State of the Union Address 2011: Poised for Progress

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Today -100: January 25, 1911: Of anarchists, senators, the size of Congress, and progressives

Twelve Japanese anarchists are executed for conspiring against the royal family (see the interesting ExecutedToday.com post on this).

The Nevada Legislature ratifies the results of the non-binding popular re-election of US Senator George Nixon, even though Nixon is a Republican and the Legislature has a Democratic majority, because Nixon and his opponent had agreed to abide by the popular vote.

The Democrats in the West Virginia Legislature didn’t wait for the fugitive Republican senators to return and went ahead with the vote for US senators. The R’s in the lower house didn’t vote either – presumably in protest, although the NYT doesn’t say – and not surprisingly two Democrats were elected, William Chilton and Clarence Watson. Accusations of bribery were made in the election of Watson, a coal baron.

Congress is considering reapportionment under something called the Crumpacker Act, which only sounds like a bizarre sexual act. To avoid reducing the number of Representatives any state has, the Act foresees increasing the size of the House to 433, and more when Arizona and New Mexico become states. Some people consider this too large and unwieldy, too difficult to assemble a quorum. And Republicans, who did so badly at the state level in the 1910 elections, are afraid that newly Democratic state legislatures will gerrymander the new seats in favor of the D’s.

Theodore Roosevelt has refrained from adding his name to the Declaration of Principles of the National Progressive Republican League, on the advice of the Progressives who wanted the League to look like a movement for progressive legislation rather than for the election of certain candidates for certain offices in 1912.

Today -100: January 24, 1911: Of pogroms foreign and domestic, and droll objects

Turks in the southern province of Adana seem to be planning new massacres of Armenians, if marking their houses with a red cross and the word “death” is any indication.

Night riders in Hominy, Oklahoma, drive out all the black residents, with polite suggestions and dynamite.

The fugitive West Virginia Republican state senators agree to return from Ohio, with the issues at dispute with the D’s to be referred to committee for arbitration.

Madame Curie is defeated for admission to the French Academy of Sciences, because she is une femme.

In a New York theater, the performance of “a burlesque suffragette” wearing a man’s coat and a divided skirt, a “droll object,” was interrupted by real suffragettes in the balcony. “Look at us, we are real suffragettes. Do we look like her?” they yelled.

The norms and rules of the international system

The Israeli investigation of the flotillacide finds that shooting up the flotilla last May was totally cool. Self-defense, in fact. Defense Minister Ehud Barak says this proves “that Israel was a law-abiding country that could inspect itself and which respects the norms and rules of the international system.” Yes, that’s precisely what the latest whitewash shows. A country that can inspect itself and find itself to be innocent as the driven snow and as adorable as a newborn kitten.

However, I can agree that a country that mows down unarmed civilians on a humanitarian mission and then claims self-defense does indeed respect the norms of the international system, if you really want to judge yourself by the lowest possible standard of behaviour there is.

Today -100: January 23, 1911: Of gunboats and babies

A force from the US gunboat Tacoma boards the Hornet, a gunboat outfitted in New Orleans in support of Gen. Bonilla’s attempted takeover of Honduras.

Riots break out in the Chinese “treaty port” of Hankou when British police are believed to have killed a coolie. British and German gunboats landed troops, and 10 Chinese were killed in the fighting.

Headline of the Day -100: “Police Flee From a Baby.” An abandoned baby which the policemen (bachelors, the Times notes) didn’t want to have to carry around. One forced the 9-year-old who had found the baby to carry it to the station house, then faked stomach cramps to avoid having to take it to Bellevue.

State of the Union adjective contest

I don’t think Obama actually did a “The state of the union is strong/hopeful/hungover” sentence last year, which is a mistake. It’s like the Alfred Hitchcock cameo: you can’t just relax and watch the movie until you’ve spotted him walking a dog or wrestling with a cello.

Still, even if he doesn’t play his role, my annual role here is to offer you this contest. Fill in this sentence: “The state of the union is _____” Fearful? Olbermannless? Tea Partying Like It’s 1773? Totally over “Glee”?

Today -100: January 22, 1911: Of senators on the run, young FDR, and buffalo

Sen. Thomas Carter (R-Montana) warns that the proposed constitutional amendment for popular election of the Senate is being used “to saddle the disfranchisement of negro voters upon the country by constitutional amendment” by removing the ability of Congress to regulate Senate elections.

The 15 Republican West Virginia state senators are still in self-imposed exile outside the state (having dinner with President Taft’s brother), but the 15 D’s think they can form a quorum without the R’s since 4 of them were never properly sworn in. So they may just go ahead and select the US senators.

An article in the NYT magazine section on a new 28-year-old New York state senator begins, “It is safe to predict that the African jungle will never resound with the crack of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rifle”, unlike his fifth cousin. There’s not much to say about FDR, because he hasn’t accomplished much of anything yet, beyond leading insurgent D’s unwilling to accept Tammany dictation about who the next US senator should be, but the article, which I imagine is the first real look at FDR in the press, says it at some length.

The US evidently suggested to Ecuador that the US lease the Galapagos Islands from it for 99 years for $15m, I guess for use by the Navy.

The last buffalo: the owner of the last existing herd of buffalo in the United States has sold 500 head to Canada and is killing off the remaining 20, in violation of Montana game laws.

A healthy lay status

The pope criticized Silvio Berlusconi for fucking all those prostitutes, saying, “The singular vocation that the city of Rome requires today of you, who are public officials, is to offer a good example of the positive and useful interaction between a healthy lay status and the Christian faith.” Um, yeah.

Today -100: January 21, 1911: Of flying high, football, invasions, poison, lynchings, and the Virginnies

A state representative in Missouri, a friend of the aviators Hoxsey and Johnstone, who both died in crashes last month, introduces a bill to ban planes flying at more than 1,000 feet.

A football game between Iowa University and the U of Missouri is called off because Iowa has a negro player and refused to bench him for the game. The two teams have agreed not to play against each other until he graduates.

Santo Domingo (the future Dominican Republic) invades Haiti. There’s a territorial dispute.

In the Trial of the Century of the Week, Laura Schenk is being tried in West Virginia for poisoning her husband, although there seems good reason to doubt whether he was actually poisoned. In an interesting tactic, the defense attorney offered poison to the jurors, 12 grains of sugar of lead mixed in water, to prove that it was too icky not to be detected. If the poison tastes like shit, you must acquit. Four jurors took up the invitation, tasting and then spitting out the beverage.

A negro named Oval Poulard is lynched in Opelousas, Louisiana, after shooting a deputy (who received only a minor flesh wound) who was trying to arrest him for discharging firearms.

Divorces can be so difficult. The Supreme Court is currently working on the 50-year-old divorce between Virginia and West Virginia, specifically the question of how to divide the state’s debt, which at the time of the split in 1863 was $33 million. VA wants WV to pay 1/3, WV wants to pay nothing.

What’s up, Baby Doc?

Baby Doc Duvalier denies that he has ambitions to become president. “Blood-soaked hereditary dictator yes, president no,” he reassured the Haitian people.

Today -100: January 20, 1911: Of passports, skyscrapers, and wine riots

For 30 years Russia has refused to recognize American passports held by Jews, in violation of the 1832 treaty between the two countries.

F.W. Woolworth announces plans to build the Woolworth Building, which at 57 stories will be the tallest skyscraper in the world (but shorter than the Eiffel Tower) and is expected to cost $12 million (it will actually cost $13.5m and open in 1913, and a very nice building it is too).

Headline of the Day -100: “Troops Stop Wine Riots.” By under-paid wine workers in the Champagne region of France.

Today -100: January 19, 1911: Of senators, war, and planes & boats

Henry Cabot Lodge is narrowly re-selected as US senator for Massachusetts, despite the fierce opposition of Gov. Eugene Foss.

Colombia has invaded Peru.

Aviator Eugene Ely successfully lands his plane on a naval cruiser in the San Francisco Bay, the first time this has been accomplished. Ely says, “I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.” A great step forward in warfare. Hurrah.

Bet that name’s looking a little limiting now, huh?

Officials of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party have spent the day frantically cold calling everyone named Lieberman in the Hartford phone book, looking for a new candidate to run for Senate under its imprimatur.

Wherein your faith in The Youth of Today will be restored

LA Times headline: “Student Apologized to Classmates after His Gun Went Off, Hitting Two Students.” Who says that kids today lack proper manners?

I’m starting to think the Catholic Church is a little weird

Indy: “Vial of Late Pope’s Blood to Be Kept in Polish Church after His Beatification.”

Today -100: January 18, 1911: Of segregation, fleeing senators, and leather

In a physical culture class in a public school in Flushing, NY, a white girl basically goes into hysterics when asked to dance with a black boy. An agitation is now beginning to return to segregated schools, which were abolished by Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 when he was governor.

The Calif. Legislature is considering a bill to segregate all Asians in the public schools. And Native Americans.

The West Virginia state senate is evenly split between the parties, but the D’s are trying to oust two R’s, so the R’s have been preventing a quorum. When the D’s issued warrants to arrest them as absentees, all 15 R’s have fled to Ohio.

An insane guy shoots at French Prime Minister Briand in the Chamber of Deputies, wounds the director of public relief instead.

Headline of the Day -100: “Stir in Central Leather.”

I watch Sarah Palin on Hannity so you don’t have to: You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements

Her hope for the families of the Tucson victims: “May He turn their mourning, somehow, supernaturally into joy.” Yeah, God, get right on that, wouldja?

She didn’t deny that those were crosshairs on that map, but said that for many years maps have been used to target certain districts. So that’s okay then. In fact, Democrats invented the use of crosshairs on maps.

Ah yes, the obligatory Martin Luther King Jr quote: “A lie cannot live.” The lies about her, of course.Because even Martin Luther King was All. About. Her.

She used the term “falsely accused” I think 4 times about the linking of her and talk show hosts and the Tea Party to the shootings. I’m not really sure why that term annoyed me so much, but it did.

At one point she referred to the mainstream media and quickly corrected that to lamestream. Phew, hate to make a gaffe like that.

Asked about Obama’s speech, she said “some parts” of it hit home, but that it was too much like a campaign rally.

Re “blood libel”: “You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements”. That term has been used for aeons; it’s double standards to criticize her for using it. And if her enemies didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all, she said twice as if she’d just come up with it.

One of the things that makes the US “exceptional” is that we have free speech. No other country in the world has free speech, evidently. Yay for us.

As such

Berlusconi says he couldn’t possibly have paid all those young women and under-aged girls to have sex with him, because he has been in a stable relationship with one woman since his wife divorced him for having sex with women he paid money to. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Former dictator Baby Doc Duvalier returns to Haiti “to help the people of Haiti,” and is not immediately tossed into prison (or torn apart by angry mobs).


Prime Minister Bellerive says Duvalier “is a Haitian and, as such, is free to return home.” He’s also a mass murderer and, as such, shouldn’t be free to do anything but rot in a cell. I have nothing funny to say about this.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still in exile.

Today -100: January 17, 1911: Of senators, Gypsy queens, and Coleman Livingston Blease

In a process that makes a good argument for popular election of US senators (Congress is just beginning to consider the 17th Amendment), NY Democratic “Boss” Murphy is trying to fix a Senate seat for his man William Sheehan, now that the D’s have taken control of the Legislature. Murphy called a caucus of the Democratic state legislators, but 25 of the 116 refused to come so that they would not be bound by the caucus vote. One of the 25 was brand-new state senator Franklin D. Roosevelt. Gov. Dix puts forward the odd proposition that legislators should vote in accordance with their own consciences and the will of their constituents, which is just adorable. Neither Democratic faction has enough votes to put through their candidate without R votes. This fight is going to go on for 74 days before a compromise candidate is chosen, and is way too complicated for me to detail here (or to put it another way, I’m too lazy to try to figure it all out).

Meanwhile, the NY Republican caucus nominates the incumbent, Chauncey Depew, nearly unanimously, with a couple of votes going to Teddy Roosevelt.

Immigration deports the new wife of the Gypsy King (who the Times informs us is “inclined to stoutness”). And after he paid $60 for her in Bosnia, too.

Headline of the Day -100: “Auto Takes His Trousers.”

The new governor of South Carolina, Coleman Livingston Blease, is sworn in. Let’s look at his inaugural speech at some length, shall we? He begins by crowing about his victory over “a set of political character thieves, the meanest and most contemptible people known to man,” who tried to “crown him with a crown of persecution, envy and malice.” He recounts how he called on the author of an editorial against him in The State to show up at one of his rallies and repeat his statements in person (the editor didn’t, possibly remembering how his brother, a previous editor, was shot dead in 1903 by Lt. Governor James Tillman, who blamed the paper for his having lost the 1902 governor’s race) (Tillman was acquitted) and demands that the Legislature pass a bill to punish newspaper editors and reporters who say false things about people with a fine and imprisonment. He goes on for quite some time, Sarah Palin-style, about the newspapers that sullied his reputation.

He calls for more support for Confederate veterans, “for any man who does not love the ex-Confederate soldier is either a Yankee or has negro blood in his veins.”

He calls for liberal spending for schools. Well, for schools for white children. But he is against compulsory education because it “dethrones the authority of the parents and places the paid agents of the State in control of the children, and destroys family government” by tacitly telling children “we are giving you what your unnatural parents would not give,” thus imparting “the spirit of rebellion against parental authority”. And he says everyone should stop “parad[ing] figures to show the percentage of the ignorance of” South Carolinians. Any government officials who make such figures public should be fired. What he’s really against, though, is “white people’s taxes being used to educate negroes. I am a friend to the negro race. This is proved by the regard in which negroes of my home county hold me. The white people of the South are the best friends to the negro race. In my opinion, when the people of this country began to try to educate the negro they made a serious and grave mistake... So why continue?”

He wants a law against smoking by boys (not girls?) under 16. Also one against possession of toy guns (and real guns) by children under 16.

He wants to amend the law which currently allows white convicts to be placed in the same camps as negro convicts and worked in the same squads, threatening to pardon any white prisoner so grievously treated.

He is in favor of counties enacting licensing systems for the sale of liquor but only if a majority of the white people want it.

He wants “to make executions for the crime of rape, or assault with intent to ravish, public, as I believe this will bring about more satisfactory results – allowing others, and particularly those of the younger generation of that race from which most of these culprits come, to have a full view of the punishment meted out.” This he says, might prevent some lynchings. Not that there’s anything wrong with lynchings, of course: “Some newspapers and some people, in every controversy between the white man and the negro, seem to take delight in taking the side of the negro and denouncing the lynching, but this is a white man’s country and will continue to be ruled by the white man, regardless of the opinions or editorials of quarter or half breeds or foreigners. The pure-blooded Caucasian will always defend the virtue of our women, no matter what the cost. If rape is committed, death must follow.”

He wants to make cocaine illegal. “I also, in this connection, beg leave to call your attention to the evil of the habitual drinking of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and such like mixtures, as I fully believe they are injurious.” He recommends beer instead.

Today -100: January 16, 1911: Of healers, lynchings, and ether

The NYT applauds the arrest of a Christian Science “healer.” Usually they’re only arrested after someone dies, but not in this case.

Three negroes are lynched by a small mob in Shelbyville, Kentucky. One was a convicted murderer, but since his victim was only an old black woman, it looks like he just happened to be there when the mob broke down the jail door looking for the other two, each charged with “an attempt to detain” white girls.

The new craze in the Boston area for people wanting to get high is inhaling ether.

Today -100: January 15, 1911: Of horseless trucks, closed incidents, and racist medical students

Trend of the Day -100: “Horseless Truck Has Come To Stay.”

The Mexican government says the revolution is over, a “closed incident.”

Honduras, on the other hand, “admits existence of revolt.”

Medical students at Georgetown & George Washington Universities are boycotting the (required) class of a professor who let black students from Howard attend his last lecture. Both (all-white) universities are backing their racist students, who will be required neither to apologize to the professor nor attend classes with negroes.

Biden in Pakistan: We are not the enemies of Islam

Joe Biden was in Pakistan this week. He made some rambling remarks alongside Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.

GILANI SUFFERS FOR HIS COUNTRY: “And I tell you that we have had numerous telephone conversations, and I thank you for always taking my call, and I thank you for your input.” Like all those calls when I was trying to update to Windows 7.

SO SADDENED, IN FACT, THAT SALMAN TASEER’S ACTUAL NAME HAS ENTIRELY SLIPPED HIS MIND: “The president and I -- indeed, the entire world, I would suggest -- were saddened, saddened by the cold-blooded murder of a decent, brave man. The governor was killed simply because he was a voice for tolerance and understanding.”

WHAT JOE WOULD RESPECTFULLY SUGGEST: “There are those also who accuse the United States of violating your sovereignty as we support your army and pursue terrorists where they hide. .... But I would respectfully suggest that it’s the extremists who violate Pakistan’s sovereignty and corrupt its good name.” Well technically those guys are mostly Pakistanis, so I’m not sure how exactly they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. But even if they do, that doesn’t mean that assassinating them with drones on Pakistani soil doesn’t likewise violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. I feel silly even pointing out something so obvious, but Biden speaks as if he thinks he’s making some sort of logical argument here.

BECAUSE NOTHING SAYS RESTORING AND STRENGTHENING SOVEREIGNTIES LIKE MISSILE STRIKES BY ANOTHER COUNTRY: “Our goal is to work with your leaders and you, Mr. Prime Minister, to restore and strengthen sovereignties in those areas of your country where extremists have violated it.”


QUITE THE OPPOSITE: “The assertion that we disrespect Islam is actually quite the opposite. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States of America.” Or maybe it’s Gleeks, I always get those two mixed up.

REST AREA: “So I want to put to rest, which I know I will not by this simple assertion -- we are not, we are not the enemies of Islam”. Frenemies?

ADMIRES SO MUCH THAT JINNAH’S ACTUAL NAME HAS ENTIRELY SLIPPED HIS MIND: “America admires, admires the vision of your great founder, who said wisely, and I quote...”

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.