Rick Perry is fed up. Pardon me: Fed Up Exclamation Point. (I read Rick Perry’s book so you don’t have to)

Yes, I’m reading Rick Perry’s Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington (2010). It is his second book, following the smash success of On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For.

I’ll do this in multiple posts as I read the book. This post covers the preface and chapter 1. Er, I may not be able to read all of it before family obligations and/or nausea intervene.

To start with the title: Do you trust any politician who uses an exclamation point in the title of their book? Me neither. “Fed Up” (Fed in red, Up! in blue) might be kind of a pun, although I’m not sure Rick Perry is that subtle. “Our” fight assumes that he’s writing not a persuasive book, but one aimed at people who already agree with him. The notion of saving America from Washington entails the belief that “Washington” is some alien usurper, and that “America” is in no way responsible for creating the perceived ills associated with “Washington.”

Anyone mind if I skip the foreword by Newt Gingrich? Good.

“It wasn’t so long ago that we were expected to pay our bills, we were able to pray at the town meeting, and we believed it was important to rely on ourselves or our families rather than government.”

He is definitely not writing this book because he seeks higher office. Put that right out of your head.

First sentence of ch. 1: “Something is terribly wrong.”

Here’s that first person plural again: “We sense that our way of life and, perhaps more importantly, our ability to decide how we shall live, is no longer in our control but in the control of an increasingly powerful and oppressive national government – a government run by people who simply do not share our values or our beliefs and blatantly ignore its limits.”

He’s talked to lots of people “and I can tell you one thing from certain: the American people are fed up.”

Evidently the government tells us how much salt we can put on our food.

And of course “what kind of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates” etc.

He uses the word chutzpah, which is I believe a Texan expression. Evidently the federal gov has the chutzpah to haul baseball players before congressional committees. Also something about Stephen Colbert.

Oh, several pages of things “we” are “fed up” with.

In fact, we are fed up with being told not to say that America is great, like some sort of cowboy, and what’s so bad about being a cowboy?

Americans are “a diverse people – incapable of being governed from a faraway capital by people who do not share our values.” So we’re diverse, except our values are the same, and they’re not the same as those of anyone in Washington. Gotcha.

In fact, values are geographically distributed, so the federal government should stick to national security “while we live in states with like-minded people who share our values and beliefs. Crucial to understanding federalism in modern-day America is the concept of mobility, or ‘the ability to vote with your feet.’ If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas. If you don’t like medicinal marijuana and gay marriage, don’t move to California.” Texas, love it or leave it. So I guess he supports diversity, but not within states. What’s the term for values-based ethnic cleansing?

The “assault” on the Constitution and federalism comes from 1) “those who believe in the primacy of the government over the individual, referred to as liberals...” – yes, I’m sure that’s exactly how John Stuart Mill defined the term. “...so-called Progressives, or statists.” Evidently these people don’t believe in the things that made the US the greatest nation blah blah.

And 2) the statists’ enablers, old-guard Republicans.

In his list of things Republicans believe is “protecting innocent life.” Isn’t it interesting that every one of you reading that knows he means fetuses, and only fetuses?

(Click on the Rick Perry label at the bottom of this post for part 2 and beyond.)

I make no apologies for being reasonable

Yesterday, Barack Obama spoke at a “town hall meeting” in Iowa, because he heard about the foot-long corn dogs, I guess.

Speaking of foot-long corn dogs, here’s the new $1.1 million presidential bus.


Black? Seriously? Is it left over from the Cheney Administration?

The town hall was held in Decorah, Iowa, at the “Seed Savers Exchange,” which just sounds kinky.

HE’S ASSUMING THERE ARE NO IMMIGRANTS IN IOWA. PROBABLY RIGHT. “And so as tough as things are, all of us are incredibly blessed to have been born in the United States of America.”

WHAT THE PROBLEM WE HAVE ISN’T: “See, the problem we have is not with our country; the problem is that our politics is broken.” Gee, it sounds too me like having broken politics would actually be a problem with our country.


OBAMA CAN TOTALLY TALK TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE, YOU CAN TELL BY HIS USE OF YOOF SLANG LIKE “SHENANIGANS”: “I see a lot of young people in the audience here today, and they’re thinking about what are their prospects for the future -- graduating from college knowing they’ve got a lot of debt, needing to find a job. They don’t have patience for the kind of shenanigans we’ve been seeing on Capitol Hill.”

AND THAT’S WHY YOU’RE TOOLING AROUND IOWA IN A GIANT CAMPAIGN BUS: “Well, you know what, you guys didn’t send us there to be thinking about our jobs. You sent us there to be thinking about your jobs and your future.”

SOLVE THIS PROBLEM WE COULD: “If everybody is willing to make some modest sacrifices, this problem we could solve.”

Then he quotes Warren Buffet on how billionaires should be taxed more. Funnily enough, Warren Buffet is still the only billionaire he can find saying this.

WHEREIN HE IMPLIES THAT DEMOCRATS ARE BEING JUST AS UNREASONABLE AS REPUBLICANS, AND THAT THE ONLY PROGRAMS HE’S AGREED TO CUT ARE ONES THAT AREN’T WORKING: “Now, that doesn’t mean that we defend every single government program. Everybody has got to make sacrifices; there are programs that aren’t working well. And sometimes there are those in my party who will defend everything, even if it’s not working.”


On the Republican presidential candidates refusal at the last debate to accept a 10:1 ratio of cuts to taxes: “And what that tells me is, okay, you’ve gotten to the point where you’re just thinking about politics, you’re not thinking about common sense.” So you think we just got to that “point” last Thursday?

WHO CAST THEIR BALLOT FOR “DIVIDED GOVERNMENT”? “And so I understand that after this last midterm, you voted for divided government. But you didn’t vote for dysfunctional government. You didn’t vote for a broken government that can’t make any decisions, can’t move the country forward at all.” Well, government does tend to get broken when the attempt to divide it is made by a bunch of crazy people with chainsaws.

Then it’s question time, and Obama shows his common touch by suggesting that his first questioner’s little girl, who had a cookie, shouldn’t have a cookie before dinner. She (the mother, not the girl with the broken arm and the cookie) responded by accusing him of being a crap negotiator who compromised all his key principles.

He says, among other things, that the debt-ceiling situation was “unique,” because the stakes were so high. “I’ve got a whole bunch of responsibilities, which means I have to make choices sometimes that are unattractive and I know will be bad for me politically and I know will get supporters of mine disappointed.” Well, that’s less of a problem every day because there are fewer of those every day.

SUBMISSIVE = RESPECT: Later he says that “I basically let Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, give me my little 10 percent,” before hastily adding that she’s right 90% of the time. Sigh. Now he’s the muddle-headed dad in every stupid sitcom.

He says the increase in partisanship is partly because everyone used to watch Walter Cronkite but now “everybody is on their own little blog or their own separate news forum.” Okay, now he’s gone too fucking far. TOO FUCKING FAR!!!

BECAUSE THAT APPROACH HAS WORKED SO WELL SO FAR: “Now, in terms of how I deal with the current Congress, what I can do is to present my best ideas about how we move the country forward.”


HOW ABOUT FOR BEING A WIMP? “I make no apologies for being reasonable.”

A former high school social studies teacher asked about public sector unions and collective bargaining. He went on at some length about the importance of unions (although mostly in historical terms – giving us the weekend, that sort of thing), before suggesting that teachers have to make “sacrifices,” like their pensions, and that if people “don’t feel like the public sector employers [sic] are making any adjustments whatsoever to reflect the tough economic realities that are facing folks who are not protected, then there’s going to be a natural backlash.” And why don’t they “feel like” public-sector employees are making “adjustments”? Because they’re watching Fox News.

SUDDENLY? “we came in -- you’ve got a bunch of irresponsible actors, both in Washington and on Wall Street, that almost brought this economy to the ground, and suddenly everybody else is paying for it.” Everybody else has been paying for the acts of irresponsible actors in Washington and on Wall Street for as long as there’s been a Washington and a Wall Street.

And then he went out and stole an ice cream cone from a little girl.


The Secret Service are afraid the little girl is coming after them, but Obama is just enjoying the extra sweetness that comes from eating an ice cream cone stolen from a little girl.


Oh, I’m kidding, of course. It’s plain vanilla with no sprinkles or anything, just what Obama would order. Hoping for the equivalent of a Bachmann corn dog photo, the press photogs snapped many pictures of him while he that ice cream cone, but Obama can make even eating delicious stolen ice cream look like serious work.

Today -100: August 17, 1911: Of poultry trusts and silence

13 members of the “Poultry Trust” are sentenced to 3 months in prison (and fines) for conspiracy. The judge told the defendants, “your control of the poultry business was not alone absolute, but despotic.”

The Cherokees plan to sue the US government for $25 million, the value of Cherokee land given to freed black slaves (that is, slaves owned by Cherokees who were given tribal properties to punish the Cherokees for joining the Confederacy) and to whites who married into the tribe.

The first black cop hired by the NYPD, Samuel Battle, is being given the silent treatment by his fellow cops and excluded from their reindeer games.

Today -100: August 16, 1911: Of legalized terrorism, lynchings, annexations, and V rays

As expected, Taft vetoes statehood for New Mexico and Arizona due to the provision in AZ’s constitution for the recall of judges, which Taft said would compel judges to make rulings under “legalized terrorism.” The governor of the New Mexico Territory, William Mills, seems to think that the earlier enabling act and a presidential proclamation mean that the veto doesn’t affect NM statehood, and that if Congress disagrees, it will just have to refuse to seat NM’s congresscritters.

One of the Coatesville, Penn. lynching party has been arrested.

Major Henry Rathbone, the man who shared Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater and was stabbed by John Wilkes Booth, and who went insane and killed his wife in 1887, dies in the German insane asylum where he’s been incarcerated ever since.

Miguel Gomez, son of the president of Cuba, was arrested for that little murder attempt yesterday. At first he denied that he was Miguel Gomez, then he claimed he had no memory of the shooting, before finally breaking down and confessing.

The Canadian election campaign begins. Conservative opposition leader R. L. Borden is really campaigning against the looming threat of annexation by the United States.

A French scientist claims to have photographed human thoughts. He did it by first staring really hard at an object (a walking stick in one case, and a bottle), and then staring really hard at a photographic plate, on which an image of the object allegedly appeared. This is due to the power of something he calls V rays. The NYT says, perhaps with a degree of sarcasm: “As the Academy of Sciences is the highest official body of savants in France, and all Commander Darget’s experiments were made in the presence of six witnesses, there seems no doubt as to their authenticity.”

Today -100: August 15, 1911: Of bathtubs, get-away coaches, lynchings, and yachts

Headline of the Day -100: “May Stop Use of Bathtubs.” The New York City water commissioner is threatening to do that because the water supply is low (he would reduce water pressure so people on floors higher than the first floor would have no water).

Miguel Gomez, the son of the president of Cuba fires five shots at Armando Andres, editor of an anti-Gomez newspaper and member of the Cuban Congress. He returns fire. Gomez then “fled in a palace coach”.

Long interesting article about the Coatesville, Penn. lynching and its aftermath.

A black man is lynched in Durant, Oklahoma, for an assault on a white woman who later died. The mob shot him 150 or so times, brought the body to the woman, who identified it, and then burned it. A race war may be imminent. 75 negroes commandeered a train at Atoka and took it to the vicinity.

Lindsley Loring (whoever that might be), facing a $500 per year tax bill for his foreign-built yacht (worth c.$12,000), decides to burn it instead. That’ll show ‘em.

Today -100: August 14, 1911: Of trolleys and lynchings

Yet another scene of violence and wanton trolley destruction in a street-car strike, this time, just for a change, in Glasgow.

A negro, Zachariah Walker, is lynched in Coatesville, Penn., evidently the first lynching in Pennsylvania. Walker had shot a steel company guard, and tried to kill himself when a posse closed in. Later, a mob stormed the hospital where he was being held, and finding him shackled to a bed, carried him and the bed outside, intending to take him to the scene of his crime. After a while they got tired, so they tied a rope to his leg and dragged him the rest of the way. They then burned him (and the bed) at the stake. When the bed burned away, he tried to escape, but they forced him back into the flames with pitchforks. Afterwards, the chain that had attached him to the bed was dipped in water to cool it down, then broken up for souvenirs. The NY Tribune reported: “For hours today the scorched torso of the Negro Walker was kicked around by children on the highway a short distance from where he met his death.”

So long at the fair

The Iowa State Fair features pigs, cattle and other dumb animals.

Sharing a foot-long corn dog:




CAPTION CONTEST!


(Update: I just noticed: $6 for a corn dog? $6?)

Today -100: August 13, 1911: Of Jewish colonies, arbitration, and warplanes

200 Jewish families from Philadelphia will soon form a colony in Utah.

The Senate has stripped from the arbitration treaties with France and Britain their provisions for, um, arbitration. Specifically, they removed the power of the Joint High Commission to decide which disagreements would be arbitrated, and any arbitration would have to be approved by the Senate. In truth, this does sound like the Senate preserving its constitutional prerogatives, but the treaties, part of an attempt to create an international system that would prevent wars, would obviously be meaningless if so amended. Some senators expressed the fear that if the principle of arbitration became widespread, there might be treaties with China and Japan, and where would our precious racist immigration policies and exclusion of people of Asiatic races from public schools be then?

British aviator Claude Grahame-White says that the next big war will be decided by air power.

Republican Debate: Not going to eat Barack Obama’s dog food

Only Pawlenty and Bachmann seem to be wearing flag pins.

Michele B. does the “One. Term. President.” thing again.

Romney has spent his life in the private sector (I thought it was weird that Clinton scrubbed being a Rhodes scholar from his resumé in order not to appear all uppity, didn’t expect someone to pretend they’d never been a governor) and “understand[s] how jobs come and how they go,” especially the latter in any business he’s run. Says capitalism is about people (but then he thinks corporations are people. To be fair, Romney has to take the Turing test on a curve). “We’re inches away from no longer having a free economy.” He does not say how many inches.


GINGRICH PROBABLY WOULD: Romney on the debt ceiling bill: “Look, I’m not gonna eat Barack Obama’s dog food, all right?” Should Romney really still be bringing up dogs?

Ron Paul wants to put the militarism on the table.

Huntsman: “I intend to do exactly what I did as governor of the state of Utah,” adding, “Hey, can anyone remember what that was?”


REAL MEN DON’T COOK: Pawlenty: “I’ll offer a prize tonight to anybody in this auditorium or anyone watching on television, if you can find Barack Obama’s specific plan on any of those items, I will come to your house and cook you dinner. Or if you prefer, I’ll come to your house and mow your lawn. But in case Mitt wins, I’ll limit it to one acre.”

Santorum says the middle of America went to China, or something.

Now for the sexual tension portion of the debate, with Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann doing the Sam & Diane thing.

YES: Chris Wallace to Pawlenty: “Is [Bachmann] unqualified, or is she just beating you in the polls?”


SO SHE’S ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING, BUT IT’S A “WONDERFUL” NOTHING? Pawlenty on Bachmann: “She has done some wonderful things in her life but it is an indisputable fact that her record of accomplishment and results is nonexistent.”

Bachmann on Pawlenty: You’re Obama Obama Obama!

WHAT PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR: Bachmann: “People are looking for a champion. They want someone who has been fighting. ... I have a very consistent record of fighting against Barack Obama. That is what qualifies me as a fighter and a representative of the people.” But how is that a qualification for running a country?

NOW THIS IS A QUALIFICATION FOR RUNNING A COUNTRY: “I introduced the Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act”.

Seriously, applause for that?


NOW THIS IS A QUALIFICATION FOR RUNNING A COUNTRY: Pawlenty: “she’s got a record of misstating and making false statements.”

WE’RE HOLDING OUT FOR ADAMANTIUM: Pawlenty, after noting that Bachmann has lost all her battles: “She said she’s got a titanium spine. It’s not her spine we’re worried about; it’s her record of results. If that’s your view of effective leadership with results, please stop, because you’re killing us.”

Bachmann: “I was at the tip of the spear fighting against the implementation of Obamacare in the United States Congress.” Heh heh, she said “tip of the spear.”


Romney: “I understand how the economy works.” He keeps talking about the “real economy.”

Gingrich calls a question about his Mickey Mouse campaign a “Mickey Mouse” question.

POLITICS IS EASY, COMEDY IS HARD: Herman Cain, asked about having said that the border needs a “twenty-foot barbed wire electrified fence,” said “America’s got to learn how to take a joke.”

Romney: “I was fortunate enough to be a governor that got an increase in the credit rating of my state at the same time we got a president who got a decrease in the credit rating of our nation. And that’s because our president simply doesn’t understand how to lead and how to grow an economy.” At the same time? Er, so he was governor last week?

Gov. Pawlenty regrets having supported a cigarette tax to pay for education, even though it was really a fee (a “health impact fee,” he called it at the time), and the courts said it’s really a fee, so there.

T-Paw also says Obama should come back from his “Cape Cod vacation.”


Bachmann was in the state legislature and really really opposed the cigarette tax, but voted for it because Pawlenty made a deal with “special interests” and “put in the same bill... a vote that would take away protections from the unborn”. She means the opposite, of course. Also, the “protections” in the bill were that pregnant women seeking abortions would have to be asked if they wanted the fetus to receive anesthesia before the procedure. (h/t TPM).

All the candidates would walk away from a deal that included spending cuts and tax increases in a ratio of 10:1.

Bachmann: if the government can force you to purchase health insurance, there is nothing the government cannot do.

OH NO, NOT MANDATORY MARRIAGE, SAVE US FROTHY: Santorum: “Michelle Bachmann says that she would go in and fight health care being imposed by states, but she wouldn’t go in and fight marriage being imposed by the states. That would be okay. We have Ron Paul saying oh, whatever the states want to do under the Tenth Amendment is fine. So if the states want to pass polygamy, that’s fine. If the states want to impose sterilization, that’s fine. No! Our country is based on moral laws, ladies and gentleman.”

Bachmann is late returning from the commercial break. I guess the timing on her ingenious plan to knock over a diamond merchant during the debate went a little bit awry. No such thing as a perfect crime, huh Michele?


Gingrich objects to a question about his complete reversal on Libya as a “gotcha question.” Says we need to rethink everything in the region. Which means he wants to come up with ten new nutty and completely contradictory ideas on the back of a napkin that he forgets about the next day.


Santorum clears up a geography question for Ron Paul: “Iran is not Iceland, Ron. Iran is a country that has been at war with us since 1979. Iran is a country that’s killed more men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis and the Afghanistans [sic], Afghanistanis [sic] have.” Say what?

Paul responds that it actually started with the US support of the 1953 coup and 1979 was blow-back and we “just plain don’t mind our own business.”

Bachmann explains to Ron Paul (this is the “condescending to Ron Paul” portion of the debate) that terrorists don’t get Miranda rights and that Guantanamo Bay was responsible for Bin Laden being killed. She also explains to him that Iran is the center of all evil and she knows this because she sits on the House Select Committee on Intelligence (pause for snickering).

Ron Paul: “Who rules them a terrorist?”

Santorum says Ron Paul sees the world exactly like Obama does. Um, right. And that he won’t apologize for Iran having been free for a long time before the “mullahcracy.” He fails to say exactly when Iran was free. He does complain that Iran “tramples the rights of gays,” because if there’s one thing Ricky Santorum hates, it’s trampling the rights of gays.



Byron York asks Bachmann if she would be “submissive” to her husband, which some people think is a sexist question and I don’t. “[Wh]at submission means to us, if that’s what your question is, it means respect.” I’ll bet it does, I’ll bet it does.

I’m not sure what thesaurus she’s using, but submission in no way means respect.

Speaking of marriage, it’s gay marriage time. Romney says marriage should be determined at the federal level, because people move: “Marriage is a status, it’s not an activity.” Well, not the way Mrs. Romney does it (ba dum BUM).

Ron Paul doesn’t want the federal government having a marriage police.

I wonder what sort of uniform a federal marriage cop would wear?


Santorum says it sounds like Ron Paul says that if states want to legalize polygamy, they can. Evidently he’s no longer using the “man on dog” analogy.

Bachmann says she has “an unblemished record when it comes to this issue of man-woman marriage”. Hoo-kay then.

Santorum says it’s wrong that you can’t execute a rapist but you can abort a fetus conceived during rape. The child is an innocent victim. To be victimized twice is a horrible thing. (He means for the fetus; to victimize the actual rape victim twice with a forced pregnancy is of course a wonderful thing). “One violence is enough.”

Bachmann says she was right to oppose raising the debt ceiling and Standard & Poors has proven her right, because they said the US has no ability to pay its debts.

Today -100: August 12, 1911: Of mutinies and bad-ass pigs

The steamer Victorian arrives in Montreal from Liverpool and is met by the police, who arrest 57 stewards who had refused to serve meals. They are charged with mutiny. Evidently you can be charged with mutiny on a civilian passenger ship.

2,000 African-Americans are arriving in Denver for the 2nd annual convention of the National Negro Educational Congress, and are having trouble finding accommodation, as hotels and restaurants are refusing their reservations.

Headline of the Day -100: “Shark Killed by Pig.” Really. The shark had been harpooned and brought aboard a schooner, which for some reason had a pig as a mascot. His name is Dennis. The shark grabbed Dennis the Pig, but then Dennis tore off the shark’s jaw! It’s like the worst children’s book ever.

David Cameron’s statement the spot of bother in London: We will not let a violent few beat us

With riots on the mean streets of Tottenham and elsewhere in England (Scotland informs me that it would prefer if everyone stop talking about rioting in the UK), David Cameron returned from his vacation, where his biggest problem was that he was caught stiffing a waitress, recalled Parliament and made a statement to it today.

NOT JUST A LITTLE UNACCEPTABLE: “What we have seen on the streets of London and in other cities across our country is completely unacceptable”.

WHAT WE WILL NOT ALLOW: “We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets.” What exactly is a “culture of fear” when it’s at home?

SIMPLY PREPOSTEROUS (IT’S JUST NOT A TORY SPEECH UNLESS SOMETHING IS DESCRIBED AS SIMPLY PREPOSTEROUS): “It is simply preposterous for anyone to suggest that people looting in Tottenham at the weekend, still less three days later Salford, were in any way doing so because of the death of Mark Duggan.” I’m not going to psychoanalyze people based on some CCTV footage, but I don’t see anger over the police shooting yet another dark-skinned man and then lying about it, and opportunistic thieving as being mutually exclusive. Both are the result of alienation, social exclusion, state hostility and “austerity” measures.

WHAT STEALING FLAT-SCREEN TELEVISIONS WAS ABOUT: “The young people stealing flat screen televisions and burning shops was not about politics or protest, it was about theft.”

He defended publishing photos of looters and “no phoney human rights concerns” will stop him. Phew, because I was worried that phoney human rights concerns would stop him.

140 PUNCHES OR LESS: “And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.” He is considering “whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

“I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers.” I’m guessing they’ll say no. Cops always think they have quite enough powers, thank you very much.

WELL AND TRULY: “The fight back has well and truly begun.” We will fight them in the Miss Selfridges, we will fight them in the Boots... Every British prime minister thinks he’s bloody Winston Churchill.

COL. PICKERING: HAVE YOU NO MORALS, MAN?
ALFRED DOOLITTLE: CAN’T AFFORD THEM, GOVERNOR. NEITHER COULD YOU IF YOU WAS AS POOR AS ME. (George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912)
“[T]here is a major problem in our society with children growing up not knowing the difference between right and wrong. This is not about poverty, it’s about culture.” There’s that word again.
“A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities.” Because it just wouldn’t be a Tory speech about the lower orders without some mention of how everyone talks about rights and no one talks about responsibilities. “In too many cases, the parents of these children – if they are still around – don’t care where their children are or who they are with, let alone what they are doing.” Says the man who’s been merrily cutting every youth and sports program in sight.

WHAT WE NEED: “We need more discipline in our schools.” I didn’t see the speech, but I’m assuming every male Tory MP put a paper over his lap to disguise the stiffy brought about by any mention of the word “discipline.”

“In short, all the action necessary to help mend our broken society.”

TERRITORIAL, HIERARCHICAL AND INCREDIBLY VIOLENT – ISN’T THAT THE TORY PARTY MOTTO? “At the heart of all the violence sits the issue of the street gangs. Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent, they are mostly composed of young boys, mainly from dysfunctional homes.” David, for example, was sent away to Eton.

AND IF THERE’S ONE THING WE ENGLISH HATE, IT’S EMOTIONS: “Mr Speaker, in the past few days we have seen a range of emotions sweep this country: anger, fear, frustration, despair, sadness – and finally a determined resolve that we will not let a violent few beat us.”

FOR EXAMPLE, MANY OF OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ARE DESTROYING PROPERTY AND PERPETRATING VIOLENCE IN THE BRITISH ARMY IN AFGHANISTAN: “We need to show the world, which has looked on appalled, that the perpetrators of the violence we have seen on our streets are not in any way representative of our country – nor of our young people.”

OR WE COULD PLAY TO OUR STRENGTHS AND INTRODUCE ARSON AND LOOTING EVENTS IN THE OLYMPICS: “And a year away from the Olympics, we need to show them the Britain that doesn’t destroy, but that builds; that doesn’t give up but stands up; that doesn’t look back, but always forwards.” Really? He really had to mention the Olympics? At least he didn’t use the phrase Big Society.

I’m no doctor, but isn’t pregnant women not spontaneously bursting into flames a GOOD thing?

LAT: “Pregnant California Women Show High Levels of Flame Retardant.”

Today -100: August 11, 1911: Of mutinies, arbitration, trolleys, and losers

The Spanish government claims that the 26 sailors shot for mutiny were part of a Republican revolutionary plot.

There have been rumors that Teddy Roosevelt is working behind the scenes to stop ratification of the arbitration treaties with Britain and France. (Spoiler alert: He is.)

Oh good, another street car strike atrocity: a Pittsburgh (motto: Now with An H!!!) trolley drives over a bottle of nitroglycerine, partially blowing up, but somehow without any of the twenty-some-odd passengers getting killed.

The Georgia Legislature calls on Congress to abrogate the 1832 treaty with Russia because of its refusal to honor American passports held by Jews. Yes, the Peach State is all about upholding the rights of Jews.

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease revokes the licenses of three notary publics who supported the charge of a railroad ticket agent that Blease had tried to cut in line and then insulted her when she told him to wait his turn.

Headline of the Day -100: “WED MRS. LOSER AND $300,000.” Mrs. Loser marries her chauffeur.

Today -100: August 10, 1911: Of milk, maneuvers, and elevated officials

I believe I mentioned that President Taft’s cow would be a special exhibit at the International Dairy Show in Milwaukee. Well, her milk will be sold at 50¢ for a small bottle. Souvenir milk – who came up with that brilliant idea?

Orange, NJ bans Carrie Davenport from teaching in Orange schools. She is black.

The Texas Legislature shouts down a proposal that Booker T. Washington be allowed to speak in the Capitol.

Airplanes will participate in German military maneuvers for the first time.

Headline of the Day -100: “CHOOSE ELEVATED OFFICIALS.” The guys in charge of Chicago’s El. So it’s the train tracks that are elevated, not the officials.

Today -100: August 9, 1911: Of restored h’s, mutinies, duels, and states

The long national nightmare is over: The spelling of Pittsburg is being changed back to Pittsburgh. That decision was made by the Post Office (or the United States Geographic Board?). The city had been demanding its h back for the last 20 years.

There was a mutiny a couple of days ago aboard a Spanish battleship anchored off Tangier. 26 sailors have been court-martialed and executed.

An East Chicago man who challenged another man to a duel (both have Serbian names) is sentenced to a fine, jail and, interestingly, disfranchisement, under a law against challenging someone to a duel, the first time the Illinois law has been used.

The bill for statehood for Arizona and New Mexico passes the Senate 53-18. An attempt to strike out Arizona’s provision for the recall of judges was voted down, but AZ will be required to vote on that provision separately from the referendum on the entire constitution. However, it will be admitted to the Union however that vote goes.

Quote of the Day

If you’re the lieutenant governor of Missouri, Peter Kinder, and you’re planning to run for governor in 2012, this is probably not what you want to have to send your spokesmodel out to say: “I really highly doubt the lieutenant governor is going to a bar where they don’t wear pants on a night when they don’t wear pants.”

Today -100: August 8, 1911: Of women’s games, stilts, and cleaning up

The mayor of Hunnewell, Kansas, Ella Wilson, is in a death-struggle with the all-male city council. They won’t confirm any of her appointments and she won’t sign any of the ordinances they pass. She says she would quit if she could, and that “politics is not a woman’s game,” but instead is working with the governor to oust the council.

Headline of the Day -100: “FIREMEN FIGHT BLAZE IN HOUSE ON STILTS.” Sadly, it was the house (the Jamaica Bay Yacht Club) which was on stilts, not the firemen.

Pathé begins the first newsreel in America, Pathé’s Weekly.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “TY COBB CLEANS UP WITH BABES FULL.”

Today -100: August 7, 1911: Of crap shooters, slavery, trolleys, and icebergs

Haiti’s revolutionary army proclaims as president one Gen. Cincinnatus Leconte, the great-grandson of a previous Emperor of Haiti. Spoiler alert: contrary to his name, he did not return to his plow, but was blowed up in 1912.

Topic Sentence of the Day -100: A story headlined “Negro is Killed By His Own Pistol” begins “Moses Hill, a negro [okay, we get it already: he’s a negro], who had a reputation as a crap shooter, met his death by his own hand as a result of that talent yesterday morning.” No, “crap shooter” doesn’t mean he was a really bad shot but rather that three white men he beat playing craps decided to beat the crap out of him and he drew a gun. My, the word crap is so versatile, isn’t it?

Mississippi’s Democratic primary (all-white, of course) last week chose former governor James Vardaman as candidate for US Senate. Many black people are now fleeing the state, believing that when he is elected, slavery will be restored. To be fair to Vardaman – the white supremacist shit – he only advocates repealing the 14th and 15th Amendments, not the 13th.

Why are street car strikes always so violent? The one in Des Moines has ended because a court ordered the reinstatement of the conductor whose dismissal was the cause of the strike, but another one in Brooklyn/Coney Island features the usual wrecking of cars, beating of scabs and terrorizing of passengers. The street car operators want an increase in pay from 23¢ an hour to 25¢.

Interesting details of the Columbia’s collision with the iceberg.

Today -100: August 6, 1911: Of sabers, Confederate nickels, Doc Hazzard, trolleys, and patents

In Berlin, a burglar kills a cop trying to arrest him. New orders have gone out to the Berlin PD concerning the use of service revolvers: they can now use them first, rather than having to try their sabers first. To reiterate: cops in Berlin had sabers.

More Berlin police news: police have issued a warning against some Confederate bills that have been circulating, brought back by an artisan who was living in the US until recently.

After a patient dies while taking the starvation cure at the Hazzard Institution – she can’t say she wasn’t warned – Dr. Linda Hazzard is arrested for killing patients to take their money.

Rioting by striking street car workers in Des Moines succeeds in making every scab flee the city.

The US issues its one millionth patent: a puncture-proof tire. (Update: Oh, actually no. 1m as issued by the Patent Office since it was created in 1836. There were 9,957 issued 1790-1836.)

If you hop while eating BBQ, you’re going to get very messy, or am I missing the point?

Fox News complains that Obama’s birthday “Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs.”

Speaking of Hip-Hop birthdays, the day Katrina hit New Orleans...

Today -100: August 5, 1911: Of alphabets, poltroons, Reciprocity, and icebergs

Rep. Fred Jackson (R-Kansas) introduces a bill calling on Taft to call a conference of all nations to consider the creation of a Universal Scientific Alphabet.

German ultra-nationalists are worried that the government may compromise with France over Morocco. The Pan-German Post calls Kaiser Wilhelm “The Valorous Poltroon.” What is the German for poltroon, and how do you spell it in the Universal Scientific Alphabet?

Update: Google Translate says the German for poltroon is feigling, which seems to me to capture the literal meaning but not the tone.

President Taft names his new horse Reciprocity, after the Canadian trade treaty. There’s probably a joke in that somewhere.

In a freak accident that will never be repeated, the passenger liner Columbia, traveling from Glasgow to New York, hits an iceberg. No one was hurt.

Somebody needs a better travel agent

White House press releases today:

On Tuesday, August 9, the President will travel to Interstate Moving Services in Springfield, Virginia, to announce first of their kind fuel efficiency standards for work trucks, buses, and other heavy duty vehicles.

On Thursday, August 11, the President will travel to Holland, Michigan, to tour the Johnson Controls Inc. advanced battery facility.

The Vice President will depart for China, Mongolia, and Japan on August 16, 2011.

Today -100: August 4, 1911: Of three-time losers, arbitration, monkeys, and cows

William Jennings Bryan says he will never run for president again. And he won’t.

The US signs arbitration treaties with both Britain and France. Even matters of “honor” are to be settled through arbitration.

Upton Sinclair announces that he plans to write a book about the horrors of prisons. What on earth did they do to him during his 18 hours at the New Castle Workhouse?

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “A Monkey Chews Gum.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Taft to Exhibit Cow.”

Unfortunate Headline of the Day

AP: “Heather Mills: Journalist Told Me I’d Been Hacked.”

Today -100: August 3, 1911: Of enlistments, extinctions, women lawyers, menacing revolutions, and useless husbands

There is a controversy in the US Army over whether army enlistments should be short, with a high turnover so that a large number of people can be trained and then called up if needed, or conversely whether enlistments should be increased to five years.

The chief health officer of Richmond, Virginia, notes that negroes have a higher death rate than whites and predicts they will become extinct in the 21st century.

Arabella (“Belle”) Mansfield, the first woman admitted to the bar in the US (Iowa, 1868), although she never actually practiced law, dies. She was dean of the College of Arts at DePauw University.

Well that was fast: “New Revolution Menaces Mexico.”

Condescending Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “They’ll Give Up Candy For Sake of Suffrage.” California suffragists are fund-raising for the October state referendum on women’s suffrage through a “self-denial week.”

Headline of the Day -100: “KILLED USELESS HUSBAND.; Wife Gives Excuse That She Could Not Make a Man of Him.” But she could make a dead man of him – it’s compromises like this that make marriages work.

The Southern Pacific Railroad will no longer hire women. They get married just when they’re becoming useful.

Because nothing empowers women like telling them what they can and can’t wear

Italy is joining other European countries in planning to ban the burqa with a new law requiring women’s faces to be visible. Since the proposal comes from Silvio Berlusconi’s party, it will probably also require their breasts to be visible.

Today -100: August 2, 1911: Of reapportionment, Sunday golf, and braaaaaiiinnnsss!

The reapportionment bill is going through despite opposition from Robert La Follette, who notes that the changes will disadvantage Republican Insurgents in the Electoral College, and from a few mainstream Republicans like Elihu Root, who think any reapportionment will work in favor of Democrats (which it will, because R’s did so badly in so many state legislature elections in 1910).

Follow up: Upton Sinclair and the ten other members of the Arden, Del. Single Tax colony will serve 18 hours in the workhouse for violations of the blue laws. Sinclair, imprisoned for felonious tennis-playing, now plans to go on the offensive against the blue laws by applying for arrest warrants for anyone who plays golf or other games on the sabbath. Wilmington Country Club, you have been warned!

Headline of the Day -100: “Doctors Buy Her Brain.” Progressive teacher Celeste Parrish. She has a really good memory. They’ll wait until she’s dead to collect it.

A detailed case

Obama, in his announcement yesterday of the debt ceiling deal: “And over the next few months, I’ll continue to make a detailed case to these lawmakers about why I believe a balanced approach is necessary to finish the job.” After all this time, he still thinks it’s about reasoned discussion, healthy debate, back and forth, making a detailed case. Dude’s learned nothing.

Today -100: August 1, 1911: Of sugar and anarchist sabbatarians

The House Special Committee investigating the Sugar Trust held a sugar-tasting session. They decided that French sugar was the tastiest.

George Brown, a philosopher and anarchist, angered by his treatment at the (Henry) Georgian Single-Tax utopian colony in Arden, Delaware, where his espousal of his views at a meeting of the Economic Club after they had expelled him from membership earned him a $2 fine (and 5 days in the workhouse when he refused to pay), is seeking his revenge by swearing out warrants for the arrest of all the top leaders at Arden for violations of the state’s blue laws. He charges Upton Sinclair with having played tennis on a Sunday and others with playing baseball or selling ice cream.

Super

So there will be a “Super Congress.” Prepare for much hilarity in the days ahead as we discover which members of the current Congress are considered “super.”

Happy now?

Paul Krugman reminds us of Obama’s press conference last December after he gave in on tax cuts for the rich, when he was asked whether not having addressed the debt ceiling left the Republicans with significant leverage and Obama said that Boehner would never be so crass as to do that.

In my analysis of that press conference, which is worth re-reading (if I do say so myself) as a reminder of how smug and self-righteous Obama was about his so-called pragmatism, I see that Obama said this: “I am happy to be tested over the next several months about our ability to negotiate with Republicans.”

Today -100: July 31, 1911: Of raging kaisers

Headline of the Day -100: “Kaiser in Rage on Morocco.” He’s pissed at Foreign Minister Baron von Kiderlen-Waechter (say that three times fast), who had thought that Britain wouldn’t back France up, even though they have a mutual defense treaty.

In the Canadian elections, the Conservatives are making a big deal over a telegram Taft sent to the Hearst newspapers, thanking them for supporting the tariff reciprocity treaty. Since William Randolph Hearst also advocates annexation of Canada, the Conservatives say that this telegram obviously means that Taft does too.

Today -100: July 30, 1911: Of popular wars, bloodless revolutions, elections, bounties, and guillotines

A “highly qualified American observer of European affairs” thinks that the Moroccan crisis shows that a war between Britain and Germany might not be unpopular in Britain.

The NYT reassures its readers that the ongoing revolution in Haiti is bloodless.

The Canadian Parliament has been dissolved, and elections will be fought in part on the reciprocity treaty with the US.

The government of Persia offers a $100,000 reward for the head of the former shah, Mohammed Ali Mirza, who is trying to recapture the throne.

The Paris guillotine (the “widow”) is moved inside La Santé Prison. In future it will no longer be ceremonially transported to the prison prior to executions on a cart drawn by a white horse (French executions were public until 1939). The guillotine had been kept in a shed outside the house of the public executioner, Anatole Deibler (who inherited the job from his father, and also married into a family of executioners, which is not at all creepy). He assembled guillotines himself, IKEA-style, from parts ordered from separate carpenters and joiners, so none of them knew what they were working on. He also put together guillotines intended for export. China just ordered one. Deibler’s “staff has a sense of humor, for a year or two ago they amused themselves by strapping their chief to ‘the widow,’ with his neck under the fatal knife, and left him there for quite a while to appreciate the sensation of one of the condemned wretches whom he has so often dispatched to the next world.”

Projecting

George Bush explains the Pet Goat thing: “I wanted to project a sense of calm. I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm.” He added, “But mostly I wanted to wait until I stopped projecting pee.”

Daily Telegraphy: Kitler, gay alligators, humble days, and juggler’s hat sex acts

Headlines of the Day, from the One True Source of All News:

“Hitler Cat Fails to Find Home.” Poor Kitler.


“Judge Tells Teacher Sex Offender: ‘I don’t criticise you for being attracted to children.’” A (female) judge with a record of leniency towards sex criminals – “In 2008, she allowed former headmaster Phillip Carmichael to walk free from court after accepting that medication for Parkinson’s disease had turned him into a paedophile” – who maybe shouldn’t have been given this kiddie porn case. “Reading Crown Court was told that the teaching assistant became alarmed after noticing files on Armstrong’s laptop with names including ‘rape wife’, ‘nude model’ and ‘gay alligator’.”

Gay alligator?

“Jonnie Marbles” is convicted of pieing Rupert Murdoch. “The part-time stand-up comic emerged from court and said: ‘I would just like to say this has been the most humble day of my life.’”

“Harry Potter Dwarf Spared Jail over Juggler’s Hat Sex Act.” To clarify, he is a dwarf in real life and a goblin in Harry Potter (and an Ewok in Return of the Jedi). “It is understood that Read has recently been hiring himself out to stag parties, offering to be handcuffed to the stag while dressed as a diminutive fictional character such as a Smurf or Oompa-Loompa.”

What does the auto club have to do with this?

Obama this morning:
“we could lose our country’s AAA credit rating, not because we didn’t have the capacity to pay our bills -- we do -- but because we didn’t have a AAA political system to match our AAA credit rating.” We do have an AA political system, though, amiright? I’ll be here all week.

WE’RE DOOMED: “I’m confident that common sense and cooler heads will prevail.”

Today -100: July 29, 1911: Of Jews and ashes

Russian Prime Minister Stolypin (Putin’s hero) wants to force banks to stop extending so much credit to Jews. Because the banks are all controlled by Jews and Jews monopolize trade and Jews speculate in the grain trade and blah blah anti-Semitic blah.

Front-Page Headline of the Day -100: “SAYS HE THREW AWAY COL. WARING'S ASHES; Then Mixed Drinks in the Urn at Quarantine Orgy, Testifies Arthur Denyse.”

Today -100: July 28, 1911: Of Morocco and Germany

A NYT editorial tries to put the Moroccan crisis in perspective, or figure out what “international morality” requires, or something. It says that Germany should be supported if its purpose it to nobly preserve the territorial integrity of Morocco (like the US did with China) if “France and Spain are seeking to divide Morocco instead of performing the white man’s duty.” But the paper isn’t sure that Germany really is being noble rather than being just as land-grabby as France and Spain (which it obviously is, just not in Morocco, where it’s playing let’s-make-a-deal), like the US in Panama, “the sole blot on our record.” It warns Germany that “She is too far advanced in civilization to defy those rules of right conduct which only the barbarous exult in ignoring or infringing.” (Spoiler alert: no she isn’t.)

Today -100: July 27, 1911: Of good character, and unwanted lions

An amendment to the Georgia constitution is proposed establishing a “good character” qualification for the franchise, as determined by “respect for good womanhood.” Which seems to mean that a black man would have to have his character attested to by two white women (in person). According to the amendment’s author, Rep. J.J. Slade, “Circulars are being sent to negroes all over the State telling them to qualify for the ballot under the educational and property qualifications. I want to make it impossible for any one with a black or mulatto skin to vote in Georgia, no matter how much book learning he may possess. The protection of the white race demands that negroes be made positively and forever the political inferiors of the whites, as they are their social inferiors.” White men would also have to have white women attest to their character but, according to Slade, “Any good white man can get a good white woman to testify that she would trust him in the dark. If any white man can’t, the scoundrel should be disfranchised.” I’m pretty sure this amendment went nowhere.

A Coney Island amusement park, in a publicity stunt that could in no way have gone horribly, horribly wrong, sent a lion to Theodore Roosevelt’s office, with a letter saying “We are sending you a lioness we have no further use for.”

Today -100: July 26, 1911: Of hotels and fleets

A Chinese man (president of a D.C. YMCA branch) tries a dozen hotels in Ocean Grove, NJ, none would give him a room.

Britain cancels a planned visit by the Atlantic fleet to Norway. This is another slightly veiled threat to Germany over Morocco.

Define “excessive”

Last week, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny attacked the Vatican cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. So today the Vatican recalled its ambassador, expressing “surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.” Well we’d certainly hate if anyone reacted excessively to decades of child-rape.

Another day, another Obama address to the nation about the debt ceiling

And it’s pretty much the same one he gave last time and the time before that. Debt bad, default bad, compromise good.

WHEN DID THEY AGREE ON THAT? “Democrats and Republicans agree on the amount of deficit reduction we need. The debate is about how it should be done.”


WHAT MOST AMERICANS DON’T UNDERSTAND: “Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.” How can Republicans ask that? With a song in their heart and a large campaign contribution in their pocket.

ALTHOUGH IT’S A LOT EASIER TO HAVE YOUR WAY... AH, YOU KNOW WHERE I’M GOING HERE. He quoted Jefferson: “Every man cannot have his way in all things.”

---

Then John Boehner came out, to rebut the crazy idea that he cannot have his way in all things.

He was amazed that the federal government does not work in exactly the same way as a small business in Ohio. In fact, he was amazed that it doesn’t work like “every other business in America.” Well see, that’s the source of your amazement right there: government is not actually a business.


Now he’s accusing Obama of not taking yes for an answer, just like Obama accused the Republicans last week. Could this all be just a wacky misunderstanding?

SO SAD: “The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today.”

Boehner refers to “the crisis atmosphere he has created”.

AND THE PURPLER THE GOVERNMENT, THE MORE ORANGE THE PEOPLE (OR SOMETHING): “I’ve always believed that the bigger the government, the smaller the people.”

Today -100: July 25, 1911: Of lynchings and wet Texas

A negro farmer shoots four white farmers in Shreveport, LA “without cause,” and is lynched in front of the negro church.

The Texas prohibition referendum fails, 234,000 to 228,000.

Today -100: July 24, 1911: Of war widows and x-raying souls

Remember how until recently they kept discovering new “last Confederate widows,” some 100-year-old woman who’d married a 100-year-old Confederate veteran when she was a teenager? Well, in 1911 there was at least one living War of Independence widow. Born in 1800, at 19 she married one Hiram Proctor, a veteran of both the Revolution and the War of 1812. She gets a $12 a month pension because of his service in the latter war, and is cared for in a tumble-down cabin in North Carolina by her 90-year-old daughter.

There is a serious scientific dispute going on about whether the human soul can be x-rayed. An experiment is about to be conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Mass. thinks that it can’t be done, because the skull gets in the way, except perhaps at death, when the soul substance becomes more agitated. He says it gives off a light just like that of interstellar ether. Oh, and that the soul weighs between ½ and 1¼ ounces. MacDougall has performed experiments on dying people that prove it.

The Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Parking Lot of Doom

Not a lot of pictures of this week’s Jerusalem parking lot protest.


But there was a nice innovation: secular counter-protesters. Unconstrained by sabbatarianism, they can bring their cars and... water pistols.

Debt negotiation caption contest