Today -100: January 14, 1911: Of foreign banks, foreign spies, socialists & supes, and wills

A “foreign bank” in Pittsburg goes bankrupt and the owner blows his brains out. But depositors, described by the Times as “Gypsies, Poles, and Slavs, a number of them women, in fantastic headgear,” gathered in front of the closed bank demanding to see the body to ensure that he hadn’t faked his death and absconded.

The House is working on a bill to outlaw spies. In 1911, it seems, spying for a foreign nation was only a crime if the US was actually at war, in which case it fell under the treason laws. The timing is probably related to several recent incidents in Europe, such as British “hikers” being arrested in Germany making sketches of fortifications, but also to the activities of Japanese spies who got hold of blueprints to fortresses along the Pacific Coast and in the Philippines.

Teddy Roosevelt is to go hunting with a group of his Rough Rider pals in Mexico. Did no one tell him there’s a revolution going on there?

Taft goes to the top of the Washington Monument for the first time.

Eugene Debs calls for socialists to rise up in revolt, the nature of which he fails to specify, against the Supreme Court. On Lincoln’s Birthday. Debs particularly objects to the 6-month sentence given to an editor for posting a reward for the return of the fugitive ex-governor of Kentucky (which I’ve mentioned before), given that union leaders Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were infamously kidnapped in Colorado by Idaho police and brought forcibly to Idaho in 1906.

In Brooklyn, Surrogate (like a judge) Ketcham rejects the will of millionaire Robert Thompson. 4 months before his death, the 70-year-old Thompson married a 27-year-old stenographer at his paper company. His relatives were not best pleased, including his dead first wife, “Muzzie,” whose displeasure from beyond the grave was made known through spiritual messages helpfully relayed by Thompson’s granddaughter, Marion A. Funk. The dead wife also said that if he did marry, he should cut the second wife from his will in favor of his grandchildren, and this he did. The surrogate ruled that the will was the product of fraud.

Carrie Nation collapses!

Caption contest

The memorial in Tuscon yesterday. Obama gazing beatifically into a new enlightened era of civility, or something, and John McCain (2nd row, 2nd from the left) glaring balefully at Obama. But what is he (either one, or both) thinking?

Today -100: January 13, 1911: Of fingerprints

Two burglars are the first people convicted in New York state on the basis of fingerprint evidence (actually, they decided to plead guilty when confronted with it).

Congresscritters are a-scared

Rep. Peter King wants to ban people carrying guns within 1,000 feet of congresscritters and other federal officials. He doesn’t mention 9-year-old student council members; I guess they can take care of themselves. So the lesson he’s drawn from Tuscon is that he isn’t privileged and protected and pampered enough.

And Rep. Dan Burton wants to enclose the House gallery in plexiglas.

Funny. I’d like to enclose Rep. Dan Burton in plexiglas. Or carbonite. Or yak manure.

Today -100: January 12, 1911: Of injunctions

Samuel Gompers attacks Taft’s support for a proposed law on injunctions, which is supposed to rein in judge’s use of injunctions against strikes, but would institutionalize their use (judges have been citing “common law” when issuing these questionable injunctions).

Today -100: January 11, 1911: Of gas

Inexplicably Amusing Headline of the Day -100: “Gas Kills Benjamin Cramp.”

Bullets. Lots of bullets.

US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing (do not click through to the original Belfast Telegraph story, which crashes Firefox)
250,000 bullets for every insurgent killed. Really, really bad shots? Or just really careful? “Sarge, I thought I’d probably killed him after shooting him 100,000 times, but I shot him another 150,000 times, just to be sure.” “Good thinking, private, you can never be too sure.”

Today -100: January 10, 1911: Little Oscar and the biplane of doom

Texas Governor-Elect “Little Oscar” Colquitt gets in a minor plane wreck. It was actually supposed to be a photo op of him in a plane on the ground, but he accidentally hit the accelerator and it went several hundred yards before the pilot, who was running along beside it or being dragged, managed to get the throttle closed.

Incidentally, Colquitt was a Democrat and the majority party in both houses of the Texas Legislature was the Prohibition Party.

But not, you know, really

Boy it’s been a tough week for political metaphors, what with a congresscritter “targeted” by Sarah Palin actually being targeted by a loon with an automatic weapon. I mean, I’d hate for my metaphors to be taken as something I intended literally.

That said, fuck Sarah Palin.

Today -100: January 9, 1911: Of senators and remembering the Maine

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote this week for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of US senators. Opponents may try to derail it by setting qualifications for electors or having the federal government oversee the elections, which would be opposed by Southern Democrats as potentially giving the vote to black people. But the Committee is expected instead to allow the states to set qualifications by making electors for Senate the same as for the lower house of the state legislatures (which is what the 17th Amendment says).

The WaPo reports that the Department of War has concluded that the Maine blew up in 1898 because of an internal explosion, not a Spanish torpedo. So, um, whoops.

Oops

Israeli soldiers kill 65-year-old Palestinian asleep in his bed in Hebron instead of the Hamas member who lived in the apartment downstairs. The IDF apologizes, saying, “Sorry, we meant to kill a different unarmed guy asleep in his bed.”

I’m kidding, of course.

The IDF never apologizes.

Today -100: January 8, 1911: Of monks & nuns, and women voters

Portugal bans monks & nuns from wearing distinctive dress. And anybody is empowered to arrest them for it, or any of the Jesuits already expelled from the country.

The 1910 election has been followed by criminal prosecutions of hundreds of people in various places for vote-buying. Maybe it was like that after every election, I don’t know. In the Billtown School District in Ohio, which is near, um, Ohio I guess, every single male has been disfranchised for vote-selling, so in the next election only women will be able to vote or stand for school trustee.

Today -100: January 7, 1911: Of pardons & peonage, fireworks, mosquitos, suffragettes, mutinies, and pensions

Taft refuses to pardon the president of a lumber company in Florida convicted of holding foreign laborers in involuntary peonage (however, Taft had previously commuted the sentence from 18 months to 6 months). Taft says that “Fines are not effective against men of wealth. Imprisonment is necessary.”

The city of NY has won a court ruling that may allow it to recover from William Randolph Hearst the $250,000 it had to pay out to victims of a fireworks display at Madison Square Garden on election night 1902, put on by the National Association of Democratic Clubs of which Hearst was president, which killed 18 people.

The House votes a $72 a month annuity to a soldier who volunteered for a medical experiment, allowing himself to be bitten by yellow fever mosquitos to test the theory that that’s how you get yellow fever. It is.


The Archbishop of Lyons, France, forbids Catholics reading four republican newspapers, says it is a sin to do so.

British suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst is visiting NY, giving speeches and raising money. The NYT article begins by referring to her as “a little rosy-cheeked slip of an English girl” and keeps up the condescension throughout, using the word “girl” a lot and calling her “little Miss Pankhurst.” It says she is 20 and looks younger. She is in fact 28, and doesn’t. She said she expects British women to be enfranchised “this very year.”

A couple of months ago, some sailors on 2 Brazilian battleships and some other ships mutinied, demanding more pay, the abolition of corporal punishment on ships, etc, or they would bombard Rio. Which they did. The Brazilian Congress voted to accept their demands and give them amnesty but naturally they were arrested when they set foot on shore. Since then 45 of the imprisoned mutineers have mysteriously died of sunstroke, gangrene and suffocation.

There is still no quorum in the Tennessee Legislature, so still no governor. The NYT notes that the situation can’t continue for long because without a government, pensions to Confederate veterans would be stopped and “No man or set of men with political aspirations would care to hazard even an indirect connection with such a situation as that.”

More Daily Telegraphy: Cats do not talk

From the newspaper of record, the Daily Telegraph:

Scientists prove that women crying is a big turn-off for men. The scientists, wearing lab coats and everything, “collected tears from women watching a sad movie and then had a panel of 24 men smell them while at the same time looking at pictures of the opposite sex. This was then repeated using a salt water solution trickled down the cheek of the same women. When asked to rate the attractiveness of the pictures, the men who had sniffed the real tears found the images much less attractive than when smelling the fake tears.”

The makers of Super Scoop kitty litter are suing Fresh Step for its commercials suggesting that cats prefer the latter litter to the former, citing the alleged fact that “Cats do not talk”.


This nattily dressed gentleman, one Phoenix Jones, practices the trade of superhero in Lynwood, Washington.

Romania is imposing income tax on witches for the first time. The witches are resisting with, yes, spells.

Today -100: January 6, 1911: Of governors, skyscrapers, and first class tickets

Tennessee’s Governor-Elect Ben Hooper is still just governor-elect. A Fusionist, he’s pretty much an accidental, minority governor, his election the product of a bad split in the Democratic Party, mostly over prohibition. Now, mainstream Democrats elected to the Legislature are refusing to be sworn in until the Fusionists stop challenging the results in several seats D’s supposedly won. Without a quorum the Lege can’t swear Hooper in.

Chicago will limit all new buildings to 200 feet, a reduction from the current 260.

The Trial of the Century? The Pennsylvania Railroad files suit against Altern Miller, the president of the Union Electric and Power Company, for $2.16, the price of a first class fare, which Miller had refused to pay for the second part of his journey after being forced to stand from West Philadelphia to Belmar despite having paid first class. Miller vows to fight it to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Meet your new, orange Speaker of the House, America. Who’s crying now?

John Boehner was sworn in today as Speaker of the House,

Give it, Nancy! I said give it!
so I guess I have to start paying attention to John Boehner now, so let’s blog his stupid first speech as stupid speaker of the stupid House of Representatives.

Nancy, look out, he’s behind you, he’s behind you!!!

NOT LIKE THOSE CRAPPY, LAZY ONES – I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MASSACHUSETTS’S SEVENTH DISTRICT: “I am honored and humbled to represent a great, hard-working community in Congress.” (Note to any readers in Massachusetts 7th; I picked that number at random, I don’t even know where you are, except probably in Massachusetts, I’m sure you’re lovely, so no complaints please.)

YEAH, WE’RE ALL REALLY GRATEFUL, OHIO’S 8th: “The people of Ohio’s Eighth Congressional District continue to afford me the privilege to serve, for which I am deeply grateful.” And the privilege of leaving Ohio in the winter, or any time, really. (Note to Ohio... ah, screw it.)

Aaaand, he’s crying.
BECAUSE THERE WON’T BE ANY MORE ROAD MAINTENANCE FUNDING, SO THE CAN WOULD JUST FALL INTO AN ENORMOUS POTHOLE: “No longer can we kick the can down the road.”

BECAUSE WHEN YOU THINK HUMBLE, YOU THINK JOHN ANDREW BOEHNER: “The American people have humbled us.”

Humble

OR SELL IT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. YOU KNOW, WHATEVER. “Our aim will be to give government back to the people.”

SIZE DOESN’T MATTER: “We will dispense with the conventional wisdom that bigger bills are always better...”

NO PREMATURE LEGISLATION: “...that fast legislating is good legislating”.

HE CAN SOMEHOW GET THROUGH THIS SENTENCE WITHOUT LAUGHING MANIACALLY, THAT’S WHY THEY GAVE HIM THE JOB: “Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it openly, honestly, and respectfully.”

Fondling the Speaker’s gavel. What, he’s fondling the Speaker’s gavel, why are you snickering?
OR EVER: “We will not always get it right.”

THAT IDEA: I THINK I’LL HAVE SOME MORE NACHOS: “More than a country, America is an idea”.


IT’S THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE? THAT’S GREAT, CUZ THE PEOPLE JUST GOT FORECLOSED ON: “Welcome to the people’s House. Welcome to the 112th Congress.”

Aaaaand, some more with the crying.

Another edition of “Why Do We Need To Keep Saying This?”

Lots of people have rightly piled onto Ross Douthat for his recent column. But let’s boil it down, shall we? The desire of infertile couples for adorable white babies places absolutely no moral obligation on women with unwanted pregnancies to fill that need. None.

Today -100: January 5, 1911: Of large dirigibles, earthquakes, anarchist demonstrations, and college women

A dirigible capable of carrying 50 passengers is supposedly being built. Its designer promises it will neither explode nor fall.

An earthquake in Russia, 7.7 on the Richter scale, destroys Vyerny, the capital of Semiryetchensk.

Chicago bans anarchists holding a demonstration in honor of the Sidney Street burglars.

The endless discussion in the NYT letters pages about the women’s suffrage movement in colleges continues with a letter from “E.K.R.”, whose daughter is a student in a “prominent college.” She informs him that “without doubt most girls comes out of college suffragettes. ... I have three other daughters, and I am quite sure that no other girl of mine shall go to college to have this stuff ground into her head. It seems to me too bad that our girls should have their poor little heads filled up with this nonsense, thereby constantly increasing the already large army of spinster ladies in the United States of America; for what young man, except one of those long-haired poltroons, would marry a girl who is both a college graduate and a suffragette?”

Today -100: January 4, 1911: Of sieges, debt peonage, and run-over New Yorkers

The Siege of Sidney Street in London. Several weeks before, some Latvians who the press would make out to be anarchists trying to finance their hideous cause but were probably just small-time burglars were interrupted by police while tunneling into a jewelry store. They killed two cops (three?) and escaped, going to ground in a house in Stepney, where they were discovered three weeks later. Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who naturally went along himself to observe the fun (a bullet passed through that nice top hat – questions about his recklessness were later raised in Parliament), sent in pretty much every cop in London to surround the house, plus Scots Guards from the Tower of London, who brought along a Maxim gun (which wasn’t used). A major gunfight ensued, lasting two hours, against what turned out to be just two people. The building was set on fire, Churchill refused to let the fire brigade put it out, and the two Latvians died, evidently at their own hands.



Click for the Manchester Guardian’s coverage.

Click for newsreel footage (3½ minutes):

LONDON - BATTLE OF LONDON - SIDNEY STREET SIEGE

The Supreme Court rules that Alabama’s labor contract law violates the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. The law prevented people who received pay in advance from quitting their jobs until it was repaid, and was used to reduce negroes to debt peonage.

Henry Cabot Lodge, although a three-term US Senator, is only now giving his first election speech, in advance of the Massachusetts state legislature’s vote on whether to give him a fourth term.

In 1910 376 people were killed by vehicular traffic in New York City, of whom 104 were killed by automobiles, 114 by or in trolleys, and 158 by horse-drawn vehicles. Part of the reason for the large number in the latter category is that while there is a stiff fine for drunk-driving an automobile it is not even illegal to drive a wagon drunk.

In 1910 there were roughly 500,000 automobiles in the US.

John Boehner, the man whose skin color has no rhyme

John Boehner still lacks a widely agreed upon nickname. He was called Boner by his oh-so-imaginative high school classmates, and lately I’ve been seeing Orange Julius. There’s The Great Pumpkin – I just had to google to see if I coined that one (evidently not) – Agent Orange, the Town Crier....

What else have you heard? What did Bush call him? Answers in comments, along with any suggestions of your own.

Today -100: January 3, 1911: Of coups, recovered heads, hands on ice, and umbrellas

Honduras’s deposed president (or coup leader, if you will) (1903-7) Manuel Bonilla re-enters the country and declares himself president again. The NYT notes that “There are disquieting rumors from Washington... that the State Department rather favors the revolutionists in Honduras.” State Department, United Fruit Company, no big diff.

An American military campaign in Mindanao (in the Philippines) against “bandits” ends. One private was killed and “The head of a soldier, which was held as a trophy by the bandits, was recovered.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Dead Hand out of the Ice.” A small boy finds an axe-murdered Italian in a frozen stream in New Jersey.

Oh, and the very next story: “Umbrella Stab to Brain.” Also in Jersey.

Today -100: January 2, 1911: Of revolutions and car accidents

If you’re wondering why I haven’t had much on the ongoing Mexican Revolution, a NYT editorial beginning “One who reads the newspapers with some care may note that there is ‘war’ in Mexico” goes some way towards explaining it. The Times says that the war, which “has the proportions of a riot,” may be confined to a small part of Chihuahua, although there may be uprisings elsewhere, “But of these disturbances we only get the vaguest reports”. Those reports insist that the Díaz government “is beaten daily if not hourly. One feels sorry for a Government that is so persistently beaten, and yet is unaware of its plight.” So the NYT has only crappy sources which it doesn’t trust and it doesn’t think that its job as a newspaper is to do anything about that.

In 1910, 76 children were killed by automobiles in New York City and 215 seriously injured. The National Highways Protective Society blamed 40% of these on the children and has begun an educational program in schools about not getting run over.

Oath

NYT: “To highlight his thrift, [Jerry] Brown, a Democrat, plans to stop at a cookout after he takes the oath to snack on hot dogs and chips.”

California has a very odd oath of office.

Today -100: January 1, 1911: What goes up must come down

Headline of the Day -100: “Moisant and Hoxsey Dare Winds and Die.” Aviator Archibald “Arch” Hoxsey (who took Teddy Roosevelt up in a plane in October) dies in a crash near LA blamed on “holes in the air,” which was evidently a problem in 1910. Earlier in the week he had set a new altitude record (11,474 feet). (Ralph Johnstone, another pilot who had a fatal crash in November, also did so just a few days after setting an altitude record. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.)

And in Louisiana, another famous aviator, John Moisant, was thrown from his plane, broke his neck and died.

32 people died in airplane crashes in 1910.

Haley and the kidney

Procrastination is good. I knew if I waited long enough, someone, in this case the AP, would write about the ethical implications of Haley Barbour pardoning the Scott sisters on the condition that Gladys give a kidney to Jamie. I’m so glad that Barbour has found a way of giving something to the black folks that won’t piss off his white racist base too much, and save the state hundreds of thousands in dialysis costs at the same time, but this is an ethical slippery slope. He can and should pardon them (16 years served so far for an $11 robbery!) so they can do the transplant, but making it a condition is a step too far, especially in a state that used to mass arrest black people on vagrancy and other flimsy charges and put them on chain gangs right before harvest season. We do not use our prisoners for spare parts.

Today -100: December 31, 1910: Of bathtub men

Headline of the Day -100: “Bathtub Men’s Plea for Clemency Fails.” This would be 14 corporations and 37 individuals comprising the Bathtub Trust, currently being prosecuted under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The Justice Dept is going after them personally, seeking jail sentences.

Today -100: December 30, 1910: Of mercenaries, white-capping, and lepers in cars

There’s a revolution going on in Honduras, led by ousted President Gen. Manuel Bonilla and the improbably named Gen. Lee Christmas, an American mercenary. This “revolution” was financed by the United Fruit Company. The NYT thinks that a recent story of two Americans being whipped by the Honduran police is a plant.

80 prominent farmers in Corsicana, Texas are indicted for “white-capping” (basically KKK-type vigilante intimidation) aimed at driving negroes out of the county.

Two Headlines of the Day -100 today, both public transportation related. #1:“Lepers Ride in Cars.”
#2: “Dies in Sleeping Car.”

Today -100: December 29, 1910: Of amateur politicians, resurrections, and street cars

In a speech to the City Club of St Louis, NJ Governor-Elect Woodrow Wilson says that this is the day of the amateur politician, the politician not seeking personal gain. I wonder who he has in mind? He also said, “You can trust the people providing you serve them. Reveal everything and the people will be just; conceal anything and make them jealous.” “Force public officials to report often and watch their eyes to see if they are telling you all they know.”

Some Christian Scientists are protesting the placing of an armed guard at the cemetery where Mary Baker Eddy’s body is waiting to be interred, because they expect her to be resurrected.

There are riots and shooting in a border war between Chicago and its suburbs, whose residents are now being charged double fares to ride street cars into Chicago.

Today -100: December 28, 1910: Of men in small spaces

Cornelius Dayton, who went insane when serving in the Civil War, has been kept for the last 45 years in a cage on the family farm in Connecticut.

In West Virginia a lynching is thwarted when a negro prisoner was kept from the mob for several hours in the railroad station’s safe. He almost died of suffocation.

Okay, I thought I was done with Obama before. NOW I’m done with Obama.

Obama took time out of his presumably busy schedule to call the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles to thank him for hiring perpetrator of violence against animals Michael Vick.

Today -100: December 27, 1910: Of suffrage, interrupted toilets, pigs, mistletoe, and Sunday baseball

There have been several letters in the NYT over the last couple of weeks -100 about whether or not female students at Barnard College have any interest in women’s suffrage. Now an editorial informs us that “The organization of suffrage clubs in the women’s colleges is not spontaneous, the idea of it is hardly tolerated by the majority in the undergraduate bodies. The young women do not go to college to argue politics or to let the subject intrude upon their studies. It offends them. ... Outside the colleges the agitation of the suffragists has wrought no demonstrable good. It can do no good within them, and it has no rightful place within them.” So that settles that.

Headline of the Day -100: “Morok’s Aeroplane Interrupts Toilet.” Belgian aviator Charles Frank Morok set off from North Bergen, NJ, only to crash into the second floor of a house “where a young woman was completing her toilet at the time.”

On Christmas, there was an explosion at the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles, part of an ongoing labor dispute. Now, 1,000 LA businessmen have formed a “vigilance committee” to beat up labor organizers, meet union agitators at the train station and turn them away, etc. A police captain says this is just what is needed.

The US sends a gunboat to Honduras. Just because.

Other Headline of the Day -100: “Won’t Let Woman Live with Pigs.” The Health Dept won’t let a woman back into her home in the, um, “Polackville” section of Queens.

Christmas-y Headline of the Day -100: “Mistletoe Kills Children.”

NY Governor-Elect Dix is such a politician: “I have never expressed myself on the subject of Sunday baseball.”

Today -100: December 26, 1910: Of common malefactors & robbers, strikes, and peacemaker’s heads

The governor of Chihuahua issues a proclamation calling for all citizens to organize themselves to fight the rebels and deriding the latter as common malefactors and robbers.

Employees of the Pressed Steel Car Company of Pittsburg are threatening to strike. 1909’s strike was accompanied by violence and this year plant workers have been buying rifles discarded by the Army. Oh, and they’re “foreigners.”

Christmas-y Headline of the Day -100: “Peacemaker’s Head Nearly Severed.” One Albert Hibbs in Camden, NJ, who tried to stop two negroes fighting (Hibbs’s race is not mentioned, which means he was white, since the 1910 NYT was incapable of referring to any African-American without making their race clear).

GOP gadgets

Republicans are proposing to allow members of Congress to bring their electronic gadgets into the House chamber – iPads, Blackberries, vibrators, etc. After all, Dick Cheney used to preside over the Senate, and he’s more machine than man.

CONTEST: What gadgets might be appropriate for Republican congresscritters in either House, collectively or for individuals, such as the iCurmudgeon, which reminds him what he’s cranky about on a real-time basis.

Today -100: December 25, 1910: Of hair, reckless driving, and dancing

One result of the Japanese annexation of Korea: human hair has gotten a lot cheaper on the world hair markets as Koreans are cutting off their top-knots. A ladies’ hairdresser tells the Times that “smart” women spend $100 to $150 a year on human hair, with $8 of foreign hair on her head at any one time. The glut of Korean hair will bring curls, switches (whatever those might be) etc within the reach of all.

A chauffeur (I think meaning taxi driver) in Nebraska is sentenced to 3 years for running over a rich guy (while driving some fares to a funeral). This is the first manslaughter conviction of a motorist in the West ever (reckless drivers in general seemed to get off pretty lightly in 1910).

Nebraska Governor-Elect Chester Aldrich will have no inaugural ball – he is a Methodist and “cannot countenance dancing.”

That voodoo that you do

1) Sarah Palin’s latest “cause” is Haiti (through the odious Franklin Graham’s group). 2) Haitians have been killing voodoo practitioners in an effort to end the cholera epidemic. Coincidence?

Today -100: December 24, 1910: Of gambling, divorces and recalls

Gamblers are demanding the repeal of an anti-gambling law recently passed in Nevada. They are threatening that if it is not repealed, they will repeal the other source of Nevada’s tourist trade, the divorce law.

A petition for the recall of Seattle Mayor Hiram Gill, elected earlier in the year, receives enough signatures to trigger a recall election, the first of an American mayor.

State visit

Chinese president Hu Jintao will be visiting the White House next month. In other news, banks have been breaking into people’s houses and throwing out all their possessions. Just sayin’.

Today -100: December 23, 1910: Of bodies in barrels, invasions, duck hunting, and opium

A body found in a barrel marked “poultry” in Montreal has been identified as one Matthew Johnson. The case turned out not to be one of murder, but of grave robbery by an amateur medical student, who insists that the barrel, which was discovered after he failed to collect it at the railroad station, contained turkeys and not dead janitors.

For some reason everyone in the US government is issuing denials that the US plans to re-invade Cuba.

French aviator Hubert Latham went duck hunting from his airplane. Another aviation first.

Members of the Chinese National Assembly are demanding a reduction in the production of opium and a ban on its importation from India. The British government is trying to prevent these “sentimental” measures which threaten state revenues in India, and they did after all fight the Opium Wars to force open the Chinese opium market.

Obama press conference: A season of progress

Just what I didn’t want for Xmas: another Obama press conference to blog.

IS THAT YOUR WAY OF TELLING THEM THE WHITE HOUSE HAS BEDBUGS AND NOW SO DO THEY? He began, “I know everybody is itching to get out of here”.

AND A SEASON OF WHINING AND PETULANCE FOR JOHN MCCAIN: “A lot of folks in this town predicted that after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock. And instead, this has been a season of progress for the American people.”


IT WAS MORE FUN WHEN REAGAN USED TO TRY TO SAY IT IN RUSSIAN: On the New START Treaty: “So we will be able to trust but verify.”

HE’S THE REMINDERER: “In fact, I just got off the phone with Dick Lugar, and reminded him the first trip I ever took as senator -- foreign trip -- was with Dick Lugar to Russia, to look at nuclear facilities there.” Hey, Dick, remember when I’d been in the Senate about a week and you’d been there like thirty years and now I’m the president and you’re still in the Senate?

“PERFECTING OUR UNION” – IS THAT WHAT THEY’RE CALLING IT NOW? “In our ongoing struggle to perfect our union, we also overturned a 17-year-old law and a longstanding injustice by finally ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”

YES, LET’S STOP PUNISHING KIDS, AND SEND THEM INTO THE MILITARY, NO WAIT, WHAT? “I am very disappointed Congress wasn’t able to pass the DREAM Act so we can stop punishing kids for the actions of their parents, and allow them to serve in the military or earn an education and contribute their talents to the country where they grew up.”

On gay marriage: “As I’ve said, my feelings about this are constantly evolving. I struggle with this.” It’s not about your “feelings.” It’s about equity. Your “feelings” about other people’s rights are irrelevant.


WHAT HIS BASELINE IS: “my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protections and the legal rights that married couples have. And I think -- and I think that’s the right thing to do. But I recognize that from their perspective it is not enough”. That “from their perspective” is rather telling. Just as he privileges his own personal “feelings” about gay marriage, this suggests that only gay people have a problem with their being denied marital equality, and that that problem is primarily emotional. In fact civil unions are “not enough” from the perspective of anyone who puts equity first, and the denial of equality to anyone in society is harmful to everyone in that society.

THE SPIDER-MAN PRINCIPLE (BUT THEN, SPIDER-MAN SEEMS TO BE FALLING DOWN AN AWFUL LOT LATELY): “You know, my sense is the Republicans recognize that with greater power is going to come greater responsibility.”


Asked about his failure to close Guantanamo, he went on about the reason for closing it being that “Guantanamo is probably the number one recruitment tool that is used by these jihadist organizations.” Well, no, that would probably be all the wars in Muslim countries and, you know, Israel. “And that’s what closing Guantanamo is about -- not because I think that the people who are running Guantanamo are doing a bad job, but rather because it’s become a symbol.” Unless you’re a prisoner in the 6th or 8th year of detention without trial, of course.

“And so one thing I hope people have seen during this lame duck -- I am persistent. I am persistent. If I believe in something strongly, I stay on it.” And then he went on vacation.

Today in Lame

On Monday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was seen to be blissfully unaware of alleged terrorists having been arrested in London.



White House adviser on heimat security John Brenner defends Clapper thusly: “I am glad that Jim Clapper is not sitting in front of the TV 24 hours a day and monitoring what is coming out of the media.”

Oh, all right, I guess I have to: Clap on, clap off. The Clapper.

Today -100: December 22, 1910: Of the 103rd meridian

The US Senate invalidates the decision of the New Mexico Constitutional Convention as to the borders of the not-yet-state with Texas. There’s a dispute dating back to an error by a government surveyor in 1858, and Taft wants that error made permanent.

Oh, now you’re just making it sound dirty

AP: “Obama To End Military Gay Ban at Interior Ceremony.”

Today -100: December 21, 1910: Of the need for speed, blue suit duels, and the British elections

NYC is considering raising the automobile speed limit from its current 8 mph to 15 or 20, depending on the width of the street.

In Nagyvarad, Hungary, the president of the local union of solicitors attended a ball given by local law students. He was wearing a light blue summer suit and brown boots, which for some reason was taken as a grave insult. The law students called a meeting to debate the suit, things turned nasty, 122 deadly insults were made, which will result in 122 duels. Which are to be fought with swords. (Were 122 duels actually fought? Who knows: there was no follow-up story).

The British general election (voting took place from the 3rd to the 19th, the last multi-day election in Britain), which was supposed to break the parliamentary deadlock created by the previous general election 11 months before, didn’t. The Liberals dropped from 275 seats to 272, the Tories won 272 seats, down by 1 (who counts as what is open to debate for some, so you may see different figures). Labour gained 2 to win 42 seats, despite the fact that having to fighting two elections in one year seriously strained their finances. The Irish Nationalists won 84 seats, up 2. Turnout was 81%, down 5.5% from January. Asquith and the Liberals will continue to rule, in conjunction with Labour and the Nats.

Today -100: December 20, 1910: Of dry zones and Civil War pensions

President Taft is considering whether to modify the dry zones in Minnesota. Old Indian treaties forbid the sale of liquor on any reservations, but the boundaries were set so long ago that the dry zones now include Minneapolis, Duluth, etc. Taft is talking with the governor and the Anti-Saloon League about what to do.

In Congress, the Republican Old Guard and some Democrats are filibustering a bill to give a pension to Civil War vets who served more than 60 days ($15 a month if they’re over 65, $20 if 70, $36 if 75). The Republicans oppose it on budgetary grounds, the Democrats because, well, because a lot of them weren’t on that side, and because it would give the same pension to real soldiers and to those who joined in the last year to get large signing bonuses and who saw no actual fighting.

Today -100: December 19, 1910: Of disappearing islands and disappearing horses

Following a series of earthquakes in Costa Rica, an island in the Ilopango Lagoon sinks, killing roughly 170 people.

Another piece of old New York has passed away, says the NYT: battery-powered street cars have now replaced horse-drawn ones on the 28th and 29th Street crosstown line. “To stand in Broadway... and watch first the tide of modern traffic along the Great White Way and then suddenly to see a horse car jogging across this line of traffic was not unlike looking at a knight in armor gallop across a parade of the bricklayers’ union.”

Today -100: December 18, 1910: Of invasion, grand old Republicans, airplanes, and women smoking

Taft gives a speech publicly refuting those leaked reports of his secretary of war and army chief of staff and denying that the US is in any imminent danger of being invaded by some European power if it doesn’t immediately increase the size of the standing army to 400,000 or more: “There is not the slightest reason for such a sensation, because we are at peace with all the nations of the world and are quite likely to remain so.” But he does want an international court and fortification of the Panama Canal.

In Russia, five newspapers are confiscated and their editors will be prosecuted for lèse majesté for publishing a speech made by Vladimir Purishkevitch in the Duma about police attacks on student meetings and the cruelties inflicted on political prisoners (since Purishkevitch was a right-wing anti-Semitic crazy, I’m not sure what this is about, and I don’t have more details about the speech).

Samuel Parker, 80, one of the founders of the Republican Party and a friend of Abraham Lincoln, retires from his government job in Cook County. And the NYT -100 really needed to watch its spacing, since “whoretired” might really be “who retired,” and might really be something else entirely.

Orville Wright says that aviation is now safer than automobiling, that planes will soon be built capable of carrying ten or even twelve passengers, and that people (rich people) will soon use planes for cross-country trips.

At the new Ritz-Carlton, a woman smoked in the dining room, blowing smoke-rings. A waiter informed the head-waiter, who informed the manager, who merely observed the violator of social mores without chastising her. So, will women be allowed to smoke in the public rooms of the New York Ritz-Carlton, as they are in the one in London? The Times sent a reporter to ask the vice president of the Ritz-Carlton Company. He insisted that “American women know best what is the correct thing to do in a public restaurant, and I would never dream of posing as an arbiter of etiquette. ... I cannot presume to teach American women anything at all.”

Headlines of the day from the greatest newspaper ever

The Daily Telegraph today brings us these journalistic gems:

“Silvio Berlusconi Buys 37 Rings for His Leading Ladies.” Meaning $1,850 gold & diamond rings for women MPs. I believe they had to take them from his penis.

“Japanese Woman Sues Google for Displaying Images of Underwear.” Google Street View strikes again. “I could understand if it was just a picture of the outside of the apartment, but showing a person’s underwear hanging outside is absolutely wrong,” she says.

“Hospital Hired Models in Lab Coats and Heels ‘To Attract Men.’” UMass Memorial Health Care hired the models to flirt with men in malls and coax them into having swabs taken for a bone marrow registry. And then billing their insurance $4,300.

“Swedish Medical Students Get Teacher’s Body at First Autopsy.”

“Barack Obama Scoops Bo’s Poop.” Hey, he’s getting off lightly. John Boehner is going to make him eat his.

This was at an elementary school. No one asked him about dog poop. Some student asked how much fun is it running around the White House all day, and he brought up the poop thing all by himself. The children’s response, as recorded by the White House transcript: “Ew!”

One kid asked him for an autograph. He said no.

“Surgeon Made Dominatrix Blush.” Dr. W masturbated after giving Mistress J botox injections at a clinic in, um, Maidenhead.

“Model’s Hair Catches Fire at Rapper Diddy’s Party.” And there’s a video you can watch (I didn’t), because he was webcasting the album-release party. “Diddy has apparently been told not to return to the hotel.”

“Winona Ryder Claims Mel Gibson Called Her an ‘Oven-Dodger.’” I assumed it was some sort of sexist thing, but it was an anti-Semitic thing. Charming.

Today -100: December 17, 1910: Of seasonable baths and goodies

Congresscritters will no longer be able to take baths in the House Office Building: the salaries for bath attendants were stricken out of the appropriations bill. Rep. James Mann (R-Ill.) complained that “those members of the House who did not care to take baths should find no fault with those who did.” Rep. Philip Campbell (R-Kansas) replied that they should take their baths at seasonable times and places, not during the daytime at their offices. Mann replied that “seasonable times of the year also would be a good suggestion to make to some members.” Zing!

Germany’s parliament has adopted a draft Constitution for Alsace-Lorraine, the province seized from France in 1870. It will have a governor appointed by the kaiser and a two-chamber legislature. Half of the upper house will be ex officio or appointed by chambers of commerce, agriculture and labor, the other half nominated by the lower chamber and appointed by the kaiser. The lower house will be elected by universal male suffrage of men over 25, with those over 35 getting 2 votes, those over 45 3 votes.

Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Gets Aunt Delia’s Goodies.”

We’re going to have to continue to stand up

Introducing the Afghan-Pakistan Annual Review (spoiler alert: two thumbs up), Obama said, “It’s important to remember why we remain in Afghanistan.” Because everything we’ve done there in nine years has failed?

In case you’re wondering, we remain in Afghanistan because of 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!

HUNKERED: “In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down.”

OBAMA DOES NOT WANT YOU TO MAKE A MISTAKE: “But make no mistake -- we are going to remain relentless in disrupting and dismantling that terrorist organization.”

AFGHANISTAN IS A PRECIOUS NEWBORN KITTEN: “In many places, the gains we’ve made are still fragile and reversible.”

AL QAIDA GET TO HUNKER WHILE WE HAVE TO STAND: “We’re going to have to continue to stand up.”

Are everyone’s lips pursed? Then we’ll begin.

The report’s unclassified summary consists entirely of clichés and vague generalities.

SEE, AND YOU DIDN’T THINK WE HAD A CORE GOAL: “The core goal of the U.S. strategy in the Afghanistan and Pakistan theater remains to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa’ida in the region”. There’s that disrupt, dismantle & defeat thing again. Obama has been repeating this since alliterative catchphrase since the start of his presidency, and I’ve long since run out of amusing alliterative additions to it. The Pentagon, however, seems to have caught the bug, and one or more of the Big D triumvirate tends to show up in close proximity to another d-word, so that Al Qaida’s “eventual strategic defeat” (when in doubt, they throw in the word strategic) requires “the sustained denial of the group’s safe haven”. See what they did there? Strategic defeat / sustained denial. And AQ’s capabilities have been “degraded” and its leadership “depleted.”

STRATEGERY: “In 2010, we also improved the United States-Pakistan relationship through the Strategic Dialogue.” Initial caps and everything, that must be quite a dialogue.

ER, CATERING, YEAH, CATERING’S GOING OKAY: “Specific components of our strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan are working well.”

AND IF THEY WOULD JUST SHUT UP AND DO WHAT WE TELL THEM... “In Pakistan, we are laying the foundation for a strategic partnership based on mutual respect and trust”. Actually there’s an awful lot about how Pakistan has to step up and secure parts of Pakistan the government’s never had much control over.

KOMICAL K SOUNDS: “It clearly communicates U.S. commitment to a long-term relationship that is supportive of Pakistan’s interests, and underscores that we will not disengage from the region as we have in the past.” Nice to see a repetition of the Republican talking point that the US “walked away” from Afghanistan after the Soviets were driven out, selfishly setting down the White Man’s Burden instead of, I guess, handing it over to Haliburton to run.

Headline of the Day

WaPo: “Red Cross Official Offers Grim Assessment of War.” Everyone’s a critic.

Today -100: December 16, 1910: Of arbitration, palaces, fingers, and the P-word

The idea behind Andrew Carnegie’s $10 million donation is that peace will be established when arbitration between nations becomes not a diplomatic but a judicial process.

This is the entirety of a NYT story: “The Government Palace at Quito was burned to-day.”

Gross Headline of the Day -100: “Snipped Finger Exhibit.” Albert Shattuck of the Executive Committee of the American Museum of Safety (est. 1908 to promote workplace safety) (I wonder what the gift shop sells) appeared at a dinner of the Engineers’ Club with his little finger bandaged, which he explained was the result of a shaving accident. I admit to having been somewhat disappointed when I realized that “Snipped Finger Exhibit” wasn’t about an actual exhibit at the museum.

Mortifying Headline of the Day -100: “Remember the Pickaninnies.” “Those who feel an interest in colored children protest that, in all the flood of Christmas charity, everybody seems to forget the little ones of the city’s dusky poor. There is to be a ‘pickaninny Christmas tree,’ just the same, and a Christmas dinner, too.” And Rosalie Jonas, who is collecting subscriptions for the event, has a little poem, which may be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever read:


Ms. Jonas was evidently a poet of the Harlem Renaissance, so, um, presumably African-American.

Is he saying it’s not fun to stay in the United States military?

Favorite stupid comments – today – about repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

Duncan Hunter: “The United States military is not the YMCA. It’s something special,” adding that it is also “not the place to have a liberal crusade to create a liberal utopia and experiment.” Because nothing says liberal utopia like heavily armed gays shooting up Afghan villages nine years into an unending occupation.


Louie Gohmert (R-TX): “I would submit if you will look thoroughly at history — and I’m not saying it’s cause and effect — but when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that ‘fine for homosexuality to be overt’ — you can keep it private and control your hormones, fine, if you can’t, that’s fine too — they’re toward the end of their existence as a great nation.”

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos warned that gay people in the Marines would be “distracting,” what with their washboard abs and dreamy eyes, which would be bad,“And I’ll tell you why. If you go up to Bethesda Hospital . . . Marines are up there with no legs, none. We’ve got Marines at Walter Reed with no limbs.” See what you’ve done, House of Representatives? You’ve literally cut the legs out from under the Marines, with the gay.

Today -100: December 15, 1910: Of fatally deficient armies, abolishing war, and Pancho Villa

Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson sent a report to the House of Representatives on the weakness of US military defenses, which was hurriedly recalled before it could be published after someone realized that this wasn’t anything they really wanted to advertise. Still, it leaked out that the report called the army “fatally deficient” and the militia worse. Dickinson wants a military three times bigger (400,000) and much better armed in order to defend against a theoretical trans-Atlantic invasion. And he evidently leaked this report in order to pressure Taft, who is far less concerned about an amphibious assault by Belgium or wherever.

Andrew Carnegie creates a peace foundation with a gift of $10 million. After its done its job and war is abolished forever, the money will go to addressing whatever the “next most degrading evil or evils” afflicting humankind might be.

Mexican rebels fought a larger number of the Mexican Army to a standstill. The latter is taking no prisoners, bayoneting wounded and surrendering rebels. Also, every man in the hamlet of Cerro Prieto was hauled out and ordered to prove that they had not participated in the revolt. 30 could not do so to the satisfaction of the mayor, and were killed. Pancho Villa (is this his first mention in the Times?) and his band took time off from the revolution to rob a Chinese man, extort money from a ranch superintendent, and burn a store.

The Israeli government: working overtime to develop new and exciting forms of assholery

Palestinian firefighters who helped fight the big fire aren’t allowed back into Israel for a ceremony to honor them for it.

Today -100: December 14, 1910: Of judges, California chattel, South Carolina schools, and Finnish Jews

Taft nominates Willis Van Devanter and Joseph Lamar to the Supreme Court.

California’s Governor-Elect Hiram Johnson says that “For forty years, California has been a chattel of the Southern Pacific Railroad. ... The railroad has named the governors of California for forty years.” Johnson observes that he and the other reformists only won election in Calif. this year because of the new direct primary system, and he wants to add to that the initiative, referendum and direct election of US senators. He is, however, a little squirrely about women’s suffrage, saying there is some suffragist agitation in the state but that it ought to be left to the people to make their own decision, whatever that means.

South Carolina’s Governor-Elect, Coleman Livingston Blease (campaign song: “Roll up your sleeves, say what you please, the man for the job is Coley Blease”) advocates separate and unequal education, that is, that the amount spent on white schools and black schools respectively should be proportionate to the taxes paid by whites and blacks. He also doesn’t want blacks to be taught more than the most basic literacy. A NYT editorial deprecates this, saying that negroes should receive an education meeting their “probable needs,” which in the South means some sort of industrial training, either mechanical or agricultural. So their disagreement isn’t about whether blacks should get an inferior education, but what sort of inferior education.

The Russian Duma, working on a bill defining citizenship in Finland, refuses to give equal rights to Jews.