Today -100: July 30, 1912: Of mikados, race issues and race wars

Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito dies after a reign of 45 years.

Headline of the Day -100: “Race Issue Bothers Taft.” Some negroes, including the two in his administration, are pressing for the appointment of one Ulysses Mason as collector of internal revenue for northern Alabama. (Taft will go with a white dude instead.)

Nothing further on yesterday’s report of race riot/war in Georgia, but there is a fatuous NYT editorial which suggests that such stories are always fakes and that blacks in the South are actually “living in fairly prosperous circumstances... do not care particularly about political questions... and, while the race wars are raging in the dispatches, keep on making more corn and cotton than they can sell at the prices they would like.” So that’s okay then.

Hmmm

What does it mean that the White House issued the proclamation for World Hepatitis Day the day after World Hepatitis Day?

Wailing? I’d rather be sailing.

Romney at the Western Wall.

“Yes, it has the right amount of wailing.”

“They’ll never find my tax records here.”

This is, of course, a CAPTION CONTEST.

Today -100: July 29, 1912: Of race riots and explorers

Race riot (or race war, according to the LA Times) in Plainville, Georgia. Evidently last week a white boy was hit with a stone, which naturally led to violence yesterday. All the negroes were driven out of the town (which is majority-black), and the sheriff was sent for. His posse was ambushed and the sheriff shot. Developing.

President Taft is such a bystander in his own re-election campaign that I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t, until now, made any response to Roosevelt’s claim that the Republican convention was stolen. Well, now, rather belatedly, he has. It’s not very interesting.

Explorer Capt. Ejnar Mikkelsen and his engineer have returned from three years in the Arctic (Greenland), most of that time waiting for someone to rescue them (a Norwegian fishing, or possibly whaling, ship, in fact). His message: the Arctic really really sucks.

Today -100: July 28, 1912: Of the foulest of liars

Another lively, um, primary debate, in South Carolina. Gov. Coleman Blease accuses Southern Railroad of having employed the son of Ira Jones to influence his father when he was chief justice of the SC Supreme Court. Ira Jones calls Blease the “foulest of liars” and rushes him. Partisans of both sides whip out their guns. The police chief pulls his revolver and jumps between Jones and Blease, threatening to shoot the first one who made a hostile move.

It would be great if we could just leave it at that

Seeing certain elements of the internet delighting in The Sun’s dubbing Romney “Mitt the Twit,” I had to look up when I first started calling him Twitt Romney. August 14, 2007, it was. In that post, I reported a line snapped by Romney at reporters: “I’m pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that.” I responded: “Really, would everybody just stop asking Romney any questions about his positions on issues, he doesn’t like it.” And nothing in his campaigning style has changed since then.


I’ve been looking for another old post, without success. I could swear that sometime in 2000, I drew up a list of unanswered questions about George Bush – where was he when he was supposed to be in Alabama in the Air National Guard, did he take cocaine, how many times was he stopped for DUIs, etc etc – and that months later, right before the election, I re-ran the post (except I can’t find that one either), noting that none of the questions had been answered and, indeed, almost none had ever been put directly to Bush himself. So no, it’s not inevitable that Mittens will be forced to release his tax returns.

Today -100: July 27, 1912: Of correctives and antidotes, and stews

Theodore Roosevelt says his address to the National Progressive Party convention next month will be “a corrective of socialism and an antidote to anarchy.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Roosevelt in a Stew on the Negro Question.” That is, he thinks he can win in a few Southern states, but not if he treats negroes like human beings (Southern racists still haven’t forgiven him for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House that one time).

Today -100: July 26, 1912: Of battleships, visible governors, and the electric chair

During parliamentary discussions over the proposed increase in naval spending, Prime Minister Asquith says Britain has no quarrel with Germany, it just doesn’t want anyone messing with its shit, which is half the world. Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey says that the arms race will increase the prospect of peace, because it will make everyone realize just how jolly expensive a war would be. So that’s all right then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Wilson To Be Visible For Just Two Hours.”

Georgia’s Bull Moose party holds a convention to nominate delegates to the national convention, but splits into two competing conventions over the “negro question.”

The electoral laws in many states did not really anticipate a situation where a third party springs up overnight out of an existing party after the primary but before the general election. This means that fights over ballot access and control over electors are developing in state after state. Roosevelt started out wanting to build his third party as a new independent party rather than a Republican splinter party, so that he could appeal to progressives of both the Democratic and Republican variety. In practice, though, in states where his followers control the Republican party machine, he is now willing to compromise and support Republican candidates (such as in Minnesota), if they support his presidential electors. In the Minnesota deal, the existing Republican electors would all resign and become Progressive electors by petition, and the Tafties would have to find new electors.

For 22 years, NY state has been executing people, 155 of them, in the electric chair, at a cost of $65,000+. An electrician charges $250 per execution (his assistant gets $50), plus travel and lodging.

Today -100: July 25, 1912: Of serpents and battleships

Novelist H. Rider Haggard reports that his daughter saw a sea serpent off Lowestoft, England.

US House Dems refuse to fund the two battleships a year the Taft administration wants built, despite the escalating German-British naval arms race and the alarming increase in sea serpents.

The first international Eugenics Congress opens in London.

Today -100: July 24, 1912: Of ships

Following Churchill’s announcement of an increase in Britain’s warship-building, the NYT says the US really needs to build more warships too, in case there’s a naval war with Germany or something.

Exercises

A paywalled Ha’aretz article reports that Israel will demolish eight Palestinian villages, claiming the IDF needs the land for training exercises. And what are they training for? I’m guessing they’re training to evict Palestinians from their villages. Circle of life.

Today -100: July 23, 1912: More rum, more sodomy, more lashes

Britain: First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill calls for more naval spending and ship-building to counter that of Germany.

Today -100: July 22, 1912: Of doctors’ strikes

The British Medical Association breaks off negotiations with Lloyd George over what the fee should be to handle National Insurance patients. And the BMA says that if any doctors accept the governments blackleg (that’s British for scab) rates, they will be ostracized socially by all respectable doctors.

Today -100: July 21, 1912: Of slanderous eruptions and wolves

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease again denounces the investigation into his alleged corruption; he is also not happy with the “slanderous eruptions from the impure mind, foul mouth, and slanderous pen of Tom Felder” and with the man running against him for governor, former Chief Justice Ira Jones, who is “a cowardly liar.”

Such a great orator, isn’t he? He won an oratorical contest when he was a student at South Carolina University, which resulted in him no longer being a student at South Carolina University when they discovered he’d plagiarized it.

Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico are to cooperate in wiping out the wolf population of the region.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Negro May Lead Harvard.” The Harvard track team, anyway.

Today -100: July 20, 1912: Of transportation

Portugal, having defeated the abortive monarchist uprising, is deporting royalists to the colonies. Very retro of them.

Without incident

Texas is experimenting with executing people using a single drug. I say experimenting although it’s a little hard to ask executed prisoners if it really did kill them more painfully than the old three-drug executions. Not a lot of scientific method, is what I’m saying.

Anyhoo, Texas claims the first execution using this method, performed Wednesday on Yokamon Hearn, was “carried off without incident.”

Unless you count the state of Texas killed a retarded dude as an “incident.”

Blog fail

Well, I tried:

1) Came up with “We, the ‘you people,’” googled it, found lots of people had already thought of it.

2) Texas state’s attorney John Hughes, defending voter i.d. law, told the court it’s not a big deal that some Texans would be forced to go 100 miles in each direction to obtain the i.d. Tried to find his phone number so Texans could ask him for a ride, since it’s not a big deal, but couldn’t find it.

3) Yesterday someone in his audience told Romney that Obama is a monster. The newspapers reported that Romney “disagreed” with her, but he actually said “That’s not a term I would use,” which is not the same as disagreeing. Anyway, I was thinking of having an “Obama’s not a monster, but if he were, what sort of monster would he be” contest, like I did with Hillary four years ago, but decided meh.

Today -100: July 19, 1912: Of hatchets and pusso alliances

Alma Belmont opens a women’s suffrage headquarters in Newport, Rhode Island, so it was obviously necessary that the NYT describe, in detail, what she was wearing.

British Prime Minister Asquith is in Dublin. A suffragette throws a hatchet at his carriage & others try to burn down the Theatre Royal a day before he is due to speak there.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “PUSSO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE?; Expected Outcome of Prince Katsura’s Visit to St. Petersburg.” Probably some weird anime thing.

Today -100: July 18, 1912: Of transformations

Mathematician Henri Poincaré dies at 58.

No worthy person

David Brooks complains that Obama’s anti-Bain Capital ad involves “the assumption that no worthy person would do what most global business leaders have been doing for the past half-century.”

Yes. Quite. And your point is?

(Incidentally, the complaint that Romney isn’t defending capitalism and out-sourcing properly, because surely everyone would agree that What’s Good for Bain Capital is Good for the Yoo Ess Ay if it were only explained to them slowly and using short words, is the exact mirror image of the complaint that Obama is failing to explain ObamaCare properly.)

Today -100: July 17, 1912: Of worrying insurance and buffaloes

The NYT says National Insurance is “worrying Britain.” A Mrs. Robinson Guffy has fired her 8 servants in protest at having to pay their insurance under ObamaLloyd George-care, and is trying to keep her 15-room house (and the garden) (and a stable full of horses) all by herself. I’m sure everyone’s hearts went out to Mrs. Robinson Guffy, in the extremely unlikely event that she wasn’t just made up by a Tory newspaper.

Headline of the Day -100: “Aviator Latham Slain by Buffalo.”

Today -100: July 16, 1912: Of socialised medicine

Britain’s National Insurance Act goes into effect. The NYT says it could never be implemented here as no one would put up with it because, you know, freedom and shit.

Today -100: July 15, 1912: He’s got mixed blood in him, and I can’t get him to admit it

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease calls the committee of the Legislature which is investigating him “gutter snipes,” adding, “If they will come to me, I will call them something that will make any man in South Carolina fight.” He offers to “shoot it out” with any member of the committee who says they believe the charges against him. He says of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ira Jones, now running against him (after, according to Blease, “shaving the feathers off his legs,” whatever that means), “He’s got mixed blood in him, and I can’t get him to admit it.” And, just because he’s on a roll, Blease adds that the governor of Georgia doesn’t have the sense to raise a watermelon.

The NYT notes that Blease recently vetoed a bill for the medical inspection of school children, on the grounds that it was an infringement of personal liberty. Don’t ever change, South Carolina. Oh, right, you never do.

Today -100: July 14, 1912: Of pardons, the need for more Germans, ex-senators, and congresswomen

A private detective testifies to the South Carolina investigating committee that a friend of Gov. Coleman Blease promised that for $5,000 Blease would pardon James Johnson, alias Edward Murphy, alias Ed Howard, alias Gus Befold, alias G.M. Defeld, who blew open the safe of the Knoree Manufacturing Company.

Blease, who last year tried to get Atlanta attorney Thomas Felder extradited from Georgia, evidently in retaliation for Felder accusing him of having taken bribes when he was a state senator, last week tried to get him arrested on that warrant in Maryland, where Felder was a delegate at the Democratic convention.

President Taft will not campaign for re-election, because that sort of thing is beneath the dignity of the office.

The German government issues a warning against the “perilous decrease” in the birth-rate. There will be an inquiry.

The Senate expels William Lorimer (R-Ill.) 55-28 due to the massive corruption involved in his election. Lorimer says it’s okay because his family still loves him. Roosevelt takes credit for it, because two years ago he refused to sit at the same table with him at a public dinner.

Democrats in the 9th Congressional District of California (L.A.) select a woman, Musa Rawlings, as candidate.

Britain: a couple of suffragettes are arrested trying to burn down Colonial Minister Lewis Harcourt’s mansion.


Hey, did I mention the 1912 Olympics are going on? They totally are.

MIA

Maybe Mitt Romney in 1999-2002 was hiding out in the same place that George Bush was when he was supposed to be doing National Guard duty in Alabama?

Today -100: July 13, 1912: Of bribes, imbeciles, prohibitionists, and ice floes

South Carolina is investigating Gov. Coleman Blease for taking bribes to pardon criminals, veto bills, and protect “blind tigers” (speakeasies).

US immigration officials will henceforth allow entry to all foreign-born children of naturalized citizens, even if they’re imbeciles or idiots.

The National Prohibition Party convention nominates Eugene Chaflin for president and Aaron Watkins for v.p., just as in 1908.

Theodore Roosevelt denies that Progressivism is a sectional movement after one of his supporters, 92-year-old Civil War general Daniel Sickles (who Wikipedia tells us was a member of Congress before the war when he killed his wife’s lover, the son of Francis Scott Key, and became the first person in American history to be acquitted on a temporary insanity defense. And that was just before they made him a general. He disobeyed orders at Gettysburg, but wasn’t punished because his leg got blown off. Oh, and when he was a NY state senator he was censured by the Assembly for bringing a prostitute into the chamber, a prostitute he later presented to Queen Victoria. Interesting Wikipedia entry, is what I’m saying), says that Wilson shouldn’t be elected because he’s a southerner. Why, TR responds, some of my uncles fought on the Confederate side, and everyone who fought on both sides was great.

A member of the Newfoundland Legislative Council says that all the Titanic passengers could have been saved, lifeboats or no lifeboats, by putting them on ice floes until rescue arrived, like the survivors of the Polaris in 1873.

Today -100: July 12, 1912: Of theft, prohibitionists, and royalists

Theodore Roosevelt makes the case in The Outlook that Taft’s re-nomination was the result of theft.

The Nevada Republican convention, whenever that was, named delegates to the national convention, but forgot to nominate any electors, so Taft may not be on the ballot in November.

The Prohibition Party is holding its convention now. The platform, besides the obvious, calls for women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, the initiative, referendum & recall, income tax, and abolition of polygamy & white slavery.

The royalist invasion force in Portugal has been forced to retreat into the mountains.

If you understood who I truly am in my heart...

Mitt Romney gave a speech to the NAACP today.

He was booed just twice, which suggests that they were very properly booing the ideas rather than the person. There isn’t enough booing of politicians. As the London Times said in an editorial entitled “A Good Word for Hecklers” in 1950, a few well-chosen and well-timed interventions, a sprinkling of laughter in the wrong places, will hasten politicians’ political development and might promote their spiritual welfare.

AAAAND, STRAIGHT TO THE CONDESCENSION: “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president.” Moving beyond the “you only hate me because you don’t understand” smugness, one might ask if it’s important to understand what’s in his heart, when we know what’s in his actions and his policies.

Also note the insertion of the word families – African-American families – which puzzled me for a minute until I realized he was trying to divide African-Americans, to deny or at least not admit that African-Americans might have collective interests as a community, because he certainly won’t be addressing those.

Also note the adjectives real and enduring in “the real, enduring best interest of African-American families,” which suggests, I guess, that blacks don’t understand their real interests.


AND THEIR DRESSAGE HORSES: “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color - and families of any color - more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president.”

BAD GRAMMAR ALERT! SOMEONE CHANGE HIS GRAMMAR CHIP! “The opposition charges that I and people in my party are running for office to help the rich. Nonsense. The rich will do just fine whether I am elected or not. The President wants to make this a campaign about blaming the rich. I want to make this a campaign about helping the middle class.” There’s a logic fault; the rich will do just fine is not a refutation of the proposition that Republicans want to help the rich. Also, greedy rich bastards are not satisfied merely to “do just fine.” Also, what is it Obama is supposedly blaming the rich for?

TRANSLATION: PLEASE DON’T HURT ME. “But, in campaigns at their best, voters can expect a clear choice, and candidates can expect a fair hearing - only more so from a venerable organization like this one.”


BUT WE’RE OVER IT NOW, SO LET’S GO BACK TO RICH WHITE DUDES: “If someone had told us in the 1950s or 1960s that a black citizen would serve as the forty-fourth president, we would have been proud and many would have been surprised.” And urine-soaked.

AFTER REPEALING OBAMACARE AND DECLARING CHINA A CURRENCY MANIPULATOR, OF COURSE: “On Day One, I will begin turning this economy around with a plan for the middle class. And I don’t mean just those who are middle class now - I also mean those who have waited so long for their chance to join the middle class.” I think he means poor people, but it’s too distasteful to refer to them directly.

Here’s the Obamacare reference that got the booing. I find it amusing that he phrased it as a deficit-reduction move: “we must, must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare”.


WHAT HE WILL RESTORE: “I will restore economic freedom. This nation’s economy runs on freedom, on opportunity, on entrepreneurs, on dreamers who innovate and build businesses.” Also on planet-destroying fossil fuels and misery.

DID I SAY BETTER? I MEANT BITTER. “If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him.”

(On how great he was for black school kids when he was governor): “The teachers [SIC!] unions were not happy with a number of these reforms.” He seems to say that federal education money will be entirely in the form of vouchers.

HE’LL BOO THEM TOO: “I can’t promise that you and I will agree on every issue. But I do promise that your hospitality to me today will be returned.”

Not having any civil rights record of his own, he decided to invoke his father’s, another reminder of the devolution of the Republican Party.



(Update: in comments, Sen. Bob says "Mitt went there to tease the lions in the zoo by throwing red meat. They growled, and now his supporters believe that he is a lion tamer. He isn't.")

Today -100: July 11, 1912: Of pardons, hollering, and boxing

A May E. Brown writes a sappy poem to President Taft, who issues her a pardon, which is the traditional response.

Oh, Mr. President, most exalted in the land;
To you I now appeal, for you hold my freedom in your hand.
Not for myself I humbly plead, but a little child
My love and care doth need. ...

Punishment ne’er changes one’s heart,
Only by repentance can all sinfulness depart.
God gives to us forgiveness, at any time the heart repents.
Then why should man himself hold fast when God relents?
And why the waiting through the weary years so long?
If God’s decree be right, then surely man’s is wrong.

Yeesh. Anyway, the pardon released her one year into a 5½-year sentence for white slavery (she coaxed a 16-year-old into prostitution).

Roosevelt is talking about including a downward revision of tariffs in his platform. The NYT, in the most condescending editorial ever, thinks he should drop it, as the tariff “is a subject that requires concentrated thinking, and that lies beyond the powers of the great mass of his followers. It would kill them in a week.” Anyway, the Times says, his movement is purely a personal one, not having anything to do with issues or principles at all. “Mr. Roosevelt knows very well that there is a propensity in human nature that makes large numbers of people, when they look upon him, get up and holler.”

Boxing champeen Jack Johnson is told that if he wants to box in NY, he can only fight a black man.

Today -100: July 10, 1912: Of putsches

Portuguese monarchists invade from Spain and seize the town of Cabeceiras de Basto. It’s one of those over-optimistic if-we-seize-a-tiny-bit-of-territory-everyone-will-rise-up-in-support-of-us deals.

Heh, he said member

The latest email from the Romney campaign asks me to “become a MyMitt Member.” Sounds like a euphemism.

Today -100: July 9, 1912: Of Progressives

The nascent Progressive Party is working out logistics. Given the time constraints, it will have to forego its democratic principles and select the delegates to its convention, now scheduled for next month, entirely through state conventions rather than primary elections. And it is negotiating deals with Republican and Democrat candidates throughout the country to give them support in exchange for help getting Progressive electors on the November ballot.

Today -100: July 8, 1912: Of rubber abuses, men overboard, and missionaries

Sexy, Sexy Headline of the Day -100: “End Rubber Abuses, America Tells Peru.”

Okay, not so funny, now that I’ve read it. I thought it was going to be a trade dispute story, but it’s the future late Sir Roger Casement’s investigation of Heart-of-Darkness-like exploitation of natives in Peru.

A headline that goes the other way: “Thrown Overboard Manacled in a Box.” Not some horrific crime, but Harry Houdini.




At the trial of 123 Koreans accused of attempting to assassinate Count Terauchi Masatake, Japanese governor-general of Korea (and later PM of Japan), the conspiracy is being blamed on an American Presbyterian missionary, a Rev. McClune.

Today -100: July 7, 1912: Of party realignments and mock ducks

Roosevelt plans for his Progressive Party (which I’m already beginning to see referred to sometimes as the Bull Moose Party) to run a full slate of candidates in NY, including judges.

There had been some talk of the Progressives running a Democrat for vice president in order to appeal to progressives in both parties, but the Democrats’ nomination of Wilson, a progressive, has taken the steam out of that idea.

And in California, Gov. Hiram Johnson explains that that state’s confusing laws are such that the Republican electors on the November ballot will be Progressives and there will be no Taft electors on the ballot unless each elector gets a petition signed by 11,000 qualified voters who hadn’t voted in the primaries.

Name of the Day -100: Mock Duck, head of a Chinese tong.

Today -100: July 6, 1912: Of free trade, a couple of emperors just chillin’, and lynchings

Theodore Roosevelt needs to distinguish his positions from those of the other Progressive in the race, Woodrow Wilson, and so is attacking him as being a supporter of free trade, which TR says would destroy farmers. He says the way to bring down the high cost of living is to control the trusts (the beef trust and whatnot).

Kaiser Bill and Tsar Nicky are meeting, as the former tries to coax the latter away from Russia’s military alliance with France.

A black man, John Williams, is lynched near Plummerville, Ark. A fight broke out at a “negroes’ picnic,” and Williams killed a “special deputy,” one of a posse sent to stop the fight (feels like there’s more going on here than is explained in the story).

Negro boxer Jack Johnson won another championship bout, and an army of cops goes into black neighborhoods in Chicago to prevent blacks celebrating the victory.

Today -100: July 5, 1912: Of unsatisfactory negroes, flags, and worms

White women in Savannah, Georgia are planning to replace all their “lazy and unsatisfactory negroes” with white servants imported from the Netherlands.

An IWW speaker is sentenced in Los Angeles to 40 days for “defiling and reviling and placing the American flag in contempt”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Worms Block a Train.” In Georgia. So many of them are crushed crossing the tracks that they grease the train’s wheels.

Today -100: July 4, 1912: Of sticking governors and unsticking governors

Woodrow Wilson won’t resign as governor of New Jersey while he runs for president, since that would mean a Republican taking over from him. Woody says he hasn’t read the party platform yet, and is rather surprised to hear that it limits him to one term in office.

The realignment within the Republican party goes on city by city and state by state, at too local a level to be covered here. In some places, Progressive Parties are being formed, in others, like California, Roosevelt supporters control the Republican Party. (The South Dakota Republican state convention, which just met, refuses to endorse Taft and elects 5 pro-Roosevelt electors). Some of the people Roosevelt had expected to follow him out of the Republican party are balking, while others, such as Mich. Gov. Chase Osborn, one of the governors who signed that letter months ago asking TR to challenge Taft, are suggesting that Progressive Republicans can vote for Wilson in good conscience because “The real Republican party has no candidate this year.” Osborn sees “no necessity for a new political party.” Roosevelt responds, “I didn’t think that Osborn would stick, anyway,” adding something not at all insulting about Osborn and Missouri Gov. Hadley’s lack of backbone.

The governor of Baja California forbids the San Diego and Southeastern Railway from running an excursion train which members of the Red Caps, an organization of black porters from Santa Fe, and their families were planning to take to Tijuana for an outing. He was afraid it was a cover for an invading private army of filibusters.

Today -100: July 3, 1912: Of Wilson, vile and malicious slanders, and mustache monopolies

Woodrow Wilson is nominated on the 46th ballot.

Champ Clark, who is not at all bitter, says he lost “solely through the vile and malicious slanders” of Bryan.

Incidentally, in 1917 Clark, still Speaker of the House, opposed entry into World War I. Had he become president, which he might so easily have done, history would have been rather different.

Indiana Gov. Thomas Marshall is nominated for vice president.

The NYT seems happy with Wilson, saying the party “escapes the thralldom of little men and ignoble leaders.” Wilson doesn’t owe his nomination to Wall Street or Bryan. And what they really like is that as a Progressive, he’ll take the wind out of Roosevelt’s sails.

The Democratic platform blames unequal distribution of wealth on the high Republican tariff; calls for a ban on corporations contributing to election campaigns and a limit on donations by individuals; a constitutional amendment for a single-term presidency; opposes American imperialism as “an inexcusable blunder which has involved us in enormous expense, brought us weakness instead of strength, and laid our nation open to the charge of abandonment of the fundamental doctrine of self-government,” and calls for the Philippines to be given independence.

Headline of the Day -100: “WANTS MUSTACHE MONOPOLY.” James Hazen Hyde, millionaire former insurance tycoon, fired sailors with facial hair on his rented yacht so he’d be the only one.

Today -100: July 2, 1912: Still waiting for the white smoke

The Democratic Convention has now held 42 ballots. Wilson took the lead on the 30th ballot and by the end of the day leads Clark 494 to 430 (104 for Underwood, 27 for Harmon), although he lost some votes on the last two ballots. He probably would have won by now, but delegates don’t want it to look like Bryan’s stunt tactics achieved anything.

The House passes a resolution expressing its confidence in the patriotism, honor & integrity of Speaker Clark.

The US battleships in Cuban waters are being recalled, as the Cubans have crushed the negro revolt and killed its leader. Hurrah?

Shit I was meaning to get back to

In that Obama fundraising email I mentioned a few days ago, he said “We can be outspent and still win -- but we can’t be outspent 10 to 1 and still win.” Er, why the hell not?

---

In the dissent in the Obamacare case, the right-wing justices argued that young people didn’t need the health-insurance mandate: “the health care ‘market’ that is the object of the Individual Mandate not only includes but principally consists of goods and services that the young people primarily affected by the Mandate do not purchase. They are quite simply not participants in that market”. Sure they are, because even if they do not get sick a good 40% or so of them avail themselves of contraceptives. The four justices, all being male and Catholic, seem to have forgotten about that.

Also, what’s up with the quotes around market?

Today -100: July 1, 1912: Of bosses and ninety wax figures

Yesterday was Sunday and a day off for the Democratic Convention, which of course means a day for horse-trading and faux outrage.

Champ Clark says he’s confident of being nominated, but then so does Oscar Underwood.

Clark also denies having made a deal with the devil (i.e., Wall Street), and demands that Bryan either prove the charge or retract it. Bryan responds that he’s actually accusing Clark of failing to act while his lieutenants make the deal with the devil or at least with Boss Murphy and the “ninety wax figures [the NY delegation] which Mr. Murphy under the unit rule uses to carry out the will of the predatory interests.” Bryan suggests that either Wilson or Clark would be acceptable if they promised to rely only on the Progressive vote and forgo NY’s 90 delegates. He also names several other people who would be perfectly acceptable to him.

William Randolph Hearst accuses Bryan of being a boss.

Today -100: June 30, 1912: Of colossal impudence

The Democratic convention today was long, hot and (according to the LA Times) smelly. Also inconclusive. 14 more ballots were held today, for a total of 26. Champ Clark lost votes on each ballot after the 15th, 90 votes over the course of the day, dropping to 463½. Wilson gained 50, to 407½. 725½ are required. Gov. Harmon of Ohio (29) drops out. Clark’s people suggest that Wilson would make a good veep for Clark; Wilson’s people think not. Clark’s people also suggest another solution to the deadlock: every candidate except for Clark should withdraw.

Drama was provided by William Jennings Bryan, because that’s what he’s there for, when he asked to explain to the convention his shift from Clark to Wilson and more or less said that he will bolt the Democratic Party if its presidential candidate wins the nomination with the support of the 90 votes of the New York delegation, which he says is controlled by Wall Street and Boss Murphy, which it is, and therefore “does not represent the intelligence, the virtue, the democracy or the patriotism of the ninety men who are here”.

Part of the problem in getting a nominee is that under party rules each delegation must vote as a bloc. So the many Wilson supporters among those 90 NY delegates have to vote for Clark.

Headline of the Day -100: “William J. Bryan a Man of Colossal Impudence.”

The editor of the German Anti-Semitic Party’s newspaper has been convicted for slandering the Jewish religion and sentenced to one week in prison.

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt is facing a primary challenger who is bringing up the large number of pardons Colquitt has issued. Colquitt responds by noting that most of those pardons were of young men who had left farms for the city and been led astray. Let’s see if you can spot what else he wants to highlight about the pardonees: “Out of the men I have pardoned some 225 of them were young white men who were serving their first terms in prison for their first offenses against the law, young white men who were without means for defense, young white men etc”.

Today -100: June 29, 1912: Of nominations and shaking prime ministers

On the Democratic Convention’s 10th ballot, there is finally some movement, with Champ Clark increasing his lead, with 556 votes to Wilson’s 350½, with Underwood & Harmon hanging in somewhere in the 100s. It would all have been over by now, with Clark the winner, but nomination requires 2/3 of the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: “Woman Shakes Asquith.” The prime minister meets a suffragette. Who shakes him. She is thrown downstairs, as is the custom.

What the Framers knew

Verily John Roberts says, “The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing.”

Today -100: June 28, 1912: There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians

An attempt by Champ Clark supporters to pack the Democratic convention (they printed their own admission tickets) and rush his nomination through fails. They are now trying to bribe Boss Murphy of Tammany into throwing his minions behind Clark. But Murphy and the right wing of the party in general are scared shitless that if they knock Woodrow Wilson out of the race, his backers will join in a push for William Jennings Bryan, their worst nightmare. Bryan wasn’t even running in the primaries, but suddenly, here he is. Again.

Bryan makes a fiery speech introducing a resolution that “we hereby declare ourselves opposed to the nomination of any candidate for president who is the representative of or under any obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class.” He accuses those millionaires of trying to buy the Democratic nomination. The resolution further demands the withdrawal of any delegates representing those interests. This provoked outrage, with Virginia (Ryan’s a VA delegate) invoking state’s rights. Bryan withdrew that part of the resolution.

Bryan reports on his speech in his syndicated newspaper coverage: “But when I called the country’s attention to the fact that we had in the convention two men who are politically sexless, who have no god but money, and who do not hesitate to use political power for their own enrichment, I at once became ‘a disturber of peace’ and an ‘enemy of the Democratic party.’” “There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians.”

The resolution passes 889 (899?) to 196, because it’s just easier to give Bryan this one than have him storming out like Roosevelt. Bryan claims that the resolution’s passage makes clear that the convention is entirely a Progressive one.

Portugal says it will allow Jews to settle in Portuguese Angola and establish a self-governing Zionist colony.

A German Zeppelin flies nine hours from Hamburg to the North Sea and back, purportedly to demonstrate that it’s possible to use airships to bomb London if the need should ever, you know, arise.

16 have died from bubonic plague in Puerto Rico.

Yesterday, the NYT complained that British suffragette hunger-striking is making it impossible to keep them in prison. A letter today helpfully suggests deporting them to Borneo (similar letters can be found in the London Times).

Today -100: June 27, 1912: Of platforms, lynchings, bandanas, and hens

The Democratic convention decides to reverse the usual order of things and nominate the presidential and vice-presidential candidates before adopting a platform.

Taft says he deplores lynching and thinks those who do it should be punished. This in response to the woman being lynched in Georgia, where authorities have already said they aren’t going to punish anyone.

The new Progressive Party has purchased 28,000 red bandanas to be distributed to supporters. I guess the Rough Riders wore them at San Juan Hill.

Headline of the Day -100: “TAFT’S CADDY A SUICIDE; Guy Hurdle Had Been Scolded for Trading a Hen for a Watch.” The 13-year-old Guy Hurdle, for such was his name, hanged himself. No word on what became of the hen. I fear the worst.

Outspent

Just got an email from Barack Obama, because we’re close like that, and he’s worried about a dangerous trend in American politics: “I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.” Oh, please, Mr. President, tell us what we can do to reverse this awful situation, why Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if an incumbent president had a campaign chest of anything less than a billion dollars.

If you contribute, you are entered into a drawing for a “grassroots dinner” with the Obamas. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Today -100: June 26, 1912: Of conventions, marines, club women, lynchings, and bathing suits

Former South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Ira Jones tries to punch Gov. Blease after Blease says that his vote on the Court against a Jim Crow law was a vote for white women to be forced to ride in the same railroad carriage as “big negro bucks and wenches.” “That’s a lie,” yelled Jones, and went for him.

The Democratic Convention votes for Alton Parker over William Jennings Bryan for temporary chairman, 579 to 510. Parker gives the conservative keynote speech Bryan didn’t want to happen. Bryan reviews it in his syndicated reporting thusly: “People will not remain in a large hall unless they know what is being said, and Judge Parker’s speech was written in the language of Wall street. Only 200 or 300 of the delegates could understand it, and the committee was so busy oiling the machine that it had neglected to provide an interpreter to translate the speech into the every day language of Democrats.”

More by Bryan: “The smoke of battle has cleared away, and the country is now able to look upon the amazing spectacle of a national convention controlled by a national committee, that committee controlled by a subcommittee of 16, the sub-committee controlled by a group of eight men, these men controlled by Boss Murphy and Boss Murphy controlled by Thomas Fortune Ryan. Probably never before in the history of the country have we seen two men attending a national convention and pulling the strings in the open view of the public.”

The US Marines Taft sent to Cuba have been exchanging gunfire with the negro rebels.

The 11th biennial convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs is meeting, or, as the NYT headline puts it, “CLUB WOMEN MEET.; Thousands Make San Francisco Pavilion Attractive by Their Gowns.”

A rare lynching of a black woman, Annie Beshdale, a maid who supposedly stabbed her mistress to death (which is the sort of thing that white Southerners found especially worrying) in Pinehurst, Georgia. Authorities will make no effort to find the culprits, although they used automobiles, which were identified. She was hanged, and her body shot up.

Venice, California is considering a new bathing suit ordinance. Women would be required to wear bathing suits of “suitable heavy material which will not cling to the person,” with a skirt at least 14 inches below the waist and a neckline at most 2 inches below the shoulder. Men’s bathing suits must have skirts reaching the knee.

The pissant dissents

Earlier in the day, I read and wrote up most of Scalia’s dissent in Arizona v. United States (pdf, Scalia begins on p.30), but before finishing I had to go out to feed some ducks and perform other important tasks like that, while the Interwebs tore it to pieces, so by now probably none of this is new to you. But what the hell.

He puts a lot of emphasis on states being “sovereign,” which my dictionary defines as “possessing supreme or ultimate power.” I’m pretty sure Arizona isn’t that. Anyway, being sovereign, it has “the power to exclude.” He quotes “Emer de Vattel’s seminal 1758 treatise on the Law of Nations” to support that. Again, though, Arizona is not actually a nation (it is a mental state brought on by too much time in the sun without a hat). Then he quotes I R. Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (1854), except, again, international law doesn’t grant Arizona the right to ban people or any other rights because Arizona isn’t actually a nation. I don’t know how this has escaped Scalia’s notice.

Actually, there’s a linguistic clue that he hasn’t: at several points he talks about Arizona “protecting its borders.” Plural. Thing is, it has borders, plural, with other states of These Here United States but only one, singular, international border. It can’t “protect” the former (although, as the resident of one of the states bordering Arizona, I gotta say to Jerry Brown: Build the danged fence!).

He notes that states in the 19th century passed laws restricting entry of convicted criminals, indigents, people with contagious diseases and freed slaves. Those are the precedents he cites, because he’s Tony Fucking Scalia. And presumably, since he’s citing these as positive precedents for his position on Arizona’s law, he believes that it’s okay for states to pass such laws again. If we now see a spate of Southern states passing laws banning entry by free negroes from other states, we’ll know who to blame.

Actually, he says that the federal government has not pre-empted the power of the states to exclude, that is, to decide on their own what foreigners to allow into their states.

He criticizes Obama’s recent decision not to deport certain illegal immigrants who came as children and says that the states are free to arrest and imprison those people themselves, because of their awesome sovereignty.

There’s some racist immigrant-fear-mongering that could not be more out of place in a Supreme Court opinion, including an accusation that Obama “leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants” and puts the states “at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws”. Obama has tied Arizona to the railroad tracks and is twirling his mustache while waiting for the Messkin hordes to have their way with her. Scalia says that Arizona’s “citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants”. They may or may not feel themselves “under siege,” but they’re not.

He concludes, “If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.” Okay, let’s.

Today -100: June 25, 1912: Of assassins, temporary speakers, and wotherspoons

Headline of the Day -100: “Blease Fears Assassins.” South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease says that followers of Ira Jones, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who is running against Blease for governor, have threatened to kill him. At a meeting last week, police had to break up a near-fight between the governor and the judge, and Blease has threatened that if Jones again “insults me personally, I shall hold him strictly to account off the platform when no others will be in danger,” which I take to be a promise to challenge him to a duel.

The Democratic convention has two women delegates, Mrs. Hutton of Washington and Mrs. Pilzer of Colorado (the latter is Champ Clark’s sister-in-law).

The fight over the temporary speakership of the Democratic Convention continues. Alton Parker is confirmed in the role by the DNC and there will be a floor fight over it. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except Bryan made it one. Bryan says if he can’t find a progressive candidate to run against Parker, he’ll do it himself. Parker, by the way, is attorney for AFL President Samuel Gompers, but wasn’t in court today when Gompers was sentenced to one year for contempt of the (highly contemptible) DC district court, which had issued an injunction against an AFL boycott.

Name of the Day -100: newly promoted Major General William Wallace Wotherspoon.

British suffragist leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence are released from prison one month into their 9-month sentences as a result of their hunger strike (other prisoners are being forcibly fed, Pankhurst was not).

The Newsroom

Aaron Sorkin misses Murrow & Cronkite. But you know who his new show made me miss?

Lou

Rossi

Billie

Charlie

Mrs. Pynchon

Animal


That said, Edward R. Murrow’s attempted interview of Harpo Marx was fucking hilarious.

Today -100: June 24, 1912: Of chairmen, prison riots, and Bedelia the Bear

Leading Democratic presidential candidates Gov. Woodrow Wilson & Speaker of the House Champ Clark are failing to take William Jennings Bryan’s bait in his crusade against Alton Parker being named the Democratic Convention’s temporary chairman. Bryan sees it as part of a sinister plot to give the “reactionaries” control of the convention and of the nomination (given the role Root performed as chair at the R. convention, he might have a point).

The Washington state Socialist Party nominates Anna Malley for governor, with more than 5,000 ballots returned.

The warden of San Quentin blames a recent revolt there, in which one convict was shot, on... wait for it... women voters, who have been advocating reform of the prison.

A bear escapes on Coney Island and goes to the beach. Bedelia the bear goes to the beach. Sounds like a not very good children’s book.

Today -100: June 23, 1912: Your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit

Right before the Republican convention was scheduled to vote on the presidential nomination, Henry Allen of Kansas read out a statement from Theodore Roosevelt which said that since the RNC had, “by the so-called steam-roller methods, and with scandalous disregard of every principle of elementary honesty and decency,” stolen delegates and “substitute[d] a dishonest for an honest majority,” making “the convention in no proper sense any longer a Republican convention representing the real Republican party. Therefore I hope the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the convention. I do not release any delegate from his honorable obligation to vote for me if he votes at all, but under the actual conditions I hope that he will not vote at all. ... Any man nominated by the convention as now constituted would be merely the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable to any man to accept the convention’s nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds, and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds.” Allen continued (I’m not sure if this is still TR’s statement), “we decided that your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit.” “You accuse us of being radical. Gentlemen, let me tell you that no radical in the ranks of radicalism ever did so radical a thing as to come to a national convention of the great Republican party and secure through fraud the nomination of a man that they know could not be elected.”

Taft was officially and alliteratively nominated by Ohio’s ex-Lt. Gov. Warren G. Harding: “I have heard men arrogate to themselves the title of ‘Progressive Republicans,’ seemingly forgetting that progression is the first essential to Republican fellowship... Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed.” Taft is in fact “the greatest Progressive of his time,” said Harding, to the accompaniment of “hisses, hoots, groans, and boos”. Later in the speech Harding accused TR of “pap rather than patriotism” and elevated Taft to the “party pantheon.”

Almost 1/3 of the delegates abstained from voting (including 20 of the 22 from California). Taft won the nomination by a narrow majority (561). 107 of the Roosevelt delegates felt honor-bound to honor their instructions or primary voters and vote for TR, but most (344) sat on their hands. The convention then re-nominated James Schoolcraft Sherman as VP, the first time a sitting VP had been re-nominated in 80 years, even though Sherman was dying of Bright’s disease and everyone knew it (Spoiler alert: he will die just before the election).

A platform is adopted.

Taft gives the NYT a statement that his, um, victory means the constitution has been saved. Evidently he sees this as purely a defeat of the idea of judicial recall. “All over this country patriotic people to-night are breathing more freely, that a most serious menace to our republican institutions has been averted.”

Roosevelt delegates hold a rump convention and nominate Roosevelt for president. He accepts, but says he’d step aside if the new party, once it is organized and holds a proper convention, decides to choose someone else, like that could happen. A lot of speeches use the phrase “Thou Shalt Not Steal” and the most popular word is “fraudulent.” The convention will meet again tomorrow. Says Gov. Hiram Johnson, “I know it is Sunday, but our work is holy work.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Hamburg Has a Talking Cat.”

Allegedly, an anarchist tries to poison King Victor Emmanuel of Italy’s trout. The cook tasted the dish and dropped dead.

The US Secret Service plans to adopt guns that fire gas that blinds and chokes people.

Today -100: June 22, 1912: Toot toot

The NYT says all the fight has gone out of the Republican convention. (William Jennings Bryan, in his syndicated coverage, concurs: “The machine has worked beautifully all day; it has not slipped a cog. When it was running at full speed ‘Toot,’ Toot,’ would occasionally come from the audience. Sometimes sounds arose that resembled escaping steam, but I am satisfied that no steam escaped; it was all being used, and at high pressure, too.”) The convention is voting on disputed delegates state by state, ignoring a motion by the Theodores to seat all the Roosevelt delegates as a bloc (that would have required all 78 disputed Tafties to sit out the vote; instead, piecemeal voting let the Texas Tafties vote on the credentials of the Alabama ones and vice versa).

Favorite line of the coverage: “The Governor [Hiram Johnson of California] stood there shrieking and gesticulating with his embattled forefinger”.

I’ve been meaning to mention that two of the California delegates were women, the first women at a national convention.

William Jennings Bryan is starting a fight with the Democratic National Committee over its plans to make Alton Parker, the party’s conservative 1904 presidential candidate, temporary chairman of the convention, asking the leading presidential candidates to support some Progressive for the position.

Today -100: June 21, 1912: Of women’s suffrage, and credentials

Both Taft & TR supporters will support a women’s suffrage plank (though probably not a federal constitutional amendment). On hearing this, the secretary of the New York Man’s League for Woman Suffrage immediately goes to Roosevelt’s office to drop off a membership form for him. Sadly, TR’s secretary says he does not wish to join at the present time.

New Hampshire’s constitutional convention rejects women’s suffrage, 208-149.

The Theodores on the convention’s credentials committee end their boycott. The convention will be considering the credentials of its members for the entire time it sits. Nothing much happened in the convention itself yesterday.

Roosevelt himself seems to be vacillating on exactly what his next step should be and is ordering his delegates to continue attending the convention but not participate, in other words a holding action. He’s saying he’ll run as a non-Republican “if there was found to be a demand for me,” but isn’t saying precisely in what form such a demand would be expressed. William Jennings Bryan notes that Roosevelt has no way of knowing how many delegates would bolt if he ordered it and, indeed, many will only make up their minds when the time comes.

A Civil War veteran from Chicago, I presume a delegate, accuses a negro delegate of selling his vote. The negro delegate knocks him down.

Cuba thinks that the proclamation by the leader of the negro rebellion threatening to kill all whites who didn’t leave the El Cobre district was actually written by the French consul.

Today -100: June 20, 1912: Of the real and lawful majority of the convention, executions, and Lloyd George’s hat

NYT: “The convention today cheered for Roosevelt and voted for Taft.” There was a 45-minute pro-Theodore demonstration (to be fair, there was also a 15-second Taft demonstration later in the proceedings). Later, Roosevelt supporters withdrew from the convention’s credentials committee on the pretext of its refusal to give a full hearing to all the contested seats (and the convention voted to let 72 contested delegates, enough to swing the convention to either Taft or TR, vote on their own cases). TR had told a meeting of his delegates in the morning that if the “fraudulently seated delegates” were seated, they, “the real and lawful majority of the convention,” should organize their own convention. Incidentally, before the bolt, the Theodores were spreading a rumor that if the convention nominated Roosevelt, Taft was planning to run as an independent.

A convicted murderer will soon be executed in Nevada. Under a new law, he gets to choose the method of execution and has opted for being shot. The NYT thinks this is inappropriate for a non-military regime and that hanging is “a relic of the mediaeval punishments by public exposure.” It also thinks taking poison (an option the Nevada Legislature considered but rejected) is “revolting to modern sensibilities” and much prefers New York’s electric chair, which is “certain, scientific, and prosaic”.

British Suffragettes knock Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s hat off. Detectives seize the women while he jumps into a cab and escapes. No word on the fate of the hat.

Mittimal

ABC interviewed Newt Gingrich at the National Zoo, so the headline reads “Newt Gingrich’s Advice for Mitt Romney: Sharpen Your Animal Instincts,” although he didn’t actually say that. But it raises a question:

If Mitt Romney were an animal, what animal would he be?

CONTEST!

Today -100: June 19, 1912: Of hissing and leper republics

At the “sullen, ugly, ill-tempered” Republican convention, “hissing the order of the day.” Also, according to the NYT, savage talk, personal insults, hoots, grim silence, booing, cat calls, imitations of a steam whistle, derisive laughter, angry snarls... It took six hours to elect a temporary chairman, Sen. Elihu Root (the Tafties’ choice), by a handful of votes over Wisconsin Gov. Francis McGovern, a La Follette supporter backed by the Theodores in a tactical move. And, er, that’s it for day one. William Jennings Bryan, sitting in the press section, said “If you didn’t know where you were you might think you were in a Democratic Convention.”

Michael Walen of the United States is elected president of the Philippine Leper Republic.

Today -100: June 18, 1912: If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!

Metaphor of the Day -100: Some of the Taft delegates traveling to the Republican National Convention are injured in a train wreck.

Metaphor of the Day -100, runner-up: Theodore Roosevelt, at a meeting: “If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!” He asks Taft delegates to vote for his candidate for the temporary chairmanship of the convention to rebuke the “burglary and piracy” of the RNC and says that any action by the convention which was voted upon by fraudulently seated delegates would not be binding on the party (he wants organizational votes to be cast only by unchallenged delegates). William Jennings Bryan reports: “The Arabs are said to have seven hundred words which mean ‘camel’; Mr. Roosevelt has nearly as many synonyms for theft, and he used them all tonight. ... He compared political crimes, such as he charged against his opponents, with the crimes for which men are imprisoned, to the advantage of the latter, and declared that some of the governors among the reactionaries have refused pardons to criminals whose deeds were infinitely less wicked than the political misdemeanors of the governors themselves.”

Some of the negro delegates from Georgia defected to Roosevelt yesterday and defected back to Taft today, claiming they’d been bunkoed. The Georgia delegates almost came to blows, a white delegate who announced himself a Theodore raising a chair to ward off negro Tafties (Tafty is my own term, since there seems to be no one-word term for Taft supporters, but Roosevelt supporters are occasionally called Theodores). The Roosevelt strategy of winning over negro delegates (or bribing them, according to the Tafties) is not going well.

Taft vetoes the $92 million Army appropriation bill because of its provisions reducing the size of the General Staff, setting the qualifications for the office of Army chief of staff that would remove Taft’s appointee, and removing decisions on the distributions of forts and disposition of the army from the War Dept to a committee of retired officers.

The LAT, always so good in its understanding of the Celestial mind: “CHINESE RESIST REFORMS.: Abolition of Gambling and Girl Slavery Weakens Hold of the New Government on the Ignorant Masses.”

Today -100: June 17, 1912: Of meat riots, white planks, socialists, and negro rebellions

Meat riots in Chicago. Which sounds like a funny way of describing the Republican convention, but no, it’s actually rioting over the high price of meat.

Sen. Francis Newlands (D-Nev.) proposes a “white plank” for the Democratic platform: a constitutional amendment to disenfranchise all black people and ban all non-white immigration.

Republican delegates are arriving in Chicago, marching from the railway station to hq behind bands which only seem to know “Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here” or “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”


William Jennings Bryan, covering the convention for many newspapers, notes that “The Taft men, excepting the Southern delegates, are as a rule of the conservative type. They speak more deliberately and show less animation. Many of them are politicians of long experience who have been accustomed to the methods of the inner circle. They speak cautiously, act deliberately, and are more inclined to ‘view with alarm’ than to enthuse. They feel that things have been going along fairly well, and are anxious that such changes as are necessary may be made ‘slowly and only after careful investigation.’ The Roosevelt men, on the contrary, are largely of the aggressive type. They have already decided matters and have no doubts to settle. They are not waiting for investigation and are not weighing reforms in apothecary scales.”

For the first time, the Socialist Party will be on the ballot in every state.

The Canadian Supreme Court rules that Quebec can’t make mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants illegal if performed by a Protestant (but not a Catholic) priest.

The head of the negro rebellion in Cuba orders all foreigners in areas under his control to leave or be hanged.

Today -100: June 16, 1912: It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!

Taft campaign director McKinley says Roosevelt’s followers are trying to “sweep delegates off their feet by bluff, bulldoze, and bluster.”

The LA Times describes the California delegation, arriving in Chicago for the convention, as “screaming protests” at the unseating of their delegates from the 4th Congressional district (in violation of California election law).

The RNC has finished adjudicating contested convention seats, deciding 19 seats for Roosevelt and 235 for Taft, including those named by all-white conventions in Virginia. The NYT says that the Taft delegates from the South who were approved by the RNC are “decidedly of a better type” than the rejected Roosevelt delegates, but complains that the Southern states are represented at all, since those states are “hopelessly Democratic, where the actual Republican vote is very small, and where it is made up almost altogether of the weaker of the two races”; this is “bad for the negroes, for the Republican Party, and for the whole country. At home the negroes suffer from the bitterness of political feeling.”

Arriving in Chicago, Roosevelt tells the crowd greeting him, “It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!”

The Perth Amboy strike may be near an end, following numerous shootings and other violence (Gov. Woodrow Wilson refused to send in the militia, and claims he can’t find any strike leaders to deal with personally). One of the demands of the strikers is an end to the system by which men who worked more than 24 days in a row at the foundries got a bonus. Sentences of 6 months or a year have been handed out to strikers for throwing stones or “inciting to riot,” but the guards and/or deputies who shot down two strikers yesterday remain at large, although the prosecutor admits the shooting was illegal without the Riot Act having been read.

The Texas attorney general’s office rules that married women aren’t eligible for public offices that require bonds because married women can’t execute valid bonds unless they go through a lengthy legal procedure to remove coverture.

The NYT condemns a recent bit of naughtiness by British suffragettes, saying “The right to vote will never be secured through disorderly conduct.” When has it been secured through anything else?

Headline of the Day -100: “Only The Kaiser Can Blow This Horn.” Evidently no one is allowed to copy the sound of Kaiser Bill’s car horn, which “differs from any other signaling instrument in the world in that it consists of four or five distinct tones, blended into a harmonious whole, which produces more the effect of an operatic recitative than a prosaic blast”.

Today -100: June 15, 1912: Of bribery, biddles, and rifles

The RNC today awards 14 more disputed delegates to Taft, none to Roosevelt.

More accusations of bribery between the Roosevelt & Taft camps, related to negro delegates from the South. No need to get into the details, but it arises because it is “traditional” to pay the traveling expenses of these (usually poor) negroes.

In Virginia, Taft is trying to build up a whites-only Republican party to counter-balance Roosevelt-supporting black Republicans. Both sides are trying to scrounge up delegates from the South, where they don’t have to worry so much about the feelings of the rank and file Republican party members, because there basically aren’t any. Roosevelt is actively courting negro Taft delegates to switch their votes.

Taft issues a denial that he is considering stepping aside in favor of a compromise candidate, a fairly remarkable statement for a sitting president to have to make.

Rumors (reported as fact) that VP Sherman, who is not at all well, will not run again this year.

Name of the Day -100: A NY judge is marrying a Miss Beatrice Biddle.

San Diego police buy 20 rifles but deny it has anything to with the IWW.

We can’t afford to jeopardize our future by repeating the mistakes of the past

Romney a speech on the economy in which he criticized Obama for giving a speech on the economy: “He’s doing that because he hasn’t delivered a recovery for the economy.” “Talk is cheap,” Romney says. While talking. Cheaply.

He said he’d build the Keystone pipeline “if I have to build it myself”. It’s good to have a hobby.

Then Obama gave his economic speech. It was very much a campaign speech, explicitly defining itself against the Romneybot and the Republicans. It didn’t, for example, ask Congress to do anything before November.

COMPLETE AGREEMENT ACHIEVED! “there’s one place where I stand in complete agreement with my opponent: This election is about our economic future.”

WHAT THIS ISN’T: “Now, this isn’t some abstract debate.” Really? Because Romney’s economic plans are based entirely on abstract ideology. Also, Barack, what’s so wrong about have having “some abstract debate”? Ideas are good. Ideas are your friend.

It’s not only not some abstract debate, it’s also “not another trivial Washington argument.” It’s “a make-or-break moment for America’s middle class”.

WHAT NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN: “And while there are many things to discuss in this campaign, nothing is more important than an honest debate about where these two paths would lead us.” Oh good, nothing is more important than an honest debate, because I’m sure an honest debate is just what we’re going to get. Honest debate, woo hoo.

THE RETURN OF IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, this was not your normal recession.”

THE CRISIS OF 2008: “So recovering from the crisis of 2008 has always been the first and most urgent order of business”. “The crisis of 2008” is probably a good phrase for him.

MAN, WE CAN’T AFFORD ANYTHING ANY MORE: “We can’t afford to jeopardize our future by repeating the mistakes of the past”.

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS TIME TO GO BACK TO A GREATER RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUELS FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES, RIGHT? “Now is not the time to go back to a greater reliance on fossil fuels from foreign countries.”

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS TIME TO SADDLE AMERICAN BUSINESSES WITH CRUMBLING ROADS AND BRIDGES, RIGHT? “now is not the time to saddle American businesses with crumbling roads and bridges”.

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT’S TIME TO GO BACK TO TAKING ON OUR FISCAL PROBLEMS IN A DISHONEST, UNBALANCED AND IRRESPONSIBLE WAY, RIGHT? “And finally, I think it’s time we took on our fiscal problems in an honest, balanced, responsible way.”

WHO’S SAYING THAT? ARE ANY CANDIDATES FOR ANY PUBLIC OFFICE SAYING THAT? “And let me leave you with one last thought. As you consider your choice in November -- (applause) -- don’t let anybody tell you that the challenges we face right now are beyond our ability to solve.”

Graveled down

In its story about the Michigan legislator not allowed to speak after using the word “vagina” during the debate on abortion restrictions, ThinkProgress says “Republicans sought to gravel down the women.”

ThinkProgress of course meant to say gaveled down.

But I like it.

I therefore propose the immediate introduction of the phrase “graveled down” into our political discourse.

That is all.

Today -100: June 14, 1912: Of Hatfields & McCoys

RNC hearings continue, give Roosevelt a few delegates, for once. Lots of debate about whether party conventions at the congressional district level were held without notice and whether negroes and Roosevelt supporters were ejected from Mississippi conventions.

The Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia is a Dr. Henry Hatfield, as in Hatfields & McCoys (evidently the feud is over and the McCoys will work for his election).

Window-smashing by suffragettes in Dublin.

The Socialist mayor of Schenectady appoints Helen Keller to the Board of Public Welfare.