I made the mistake of setting the DVR to record this on a local channel, where it’s all Holy-shit-San-Bruno-Is-On-Fire all the time. And by the way, fuck PG&E.
DIGGING AND GROWING. WHY DOES EVERY PRESIDENT TALKING ABOUT THE ECONOMY SOUND LIKE CHANCE THE GARDENER? “I just want to talk a little bit about our continuing efforts to dig ourselves out of this recession and to grow our economy.”
SEE, IT’S A SIX-YEAR PLAN BECAUSE IF IT WERE A FIVE-YEAR PLAN WE’D ALL KNOW HE WAS FLAT OUT BEING A COMMUNIST AGAIN: “We also announced a six-year plan to rebuild America’s roads and railways and runways.”
PLENTY OF ISSUES, YES; PLENTY OF PEOPLE OF GOOD FAITH, NOT SO MUCH: “I realize there are plenty of issues in Washington where people of good faith simply disagree on principle.”
WHAT HE UNDERSTANDS: “I understand there’s an election coming up. But the American people didn’t send us here to think about our jobs.” We sent them there to think about Ground Zero Mosques, right?
NAME OF THE DAY: His new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers: Austan Goolsbee. Hi-larious.
“If the election is about the policies that are going to move us forward versus the policies that will get us back into a mess, then I think the Democrats will do very well.” He thinks there could be an election that’s about policies? That’s so adorable!
A DIFFERENT ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY? IT’S SOCIALISM, ISN’T IT? “And I ran because I felt that we had to have a different economic philosophy in order to grow that middle class and grow our economy over the long term.”
ALSO DOPEY, GRUMPY, SLEEPY... “Now, for all the progress we’ve made, we’re not there yet. And that means that people are frustrated and that means people are angry.”
THAT’S NOT A TUNE, THAT’S A WHOLE FUCKING SYMPHONY: “what I’ve got is the Republicans holding middle-class tax relief hostage because they’re insisting we’ve got to give tax relief to millionaires and billionaires to the tune of about $100,000 per millionaire”.
“And if the Republican leadership is prepared to get serious about doing something for families that are hurting out there, I would love to talk to them.” He thinks the Republican leadership could be prepared to get serious about doing something for families that are hurting out there? Just SO fucking adorable!
NO, THE QUESTION IS, WHY NOT? “Why hold the middle class hostage in order to do something that most economists don’t think makes sense?”
WHAT REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS USUALLY AGREE ON: “usually, Republicans and Democrats agree on infrastructure.”
Asked why he won’t just name Elizabeth Warren to the consumer protection agency, he decided to keep her hanging a while longer and also to undercut her publicly with, well I’d say faint praise but there isn’t any actual praise in here at all: “She’s a dear friend of mine. She’s somebody I’ve known since I was in law school. And I have been in conversations with her. She is a tremendous advocate for this idea.”
WHAT ONE OF THE THINGS HE MOST ADMIRED ABOUT BUSH WAS: “One of the things that I most admired about President Bush was after 9/11, him being crystal-clear about the fact that we were not at war with Islam.” And crystal-clear about the US not torturing people. And crystal-clear about there being WMDs in Iraq. Bush was “crystal-clear” about a lot of shit, is what I’m saying. A lot of shit.
HE’S THE REMINDERER: “And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.” Also, fuck you, atheists.
ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T MEAN YOUR SECRET MUSLIM FAITH? “And as somebody who relies heavily on my Christian faith in my job, I understand the passions that religious faith can raise.” So subtle about slipping in the reference to being Christian. So subtle.
WHAT HE DOESN’T WANT ANYBODY OUT THERE THINKING: “And I don’t want anybody out there thinking that it’s [Middle East peace] going to be easy.
Asked about Terry Jones, he referred to him as “the individual down in Florida,” “this individual” and “one individual in Florida”. This could be because 1) he’s trying to emphasize that Jones has almost no followers, 2) he’s forgotten his name, 3) he can never remember which one is Terry Jones and which one is Michael Palin.
INDIAN HUTS, WITCHES, AND CROSSES ON BLACK PEOPLE’S LAWNS, MAYBE, BUT NOT SACRED TEXTS: “The idea that we would burn the sacred texts of someone else’s religion is contrary to what this country stands for.”
UNLESS BY ATTENTION YOU MEAN BEING CALLED OUT IN A PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: “And although this may be one individual in Florida, part of my concern is to make sure that we don’t start having a whole bunch of folks all across the country think this is the way to get attention.”
WHAT HE’S CONSTANTLY THINKING ABOUT: “And so I am constantly thinking about how do we create ladders for communities and individuals to climb into the middle class.” Ladder factories?
See if you can guess what country Obama is referring to here: “It has a multiethnic population that mistrusts, oftentimes, each other. And it doesn’t have a tradition of a strong, central government.” If you guessed the United States, you were probably listening to the earlier part of the presser when he was begging for the Republicans to stop grinding our central government to a halt, but he’s actually talking about Afghanistan.
Asked about dealing with corrupt officials in Afghanistan (that is, officials in Afghanistan): “the only way that you are going to have a stable government over the long term is if the Afghan people feel that you’re looking out for them. And that means making sure that the tradition of corruption in the government is reduced.” Way to set goals.
“And we’ve made progress on some of those fronts. I mean, when it comes to corruption, I’ll just give you an example. Four years ago, 11 judges in the Afghan legal system were indicted for corruption. This year, 86 were indicted for corruption.” Well I know that reassures me. Doesn’t that reassure you?
AND BY “MADE COMPROMISES,” HE MEANS “PAID MASSIVE BRIBES TO”: “Are there going to be occasions where we look and see that some of our folks on the ground have made compromises with people who are known to have engaged in corruption?
AND BY “A WINK AND A NOD,” HE MEANS “PAID MASSIVE BRIBES TO”: “Let’s make sure that our efforts there are not seen as somehow giving a wink and a nod to corruption.”
On trials of alleged terrorists: “there are going to be circumstances where a military tribunal may be appropriate... there may be situations in which somebody was captured in theater, is now in Guantanamo. It’s very hard to piece together a chain of evidence that would meet some of the evidentiary standards that would be required in an Article III court. But we know that this person is guilty; there’s sufficient evidence to bring about a conviction.” Just not in a real court. But it’s okay because we “know” this person is guilty.
STILL TO THIS DAY: “Al Qaeda operatives still cite Guantanamo as a justification for attacks against the United States. Still to this day.” That might be because Guantanamo is still in the indefinite-detention-without-trial business. Still to this day.
What about capturing Osama bin Laden? “we have the best minds, the best intelligence officers, the best special forces, who are thinking about this day and night. And they will continue to think about it day and night as long as I’m president.” Because on his last day in office, we still won’t have captured bin Laden, is what he’s saying.
Finally, he made a fairly strong defense of the “Ground Zero Mosque.” “And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.” In fact, you could build a church on top of a synagogue on top of a Hindu temple on top of a mosque on top of a Burlington Coat Factory.
“we’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?”
Ill. State Rep. Lee O’Neil Browne is acquitted for his role in the bribery of the state legislature to elect William Lorimer to the US Senate. Oddly, Browne is a Democrat and Lorimer a Republican. This was Browne’s second trial; the first resulted in a hung jury and hints of jury tampering.
Teddy Roosevelt bans Sen. William Lorimer, whose seat was purchased by bribery, from a banquet in his honor at the (Republican) Hamilton Club in Chicago. In his speech TR accuses the Illinois Legislature of “the foulest and basest corruption, and, therefore, of the most infamous treason to American institutions.” It’s funny because it’s true.
The US chargé d’affaires in Panama, Richard Marsh, threatens the Panama Assembly and government that if they “persistently refuse to accede to the clear wishes of the American Government” by, for example, the Assembly electing the candidate of its own choosing and not that of the United States to fill the remainder of the term of the late president, then the US “can only adopt such means to prevent such opposition in the future as occupation and annexation.” The NYT says this statement has “created a sensation” in Panama.
Since the NYT devotes only 55 words to this story, I might as well give it verbatim: “The lower House of the Texas Legislature to-day, by a vote of 51 to 34, instructed Senators and Congressmen to work for the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federation Constitution, conferring franchise upon negroes.” Presumably they mean the 15th Amendment.
David Hacker, a NYC tailor, is building a dirigible which will run by perpetual motion. And a bicycle. A combination of bicycle and perpetual motion. The article’s end is priceless:
“I’m going to Washington first to call on President Taft, and any twenty persons [the airship’s capacity] who want to go with me will be welcome. After that I’m going to establish a transoceanic service with other ships like this first one.”
The 9th Circuit rules 6-5 that the Obama administration can keep victims of Bush’s extraordinary rendition and torture policies out of court by calling those policies “state secrets,” but the majority is pretty sure “that the government is not invoking the privilege to avoid embarrassment or to escape scrutiny of its recent controversial transfer and interrogation policies.” So that’s okay then.
Really, who would even have the nerve to impute that a government that kidnapped people and sent them to Morocco to be tortured was trying to avoid embarrassment or escape scrutiny?
The majority wept crocodile tears over the tough job it had: “This state requires us to address the difficult balance the state secrets doctrine strikes between fundamental principles of our liberty, including justice, transparency, accountability and national security.” And then they tossed out liberty, justice, transparency and accountability. Balance achieved.
By the way, to those smartypants who point out that there is no mention of a “state secrets doctrine” in the Constitution, that’s because it’s a state secret. Duh.
After anti-war protesters threw eggs and shoes at him in Dublin, Tony Blair cancels a second book-signing event so as not to “put our guests through the unpleasant consequences of the actions of demonstrators.” Still no second thoughts about putting Iraqis through the unpleasant consequences of his actions.
TR, in Wisconsin, criticizes a scheme by Republican Old Guardists to ignore the results of the (advisory) primaries and have the Legislature elect someone other than Robert La Follette to the US Senate.
Republicans sweep the elections for state offices in Vermont. Evidently they didn’t wait for November. But the Republican majority is only 2:1, which is considered a bad omen for Republicans nation-wide (“As goes Vermont...”). In other states, primaries are going on, and progressive/insurgent Republicans are generally trouncing Old Guard Republicans. The party convention in California rejects a plank endorsing Taft.
The Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) declares a ceasefire, but Spain says no thanks. This is what ETA declaring a ceasefire looks like.
Some Catholics in France are complaining that Muslims are “calmly taking possession of our churches with the complicity of the Catholic authorities.” By which they mean that one of the new gargoyles on a 12th-century cathedral in Lyons was made to resemble a foreman on the restoration project – who happens to be Muslim.
The record for “fastest furniture” was broken this weekend (but is there footage on YouTube? No there is not) by Perry Watkins and his nitrous-powered Queen Anne table with silver dinner service (113 mph).
Clive Williams, a retired electrical engineer in Henley-on-Thames, has discovered in his garden a carrot that looks exactly like Buzz Lightyear.
YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A PHONE CALL: NYC Police Commissioner Baker orders that people under arrest have a right to send a message or have someone notified by telephone without charge. In the past, cops have extracted graft for providing this service.
Headline of the Day -100: “Stabbed, He Falls Before Baby Parade.”
Political cartooning is something of a dying art these days, but Paul Conrad was one of the best, earning himself a proud place on Nixon’s enemies list and provoking Nancy Reagan into calling Conrad’s publisher at the LA Times every day when Ronnie was governor until he stopped taking her calls. Paul Conrad, dead at 86.
The Columbus, Ohio trolley company gets a temporary injunction forbidding the striking Association of Street Car Men handing out printed manner warning people not to ride the trolleys, picketing stations or stopping points, or intimidating employees.
In Bari, Italy, a mob of 2,000, displeased by an ordinance prohibiting the eating of figs because of a cholera scare, wreck the local sanitation office and beat up the employees.
Figs?
64,000 Russians have died during the current cholera outbreak. Russians must eat a lot of figs, or something.
Today Secretary of State Clinton was interviewed jointly by Israeli and Palestinian tv.
AND BY ASSOCIATED, YOU MEAN THAT YOU WERE MARRIED TO THE PRESIDENT: “And I think I’m the first person ever associated with an American administration who called for a Palestinian state as a way to realize the two-state solution.”
WHAT’S CLEAR TO HILLARY: “It’s clear to me that the forces of growth and positive energy are in a conflict with the forces of destruction and negativity.” “Forces of growth and positive energy.” That’s good rhetoric, Hills, because if Muslims and Jews can find common ground on anything, it’s that spacey new age talk like that is annoying.
WHAT HILLARY CANNOT DO: “Now, I will be the first to tell you it is very difficult. I cannot change history. I cannot take an eraser to the history books and change everything that has happened between you for so many years.” For example, while some Palestinians might wish to erase the Jews, Hillary would want to erase just one Jew, named Monica.
WHAT WE GOT: “And from [Israelis’] perspective, and one of the reasons for the skepticism in Israel, is we pulled out of Lebanon, we got Hezbollah, we pulled out of Gaza, we got Hamas.” Straight out of the Likud handbook, that line.
But it gets worse:
“So I think that Iran is a serious problem. I’m the first to tell you that.” Funny, I thought Iran was a country. “It’s a problem not just for the United States. It’s a problem for the entire region, because more than anyone, you see the results. I mean, Hamas is not only attacking Israelis; Hamas has been brutal to the people in Gaza in so many ways over the last years.” Hamas = Iran.
NO ONE DESERVES A FUTURE IN TORONTO OR CHICAGO: “I’m hoping that the leadership will be willing to try one more time and to be willing to do the hard work of making peace, because these young people – they deserve to have a future in Ramallah or Jericho, not in Toronto or Chicago.”
Asked, presumably by the Israeli reporter, why she had changed her mind since Candidate Hillary said that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel: “I want to support what is the outcome that the parties can agree to.”
The chief rabbi of Britain refuted Stephen Hawking’s proof of the non-existence of God. But he did it behind the Times’s paywall, which means that you live in a cold, purposeless, chaotic universe unless you pay Rupert Murdoch.
Fortunately for those of living outside the paywall we still have the Daily Telegraph, which today introduces us to the world’s biggest potato. Those of us outside Murdoch’s praywall will just have to worship it as our new god:
Headline of the Day: “JM Barrie in Clear over Dead Babies Found in Trunk.” Turns out the trunk was owned by a nurse named Janet M. Barrie, and not by the author of Peter Pan.
Make-Over of the Day: “Phone Box Turned into Lavatory.” When was the last time you saw a phone box that hadn’t been turned into a lavatory?
Finally, some nurses at an NHS hospital in Milton Keynes do a rap about washing your hands (the rap begins at 0:58). “Even if your hands look clean / Just remember where they’ve been.” So sad, so very sad.
The American Marines in Nicaragua, having succeeded in preventing the Madriz government taking the port of Bluefields and thereby playing a small-to-medium role in Madriz’s downfall, are being withdrawn.
Taft leaks, or someone leaks on his behalf, that parts of TR’s “new nationalism” sounds unconstitutional to him. In particular, a federal child (and women) labor law and a workmen’s compensation act would infringe, Taft thinks, on the powers of the states.
Taft does not plan to do any campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates this fall. Back then, it just wasn’t done.
A mob in Graceville, Florida lynches a black man and woman believed to have shot a cop trying to arrest the man for stealing a watch. They were seized from the town jail and hanged from a trestle.
A NYT editorial tries to explain the feminist opposition to the city’s new Night Court for women without quite explaining what they object to, which is “to the systematic examination to which women of a certain class are to be subjected to in court, though its object is clearly humane and in the interest of public health and morals.” If I’m reading this correctly, prostitutes are being forced to undergo medical examinations of their naughty bits.
New York bans all betting, whether “orally or otherwise.” The bill was originally aimed just at racing, but amendments got out of hand. The racing season was just aborted prematurely, before this law came into effect.
NYC opens a separate Women’s Night Court. Feminists are organizing against it.
A negro is lynched in Jackson Crossing, Mississippi. A crowd of 2,000 participates.
Headline: “Kaiser Reviews 30,000 Men.” Boy, everyone’s a critic.
Tonight Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina debated for the California Senate seat (flawed transcript).
Carly: “But I think our founding fathers intended for ours to be an elected government.”
Boxer: “When she was CEO of Hewlett Packard, before she was terminated, actually, she shipped 30,000 jobs overseas. Think of it. That’s the size of Foster City.” On the other hand if she’d actually shipped Foster City overseas, would anyone have noticed?
Boxer: “I want to see the words ‘made in America’ again.”
Carly-cakes: “She voted against body armor.”
F: “Senator boxer has vilified the people of Arizona, even though the federal government isn’t doing its job.”
F: “she is also for big government and elite, extreme environmental groups.”
B: “And I have a record which won me an award from doctors who were trying to find out better treatments for burn victims.” What would such an award be named? The Burny? The Crispy?
Boxer: “So I love the military. In a very personal way.”
Questions from viewers. A Mr. Tim Tam, if that is his real name, asks, “Senator boxer, you have been staying in the office three terms. Why don’t you let other people try?”
B: “I don’t think we need those Wall Street values right now.”
F: “The truth is that California has higher-than-average unemployment rate because we are destroying jobs and others are fighting harder for our jobs. Texas is fighting harder for our jobs. So is North Carolina, Brazil, Guatemala, China, India, Russia, Poland. I know precisely why those jobs go. And I’ll tell you why. Because China for example, like Texas, like Brazil, gives companies huge tax credits. They help them cult through reg -- cut through regulation.” Fiorina’s new slogan: culting through regulation.
F: “And frankly, I don’t think there are enough people in Washington who understand why private sector jobs are important.”
SF Chronicle reporter Carla Marenucci asked Boxer about the most important moment in recent California political history, when Boxer asked Gen. Michael Walsh to call her senator rather than ma’am. Boxer says she called him general. Evidently after the scandalous event in question, she called the general and asked if she should apologize for upsetting him and he said no.
Fee-fi-fo-orina said it was just a shame that Boxer is using Hewlett Packard, “a treasure of California,” as a political football.
Asked if she ever disagreed with her boyfriend Obama on anything, Boxer said we need an exit strategy in Afghanistan and he should appoint Elizabeth Warren, right now.
Carly says she is pro-life because “My husband’s mother was told to abort him” because of health concerns, but “She lived a ripe old age to 98.” So clearly, as that anecdote demonstrates, nobody needs abortion rights.
Carly says Boxer “said that she doesn’t think a baby has rights until it leaves the hospital.” (In 1999, and she said no such thing. It was in a debate with Rick Santorum. She said she’d had 2 children, Little Ricky said he’s had 6, she said, no your wife had 6, he said no we both did, “That’s the way we do things in our family.”)
Fiorina says she’d overturn Roe v. Wade “If there were an opportunity. It’s not something I’m running on.”
F. keeps saying Boxer has sponsored only four successful bills in her Senate career. Eventually, Boxer notes that the way Fiorina is counting, neither McCain nor Feingold would get credit for McCain-Feingold.
F: “Recovery summer has become the summer of despair in California.”
F. seems to support Prop. 23 (to kill state global warming legislation), although she also refuses to take an explicit position, because “The only way to impact global warming is to act globally. A state acting alone will make no difference.”
B. says if you support Prop. 23, “China takes the lead away from us with solar. That Germany takes the lead from us with wind.” Heaven forfend Germany take the lead from us with wind. “But I guess my opponent is kind of used to creating jobs in China and other places.”
F: “I think it’s crystal clear that we have loads of laws.” So we should all be allowed to have assault weapons.
Another trolley is blown up in Columbus, and there is a threat to turn the trolley strike into a general strike if it is not resolved in 72 hours.
Woodrow Wilson, speaking to the American Bar Association’s annual convention, says that the “fatuous, antiquated, and quite unnecessary fiction” that corporations are legal persons should be abandoned. When they do wrong, their directors should be punished, not their shareholders. Society “cannot afford to let its strongest men be the only men who are inaccessible to the law.”
And Teddy Roosevelt makes exactly the same point – “officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law” – in a speech at the John Brown Celebration in Osawatomie, Kansas which marked his first use of the term “new nationalism,” which would feature in his 1912 presidential campaign, and which meant a much stronger president, capable of overriding “local selfishness,” Congress, corporations etc in the national interest. He also called for a progressive income tax and a progressive inheritance tax on large corporations, and said, “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.”
Headline and Scoop of the Day -100: “Czar Growing Stouter.”
This time, it was the voluble Joe Biden who said it most succinctly: “We’re going to be just fine. They’re going to be just fine.” Obama spun that nonsense out at greater length, in a soporific monotone.
WHAT THIS MILESTONE SHOULD SERVE AS A REMINDER TO ALL AMERICANS OF: “But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment.” Funny, I’d have said the last 7+ years of the Iraq war have shown that the future is not ours to shape, no matter how much misplaced confidence and commitment we exude.
MAYBE WE SHOULD BURN THAT DESK, JUST TO BE SURE: “From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq.”
“A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency.” Here, Obama buys into the narrative that Bush began the invasion of Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein. Wouldn’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, you know.
EXCEPT FOR THAT WMD SNIPE HUNT, OF COURSE: “The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given.”
WHY WE FOUGHT: “Our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future.” And I’m sure the surviving residents of those blocks are standing by their piles of rubble, just being grateful for that chance for a better future.
“So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.”
“And Iraqi forces have taken the fight to Al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations.” And here (and elsewhere in the speech), Obama buys into the narrative that the Iraq war was about Al Qaida.
IT’S ABOUT FIVE MONTHS LATE FOR THAT “SENSE OF URGENCY” THING: “Tonight, I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people.”
IRAQ = PAGE. “Now, it is time to turn the page.”
WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT? “This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.”
I’M PRETTY SURE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO COULD DOUBT THAT: “Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”
HE NEVER WANTS US TO MAKE A MISTAKE: “But make no mistake: this transition will begin - because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”
“Over seven years before, American troops and coalition partners had fought their way across similar highways, but this time no shots were fired. It was just a convoy of brave Americans, making their way home.” So the big victory is that they didn’t shoot at us when we were leaving. Hurrah.
IT’S HARD TO GET TO KNOW SOMEONE YOU JUST SHOT OR BOMBED: “Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.”
THE LIGHT OF ELECTRICITY MORE THAN TWO HOURS A DAY WOULD ALSO BE NICE: “They stared into the darkest of human creations – war – and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.”
HOW WE MUST EARN VICTORY: “In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.”
PAINTED GRAY AND UNDERWATER? “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.” So, if I understand this metaphor correctly, we’re traveling through rough waters on a ship built out of troops (I’m picturing the pirate comic in Alan Moore’s Watchmen) in pre-dawn darkness to better days.
Today Obama also issued a proclamation for National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Just saying.
At the Israeli whitewash investigation of the flotillacide, Major General Eitan Dangot of the IDF insists “There was no justification for the flotilla, because there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
What does the IDF find justified? As Lenin reminds us, shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then going over and emptying a magazine into her to “confirm the kill,” that was considered justified. (My oldposts on the case.)
The pope has ordered the closing of the seminary in Perugia, Italy, because the students gave an ovation to the king and queen of Italy.
The NYT reports that Henry Reed Rathbone is near death. They’re wrong by a year, but this story was new to me, not being an assassination buff: In April 1865 Rathbone, a Union army major, and his step-sister Clara were guests of the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre. Rathbone received several stab wounds trying to stop John Wilkes Booth. He recovered and entered government service, but slowly went insane. In 1883, while US consul to Hanover, he shot Clara, who he had married in 1867, fatally, then tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself 6 times. He was committed to a German insane asylum for the rest of his life.
The trolley strike is still going on in Columbus. A couple of trolleys are dynamited, with passengers aboard, but no one is killed. The mob fights with soldiers.
Headline of the Day -100: “Brooklyn Helpless Before Cardinals.” Oh, baseball, not a Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren thing.
The governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver call for Theodore Roosevelt (who they were introducing in the Denver Auditorium) to run for president in 1912. They are both Democrats.
Sorry, I just can’t. I didn’t read Beck’s speech and I got as far in Palin’s as “I must assume that you too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want,” then I had to lie down.
So feel free to caption these here pictures:
(The Reuters caption says that Beck is introducing a representative Jew, a representative Indian, a representative guy unafraid to wear a pink shirt that in front of a bunch of people who think anyone wearing a pink shirt is a fag and must be killed, and a descendant of Protestant settlers.)
(Update: Palin tweets “So honored to be a part of the ‘Restoring Honor’ rally today in D.C.” Yes, Sarah, “restoring honor” meant restoring it to you, because it’s always all about you.)
Kaiser Wilhelm delivered a speech in which he insisted that the crown came to him “by God’s grace alone, and not by Parliaments, assemblages of the people, or resolutions of the people”. Predictable shitstorm ensues.
Russia gives special permission to Oscar Straus, the US ambassador to Turkey, to enter visit St. Petersburg. Permission is required because Straus is Jewish.
Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson, visiting the Philippines, hears from Moros who want Mindanao annexed to the US, or made independent, but definitely not subsumed within the Philippines.
Another way in which Obama administration policies go further than Bush’s did: officials at Guantanamo no longer tell us how many hunger strikers they are force feeding.
But they do inform us that they are doing it in a culturally sensitive way, force feeding them only between dusk and dawn during Ramadan.
So that’s okay then.
“By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.”
Roosevelt gives a speech in upstate New York, supporting a state senator who VP Sherman opposes. TR sez, “the only kind of politics I care for is the kind of politics where decency is combined with efficiency,” whatever that means. He also said, “I am against a crook – rich or poor” and “There is only one person I place above the veteran, and that is the mother who does her full duty. I like all your crops, but I like children best.”
José Dolores Estrada, brother of the insurgent general, declares himself president of Nicaragua. He claims there will be an election within six months.
Fashion victim -100: A Pittsburg tailor fell asleep in his shop and died in his sleep, choked to death by a high collar.
Arizona Democrats want the not-yet-state’s constitution to have provisions for initiatives and referenda, and are willing to risk the Republicans in Congress and the White House denying them statehood on that account.
The insurgents capture Managua without a fight. Madriz goes into exile.
The US has declared that it will consider it unconstitutional if Panama’s National Assembly elect the acting president, Carlos Mendoza, the VP who took over when President Obaldia died, to serve out the remainder of his term. Mendoza is black. (A week later he dropped out.)
Taft finally breaks his silence about the NY Republicans’ snubbing of TR, saying he had nothing to do with it and hanging his veep out to dry, releasing a telegram which he had sent to Sherman advising him to talk with Roosevelt before the vote by the committee on the chairmanship of the party convention – which Sherman failed to do. In fact, Taft suggests that when he spoke with Sherman before the vote, Sherman had not told him that his name would be put forward against TR’s.
The Madriz government in Nicaragua is on the verge of falling, with the Estradists threatening Managua.
Korea is about to cease to exist as a nation and be annexed completely by Japan. Newspaper censorship has ensured that Koreans have no idea this is about to happen. The NYT thinks most Koreans will be better off under Japanese rule and won’t object too much to the change.
The King of Saxony and two of the princesses, taking a stroll through the woods, stumbled across a nudist. The princesses ran away, screaming.
John Tully of Brooklyn was bitten by a dog one month ago and then by a Mr. Stanford Waltbridge, also of Brooklyn, last Saturday. Headline of the Day -100: “Prefers A Dog’s Bite.” In case you were wondering.
Or is this the Headline of the Day -100: “Assaulted with Cucumber”? A grocer is the assaultee, the offending fruit being hurled at him by a youth he caught trying to shoplift it.
Taft’s people have been claiming, truthfully or not I cannot say, that he didn’t even know about the scheme of the New York Old Guard Republicans to defeat Roosevelt as temporary chairman of the party convention in favor of VP Sherman (it should be noted that TR and Sherman were both New Yorkers). Nevertheless, the break between Taft and TR seems to be complete.
Speaking of Sherman, the House committee investigating Indian land contracts in Oklahoma exonerates him of having anything to do with the attempt to bribe Sen. Thomas Gore. It’s not clear how hard they really tried to find out the truth.
At an air meet in New York, a Lt. J.E. Fickel fired a rifle at a target on the ground from aviator Glenn Curtiss’s plane. This was the first time gunfire ever emanated from an airplane (but not the last). Fickel missed by six feet.
Kaiser Wilhelm is opening a big new imperial castle in Posen, Poland, a symbol of German control of Poland. The Polish nobility will be staying away from the dedication ceremony in droves. A new law in German Poland bans public political meetings held in Polish or any other language than German.
Karmic Death of the Day: Sam Mazzola, whose business included bear wrestling, is mauled by one of his bears.
Another albino child killed in Swaziland because, as you know, albino parts (in this case evidently her head) are great for magic.
The descendants of Ivan the Terrible and the Rurik dynasty are suing to regain ownership of the Kremlin. Funnily enough, no one has official title to it now.
Headline of the Day: “Japanese Man Kept Dead Mother in Backpack.” And if I know the Japanese, it was a Hello Kitty backpack.
Theodore Roosevelt addressed the National Negro Business League. He told them “that they should not whine about privileges they did not enjoy, but should plunge ahead and make the best of the opportunities they have.” And “slouchy, ne’er-do-well” negroes hurt the whole negro race. And the best friends the negroes can have are their white neighbors in the South (say WHAT?).
Canadian MP Henri Bourassa, leader of the Quebec Nationalists, calls for annexation of Canada by the United States.
South Sudan plans to rebuild its cities in the shape of rhinos and giraffes.
The White House actually sent out someone to tell the press that Obama is a Christian.
A Disneyland hostess is suing to be allowed to wear a hijab. Did no one consider the obvious compromise?
The obvious compromise is Mickey Mouse ears over the hijab.
A man in a banana costume, brandishing a shotgun and his penis and shouting “something or other about white supremacy” in Washington state, is arrested for, among other things, indecent exposure (either because the banana costume was child-sized or because he was exposing himself to women, depending on which story you read). Name of the Day: the cop telling all this to the press: Sgt. Randy Pieper. Said Pieper, “he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn’t really have a reason for the costume.”
Headline of the Day (and the photo caption’s pretty good too).
The Times has naturally been keeping its readers apprised of every detail of Mayor Gaynor’s recovery from the shooting. Today’s report: Gaynor Expects to Sit up To-day.
Roosevelt has decided on a strategy: he will stand aside from the elections in New York and let the Old Guard Republicans take the blame for their inevitable loss to the Democrats. He will neither endorse nor criticize the Taft administration unless it, you know, starts it. And he’s definitely probably maybe not running for president in 1912.
The Columbus trolley strike continues, more peacefully (rocks thrown, one car dynamited, ok not that peacefully). Mayor Marshall is more or less daring the governor to remove him from office. Soldiers ordered to protect the scabs have been making generous donations to the strike fund.
Headline of the Day -100: “Governor Slaps Editor.” That’s Governor Denver Dickerson of Nevada and George Montrose, editor of the Carson City News, who may or may not have written an article accusing the governor of grafting $5,000 on a land deal for a new prison.
What “singular issue” does she mean? Abortion? Also, Sarah, if you’re looking to be crowned the Queen of the True Feminists, you might not want to refer to a “cackle” of women.
(Update: and in other tweets today, she advises Dr. Laura “don’t retreat...reload!” which I think means she wants her to say nigger a bunch more times, and called opponents of Dr. L’s hate speech “Constitutional obstructionists” – “her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence ‘isn't American,not fair’”).
The Washington D.C. Humane Society is threatening to sue the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Dept of Agriculture and other government bureaus for allegedly vivisecting dogs.
In California’s Republican primaries, Insurgents sweep up the nominations for every office, with Hiram Johnson winning 51 of the 52 counties (exc San Francisco). A couple of incumbent US congresscritters lose. Former congressman and state legislator Grove Johnson loses his bid for a seat in the Assembly. He was an Old Guard Republican and a bitter political enemy of Hiram Johnson; he was also his father. This election marks the end of Southern Pacific’s long dominance over California politics.
Headline-That-Sounds-Like-It’s-Dirty-But-Really-Isn’t of the Day -100: “Barber Out After Dick.” O.C. Barber of the Diamond Match Company – “America’s Match King” – will stump to rid the Republican Party of Old Guard types like Sen. Charles Dick.
Taft’s plans to change the leadership of the Republican party seem to have failed. Speaker Cannon in particular “is making it clearer every day that he intends to go down fighting and to do all the damage he can in the process.” The same could be said more or less of the entire Old Guard Republican leadership, who seem content to lose the 1910 elections if it means they retain control of the party in defeat. The Republican Party is fragmenting (which is fun to read even if it’s only in 1910, by the way) and “The use of the party whip to compel discipline in States where the insurgent sentiment has been growing has resulted disastrously in practically every instance.” Taft is simply too weak and uninfluential to hold the party together, especially with the return to America of Theodore Roosevelt. The old guard is trying to make Roosevelt, in the words of one anonymous party leader, “know his place,” and has just engineered his defeat for the post of temporary chairman of the NY state convention next month (evidently it’s more important than it sounds, if only symbolically) in favor of VP Sherman, who had worked hard to ensure the defeat of TR’s nephew, Theodore Douglas Robinson, for a state senate seat nomination, making the choice of him over TR especially insulting. TR, who is royally pissed off, will (probably) be at the convention as a delegate.
One “Roosevelt Republican,” insurgent Hiram Johnson, has won the first-ever direct primary for governor in California.
The NYPD has begun issuing photo i.d. cards to “persons of good character,” which will allow holders who break minor laws and city ordinances, especially while driving, to be served with a summons rather than be arrested. To get the card, applicants must send their personal details, employment and criminal history, with affidavits attesting to their character signed by three men who are over 21, not relatives, and not saloon-keepers.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), responding to a constituent who called Obama a Muslim Marxist, said, “He’s at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture. ... He doesn’t have an American experience.” I love how merely understanding Muslim culture – pardon me, the Muslim culture – is elevated into something akin to treason. Yes, he understands stuff, let’s throw rocks at him.
Also, of course, King makes the assumption that Islam and “an American experience” are antithetical.
Also, Obama is a black man having abuse shouted at him by bigots – what experience is more American than that?
Ohio Governor Judson Harmon sends the National Guard into Columbus, over the objections of the mayor. “When asked for his opinion of the new developments this evening, Mayor Marshall replied that he had nothing to say except that Gov. Harmon and Adjutant Gen. Weybrecht could go to the infernal regions.”
Violence in Columbus all day related to the trolley strike, with many rocks thrown. Also cayenne dough balls. And attempts to dynamite car sheds. Business groups are demanding the governor remove Mayor George Marshall from office for supposedly instigating the strike. The mayor has called for 2,000 volunteers to join the police force to put down disorder; precisely 0 have done so. The police have decided to stop arresting scabs who carry guns; “In consequence there was much firing by the strikebreakers to-day.”
The pope told a prominent (but unnamed) visitor that the Vatican doesn’t even have to respond to the government of Spain, because loyalty to the Church is such that PM Canalejas, who the pope said betrayed the Spanish nation, is likely to be removed by the Cortes. (Spoiler alert: he won’t be. He will continue in office two more years, until he is assassinated by anarchists).
New Jersey’s former governor, E.C. Stokes, announces his candidacy for the US Senate. He will avail himself of the state’s 1907 Primary Act to put himself on the ballot of the Republican primary. Since senators were chosen by the Legislature, this is a voluntary act, and his rivals have not so far chosen to join him.
Since Mayor Gaynor seemed to have survived assassination, some people are talking about him as the next Democratic candidate for president. Or possibly for governor.
President Taft is paying to send the Italian laborer his son hit with his automobile on a lengthy vacation to Italy. Taft also paid his medical bills and gave him $500, more than he earned in a year.
In the trial at Guantanamo of Omar Khadr, a colonel is removed from the jury for saying he agrees with Obama that Guantanamo should be closed. The prosecutor said he had “preconceived ideas that detainees were mistreated,” unlike the obvious open-mindedness of the jury members who said Guantanamo should remain open or the 7 jury members who have lost close friends in The War Against Terror (TWAT) – it is not clear how many of those 7 were among the officers who had volunteered to serve on the jury. More impressively, especially in the trial of a boy who was tortured into confessing, none of the jury members believe that the US ever tortures anyone into confessing.
NYT: “Much of the media tour is intended to convey that the 176 men the government is holding at Guantánamo are being treated humanely. Camp guards describe the curriculum for detainees, which includes a living-skills course on home budgeting and résumé writing.”
CONTEST: What advice might Omar Khadr and his fellow inmates have received on home budgeting and résumé writing?
At a New York militia camp, members of Squadron C of Brooklyn are complaining about having to use the same showers as the Tenth Cavalry. Yes, the former are white, the latter black (New York state segregated its militia units?).
1/3 of Columbus cops are refusing to guard trolleys and the strikebreakers running them. They had been ordered to shoot anyone who refused orders to halt.
Interior Secretary Ballinger, who Taft is evidently planning to force out, tells the Commercial Club in Portland, Oregon that “The demagogue, the fanatic, the sentimentalist, the faddist are crusading under the banner of conservation”.
