Criminal Charge of the Day, Chinese Version

Chinese people have been lighting candles and leaving flowers outside Google’s Beijing hq. Evidently to do so is to commit the crime of “illegal flower donation.”

Silent

Two things have rendered me speechless by their sheer overwhelming, astonishing awfulness: the earthquake in Haiti, and the decision by the judge in the trial of Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion loon who assassinated Dr. Tiller, that he can argue that Tiller needed killing.

Today -100: January 14, 1910: Of chairwomen and the palmiest days of sacerdotal ambiguity

In Philadelphia as in NY, the shirtwaist strike is being supported by women suffragists, who are joining picket lines and going bail for arrested picketers.

A letter (I wonder, by the way, when the NYT stopped printing anonymous letters) congratulates the paper on being the first to use the term “chairwoman,” in an article about a suffrage meeting.

Prime Minister Asquith, in one of his last speeches before the British general election, accuses opposition leader Arthur Balfour of being wishy-washy about tariff reform (protectionism), which is popular with some parts of the Conservative Party but not so much with the general public, which doesn’t want to see food prices rise. At least I think that’s what Asquith is saying: “The oracle has spoken [referring to Balfour’s speech]. What is its message? Not Delphi or Dodona in the palmiest days of sacerdotal ambiguity ever gave forth a more uncertain sound.”

The NYT disparages the Liberals’ social policies, claiming that Britain is “overtaxed to pay old-age pensions” and can’t afford the proposed system of unemployment insurance (being superintended for the moment by Winston Churchill, of all people, at the Board of Trade). The NYT says that Asquith rules a coalition of “Socialists, laborites and Irish Nationalists. No promise has yet been made to provide husbands for suffragettes.” The editorial also refers, somewhat more fairly, to “the obviously insincere Liberal promise of home rule for Ireland.”

Today -100: January 13, 1910: Of speedsters, white slaves and dead heads

Bills in the NY Assembly would require autoists to have driver’s licenses and set speed limits of 15 mph city, 25 in outlying areas of cities, and 30 in the country. A second bill proposes lower speed limits.

The House passes the Mann Act.

Headline of the Day -100: “Charles Head Falls Dead.”

Getting better

Headline of the Day: For weeks, Nigerians have been demanding that their president make some sort of public appearance. Umaru Yar’Adua has been getting medical treatment for a heart condition in Saudi Arabia since November. Today he re-emerged, giving a radio interview to the BBC. The London Times headline: “I’m Not Dead, I’m Getting Better’ Nigerian President Tells People Back Home.” For the record, that’s not a direct quote from Yar’Adua (although he did say “I’m getting better), that’s someone trying to sneak in a Monty Python reference.

Misc

Readers in Colorado: Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is considering running for governor. He should be encouraged, because of the name. Say it with me: Hickenlooper Hickenlooper Hickenlooper.

Why the Prop 8 trial needs to be on YouTube: Anti-equality lawyer questions Harvard history professor Nancy Cott about whether Jesus Christ advocated monogamy.

Diplomacy, Avigdor Lieberman style

In response to criticism by the Turkish prime minister of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel said that “The Turks are the last ones who can preach morality to Israel” and the Israeli Foreign Ministry gave the Turkish ambassador a lower seat than Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon during a meeting which Israel called in order to complain about a Turkish television drama that portrayed members of the Shin Beth as child kidnappers. At the pre-meeting photo op Ayalon told the photographers, in Hebrew so that the ambassador wouldn’t understand, “Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair and we are in the higher ones, that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling.”


Turkey called Lieberman and his deputy “adolescent youths.” Lieberman is trying to humiliate not only Turkey but also Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who stopped Ariel University Center, located in the West Bank settlement where Lieberman lives, being accredited as a university. Lieberman wants to get a scheduled trip by Barak to Turkey canceled.

News from that liberal gay bastion, Salt Lake City

Utah state Rep. Christine Johnson, an out lesbian who represents Salt Lake City, is pregnant, acting as surrogate to a gay male couple prohibited from adopting under Utah law.

Today -100: January 12, 1910: Of Ballinger and Pinchot

A slow news day, so it’s time for some catch-up. The intra-mural fight in the Republican Party is growing, with Taft and Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon and their conservative allies battling the progressive Republican followers of Roosevelt. The current battle field is an investigation into relations between the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service. When he came into office, Taft reversed Roosevelt’s order that public lands in Wyoming and Montana from which water-power could be exploited not be sold. Gifford Pinchot, the head of the Forest Service since TR created it in 1905, accused Taft’s Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger of favoring certain corporations in those sales (there’s another land scandal in Alaska). Taft fired Pinchot a week ago (-100). The House will investigate the controversy, but the “insurgent” Republicans allied with Democrats to strip Speaker Cannon of the power to appoint all the members of the investigating committee.

Foxy as a Crazy

Sarah “It’s God’s Plan” Palin signs on with Fox News. Boy, didn’t see that one coming.

CONTEST: Name her tv show. You know what she named her kids, so she clearly needs all the help she can get. Me first: “Too, Also.” “In What Respect, Charlie?” “The Tina Fey Can Just Go To Hell Hour.”

(Update: OK, Twitter got there first. They’ve got: Fancy Pundit Talkin’, Punditz, Are You Smarter Than a Tea Bagger?, The Rich Lowry is Touching Himself Hour, This Wink with Sarah Palin, You Don’t Betcha, Quittin’ Time.)

Happy 8th Birthday, Guantanamo Gulag!

And no one knows how to throw an appropriate party like Jon Stewart: tonight, he’s interviewing John Yoo on the Daily Show.

Criminal Charge of the Day, Iranian Edition

Several protesters have been charged with the capital crime of “warring against God” (moharebeh).

Today -100: January 11, 1910: Of patriotic butting in and contrary Marys

The widow of the recently deceased Rep. James M. Griggs (D-Georgia) has done what the NYT calls “something new in American political history,” naming her personal choice to succeed her husband in the special election, a Mr. McIntosh. While the paper says her action is not to be condemned on account of its unusualness, they do subtly imply, less than a week after her husband’s death, that she just wants to get into McIntosh’s pants: “We are not informed as to whether or not Mr. McIntosh is an eligible bachelor or widower, and we should courteously decline to make use of any information on that point if we possessed it. The practice of seeking a purely personal motive for a public action that attracts notice is reprehensible. ... But the widow’s candidate ought to have the support of the women folks, who must approve of her patriotic butting in, and the women of Georgia know how to influence voters.”

But evidently not enough, because (spoiler alert!), the election was actually won by a Mr. Seaborn Roddenbery,who spent the next three years, until he too died in office, working for a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage.

Nursery maids at the Nursery and Child’s Hospital (these are essentially interns, who will go on to become nursemaids in private homes) have gone on strike, demanding to be called “Miss” Whatever Their Name Is instead of just by their first name. The superintendent says they will not be allowed back “unless they get that foolishness out of their heads. ... We don’t want any contrary Marys here.”

An article the next day explains that nursemaids are paid about ¼ of what proper nurses, who are called Miss or Mrs., receive, and eat with the servants rather than with the family. Also, nurses’ aprons cover from the waist down, nursemaids’ extend to the shoulders.

Criminal Charge of the Day

The guy who caused all the trouble at Newark Airport by kissing his girlfriend is being charged with “defiant trespass.”

Today -100: January 10, 1910: Of footpads and impartial judges

Headline of the Day -100: “FOOTPADS ATTACK A BOY.” Evidently in 1910 they still had “footpads” in New Jersey.

The London Times reports on another election meeting disturbance. A woman was charged with being drunk and disturbing a Liberal meeting. The judge asked her what she objected to, adding, “You may be right, and if you are I’ll let you go.” Free trade, she said. He let her go.

Today -100: January 9, 1910: Of snuff films and opera

In France, someone with a movie camera filmed a guillotining of a child murderer, but the police seized the film and arrested the camera-man.

Headline of the Day -100: “Hotel Guests Demand Opera.”

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.