in contributions, and many of those contributions coincided with lobbying that endangers us all. For example, Dow Chemical’s $1.7 million contribution included funding for the Chamber’s fight against legislation to protect chemical plants from attack (New York Times, 10/22/10).

Congressman Guinta, I wouldn’t boast about U.S. Chamber support. It’s like being stamped

“bought and paid for” by multinational corporations. I can’t wait to vote against this Congressman who forgot his New Hampshire constituents.

Lew Henry Gilmanton Iron Works, NH § Is He Pro-Sequestration?

To the Editor: In a few months, if Congress does not act to prevent it, so-called “sequestration” — unplanned, severe, untargeted budget cuts — will axe the Federal budget, including the Defense budget, and endanger our national security. Our Congressman, Frank Guinta, voted for this ill-written, ill-advised, reckless bill, and he recently admitted that these huge cuts could put the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at risk of closure.

Secretary of Defense Panetta described the grave impact of these irresponsible across-theboard cuts to Senator John McCain. Panetta said that a “23 percent reduction would have to be applied equally to each major investment and construction program.” This large indiscriminate cut “would render most of our ship and construction projects unexecutable — you cannot buy three quarters of a ship or a building….” It would sharply reduce the size of the military, giving us the smallest ground force since 1940, the fewest ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force ever.

Slashing the budget would disrupt war operations and support for our troops. Is it fair to ask our troops to fight in war zones while denying them the support they need? Maybe Mr. Guinta (and other Tea Partiers) would like to take their place in an under-funded war? The military accepts men his age.

Even as we shred the defense budget, Panetta points out that the threats to national security will remain, and we risk not meeting our defense needs. We do have enemies, and I am outraged

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that Congressman Guinta voted to weaken America and endanger us all.

Susan Mayer Lee, NH § Better Than Trickle-Down To the Editor: Congressman Guinta, and others of his ilk, are claiming that if we cut taxes, jobs will be created.

Where have we heard this before?

Give the industrialists money and good things will happen. It’s the old trickle-down theory, of course, wrapped up in new packaging.

There’s no reason why the industrialists must use the money for that purpose — they could just as well buy another Cadillac.

How about requiring action on the part of these employers before they get their money? Allow them on a temporary basis to keep a small portion of the income tax they deduct from new employees paychecks. That requires them to hire, and ties the amount they get to the number of employees they hire. It also discourages hiring for a temporary project and continuing to benefit under a program after the temps are gone. It also increases the country’s income, not quite as much as a full program but any little bit helps.

Joel S. Look Portsmouth, NH § Poisoned Tea To the Editor: I have found a pattern in this election cycle. Forget the normal campaign rhetoric from the candidates. This is about false content in the other media: internet, twitter and email. Here is what I have found.

1. All candidate bashing is against Obama. Odd there was nothing against Romney.

2. About a third of it involved faked photos with changing messages.

3. All statements are completely or mostly false.

4. Research was able to track over 90 percent back to Tea Party organizers, lately from Maine and Michigan.

The Tea Party movement is funded primarily by publisher Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers. This is media and big oil backing Romney and the Republican Party. It is also Republican legislators who have created voting requirements which prevent a certain demographic from getting required IDs. Is it coincidence these are mostly the elderly and poor, who generally vote Democratic?

I can research actual texts of legislation, but could never know all the deals conducted behind closed doors. I can see the kind of people backing Romney, and the corporate attitude that voters are expendable. There’s poison in the tea, and I’m not drinking or voting for it in November.

Warren Isleib Nashua, NH § Guinta’s Phony Bipartisanship To the Editor: Congressman Frank Guinta is once again balancing on a fence rail, unable to take a firm position on either side.

The Union Leader reported that after the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Guinta said he would vote, as in 2011, to repeal the health care law, but he’d be willing to amend it, despite its “excesses.” And then he did vote to repeal it, yet again.

So how much sense does it make for him to say that he’s “willing to amend this law as needed,” when he votes repeatedly to repeal it?

Just how do you amend a repealed law? He’s voted to repeal it in its entirety twice, so why persist in this farce about amending it? I’m so tired of his phony bipartisan pose. It’s unconvincing, to say the

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And Other Correspondence least, in a Tea Party Congressman so extreme that the National Journal rates him as the 31st most conservative in the U.S. House.

At least, don’t be afraid to embrace your extremism, Mr. Guinta, and stop trying to convince us that you’re a reasonable guy. It’s not working.

Cristina Mendoza Stratham, NH § Republicans Unconcerned To the Editor: Republicans show little or no concern over their robot candidate Mitt Romney trailing in the polls. Perhaps voter purges and new voter ID laws passed in GOP-controlled state legislatures provide them with confidence.

After all, it’s important that our democracy is protected against all that non-existent voter fraud.

Strange how all those flag-waving, family-values patriots have no difficulty going out of their way to prevent fellow citizens from exercising their right to vote!

Eugene Murphy Priest River, ID § Town Hall Tour of Shame To the Editor: On July 31, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) were at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire for the purpose of urging Congress not to move forward on the sequestration trigger set to make large defense spending cuts in Jan. 2013. I am dismayed to learn that this taxpayer-supported tour of GOP Senators to town halls around the country is being used as a vehicle to disingenuously spread blame to President Obama for what they claim is a lack of leadership to broker a better deal. In truth, the sequestration agreement involving defense cuts is one that, along with his GOP colleagues in both the Senate

and Congress, Senator McCain supported and helped create. It begs the question of why these Senators aren’t instead on tour to apologize for their self-imposed debacle.

The problem with this handwringing tour is that the defense spending cut these Senators now bemoan was put in place by the Republicans in Congress, and it was avoidable. Last summer, the GOP held the debt ceiling vote hostage in order to force a deal with the President and the Democrats in Congress to cut deficit spending, something GOP leaders seemed unconcerned with during the previous ten years of record spending. As Democrats in Congress offered key non-defense domestic cuts as a compromise, Republicans were unwilling to sacrifice any of their own priorities. President Obama recommended a slight increase in taxes to the wealthiest Americans as part of the GOP’s show of a good faith compromise, but rather than entertain raising taxes on the wealthiest community the GOP submitted cuts to defense spending. It was their choice, not the President’s or the Congressional Democrats, to place cuts to defense spending on the line rather than raise taxes on the wealthy.

The defense cuts the GOP proposed would come on top of the precisely calculated and measured spending cuts that the Pentagon had put forward to President Obama before the debt ceiling debate started. For obvious reasons the Pentagon is reeling at the additional cuts the GOP offered in lieu of tax increases in their debt ceiling showdown, and now Senators McCain, Graham and Ayotte are on a tour of swing states to blame the President for a mess of their own creation.

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If the GOP had kept our “country first” and done their job honestly instead of pursuing their stated goal of making Mr. Obama a “one-term President,” a reasonable compromise could have been reached. Instead, we’re now witnessing Republican Senators wasting our tax dollars to tour the countryside for purely partisan purposes.

Kim Meuse Portsmouth, NH § Our “Defaulting” Rep. Guinta To the Editor: We are approaching the oneyear anniversary of the debt limit fiasco. Congressman Guinta was a fan of letting us default on our bills, telling us that we could just choose which bills to pay and default on the rest; no harm done.

His recklessness was astounding. Last July, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned House Republican leadership not to play brinksmanship games with raising the debt limit, saying, “Failure to increase the statutory debt limit in a timely fashion could have significant and long-lasting negative impact on the U.S. economy.”

They were right.

After teetering on the edge of the cliff, Frank Guinta and other Tea Party Republicans finally backed off, but not before damaging the economy.

In a crisis engineered by House Republicans, Speaker Boehner refused to increase the debt limit, and consumer confidence plummeted faster than during the economic crisis in late 2008.

Businesses lost confidence and dramatically reduced hiring for the next four months. Our credit rating was downgraded, the stock Murph’s Fortnightly Quote “ … you didn’t get here solely on your own … also cheer the parents, coaches and community.”

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market crashed, and it took a full year for confidence to recover.

Two University of Pennsylvania economists [Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, of the Wharton School] analyzed the impact of the debt limit debate, calling it an “act of economic sabotage” and concluding that it “almost derailed the recovery.” They said, “Despite the rebound in job growth, employment is likely still below where it would otherwise have been.”

Mr. Guinta and other House Republicans who pulled this dangerous partisan stunt to deliberately sabotage the recovery are deeply unpatriotic and don’t deserve reelection.

Herb Moyer Exeter, NH § Kulla v. Gallace To the Editor: Another letter by Marjorie Gallace in which she reinvents history and displays bias such that the editor questioned her suggestion “that Israel should not be allowed to exist.”

Unable to challenge her battery of distortions in a single letter I’ll touch on one item — the new anti-Semitism. The new anti-Semitism doesn’t publicly proclaim a desire to bring about a second Holocaust or to subject Jews to mass murderer or annihilation.

Even Gallace is careful on that account. Her hatred, and that of More Hate Mail, &c. to page six

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Page 6 - The New Hampshire Gazette - Friday, August 10, 2012

Northcountry Chronicle

Return to Brigadoon

by William Marvel

I

don’t think my father ever attended a reunion of his Kennett High School class, although he survived his graduation by seven decades. I haven’t been to many of my own, for that matter. I had promised by best friend from the class of 1967 that I would attend the 40th reunion, but we had just sent our more talkative Kennett graduate out into the world about six weeks before, and the house had become so quiet that I fell into a summer-long reverie.

When I roused from it, the reunion was long past.

Growing up in Conway when the population hovered near 3000, I tended to hear a lot about my father’s days at Kennett, when he starred in or captained the championship Kennett basketball and football teams of the 1920s. The pictures of those teams still hung in the halls then, four decades later, with him sitting or standing

front-and-center among babyfaced teammates who all parted their hair in the middle. Almost all of those boys had grown by then into men I knew, and who knew me. It was impossible for most of us to get away with any misbehavior where there might be witnesses, because they were sure to recognize the culprits and know where to find their fathers, if they didn’t take us in hand themselves. Back then, the interconnectedness of our community felt permanent and inescapable so much so that escape from it seemed almost desirable, to a 15or 16-year-old.

Since then, our town has become something ugly and alien, teeming with arrogant, self-obsessed strangers of transient proclivities. Economic opportunities seem only slightly more abundant than they did half a century ago, and perhaps they are even less so when calculated against the greater population. The most satisfac-

tory local employment these days, in fact, appears to be provided by the municipality. New cultural amenities offer some solace, but they often struggle to survive financially in a brazenly commercial environment that glorifies and supports more pedestrian pursuits. Classmates of mine who followed careers within visiting distance of this place often remark distastefully on Conway: it seems to be mainly those who have been absent for decades who express a desire to return.

For those of us who never really left our home town, the change has been so gradual that is has usually been easier to overlook, except during periods of exponential growth like the one we currently face. Even the more reclusive of us encounter each other so often that a reunion smacks of redundancy. The concept of high school and college classes holding fifth- and tenth-year reunions has always struck me as reflective of a

refusal to grow up and get on with life, and I ignored all my Kennett reunions until 1992, when a fair percentage of our 133 graduates showed up. To some degree I dreaded the reminder of my angst-ridden days as a physically awkward and socially inept adolescent, especially since those deficiencies proved to be permanent, but everyone I saw there seemed much more understanding about such things at 43 than they had at 18 — or perhaps my own perspective had changed a little.

The 2012 reunion — both the general alumni reunion at the Fryeburg fairgrounds and our own class klatch afterward — turned out to be especially appealing. An involuntary camaraderie links those whose mention of school conjures an image of the same Greek Revival portico. At the fairgrounds I met a woman whose father had attended Kennett with mine, and there were a couple of women who had been

freshmen the year my father was a senior, who knew the same headmaster and some of the teachers he often mentioned.

The alumni dinner probably attracted the largest assemblage of people to be found on earth who remember such esoterica as the location of Stubby Knox’s Tydol station, Shaw’s Pharmacy, Thurston’s Meat Market, or the Bijou Theater.

I was a little sorry to have to leave before the alumni dinner, but our private class gathering coincided with it. The fairgrounds itself stands as the last communal tribute to a vibrant agricultural life that is now flickering out, and many of the people who filled the fair building that day brought with them the shadows and memories of a bright, green world we once thought eternal. For a fleeting hour it almost seemed as though we had our town back, even if we had to step into another state to have it happen.

MoreMash Notes, Hate Mail, And Other Correspondence, from Page Five some others, is aimed against the State of Israel which represents all that is evil in the world and is the main violator of human rights and guilty of virtually every other abuse that can be conceived. The leaders and instigators of the new anti-Semitism unfortunately are concentrated on the political left.

Its most active and vocal spokespeople being found in our most prestige universities and even includes a fair number of Jewish professors and other “intellectuals,” not just in the U.S. but even in Israel.

They call for the abolition of Israel outright, although they do not tell us what they would do with the over five million Israeli Jews. Presumably they would be

left to the tender mercies of the Arabs who, based on their rhetoric, would have no greater joy than to emulate or perhaps even to “improve” on the Nazi model.

With the possible exception of Carthage during the Punic Wars, 2,500 years ago, no country in recorded history, has ever been threatened with extinction. Israel has allowed itself to be pressured into many concessions to those who are sworn to destroy it.

Of course, not everybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite.

The actions of Israel, just as the actions of any other nation, are subject to examination and criticism. But the viciousness, volume, and consistency of the criticism against Israel is such that it’s dif-

The New Hampshire Gazette

ficult to be considered as anything but anti-Semitism.

Overt vilification of America has been muted. It’s somewhat dangerous to be too outspoken against the U.S., but Israel, seen as the satrap and the handmaiden of the U.S. in the Middle East, is an easy target.

Mike Kulla Pleasant Valley, NY § Demagoguery Does Damage To the Editor: Sarah Palin misrepresented the details of the Affordable Care Act and repeated the term “death panels” as a purely political attack on the bill. So what, you may say, that’s politics!

In fact, her misrepresentation

had a serious negative effect: an important benefit for seniors and terminally ill individuals was dropped from the final version. The [original] bill called for Medicare to pay physicians to counsel patients on the benefits of living wills and advanced directives which record their wishes on end of life decisions. Where tested this practice has achieved all the benefits expected.

Many terminally ill patients endure a painful, undignified and extremely expensive departure because they cannot communicate their wishes or did not do so prior to becoming ill. Most patients, when asked, want to die at home or in a hospice not hooked up to all kinds of machines which could

bankrupt the family. (A Harvard study found that 62 percent of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses). Palin’s sound bite, a political winner, was and is completely untrue and was a loser for terminally ill patients, their families, and our health care system.

Palin, undeterred by the facts is at it again. Now she claims that the concept of best practices sharing is a “death panel.” The panel of doctors and healthcare professionals was created by the bill to identify the best medical practices across the country and publicize them so others can adopt them to prevent errors, improve care and reduce costs. A win, win, win, win for patients, Medicare, families and society.

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Friday, August 10, 2012 - The New Hampshire Gazette - Page 7

Sandy Weill's Apt Epitaph: Pigs Fly

by Jim Hightower hy isn’t Sandy Weill treated as a crook? He not only violated the law, but arrogantly flaunted it. Yet the system treats the criminal acts of Wall Street Royals like him as the by-product of “financial innovation.” Far from criminal, you see, Weill simply suffers from Narcissistic Avariciousness Disorder.

NAD prompted Weill in the

1990s to create Citigroup, the Wall Street conglomerate that wired your and my bank deposits to reckless deal-making by global speculators. At the time, his toobig-to-fail model directly violated the Glass-Steagall Act, passed in 1933 to prevent another Depression. But in 1999, Weill got Congress to repeal that act, thus legalizing his house of cards that made him a billionaire — before it crashed on our economy in

2008.

But having NAD means never having to say “mea culpa,” much less “I’m sorry.” So, while Weill now says that Glass-Stegall should be reinstated, he still insists that he was right to repeal it at the time — and that he’s not responsible for any of the consequential pain that Americans are suffering.

Indeed, he’s even playing the victim, wailing recently that “Our

world hates bankers.” No, Sandy, the world hates greed and selfaggrandizement. You are, after all, the guy who has kept a four-footwide wood etching of yourself in your office, grandiosely titling it: “The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall.”

Yet, the clueless bankster who shattered that glass so he could reach in and help himself to an immense fortune, now wants us to remember him as a pious reformer.

But remember this: Just weeks after American taxpayers ponied up $45 billion to bail out his once-haughty bank, the narcissistic Weill commandeered a Citigroup jet to give him a free ride to a Mexican vacation resort. This act of arrogance led a New York Post headline that will be Weill’s eternal epitaph: “Pigs Fly.” Copyright 2012 by Jim Hightower & Associates. Contact Laura Ehrlich (laura@jimhightower.com).

Let’s hope Palin’s irresponsible demagoguery and rhetoric doesn’t turn a very successful practice, used in business for decades, into a lose, lose, lose, lose.

Dave Potter N. Hampton, NH § Guinta Surpassed Himself To the Editor: Congressman Frank Guinta has surpassed himself. Not content to vote (in vain) 33 times to abolish Obamacare and to vote to end Social Security protection for millions of seniors, he has been ignoring the real work that needs to be done by Congress to create jobs and cut spending. His incompetence and hypocrisy are astounding. Last week, Guinta feigned outrage and disappointment that the House was planning to adjourn without addressing the many problems left unsolved, and then promptly voted to go home for a five-week vacation, leaving the work undone!

Because of his poor record in Congress, Frank Guinta is trying his best to get re-elected by distancing himself from the dysfunctional Congress and pretending that he isn’t really the Congressman, but just a candidate running against Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter. Wait a minute. Shea-Porter is not our member of Congress. According

to stories in the Concord Monitor, on the website www.nhinsider. com, and voters throughout the district, Guinta’s campaign has been making robocalls to the voters in his district alleging that she is the incumbent Congressperson and that he is the challenger.

Of course, it’s easy for Frank Guinta to try to fool the voters into thinking he hasn’t been in Congress for the last two years.

Neither he nor the rest of the Republicans in the House have done anything for the American people since he was elected. Don’t be fooled by Guinta. Vote for Carol Shea-Porter for Congress on November 6.

Lenore Patton Hampton, NH § Frank Guinta? Honest?

To the Editor: If, over the past two years, you have been wondering if Congressman Frank Guinta is really being honest with his constituents, here is the answer you have been waiting for: Last week, Congressman Frank Guinta helped pay for an extremely deceptive political advertisement to “replace” Carol Shea-Porter. Of course, the former Congresswoman is no longer in Congress and Mr. Guinta, of all people (her successor), should be well aware of this. Apparently

our current Congressman is not proud of his record. After voting with Tea Party extremists for the last two years, he is now trying to mislead the public into thinking he is not the incumbent in next November’s Congressional election!

Apparently, this blatantly false political ad was not enough.

He followed up with an even more misleading robo-call that went like this: “Hi, this is Frank Guinta, candidate for Congress, running against Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter. I’m running to end the broken culture of Washington….” What is wrong with this picture? The robo-call made it sound as if Carol Shea-Porter is the current Congresswoman and because “Washington is broken,” we need to elect Frank Guinta to fix the problem. Hello… Mr. Guinta, you are part of the problem!

Our Congressman Frank Guinta has decided he would have a better chance of getting re-elected if he could erase his Tea-Party extremist Congressional record of the past two years. Apparently he has decided that his best shot at re-election is pretending that he does not sit in Washington, and that former Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter does!

How stupid does he think New Hampshire voters are? Not only

are these tactics blatantly dishonest and underhanded, but they are an insult to his constituents.

Beth Olshansky Durham, NH § Why Do They Hate Us? To the Editor: The list of questions we must each ask ourselves before we vote in November is virtually unending. I have at least a dozen concerns and I’m having a wearisome time prioritizing them. Most certainly, extending the wars in the Mideast is near the top of the list. It’s bad enough that the present administration hasn’t ended our involvement there, a change of presidents could be even more disastrous.

Mitt Romney is very apt to follow a harder line of combativeness in that region in order to (1) support the policies of his long time friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and (2) to appease the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, trying to filch a substantial portion of the Jewish vote away from Obama. A Romney White House is certain to intensify the rhetoric against Iran, maybe even to the point of military intervention. Regardless of who is in the White House, our foreign policy will continue to be dictated to us by Tel Aviv, further escalating our long-term,

ill-advised and unproductive involvement in the Arab world.

I don’t blame Iran for wanting nuclear weapons (or any neighbor of Israel for that matter). Israel has shown itself an aggressor nation with a strong penchant to attack anyone (including the United States — which it has done) if it deems it in their best interest to do so.

Mitt Romney has also promised to increase financial aid to the Jewish state, which means military aid. Obama recently released $70 million to help Israel expand production of a short-range rocket defense system which should make their neighbors more nervous than they already are.

We give Israel freely while asking little in return. In the meantime the Palestinians continue to suffer under Israeli policies denying them opportunities to live decently and embrace a more peaceful position as neighbors. The last President to truly pursue the cause of peace in the Middle East was Jimmie Carter 35 years ago.

Since then our policies have been more disruptive and destructive than helpful. So when you think to ask yourself “why do they hate us so much,” you might start with our unconditional support of Israel at the sacrifice of the rest of the Middle East.

David L. Snell Dillsboro, NC

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Page 8 - The New Hampshire Gazette - Friday, August 10, 2012

Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes) Portsmouth, arguably the first town in this country not founded by religious extremists, is bounded on the north and east by the Piscataqua River, the second, third, or fourth fastest-flowing navigable river in the country, depending on

who you choose to believe.

The Piscataqua’s ferocious current is caused by the tide, which, in turn, is caused by the moon. The other player is a vast sunken valley — Great Bay — about ten miles upriver. Twice a day, the moon

drags about seventeen billion gallons of seawater — enough to fill 2,125,000 tanker trucks — up the river and into Great Bay. This creates a roving hydraulic conflict, as incoming sea and the outgoing river collide. The skirmish line

moves from the mouth of the river, up past New Castle, around the bend by the old Naval Prison, under Memorial Bridge, past the tugboats, and on into Great Bay. This can best be seen when the tide is rising.

Twice a day, too, the moon lets all that water go. All the seawater that just fought its way upstream goes back home to the ocean. This is when the Piscataqua earns its title for xth fastest current. Look for the red buoy, at the upstream

end of Badger’s Island, bobbing around in the current. It weighs several tons, and it bobs and bounces in the current like a cork.

The river also has its placid moments, around high and low tides.

When the river rests, its tugboats

and bridges work their hardest.

Ships coming in laden with coal, oil, and salt do so at high tide, for more clearance under their keels.

They leave empty, riding high in the water, at low tide, to squeeze under Memorial Bridge.

Sunday, August 12

Monday, August 13

Tuesday, August 14

Wednesday, August 15

Thursday, August 16

Friday, August 17

Saturday, August 18

2004—New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Tom McGreevy admits he’s been sleeping with a man who is not his wife, then resigns.

2000—The Russian submarine Kursk is sunk in the Barents Sea, probably by its own torpedo; 112 crew members perish.

1992—The U.S., Canada, and Mexico announce that NAFTA has been finalized.

1985—The tail falls off a JAL 747 slightly damaged seven years earlier but badly repaired. Many of the 524 aboard survive the crash, but only four are rescued due to delays.

1955—Ike raises the minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 per hour.

1953—Russia tests an H-bomb.

1935—Babe Ruth plays his last game at Fenway.

1898—The U.S. annexes Hawaii and makes peace with Spain.

1865—Joseph Lister introduces a new refinement to the art of surgery—disinfectant.

1827—William Blake is released from his earthly form.

1676—John Alderman, a Christianized “Praying Indian,” shoots and kills Metacomet, aka King Philip. Alderman is awarded Metacomet’s head and one hand. He later sells the head for 30 shillings to the town of Plymouth, where it’s kept atop a stake for 25 years.

Metacom’s wife and child are sold to West Indian slave traders.

2007—George W. Bush’s brain announces its resignation.

2002—“I promise you I will listen to what has been said here,” says George W. Bush at the President’s Economic Forum in Waco, TX, “even though I wasn’t here.”

1980—Cuban refugees hijack an Air Florida jetliner to Cuba.

1971—Attorney General John Mitchell announces that there will be no grand jury investigation of the May 4 shootings at Kent State.

1966—“In two or three years, or even before” says S. Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, “the Communists will accept defeat.”

1961—Construction of the Berlin Wall begins.

1948—Satchel Paige throws his first complete game for the Cleveland Indians. The 42 year old gets a 5-0 shutout.

1925—Baltimore Chamber of Commerce accuses H.L. Mencken of damaging the city’s trade with the south due to his reporting of the Scopes “monkey” trial.

1906—African-American soldiers raid Brownsville, TX to avenge racial insults. One white man is killed, two are wounded.

1899—David Terry, former Chief Justice of the CA Supreme Court, assaults U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. Terry is shot dead

by Field’s bodyguard, a U.S. Marshal later cleared of wrongdoing.

2003—Untrimmed trees and a software bug in Ohio knock out power to 55 million people from Hudson’s Bay to New Jersey.

1999—George W. Bush wins an Iowa presidential straw poll where, in traditional Republican fashion, you could vote as many times as you want for $25 a pop.

1966—“As long as the United States and our brave allies are in the field,” says Lyndon B. Johnson, “[a Communist takeover of South Vietnam] is impossible.”

1966—One day after Texas radio station KLUE-AM holds a public bonfire to burn Beatle records, its broadcast tower is hit by lightning.

1945—Japan surrenders, ending World War II. 1936—In Owensboro, KY, at 5:30 a.m, 15,000 watch as Rainey Bethea becomes the last person publicly hanged in America. Arthur Hash, the assigned executioner, is so drunk a deputy sheriff has to pull the lever.

1923—“Felix the Cat” debuts.

1912—U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua to “protect American interests.”

1901—In Fairfield, CT, Gustave Whitehead pilots an acetylenepowered aircraft about half a mile.

1862—Abe Lincoln becomes the 1st President to meet a delegation of African-Americans, whom he offends by recommending they remove to Africa.

1980—The FAA announces an increase in sky marshals on commercial flights to stem the rising tide of hijackings.

1977—Ohio State’s Dr. Jerry R. Ehman records a 72-second burst representing the best evidence yet of intelligent life in the universe.

It’s gotta be somewhere.

1971—Richard Nixon reneges on the U.S.’s promise to redeem dollars with gold.

1969—Half a million half-naked, drugged-up baby boomers begin a three-day mud wallow in Bethel, NY. 1966—The New York Herald Tribune, founded as the Tribune by NH-born Horace Greeley 125 years earlier, succumbs to a strike called by a labor union also founded by Greeley.

1945—To celebrate the end of WW II, San Franciscans riot.

1943—About 35,000 Allied forces land on Kiska, one of the Rat Islands in the Aleutians. Though unopposed—the Japanese had evacuated two weeks earlier—300 end up missing in action or killed by friendly fire.

1935—Wiley Post and Will Rogers perish in a plane crash at Point Barrow, AK. 1877—Thomas Edison records Mary Had a Little Lamb. For a brief period, it not only tops the charts, it is the chart.

2002—In an Army Times article, the commander of “Red” forces in the recent “Millennium Challenge” war games charges they were “almost entirely scripted to ensure a [U.S. military] win.”

1980—Refugees hijack three jetliners to get back to Cuba.

1977—Elvis dies ... we think.

1976—Two college dropouts named Steve form the Apple Computer company in a garage.

1962—Cuba outlaws anarchy.

1960—USAF Colonel Joseph Kittinger exits a balloon-lofted gondola 19.4 miles over New Mexico, falls for 4.5 minutes, reaches 714 m.p.h., and lands safely.

1951—Hundreds in Pont-SaintEsprit, France suddenly seem to go mad. Ergotism is blamed at first.

Later evidence points to LSD administered by the CIA. 1938—Hell hounds catch up to Robert Johnson.

1920—Poet Charles Bukowski is born in Andernach, Germany.

1920—Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman fails to see a pitch from the Yankees’ Carl Mays.

Hit in the head, he dies the next day.

1890—Myron “Grim” Natwick, creator of “Betty Boop,” is born.

1819—British cavalry and Hussars attack a political meeting at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, killing fifteen people.

2008—Maudie Hopkins, widow of Confederate Civil War veteran William M. Cantrell, dies. They married in 1934. He was 86, she 19.

2002—U.S. Generals admit that the U.S. assisted Iraq during its war against Iran, knowing that Saddam Hussein would “use chemical weapons against his own people.”

1988—A Pakistani C-130 explodes in mid-air killing President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. General Pervez Musharraf, scheduled to be on-board, misses the flight.

1988—J. Danforth Quayle informs the Republican National Convention, “in 1988 the question is whether we’re going forward to tomorrow or whether we’re going to go past to the back!”

1965—South of Chu Lai, U.S. Marines begin Operation Starlite, the first major U.S. ground offensive of the Vietnam war.

1962—LA County Coroner declares Marilyn Monroe a suicide.

1918—In Chicago, IWW members go on trial; 95 will be imprisoned for up to 20 years.

1910—A New York sweatshop opens despite a strike. Women strikers demolish the factory.

1901—During an excursion around New York on the side-wheeler General Slocum, some of a party of 900 intoxicated anarchists from Paterson, NJ attempt unsuccessfully to take control of the ship.

1996—The U.S. prison population hits 1,600,000, twice what it was 10 years earlier.

1989—Malcolm Forbes throws himself a $2 million birthday party, flying 800 guests to his castle in Tangiers.

1959—Sailors aboard the U.S.S. Wasp bring a severe fire under control, barely averting the need to flood the ship’s nuclear weapons storage space.

1933—Germany introduces the Volksempfänger, or Peoples’ Radio.

Built to Joseph Goebbels’ specifications, it receives only local (Nazicontrolled) broadcasts.

1782—William Blake, poet and self-publisher, marries Catherine Sophia Boucher. He later teaches her to read.

1634—Urbain Grandier, a French priest whose sexual prowess earned him accusations from a scorned Mother Superior, is “waterboarded,” then burned at the stake for witchcraft.

1590—Virginia Dare becomes the first missing white girl in the New World.

1587—Virginia Dare becomes the first white child born in the New World.

1503—Death of Pope Alexander VI, host of the infamous Ballet of the Chestnuts, whose entertainments included fifty naked prostitutes writhing on the floor.

8:04

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Sunday, August 19

Monday, August 20

Tuesday, August 21

Wednesday, August 22

Thursday, August 23

Friday, August 24

Saturday, August 25

1999—The FBI puts “Whitey” Bulger on its Most-Wanted List.

1953—CIA-backed royalists in Iran overthrow Premier Mossadegh.

1951—St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck sends Eddie Gaedel in to pinch-hit for Frank Saucier.

Gaedel is 43 inches tall.

1942—An Allied force of 6,000 lands at Dieppe, France. Sixty percent are killed, wounded, or captured, but planner Lord Mountbatten’s censors win the PR battle.

1812—“Old Ironsides” defeats the Guerriere.

1791—Benjamin Banneker, “the sable genius,” sends a copy of his just-published almanac to Thomas Jefferson with an admonition to practice what he preaches about the rights of all men.

1692—“Witches” George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, John Proctor, and John Willard are hanged in Salem Village.

1599—The Chief of the Acoma pueblo, asked why he will not accept baptism before he is burned to death by Spanish Conquistadors, says it is because “I would go to the Christian heaven and meet even more of you people.”

1503—The body of Pope Alexander VI, dead but one day, is displayed to the public: swollen, putrescent, and “without any form or likeness of humanity.”

1986—Drug addict Randy Woolls helps Texas kill him by finding a good vein.

1983—Returning to the Philippines under assurances there will be no reprisals for his dissidence, Benigno Aquino is shot dead as soon as he leaves his plane.

1974—The House of Representatives votes 412-3 to recommend Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon.

1969—“Tired of playing for people who clap for all the wrong reasons,” Frank Zappa disbands the Mothers of Invention.

1965—Keene, NH seminary student and civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels is murdered in Nayneville, AL. An all-white jury acquits his killer.

1940—In Mexico, Stalinist agent Ramon Mercader attacks Leon Trotsky with an ice ax. Trotsky tells his guards, “Do not kill him. This man has a story to tell.”

1910—Above the Sheepshead Bay racetrack in New York, Lt. Jacob E. Fickel pulls the trigger on the first gun shot from an airplane.

1904—Miners seize the town of Cripple Creek, CO, and deport town officials.

1619—Jamestown, VA gets its first group of 20 African slaves.

1191—Richard the Lion Hearted’s troops slaughter 3,000 Arabs in the Holy Land.

1976—Two day occupation of Seabrook, NH nuke site begins.

1963—Ngô Đình Nhu’s secret police kill hundreds of Buddhist protestors across Vietnam — in defense of democracy, to be sure.

1962—CBS’s “Evening News” reports on the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, Alan Abel’s most successful hoax.

1946—At Los Alamos, Physicist Harry K. Daghlian accidentally drops a tungsten carbide brick causing a plutonium core to give him a lethal burst of radiation.

1927—Supreme Court “Justice” Louis Brandeis refuses to hear a request for a stay of execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

1920—Birth of Christopher Robin Milne, who later said, “[I]t seemed to me, almost, that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders.”

1863—William A. Quantrill and several hundred of his Raiders attack Lawrence, KS and kill hundreds of men, women, and children.

1841—John Hampson patents the Venetian blind.

1831—Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Virginia.

1791—Slaves revolt in Santo Domingo.

1621—A widow and eleven girls in Virginia are ordered sold for 120 pounds of tobacco each.

2002—A Bush Administration spokesperson announces that as punishment for selling SCUD missiles, North Korea, with which we do not trade anyway, will suffer trade sanctions.

2001—The Bush Administration, having jacked up expenses and slashed taxes, announces a baffling decrease in the federal surplus.

1991—When Derick Lynn Peterson’s heart continues to beat for ten minutes after his electrocution, Virginia officials repeat the process.

1976—Police arrest 179 at Seabrook, NH anti-nuke rally.

1972—Almost 900 protesters are arrested in Miami during the Republican National Convention.

1953—The last prisoners leave Devil’s Island.

1952—The Justice Department sues four big U.S. oil companies for overcharging for oil shipped to Europe under the Marshall Plan.

1900—Rioters in Akron push the world’s first police car into the Ohio Canal.

1893—Birth of Dorothy Parker. At 70, she wrote, “If I had any decency, I’d be dead. Most of my friends are.”

1787—John Fitch tests a steamboat on the Delaware River.

1791—Slave revolt begins in Haiti, which becomes a free black country in 1804. U.S. recognizes its sovereignty 61 years later.

2001—French stuntman Terry Do snags a parasail on the Statue of Liberty and dangles from it for 45 minutes before being rescued.

1994—British musicians Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, aka “KLF,” burn a million British pounds worth of currency.

1971—Future Associate Justice Lewis Powell writes to his pal, the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, arguing that the right wing needs to fund its own think tanks. Before long, they do.

1968—In Chicago, the Youth International Party nominates a pig for president.

1944—An American B-24 Liberator crashes into an English school and explodes, liberating 71 people from this mortal coil.

1927—Bostonians electrocute Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

1784—Settlers gather at Jonesboro, in what is now Tennessee, to establish the state of Franklin.

1724—Jeremiah Moulton, who saw his parents scalped 32 years earlier, leads a raid on Norridgewock, killing seven Abenaki chiefs and the French priest, Sebastian Rasle.

1305—For rebelling against His Majesty King Edward, William Wallace is hanged, cut down while alive, disembowelled, then killed by beheading. His corpse is quartered, and his head displayed on a pike.

2001—Due to a fuel leak, Air Transat Flight 236, with 306 souls aboard, runs out of fuel over the Atlantic, 90 miles from the Azores.

Pilots glide the plane to safety.

1980—Solidarity is founded in Gdansk.

1970—Grad student Robert Fassnacht is killed and three others are injured when peaceniks blow up a physics lab at the U. of Wisconsin.

1967—The floor of the NY Stock Exchange erupts into bedlam as capitalists scramble for 300 onedollar bills dropped by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

1960—Temperature drops to minus 126.9 at Vostok Station; lowest ever recorded on Earth.

1853—In Saratoga Springs, NY, George Crum prepares the first batch of potato chips.

1827—The Mechanics Gazette, first U.S. labor paper, is published in Philadelphia. By 1832 there are 68 labor newspapers.

1814—The British march unopposed into Washington and set fire to the White House and the Library of Congress.

1572—French Catholic mobs massacre thousands of Huguenots.

Learning of the slaughter, Pope Gregory is so pleased he orders a day of thanksgiving.

1456—In Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg finishes printing the Bible.

410—Visigoths sack Rome.

1999—Six years later the FBI admits tear gas canisters it fired into David Koresh’s compound in Waco were incendiary, but denies they started the fatal fire.

1995—In Athens, GA, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Asylum) announces new policy to win the drug war: executing “27 or 30 or 35 people at one time.”

1985—The White House confirms that President Reagan was an FBI informant during the late 1940’s while he was head of the Screen Actors Guild.

1967—American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell is shot dead at an Arlington, VA shopping mall by a former aide.

1950—Harry S Truman orders the U.S. Army to take over the nation’s railroads to prevent a strike.

1945—Ho Chi Minh proclaims the Republic of Vietnam.

1945—Baptist missionary and U.S. spy John Birch is shot by Chinese Communists.

1925—Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is founded by A. Philip Randolph.

1921—Ten thousand striking coal miners square off against coal companies and their stooges in the Battle of Blair Mountain, WV. 1893—“Colored Peoples’ Day” at the Columbian Exposition.

1875—Matthew Webb becomes the first man to swim the English Channel.

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“Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea.”

— Pythagoras (580-500 BC)

Therapeutic Massage, Aromatherapy & Bodywork 150 Congress Street Portsmouth, NH 603-766-FISH

Jill Vranicar• Kate Leigh

16 Market Square, Portsmouth, NH

(603) 436-6006

Next to City Hall in Downtown Dover, NH 3 Hale Street j (603) 742-1737

Since 2011

7 Commercial Alley ~ 766-1616 www.portsmouthsaltcellar.com