skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Obama spoke today about his number one priority since the Republicans told him it was his number one priority, deficit reduction.
IF THIS DOESN’T CONVINCE THE REPUBLICANS TO PASS THE JOBS ACT, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL: “They should pass it right away. I’m ready to sign a bill. I’ve got the pens all ready.” Say, if you’re serious about deficit reduction, maybe cut down on the number of pens you use just to sign your name.
AND I COULD “SAVE” A LOT OF MONEY IF I STOPPED BUYING ALL THAT COCAINE AND ALL THOSE MAGIC BEANS: “And we save an additional $1 trillion as we end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
HE WAS FOR LEAVING PEOPLE AT THE MERCY OF THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT: “Because while we do need to reduce health care costs, I’m not going to allow that to be an excuse for turning Medicare into a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry.”
SOME OF HIS BUREAUCRATS CAN FIND AS MANY AS SEVEN DIMES OF WASTE AND INEFFICIENCY EVERY HOUR THEY SPEND SCOURING THE BUDGET: “So this is how we can reduce spending: by scouring the budget for every dime of waste and inefficiency”.
THE FIRST RULE WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A HOLE... “We can’t just cut our way out of this hole. It’s going to take a balanced approach.”
IT SHOULD GIVE IT TO THOSE WHICH GIVE THE LARGEST CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS: “Our tax code shouldn’t give an advantage to companies with the best-connected lobbyists.”
NOTE THAT THE MIDDLE CLASS ARE “FAMILIES” BUT THE MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES ARE ALONE. POOR LONELY MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES. “And any reform should follow another simple principle: Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.”
His strongest bit of rhetoric attacks the Republicans’ no-tax pledges as support for unfairness in that every billionaire evidently pays less than every secretary. Putting aside whether that’s a caricature of our, yes, ridiculously uneven tax code, this isn’t even a full-throated defense of progressive taxation. Hell, it could be a defense of the flat tax.
It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million. Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness -- explain why somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that -- paying a higher rate. They ought to have to answer for it. And if they’re pledged to keep that kind of unfairness in place, they should remember, the last time I checked the only pledge that really matters is the pledge we take to uphold the Constitution.
Which explains why he’s okay with having broken every single one of his campaign promises, I guess.
HOWEVER, TAKING OUT A FEW HEDGE FUND MANAGERS WITH PREDATOR DRONES WOULD JUST BE FUCKING COOL: “I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare.”
WHAT, NOBODY? “Nobody wants to punish success in America.” Actually, let’s test that proposition.
WHAT BOTH PARTIES AGREE: “Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount -- by $4 trillion.” Wow, they both agree on the same arbitrary number? It’s almost the same as only having one political party.
WE CAN’T AFFORD TO DO WHAT NOW? “Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.” So if we raise Medicare fees we can’t also ask the rich to pay their fair share in taxes, is that what you’re saying? You know that makes no sense, right? “Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.” Seriously, did no one check this speech for logic?
SO OBAMA’S READING OF AMERICAN POLITICS IS THAT CLASS WARFARE ISN’T POPULAR, BUT MATH IS. “This is not class warfare. It’s math.”
WHO YOU CALLING ORDINARY? “I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans.”
THE V WORD! HE USED THE V WORD! “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.” So we can afford to do both those things after all?
After some nonsense about how Russian PM Stolypin might survive because the assassin’s bullet was deflected by his crucifix, he dies. The Jews of Kiev are expecting retaliatory violence, as is the custom.
Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “Sea Dragon Sighted Off Coast Near San Diego.” 40 feet long, with four baby dragons. Pink.
Bibi Netanyahu: “we are ready to enter negotiations if the Palestinians want to. At the end of the day I believe that after the smoke clears the Palestinians will come to their senses and sit down for negotiations that will bring peace for us and our neighbors.” Because nothing says “ready to enter negotiations” like telling your potential negotiating partners to “come to their senses.”
In the same article, Abbas denies trying to delegitimize Israel, saying that in fact Israel is a legitimate state, but its settlement-building activities are illegitimate. Actually, I’d say that until there is an established Palestinian state with mutually agreed borders, Israel is not a legitimate state.
but I didn’t realize how much I’d come to loathe him until I read an article in the Daily Telegraph about his secret meetings with Qaddafi as an emissary of Gordon Brown to negotiate the release of the Lockerbie bomber and when it said “He was flown to Libya twice at Gaddafi’s expense on one of the former dictator’s private jets,” I had a genuine brief moment of confusion over which one was the “former dictator.”
Counter-terrorism Czar John Brennan says the US can kill or capture people in any country on earth: “We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves.” He does add the caveat that we are constrained by “respect for a state’s sovereignty,” so I guess we’ll respectfully insert military forces into other countries to kill people.
Court-Martial of the Day -100: “For the first time in the history of the army it seems certain that an officer is to be court-martialed for the purpose of proving whether or not he is qualified to act as a judge of the price of North Carolina watermelons.” A captain briefly detained a watermelon farmer who was charging soldiers a higher price than that set by the captain. The farmer was friend of a friend of a friend of Sen. Lee Overman, who complained to the secretary of war, thus the court-martial.
The threat of war between Germany and France seems to have receded while they send various notes and proposals and ultimatums relating to Morocco back and forth. The views of the king of Morocco, or indeed those of any other Moroccans, are of course irrelevant.
Governors of all five states with women’s suffrage (plus the governor of South Dakota) attend a meeting of the Women’s Political Union at Cooper Union in NYC. They all support women’s suffrage in general but Gov. William Spry of Utah has some criticisms of militant suffrage methods (meaning those used by British suffragettes, not – yet – by Americans). And Gov. James Hawley of Idaho said “The suffrage campaign should be carried on in a kindly way.” He warned against using “coercion and force,” adding “I believe in women who are motherly women, who are true sisters and true wives; women who believe that home is the most sacred place on earth.” Harriot Stanton Blatch said governors Spry and Hawley don’t know what they’re talking about. More surprisingly, Gov. John Shafroth of Colorado said the same, coming out in support of English militancy; he says that men would have reacted much more strongly if treated the same way.
The Sunday magazine section today has two features on important personages in Russia, one on “The Mad Monk Who Rules Russia Through the Czar” (Iliodor, not Rasputin), and one on “The Czar’s Sister-in-Law A Woman Suffrage Leader.”
Hoke Smith, former governor of Georgia and now US senator-elect, says that the negro is the South’s burden. And education won’t help, because negroes are, well, you know. What would help? He doesn’t come out in favor of the return of slavery, although he does say that negroes were “advanced from savagery to civilization during slavery,” which they never do when left to their own devices, as in Africa. And Negroes, he says, should never compete with whites: “with few exceptions, they succeed only in the simpler walks of life, and there only when they receive the benefit of kindly direction from the white man.” They do best in communities with lots of white men, so the best policy would be to scatter them throughout the country. He seems a bit resentful that the South is shouldering so much of the white man’s burden.
US says Palestine should not make "unilateral" move for UN recognition, will unilaterally veto UN recognition.
Headline of the Day -100: “China Realizes Revolt is Serious.”
The guy who shot Russian PM Stolypin, Dmitry Bogrov, who was arrested on the spot, is evidently both a revolutionary and an informer for the secret police. The government is saying that he was actually assigned to the theater to act as a bodyguard for Stolypin. I’m not sure that’s correct, but in the months to come there were a lot of suspicions over his motives – was he working for the Social Revolutionaries or the Jews (Stolypin fueled the recent pogroms and deportations) or for the extreme rightists in the secret police who found Stolypin a dangerous liberal? Bogrov was hanged within a few days, and the tsar ordered a halt to the investigation into the assassination. It’s all very mysterious.
After he was shot, Stolypin “summoned his waning strength, and, rising, faced the imperial box and gazing steadily upon the Czar, lifted his wounded arm and made the sign of the cross toward his Majesty, invoking the divine protection.”
The NYT helpfully offers an editorial against assassinations.
Teddy Roosevelt attends the NYC Children’s Court in order to write an article about it. He cross-examined the prisoners and gave some of them “a severe lecture.” He told a 15-year-old, accused of spitting off the rear platform of an elevated train, “I never heard of such a beastly thing for any boy to do,” adding, “I never knew a William to be a bad boy,” and declaiming “What you need is a good spanking, and I’d like to give it to you!” Bad William got a suspended sentence. TR told a boy who threw tomatoes at a passerby that he should play ball instead.
Sarah Bernhardt is making a movie!
Headline of the Day -100: “MEETS LOST SON IN JAIL.; Father, Parted for 20 Years, Finds Him Arrested for Burning Negro.”
Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin is shot twice at the Kiev Opera House (Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan). Tsar Nicholas and two of his daughters were also present. After being shot, Stolypin shouted “I am happy to die for the tsar!” And he did. Or will, in 4 days. The NYT helpfully explains that hangman’s nooses are called “Stolypin’s neckties” in Russia, thanks to his “reforms” of the legal system, facilitating 3,000 executions during his 5-year premiership. (Vladimir Putin, naturally, admires Stolypin for his “unbending will.”)
The Chinese 1911 Revolution is, um, a thing.
Mount Etna has erupted.
Suffragists are wearing sandwich boards along Broadway in NYC to advertise a suffrage meeting, the first time they have been employed by American suffragists, copying their more advanced (and less timid) British sisters. “Sandwichettes,” the NYT, perhaps inevitably, calls them.
President Taft will be visiting the St. Louis City Club. They are preparing by ordering new cables for the elevators.
Transcript.
Herman Cain: “I believe that America has become a nation of crises. That’s why I want to be president of the United States of America.” The logic is impeccable.
Romney: “I spent my life in the private sector.” Please ignore my actual qualifications for public office and record of public office.
Gingrich thinks it’s “totally appropriate that we’re having this particular debate on 9/12.” He wants to fight “against the forces of reaction and special interests.”
Bachmann: “I’m a person that’s had feet in the private sector and a foot in the federal government.” And all three feet are righties.
Romney points out that Perry is not only calling Social Security a ponzi scheme, but says it’s unconstitutional, which makes Perry’s u-turn in trying to sound reassuring about Soc Sec problematic. Perry says it’s “not appropriate for America” to “support what they did in the ‘30s”... “And it’s time for us to get back to the constitution and a program that’s been there 70 or 80 years, obviously we’re not going to take that program away.” So he’s not going to take away the unconstitutional program but we’ll get back to the constitution. Clears that right up. Follow-up from Romney: so do you still want to return it to the states? Perry: “I think we ought to have a conversation.” Romney says that’s what we’re doing now, dude. No, says Perry, you’re just trying to scare seniors, by asking me questions that if I answered honestly would scare them.
Gingrich says the one who’s really scaring people on Social Security is Obama. Because Obama correctly pointed out that if the Republicans defaulted the government, SSI checks couldn’t go out. “Now, why should young people who are 16 to 25 years old have politicians have the power for the rest of their life to threaten to take away their Social Security?” So, privatize Social Security and take away that power. Or at least transfer it to Wall Street, which is so much safer than the full faith and security of the United States.
Gingrich says that you can balance the budget simply by “modernizing” government. Free money! No hard choices!
Perry: “I would suggest to you that people are tired of spending money we don’t have on programs we don’t want.”
Romney repeats his line about going from a pay-phone world to a smartphone world and Obama is still feeding quarters into the pay phone. Of course Michelle Bachmann keeps trying to stuff quarters into her smartphone.
Romney is against a national sales tax, because the rich would pay less and the middle class more (he doesn’t mention poor people, for some reason). So he would just end taxation on interest, dividends and capital gains, because that wouldn’t shift the tax burden away from the rich at all.
On the cervical cancer vaccine Perry tried to require, Wolf Blitzer turns to Michelle Bachmann because “You’re a mom.” As a mom, Bachmann is against “innocent little 12-year-old girls” being “forced to have a government injection”. Perry says it was all about “err[ing] on the side of life.” Bachmann says it was actually about drug company profits. Perry says “if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.” Shouldn’t he be offended by the suggestion that he can be bought at all, not by the notion that he can be bought cheaply? Bachmann: “Well, I’m offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn’t have a choice. That’s what I’m offended for.”
Perry says Obama based Obamacare on Romneycare. Romney: “I’d be careful about trusting what President Obama says as to what the source was of his plan”.
Blitzer asks Ron Paul if someone who didn’t bother getting health insurance and then gets sick should be allowed to die. Yes, because “that’s what freedom is all about.” Yay, freedom! (Cheers from the audience at the thought of someone dying.) Paul then says that churches should take care of them (unless they’re filthy atheists, presumably). Also, health care is so expensive because there’s no competition, because there’s licensing, and we should just let fake doctors “practice what they want.”
Santorum: “what Governor Perry’s done is he provided in-state tuition for -- for illegal immigrants. Maybe that was an attempt to attract the illegal vote -- I mean, the Latino voters.” Little racist slip of the tongue in the middle of his racist remarks. Then he added that Republicans can attract Latino voters by making English the official language. “We’re a melting pot, not a salad bowl.” (Although funnily enough, if they assimilate into American society like Santorum wants, they’ll stop eating salads and eat more nachos.)
Gingrich: “I think that the day after we celebrated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 we should be reminded exactly what is at stake if a foreign terrorist gets a nuclear weapon into this country.” Way to bring everyone down after our “celebration,” Captain Buzzkill.
Santorum attacks Ron Paul for suggesting that 9/11 was a response to US actions. Rather, it was because “we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists. And they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. And we stand for American exceptionalism”. They hate us for our exceptionalism.
Asked what they would bring to the White House, Santorum says that with all his children, he’d add a bedroom. And a display case for fetuses.
Paul would bring “a bushel basket full of common sense.” And a course in Austrian economics”. Well, which one is it?
Perry says he’d bring his wife. And his hair stylist.
Romney would bring back the statue of Winston Churchill that Obama banished because he’s a Kenyan.
Bachmann would bring a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, because I guess they don’t have copies of those things in the White House now, or access to the internet.
Herman Cain would bring a sense of humor, “because America’s too uptight.”
Huntsman would bring his Harley.
The Italian government has decided to seize Libya, taking advantage of the Franco-German conflict over Morocco.
A “race war” breaks out in Alexandria, Louisiana. A white student at the Baptist college bumped a black man, who hit him with a fence picket, killing him. White mobs have been attacking random black men, as is the custom.
Maine voters seem to have voted narrowly to repeal prohibition (Maine has been dry since 1858). Licensing laws still need to be written; towns will be permitted to remain dry.
The Trial of the Century of the Week has been that of Henry Clary Beattie, convicted of murdering his wife. The NY chief of the Bureau of Licenses now warns that no movies depicting the trial will be permitted to be shown. And a couple of the witnesses have been prevented from telling their story on stage in various places.
I might have refrained from making fun of Bush’s chimp-like face if he’d had the decency to keep it to himself this weekend, but there it was, smirking at the dedication of the Flight 93 memorial,
trying to look all somber-like,
or possibly just falling asleep,
smirking next to his favorite comedy partner,
wondering how long this stoopid ceremony was gonna go on,
looking all squinty and somber-like at some flowers,
and (today) trying to look all dignitudinous at Ground Zero,
but not for long, ‘cuz he got to go a football game. New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys. Like we haven’t had more than enough in the last ten years of New York jets and Dallas cowboys.
Someone just told a dirty joke.
A few quotes from myself (because if I don’t quote myself, who will?). These are from the proto version of this blog in the days after 9/11:
Like a lot of people before them, they came to New York with no more than a dream in their hearts, a knife, and many hours spent playing with the flight simulator.
The Empire State Building is now once again the tallest building in NY, which is as it should be. Some of us never took too well to the sacrilege of the World Trade Center. Speaking of which, the Empire State Building was briefly evacuated today after a bomb-sniffing dog made a mistake. Thrown off by the lingering giant-monkey smell, no doubt.
Congress is so desperate to act as if it has a role in this that members are talking about declaring war. Against what or whom, they do not know or care.
From a guy at an Internet firm in the World Trade Center: “I’m a combat veteran. Vietnam, and I never saw anything like this.” No shit, I’m guessing that’s because there were relatively few 110-story buildings in the rice paddies?
Texas postponed an execution. No sense of irony, the Texans.
I especially liked how [Bush] said at the Pentagon, “Coming here makes me sad.” The man is a walking emoticon.
Rep. Don Young of Alaska thinks the real culprits might be the
eco-terrorists.
Bush says that we will now rid the world of evil. I see him traveling the world fighting evil wherever it arises. Like that guy in Kung Fu.
Bush’s use of the word crusade is another reason they should never let him speak in public again. He couldn’t have said something more disturbing to the Islamic world than if he called bin Laden a sand nigger.
Tony Blair on the rendition of prisoners to Libya for torture while he was prime minister: “You can’t know everything the security services are doing.”
In two towns in southern Italy, mobs storm the cholera hospitals, remove the patients and set fire to the hospitals, which they believe were actually created to put cholera patients to death. Some patients died in the fires, some died as they were being taken through the streets because they had, you know, cholera, and weren’t really up to a parade.
The French cabinet decides that it won’t release soldiers whose two-year conscription terms will come up later this month if Germany doesn’t release its two-year soldiers.
French feminist journalist Arria Ly (a pseudonym for Joséphine Gondon) wrote an article that raised a stir by calling for a class of celibate single professional women. Prudent Massat (or “the prudent M. Massat,” as the NYT garbles it), a (male) editor of the radical-socialist Toulouse Reporter, then published an article making fun of her ideas and basically calling her a lesbian. So she challenged him to a duel, demanding they exchange bullets “in the name of feminism.” He told her seconds (women, naturally) no, and then organized a protest meeting against her, at which she walked onto the platform and slapped him, twice, by way of repeating the challenge. After a few hours in a police cell, she accepted that the remarks were aimed at her ideas and not her character (although “de-sexed neurotic” sounds pretty personal to me) and withdrew the challenge (although she refused to apologize for the slap), and he wrote a letter of apology. However, a male admirer of Ly’s wrote an article that provoked Massat into challenging him to a duel. They got off two exchanges of fire, all of which missed, then they switched to swords and evidently still managed not to injure each other before the seconds stopped it.
Prince Adelbert, the third son of Kaiser Wilhelm, says that Americans are the rudest people in the world. Evidently some Americans refused his lunch invitation because they had a prior engagement and he, naturally, had never in his 27 years had his wishes disregarded. Two days later another American refused to play tennis with him because it was Sunday and it was against his religious principles to play.
Obama gave his little jobs speech to Congress yesterday.
BY WHICH I MEAN REALITY TV CONCERNS: “But the millions of Americans who are watching right now, they don’t care about politics. They have real-life concerns.”
WHO THIS PLAN IS FOR: “So for everyone who speaks so passionately about making life easier for ‘job creators,’ this plan is for you.”
OBAMA WILL PUT AMERICANS TO WORK BUILDING NEW SKIES: “Everyone here knows we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over the country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world. It’s an outrage.”
BUT IF YOU’RE NOT TAKING IT OUT OF OUR POCKET, ISN’T IT ALREADY IN OUR POCKET, SO IT DOESN’T HAVE TO GO INTO OUR POCKET BECAUSE IT’S ALREADY IN OUR POCKET? AND HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED HOW WEIRD THE WORD POCKET SOUNDS IF YOU KEEP SAYING IT OVER AND OVER? “Fifteen hundred dollars that would have been taken out of your pocket will go into your pocket.”
WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: “Should we keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or should we use that money to give small business owners a tax credit when they hire new workers? Because we can’t afford to do both.”
MATH WARFARE: “This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math.”
MOST? WHO ARE THESE APPEASERS OF WHOM YOU SPEAK? “Now, I realize that some of you have a different theory on how to grow the economy. Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate most government regulations.”
WHAT HE REJECTS: “I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy.”
RACE! “We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top.” Most expensive labor? “And I believe we can win that race.” Pollution standards aren’t actually a race, you know.
MAYBE NOT EVERYONE LIKES TRAVELING AS MUCH OF YOU, HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF THAT? “Ask yourselves -- where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports?”
HAVE YOU BEEN TALKING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’S DOCTOR? “The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here -- the people who hired us to work for them -- they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.” Seriously, we’re dying, aren’t we? You’d tell us if we were all going to die in less than 14 months, right?
He finished with a quote from John F. Kennedy: “Our problems are man-made –- therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.” And if there’s one thing that Americans have proven since then, it’s that Americans can be as big as they want.
We’re fat, is what I’m saying.
Headline of the Day -100: “Mad Monk Predicts Attack on Jews.” In Russia, where there are many mad monks.
Persian government forces defeat the forces of the deposed former shah, using machine guns.
John Shafroth, the governor of Colorado, is going to the New Jersey Divorce Convention (I don’t know what that is, but I’d guess it has something to do with standardizing divorce law nationally, or getting states to recognize divorces from other states) (update: elsewhere in the paper, NY State Senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt announces a resolution calling for a uniform federal divorce law). Gov. Shafroth so hates his lieutenant governor that he has barred him from acting as governor in his absence. Lt. Gov. Fitzgerald says he will break into the executive offices or call out the troops if he is barred from them.
I’ve mentioned the (female) mayor of Hunnewell, Kansas, Ella Wilson’s battle to the death with the city council, which refuses to confirm any of her appointments or even meet with her. As a result, no tax levy has been made this year, but she says she will appoint women who will serve without pay to the offices of city clerk, treasurer, marshal and streets commissioner.
Theodore Roosevelt pens an editorial in The Outlook attacking Taft’s arbitration plans as “shams.” He says “It is one of our prime duties as a nation to seek peace. It is an even higher duty to seek righteousness.” Wars in which the US put righteousness above peace include the Revolutionary, Civil and Spanish-American wars. He does not express an opinion on the righteousness of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. “I, for one, would rather cut off my hand than see the United States adopt the attitude either of cringing before great and powerful nations who wish to wrong us or by bullying small and weak nations who have done us no wrong.” (Colombia, which did us wrong by holding land Roosevelt wanted to build a canal on, might have something to say about that.) He lists various matters he thinks should not be subject to arbitration, including the Monroe Doctrine, the Platt Amendment with Cuba, the Panama Canal, racial exclusion of immigrants, etc.
Rudyard Kipling intervenes in the Canadian elections, denouncing the tariff reciprocity treaty in a message to the Canadian people. He says “Ten to one [90 million Americans to 9 million Canadians] is too heavy odds. ... It is her own soul that Canada risks to-day.” And once that soul is “pawned,” Canada will inevitably come to adopt American standards in all things. “She might, for example, be compelled later on to admit reciprocity in the murder rate of the United States...”
The (US) governor-general of the Philippines, William Cameron Forbes, issues an order: “The provisions of the act are hereby made applicable to all districts within the Moro Province. It is therefore declared to be unlawful for any person within the Moro Province to acquire, possess or have the custody of a rifle, musket, carbine, shot-gun, revolver, pistol or any other deadly weapon from which a bullet may be discharged, etc., or to carry, concealed or otherwise on his person, any bowie knife, dirk, dagger, kris, campilane, barong, spear or any other deadly cutting or thrusting weapon except tools used exclusively for working purposes and having a blade less than fifteen Inches in length, without permission from the Governor of the Province.”
Transcript, and if I’d known there would be a transcript this time, I wouldn’t have had to sit through that crap-fest. (Update: except the “transcript” is missing some stuff I wrote down).
AND IN SEVERAL MANSIONS: Romney: “Our president doesn’t understand how the economy works. I do, because I’ve lived in it.”
WHAT PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR: Santorum: “I think what people are looking for is someone to get something done.” He added, mysteriously, “I’ve done things.”
EVEN IF PERRY PRAYS FOR IT: Huntsman says he hates to rain on the parade of the Lone Star governor, but he did a better job of creating jobs in Utah.
WHAT KIDS NEED: Bachmann says there’s one thing she knows, which is one more thing than I gave her credit for, so good for her, except that the one thing was “Kids needs jobs.”
Ron Paul, a doctor, seemed to say that we don’t need an FDA to test drug safety because drugs do more harm than good. And consumers can decide if cars are safe.
Gingrich: “The fact that President Obama doesn’t come to the Reagan Library to try to figure out how to create jobs...” By reading the stacks of Reader’s Digests? “...tells you that this is a president so committed to class warfare and so committed to bureaucratic socialism that he can’t possibly be effective in jobs.”
Perry says Texas has an uninsured rate of 25% because the people of Texas “would like to see... the federal government get out of their business.”
Gingrich goes on attack against the liberal media, including the debate questioners, saying of the attempt to ask him questions about the candidates he’s competing against, “You want to puff this up into some giant thing.” Which normally is what he pays... oh, you’re all way ahead of me.
JUST POP THE HOOD: Santorum says no one did more than him in “working on the poor.”
Rick Perry then refers to Rick Santorum as “the last individual.” Probably forgot his first name.
Mittens: We’re living like an energy-poor country.
Bachmann defends her promise to reduce gas prices to $2 a gallon: “very time gasoline increases 10¢ cents a gallon, that’s $14 billion [I think the transcript is wrong and she said million] in economic activity that every American has taken out of their pockets.” Wow, every American had $14 billion in their pockets? Let me check. Hey, whaddaya know, she’s right! Fuck this blog, I’m buying Disneyland.
Huntsman says that the price of gas is actually $13 a gallon, “When you add up the cost of troop deployments, when you add up the cost of keeping the sea lanes open for the importation of imported oil” etc etc. So nice to see a politician admit that the wars are for oil.
YOU SHALL NOT CRUCIFY MANKIND UPON THIS CROSS OF GOLD: Ron Paul says he can get us all gas for 10¢ a gallon, because “you can buy a gallon of gasoline today for a silver dime. A silver dime is worth $3.50. It’s all about inflation and too many regulations.”
A NICE INTELLECTUAL CONVERSATION: Perry refuses to talk about what his book said about Social Security’s origins: “it’s a nice intellectual conversation, but the fact is we have got to be focused on how we’re going to change this program.”
CONTEST: What else does Rick Perry consider a nice intellectual conversation. Example: Which is correct, “Yee hah!” or “Yee haw!”?
Romney defends Social Security because “We have always had, at the heart of our party, a recognition that we want to care for those in need”. Say what?
SOME PROVOCATIVE LANGUAGE: Perry: “maybe it’s time to have some provocative language in this country and say things like, let’s get America working again and do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
Bachmann is against the mandatory vaccination of children “and especially by dictate to impose something like an inoculation on an innocent 12-year-old girl.”
WHOA, WATCH THE PROVOCATIVE LANGUAGE, TEX: Perry: “I hate cancer.”
HERE’S WHERE I HAD TO STOP THE DVR AND LAUGH FOR THREE MINUTES: Ron Paul: “These TSA agents are abusive. Sometimes they’re accused of all kinds of sexual activities on the way they maul people at the airport. So the airlines could do that.” He adds that 9/11 was the fault of the feds not allowing pilots to carry guns.
Paul has a plan to end all our wars: “if we did that and took the air conditioning out of the Green Zone, our troops would come home.”
Perry says Texas’s crappy education record isn’t so crappy, and anyway it’s crappy because Texas shares a border with Mexico. Stoopid Mescins.
And when Obama says the border is safe, “he was an abject liar to the American people.”
Ron Paul says darkly that the border fence all the other candidates want – “this fence business” – is actually “designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital. And there’s capital controls and there’s people control. So, every time you think of fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in.”
Perry says he tips his hat to Obama over killing bin Laden but actually he gives more – well, the NYT transcript says props but I heard him say that he gives more probes to the Navy SEALS.
Santorum says Obama only bombed Libya because “the United Nations told him to.”
John Harris asked Perry which scientists he finds most credible on global warming. For some reason, Perry didn’t name any scientists.
Gingrich says he would fire Ben Bernanke tomorrow. Does the president have the power to summarily fire the chairman of the Fed? No, no he does not.
Gingrich wants to “liberate” much of Alaska for natural resource extraction.
Perhaps the greatest applause of the evening was when a question to Perry began by noting that he’d presided over 234 executions (the question was whether he ever had difficulty sleeping because he might have executed an innocent person) (No, he never has); the follow-up asked about that reaction. Perry said it was because “Americans understand justice.”
SC Governor Coleman Blease writes a letter to the NYT, which had rather mildly suggested that he might have better uses for his time than waging a war on the memory of Gen. Sherman. Blease accuses the NYT editor of “blackguardism... much of which is false and comes from a heart which is corrupt and from a head which is willing to lie or abuse in order to carry a point or win a temporary victory”. As evidence of his own high character he cites his election by “nearly 57,000 white voters”. He says that his defense of the Confederate army is not motivated by hatred for “the Yankee or the nigger.” He adds, “The Confederates were right; they fought for the highest of principles”.
The LAT quotes a circular put out by the Anti-Suffrage Association for next month’s Prop. 8 on women’s suffrage: “Women who assume the responsibilities of suffrage must either add it to present duties or lay down those duties to take up this one. The frequent low state of health among American women is a fact as undeniable as it is deplorable. When women generally vote and hold office, nervous prostration, desire for publicity and ‘love of the limelight’ will combine to produce a form of hysteria already increasing in the United States.”
British “Justice Minister” Kenneth Clarke blames the riots on a “feral underclass, cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialism.” So at least they have one redeeming quality, is that what you’re saying, Ken?
A feral underclass is what happens when weak-minded bleeding hearts no longer let you hunt them down like the vermin they are, right Ken?
Truman Newberry, who was Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy, is charged with murder after running over an 8-year-old girl (or 7 years old, according to the article a week later saying the charges were dropped).
Rumors of impending war with France continue to grow in Germany. There are runs on banks in some places, and a story is running around that the ambassador to France was murdered in Paris. Rumors also arose from the early return of a regiment of German dragoons to their base in upper Alsace from maneuvers, however that was actually due to dysentery (the French army is also conducting maneuvers, which can’t be helping stem the ol’ rumor mill). Socialist unions in Germany have been talking about calling a general strike in the event of war. Non-socialist (which I take to mean Catholic) unions have been calling them traitors.
The mayor of Los Angeles orders the route of the Labor Day parade altered so it doesn’t go past the county jail where the McNamara brothers, accused of blowing up the LA Times building, are currently located.
During a firing exercise the USS Delaware fired its big guns at a repair ship rather than at its target. Well, they looked a lot alike. Fortunately, the Delaware also couldn’t shoot for shit, and missed both times.
In another near miss, a malfunctioning biplane knocks Sen. William Lorimer’s hat off, then crashes into a tree.
Rear Admiral Nathan Twining invents a dirigible aerial torpedo.
Headline of the Day -100: “Woman of 80 Grabs Negro.”
The worst thing about Obama junking his plans to reverse Bush’s lowering of standards for air pollution is, of course, that people will die because of it, and he knows it. The second worse thing is that he justified it with the argument that protecting the environment and people’s lungs is an optional extra in bad economic times, that profits must always come first. But I want to point out the third worst thing, the craven sneakiness of announcing the decision in a news dump on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend. Obama’s promised transparency has turned out as transparent as the air over Houston.
Oh, and EPA head Lisa Jackson should have resigned in protest. I miss people resigning in protest over matters of principle.
In Berlin, 200,000 attend a Socialist-organized protest against “the infamous war agitation” which is agitating for a war with France over the Morocco crisis.
The California congressional delegation is pressuring the State Department to press Mexico to sell the US a strip of the Imperial Valley 50 miles X 20, an area which includes a canal providing the valley with water from the Colorado River. During the Mexican Revolution, rebels demanded (and received) money not to blow up the canal.
There have been food riots in France. The NYT does not approve. It says that people have non-riotous recourse: “To refuse to pay prevailing prices for food is within the rights of all.” Just don’t eat; I don’t know why the French didn’t think of that themselves. Stoopid French people.
The Vatican denies being part of a conspiracy to overthrow the republic in Portugal and re-establish the monarchy.
Southern members of the American Bar Association are threatening to secede after the Association admitted a negro, Assistant United States District Attorney William Lewis.
President Taft bans cock fights, dog fights and bull fights in the Panama Canal Zone.
Headline of the Day -100: “Few Hoboes at Convention.” Hoboes, it turns out, don’t really go to hobo conventions.
This headline is also good: “CROWD GOADS AIRMAN TO FLIGHT AND DEATH; J.J. Frisbie Goes Up in Crippled Machine Because Kansas Spectators Call Him a Faker.” J.J. Frisbie. That name just screams out “man wearing a straw hat,” doesn’t it?
Some days there are no headlines of the day -100, then there are days like this when you get several in a row: “Sultan Receives Women.” “Receives” as in met with a deputation of them complaining about the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire, not “receives” as in “received a new shipment of dancing girls.”
Rep. Charles Carter (D-OK) beats up four clerks in a store, with his fists and his cane, for allegedly insulting his daughter. The NYT offers an explanation: “Carter’s Blood is Almost Half Indian.”
Mitt Romney, 2011: I’m only doubling my mansion.
Mitt Romney, 2007: My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.
Coincidence?
A New York state law goes into effect requiring the registration of all firearms and banning the carrying of blackjacks. Another new law makes it illegal for hotels and theaters to refuse admission to soldiers and sailors in uniform (unless they’re drunk).
Belgium is preparing for war, creating a military council to determine how to keep France, Germany and/or Britain from violating its borders if they go to war with each other over Morocco. Shells and ammunition has been sent to frontier forts, and artillery and machine guns to posts on the German border. Good luck with the whole neutrality thing, Belgium, you’ll need it.
General Electric has just finished making the most expensive electric fan ever, gold-mounted with an ebony switch. It’s for Queen Mary.
Mississippi has its first public hanging in 35 years (the NYT says that in the South, “executions are universally private and as far removed from the public gaze as possible”. Suuuuure they are.). You’ll be surprised and amazed to hear it’s a black man, who killed his wife. Stands were set up around the scaffold to sell the crowd sandwiches, coffee, lemonade, peanuts and everything else you need to make a day of it. “It was more like a gala picnic than the dispatching of a soul to eternity.”
Indy: “Israeli Military to Equip Jewish Settlers with Gas and Grenades.”
Today, Obama spoke to the American Legion’s annual conference. He found something good to say about every war every member of the Legion might have fought in. Here are his remarks about Vietnam:
When communist forces in Vietnam unleashed the Tet Offensive, it fueled the debate here at home that raged over that war. You, our Vietnam veterans, did not always receive the respect that you deserved —- which was a national shame. But let it be remembered that you won every major battle of that war. Every single one.
So yay for our triumph in Vietnam.
On the Today show, Dick Cheney explains the continuing benefits of having invaded Iraq: “What would’ve happened this week if Moammar Gadhafi had still been in power with a nuclear weapon in Libya? Would he have fled? I doubt it.” The logic is impeccable. The logic also gives the credit for Qaddafi’s ouster to Bush ‘n Cheney rather than Obama or the Libyan people.
Invading Iraq was “sound policy” because Saddam Hussein was “a major source of proliferation” [of weapons to terrorists]. He still offers no proof of that. And the war did not damage the US’s reputation.
Asked whether the US, having waterboarded people, could complain when another nation waterboarded an American citizen it suspected of being a spy, Cheney said, “We probably would object to it on the ground that we have obligations to our citizens and we do everything we can to protect our citizens. I think we would object because we wouldn’t expect an American citizen to be operating that way.” This is not a double standard, he explained, because the people we tortured, well, “These are not American citizens.” Not sure why he thinks other countries would accept the proposition that Americans, and only Americans, are too good for waterboarding.
He added, “I would argue that it’s important for us not to get caught up in the notion that you can only have popular methods of interrogation if you want to run an effective counterterrorism program.” Yes, that’s the problem with waterboarding: it’s not “popular.”
In a speech in Virginia, Taft says that “those of us who study the question at all know that the hope of the negro is in his white neighbor in the South. ... the negro ought to come, and is coming, more and more under the guardianship of the South.”
Las Vegas, “a town hitherto devoid of large fame,” is thinking about setting up a divorce colony to rival Reno’s.
The British government is following the lead of American anti-abortion states like South Dakota by stripping the funding for abortion counseling conducted by groups that also provide abortions and shifting the funding to counseling conducted by Catholic and other anti-abortion groups. Because the Tories are all about offering women “independent” advice and information. And eroding their rights incrementally.
Headline of the Day -100: “BATHTUB TRUST KILLED.; Government Also Reaches an Agreement with the Electrical Trust.” I hope they didn’t fiddle with the electrical trust while they were in the bathtub trust, because that would just be dangerous.
The battleship Wisconsin has fired its mascot, a kangaroo named Murphy, for “bad behavior.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Huckleberries’ Pow-Wow.” There’s a Native American tribe called Huckleberries?
Mmm, Hamburgers: Headline: “Kaiser for More Navy. To Keep for Germany Her Due Place, He Tells Hamburgers.” In fact, the phrase he used is “the place in the sun that is our due.” We may be hearing more of that phrase from Germany in the future.
William Van Schaick, captain of the paddle steamer General Slocum when it caught fire in the East River in 1904, killing over 1,000 people on their way to a church picnic, is paroled after serving 2½ years for criminal negligence.
It really is a bad idea to shout fire in a crowded theatre. Some drunk does so in a movie theatre in Canonsburg, PA, and 28 people die in the stampede. There was no fire.
Interplanetary News of the Day -100: “Martians Build Two Immense Canals in Two Years.” According to astronomer Percival Lowell, who should know. Each of the canals is 1,000 miles long and 20 miles wide. Which certainly puts the Panama Canal into perspective.
When he was 21, Jonas Pendleton of Saybrook, CT, vowed never to shave his beard until there was a bridge over the Connecticut River linking Saybrook and Lyme. Now just such a bridge has opened, so Pendleton, now 81, marched off to the barber shop, but it was closed because everyone in town was watching the bridge-opening ceremonies. The next day, however, everyone in town was on hand to witness him being shaved.
The people of Saybrook, Connecticut really needed to get a life, is what I’m saying.
Actually, the post title is really all I wanted to say about the story.
A negro accused of attacking a white woman is burned to death by a mob in Purcell, Oklahoma. The twist: he was captured by three black guys and turned over to the mob.
There was a report a day or two ago about an apartment building in Harlem that displayed a red T in its “To Let” sign, a coded signal that only negroes would be rented to. At the same time, the building started evicting its white tenants. The NYT notes that “Race prejudice in this city is capitalized, and this is the way the colored folk reap the rewards of the prejudice.” The way race prejudice is “capitalized” is that the building’s owner is blackmailing neighboring landlords with the threat of letting blacks move into a previously white street. Either they buy his building from him for more than its market value, or they’ll wind up selling their own properties to negro speculators at a ¼ discount. The Times suggests fighting such tactics by voluntary agreements of property-holders in a neighborhood not to rent to blacks. Problem solved.
Hoboes plan a 2,000-bum march on Washington to demand free national employment bureaus. If they can get there, that is. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is refusing to provide transportation (free transportation in box cars, naturally).
From that NYT article about bisexuality being “real”: Ellyn Ruthstrom of the Bisexual Resource Center: “Researchers want to fit bi attraction into a little box”.
I’ll bet they do, I’ll bet they do.
Japan’s prime minister will resign, after Japan’s debt is downgraded. Didn’t do it when caught repeatedly lying about exposure to radiation.
Qaddafi: “All youth, men and women should go out to cleanse their areas from the rats.” Seems like an odd time to be worried about rats.
Juan Cole has some helpful advice on “How to Avoid Bush’s Iraq Mistakes in Libya.” #3. “Some Libyans are complaining about the prospect of retaining the same police as in the old regime, and want local security committees instead. A compromise would be to establish a strong civilian oversight over police.” The old police were hired, and promoted, solely on their ability to keep the Qaddafi regime in power. That’s their skill set. But forgive and forget, I guess. #6. “Consult with Norway about how it is possible for an oil state to remain a democracy.” Yes, if only Qaddafi had consulted more with Norway, none of this unpleasantness would have arisen. And, of course, #9: “Recognize Berber as a national language.” Or possibly Norwegian. I don’t know how Libya has survived without Juan Cole’s advice up until now.
The authorities in Pennsylvania have been quite serious about prosecuting not just members of the Coatesville lynch mob who burned Zack Walter alive earlier this month, but also the spectators who did nothing to stop the lynching.
Police are investigating the disappearance of the Mona Lisa. They’re searching every crevice of the Louvre (which is closed to the public for the duration) because they’re convinced the painting couldn’t have left the building, say, just to give a fer-instance, under an employee’s coat.
The anti-Jewish riots continue in south Wales. The Times correspondent helpfully explains the cause: “It is just the spirit of indiscipline run riot.” And it’s Socialism’s fault.
Headline of the Day -100: “Gov. Blease Feels Bitter.” That’s Gov. Coleman Blease of South Carolina, who recently ordered that a history book being used in SC schools be re-written. At a convention of Confederate veterans, he complains that “some of the newspapers said that I was trying to dictate to the writer. I insisted upon putting into your histories in your schools that that infamous scoundrel Sherman and his army burned Columbia.” (In fact, that was and is far from being an established historical fact.) Blease also criticized Sen. Heyburn (R-Idaho), who opposed federal funds being spent on a monument to the Confederate dead at Vicksburg. Blease said it was beyond his comprehension how a Southerner in Congress could hear the Confederacy called an “infamous cause” without rising and calling the speaker a liar.
I can totally see myself wearing this while shopping at Trader Joe’s.
The Mona Lisa has been stolen from the Louvre. This “has caused such a sensation that Parisians for the time being have forgotten the rumors of war.”
China, according to the LAT, “is planning to allow the office of Dalai Llama of Thibet to lapse by not authorizing the reincarnation of a successor”.
Headline of the Day -100: “Will Try to Force Grout to Testify.” That’s Edward M. Grout, former president of the Union Bank of Brooklyn.
