Today -100: January 8, 1910: Of the limits of solidarity, cherry trees, and organized rowdies

Mrs. Belmont suggests to a meeting of women teachers called to consider how to help striking shirtwaist workers that all employed women in the NYC go on strike until the shirtwaist workers’ demands are met. Turns out that wasn’t quite what the teachers had in mind. Actually, many of the shirtwaist workers are themselves no longer on strike. Some of the employers have given in; the rest are still resisting the demand for closed shops.

The city of Tokyo gives 2,000 cherry trees to Mrs. Taft and the District of Columbia.

An editorial in the London Times on the disturbances at British election meetings claims that Tories are being shouted down “not by genuine ‘hecklers,’ but by organized rowdies”. Note the distinction: hostile questioning, or heckling (the quotation marks showing that the Scottish term was fairly new in England) of candidates was considered a legitimate part of the rough and tumble of campaigning, but not if it was organized or intended to prevent speech. The Times complains that Asquith was not repudiating such tactics. “If there is anything for which that party [the Liberals] is supposed to stand, it is the right of free speech, and especially free speech in elections. The howling down of speakers and breaking up of meetings is the suppression of free speech by force. ... Objections are a common and one might almost say regular feature of ordinary election meetings. ... Objectors who have nothing to say express their feelings by an occasional shout of dissent, those who have something to say ask questions; there may be a little cut-and-thrust but it is all orderly and in good part. No genuine audience spontaneously howls and whistles down a speaker or breaks up a meeting. The thing is got up and planned, if not paid for, by somebody”.

Great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust

Obama spoke today about the Underpants Bomber.

WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT FAILED TO DO: “our government failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America”. Not actually a “known terrorist” or even an unknown terrorist until after his attempted act of known terrorism.


STILL BRINGING RUNNING METAPHORS TO AN AIRPLANE WORLD: “In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary.” Nimble adversary? Dude set his leg on fire.

WHAT WE MUST COMMUNICATE CLEARLY TO MUSLIMS AROUND THE WORLD: “And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death –- including the murder of fellow Muslims –- while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” Alternately, instead of treating this as a communications problem, of Muslims failing to understand what nice guys we really are, we could actually stand with those who seek justice and progress instead of “communicating” that we supposedly do.


WHAT WE WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO: “but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.” That’s why we have scanners that show our genitalia.

WHAT NOW IS NOT A TIME FOR: “For now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship -- a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.” Yeah, that’s totally what’s gonna happen. Has Obama ever met us?


Anyway, it was a systemic failure and the buck stops with him, and connect the dots, people, the end.

Insert “pipe” joke here

There are two types of people in the world. Those who, when they see the headline “Man’s Penis Removed from Pipe” on the Daily Telegraph’s contents page, click through to find out a) if it was still connected to the man’s body, and b) just what sort of pipe we’re talking about,



and those do not feel any compulsion at all to click through. Which type are you, readers?

Me? Oh, I think you know which type I am.

The man is not named but is described as an “anxious man aged about 40 [who] gave hospital staff no explanation about how the pipe got stuck after he turned up on Tuesday morning.”

The State of the Union is Lost

Obama is considering giving the State of the Union Address on February 2nd, the day Lost was supposed to have had its season premiere, which is appropriate because, if I recall correctly, Oceanic Flight 815 was brought down by a Nigerian with explosives in his underpants.

DIY CONTEST: Pretend I’ve devised a clever contest combining in some way Lost and the SOTU, and provide an entry to that contest. For example, what cabinet positions might Obama name Hurley, Locke or Sawyer to? Or, LOST FANS WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE... Obama announces commission to investigate why the fuck there are polar bears on that island.

Today -100: January 7, 1910: Of federal income tax, negresses, fair fights and no fouling, and Starnright. Poor, poor Starnright.

NY Governor Charles Evans Hughes opposes the proposed 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, allowing the federal government to collect income taxes, largely because it will affect income from state and municipal bonds, placing “the borrowing capacity of State... at the mercy of the Federal taxing power”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Say Mrs. Horton’s a Negress.” William Horton, a plumber contractor in Harlem, is suing his 19-year-old wife for an annulment on the grounds that she told him she was of French and Spanish ancestry but is actually the daughter of a mulatto. She claims her father ran off when she was so young that she can’t remember him or what his skin color might have been. Testimony from her maternal grandmother, who says Edith Horton did know her father was a mulatto, has been taken.

British election meetings have continued to see rowdy behavior. One Tory MP, Sir William Bull, threatened to punch a heckler’s head. The heckler suggested he come done from the platform and try it. Bull did, and they had to be separated by the police. He said later, “This affair may clear the air, as Englishmen like a fair fight and no fouling.” Lloyd George called Balfour’s alarmist references to the possibility of war with Germany as the last resort of a desperate man, almost as bad as the sort of thing you’d expect from American politicians.

President Taft has bought a new horse, Starnright, which at 16 hands is believed capable of bearing the weight.

A pig and pony year

Today was Governor Terminator’s very last State of the State Address.

He opened with a heart-warming story, that simply must be quoted in full: “Now, I want to begin with a true story from which we can draw a worthwhile lesson. As you might guess, the Schwarzenegger household is something of a menagerie -- an Austrian bodybuilder, a TV journalist, four children, a dog, a normal goldfish, a hamster and so forth -- and in recent years we added a miniature pony and a pot-bellied pig. Now, it’s not unusual for me to look up from working on the budget or something and to find the pig and the pony standing right there in front of me and staring at me. Now, the dog’s food, which we keep in a canister with a screwed-on lid, sits on the top of the dog’s kennel. And the pony has now learned how to knock the canister off the top of the kennel and then he and the pig wedge it into the corner. Now, there’s this ridge on the lid of the canister and the pig with his snout pushes this ridge around and around until it loosens up and then they roll the canister around on the floor until the food spills all out. And then, of course, they go to town and they eat it. Now, I have no idea how they ever figured all of this out, to tell you the truth. I mean, it’s like humans figuring out how to create fire. But it is the greatest example of teamwork and I love it. It’s about teamwork. So one lesson to draw from the pig and the pony story is what we can accomplish when we work together. And last year we here in this room did some great, great work together. We had a pig and pony year.” He did not say who is the pig and who the pony in this scenario.

A LITERAL WAR: “For decades this state was in a literal war over water”.

WELL THAT’S CERTAINLY A COMPELLING ANSWER: “Because some people say ‘how can we afford these bonds in the current economic climate?’ I say, how can we not?”

IF HE CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WATER AND BLOOD, MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL JUST DRINK BOTTLED WATER UNTIL A DEMOCRAT IS GOVERNOR: “Our economy cannot grow without water. Our population cannot live without water. It is our state’s lifeblood.”

HE IS FOCUSING ON PRIORITIES. AND PRIORITIZING FOCUS. “If I had to summarize in one word our focus for the coming year, it would be the word ‘priorities.’”


STOP TAXING RICH PEOPLE!: “144,000 taxpayers pay almost 50 percent of all personal income taxes. Now, think about that -- 38 million Californians have to rely on 144,000 people for their schools, their fire protection, their health care, their public safety and so many other services. That makes absolutely no sense.”

YOU MEAN THE CENTURY WHEN WE STILL HAD JOBS AND HOUSES? “Now, here is what we need to accept. Our economy is 21st century and our tax system is 20th century. It is stuck in the wrong century.”

WHAT WE DO IN CALIFORNIA: “The Commission proposed major, radical reforms. Now, some people right away said they are too bold and thus they would be too hard to enact. Now, what do they mean too bold? Bold is what we do in California.” Wait, or is it blow we do in California?

AND OUR LOSS WOULD HAVE BEEN AUSTRIA’S INCREDIBLE GAIN: “And what do they mean too hard? If I had hesitated in my career every time I made a move because it was too hard, I would still be yodeling in Austria.”

WHICH CHILD DO WE CUT? NO, THAT’S NOT DISTURBING AT ALL: “the current tax and budget system is cruel... It is cruel because it is forcing us to make a Sophie’s choice amongst our obligations. Which child do we cut? Is it the poor one or is it the sick one? Is it he uneducated one or is it the one with special needs? That is cruel.”

He noted that we now budget 11% for prisons and 7.5% on higher education and that this is wrong. So is he calling for reversing the cuts in higher ed that he himself insisted on? Hell no. His solution? A constitutional amendment that says that we should spend more on higher education than on prisons. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns? It simply is not healthy.”


And he wants to privatize all the prisons.

He complained that California only gets back 78¢ of each tax dollar it sends to Washington, and said the health care bill “has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. Yet you’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere. Well, this is health care to nowhere.”

Awad the Lame redux

Lawrence Hutchins III is petitioning for clemency for his part in the murder of Iraqi citizen, Awad the Lame, in Hamandiya in 2006. If released, the sheriff of Plymouth County, Mass. will give the man – quoted at his court-martial as saying “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder” – a job as an emergency medical technician. Hutchins has written to the parole board that he now knows that shooting random innocent Iraqis eleven times is wrong. So that’s okay then.

Hunting the elusive Whipple Spot

I think the BBC may be having some fun in an article about a study at King’s College London into the existence or non-existence of the famed G-spot: “The elusive erogenous zone said to exist in some women may be a myth, say researchers who have hunted for it.” But “Some are firm believers.” Among these is sexologist Beverley Whipple, who popularized the idea of the G-spot but evidently couldn’t get it named the Whipple Spot (and you people refused to name female ejaculation after her). The study involved twins because, in the words of one of the researchers, “Mmmm, twins.”

Hat-tip to xkcd (click if cartoon gets, um, cut off):

Today -100: January 6, 1910: Of the fourth dimension and intimate personal confidence of the Almighty

A NY magistrate told one of the striking shirtwaist makers that he is on strike against God (who decreed that man live by the sweat of his brow), and Elizabeth Dutcher of the Women’s Trade Union League thought to cable George Bernard Shaw for his opinion of this. He replied, “Delightful, mediaeval America always in the intimate personal confidence of the Almighty.”

Boy-genius William James Sidis, 11 (the NYT wrongly says 10), gave a lecture to the Harvard (he is a student there) Mathematical Club, wearing short trousers (he did, not the Harvard Mathematical Club) (so far as I know), on the fourth dimension. He believes his theories will revolutionize the study of geometry.

Is Cuba the new North Korea?

The list of 14 countries all of whose citizens are to be thoroughly searched if they dare to buy an airplane ticket includes Cuba, whose citizens are not exactly renowned for joining Al Qaida. Is this bureaucratic inertia, where any measure designed to hassle foreigners must include Cubans, just because they can, or is it designed as a fig-leaf to show that we’re not just bothering Muslims (the other 13 nations being largely Muslim), in the same way as North Korea was included in the “Axis of Evil” to show that Bush’s crusade wasn’t actually a, you know, crusade.

Fun with using screengrab to make one headline look like the caption to an unrelated picture

From the Guardian’s World News page.


(That’s South African President Jacob Zuma, 67, who fell down dancing at the wedding at which he took a third wife, 38.)

Today -100: January 5, 1910: Of doomed negroes, negroes in evening dress, and the age of the earth

Headline of the Day -100: “Negroes Quickly Doomed.” In Kansas City, Missouri, two black men were sentenced to death for assaulting a white woman. The trial, from jury selection to verdict, took two days. The jury was out for five minutes. The trial was held behind closed doors, to prevent a lynching.

NYT: “Society in Washington is to-day discussing somebody’s blunder at last night’s charity ball, which resulted in the bringing to the red ballroom of the Willard three negroes in evening dress.” Blunder indeed. What seems to have happened is that Paulens Sannon’s wife was listed in a newspaper as a patron of a fashionable charity, so she got the invite. She and her husband and their guest attended for an hour, were spoken to by absolutely no one, and left. Paulens Sannon was the ambassador from Haiti.

Professor William Morris Davis of Harvard, a geologist and the “father of American geography,” says that “We are now able to tell almost exactly the age of this earth.” 60 million years old.

Of course for some people, that would be the perfect vacation

A workman in my home just turned on (shudder) talk radio. Evidently Obama made a serious mistake by not cancelling his vacation, going to Washington Airport, and personally cavity-searching foreigners.

Oh, thank God. A drill is now drowning out the radio.

Today -100: January 4, 1910: Of cross-racial enumerating and international felicitating

The director of the census will hire negroes as census-takers in districts where blacks are at least 2/5 of the population, but will hire both white and black ones in Southern districts “to preclude negroes from...” [shudder] “...enumerating whites.”

The clerk of the Havana Hotel Plaza was fined $10 for refusing to serve those two black congresscritters. After the court proceeding, the two lead a procession to the hotel and again ordered drinks. They got them. No word on whether they left a tip. The government newspaper writes that “the Americans must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they shall not be permitted to introduce into Cuba the anti-negro sentiments prevailing in the United States.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Monarchs Felicitate Taft.” For a second I thought it said something else.

Name of the Day -100: newly sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Horace H. Lurton. Another former Confederate soldier. And a Democrat appointed by a Republican president.

The police commissioner of Detroit bans Emma Goldman from giving a speech.

Newly inaugurated NYC mayor William Gaynor’s appointments have been notable for not having been dictated by Tammany but by qualifications or their order on the civil service list. Some of them didn’t really want the jobs they were handed.

18 year old Vernon Plessinger pleaded guilty to opening a railway switch and wrecking a train in Ohio, badly injuring the engineer and fireman. His plan was to loot enough money from dead or injured passengers to take him to the coast so he could join the Navy.

Today -100: January 3, 1910: Of a spirit of revolting partisanship, unfairness and cruelty, getting a drink in Havana, and getting the black out

A meeting was held in Carnegie Hall to protest violations of the rights of striking shirtwaist makers by police and police magistrates who, the meeting’s resolutions declare, “have dealt with the strikers in a spirit of revolting partisanship, unfairness, and cruelty.” The police allow strikers to be assaulted, magistrates (two of whom are singled out by name) convict for “disorderly behavior” with little evidence or even against the evidence and then impose harsh sentences. A box was reserved for the magistrates, all of whom were invited. One actually came; his reaction to the proceedings is not recorded. On the platform were 350 of the “girls” who had been arrested and 20 who had been sent to the workhouse.

A NYT editorial agrees that strikers should not be thrown into the workhouse, although for the rather different reason that the abominably paid shirtwaist-makers might be corrupted by their exposure to prostitutes, “whose sinful occupation often provides what seems like wealth to the workers.”

There is also a pro-vivisection editorial, “Not Hideous When Understood,” which I will refrain from quoting.

The bar of the Plaza Hotel in Havana, described by the NYT as “distinctively an American house,” refused to serve drinks to two black members of the Cuban Congress. They came back with a large crowd of negroes and hilarity ensued. “It is thought that the riot was a concerted plan on the part of the negroes to give expression to the anti-American sentiment in Cuba.”

At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Mr. Q. T. Simpson “declared that it was only a matter of time when the negro of the darkest hue could be made as pink skinned as the caucasian.” Mr. Simpson is a Chicago stock breeder. He declares that through experimentation we “have unearthed a great deal on the nature of chromosomes, the unit of life which gives color. I think we are on the verge of gaining complete control over these chromosomes, and that means the control of color. By a set process of treatment with baths or injections this new tide in the affairs of the black man will be brought about and these color units in the cells of the creature will be attenuated or destroyed.” He is hard at work on the process that will bring this about and make it possible for everyone to get service at the Havana Plaza Hotel. At no point in the article is he quoted as giving a reason why it is desirable to eliminate dark skin; it is just assumed.

Today -100: January 2, 1910: Of nice young fellows, shaking hands, the Dick Law, moral decay in Philadelphia, and the need for speed

Senator Col. James Gordon, the possible Lincoln conspirator, has met President Taft. “He’s a mighty nice young fellow. I like him. I felt just like putting my hand on his shoulder and calling him ‘Bill.’” So Taft can breathe a sigh of relief.

Taft has successfully met the challenge of his first New Year’s Day reception at the White House. He stood in the Blue Room and shook hands, 5,575 of them, from 11:00 to 1:55. That’s 31.8 hands per minute.

Sing Sing abandoned its New Year’s custom of giving each convict a cigar with his noonday meal. Too many prisoners now, can’t afford it.

Headline of the Day -100: “All Militia to Aid Army. Lieut. Col. Weaver Certain that States Will Accept the Dick Law.”

In Philadelphia, 1 divorce suit was filed for every 11 marriage licenses issued in 1909.

Speaking of licenses, the New York Legislature is considering requiring driving licenses. And abolishing speed limits.

Awkward

The WaPo news section reports today that since the Underpants Bomber, Michael Chertoff has been repeatedly telling the media and anyone who will listen that we need to buy lots of full-body scanners for airports, without mentioning his own financial interest – one of the Chertoff Group’s clients is Rapiscan Systems. (I assume the first syllable of Rapiscan is pronounced with a soft a as in rapid, not a hard a as in rape. If I were planning to sell scanners that pictured people naked, I’d have put some more thought into that name.)

And the WaPo op-ed page today has a piece by Michael Chertoff. Guess what he’s calling for.

Today -100: January 1, 1910: Of Martians

Astronomer Percival Lowell tells the general session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the Martians are building new canals. Wonder what they’re saying at the Martian Association for the Advancement of Science.

The hammer is his, oh, you know

Name of the Day: National Security Council Spokesman Mike Hammer (picture below). Every morning he stands in front of the mirror, flips open an imaginary badge, and says in his best Joe Friday voice, “Hammer, National Security.” (Alternatively, he may flash an imaginary badge and say, “It’s Hammer time!”, in which case he should be fired immediately.)

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A second man has plead guilty to uploading the movie “The Love Guru” to the internet before its theatrical release. Another man was previously sentenced to six months in prison. Mike Meyers remains at large.

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There’s been all this talk about how alarms should have gone off when the Underpants Bomber bought a one-way ticket with cash and had no luggage. And they probably should have, though paying in cash and buying one-way tickets are not uncommon in Africa. But what does it say about Al Qaida’s competence and resources? Could they not have sprung for a thrift store suitcase and clothing and a return ticket to make him less conspicuous and increase the chances of success?

Marya Aman

If the NYT search function is correct, today was the first time they ever wrote about Marya Aman, a little Palestinian girl, now 8, who was riding in a car blown up by the an Israeli rocket in May 2006, collateral damage in the assassination on a busy highway of an Islamic Jihad leader on his way to the hospital to see his wife, who had just given birth. Marya is now a quadriplegic, permanently confined to an Israeli hospital (she is also on a respirator). I wrote about Marya in 2007 here, here, and here, but the NYT evidently waited until it could do a sentimental moral-equivalence story about Marya’s friendship with another 8-year-old, an Israeli boy in the same hospital, brain-injured by a Hamas rocket. The Times waits until the 16th paragraph to mention the details of the Israeli attack and that her mother, brother and grandmother were also killed in the blast, and until the 17th to note that Israel tried to deport her to certain death in Gaza. It says that her father still has “no official status.” In 2007 that meant he didn’t dare risk setting foot outside the hospital for fear of being summarily deported; I can’t tell from the NYT story exactly what it means now. Questions like that might have been answered if the NYT didn’t act as if it were the only news source in the world and maybe used Teh Google. At least Marya’s younger brother, also seriously injured by the rocket, is now in the same hospital.