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Meet the Press, and another Republican debate, just in case anyone’s changed their positions since last night’s Republican debate. They shoot horses, don’t they?
Transcript.
Gingrich again attacks Romney as a Massachusetts moderate (it’s alliterative, so you know it’s true), as “somebody who comes out of the Massachusetts culture”. You know, progressives only talk about the parts of the country they despise in private. It’s only polite.
Oh, I see what David Gregory’s doing now. He’s asking Gingrich whether Romney is unelectable (Gingrich says no) because Gingrich has a flyer that says “Romney is not electable.” This one:
Romney is very proud of enforcing English immersion in Mass. schools, it’s, ah, wicked awesome.
Santorum: Well, if his record was so great as governor of Massachusetts, why didn’t he run for re-election?
Romney says he didn’t run for reelection because not everyone wants to spend their entire life in politics. Dude, you’ve lost more elections than Santorum. [A minute later Gingrich points this out.]
He adds that he supports term limits in Washington, but if elected, he says he will definitely run for reelection.
He says his father “had good advice to me. He said, Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage.” Yes, only plutocrats and trust fund babies should be in politics.
Perry says the question is “Who is it that can invigorate the -- the Tea Party?” Yes, I’m sure Shooty McGoodhair can invigorate any party. “Who is it that can take the message of -- of smaller, outsider government that’s truly going to change that places [sic].” Outsider government? Is that like outsider art?
Huntsman & Romney got into a rather telling fight over whether H. is a traitor for having taken a job from Obama. Romney thinks that when the president is a Democrat, the highest form of patriotism is to work to make him fail (and to campaign for yourself to replace him, of course): “I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles and doing everything in our power to promote an agenda that does not include President Obama’s agenda. I think the decision to go and work for President Obama is one which you took.” I guess he doesn’t plan on asking any Democrats for any help on anything if he becomes president.
Gingrich complains of “the failure of the political class to have any sense of cleverness.” For example, did you know that we could save $100 billion each year in Medicaid if we stopped “theft”?
Perry: “You know, the fact of the matter is that Americans want to have a job. That’s -- that’s the issue here. And the idea that -- that there are people clamoring for government to come and to give them assistance is just wrong-headed.”
LIKE THE ONE BETWEEN RICKY’S EARS: Santorum says Ron Paul would create “huge amounts of vacuums all over the place, and have folks like China and Iran and others.”
How are you going to make your own party uncomfortable? someone asks Rick Perry. By opening his pie hole? Perry says by supporting a balanced budget amendment and term limits.
Romney says he absolutely doesn’t discriminate against gay people and “if people are looking for someone who -- who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people -- that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me” – he adds that he opposes same-sex marriage, because I guess that’s not discrimination and lack of full rights at all.
Santorum says “you can be respectful” towards gay people (although he’s never tried it himself) while denying them the right to marriage or adoption, because that’s just “promot[ing] things that you think are best for society.” And gay people are worst for society, I guess. He says if one of his sons told him he was gay, he would still love him, although obviously he would have to stone him to death. (Update: someone on Twitter – sorry about my failure of attribution here – said, but that gay son would totally hate him.)
Perry: “I’m a right-to-work guy.”
What good can labor unions do? Romney & Santorum both say they can do training. So that corporations get the benefit without having to pay for it, they don’t add.
Gingrich says the EPA is “out of touch with reality” and planned to regulate farm dust in Iowa and Arizona. This is a lie.
Perry: “I make a very proud statement and, in fact that we have a president that’s a socialist. I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country.”
Paul: “I in a way don’t like to use those terms, gay rights, woman’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s the right to your liberty.”
HE WAS FOR THEOCRACY BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT: Why can’t we live with a nuclear Iran? Santorum: because “they’re a theocracy. They’re a theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that -- that the afterlife is better than this life. President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said the principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is martyrdom.” See, they actually want to be nuked, so it’s not a deterrent.
Someday I’d like to hear Santorum explain the tenets of Buddhism.
Gingrich defends his attacks on Romney & Bain Capital: “Well, I think you have to look at the film, which I haven’t seen.”
Likewise, Romney claims not to have seen the ads put out by his SuperPAC (and then a minute later quotes “the ad that I saw.”)
Another debate, this time all rich white guys, like the Founding Fathers and Jesus intended.
Transcript. Pictures in this post illustrate the many arm positions of the Republican Party.
AND IF THERE’S ONE THING MITT ROMNEY KNOWS, IT’S TEPID: Romney says Obama deserves no credit for the 200,000 new jobs last month. “His policies have made the recession deeper, and his policies have made the recovery more tepid.”
OBAMA’S A COCK, IS WHAT MITT’S SAYING: “You know, it’s like the rooster taking responsibility for the sunrise.”
Sick Rantorum, as we shall be calling him today, says there’s no one who has more experience dealing with Iran than he does.
Gingrich keeps verbally hyperlinking to a NYT story about Bain Capital. Romney responds that the NYT is anti-free enterprise and then repeats that his claim that Bain created 100,000 jobs is net jobs, which it is not (and is a lie in other ways as well). Then he goes on some more about the importance of having presidents with business experience. Let’s see, the last president with business experience was George W. Bush, and the previous Republican with business experience was, if I’m not mistaken, Herbert Hoover. So how’d they work out?
Ron Paul says that Rantorum was corrupt as a congresscritter and then “became a high-powered lobbyist”. Sick tries to sound outraged by this, while being secretly pleased that someone called him “high-powered” for the first time in his life without it being immediately followed by “douche nozzle.”
Sick Rantorum: “I am a cause guy.”
Huntsman keeps talking about what a great job he did as governor, but interestingly never names the state of which he was the governor.
Gingrich is asked about Ron Paul calling him a chicken hawk. Gingrich says his father was in the Army for 27 years. I don’t think it works that way.
Ron Paul refuses to talk about the Ron Paul White Supremacist Newsletter and Jew-Hater Monthly, or whatever it was called. He says one of his heroes is Martin Luther King “because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience”. He says “true racism” (I guess as opposed to hotels putting up “No negroes” signs, which he thinks entirely their business) is in the enforcement of drug laws. Which it is, but so is opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, which his libertarian hero King supported.
Actually, now that I think about it, this is Ron Paul’s big move to get past the racist newsletter thing? I mean, on the one hand, he’s right about the drug war and its racist implementation, but on the other hand you can just hear him thinking, “What can I talk about that’ll get them off my back? I know! Those darkies really love their doobies!”
JUST LEAVE IT ALONE: Contraception comes up because Sick Rantorum has been making such a big deal about it lately. Asked whether states have the right to ban contraception, Twitt Romney acts like he’s never heard of such a thing, “can’t imagine” a state wanting to do so, has no idea if they have a right to do so, and it’s a silly question anyway. So basically he has no opinions on how the Constitution works or the right of privacy. Stephanopoulos points out that Romney went to Harvard Law School, whereupon Mittens pretends never to have heard of Griswold. But he adds that he wants to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which was decided on the same right of privacy as Griswold. But “Contraception, it’s working just fine, just leave it alone.”
Asked about gay marriage, Gingrich keeps referring to the “sacrament” of marriage and even to “a historic sacrament” (he’s a historian, you know). Sacrament is, of course, a religious term. “The sacrament of marriage was based on a man and woman, has been for 3,000 years.” (He’s a historian, you know.)
Sick Rantorum says this is a federal issue because “we can’t have different laws with respect to marriage.” Somebody should tell him that every state has its own divorce laws. He says the Constitutional amendment he wants would not only ban future gay marriage, but abrogate existing ones (like the 1,800 in New Hampshire).
Romney says we should discriminate against gay couples because “for a society to say we want to encourage, through the benefits that we associate with marriage, people to form partnerships between men and women and then raise children, which we think will -- that will be the ideal setting for them to be raised.” No one asks them why that view doesn’t entail a sexist, antediluvian view of gender roles.
Gingrich says the real question is anti-Christian (especially anti-Catholic) bigotry.
Romney says “John Adams, who wrote the Constitution, would be surprised” that gay marriage is said to be a right. He would be especially surprised because he was in France at the time, not writing the Constitution, and pining for Laura Linney.
WARP DRIVE, ENGAGE! Perry “would send troops back into Iraq,” which is being taken over by Iran. In fact, “We’re going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light.”
Sick Rantorum: “The Iranian people love America because we stand up for the truth and say -- and call evil, which is what Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are, we call evil what it is.” Of course he also calls gay sex and abortion and birth control evil. Really, he calls a lot of things evil. Rather like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs, come to think of it. So what does he have against those guys?
BECAUSE YOU’RE MAKING UP NUMBERS AGAIN? Romney: “Our income per person in America is 50 percent higher than that of the average person in Europe. Why is that?” That’s probably just a metric thing.
AT WHICH POINT WE’LL BE FORCED TO MEASURE IN METRIC. AUTHORITARIAN, EUROPEAN SOCIALIST METRIC: Romney: “We’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy. ... But, really, this election is about the soul of America. ... We’re increasingly becoming like Europe. Europe isn’t working in Europe. It will never work here.” I think he’s saying that Europe doesn’t have a soul. Or at least that those damned Frogs didn’t convert to Mormonism when he gave them a chance.
Gingrich defends Obama from Romney: “A -- a little bit harsh on President Obama, who, I’m sure in his desperate efforts to create a radical European socialist model, is sincere.” See what he did there?
I DUB THEE A KNIGHT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: Santorum attacks Romney for having used the term “middle class.” “There are no classes in America. We are a country that don’t [sic] allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. ... That’s not the -- that’s not the language that I’ll use as president. I’ll use the language of bringing people together.”
SANTORUM WORKED IN THE METAPHORICAL COAL FIELDS OF K STREET: “I stood firm on those and worked, actually, in the coal fields, if you will, against this idea that we needed a cap and trade program.”
The killer question: if you weren’t here, what would you be doing on a Saturday night?
Perry would be at the shooting range, shooting off his guns at random and laughing maniacally.
Gingrich would be watching “watching the college championship basketball game.” (UNKNOWN): “Football game.” GINGRICH: “I mean, football game.”
Santorum would also be watching the basketball I mean football game, but he’d do it with his family, because he’s both manly and breeds like a rabbit. Mittens also loves him some football.
Ron Paul: “I’d be home with my family. But if they all went to bed, I’d probably read an economic textbook” (while masturbating furiously every time it mentioned the gold standard, I’m guessing).
The sheriff of New York County, Julius Harburger, will attend an execution and then the autopsy to determine if the electric chair actually kills people. Some doctors think it merely stuns prisoners and it’s the autopsy that kills them.
A man in a Santa Claus suit stabbed to death an Arab Christian in Jaffa during a procession for Orthodox Christmas.
Well, what could be more orthodox than religious violence in the Middle East committed by someone in a silly costume?
New Mexico is now the 47th state, after 62 years as a territory. It has 1 million cattle, 4 million sheep, and 327,396 people (1910). Its first governor is William Calhoun McDonald (D). Its first US senators are both Republican, Thomas Catron and Albert Fall, who will be President Harding’s Interior secretary and go to prison for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Those 70 people who died in a Berlin homeless shelter did not succumb to bad herring or the Purple Death after all, but to bad schnapps.
The city of Paris has banned handbills. Shops have responded with... unsolicited phone calls. The invention of telemarketing?
German Reichstag elections are coming up. The Socialists are expected to win the one district in Berlin they didn’t capture last time, which is the district where the kaiser keeps his castles. He said in 1907 that if the district went SPD, he’d move to Potsdam. The Conservative party is accusing the Socialists of opposing the army and navy and “national obligations,” which people take to mean that the government is planning new taxes to pay for an increase in the size of the army and navy. The Conservatives are talking up the English Peril. Evidently Britain planned a sneak attack to invade Germany last summer.
The Maryland Senate passes a bill to disfranchise illiterates, on a party-line vote, the Democrats believing this will be a simpler method of excluding black voters than the previous attempts at “trick ballots” designed to fool semi-literate people into voting for fake candidates or invalidating their votes. The literacy tests would not be state-wide, but only in certain counties.
Secretary of Drone War “Little Leon” Panetta issued a “strategic guidance” document thingy (pdf).
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: “we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible, and ready for the full range of contingencies.”
IS THAT WHY WE DID THAT: “Over the last decade, we have undertaken extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring stability to those countries and secure our interests.”
KILLER DRONES FOREVER! “For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring the activities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establish control over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.”
Evidently the US military will “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.”
WAKEY, WAKEY, EGGS AND... WELL PROBABLY NOT BACEY: “In the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges.” Is that what we’re calling the Arab Spring now? On the one hand the term is an echo of the “Sunni Awakening” where the US bribed tribal leaders in Iraq, which may not be an image Arab protesters would appreciate, and on the other hand it entails an insulting suggestion that for decades the Arab people have been asleep rather than ruthlessly oppressed.
ALSO, CHEESE: “Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it.”
It reaffirmed the two-war strategy and plans to fight terrorists everywhere in the world with lots of toys.
The last Haditha Massacre court-martial, the last chance to put someone away for 24 murders, has begun.
From the LAT: “On Thursday, prospective jurors were questioned by opposing attorneys. All but one indicated that he had been in combat in Iraq when an order was given to ‘clear’ a house of insurgents; most had lost a Marine in combat. Asked by a defense attorney, none admitted having ‘strong’ feelings about the war in Iraq.”
So they’re all emotionless sociopaths, soul-less killing machines?
Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson says that the people of Ulster will refuse to recognize a Home Rule parliament in Dublin, and won’t pay taxes to it. He says the “essential question” is whether Britain would then send in troops to force them to do so.
Headline of the Day -100: “Hail! Sneezakaritchnekoff.” That’s a town in Siberia, 60 families, founded way back by Mennonites from Germany, which would like to move its entire population to the United States so they can see the sun again. A couple of scouts have been touring, and are thinking about Oklahoma or Texas.
Philadelphia high society, as led by Mrs. Frederick Thurston Mason, has banned the turkey trot and the grizzly bear. “It is understood that the two dances have all but caused several scandals in some of Philadelphia’s best families.”
In Afghanistan, 14-year-old Sahar Gul was married to/bought by a 30-year-old soldier, who immediately tried to pimp her out; he & his family tortured and starved her for six months when she refused.
To be fair, now that it’s hit the world news, the central Afghan government is at least acting like it takes this seriously, as opposed to the local ones, who returned her for several months’ more torture after she escaped.
An Interior Ministry spokes... wait for it... man said, “It is a violent act that is unacceptable in the 21st century.” He did not say in which century it would have been acceptable.
An official in the public health ministry said, “We have several cases like this, especially in remote parts of the country where there is not a strong attitude to women’s rights.” Actually there is a very strong attitude to women’s rights, that’s the fucking problem.
Wake County, NC, which contains the city of Raleigh, will hold an election for a school tax at which only three people are qualified to vote, for some unexplained reason. I’m assuming that only qualified voters are allowed to be election officials, so the three voters are also the register and the two judges of election.
The Newport, Rhode Island Animal Refuge will install an electric chair to euthanize unwanted animals.
A large debutante dance in NYC was attended by an inspector of the Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls to determine how many of the couples engaged in such moral looseness as dancing the turkey trot or the grizzly bear, which the Committee wants banned from dance halls as “not dancing at all, but a series of indecent antics to the accompaniment of music,” and someone suggested they go bother the upper classes as well as the lower orders, so they did. The Committee warns against even the modified versions of the dance that are “taught to the unsuspecting. The positions and movements of the dance, no matter how slight they may be, are pernicious.”
Friday, Evangelical nutjob Bob Vander Plaats told McNeil-Lehrer: “We had six candidates at our Thanksgiving Family Forum. And I think it was my wife afterwards who said, ‘You know, Bob, if we could take those six and put them in a blender and just have the strengths come out and have one candidate.’”
This blog heartily seconds the notion of putting the Republican candidates in a blender. This blog recommends the “grind” or “liquefy” settings.
Arkansas Gov. George Washington Donaghey threatens that unless contractors who use convict labor treat them more humanely (i.e., stop beating them quite so much), he will pardon all of them.
Sun Yat Sen is inaugurated as provisional president of China. Just like the French Revolutionaries, he has changed the calendar, with New Year’s now January 1st, the first day of his presidency. Sun promises an elected Parliament and a modernized administration (what he did not suggest, but which the LAT seems to think will happen, is that China should seek unity through a single language, which would be English.)
Russians occupying Persia are court-martialling and hanging prominent Persians, including the head of a religious sect, for attacks on their troops, and leaving the bodies hanging in public squares.
Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Won’t Reassure Taft.” Theodore Roosevelt, while frequently having said that he is not running for president, is evidently refusing to say that under no circumstances will he accept the nomination.
The brother of the deposed Shah of Persia has defeated government forces in battle. He is demanding the return of $80,000 confiscated from him by the government – or he will demolish the Imperial Bank Building.
A French Capt. Lux escapes from a German fortress, where he was serving a six-year term for espionage. He sawed through the bars using files that had been sent to him hidden in books on Napoleon.
A negro is lynched in Muldrow, Oklahoma, after stealing a locomotive in Arkansas, riding it until it derailed, then killing a farmer.
The negro students of Clark College are pissed off that they won’t get a Christmas holiday. So they stole the bell clapper to stop classes being held. The administration retaliated by withholding their meals. The students retaliated by driving calves into the college president’s study. “Since that time the tension has increased.”
When Arizona was granted statehood (due to take effect in a couple of weeks, I believe), Congress failed to grant it the furnishings it had provided for the territorial legislature’s chambers, governor’s office, etc. The territorial secretary says he may be obligated to sell them to the highest bidder, and there won’t be time enough to get in new furniture before statehood. Another teething problem: justices of the peace and constables have been elected in some areas, but these elections were illegal, because everyone forgot to include provision for them in the new election law.
France creates the world’s first aerial military regiment.
President Taft has told several people that he plans to nominate 8th Circuit Court judge William Hook to the vacant Supreme Court seat. I know he didn’t do that, but why? Opposition is emerging because of his ruling against a railroad rate.
A couple of days ago I mentioned the large number of dead homeless people in Berlin – now more than 75 – supposedly due to bad herring. The rumors that this is cholera or the plague or something are running rampant, and not only in Germany – in Paris it’s being called the Purple Death.
In the first elections in proto-state New Mexico, Republicans get more than 2/3 of the seats in both houses of the Legislature.
Headline of the Day -100: “Peace Diners Make Mr. Taft Wait an Hour; Committee Keeps the President Cooling His Heels in a Waldorf Anteroom.”
Russia may not actually take over Mongolia, which has declared independence from the collapsing Chinese state, but does want it to be a buffer state against further Japanese encroachment into Manchuria.
Arctic explorer Christian Leyden of the University of Christiana explains that Eskimos are born white, but with a tiny black spot in the middle of their back which then spreads and diffuses until they become darker.
A letter to the NYT editor complains about Taft’s announced electioneering tour through his home state of Ohio. The president of the United States cannot do such a thing without impropriety.
Everyone is amused that the Citizens’ Peace Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, the one which Roosevelt refused to attend, will be policed by the NYPD’s Strong Arm Squad (actually, it won’t: Mayor Gaynor will withdraw them).
There’s a military coup in Ecuador.
A meeting of delegates (delegates from what isn’t exactly clear) elects Sun Yat Sen provisional president of China. The child emperor is expected to abdicate at some point.
Attorney General George Wickersham and his wife will be taking a trip to Panama shortly, evidently purely so that Mrs. Wickersham can get out of attending the traditional New Year reception at the White House at which she would be forced to receive Assistant Attorney General William Lewis and his wife, who are negro.
Russia bans the Salvation Army (this happened again in 2000: Russia claimed it was a, you know, army, rather than a religious organization).
Frank McCracken has been forced to resign as mayor of Paulina, Iowa after being charged with gambling. He participated in a turkey raffle for Thanksgiving.
Chinese revolutionaries, the NYT says, were actually training in the United States for two years before the Revolution began. In fact, they were trained by former US Army drill sergeants, who were well paid to train Chinese rather than re-enlist. Some of the drilling took place in hired halls in New York City. Somehow the US government never knew a thing. (To be clear, I’m not being sarcastic. If the US was on anyone’s side, it was the side of American businesses, which favored the stability of the existing government.)
The US army has (again) put down a Moro outbreak in the Philippines. “300 hostiles with their wives and families have surrendered.”
Headline of the Day -100: “50 Now Dead From Eating Herring.” At the municipal center for the homeless in Berlin. There are rumors that it’s cholera and the authorities are covering it up.
The two most recent Presidential Proclamations proclaim January 1) National Mentoring Month, 2) National Stalking Awareness Month. That is all.
The owners of the Triangle Waist Company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, are acquitted of manslaughter for the Triangle fire. Money well spent on the most expensive lawyer in New York, Max Steuer, who charged them at least $10,000 each, and money also well spent on the cheapest perjurous witnesses. Also, the judge’s charge to the jury set a ridiculously high barrier for conviction: they would have to find that the door was locked, that Harris & Blanck knew it was locked, and that the door being locked was responsible for the deaths. The judge, as it happens, had been the NYC Tenement House commissioner in 1905 and wound up taking the fall and being forced to resign following a fire which killed 20 people in a building whose fire escapes had been boarded over (which I know from a book; it is not reported by the NYT).
President Taft modifies an executive order regulating the practice of medicine in the Panama Canal Zone in order to allow Christian Scientists “healing.” The NYT castigates him for it.
Former President Roosevelt sent a furious seven-page refusal to attend a Citizens’ Peace Dinner, which I’m curious to read. He will only tell reporters that he’s not going because “I’m not hungry.”
Mongolian and Turkestan declare independence from China and are expected to be annexed by Russia.
The health officers of Lenoxdale, Massachusetts have banned kissing on New Year’s Eve because of a diphtheria outbreak. And they’re killing any dogs and cats found outside.
Headline of the Day -100 (Memphis Appeal, reprinted in the LAT): “Oyster Drowns a Duck.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Russians Continue to Slay Persians.” According to the article, “The Persian attitude is declared to be one of growing hostility.”
James Wickersham, the (Republican) delegate of the District of Alaska to the Congress, says “President Taft imagines the way to develop Alaska is to turn it over to the money interests. ... He would have a second great East India Company, which would not only control all of our resources, but our Government as well.” He wants Alaska to have its own elected government.
Gov. Hiram Johnson of California has commuted several death sentences and plans to allow no more executions. He will sponsor legislation to abolish the death penalty.
It’s-Beginning-to-Look-a-Lot-Like-Christmas Headline of the Day -100: “Christmas Lynching in Baltimore Suburb.” A black youth shot a white guy over a game of pool, and later was pulled out of his jail cell (there was no guard at night) and either shot (according the NYT) or hacked to death (LAT).
Russian troops seem to be massacring Persians at Tabriz, even though Persia gave in to all of Russia’s demands.
In Mexico, the rebellion led by Gen. Bernardo Reyes (which I probably should have mentioned at some point) has ended with his surrender, in the form of a telegram which read in part: “I called on the people. I called on the army, and they did not respond, so I must give up.”
Supporters of President Taft are suggesting that there needs to be some sort of organization to support his renomination by the Republican Party.
A meeting of the Russian immigrant colony in Los Angeles protests the testimony of other Russians in a juvenile court case that “they are in the habit of selling their daughters in marriage to the highest bidders” ($500, if you’re wondering what the price of a 17-year-old Russian girl was in 1911, although this was evidently at the high end).
Remember Hunnewell, Kansas, where Mayor Ella Wilson was locked in battle with the all-male city council? The governor brought suit to oust the councilmen. Since they would have bourne the legal costs if they lost, three resigned immediately, leaving a council without enough members to be able to override Wilson’s vetoes.
Chilling Headline of the Day -100: “Dogs Fails to Catch Negro.”
As is traditional, Pope Grandpa Simpson complained about “the superficial glitter” of Christmas while surrounded by lots of gold trinkets.
As I imputed to Benny after another of his anti-Xmas rants, “Why, when I was a kid we got a new Hitler Youth uniform and we were happy to get it.”
The treaty allying Italy with Austria and Germany (the “Triple Alliance”) expires in 1914. France is desperately trying to lure Italy into an alliance with it and Russia, and so has been supporting its little imperial adventure in Libya.
Speaking of which, Headline of the Day -100: “Italians Stirred By War.” I’ll bet they are, I’ll bet they are. Anyone who dares express opposition to the wog-killing (Socialists, mostly) has been beaten up. Students are especially pro-war.
A black man who shot the town marshal in Donaldson, Georgia, is killed by a mob.
Oh no! King George has been shot! “The sparsest details come from India about the King-Emperor’s shooting in Nepal.” Oh, all right, he’s actually been shooting tigers. And rhinoceri. He did it sitting on an elephant, as is the custom.
Russian troops are bombarding the governor’s palace in Tabriz, Persia and generally killing lots of the locals, or, as the NYT’s subhead put it, “Russia Stern to Those Who Attacked Troops – 50 Persians Killed.” Sternly.
NY State Senator Franklin D. Roosevelt says that state government is not a real democracy but a machine legislature run by Tammany. Evidently he’s just now figured this out.
Disturbing Headline of the Day -100: “Pickled Meat Men Win.” The story’s pretty disturbing, too. They were charged with pickling the meat of sick horses and cows and sending it to the Netherlands, but were acquitted because while it would be illegal to sell such meat in the US, it’s not in the Netherlands. The Secret Service was the agency prosecuting them.
Dr. Charles Naughty, Jr. is receiving injections after being bitten by Dr. Charles Bell, who he was treating for rabies. Bell subsequently died.
Xmas story: former judge David Pugh, who served with a West Virginia Union regiment during the Civil War, donates Christmas dinner (chickens, fruit and whatnot) to be distributed to needy Confederate veterans, to “pay back some of the chickens we took down South.”
Xmas Headline of the Day -100: “Ugly Dolls in Demand.” In Britain. Aw, who wouldn’t want a gollywog?
Disappointing Xmas Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Plays Santa Claus.” He gave turkeys and gold pieces and whatnot to various White House staff and secret service, but he did not actually dress as Santa.
Members of the Russian Duma are threatening to double tariffs on American goods in retaliation for Taft’s abrogation of the US-Russian Treaty of 1832 (which is not entirely unfair, since American tariffs on Russian goods would also increase).
Persia finally accedes to Russia’s ultimatum and fires its American treasurer-general William Morgan-Shuster.
The last week or two, there have been lots of little stories about various mid-level Republican officials and groups of party members calling for the replacement of Taft by Theodore Roosevelt as the party’s 1912 candidate. It’s not quite a movement, and at this stage TR is standing on the sidelines and repeating if asked that he doesn’t intend to run. But the aim of his supporters is clearly to generate a public demand that will make the party realize that no one really likes Taft while many still adulate Roosevelt and that with the country’s trend towards the Democrats, only Roosevelt has a shot in ‘12. The problem is that only a handful of states selected their delegates to the Republican convention through primaries, and the rest will be chosen by a party machine that doesn’t really care what the public thinks and never liked TR, to the point of preferring to see a Democrat in the White House than him.
An Italian cruiser seizes a British steamer near the Suez Canal carrying $150,000 in gold coin being sent to pay Turkish troops in Yemen.
The Corona Cat Skin Company plans to open a cat farm on Long Island. Fuckers.
Headlines of the Day -100: “Chicken Wins Boy’s Pardon” (NYT) and “PLEADS FOR SON’S PARDON: Old Colored Mammy Calls on Georgia Governor with a Christmas Offering” (LAT). A black woman bribes Gov. Slaton of Georgia with a chicken to get a pardon for her son in time for Xmas. (Actually, he doesn’t accept the chicken.)
AP: “Secret US Memo Now Key Evidence in Baby Thefts.” Although the headline should have read “US Kept Evidence of Baby-Theft by Argentinian Junta Secret for 30 Years.”
“Big Bill” Haywood, in a speech at a Socialist Party meeting at Cooper Union, comes out in favor of direct action and, you know, dynamite as a weapon in the class struggle. Talking about the many deaths because of improperly ventilated mines, he said, “Let the capitalists count their own dead.”
Speaking of counting the dead, the Triangle fire trial continues. Some of the witnesses for the defense have been claiming that the exit was never locked. Today the DA brought out that those witnesses, many of whom previously said the opposite to the authorities, all received substantial wage increases just before the trial started. Funny that.
Russian and Persian troops are fighting.
Mr. and Mrs. John T. Boone get divorced. He complained that she constantly held over his head that she is the great-great-grandniece of Thomas Jefferson, and that her ancestors are, in her opinion, superior to his (he’s a descendant of Daniel Boone).
Headline of the Day -100: “Caruso Hurts His Nose.”
Evidently there’s a trailer for the upcoming film version of The Hobbit available on the internet. At least I hope that’s what all the references I’ve seen today to “Hobbit teaser” mean, and that I can soon forget the image that popped into my head when I read that phrase.
Speaking to the Automobile Club, President Taft insists that it’s not the job of the federal government to build roads, even interstate roads.
The NYT -100 just did not know how to write a proper amusing human interest story. This story about a woman in Middletown, NY who just got married for the third time to a man named Smith – that is, all three of her husbands have been named Smith – fails to tell us what her original last name was.
A Mr. Tilden Pierce of Plymouth, Massachusetts is about to celebrate his 100th birthday. He says people these days are shortening their lives by eating too much pie and taking too many baths. Baths, he says, are “a dangerous practice and bound to sap a fellow’s strength. And if a man allows himself to become so unclean that he has to have a bath twice a week – well, he’d better look out or he’ll soon be dead.” Mr. Pierce has been chewing tobacco since he was 14.
There’s a peace conference currently going on in China. Foreign nations are pushing for a continuation of the Manchu monarchy, but with limited powers. NYT editorial: “Certainly the Americans cannot be so enamored of the mere form of republicanism as to wish to see it imposed where the conditions are so unfavorable as they appear to be in China.”
Visiting NYC, President Taft is given a police detail consisting of three bicycle cops. Police Commissioner Waldo said that the president didn’t need any greater guard than the mayor gets (that would be the mayor with the bullet still lodged in his throat).
Some pics from the North Korean Central News Agency website for your captioning pleasure.
This one is entitled “Kim Jong Il Gives Field Guidance to Various Domains of South Hamgyong Province.”
And this is “Kim Jong Il inspects Kaeson youth park funfair.”
You have to be this tall to ride...
And check out the footage of “Korean people overcome with grief,” or in the case of that woman hopping up and down, grief plus a strong need to pee.
An Illinois jury attempts to add a stipulation onto the life sentence it gave a murderer: that on each anniversary of the murder, he be put on bread and water. The judge says no.
Lord Kitchener seals the border between colonial Egypt and Libya, using the pretense of neutrality to aid the Italian imperialists by cutting off the Turkish-Libyan forces’ supply of ammunition, which is almost entirely depleted. Italy, of course, can resupply its troops by sea.
Taft abrogates the treaty with Russia and asks for Senate approval. He moved quickly – and moving quickly is very much not Taft’s thing – to preempt the Sulzer resolution, which passed the House last week and is pending in the Senate but contains language Russia finds offensive, accusing Russia of violating the 1832 treaty by refusing to honor the passports of American Jews. Taft hopes Russia will stop being assholes and negotiate a new treaty before the abrogation takes effect.
Kim Jong Il dies, according to the North Korean Central News Agency (which uses JavaScript in a way that makes it impossible to give specific story URLs), of “a great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation.”
If we look back a bit on the site, we see that on Thursday, “Kim Jong Il Gives Field Guidance to Hana Music Information Center.” “He noted with high appreciation that the center has been wonderfully built to show the modern sense of beauty by decorating its exterior with stone through dry construction method and ensuring effective internal building in a versatile way. ... The center should have all materials and data on art such as records of new songs, sheets of music and books on music and dance published in the country, he urged.”
Also on Thursday, “Kim Jong Il Provides Field Guidance to Kwangbok Area Supermarket.” “Saying that the supermarket is fitted with display cases, stands and tools and other facilities and furnishings needed for the storage and sales of goods to cater for the tastes of consumers, he expressed great satisfaction over the successful renovation of the commercial service center to be conducive to improving the standard of people’s living. He went on to say: ‘It is the firm will and determination of the Party to provide the people with things best.’”
His uninterrupted field guidance will be missed.
It was evidently traditional in Paris to eat unusual things for Christmas. Last year, it was bear cotolets; the year before, elephant foot. This year, roast camel.
After a “fatiguing ceremony” in which he consecrated a couple of new cardinals, the pope has breakfast with them. This is evidently a major break with tradition, as for several centuries the pope always ate alone. Must have been lonely.
In the Haditha Massacre papers the NYT pulled off a garbage dump in Iraq, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson referred to 15 dead civilians (actually 24) as “just a cost of doing business.” So that’s okay then.
I’m not sure which part of that is the most insultingly dismissive, “a cost of doing business” or “just.”
A French soldier is sentenced to death for throwing a cap at a superior officer.
A couple of days after yet another story about property-owners in Harlem getting themselves in a tizzy because a black person bought a house on a “white block,” a letter to the editor by the president of something called the Cosmopolitan Society of America suggests that those property-owners should stop their “brutal exhibition of race prejudice” and “exert themselves in unison against the undemocratic, unmanly, irrational superstition which fixes the status of a human being by the trivial accident of the color of his skin”. This is the first time I’ve seen such an opinion expressed in the NYT, which also has an editorial today supporting the use of covenants to ban blacks from certain neighborhoods (while adding that, “From their point of view the negroes are hardly to be blamed. They are taking a smart business revenge, and gaining residences removed from the neighborhoods of the shiftless, diseased, and criminal of their kind, because of the white folks’ prejudice against them.”)
It’s been nearly 6 months since I’ve seen a reference to the Atlanta Jack the Ripper. I’d actually forgotten about him, and so has the NYT, because he’s only murdering black women, but the LAT, in a brief story, reports that he’s just made his 15th attack, and 14th murder.
The Chinese revolutionaries are planning to give the vote to women.
The King’s speech was read to the Houses of Parliament before they were prorogued until February. It was “brief and colorless.” Or possibly colourless.
Again, no transcript, and I only saw bits of it, so this won’t be in chronological order.
WE WILL GET IT ON: Everyone wants to debate Obama. Gingrich says Obama will lose in the “seven three-hour debates” that will take place in Gingrich’s mind. Perry says “I hope Obama and I debate a lot. I’ll get there early.” Get there early, why that’s so crazy, it might just work! “We will get it on”. Cue porn music.
HOW ABOUT APPEARING TO BE A LARGE, MISSHAPEN POTATO? Gingrich: “I’m very concerned about not appearing to be zany.”
UTTERLY IRRATIONAL: Gingrich called Obama “utterly irrational to say I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut [i.e., the payroll tax cut congressional Republicans tied to the Keystone XL pipeline] to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco...” San Francisco, always with the San Francisco. “...so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal, rational American.” As Adlai Stevenson said, that’s not enough, we need a majority.
Bachmann accused Gingrich of making Baby Jesus cry by saying that life begins at the implantation of the embryo, not at conception: “The Republican party can’t get the issue of life wrong”. As speaker, she says, Gingrich failed to defund Planned Parenthood. And then she accused him of supporting infanticide (as Speaker he argued against pulling party support from Republican candidates who didn’t support banning “partial-birth abortion”).
Santorum accused The Ten Thousand Dollar Man of having, as governor of Massachusetts, “personally... issued gay marriage licenses,” just because gay marriage was legal.
BUT ARE THEY FACTS? Bachmann: “It’s outrageous to say over and over again during the debates to say that I don’t have my facts right. I am a serious candidate for president of the United States and my facts are accurate,” adding, probably, “They’re coming to steal your light bulbs!”
HE WAS PLAYING ANGRY BIRDS ON HIS PHONE UNDER THE PODIUM: “Good Hair” Perry says he’s “ready for the next level.”
THEN HE TACKLED RON PAUL: Perry: “I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses.”
GOOD MANNERS COST NOTHING, YOUNG MAN: Romney accused Obama of having “a foreign policy based on pretty please”.
Huntsman: “We have been kicked around as a people. We are getting screwed as Americans.”
MAYBE GOOGLE BOY SHOULDN’T BE USING THE PHRASE “BOTTOM UP”: Santorum: “Medical savings accounts are a bottom up, not top down solution.”
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF TATOOINE: The Ten Thousand Dollar Man: “In the real world that the president has not lived in... not every business succeeds. In the real world, some things don’t make it.” You may be reminded of that later, Mittens.
SO THEY ASPIRE TO EMULATE IRAN? Santorum says Iran is run by a “radical theocracy,” and Bachmann says Iran is led by an “avowed [sic] madman” and wants to “set up a worldwide caliphate” (and Romney keeps calling for an “American Century” – what’s your point?).
THAT’S A TRICK QUESTION, RIGHT? Ron Paul, though, asks, “Why do we have to bomb so many countries?” He says “We don’t need another war.” Hey, we don’t need a flat-screen tv, we don’t need another donut, but we’re Americans, dammit.
BUT THOSE ARE THE FUNNEST PARTS OF THE JOB: Ron Paul: “I don't want to police individual activities or lifestyle, and I don't want to run the economy.”
LET’S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY: Gingrich says he did “no lobbying of any kind” for Freddie Mac. Hell, he didn’t need to, because he was rich from giving speeches and writing all these “best-selling books”. Readers: have any of you actually bought one of these “best-selling” books? Has anyone you know ever bought one? Bachmann says “You don’t need to be within the technical definition of being a lobbyist to still be influence-peddling”. Wait, did Crazy Eyes just say something that made sense? Gingrich says that “There are a lot of government-sponsored enterprises that are awfully important and do an awfully good job.” I’m assuming his candidacy is now over.
Everyone hates the courts. Gingrich calls the 9th Circuit “anti-American” because of that 2002 Pledge of Allegiance decision and says courts have become “grotesquely dictatorial.” Envy much? He wants to fire judges that disagree with him, and order them to come to Congress to explain any decisions he dislikes. Bachmann denies that the courts are the final arbiters of law (fuck Marbury v. Madison!), praises Iowans for voting down the justices who supported gay marriage.
Movies of the 1910 Jeffries-Johnson fight, which caused so much trouble in the US for racial reasons, will finally be allowed to be shown in Berlin after a long court battle overturning a police decision to ban them as a danger to public order.
Obituary of the Day -100: “‘Diamond Dick’ Is Dead. George B. McClelland, Known to Boys as Hero of Many a Dime Novel.” Or possibly the worst James Bond villain ever.
