Today -100: May 17, 1912: The elector’s bullet is his ballot

The London Times reports that in the conspiracy trial of Women’s Social and Political Union leaders in Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst’s lawyer, the Irish Nationalist MP Timothy Healy, quotes... someone... saying “the days are past for rioting” because people have the franchise now. “Formerly, when the great mass of the people were voteless they had to do something violent to show what they felt; today, the elector’s bullet is his ballot.” Obviously, Healy points out, this doesn’t apply to women, who are therefore perfectly justified in breaking a few windows. Then he reveals that he was quoting the attorney general, Rufus Isaacs, who is prosecuting the case but was temporarily out of the room.

The anarchist Ben Reitman (Emma Goldmans’ manager) describes how he was grabbed by vigilantes in San Diego, taken into the desert, and tortured. Pretty horrific stuff. The Citizens’ Committee (i.e., the thugs responsible) try to stop the publication of the IWW-friendly San Diego Herald and Labor Leader and threatens every printer in town in an attempt prevent news of the vigilante violence being publicized. Reitman is trying to get warrants sworn out against his kidnappers from L.A., but the San Diego Under Sheriff says he’ll ignore any warrants not sworn out in SD, where Reitman is understandably reluctant to set foot again.

The Mexican government buys three airplanes to use in their war against the Orozco rebels.

Today -100: May 16, 1912: Of men on horseback, dead kings, red flags, and puzzlewits

Sen. Boies Penrose (R-PA) is thrown by his horse, spooked at the sight of a steamroller (Penrose “departed from his back parabolically”). His elbow is bruised. What I’m saying is, 100 years ago senators still rode around Washington D.C. on horseback.

More on the death of King Frederik VIII of Denmark: he died of apoplexy while walking alone on the street in Hamburg (in the Goose Market). Unrecognized and without i.d., he spent five hours in the municipal morgue.

The new king is Christian X, which sounds like a Black Muslim who is painfully unclear on the concept.

The Austrian prime minister, Count Karl von Stürgkh, goes suddenly blind. It is said to be hopeless, but I think not.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee reports out favorably the McCall resolution for an international ban on war for the acquisition of territory. (Elsewhere in the NYT, an editorial deplores the Democratic proposal to grant independence to the Philippines eight years from now, whether “the people are ready and fitted for it and wish it” or not.)

Spokane follows Seattle in banning red flags being carried in parades, requiring all such parades to be headed by an American flag, twice the size of any other flag, and also bans IWW street meetings.

Competing Taft and Roosevelt conventions were held in Washington state (after Roosevelt delegates, even uncontested ones, were thrown out of the state convention)(or so they say), and will each try to get their delegates seated at the National Republican Convention.

I must have missed it, but Roosevelt called Taft a “puzzlewit.”

Today -100: May 15, 1912: Of spectacular candidates, crooks, red flags, and dead kings

Roosevelt wins the California primary, on a low turnout, coming in first in every county but San Joaquin, where La Follette wins. The NYT blames TR’s strong showing on women, voting in their first presidential election in the state, saying they “voted for the spectacular candidate.” Champ Clark wins the D. primary with more than twice the number of votes as Woodrow Wilson.

In Steubenville, Ohio, Roosevelt denies the class warfare charge: “I preach hatred toward no class except the class of crooks – political crooks or financial crooks, big crooks or little crooks. Even then I do not preach hatred of the crook himself, but of his crookedness.”

Mexican President Madero is “highly elated” over Gen. Huerta’s victory over the Orozco rebellion. So that’s okay then.

Seattle bans the carrying of any flag (i.e., the red flag) other than that of the United States. All parades must be lead by an American flag no smaller than 54 X 66 inches.

King Frederik VIII of Denmark dies on a visit to Germany. He is best known for the song “I’m Freddy the Eighth, I Am, I Am,” probably.

Today -100: May 14, 1912: Of amendments, dancing, outrageous romantic lying, and honeyfugling

The Senate Judiciary Committee votes for a Constitutional amendment changing the presidency to a single 6-year term. Yes, it’s aimed at Roosevelt (the NYT editorializes that the notion of a president not being eligible for re-election must have gained “great multitudes of conversions” in the last month). One argument against the amendment is that the American people should be forced to pay attention to public business more often than sexennially.

The House passes a resolution in favor of another Constitutional amendment, for the direct election of senators. It includes a provision for federal supervision of elections, which Southern racists, i.e. the entire Southern delegation, oppose, joined by only two Republicans, Knowland and Kahn, for equally racist (anti-Japanese) reasons.

Italy has succeeded in closing off the Aegean, preventing Turkey sending ships & troops to Libya.

Paraguay defeats a rebellion led by ex-President Alvino Jara, who is killed.

The Methodist church’s conference decides against allowing dancing.

George Bernard Shaw writes to the Daily News against the “explosion of outrageous romantic lying” by journalists and others about the Titanic to fulfill the narrative demands of “romance in a shipwreck,” which filled news reports whether true or not. These demands: That the captain must be a superhero, “a living guarantee that the wreck was nobody’s fault”. “Such a man Captain Smith was enthusiastically proclaimed on the day when it was reported that he had shot himself on the bridge, or shot the first officer, or been shot by the first officer, or shot anyhow to bring the curtain down effectively.” “The officers must be calm, proud, steady, unmoved in the intervals of shooting the terrified foreigners.” Everybody must face death without a tremor, though in reality the crew didn’t tell the passengers that the ship was sinking to prevent a panic, and the band was ordered to play Ragtime to reassure the passengers.

Arthur Conan Doyle naturally responded in the same paper a week later, singing paeans to those very romantic demands. The officers did do their duty and Shaw “tries to defile the beautiful incident of the band by alleging it was the result of orders issued to avert panic.” Shaw responded “there is no heroism in being drowned when you cannot help it.”

Your Old-Timey Vocabulary Word of the Day (from a Taft speech in Ohio): honeyfugle. To deceive or swindle.

The contrasting features of both genders

In 2004, Twitt Romney testified to Congress against gay marriage: “The children of America have the right to have a mother and a father.” It’s always bizarre when social reactionaries use the language of “rights,” isn’t it? “Of course, even today, circumstances can take a parent from the home, but the child still has a mother and a father. If the parents are unmarried or divorced, the child can visit each of them. If a mother or a father is deceased, the child can learn about the qualities of their departed parent. His or her psychological development can still be influenced by the contrasting features of both genders.”

The contrasting features of both genders. I’ve said this before: homophobia is a subset of sexism.

Today -100: May 13, 1912: Of wet corpses, butt missions, duels, and horse thieves

The Titanic’s bodies are still being recovered, four weeks after the sinking.

President Taft thinks “there is a conspiracy for the purpose of arousing religious prejudice against me.” Specifically, anti-Catholic prejudice, with claims that Taft is favoring the Catholic church. Taft himself is a Unitarian, but there were rumors that Major Butt was in Europe on a mission from the president to the Vatican (sub-hed for this story: “‘Butt Mission’ a Falsehood”) and that Taft wired congratulations to the new Apostolic Delegate, both of which he denies. But he did countermand an order by the Indian Commissioner banning nuns wearing their habits when teaching in Indian schools.

Theodore Roosevelt sweeps the Minnesota primaries.

In a duel in Hungary, one of the duelists accidentally chops off the hand of one of the seconds, who didn’t get out of the way fast enough when the duel started.

Italy extends the franchise to illiterates (over the age of 30).

I seem to have missed a story last week where the San Diego police killed Joseph Mikolasek, an IWW member (who came after the cop with an ax, if the LA Times and the SD police are to be believed, which they probably aren’t)(Update: a quick Google search tells me that Mikolasek was either 1) shot by cops in his own home, 2) shot down in front of IWW hq, or 3) died in jail. Thanks a lot, Google). Anyway, the IWW plans a procession (with the body) to protest the death, tomorrow. But today, the grand marshal is arrested as a horse thief.

Today -100: May 12, 1912: Of senators, serial killers, red flags, automobile brigands, dueling, and unwanted Canada

The House will vote next week on a constitutional amendment for the popular election of US senators. But evidently 9 Pacific Coast congresscritters will vote against it in exchange for Southerners voting against abolishing the mints at San Francisco and Carson City.

Remember the Atlanta Jack the Ripper? Just killed his 20th black woman, or “comely yellow girl,” as the NYT puts it.

Indianapolis Police Superintendent Martin Hyland bans red flags from tomorrow’s socialist parade (there’s a, um, National Socialist Convention).

The NYT claims the Paris automobile bandits (or “automobile brigands” – we don’t use the word brigand enough these days) are actually anarchists.

The German Reichstag’s Budget Committee asks the chancellor to wipe out the practice of dueling in the army.

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Denies He Wanted Canada.”

Today -100: May 11, 1912: Of yellow perils, veterans, draft riots, and dancing

The Dillingham Immigration Bill, passed by the Senate but not the House, would add a literacy requirement for male immigrants, and, they’ve just noticed, would probably accidentally remove the enforcement mechanism for the exclusion of Chinese, because Chinese immigrants would now only have to carry the same papers as other immigrants, not ones with their picture, as under previous racist immigration laws, which also provided for immediate deportation of any Chinese immigrant found without their papers on them, and it would abolish the provision that they prove, by the testimony of two white witnesses, that they were in the country legally before the first Chinese exclusion act of 1892.

The House votes 175-57 for pensions for every Civil War veteran 62 and older (I guess former child soldiers are screwed) who served at least 3 months. An amendment to segregate negro veterans in separate but no doubt equal old soldiers’ homes was defeated 137-43. The 43 were all Democrats.

Charles Appleby, 88, is suing the city of New York for damages to his property, the Hotel Allerton, which was burned down during the draft riots of 1863 (plus 50 years’ interest).

The barber of severe conservatism

Today -100: May 10, 1912: Of black perils, home rule, imperious ambitions, vanities, and mysterious antipathies, and ham strikes

South African Prime Minister Louis Botha announces there will be a commission into the “black peril.”

The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its second reading in Parliament 372-271.

There is a rumor that Theodore Roosevelt plans to be a delegate at the Republican National Convention.

Secretary of State Philander Knox, in a speech in L.A., says Theodore Roosevelt is a man “prompted by whims” and of “imperious ambitions, vanities, and mysterious antipathies.” And your point is? He attacks TR’s “new nationalism” as an assault on the autonomy of the states that might lead to a new civil war. Knox was Roosevelt’s attorney general (inherited from McKinley).

A white man is sentenced to hang (and his brother to life imprisonment) for killing a black man in Alabama. Huh. Didn’t think that was illegal in Alabama.

Headline of the Day -100: “Crew Strike for Ham.” The crew of the United Fruit Company’s steamship Admiral Farragut wanted ham instead of corned beef.

Two things I haven’t figured out about Mitt Romney yet

1) How intelligent is he? Smarter than George Bush, dumber than Barack Obama, sure, but where in that large gap does he fall? Part of the problem is that he’s so conventional in his thinking that it can barely be said to be thinking at all. And he says a lot of stupid things, but they generally arise from his narrow experiences, even narrower circle of acquaintances, and a complete lack of empathy rather than from faulty thought processes per se.

2) Why does he want to be president? The thought that he feels his privileges oblige him to give something back to his country is too ludicrous to be entertained, he seems too smugly self-satisfied to be haunted by the daddy issues that motivated GeeDubya, and he doesn’t have an agenda he’s burning to impose on the country. Sure, he wants to lower taxes on his rich friends, but does he seem like someone who would go this far out of his way for the benefit of his friends?

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I’ll give Obama one thing on gay marriage: he has ensured, I think, that he will be the last Democratic presidential candidate to oppose gay marriage.

Because it’s all about him

Obama: “for me personally it is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

North Carolina’s long proud history of being stupid

North Carolina banned white people marrying blacks or Indians in 1715 and again in 1875 (blacks being defined as those with at least 1/4 black blood). Just for the hell of it, blacks were banned from marrying Indians in 1887.

NC was the only state to file a brief in support of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Loving in 1967.

NC finally legalized interracial marriage in 1977 (technically the ban was invalidated by the Supreme Court in Loving, but it remained on the books until the state enacted a new constitution in 1971. The 1977 law recognized the legal validity of interracial marriages not recognized by the previous laws.

What is legal in NC: 14-year-old girls marrying. If they’re pregnant.

Today -100: May 9, 1912: Of miscegenation and dollar diplomacy

The German Reichstag votes 203-133 to reverse the attempt of the government to make inter-racial marriage illegal in German colonies.

Two “Dollar Diplomacy” treaties die in split Senate committee votes. They were with Honduras and Nicaragua, and would have allowed American syndicates to take over the debt of those countries and lend them money guaranteed by the US government, with the countries’ customs receipts as collateral. Something like that. Neo-colonialism.

June 2012 California proposition recommendations

Prop. 28. Re-jiggers term limits for the Legislature because evidently that’s what makes California politics so terrible. 28 would reduce max time in office from 14 years to 12, but allow those 12 to be served in one house.

Term limits are an insult to representative democracy: either you believe the voters can be entrusted to select their leaders, or you don’t.

Given that, it’s a little hard to care a great deal about these repeated attempts to play around with the rules for term limits. The changes proposed here would do away with some of the nonsense entailed in the scramble by legislators to switch from the Assembly to the Senate or vice versa, so that’s an improvement. On the other hand, the hard 12-year limit seems to mean that anyone who took over a seat mid-term after someone died or resigned would have to quit and force an unnecessary special election 12 years later.

I will probably vote a very unenthusiastic Yes, but if you wanted to skip the initiative so as not to vote for any term-limits measure, I wouldn’t argue with you.

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Prop. 29. $1 a pack tax on cigarettes (plus sales tax on top of that) to fund cancer research (not treatment).

A rather high tax on addicts (“those who choose to smoke,” as the yes argument calls them), mostly going to a fund overseen by appointees (one of whom must have been treated for a tobacco-related illness!) and UC chancellors. There’s no reason to think that this group would be qualified to determine where research money can be best spent to bring about a breakthrough, and in general I’d rather see the feds rather than the 50 states trying to cure cancer. Also, why is California creating a fund just for smoking-related cancer? Because it would have looked bad imposing a tax on bras to fund breast cancer research and calling it a “user fee?”

Lastly, I don’t smoke myself, but I don’t really see their greater likelihood of getting sick as a justification to punish them financially.

As much as I hate to be on the same side as the expensive Big Tobacco campaign against Prop. 29 or the hysterics who wrote the no argument (hurts schools! doesn’t clean up Sacramento’s wasteful spending!), this is a No.

Today -100: May 8, 1912: Of $30 dinners, 3-cent pieces, wills, effeminate schoolboys, and waifs

Two competing Republican conventions are held in Arkansas. Each elects competing slates of delegates to the national convention. The Taft convention also voted for women’s suffrage, “when the women have all signified their desire to vote.”

In Washington state, Taft’s loss to Roosevelt in Pierce County is attributed to a $30-a-plate dinner he attended last October (rather than holding a $1 dinner that more people could have afforded to come to). Still, I’m pretty sure Taft ate $30 worth.

Punch cartoon this week.


The caption reads: Uncle Sam (philosophically watching the Taft-Roosevelt scrap): “Wal! I guess old friends are the best!”

A letter to the NYT by Alice Hill Chittenden, who will soon take on the exalted post of president New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, writes that evolution means the increasing differentiation and specialization of the sexes and that the women’s suffrage movement “is in fact largely a condition of hysteria”.

The NYT defends Maryland’s negro voters against accusations made by Taft’s campaign manager that they were bribed to vote for Roosevelt. But the paper does press its case against democratic elections, insisting that if Maryland’s turnout had been higher, Roosevelt wouldn’t have done nearly as well, and that the “more intelligent Republicans” voted for Taft.

The House has voted for the minting of three-cent coins, which have been lobbied for by cities where that’s the fare on street cars. The vote also calls for a half-cent coin.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Are Our Schoolboys Effeminate?” Responding to the director of public schools in Munich, Georg Kerschensteiner, who says that the reliance of American schools on women teachers is producing “effeminacy and flabbiness” in schoolboys, the LAT says that the US has lots of college athletes, boxers, soldiers, etc., so there. It also says that everyone has aspects of both sexes: “temperamentally and psychologically every individual is really bi-sexual.”

81 “frowsy and illiterate” (according to the LAT) IWW members hijack a freight train, forcing the crew to bring them to San Diego, where they are promptly arrested.

The will of John Jacob Astor, who went down with the Titanic, specifies that his widow will lose the rather large income he bequeathed her if she remarries, which is a thing men used to put in their wills. This is the guy whose chivalry was highly praised when he died.

The “Titanic waifs” have been identified and their mother is coming from Paris to claim them (one of the waifs, Michel Navratil, Jr., will die in 2001, the last male Titanic survivor).

Today -100: May 7, 1912: I am not engaged in going about cutting off the heads of bosses

Roosevelt supporters hold one of those separatist conventions in Washington County, Tennessee, but it is captured by Taft supporters.

Taft expresses support for a plan to allow federal employees to retire at 70 with a pension worth half their salaries.

Roosevelt wins the popular vote in the Maryland primary, but Taft delegates will have the majority in the state convention. By state law, the convention will have to instruct delegates to the national convention to vote for Roosevelt, but only on the first ballot.

Champ Clark won the Democratic primary.

Taft denies Roosevelt’s charge that the political “bosses” all support him, and names several who support TR. However, he also says that he won’t go after the bosses: “I am not engaged in going about cutting off the heads of bosses. I cannot do it. It is not my function. It is the function of the people at home to reform matters. I don’t recollect in the seven years that Theodore Roosevelt was president that his path was strewn with the bodies of dead bosses that he had killed.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Turks Repulse Italians.” In Rhodes. Not that that stopped Italy appointing a governor.

NYT headline: “Home Rule Debate Tedious.” Everyone’s a critic.

Today -100: May 6, 1912: Of crooked misrepresentation

Compare and contrast these headlines on the Italian capture of Rhodes. NYT: “Rhodes Was Easily Taken.” LAT: “Use Bayonets on Turks.”

San Diego releases 16 IWW members from jail, where they have been held without trial for two months for violating the city ordinance against makes speeches in the street, but they are told to return for trial next month.

Theodore Roosevelt accuses President Taft of knowing that Taft delegates in Kentucky, Indiana, NYC and elsewhere were elected by “barefaced fraud. He stands guilty of connivance at and condonation of these frauds”. Taft “has stood for crooked misrepresentation of the will of the people.” He notes that since Taft started anti-trust suits against Standard Oil and International Harvester, their stocks have risen: “Evidently Wall St. has made up its mind that Mr. Taft’s prosecutions are fake prosecutions.”

Here’s my favorite putdown from TR’s statement: “he never discovered that I was dangerous to the people until I had been obliged to come to the conclusion that he was useless to the people.” Ouch.

Today -100: May 5, 1912: Even a rat in a corner will fight

Taft on Roosevelt: “He thinks the job is more than running the government. The job, he thinks, is to introduce social revolution.” He added, in a campaign speech in Maryland: “I am a man of peace, and I don’t want to fight. But when I do fight I want to hit hard. Even a rat in a corner will fight.”

Roosevelt, also scheduled to give a campaign speech in Maryland, had to wait for a fight between two dogs to end.

Half of the Mississippi delegates to the Republican National Convention are black, sounds like by quota. Booker T. Washington is lobbying the black delegates to switch from Taft to Roosevelt.

A big women’s suffrage parade in New York City. 10,000 people (1,000 of them male)(Teddy Roosevelt was invited, but didn’t come), 2 hours. The women wore white. Watched by huge crowds, including some hecklers: “They were for the most part the young men with their hats on the sides of their heads – of the same class that make nuisances of themselves at Coney Island in the Summer.” Banners read Votes for Women and “All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read.”


The NYT news coverage of the parade is surprisingly uncondescending, its editorial not so much. It calls the women marchers “obviously healthy and presumably intelligent” (which is restrained when compared to the way the London Times throws around the word “hysteria” when discussing British suffragists), but declares that women’s suffrage would play havoc with society and that men need to be “firm and wise enough and, it may as well be said, masculine enough to prevent them.” The editorial does the slippery slope thing: “Granted the suffrage, they would demand all that the right implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen, although voters ought to fight if need be”.

French Army Lt. Col. Gombault has an article bringing to France’s attention the fact that the army has only 21 dirigibles, while the Germans have 29.

The Italian navy occupies Rhodes.

The Mexican rebels appoint a pretender to the presidency, Emilio Vasquez Gomez.

Today -100: May 4, 1912: As it is bossism, what’s the use?

Secretary of State Philander Knox, traveling through Texas, refuses to see delegates from the Mexican rebels.

War Headline of the Day -100: “Italy Finds Tripoli A Hard Nut to Crack.” According to a lecture by explorer and author Charles Wellington Furlong, who has explored the region, Italy failed to consider that Arabs and Turks are all Muslim and might bond against the Christian colonialist invaders. Also, it’s impossible to live off the land in the desert, so all the Italian army’s supplies have to be brought in and transported, and the Italians don’t have any camels.

Another member of the Coatesville, Penn. lynch mob is acquitted, and the state gives up on the rest of its planned trials (including that of the police chief).

In a Maryland speech, Theodore Roosevelt claims that large sums of money are being used to buy negro votes in Monday’s primaries, and accuses anyone who sells his vote of treason to the Republic and, in the case of negroes, of injuring their race.

Roosevelt, who is in Delaware, refuses to make any speeches in the state: “If you had direct primaries in Delaware I would only be too glad to make a personal appeal to the people. But, as it is bossism, what’s the use?” Indeed.

Sexist Headline of the Day -100: “Women Sputter at Senate.” Actually, the Senate Office Building closed the only women’s rest room, so sputter might actually mean......... (Oh wait, “rest room” seems to have meant waiting room rather than, you know, rest room. Although I still like the last sentence of the article: “women having business with Senators will have to stand up.”)

Today -100: May 3, 1912: Of disturbing doctrines, lynchings, kaiser-farmers, zeppelin challenges, and flags

Sub-Headline of the Day -100: “TAFT TALKS PROSPERITY.; In Southern Speeches He Opposes Doctrines That Would Disturb.”

The Grand Jury in Fort Smith, Arkansas, indicts 23 for the lynching of a black man (hanged on a trolley pole) in March.

Kaiser Wilhelm has bought two farms in German South-West Africa (Namibia) and will raise sheep. Not a metaphor.

Headline of the Day -100: “Challenged by Zeppelin.” Not a flying machine but Count Zep himself, who has challenged the secretary of the failed Zeppelin Arctic Expedition, Theodore Lerner, to a duel. But it’s on hold pending some lawsuits between them. Which seems like the worst of both worlds.

Some IWW types (from the affiliated Italian Socialist Federation) trampled an American flag and put up an IWW flag in Union Square, and evidently there’s not going to be an end to the hand-wringing and outrage any time soon.

Today -100: May 2, 1912: Of delegates, plots against Canada, shiftless gangs, and prince-aviators

Because Theodore Roosevelt lost the popular vote in Massachusetts (74,808 to 71,158), he asks the elected delegates-at-large he won to ignore their pledges and vote for Taft at the Republican National Convention, which is jolly sporting of him (his larger game is to turn around and demand that the will of the people also be respected in the many states throughout the US where the Republican machine is thwarting it, and especially to pressure the 20 Taft delegates from Illinois to follow the overwhelming preference of Ill. voters)(it also seems that many of the votes for Taft delegates were invalidated because there were 9 Taft delegates on the ballot and many people voted for all of them, but were only supposed to vote for 8).

The Mexican ambassador says the current revolution isn’t a real revolution, just a bunch of brigands and Indians, and will be put down within three months.

A Senate resolution asked the president if it’s true that the Japanese are trying to take over the harbor of Magdalena Bay in Baja California, Mexico, as a naval base. The White House says no, but that an American company did try to sell some land in the area to a Japanese syndicate. So the Senate is still bubbling with racist paranoia and muttering about the Monroe Doctrine.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, our Headline of the Day -100 comes from the Daily Mail in London: “The Plot Against Canada: Amazing Revelation.” See, last week when President Taft published his private correspondence with Roosevelt, he included one from January 1911 about the Canadian Tariff Reciprocity Treaty, which later failed in the Canadian Parliament because of fears that the US was secretly planning to absorb Canada. Taft wrote that the treaty would make Canada “only an adjunct of the United States.” He meant economically rather than literally (he told TR that much of Canadian business would move to Chicago and NY), but the Daily Mail, as is its wont, is quite upset.

IWW marchers are still on their way to San Diego, and the LA Times is there with up-to-the-minute unbiased coverage, and an unusual number of sub-headlines: “Mischief Makers / Not Invited, Unwelcome / Shiftless Gang Arrives Here on Its Way South / Is Run Out of Every Town Along the Road / Mobilization at San Diego to Rant and Revile.”

Prince Axel of Denmark is going to take flying lessons.

Obama goes to Afghanistan to spike the football, and by football, I mean bin Laden’s bullet-ridden corpse

So Obama went to Afghanistan to celebrate Hey-Do-You-Remember-How-I-Totally-Killed-Bin-Laden-That-Time Day. First he visited with the troops, who may have noticed that their lives were totally unchanged as a result of that killing.

IT’S FRANCE, AND THAT GUY STOLE SOME BREAD, AND THAT OTHER GUY IS CHASING HIM, RIGHT? “And I know that sometimes, out here, when you’re in theater, it’s not clear whether folks back home fully appreciate what’s going on.”


AND YET... “We did not choose this war...”

AND YET... “We don’t go looking for a fight.”

YOU MAKE IT SOUND SO SEXY: “But when we see our homeland violated...”

BECAUSE WHEN YOU’RE THERE, IT’S A TOTAL BUZZ-KILL: “And when you’re missing a birthday or you’re missing a soccer game or when you’re missing an anniversary, and those of us back home are able to enjoy it, it’s because of you.”

CUE PORN MUSIC: “And I want everybody here to know that when you get home, we are going to be there for you when you’re in uniform and we will stay there for you when you’re out of uniform.”


Later, he gave an address to the nation (the American nation, not the nation he was actually in, which was just the backdrop, well Bagram Air Base was the backdrop, so not even really that).

He said that the agreement he signed with Karzai will bring about “a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.” A new chapter? So this whole thing was just a chapter? How the fuck long is this book, anyway?

“Where can I get me one of those hats?”
“And so, 10 years ago, the United States and our allies went to war to make sure that al Qaeda could never again use this country to launch attacks against us.” Note that that goal could be accomplished either by destroying Al Qaida or by destroying the country...

FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS: “Despite initial success, for a number of reasons, this war has taken longer than most anticipated.” Basically the only thing he’ll admit went wrong is the time-frame.

THERE’S THAT (UNDEFINED) WORD AGAIN: “We broke the Taliban’s momentum.”


Today’s agreement includes “shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions... advance development and dignity for their people... transparency and accountability, and to protect the human rights of all Afghans”. Wow, all that from this particular piece of paper, makes you wonder why we didn’t think of that long ago.

OUT OF BUTTER: “Our goal is not to build a country in America’s image”.


WHAT HE RECOGNIZES: “I recognize that many Americans are tired of war.” So it’s a purely emotional reaction, not a reasoned critique of a failed policy or a principled opposition to organized violence. We just all need a good nap and we’ll be as right as rain. This dismissive “tired of war” crap, which Bush also used a lot, really pisses me off.

BECAUSE NOTHING SAYS UPHOLDING HUMAN DIGNITY LIKE A DECADE-LONG WAR: “Here in Afghanistan, Americans answered the call to defend their fellow citizens and uphold human dignity.”

Today -100: May 1, 1912: Of funeral ships, primaries, trusts, and women talking

The cable ship Mackay-Bennett reaches Halifax with 190 of the Titanic dead. They’d already dumped 116 more into the ocean, only 57 of whom were identified (the rest didn’t have enough left to be identifiable), thus leading to tedious plot developments that go nowhere on “Downton Abbey.” 60 of the bodies brought in have not been identified, and are believed to be mostly crew members.

In the Massachusetts primary, Republican voters split nearly evenly between Taft & TR (however, voters also voted for 8 at-large delegates, and the ones they elected are all pledged to TR, it said so right on the ballot). The NYT thinks this result discredits the whole idea of popular primaries, “a first-rate device for splitting a party wide open and inviting defeat on election day.”

On the Democratic side, Champ Clark defeats Wilson, but turnout was much lower than for R’s. Also, the ballot had a little flaw in that there were delegates pledged to the state’s Gov. Foss listed on the ballot, 36 of whom were elected, but Foss himself was not on the ballot. Some consider that those delegates are morally obligated to ignore their pledge and follow the results of the popular vote.

The Taft Admin files an anti-trust suit against International Harvester. One can’t help thinking that the timing is political, since the Tafties have been attacking TR for having halted this action when he was president five years ago.

The LA Times reports ever so respectfully about the forthcoming big women’s suffrage parade in NYC, suggesting that the order that marchers not talk while marching will be impossible for women to obey.

A clear shot

Obama today made fun of Romney (aka “people”) for not wanting Osama bin Laden dead, because then he’d have to baptize him as a Mormon, or something. Actually, the Romney part isn’t my interest here. Let’s roll the tape:

As far as my personal role and what other folks would do, I’d just recommend that everybody look at people’s previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden. I assume that people meant what they said when they said – that’s been at least my practice. I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did.

“Take out.” “Go after.” “Clear shot.” He’s stopped pretending there was ever a capture option.

Today -100: April 30, 1912: Of policies of flabby indecision and helpless acquiescence

Sen. William Alden Smith will cut short the Titanic hearings, which he’d planned to continue pretty much until the end of time. For a start, all the other members of the committee are now boycotting it. He questioned members of the Titanic crew about the large sums they’ve been receiving for telling their story to the NYT: $1,000 for the surviving radio operator (and $750 for the Carpathia’s radio operator).

Woodrow Wilson says that the US is slowly turning to Socialism because the D’s & R’s aren’t giving them what they want. He accuses Taft & Roosevelt of fighting with each other “as to which had been most closely identified with special interests.” (I wonder when the phrase “special interests” was first used by politicians?)

President Taft is making speeches all over Massachusetts, starting each one saying how much he’d prefer not to be doing so: “I should not be here, and I am very sorry I have to be here. I deprecate the intervention of the president of the United States in a political controversy like this that requires him to come upon the stump in order that he may defend himself against misrepresentation.” He calls for giving presidents a single 6- or 8-year term, so that no future sitting president has to go through the unseemly business of campaigning for reelection.

Roosevelt, who made 19 speeches in Massachusetts yesterday, denies Taft’s accusation that he preaches class hatred. In fact, he says, the reforms he wants would be “the most effective kind of antidote to class hatred; whereas, if Mr. Taft’s policy of flabby indecision and helpless acquiescence in the wrongdoing of the crooked boss and the crooked financier is permitted to continue, there will really grow up class hatred in this country.”

Blog biz

First, a reminder that comments do actually exist, post-JS-Kit, they’re just annoyingly invisible on the front page (any suggestions on how to rectify this situation are very welcome). You can comment/read comments on the individual post pages (click on the post title).

Second, about 10 days back the NYT wrecked its archive feature, the one I use for the Today -100 posts, and pestering them about it on Twitter doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. I’m a few weeks ahead, but unless they fix it or I find an acceptable alternative, this feature, beloved by literally ones of readers, will be done around June 24th and we’ll never know who the Democrats picked to run for president in 1912.

I can think of two alternatives, but I don’t think either is good enough to sustain us. Instead of an index, I can use the Times Machine feature, which shows images of the paper with links to the stories, but that would leave you with links only subscribers can use. Or there’s ProQuest, which I use for the LA Times, but 1) again, no links, because there’s individualized data in the URLs I wouldn’t care to share with the class, 2) it keeps timing out, 3) it seems to miss a lot of the stories, 4) it’s less readable and more eye-strainy.

Are there other options out there?

Also, I hate the new Gmail design, Google Reader has stopped telling me how many unread articles I have, and I like pineapple but am allergic to it. Someone please fix all that.

Today -100: April 29, 1912: There is no death

The surviving Titanic crew return to Britain. The Board of Trade had been planning to hold them incommunicado until they’d testified before an inquiry, but when their ship arrived at Plymouth, the president and secretary of the British Seafarers’ Union took a sailboat alongside it and shouted over to them that they shouldn’t speak until they’d consulted with their union. Eventually, the authorities gave up on holding them captive.

Back in the US, there was a revolt against the Senate Titanic committee’s chairman, Sen. William Alden Smith (R-Mich.), who has tended to ask silly questions and is letting the whole thing meander and drag on. Several senators threatened to resign the committee.

Titanic victim and journalist W.T. Stead has evidently sent a message from the spirit world to Mrs. Cora Richmond, pastor of the spiritualist Church of the Soul. It seems that “There is no death.” So that’s okay then. (Actually, the prose of his message from the afterlife is quite purple, so I guess some things really don’t change with death: “I awoke as one awakening from a horrible dream. My son, my son, yes, the first to meet me. He was one of the rescuers from that realm where lifeboats are never lacking.”)

I guess I haven’t been keeping up with the saga of the Paris motor-car bandits. Last week their chief, Jules Bonnot, killed the deputy chief of the Paris Detective Service, so now he’s been killed in turn in a big ol’ shoot-out. And dynamite, the cops used dynamite.

Today -100: April 28, 1912: Of child fairs, Japanese women, commercialized disasters, and the Sausage King

Evidently in Friedrichshafen, Germany, there is an annual child fair, in which children of both sexes between 11 and 16 are sold to the highest bidders for farm work.

Woodrow Wilson is opposed to the recall of judges, but says he can see why some people (Roosevelt for a start) are in favor, given that in many parts of the country the judiciary is controlled by party interests and works to safeguard special interests rather than enforce the law.

In Japan, a bill to end the ban on women attending political meetings is rejected by the Diet. The chairman of the committee that rejected the bill said that women who participated in politics would neglect their domestic duties and might disagree with their husbands, which would lead to bickering and disunity in the family. The sponsor of the bill denies this, because Japanese women are not in any way like the “impudent hussies of Europe and America” and are quite docile, as women should be. For example, he points out, most Japanese politicians keep concubines, and their wives are totally okay with this.

Philadelphia Mayor Blankenburg bans movies depicting the sinking of the Titanic because it is just wrong to “commercialize such a terrible disaster.”

The Sunday magazine has a long article on the Titanic.

William Harris, London’s Sausage King, has died. He was a bit of an eccentric (although not as eccentric as the sub-hed “Always Wore Evening Dress” first made me think – turns out he wore dress clothes, an opera hat and patent-leather shoes at all times, not an evening dress). He named all three of his sons William and all three of his daughters Elizabeth. Anyone who wrote a poem about sausages, no matter how crap (the poem, not the sausages), was assured of getting a quid or two (or a pound of sausages). For example:

Have you seen the Sausage King?
His sausages are just the thing.

Today -100: April 27, 1912: He means well, but he means well feebly

In history-repeats-itself news, 1) the ocean liner Empress of Britain hits an iceberg, but isn’t badly damaged, and 2) in a re-run of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, 25 people jump from a burning factory in the Bowery; one hits head-first and dies.

Theodore Roosevelt responds to Taft’s speech: “It is a bad trait to bite the hand that feeds you.” [Insert fat joke here]. He seems especially pissed that Taft released his 1907 letter ordering his attorney general to postpone anti-trust actions against the International Harvester trust as well as cordial personal, private letters TR had sent Taft in 1910-1, which Taft is releasing to show that TR didn’t always think he was a big ol’ loser. TR says by this action Taft has been not only “disloyal to our past friendship, but has been disloyal to every canon of ordinary decency and fair dealing”. “Such conduct represents the very crookedest kind of a crooked deal” and for Taft to say he had not been disloyal is “the grossest and most astounding hypocrisy.”

He accuses Taft of a “quality of feebleness, yielding to the bosses and the great privileged interests,” although he concedes “I do not think Mr. Taft means ill; I think he means well. But he means well feebly, and during his administration he has been under the influence of men who are neither well meaning nor feeble. It is this quality of feebleness in a normally amiable man which pre-eminently fits such a man for use in high office by the powers of evil.”

The Missouri Republicans will send rival Taft & Roosevelt delegations to the national convention.

Secretary of War Stimson says he plans to equip the army with 120 airplanes, including 8 in Hawaii, 8 in Panama and 16 in the Philippines.

The Japanese administration in the colony of Korea is trying 82 Koreans for attempted assassination of the governor-general. It says the bombs they planned to use came from Russia and China via American missionaries.

Last year, Taft vetoed the Arizona statehood bill because the territory’s prospective constitution included the recall of judges. Well, now AZ is a state and can do what it likes and an amendment for recall has passed the Legislature (unanimously in the lower house) and been signed by the governor.

Today -100: April 26, 1912: Sometimes a man in a corner fights

Taft made several campaign speeches in Massachusetts, going negative on Roosevelt, reluctantly, or so he claims: “This wrenches my soul... I do not want to fight Theodore Roosevelt, but then sometimes a man in a corner fights.” Roosevelt, he says, can’t be trusted because he promised never to run for president again (which is arguable), and that if he considers himself so indispensable now, he might continue to do so and can’t “safely be intrusted with successive presidential terms.” He complains about TR’s “appeals to discontent and class hatred” and accuses him of distorting Taft’s words and taking them out of context. He says that if there was fraud in the NY primaries as Roosevelt says, the courts are open to him to seek redress. He also denies Roosevelt’s attempts to link him with the corruptly elected Sen. Lorimer of Illinois, TR’s charges that his supporters have been fired from patronage jobs (they have), and other charges, in a point-by-point rebuttal.

Taft also gave an address to a dinner of newspaper publishers, by telephone (they were in NY, he was in Boston). They each had to listen on their own receiver. Also addressing them telephonically were the prime minister of Canada, the actor Lewis Waller, who read Kipling’s “If” to them, and José Collins, who sang to them, and a couple of women whose phone conversation leaked through the line while the prime minister was trying to speak.

Another Republican convention, another fight. In Pulaski County, Arkansas (which includes Little Rock). The nephew of the chairman of the county Republican organization was hit over the head with a tomato can by one of the Roosevelt supporters trying to gain admission to the convention. This was followed by a general melee.

Venice inaugurates the Campanile of San Marco. I had no idea that the current Campanile was a replica (the old one fell down in 1902), only a couple of years older than the replica on the UC Berkeley campus.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Students to Honor Butt.” Oh, Titanic Butt headlines, how we’ve missed you! (Elsewhere in the paper, a near miss for another Titanic Butt Headline when Taft sends an army major to Halifax to look at the recovered bodies and see if one of them is Maj. Butt: “Taft Orders a Search.” They could have gone with “Taft Orders a Search for Butt,” but no.)

Love Story or Whatever of The Day -100: A German dude, J. Paul Schabert, in Reno to get a divorce, hears that his wife was on the Titanic and was rescued, abandons his divorce suit and races to New York where they are reconciled.

Today -100: April 25, 1912: Where do icebergs come from?

The House of Representatives votes 81-25 to allow the Territorial Legislature of Alaska to vote on women’s suffrage. The House divided almost exactly on North-South lines. An unfortunately unnamed congresscritter interrupted Victor Berger’s pro-suffrage speech to ask whether, if women had the same rights as men, they would they have the same privileges as they did on the Titanic. Berger says they would, because women are more important to the race than men.

Taft wins the Republican conventions in Iowa and Rhode Island.

Taft sends to the Senate letters Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his attorney general in 1907 ordering him to postpone anti-trust action against the International Harvester company.

The NYT blames the outbreak in Fez against Morocco’s new French masters on “the blind loathing of the Mohammedan masses for all Christians”.

The city editor of the Spokane Chronicle is shot dead by a crazy Russian, who said too much had been printed about the Titanic. He also claimed to have been on the Titanic, which he wasn’t.

The British are beginning to get annoyed at the US Senate’s decision to arrogate to itself the power to investigate the sinking of a British ship. The London Times notes that the questions have been rather ignorant and aimed at finding someone to pillory (although I’m sure everyone was charmed by Sen. William Alden Smith [R-Mich.]’s questions to Fifth Officer Lowe, “Where do icebergs come from?” and “Of what is an iceberg composed?”)

A very Hope-y Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Another year, another wishy-washy presidential statement on “Armenian Remembrance Day,” as he calls Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, because he failed to remember the genocide. HI-larious! Armenian Remembrance Day could be the day we all remember some random Armenian, possibly one of the Kardashians.

As is traditional with these statements, the passive voice abounds. 1.5 million Armenians “were brutally massacred” – I guess by person or persons unknown – and they “senselessly suffered and died”. He says “My view of that history has not changed,” but he doesn’t remind us what that view of that history is, for those who came in late, i.e., sometime in the last four years. He suggests that “Moving forward with the future cannot be done without reckoning with the facts of the past. The United States has done so many times in our own history, and I believe we are stronger for it.” Yes, if there’s one thing Americans are known for, it’s reckoning with the facts of the past.

In fact, Obama doesn’t even reckon with the facts of the present, since he “commit[s] to bringing a brighter future to the people of Armenia” but fails to mention the status of the Armenians remaining in Turkey and elsewhere.

“Although the lives that were taken can never be returned, the legacy of the Armenian people is one of triumph.” So that’s okay then.

Today -100: April 24, 1912: Of presidents fighting back, Moroccans fighting telegraph operators, and binoculars

This must be at least the third time I’ve seen a story along these lines: the Cabinet urges Taft to fight back against Roosevelt. Among other things, they want him to release some of TR’s correspondence. Taft is about to make some campaign speeches in Massachusetts (which will have its first ever primaries this year) and this is actually something new: it’s unprecedented for a sitting president to campaign openly for re-election.

Taft wins the New Hampshire primary. This is the first presidential primary ever held in New Hampshire and indeed in New England.

Moroccans are evidently not so happy with their new “protectorate” and attacked and killed a bunch of French soldiers in Fez. There have been stories running for days about the four brave French telegraph operators who held off their attackers for hours before being killed (it’s all very Rudyard Kipling but, you know, French). The Jewish quarter of Fez was set on fire, as is traditional.

More bodies are recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.

The Titanic’s lookout tells the Senate’s Titanic hearings that the ship might have been saved if he had been given some binoculars.

These guys toughed it out

Here’s the thing about Barack Obama. He can look just as solemn and intense staring at a souvenir football, as he did this afternoon,


as he can when staring at an eternal flame at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, as he did this morning.


So today he met Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors, and also the Fighting Falcons, and gave speeches to both. See if you can tell which excerpts are from which speech:

And most of all, we are honored to be in the presence of men and women whose lives are a testament to the endurance and the strength of the human spirit -- the inspiring survivors.

Even when they were dogged by injuries, this team pulled together when it mattered most.

These guys faced a brutal schedule, but they never backed down.

despite all the tanks and all the snipers, all the torture and brutality unleashed against them, the Syrian people still brave the streets.

As Coach Calhoun said, “This group had a warrior spirit in them.”

To stare into the abyss, to face the darkness and insist there is a future -- to not give up, to say yes to life, to believe in the possibility of justice.

These guys toughed it out

So God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

and God bless Air Force.

Today -100: April 23, 1912: Of Bram Stoker, waifs, and rioting Zionists

Bram Stoker dies. The two articles about him in today’s NYT mostly refer to him as Henry Irving’s theatrical manager. Dracula is mentioned only in a list of his writings (unless you count the comment that “his stories, though they were queer, were not of a memorable quality.”)

More Titanic waifs. A different two “waifs” than those in yesterday’s story. Two French children, Louis and Lolo, roughly 3-4, may be the children of a French woman whose estranged husband kidnapped them after telling friends he was going to America. Ship officers, enforcing the “women and children” first rule, evidently kept the kids’ father from entering the lifeboats. That rule certainly created a lot of widows and orphans.

Virginia Brooks is elected president of the Board of Education of West Hammond, Ill. (which is now Calumet City) “after scenes of violence, during which her women supporters all but drowned one political foe and administered beatings to others.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Zionist Riot Over Smoking.” That is, residents of Zion City, Illinois, a planned community built a few years ago by a faith healer in association with his Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Smoking is banned in the town, but some “crusaders” learned that factory workers were smoking, so they formed a posse to escort those workers forcibly to view the “no smoking” signs. The workers resisted and... now, “Every person in Zion City owning a revolver carried it to-day. Others paraded the street with pieces of lead pipe.”

Today -100: April 22, 1912: Of compromise candidates, the excessive pursuit of luxury, and waifs

Justice Charles Evans Hughes sends reassurances to President Taft that he won’t accept the Republican nomination for president as a compromise candidate.

And a former Texas land commissioner, A.J. Baker, announces his candidacy for vice president for the Democrat party. Evidently people did that then.

Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, blames the Titanic sinking on “the excessive pursuit of luxury.”

Tear-Jerking Titanic Headline of the Day -100: “Seek Waifs of Titanic.”

There are no funny headlines about Archibald Butt today. Let the national mourning begin.

Today -100: April 21, 1912: War is right and peace is wrong

The White Star Company is keeping the Titanic crew members who testified before Congress under guard aboard the Celtic. They have been told they’ll be fired if they talk to the press. A NYT editorial denounces the crew’s ill-preparedness for the fact that so many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them.

In addition to the much-vaunted “chivalry” of the men, such as Astor, who died so that women & children could live (a subject under some discussion by British suffragists), there has also been praise for the women who refused to let that policy turn them into widows and chose to stay with their husbands to the end.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Pope Mourns for Butt.” Runner-up: “Official Praise of Butt.”

A petition signed by many German academics, lawyers, military men, scientists, etc, has been sent to Russia, denouncing the notion of ritual murder by Jews.

Roosevelt wins West Virginia’s county-level primaries.

Headline of the Day -100: “War Is Right, Peace Wrong, Says German General.” Friedrich von Bernhardi, author of “Germany and the Next War,” a best-selling (in Germany) bit of warmongery. Sadly, Gen. Bernhardi did not die in Germany’s next war.

Some French dude invents a motorless, hand-cranked airplane.

The revolution in China seems to have made little difference to the occupation in Tibet (yet another sentence that applies to Today or Today -100). The Chinese army is using machine guns to mow down thousands in Lhasa.

Today -100: April 20, 1912: Of suffrage in Arkansas, Mormons, the Nevada & Oregon primaries, immigrants, and the Titanic hearings

The proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the Arkansas state constitution for which suffrage groups are circulating petitions is so worded as to apply the “grandfather clause” in order to disenfranchise black women.

The Daughters of the American Revolution condemn Mormonism, saying that Mormon missionary work is another form of white slavery.

Roosevelt wins the Nevada Republican primary, by a lot. Champ Clark wins the Democratic primary, followed by Harmon, then Wilson. TR and Woodrow Wilson win the Oregon primaries.

The Senate passes the Dillingham Immigration Bill, requiring that every male immigrant be literate. Unlike earlier versions of the bill, Canada is not exempt. An amendment to exclude all negro immigrants loses 28-25. An amendment for the deportation of aliens conspiring to overthrow other government (i.e., Mexico) passes. Chinese will of course continue to be excluded.

Steamship lines have agreed to take more southerly, but longer, routes in the future.

The Senate is already investigating the Titanic sinking. It’s been focusing on how many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them. It heard from J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Company, who was onboard as a passenger and who has been taking a lot of shit – and I mean a lot of shit – for still being alive.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Butt Was Tireless in Helping Women.” Runner-up: “Roosevelt’s Praise for Butt.”

Today -100: April 19, 1912: Of plain bribery and corruption, and waving farewells

Taft’s campaign manager Rep. William McKinley (no relation) asks if “the lavish expenditures of money” by Roosevelt supporters is responsible for his victories in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. “Plain bribery and corruption,” he calls it, claiming that they spent between $250,000 and $500,000 in Pennsylvania.

Italian warships bombard two Turkish forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles.

They finally have the numbers: 1,595 went down with the Titanic, 745 survived. Which isn’t what Wikipedia says.

Titanic Headline of the Day -100: “Col. Astor Went Down Waving Farewells to His Bride.”

Onboard the Carpathia, women Titanic survivors raised $7,000 for needy survivors.

Poetical Titanic Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “The Carpathia’s Arrival: Like Pall Bearers at a Shadow Funeral Tugs Clustered Around the Ship of Sorrows.”

Titanic Survivor Names of the Day: Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Despairs of Butt.”

Outside of officially sanctioned purposes

According to an Army spokesmodel, “It is a violation of Army standards to pose with corpses for photographs outside of officially sanctioned purposes.” Ya know, that kind of raises the question what officially sanctioned purposes require posing with corpses.

Today -100: April 18, 1912: Of survivors, reservations, and the high priestess of red anarchy

The Carpathia has been in only spotty wireless communication, so the names of 300 of the survivors (and therefore by process of elimination the names of all the dead) are unknown.

Taft sends his secretary of commerce and labor to New York to take charge of the immigration inspection of the Titanic survivors. NYC Mayor Gaynor has offered housing for any steerage passengers who need it. The Cunard Company (owners of the Carpathia) and the city of NY will make sure reporters and photographers don’t get near the survivors.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Still Hopes for Butt.”

The New Mexico Legislature is asking Congress to let white people (well, non-Navajos, but we know what they really mean) settle in the Navajo Reservation. Also, they’re pretty sure there’s gold and silver on the land, and they want that too.

An issue in the Texas gubernatorial race is Confederate pensions. Gov. Colquitt is accused of not being as supportive of them as he should be.

From the peerlessly objective LA Times: “Emma Goldman, the high priestess of red anarchy, and recognized leader of American nihilism, is to play ‘Joan of Arc’ – with her own interpretation of the role of Maid of Orleans – to the tattered army of I.W.W. malcontents boiling like some ill-smelling cauldron on the outskirts of San Diego.” (The LAT also likes to call the IWW the “I Won’t Works.”)

Today -100: April 17, 1912: Of parliamentary machines, women and children first, and Taft concerned

The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its First Reading in the House of Commons, 360-266. Tory opposition leader Bonar Law threatens civil war, declaring that the people of Ulster are ready to resist this measure with their lives, and that if it is not put to a referendum, “you will succeed only in breaking the parliamentary machine.”

They still know the names of less than half the Titanic survivors, which is all that the Carpathia wirelessed, possibly because of electrical storms.

(The Carpathia, by the by, was torpedoed by the Germans in 1918.)

The LAT says that relatives of lost Titanic passengers won’t be able to collect damages from the White Star line because the ship was on the high seas, covered by no nation’s laws. They can be reimbursed for lost property (which was insured, so the company will lose nothing).

The NYT editorializes on the importance of the unwritten “women and children first” rule. If men violate it, “they will find themselves shunned as alien to humanity wherever they go ashore. ... However valuable to his race a man may be, he can serve it best by giving his life for the inexorable maintenance of this ancient custom.” The narrative of civilized, chivalrous men calmly giving up their places on the lifeboats to women ‘n children will be central to the story this era told itself about itself (another NYT editorial two days from now: “There was no disorder, no rioting, the rule of the sea prevailed over the rule of nature. With band playing and the lights of the sinking ship still burning, the doomed company awaited the end. They died like heroes, they died like men. It is a tragic and dreadful story, but it tells us how civilization conquers the primal, savage instincts and brings into being and dominance the higher and nobler qualities of man’s nature. There is not in history a more splendid and inspiring example of self-control, of sacrifice, of courage, and of manliness.”)

Of course in 2½ years it’ll be all made-up propaganda about Huns ripping the fetuses out of pregnant Belgian women with bayonets.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Concerned for Butt.”

Berlusconi’s usual generosity

Silvio Berlusconi explains that his giving large sums of money to prospective witnesses in his trial for paying a underage prostitute for sex, including 100,000 to showgirl slash dental hygienist slash regional councillor slash pimp Nicole Minetti was an example of his “usual generosity,” (update: correction, that’s his lawyer speaking) and that “When someone in difficulty asks for help, you don’t ask what for.” Of course since she’s about to go on trial for procuring prostitutes for him, he probably didn’t need to ask what for. “When I am confronted with dramatic and touching cases, I don’t hesitate to intervene whether it be for individuals or for charities.” Yeah, touching... cases.

Berlusconi is finally on trial for the underage prostitute thing. Evidently his parties featured women, including Lombardy regional councillor (that’s roughly the equivalent of a US state legislator) Minetti, dressed as nuns, stripping. Also, a stripper dressed as AC Milan footballer Ronaldhino. Also, twins.

Today -100: April 16, 1912: Of enemies of toil and order, and the Titanic, the wonder ship of brief career

Headline of the Day -100, some more objective coverage by the LA Times of the IWW plan to send members to San Diego to assert the IWW’s right to organize in the city without being beaten and kidnapped by vigilantes: “Hoboes in Marching Order. Enemies of Toil and Order Invade Fresno En Route to San Diego.”

The Titanic hit an iceberg and you know the rest. Fortunately, it was insured.

Among the non-millionaire dead (and at this point it’s not known who or how many survived; the Carpathia, the only ship that arrived in time to rescue survivors, hasn’t radioed a list of them yet) are:

-Taft’s military aid Archibald Willingham Butt, aka Major Butt (NYT: “Throughout Washington to-night every comment on the disaster is followed by the expression, ‘I hope Butt is safe.’”).

-W.T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, one of the creators of modern journalism, who once (1885) set out to uncover the white slave trade and confirm that one could buy a virgin for £5 (he had a doctor confirm her virginity)(He also found out that you can go to jail for buying a little girl from her mother at least you can if you don’t also pay off the father).

-Painter Frank Millet, coming over because he’d been commissioned to paint four panels of the new Wisconsin State Capitol.

-Jacques Futrelle, an author who created a Sherlock-Holmes-type detective, Professor Augustus van Dusen, “The Thinking Machine.”

-The Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, who went down with the ship.

An interesting point, which may or may not actually be true, about the insufficient number of lifeboats: it was impossible to carry enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers and crew and also have them in positions where they could be lowered into the water quickly.

On the other hand, without the invention of the Marconi wireless, there would have been no survivors.

Titanic Headlines of the Day -100: LA Times: “Wonder Ship of Brief Career in the Graveyard of the Sea.” For a story which opens rather crassly by totting up the fortunes of the richest men on the Titanic: John Jacob Astor IV, $150 million, Benjamin Guggenheim $95 million, etc. (For comparison, the Titanic itself was worth $7,500,000.)

Newburyport (Mass.) Morning Herald: “Band Played Till End!”

NYT:

The Onion:

So Warren Buffet is the new Joe the Plumber?

In his weekly radio address, Obama talked about the “Buffet rule”.

IT’S WORTH POINTING OUT THAT YOU’RE ALL SUCKERS: “as many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part.”

1) THEY DON’T NEED TO “ASK”, 2) THEY DON’T “ASK” FOR ANYTHING: And we can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them.”

IF I’M GOOD, HE LETS ME CALL HIM WARREN: “As Warren points out, that’s not fair and it doesn’t make sense.”