How can the most fucked-over people on the planet get even more fucked over?

Barack Obama, pledging “a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support recovery in Haiti,” asks for help from Bill Clinton and... George W. Bush. Because when you think swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support recovery from a natural disaster, you think George W. Bush.

Criminal Charge of the Day, Chinese Version

Chinese people have been lighting candles and leaving flowers outside Google’s Beijing hq. Evidently to do so is to commit the crime of “illegal flower donation.”

Silent

Two things have rendered me speechless by their sheer overwhelming, astonishing awfulness: the earthquake in Haiti, and the decision by the judge in the trial of Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion loon who assassinated Dr. Tiller, that he can argue that Tiller needed killing.

Today -100: January 14, 1910: Of chairwomen and the palmiest days of sacerdotal ambiguity

In Philadelphia as in NY, the shirtwaist strike is being supported by women suffragists, who are joining picket lines and going bail for arrested picketers.

A letter (I wonder, by the way, when the NYT stopped printing anonymous letters) congratulates the paper on being the first to use the term “chairwoman,” in an article about a suffrage meeting.

Prime Minister Asquith, in one of his last speeches before the British general election, accuses opposition leader Arthur Balfour of being wishy-washy about tariff reform (protectionism), which is popular with some parts of the Conservative Party but not so much with the general public, which doesn’t want to see food prices rise. At least I think that’s what Asquith is saying: “The oracle has spoken [referring to Balfour’s speech]. What is its message? Not Delphi or Dodona in the palmiest days of sacerdotal ambiguity ever gave forth a more uncertain sound.”

The NYT disparages the Liberals’ social policies, claiming that Britain is “overtaxed to pay old-age pensions” and can’t afford the proposed system of unemployment insurance (being superintended for the moment by Winston Churchill, of all people, at the Board of Trade). The NYT says that Asquith rules a coalition of “Socialists, laborites and Irish Nationalists. No promise has yet been made to provide husbands for suffragettes.” The editorial also refers, somewhat more fairly, to “the obviously insincere Liberal promise of home rule for Ireland.”

Today -100: January 13, 1910: Of speedsters, white slaves and dead heads

Bills in the NY Assembly would require autoists to have driver’s licenses and set speed limits of 15 mph city, 25 in outlying areas of cities, and 30 in the country. A second bill proposes lower speed limits.

The House passes the Mann Act.

Headline of the Day -100: “Charles Head Falls Dead.”

Getting better

Headline of the Day: For weeks, Nigerians have been demanding that their president make some sort of public appearance. Umaru Yar’Adua has been getting medical treatment for a heart condition in Saudi Arabia since November. Today he re-emerged, giving a radio interview to the BBC. The London Times headline: “I’m Not Dead, I’m Getting Better’ Nigerian President Tells People Back Home.” For the record, that’s not a direct quote from Yar’Adua (although he did say “I’m getting better), that’s someone trying to sneak in a Monty Python reference.

Misc

Readers in Colorado: Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is considering running for governor. He should be encouraged, because of the name. Say it with me: Hickenlooper Hickenlooper Hickenlooper.

Why the Prop 8 trial needs to be on YouTube: Anti-equality lawyer questions Harvard history professor Nancy Cott about whether Jesus Christ advocated monogamy.

Diplomacy, Avigdor Lieberman style

In response to criticism by the Turkish prime minister of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel said that “The Turks are the last ones who can preach morality to Israel” and the Israeli Foreign Ministry gave the Turkish ambassador a lower seat than Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon during a meeting which Israel called in order to complain about a Turkish television drama that portrayed members of the Shin Beth as child kidnappers. At the pre-meeting photo op Ayalon told the photographers, in Hebrew so that the ambassador wouldn’t understand, “Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair and we are in the higher ones, that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling.”


Turkey called Lieberman and his deputy “adolescent youths.” Lieberman is trying to humiliate not only Turkey but also Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who stopped Ariel University Center, located in the West Bank settlement where Lieberman lives, being accredited as a university. Lieberman wants to get a scheduled trip by Barak to Turkey canceled.

News from that liberal gay bastion, Salt Lake City

Utah state Rep. Christine Johnson, an out lesbian who represents Salt Lake City, is pregnant, acting as surrogate to a gay male couple prohibited from adopting under Utah law.

Today -100: January 12, 1910: Of Ballinger and Pinchot

A slow news day, so it’s time for some catch-up. The intra-mural fight in the Republican Party is growing, with Taft and Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon and their conservative allies battling the progressive Republican followers of Roosevelt. The current battle field is an investigation into relations between the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service. When he came into office, Taft reversed Roosevelt’s order that public lands in Wyoming and Montana from which water-power could be exploited not be sold. Gifford Pinchot, the head of the Forest Service since TR created it in 1905, accused Taft’s Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger of favoring certain corporations in those sales (there’s another land scandal in Alaska). Taft fired Pinchot a week ago (-100). The House will investigate the controversy, but the “insurgent” Republicans allied with Democrats to strip Speaker Cannon of the power to appoint all the members of the investigating committee.

Foxy as a Crazy

Sarah “It’s God’s Plan” Palin signs on with Fox News. Boy, didn’t see that one coming.

CONTEST: Name her tv show. You know what she named her kids, so she clearly needs all the help she can get. Me first: “Too, Also.” “In What Respect, Charlie?” “The Tina Fey Can Just Go To Hell Hour.”

(Update: OK, Twitter got there first. They’ve got: Fancy Pundit Talkin’, Punditz, Are You Smarter Than a Tea Bagger?, The Rich Lowry is Touching Himself Hour, This Wink with Sarah Palin, You Don’t Betcha, Quittin’ Time.)

Happy 8th Birthday, Guantanamo Gulag!

And no one knows how to throw an appropriate party like Jon Stewart: tonight, he’s interviewing John Yoo on the Daily Show.

Criminal Charge of the Day, Iranian Edition

Several protesters have been charged with the capital crime of “warring against God” (moharebeh).

Today -100: January 11, 1910: Of patriotic butting in and contrary Marys

The widow of the recently deceased Rep. James M. Griggs (D-Georgia) has done what the NYT calls “something new in American political history,” naming her personal choice to succeed her husband in the special election, a Mr. McIntosh. While the paper says her action is not to be condemned on account of its unusualness, they do subtly imply, less than a week after her husband’s death, that she just wants to get into McIntosh’s pants: “We are not informed as to whether or not Mr. McIntosh is an eligible bachelor or widower, and we should courteously decline to make use of any information on that point if we possessed it. The practice of seeking a purely personal motive for a public action that attracts notice is reprehensible. ... But the widow’s candidate ought to have the support of the women folks, who must approve of her patriotic butting in, and the women of Georgia know how to influence voters.”

But evidently not enough, because (spoiler alert!), the election was actually won by a Mr. Seaborn Roddenbery,who spent the next three years, until he too died in office, working for a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage.

Nursery maids at the Nursery and Child’s Hospital (these are essentially interns, who will go on to become nursemaids in private homes) have gone on strike, demanding to be called “Miss” Whatever Their Name Is instead of just by their first name. The superintendent says they will not be allowed back “unless they get that foolishness out of their heads. ... We don’t want any contrary Marys here.”

An article the next day explains that nursemaids are paid about ¼ of what proper nurses, who are called Miss or Mrs., receive, and eat with the servants rather than with the family. Also, nurses’ aprons cover from the waist down, nursemaids’ extend to the shoulders.

Criminal Charge of the Day

The guy who caused all the trouble at Newark Airport by kissing his girlfriend is being charged with “defiant trespass.”

Today -100: January 10, 1910: Of footpads and impartial judges

Headline of the Day -100: “FOOTPADS ATTACK A BOY.” Evidently in 1910 they still had “footpads” in New Jersey.

The London Times reports on another election meeting disturbance. A woman was charged with being drunk and disturbing a Liberal meeting. The judge asked her what she objected to, adding, “You may be right, and if you are I’ll let you go.” Free trade, she said. He let her go.

Today -100: January 9, 1910: Of snuff films and opera

In France, someone with a movie camera filmed a guillotining of a child murderer, but the police seized the film and arrested the camera-man.

Headline of the Day -100: “Hotel Guests Demand Opera.”

Today -100: January 8, 1910: Of the limits of solidarity, cherry trees, and organized rowdies

Mrs. Belmont suggests to a meeting of women teachers called to consider how to help striking shirtwaist workers that all employed women in the NYC go on strike until the shirtwaist workers’ demands are met. Turns out that wasn’t quite what the teachers had in mind. Actually, many of the shirtwaist workers are themselves no longer on strike. Some of the employers have given in; the rest are still resisting the demand for closed shops.

The city of Tokyo gives 2,000 cherry trees to Mrs. Taft and the District of Columbia.

An editorial in the London Times on the disturbances at British election meetings claims that Tories are being shouted down “not by genuine ‘hecklers,’ but by organized rowdies”. Note the distinction: hostile questioning, or heckling (the quotation marks showing that the Scottish term was fairly new in England) of candidates was considered a legitimate part of the rough and tumble of campaigning, but not if it was organized or intended to prevent speech. The Times complains that Asquith was not repudiating such tactics. “If there is anything for which that party [the Liberals] is supposed to stand, it is the right of free speech, and especially free speech in elections. The howling down of speakers and breaking up of meetings is the suppression of free speech by force. ... Objections are a common and one might almost say regular feature of ordinary election meetings. ... Objectors who have nothing to say express their feelings by an occasional shout of dissent, those who have something to say ask questions; there may be a little cut-and-thrust but it is all orderly and in good part. No genuine audience spontaneously howls and whistles down a speaker or breaks up a meeting. The thing is got up and planned, if not paid for, by somebody”.

Great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust

Obama spoke today about the Underpants Bomber.

WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT FAILED TO DO: “our government failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America”. Not actually a “known terrorist” or even an unknown terrorist until after his attempted act of known terrorism.


STILL BRINGING RUNNING METAPHORS TO AN AIRPLANE WORLD: “In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary.” Nimble adversary? Dude set his leg on fire.

WHAT WE MUST COMMUNICATE CLEARLY TO MUSLIMS AROUND THE WORLD: “And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death –- including the murder of fellow Muslims –- while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” Alternately, instead of treating this as a communications problem, of Muslims failing to understand what nice guys we really are, we could actually stand with those who seek justice and progress instead of “communicating” that we supposedly do.


WHAT WE WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO: “but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.” That’s why we have scanners that show our genitalia.

WHAT NOW IS NOT A TIME FOR: “For now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship -- a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.” Yeah, that’s totally what’s gonna happen. Has Obama ever met us?


Anyway, it was a systemic failure and the buck stops with him, and connect the dots, people, the end.

Insert “pipe” joke here

There are two types of people in the world. Those who, when they see the headline “Man’s Penis Removed from Pipe” on the Daily Telegraph’s contents page, click through to find out a) if it was still connected to the man’s body, and b) just what sort of pipe we’re talking about,



and those do not feel any compulsion at all to click through. Which type are you, readers?

Me? Oh, I think you know which type I am.

The man is not named but is described as an “anxious man aged about 40 [who] gave hospital staff no explanation about how the pipe got stuck after he turned up on Tuesday morning.”

The State of the Union is Lost

Obama is considering giving the State of the Union Address on February 2nd, the day Lost was supposed to have had its season premiere, which is appropriate because, if I recall correctly, Oceanic Flight 815 was brought down by a Nigerian with explosives in his underpants.

DIY CONTEST: Pretend I’ve devised a clever contest combining in some way Lost and the SOTU, and provide an entry to that contest. For example, what cabinet positions might Obama name Hurley, Locke or Sawyer to? Or, LOST FANS WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE... Obama announces commission to investigate why the fuck there are polar bears on that island.

Today -100: January 7, 1910: Of federal income tax, negresses, fair fights and no fouling, and Starnright. Poor, poor Starnright.

NY Governor Charles Evans Hughes opposes the proposed 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, allowing the federal government to collect income taxes, largely because it will affect income from state and municipal bonds, placing “the borrowing capacity of State... at the mercy of the Federal taxing power”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Say Mrs. Horton’s a Negress.” William Horton, a plumber contractor in Harlem, is suing his 19-year-old wife for an annulment on the grounds that she told him she was of French and Spanish ancestry but is actually the daughter of a mulatto. She claims her father ran off when she was so young that she can’t remember him or what his skin color might have been. Testimony from her maternal grandmother, who says Edith Horton did know her father was a mulatto, has been taken.

British election meetings have continued to see rowdy behavior. One Tory MP, Sir William Bull, threatened to punch a heckler’s head. The heckler suggested he come done from the platform and try it. Bull did, and they had to be separated by the police. He said later, “This affair may clear the air, as Englishmen like a fair fight and no fouling.” Lloyd George called Balfour’s alarmist references to the possibility of war with Germany as the last resort of a desperate man, almost as bad as the sort of thing you’d expect from American politicians.

President Taft has bought a new horse, Starnright, which at 16 hands is believed capable of bearing the weight.

A pig and pony year

Today was Governor Terminator’s very last State of the State Address.

He opened with a heart-warming story, that simply must be quoted in full: “Now, I want to begin with a true story from which we can draw a worthwhile lesson. As you might guess, the Schwarzenegger household is something of a menagerie -- an Austrian bodybuilder, a TV journalist, four children, a dog, a normal goldfish, a hamster and so forth -- and in recent years we added a miniature pony and a pot-bellied pig. Now, it’s not unusual for me to look up from working on the budget or something and to find the pig and the pony standing right there in front of me and staring at me. Now, the dog’s food, which we keep in a canister with a screwed-on lid, sits on the top of the dog’s kennel. And the pony has now learned how to knock the canister off the top of the kennel and then he and the pig wedge it into the corner. Now, there’s this ridge on the lid of the canister and the pig with his snout pushes this ridge around and around until it loosens up and then they roll the canister around on the floor until the food spills all out. And then, of course, they go to town and they eat it. Now, I have no idea how they ever figured all of this out, to tell you the truth. I mean, it’s like humans figuring out how to create fire. But it is the greatest example of teamwork and I love it. It’s about teamwork. So one lesson to draw from the pig and the pony story is what we can accomplish when we work together. And last year we here in this room did some great, great work together. We had a pig and pony year.” He did not say who is the pig and who the pony in this scenario.

A LITERAL WAR: “For decades this state was in a literal war over water”.

WELL THAT’S CERTAINLY A COMPELLING ANSWER: “Because some people say ‘how can we afford these bonds in the current economic climate?’ I say, how can we not?”

IF HE CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WATER AND BLOOD, MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL JUST DRINK BOTTLED WATER UNTIL A DEMOCRAT IS GOVERNOR: “Our economy cannot grow without water. Our population cannot live without water. It is our state’s lifeblood.”

HE IS FOCUSING ON PRIORITIES. AND PRIORITIZING FOCUS. “If I had to summarize in one word our focus for the coming year, it would be the word ‘priorities.’”


STOP TAXING RICH PEOPLE!: “144,000 taxpayers pay almost 50 percent of all personal income taxes. Now, think about that -- 38 million Californians have to rely on 144,000 people for their schools, their fire protection, their health care, their public safety and so many other services. That makes absolutely no sense.”

YOU MEAN THE CENTURY WHEN WE STILL HAD JOBS AND HOUSES? “Now, here is what we need to accept. Our economy is 21st century and our tax system is 20th century. It is stuck in the wrong century.”

WHAT WE DO IN CALIFORNIA: “The Commission proposed major, radical reforms. Now, some people right away said they are too bold and thus they would be too hard to enact. Now, what do they mean too bold? Bold is what we do in California.” Wait, or is it blow we do in California?

AND OUR LOSS WOULD HAVE BEEN AUSTRIA’S INCREDIBLE GAIN: “And what do they mean too hard? If I had hesitated in my career every time I made a move because it was too hard, I would still be yodeling in Austria.”

WHICH CHILD DO WE CUT? NO, THAT’S NOT DISTURBING AT ALL: “the current tax and budget system is cruel... It is cruel because it is forcing us to make a Sophie’s choice amongst our obligations. Which child do we cut? Is it the poor one or is it the sick one? Is it he uneducated one or is it the one with special needs? That is cruel.”

He noted that we now budget 11% for prisons and 7.5% on higher education and that this is wrong. So is he calling for reversing the cuts in higher ed that he himself insisted on? Hell no. His solution? A constitutional amendment that says that we should spend more on higher education than on prisons. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns? It simply is not healthy.”


And he wants to privatize all the prisons.

He complained that California only gets back 78¢ of each tax dollar it sends to Washington, and said the health care bill “has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. Yet you’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere. Well, this is health care to nowhere.”

Awad the Lame redux

Lawrence Hutchins III is petitioning for clemency for his part in the murder of Iraqi citizen, Awad the Lame, in Hamandiya in 2006. If released, the sheriff of Plymouth County, Mass. will give the man – quoted at his court-martial as saying “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder” – a job as an emergency medical technician. Hutchins has written to the parole board that he now knows that shooting random innocent Iraqis eleven times is wrong. So that’s okay then.

Hunting the elusive Whipple Spot

I think the BBC may be having some fun in an article about a study at King’s College London into the existence or non-existence of the famed G-spot: “The elusive erogenous zone said to exist in some women may be a myth, say researchers who have hunted for it.” But “Some are firm believers.” Among these is sexologist Beverley Whipple, who popularized the idea of the G-spot but evidently couldn’t get it named the Whipple Spot (and you people refused to name female ejaculation after her). The study involved twins because, in the words of one of the researchers, “Mmmm, twins.”

Hat-tip to xkcd (click if cartoon gets, um, cut off):

Today -100: January 6, 1910: Of the fourth dimension and intimate personal confidence of the Almighty

A NY magistrate told one of the striking shirtwaist makers that he is on strike against God (who decreed that man live by the sweat of his brow), and Elizabeth Dutcher of the Women’s Trade Union League thought to cable George Bernard Shaw for his opinion of this. He replied, “Delightful, mediaeval America always in the intimate personal confidence of the Almighty.”

Boy-genius William James Sidis, 11 (the NYT wrongly says 10), gave a lecture to the Harvard (he is a student there) Mathematical Club, wearing short trousers (he did, not the Harvard Mathematical Club) (so far as I know), on the fourth dimension. He believes his theories will revolutionize the study of geometry.

Is Cuba the new North Korea?

The list of 14 countries all of whose citizens are to be thoroughly searched if they dare to buy an airplane ticket includes Cuba, whose citizens are not exactly renowned for joining Al Qaida. Is this bureaucratic inertia, where any measure designed to hassle foreigners must include Cubans, just because they can, or is it designed as a fig-leaf to show that we’re not just bothering Muslims (the other 13 nations being largely Muslim), in the same way as North Korea was included in the “Axis of Evil” to show that Bush’s crusade wasn’t actually a, you know, crusade.

Fun with using screengrab to make one headline look like the caption to an unrelated picture

From the Guardian’s World News page.


(That’s South African President Jacob Zuma, 67, who fell down dancing at the wedding at which he took a third wife, 38.)

Today -100: January 5, 1910: Of doomed negroes, negroes in evening dress, and the age of the earth

Headline of the Day -100: “Negroes Quickly Doomed.” In Kansas City, Missouri, two black men were sentenced to death for assaulting a white woman. The trial, from jury selection to verdict, took two days. The jury was out for five minutes. The trial was held behind closed doors, to prevent a lynching.

NYT: “Society in Washington is to-day discussing somebody’s blunder at last night’s charity ball, which resulted in the bringing to the red ballroom of the Willard three negroes in evening dress.” Blunder indeed. What seems to have happened is that Paulens Sannon’s wife was listed in a newspaper as a patron of a fashionable charity, so she got the invite. She and her husband and their guest attended for an hour, were spoken to by absolutely no one, and left. Paulens Sannon was the ambassador from Haiti.

Professor William Morris Davis of Harvard, a geologist and the “father of American geography,” says that “We are now able to tell almost exactly the age of this earth.” 60 million years old.

Of course for some people, that would be the perfect vacation

A workman in my home just turned on (shudder) talk radio. Evidently Obama made a serious mistake by not cancelling his vacation, going to Washington Airport, and personally cavity-searching foreigners.

Oh, thank God. A drill is now drowning out the radio.

Today -100: January 4, 1910: Of cross-racial enumerating and international felicitating

The director of the census will hire negroes as census-takers in districts where blacks are at least 2/5 of the population, but will hire both white and black ones in Southern districts “to preclude negroes from...” [shudder] “...enumerating whites.”

The clerk of the Havana Hotel Plaza was fined $10 for refusing to serve those two black congresscritters. After the court proceeding, the two lead a procession to the hotel and again ordered drinks. They got them. No word on whether they left a tip. The government newspaper writes that “the Americans must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they shall not be permitted to introduce into Cuba the anti-negro sentiments prevailing in the United States.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Monarchs Felicitate Taft.” For a second I thought it said something else.

Name of the Day -100: newly sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Horace H. Lurton. Another former Confederate soldier. And a Democrat appointed by a Republican president.

The police commissioner of Detroit bans Emma Goldman from giving a speech.

Newly inaugurated NYC mayor William Gaynor’s appointments have been notable for not having been dictated by Tammany but by qualifications or their order on the civil service list. Some of them didn’t really want the jobs they were handed.

18 year old Vernon Plessinger pleaded guilty to opening a railway switch and wrecking a train in Ohio, badly injuring the engineer and fireman. His plan was to loot enough money from dead or injured passengers to take him to the coast so he could join the Navy.

Today -100: January 3, 1910: Of a spirit of revolting partisanship, unfairness and cruelty, getting a drink in Havana, and getting the black out

A meeting was held in Carnegie Hall to protest violations of the rights of striking shirtwaist makers by police and police magistrates who, the meeting’s resolutions declare, “have dealt with the strikers in a spirit of revolting partisanship, unfairness, and cruelty.” The police allow strikers to be assaulted, magistrates (two of whom are singled out by name) convict for “disorderly behavior” with little evidence or even against the evidence and then impose harsh sentences. A box was reserved for the magistrates, all of whom were invited. One actually came; his reaction to the proceedings is not recorded. On the platform were 350 of the “girls” who had been arrested and 20 who had been sent to the workhouse.

A NYT editorial agrees that strikers should not be thrown into the workhouse, although for the rather different reason that the abominably paid shirtwaist-makers might be corrupted by their exposure to prostitutes, “whose sinful occupation often provides what seems like wealth to the workers.”

There is also a pro-vivisection editorial, “Not Hideous When Understood,” which I will refrain from quoting.

The bar of the Plaza Hotel in Havana, described by the NYT as “distinctively an American house,” refused to serve drinks to two black members of the Cuban Congress. They came back with a large crowd of negroes and hilarity ensued. “It is thought that the riot was a concerted plan on the part of the negroes to give expression to the anti-American sentiment in Cuba.”

At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Mr. Q. T. Simpson “declared that it was only a matter of time when the negro of the darkest hue could be made as pink skinned as the caucasian.” Mr. Simpson is a Chicago stock breeder. He declares that through experimentation we “have unearthed a great deal on the nature of chromosomes, the unit of life which gives color. I think we are on the verge of gaining complete control over these chromosomes, and that means the control of color. By a set process of treatment with baths or injections this new tide in the affairs of the black man will be brought about and these color units in the cells of the creature will be attenuated or destroyed.” He is hard at work on the process that will bring this about and make it possible for everyone to get service at the Havana Plaza Hotel. At no point in the article is he quoted as giving a reason why it is desirable to eliminate dark skin; it is just assumed.

Today -100: January 2, 1910: Of nice young fellows, shaking hands, the Dick Law, moral decay in Philadelphia, and the need for speed

Senator Col. James Gordon, the possible Lincoln conspirator, has met President Taft. “He’s a mighty nice young fellow. I like him. I felt just like putting my hand on his shoulder and calling him ‘Bill.’” So Taft can breathe a sigh of relief.

Taft has successfully met the challenge of his first New Year’s Day reception at the White House. He stood in the Blue Room and shook hands, 5,575 of them, from 11:00 to 1:55. That’s 31.8 hands per minute.

Sing Sing abandoned its New Year’s custom of giving each convict a cigar with his noonday meal. Too many prisoners now, can’t afford it.

Headline of the Day -100: “All Militia to Aid Army. Lieut. Col. Weaver Certain that States Will Accept the Dick Law.”

In Philadelphia, 1 divorce suit was filed for every 11 marriage licenses issued in 1909.

Speaking of licenses, the New York Legislature is considering requiring driving licenses. And abolishing speed limits.

Awkward

The WaPo news section reports today that since the Underpants Bomber, Michael Chertoff has been repeatedly telling the media and anyone who will listen that we need to buy lots of full-body scanners for airports, without mentioning his own financial interest – one of the Chertoff Group’s clients is Rapiscan Systems. (I assume the first syllable of Rapiscan is pronounced with a soft a as in rapid, not a hard a as in rape. If I were planning to sell scanners that pictured people naked, I’d have put some more thought into that name.)

And the WaPo op-ed page today has a piece by Michael Chertoff. Guess what he’s calling for.

Today -100: January 1, 1910: Of Martians

Astronomer Percival Lowell tells the general session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the Martians are building new canals. Wonder what they’re saying at the Martian Association for the Advancement of Science.

The hammer is his, oh, you know

Name of the Day: National Security Council Spokesman Mike Hammer (picture below). Every morning he stands in front of the mirror, flips open an imaginary badge, and says in his best Joe Friday voice, “Hammer, National Security.” (Alternatively, he may flash an imaginary badge and say, “It’s Hammer time!”, in which case he should be fired immediately.)

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A second man has plead guilty to uploading the movie “The Love Guru” to the internet before its theatrical release. Another man was previously sentenced to six months in prison. Mike Meyers remains at large.

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There’s been all this talk about how alarms should have gone off when the Underpants Bomber bought a one-way ticket with cash and had no luggage. And they probably should have, though paying in cash and buying one-way tickets are not uncommon in Africa. But what does it say about Al Qaida’s competence and resources? Could they not have sprung for a thrift store suitcase and clothing and a return ticket to make him less conspicuous and increase the chances of success?

Marya Aman

If the NYT search function is correct, today was the first time they ever wrote about Marya Aman, a little Palestinian girl, now 8, who was riding in a car blown up by the an Israeli rocket in May 2006, collateral damage in the assassination on a busy highway of an Islamic Jihad leader on his way to the hospital to see his wife, who had just given birth. Marya is now a quadriplegic, permanently confined to an Israeli hospital (she is also on a respirator). I wrote about Marya in 2007 here, here, and here, but the NYT evidently waited until it could do a sentimental moral-equivalence story about Marya’s friendship with another 8-year-old, an Israeli boy in the same hospital, brain-injured by a Hamas rocket. The Times waits until the 16th paragraph to mention the details of the Israeli attack and that her mother, brother and grandmother were also killed in the blast, and until the 17th to note that Israel tried to deport her to certain death in Gaza. It says that her father still has “no official status.” In 2007 that meant he didn’t dare risk setting foot outside the hospital for fear of being summarily deported; I can’t tell from the NYT story exactly what it means now. Questions like that might have been answered if the NYT didn’t act as if it were the only news source in the world and maybe used Teh Google. At least Marya’s younger brother, also seriously injured by the rocket, is now in the same hospital.

Today -100: December 31, 1909: Of suspicious deaths, the need for speed, and the promised land of feminism

In Britain, Earl Percy, an MP and heir of the Duke of Northumberland, has died in Paris, and the rumor is that it was in a duel, although the official cause of death is acute pleurisy.

A new speed record has been established for the monoplane: in France, Léon Delagrange flew 200 km in 152 minutes, or 48.9 miles per hour.

Mrs. Belmont has received a helpful letter suggesting that the way to win women’s suffrage is for all the women of the east to decamp to a part of the country where women already have full political and legal rights and tell their husbands to either pass a women’s franchise law or join them in Utah.

Little-known historical fact: the first woman ever elected a state senator was a Mormon plural wife in Utah, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon in 1896. One of the candidates she defeated was her husband; she was a Democratic-Populist, he was a Republican.

And that’s our last blog post from 1909!

That’ll show ‘em

Reports say Obama is planning military strikes in Yemen in retaliation for the Underpants Bomber. Personally, I am definitely in favor of a tit for tat retaliation: let’s send Joe Lieberman to Yemen and have him set his leg on fire. I say an eye for an eye, a flaming doofus for a flaming doofus.

Today -100: December 30, 1909: Of dangerous admissions, little Jew girls, canals on Mars, and zeppelins over the Arctic

NYT headline: “MRS. GAYNOR ADMITS SHE’S A SUFFRAGIST.” That “admission” is from Augusta Gaynor, wife of the mayor-elect of NYC, at a suffrage luncheon. She notes that few of the men she talks to agree with her.

Alva Belmont told the luncheon of an incident in which she telephoned a Night Court judge asking if she should send her lawyer to defend arrested striking shirtwaist-makers. He told her, “You had better save your time and money; they are nothing but little Jew girls, and their place is the workhouse.” She will hold a meeting at Carnegie Hall to protest the violation of the rights of strikers.

The British Astronomical Association weighed evidence of canals on Mars, and expressed scepticism. Well, laughter.

Prof. Hugo Hergesell of Strasbourg is talking about his and Count Zeppelin’s plans to explore the North Pole by airship.

What’s the Chinese word for irony?

China executes a mentally ill British citizen, Akmal Shaikh, for drug smuggling. The method of execution: lethal injection.

Slapped in the mouth

Quote of the Day, Foreign: Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister of Iran (which has taken to stealing the bodies of dead activists and arresting the relatives of live ones) objects to Britain praising democracy protesters: “Britain will get slapped in the mouth if it does not stop its nonsense.” (Update: The Times translates this as “receive a punch in the mouth”. We eagerly await a definitive translation – high diplomacy requires precision in its use of language.)

Quote of the Day, Domestic: Peter King (R-Under His Bed Until the Bad Men Go Away): “100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims”.

Quote of the Day, 1979 version: British official documents released under the 30 year rule show that Thatcher didn’t want her emissary to white-run Rhodesia meeting any of the nationalist opposition: “I have never done business with terrorists until they become prime ministers.” She’d have gotten along famously with Manouchehr “Slappy” Mottaki.

At Thatcher’s her first meeting with Soviet Premier Kosygin, she lectured him about the plight of Vietnamese boat people – and then did everything to prevent them being allowed into Britain, preferring white Rhodesian immigrants, white Polish immigrants, white Hungarian immigrants... She told her foreign and home secretaries that it was “quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not”. Note the telling, unnecessary use of the word “white.” Evidently she suggested to the Australian prime minister that they jointly buy an island from Indonesia or the Philippines to stick the boat people on. The idea was scotched by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu, who didn’t want the economic competition.

Today -100: December 29, 1909: Of women of high quality and fugitive senators

NYC Mayor McClellan’s committee on teacher pay recommends against equal pay for women teachers. They simply aren’t worth it in the free market: “the rate of pay which will attract women of high quality does not suffice to attract men of an equally high grade.”

Newly appointed senator for Mississippi James Gordon was a colonel in the Confederate army who was, for a while, believed to have been involved in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy (he was a close friend of Booth’s), and had a $10,000 reward on his head, dead or alive.

(Update: That’s no fun. The next day the NYT printed a War Dept denial that there was ever a reward offered on Gordon. Wikipedia says that while he was not, so far as we know, involved in the assassination plotting, he did discuss with Booth the possibility of kidnapping Lincoln. A United States senator, ladies and gentlemen! For two months anyway.)

Today -200: William Ewart Gladstone was born on this day in 1809.

The time for excuses is over

Oh yeah, you can tell they are totally committed to peace talks.


Ha’aretz: “Netanyahu is willing to accept the U.S. proposal to allot 24 months to talks, but doesn’t want to announce that the goal is to reach a deal by the end of that period.”

Today -100: December 28, 1909: Of recognition

Correction: the former Nicaraguan finance minister was not arrested; he actually managed to escape.

Rear Admiral Kimball, commander of the American warships docked in Nicaragua, met with President Madriz, but without recognizing him as president.

Meetings of striking shirtwaist makers voted down the agreement their leaders negotiated with the manufacturers, because it did not offer proper recognition of their union.

In another exciting post-Christmas news day, there is a front page headline about Andrew Carnegie falling on some ice.

Today -100: December 27, 1909: Of looting and strolling

Former President Zelaya seems to have left behind an empty treasury. His finance minister and his son-in-law, who helped run various state monopolies, have been arrested by order of the new president.

Also, the Tafts took a walk. Not really a big news day.

And who doesn’t like fireworks?

The health care bill does not cut off abstinence programs, although you’d think they’d appreciate being, you know, cut off.

The NYT on the latest attempt by someone to blow up a plane: “Many passengers who were farther away thought the pops were from fireworks”. Are in-flight fireworks standard on Northwest Airlines flights these days? Because that would be awesome, and well worth any minor risk involved.

Dave Barry’s year in review.

Name of the Day

The Senate confirms the first Chinese-American woman to a District Court. She was also nominated by Bill Clinton a decade ago, but was stopped by Republican obstructionism in the Senate. So congratulations, Dolly Gee.

Today -100: December 26, 1909: Of death, payment for MPs, and exile

Mark Twain’s daughter Jean died.

The House of Lords in its judicial capacity rules that it is illegal for unions to finance Labour Party MPs. MPs were not paid a salary at this time and Labour MPs, unlike those of other parties we could mention, tended not to be independently wealthy. And, um, if this needs saying, there were no Labour members of the House of Lords.

Former Nicaraguan president Zelaya goes into exile aboard a Mexican gunboat.

The pope gives tongue to a bagpipe player (not a metaphor!)

Caption con... Oh, you say you’d like a close-up?


...test.

Today -100: December 25, 1909: Of racial definitions and mince pies

Booker T. Washington has been proposing a “Negro Exposition” to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1913. The NYT believes that this plan is unwise since “Few of our colored population can afford to travel” and “The assertion that any large number of influential whites in the South look upon the plan with favor lacks verification.” So it would be a financial failure and just stir up that race stuff.

In other racial news, “Dragged by Elevated Train: Man Saved from Death by a Negro Platform Porter.” The NYT felt the porter’s race significant enough to require pointing out in the headline – because heaven forfend you form an opinion of him based on his actions before you know his race. The generic “man” saved from death was of course white.

Elsewhere in the paper, on the front page in fact, is a headline, “Wanted to Wed Japanese; License Refused at New Haven to Miss Dorr and Jullen Kwan.” Kwan was a Harvard student. The reason they were refused was actually that she was too young (18), but race made the whole thing newsworthy.

Sometimes those racial distinctions were disturbingly ambiguous. The US Circuit Court in Boston had to decide whether Armenians counted as white or whether they were Asiatics and therefore excluded from seeking US citizenship. Judge Lowell ruled that there has been so much race-mixing in that part of the world over the last 2,500 years that it is impossible to tell, and admitted four Armenians to citizenship, over the objections of the federal government. Lowell notes that if you accept Hebrews as white, you have to accept Armenians.

You will be relieved to hear that the giant mince pie made it to the White House safely.

Selling human beings

Cambodia deports 20 Uighur seeking political asylum back to China; a few hours later gets $1.2b aid deal from China; denies any connection.

Today -100: December 24, 1909: Of irritating scabs and mince pies

NYC Magistrate Barlow fines a shirtwaist striker $10 for calling scabs “scabs.” “There is no word in the English language so irritating as the word ‘scab.’” Scab scab scab scab scab.

What’s for Christmas dinner at the Taft White House? A 92-pound mince pie. That’s a lot of mince. It’s even large than the 50-pound one Taft was supposed to enjoy over Thanksgiving, which vanished with its two caretakers somewhere between Newark and the White House.

Today -100: December 23, 1909: Of assassinations, ringleaders, dog whips, and bulls at the Waldorf-Astoria

Zelaya issues a statement blaming his having to resign entirely on the United States. Just as his forces were, he claims, about to defeat the rebels, the US severed relations and threatened to send in the Marines under the pretext of the executions of Cannon and Groce, which he compares to the blowing up of the Maine, for which there was no proof of Spanish culpability.

The NYT wrongly reports Korean Prime Minister Yi Wan Yong was assassinated, stabbed to death. Stabbed yes, died no.

Actually assassinated: Col. Karpoff, head of the secret police in St. Petersburg, lured to a building and killed by a bomb (there’s a long story in the 1/16/10 magazine section, with engravings of the bombing and everything), and Arthur Mason Tippetts Jackson, Chief Magistrate of Nasik in the Presidency of Bombay, shot by a member of a secret society while attending the theatre.

Two days ago, we heard of a little racial dispute in Magnolia, Alabama. Today, the authorities claim to have quelled a plan by negroes to attack whites, which they thwarted by arresting 42 “ringleaders.”

NY Governor Charles Evan Hughes met a delegation from several suffragist groups and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, all calling for a referendum on women’s suffrage in the state. Hughes responded, “so far as my personal views upon this question are concerned I have nothing to say at this time.”

From the London Times: Theresa Garnett, a suffragette who struck the president of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill, with a dog whip at the train station in Bristol in November, is out of prison (the charge was only disorderly conduct rather than assault, so that Churchill didn’t have to testify; she hunger struck in prison and was forcibly fed; she also set fire to her cell). Garnett wants her whip back. It now has historical significance, she says.

“A bull calf late yesterday afternoon suddenly appeared in the throng on the sidewalk just outside the Waldorf-Astoria, at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, and, more frightened than savage, endeavored to gain admittance to the hotel by climbing over the iron railings on the Fifth Avenue side.” The calf “came at a gallop down Thirty-third Street from Madison Avenue, scampered among the automobiles on the avenue, and bumped unceremoniously into Patrolman Nittel, who was directing the traffic. Before Nittel could recover his equilibrium – the bump was a rear attack and most unexpected – the young bull was headed in the direction of the hotel. ... The bull’s path was cleared as if by magic as he bounded across the sidewalk toward the iron railing. ... Everywhere were seen fluttering veils as women rushed for shelter. ... ‘Get a rope!’ shouted a man who was prepared to climb the electric light post should the emergency arise.” Patrolman Trainor, on his horse, lassoed the bull, which was then led, I regret to say, back towards the abattoir at First Ave & 45th from which he’d escaped.

Comments

Hopefully, that’s everything fixed, thanks to my personal IT support system in New York. It would have been easier (and cheaper) to dump Haloscan, but we’d have lost the last 12,000 comments made on this blog, which just wasn’t an option.

I had to set comments to show up in a separate tab instead of a pop-up, which didn’t display properly in Chrome. I had trouble signing in to comment in Opera, but signing in isn’t mandatory. Otherwise it seems to test out in Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari. Tell me if there are problems, or if the current settings aren’t working for you.

You can use bold & italics, and insert hyperlinks and images.

You can get follow-ups to your comments via email. Some other day I’ll work on figuring out why there is no RSS for each post, like there’s supposed to be.

Features I have not enabled: You cannot “like” comments because this is not junior high or Facebook (but I repeat myself). You cannot use graphic emoticons because this is not the 6th grade.

Echo has a feature where I could send comments that use specified naughty words into moderation. I’m thinking of implementing that for a different random word every day. “Say the secret word and collect $100” sort of thing.

(Update: except, of course, everything is not fixed, and comments go to entirely different places depending on whether you’re commenting on a post in its unique URL, on the front page, or in a monthly archive. Swell.)

Bear with me

while I get the new commenting system up and running. Haloscan’s owners decided to start charging for a more annoying system. All the moving parts aren’t moving yet. Probably better not to add comments to any posts older than this one.

If a blogger on Blogspot with the JS-Kit Echo system installed is reading this, it would be very helpful if you could send me, by email or as a comment, the html code from its gadget box on the Page Lageout page.

Today -100: December 22, 1909: Of the spirit of a good son going to the rescue of his beloved mother

Madriz is sworn in as president of Nicaragua, saying, “I assume the Presidency unmoved by personal ambition, but by the spirit of a good son going to the rescue of his beloved mother, harassed and imperiled.” He announced a political amnesty.

However, the fighting continues, with the Estradists beating the government forces near Rama. The NYT attributes this to the former being “armed with the latest equipment and machine guns”. Huh. Wonder how that happened.

Shot

I thought better of titling this post “The President’s shot.” Anyway, Obama got his swine flu shot today. CAPTION CONTEST.

But is it kosher?

The various news stories and blogs talking about a supposedly discontinued Israeli program of secretly harvesting the organs and skin of dead Palestinians (and others) all fail to mention the reason Israel has a chronic shortage of organs: Orthodox Jews claim their religion prevents them being organ donors but not organ recipients.

Today -100: December 21, 1909: Of sick immigrants, lynchings, lynchings, and more lynchings, and all this Santa Claus business

Reading the 1909 papers goes a lot quicker if you don’t bother reading any of the stories about the controversy over whether Cook reached the North Pole.

The Commissioner of Immigration has decided that “physically or mentally unfit” immigrants will no longer be treated by the government but made the responsibility of the steamship companies that brought them.

As in NY, Philadelphia shirtwaist manufacturers are willing to concede pretty much every demand of the strikers – except union recognition.

The NY shirtwaist strikers’ ally, the Woman’s Trade Union League has introduced an innovation into the practice of picketing: the automobile. It will be used to cover all the factories where scabs are working. One striker, the amusingly named Fanny Fireman, has been sentenced to five days in the workhouse for throwing a rotten egg at a scab.

Here’s a picture I forgot to post earlier, I think from the paper 100 years + 2 days ago.


The Nicaraguan Congress has unanimously elected José Madriz, Zelaya’s nominee, to be the nation’s president. Gen. Estrada vows to fight on. US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox has issued a strong note saying that Madriz will have to show he is capable of directing a responsible government and make reparation for the execution of Cannon and Groce. But the US will not yet recognize either Madriz or Estrada.

In your lynching news of the day, a man who fatally wounded a marshal was lynched in Rosebud Texas; the Illinois National Guard is being moved to Belleville to protect another black man suspected of being involved in a fatal street car robbery in East St. Louis; a black man was shot to death by a mob in a jail cell in Devil’s Bluff, Ark.; and a lynch mob in Magnolia, Alabama was searching for 4 black brothers suspected of killing a white man. When the house one of the brothers was hiding in was set on fire, he shot at the mob, killing one and wounding two others, but was fatally shot himself as he tried to escape the blaze. Two others were arrested and narrowly escaped lynching; the fourth brother remains at large. “Nearly every negro resident left Magnolia to-day. The whites are all armed.”

Mark Twain announces “I am through with work for this life and this world.”

More front page news: The 6-year-old grandson of Rep. McMorran (R-Mich.) has been having doubts about “all this Santa Claus business.” So his parents told him to ask President Taft about it. Taft suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa and Santa then brings everything he asks for, that should be proof enough. The boy agreed, and is now busily writing his letter. Probably asking for a monkey-on-the-stick, whatever that might be (this?).

And that boy grew up to be Ben Nelson.

Mirror mirror

There is indeed a joke about the warlord running the Ministry of Energy and Water. Given the reliability of the power supply in Kabul, he is called the Minister of Darkness.

Karzai: “We have tried to ensure that the cabinet is a mirror of Afghanistan’s people, a cabinet that all Afghan people can see themselves in.” Evidently the Afghan people are only 4% female.

Would explain why Afghan men always seem so pissed off.

Sir Jean-Luc Picard! Make it so.