Today -100: January 24, 1910: Of negro cadets, meat, kiddie factory workers, and kaiser sandwiches

West Point is very worried that it may have to admit as a cadet one Ollie R. Smith of Cheyenne, who is black (he is an alternate, but will be in if some white kid fails the entrance exams, as 1 in 4 do). He would not be the first, as some blacks were admitted after the Civil War, but it has been 25 years or so since the last. Past practice at West Point was to send them to coventry, to ignore them – not even hazing them. Actually, a few paragraphs later, the NYT mentions a Johnson Chesnut Whittaker, who did experience hazing at West Point in 1880, if by hazing you mean being tied up, beaten and having one ear cut off and the other slit. West Point investigated and decided that Whittaker had done it all to himself, dishonorably discharging him and fining him $1. President Arthur refused to accept the findings and ordered him restored, but for some reason he soon resigned. (Wait, not true. Wikipedia says they expelled him a second time for failing an exam. He had been the first black man to graduate Harvard. Later he was a teacher, lawyer, principal and psych professor.) Anyway, the NYT interviews a lot of military types, none of whom think letting Smith into West Point is a good idea.

Side note on usage: the NYT calls it the “civil war,” without caps.

The St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Council voted against joining the meat strike for 30 days. A woman delegate accused them of doing so “simply because the working women were the first to start the movement here.”

The British Home Office orders Lady Constance Lytton (see yesterday) released from prison before her two-week sentence.

The NY State Commissioner of Labor says that “the problem of child labor in the factories of this State is well in hand.” By that he means that while 10,415 children below the age of 16 were discovered working in factories in 1909, only 8% of them were employed illegally. So, well in hand.

Headline of the Day -100: “Kaiser Passes Sandwiches.” Kaiser Wilhelm invited University of California President Benjamin Ide Wheeler to a nice family gathering. “It was a typical German domestic scene, the Empress doing needlework while taking part in the conversation, and the Emperor himself passed around the sandwiches and other light supper dishes.” Must... not... make... lame... kaiser roll... joke...

Why Scott Brown won. Theory 2.

What Scott Brown said: “I’m Scott Brown. I drive a pickup truck.”

What Massachusetts voters thought: Must be one of them lesbians. Lesbians are wicked hot.

Why Scott Brown won. Theory 1.

What Scott Brown said: “I’m Scott Brown. I drive a pickup truck.”

What Massachusetts voters heard: I will help you move.

Adjusting our privacy expectations

Saw Michael Chertoff on McNeil-Lehrer, hawking full-body scanners and saying people would just have to “adjust their privacy expectations.” Of course if there’s one person whose privacy expectations aren’t threatened by full-body scanners, it’s the living skeleton.

The purest form of self-defense

Headline Mixed Metaphor of the Day (NYT): “Republicans Strain to Ride Tea Party Tiger.”

Annoying Grant of Anonymity of the Day: The NYT, on the increase in drone attacks in Pakistan following the death of those CIA operatives: “Today, officials deny that vengeance is driving the increased attacks, though one called the drone strikes ‘the purest form of self-defense.’”

Or is this the purest form of self defense? Mircea Geoana, who lost the Romanian presidential election in December, getting 49.66% of the vote, blames witchcraft, specifically a “negative energy attack” during a debate that caused him to perform badly. And in fact, President Traian Basescu did go to that debate with a parapsychologist slash clairvoyant slash mind-control expert. This is the president and his court wizard in 2007.

Today -100: January 23, 1910: Of Alaska, bulldogs, and Liberal snobbishness

The Senate Committee on Territories decides on a plan for a Legislative Council for Alaska: a governor, attorney general, commissioner of interior and mines, and 8 judges. All appointed by the US president. If that system had still been in place under the Bush Administration, Alaska’s appointed governor would still have been Sarah Palin.

Creepy Headline of the Day -100: “Bulldog Breeders Form a New Body.”

Mrs Humphry Ward, a best-selling novelist in her time, which was the late 19th century, is the most prominent British anti-suffragist. But that doesn’t stop her writing letters to electors in Hertfordshire, where she is running her wastrel son’s campaign for Parliament. A complete non-entity, he would be known as “the member for Mrs. Humphry Ward.”

In Britain it has just become known that Lady Constance Lytton is in prison. A suffragette, Lytton had been given a prison sentence before, but it was unsatisfactory in that she was treated with favoritism (not being force-fed, that sort of thing), supposedly on account of her fragile health and certainly not at all because she was Lady Constance Lytton.


“Simply Liberal snobbishness,” she complained. So she disguised herself as a working-class woman, called herself Jane Warton,


and got arrested again, for breaking a prison window, and this time, funnily enough, prison medical authorities didn’t find evidence of a weak heart and did force feed her. (Spoiler alert: about a year later she had a massive stroke, and wrote her book on her prison experience with her left hand.)

Unequal and undemocratic information flow

China complained that attacks on its censorship of the internet amount to... wait for it... information imperialism. The Global Times (published in English by the People’s Daily) explains (and I’ll quote at length because I gather that Chinese pro-censorship diatribes against Google have themselves been censored today, so this may not continue to be available on the web) that the “bulk of the information flowing from the US and other Western countries is loaded with aggressive rhetoric against those countries that do not follow their lead.” Further, disadvantaged countries “could not produce the massive flow of information required, and could never rival the Western countries in terms of information control and dissemination,” therefore, “there is absolutely no equality and fairness. The online freedom of unrestricted access is, thus, only one-way traffic, contrary to the spirit of democracy and calculated to strengthen a monopoly.” “China’s real stake in the ‘free flow of information’ is evident in its refusal to be victimized by information imperialism.”

Today -100: January 22, 1910: Of full disclosure and the return of a gunslinger

Taft wants a law requiring congressional candidates to make public their campaign contributions and expenditures. The Chicago Tribune finds that there is “a majority of all members of each House are ready to vote for a bill applying the principle of the President, when it comes up – and that it will never come up.”

Rep. William Cocks of NY is willing to step down in favor of Teddy Roosevelt, if he wants the seat. TR is due to return from slaughtering white rhinos soon.

Free speech isn’t free, and will soon to be a lot more expensive

Our theme for this post: free speech

John McCain issues a not-at-all-stilted statement about his wife’s air-brushed appearance in an anti-Prop 8 ad: “Senator McCain respects the views of members of his family.” You can just hear his teeth grinding.

On the same day the Supreme Court ruled that corporations may “spend freely” to influence elections (when will Goldman Sachs start handing out congressional seats as bonuses?), Hillary Clinton evidently agreed that there was no difference between speech by individuals and speech by corporations. In a speech about the “five key freedoms of the Internet age,” i.e., chiding China on internet censorship, she insisted that, “From an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech.”

However, Trijicon Inc. will no longer put Bible messages on gun sights produced for the military. Evidently the Pentagon’s first reaction to this story was to claim that it was okay, just like printing “In God We Trust” on our currency.

In his partial dissent to one part of the Citizens United v. FEC decision, Clarence Thomas, who stands alone in this, opposes the release of the names of donors to political campaigns, citing the ability of the internet to harass those people. He goes on to cite many alleged instances of death threats and such against supporters of Prop. 8. “I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in ‘core political speech, the “primary object of First Amendment protection.”’” Or, alternately, you could pass laws against death threats, damaged or defaced property, etc. Oh, wait.

John Travolta is sending Scientologist missionaries to Haiti. Haiti is saved!

Today -100: January 21, 1910: Of billy clubs and meat

The new mayor of New York has been investigating cases of policemen beating members of the public with their clubs for no particular reason. Several cops have been suspended, fired or arrested. The NYT editorializes, though, that the police need their clubs, and that many of the stories about the “much-talked-of ‘third degree’” are “gross exaggerations.”

The meat strike has taken hold in St. Louis, and even Germany’s states, expressing their views on tariff negotiations are, in the words of the Headline of the Day -100, “United Against Our Meat.”

Today -100: January 20, 1910: Of factory fires, aerial warfare, and meat

In a fire at a shirtwaist factory in Philadelphia, five are dead (so far), having leapt from the fourth floor. It would have been much worse but many of the factory’s workers had joined the strike. And of course this fire foreshadows (spoiler alert) one we might be discussing here in a little over a year.

The International Bureau of Peace at Brussels wants to re-adopt the expired provision adopted by the first Hague Peace Conference forbidding the dropping of explosives from balloons during war and extend it to cover planes and dirigibles as well. Good luck with that.

The meat strike is spreading from Cleveland throughout the Mid-West, but an editorial doubts its effect on the price of meat (down 2¢ a pound!) will be permanent. “Of course, the workingmen of Cleveland have no inclination or intention to become vegetarians as a settled policy of life. They want meat, just as all other sane people do”.

Heckuva job, Brownie

poll by twiigs.com

Today -100: January 19, 1910: Of suffering executives, meat, Transylvanian wolves, and suffragettes and snow shovels

President Taft addresses the Conference of Governors with complaints about the ability of the executives at state and federal level to get the legislation they want out of insufficiently pliant legislative branches. He called the governors “my dear fellow-executives and fellow-sufferers.” He talked of the need for uniformity in laws between the states, which was a major theme of Taft’s and, coincidentally, of big business.

The meat strike in Cleveland is working. Meat sales have halved, and the price is coming down.

At the big Los Angeles flight meet, French aviator Louis Paulhan set a new cross-country record, covering 47½ miles in a little over an hour.

The front page of the NYT was so much cooler in 1910: “Baron Otto von Orban, a wealthy land owner, while riding through the forest in Transylvania was pursued by a pack of wolves. The wildly excited horse threw him and the wolves tore him to pieces.”

Also on the front page: A cop asked an (unnamed) woman in Burlington, NJ to have the snow on her sidewalk shoveled. She refused until such time as women have the vote.

Light shining out of darkness

Trijicon Inc., which manufactures “brilliant aiming solutions,” i.e., gun sights, and boasts on its webpage of its support of “biblical standards” and the NRA (not necessarily in that order), has been inscribing New Testament references on some of the gun sights it sells the US Army and Marine Corps, such as 2COR4:6, meaning Second Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Because nothing says the light shining out of darkness like a night-vision rifle sight. Iraqi troops are being trained with the, in ABC’s words, “bible-coded sights.” Anyone remember how the Indian Mutiny of 1857 got started?

Today -100: January 18, 1910: Of hysteria, meat, and flimsy blue material

The NYT wishes that Taft would stop his innovation of presenting Congress with draft legislation.

The Czarina of Russia has had an attack of hysteria.

An anti-meat strike has begun against high meat prices in Cleveland.

On the front page this slow news day: Lady Constance Stewart Richardson appeared at the Palace Theatre in London, dancing to the music of Tchaikovsky, Grieg and others, wearing – and this is the news-worthy bit – “a Greek short tunic apparently made of a single piece of flimsy blue material, through which flesh tints were plainly visible. In fact, the costume is described as the most daring ever seen on an English stage.”

Solidarity – you’re doing it wrong

The Islamic Solidarity Games have been called off because Iran, which was to have hosted, put the words “Persian Gulf” on the medals.

Legitimately chosen

Richard Holbrooke, the Af-Pak special envoy, says that we should all “move on” from the stolen Afghan presidential election and that Karzai is “the legitimately chosen, legitimate leader of this country.” I don’t think that word, “legitimate,” means what you think it means. Also “chosen.” And “leader.” And “country.”

Speaking of legitimately chosen, the book Game Change says that in choosing Sarah Palin, John McCain was “flying by the seat of his pants.” Yeah, the seat of his pants...

Today -100: January 17, 1910: Of government by peers and beer, posthumous stabbings, and going on safari

The British election results are trickling in, showing a victory for the Liberal government. Lloyd George says, “England is declaring emphatically against government by the Peers and beer.”

A rich woman, Laura White, has died, and her will requires that ten days after her death she be stabbed in the heart three times (by a doctor, for a fee of $20). It seems that 45 years ago her fiancé died and when his body had to be removed to another cemetery a few months later, it was found that it had turned on its side, which gave her a life-long fear of being buried alive. Her only living relative is refusing to do it, but the Fidelity Title and Trust Company is insisting that it be done.

Last month I saved a lot of time by not reading any of the stories about Cook having faked reached the North Pole. This month I’m giving a miss to the many stories following TR cutting a bloody swathe through Africa, like this one:

ROOSEVELT AT LION HUNT.; Follows on Horseback as Natives Chase and Spear Beast. [PDF]
NAIROBI, British East Africa, Dec. 11. -- A long stream, of porters came winding across the veldt toward the station at Nairobi, looking for all the world like a string of ants. The stars and stripes was held aloft by a giant native, and the sound of horn...

Resilient

The NYT, looking for an up side: “But if there is a benefit in the neglect that the Haitian people have experienced for so many years, it is that they are far more resilient than most.” As can be seen in their low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates. Let’s do condescend to the Haitians, NYT.

This morning, Bill Clinton and George Bush were at the White House in their new role doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing for Haiti. Obama noted, “As President, Bill Clinton helped restore democracy in Haiti” and Bush helped restore military dictatorship. Why is Bush involved in this, again? Hasn’t he really done quite enough to for Haiti?


Bush said, “I commend the President for his swift and timely response to the disaster.”


He went on, “I am so pleased to answer the call to work alongside President Clinton to mobilize the compassion of the American people.” Trust Bush to make compassion sound scary.

“[Y]et it’s amazing how terrible tragedies can bring out the best of the human spirit. We’ve all seen that firsthand when American citizens responded to the tsunami or to Katrina”.


Haiti may just need even more of that fabled resilience.

Today -100: January 16, 1910: Of election-day rowdiness, hotel suicides, kissing the book, expensive electrocutions, leather whips, and short breeches

The British are voting. Just as crowds were hostile to members of the House of Lords breaking tradition by speaking to election meetings, a crowd at Grimsby, outraged at Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George addressing voters on polling day, which is just not done, forced him to abandon the speech and flee. There were also shouts of “Traitor” and “Pro-Boer,” evidently from people still pissed at his stance during the Boer War a decade earlier. In his speech, LG had actually been refuting Balfour’s alarmism about the German menace, saying that if the German navy tried anything, it would be at the bottom of the sea in a matter of hours.

In Dundee, Winston Churchill, himself a once and future Tory, denounced the Conservatives as “the party of privilege and class.”

Rep. Henry is proposing a constitutional amendment to push the presidential inauguration back from March 4 to the last Thursday in April. The move is supported by D.C. hotels and the like, hoping for more business if there is a prospect of better weather.

In other hotel news, there has been a rash of suicides in Germany lately, possibly by people contemplating the prospects of the Germany Navy against the British Royal Navy, and the Association of Hotel Owners has issued a statement asking potential suicides to please do away with themselves somewhere other than in hotels, because there are really lots of alternative spots where they’d cause less inconvenient to others, and do you know what that does to the reputation of a hotel?

In Britain, witnesses in court have taken to refusing to kiss the Bible on health grounds, and the practice has been abolished altogether in Lambeth (London) Police Court. However, “To the poorer class the old formula seemed to appeal strongly. Remember you have ‘kissed the Book’ was usually the most crushing comment a defendant could make when challenging the statements of a witness.”

The NYC Board of Education bans competition or prizes being offered in high schools without authorization. This is aimed at a $100 prize offered by Mrs. Belmont to the female students at Wadleigh High School for the best essays on women’s suffrage.

New Jersey electrocuted six men in 1909 at a cost of $7,028. The cost of maintaining living prisoners was 33¢ a day.

At another institution of the state of New Jersey, the State Home for Girls in Trenton, it has been revealed that girls and women up to the age of 21 are lashed with leather whips. The NYT believes that whipping has been abolished in every other state. The trustees of the home complain that it has to house insane and feeble-minded girls alongside reformatory cases, that the state gives them no resources but expects them to train the girls, and that it expects them to discipline them without having a “proper house of detention so that we can separate temporarily the vicious girl”.

The shirtwaist strikers in Philadelphia have picked up a sympathizer: Helen Taft, daughter of the president, along with her fellow members of the Bryn Mawr Suffrage Club. After hearing about the conditions of shirtwaist makers, she said, “Really, I’ll never put on a shirtwaist again without a shudder. ... Why, it’s just like reading Nietzsche, isn’t it?” “And then,” the NYT snidely reports, “Miss Taft and her friends boarded a Thirteenth Street car and went to the opera.”

Headline of the Day -100: “King Drops Short Breeches.” Those invited to meet King Edward at Lady Paget’s, the men anyway, have been told they are to wear evening trousers instead of the usual black silk breeches and black silk stockings. “[T]he reason of the innovation is unknown.”

Prince Frankenstein

Headline of the Day (Daily Telegraph): “Aborigines to Ask Prince William to Return Warrior’s Severed Head.” And why do they think he can help them? Because he “has his mother’s heart.”

Epicenter

This is Jamuna Toni, born last month at the Munich zoo.

Today -100: January 15, 1910: Of Hepburns

The NYT prints a letter in support of women’s suffrage by Katharine Houghton Hepburn, a leader of the suffrage movement in Connecticut and the mother of... wait for it... Katharine Hepburn. She writes that women would be more interested in public issues if they had the vote, but instead, “The Government has classed women with the mentally incompetent – those unfit to vote even in a democracy.”

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.