Friday, January 22, 2010
Today -100: January 22, 1910: Of full disclosure and the return of a gunslinger
Taft wants a law requiring congressional candidates to make public their campaign contributions and expenditures. The Chicago Tribune finds that there is “a majority of all members of each House are ready to vote for a bill applying the principle of the President, when it comes up – and that it will never come up.”
Rep. William Cocks of NY is willing to step down in favor of Teddy Roosevelt, if he wants the seat. TR is due to return from slaughtering white rhinos soon.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Free speech isn’t free, and will soon to be a lot more expensive
Our theme for this post: free speech
John McCain issues a not-at-all-stilted statement about his wife’s air-brushed appearance in an anti-Prop 8 ad: “Senator McCain respects the views of members of his family.” You can just hear his teeth grinding.
On the same day the Supreme Court ruled that corporations may “spend freely” to influence elections (when will Goldman Sachs start handing out congressional seats as bonuses?), Hillary Clinton evidently agreed that there was no difference between speech by individuals and speech by corporations. In a speech about the “five key freedoms of the Internet age,” i.e., chiding China on internet censorship, she insisted that, “From an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech.”
However, Trijicon Inc. will no longer put Bible messages on gun sights produced for the military. Evidently the Pentagon’s first reaction to this story was to claim that it was okay, just like printing “In God We Trust” on our currency.
In his partial dissent to one part of the Citizens United v. FEC decision, Clarence Thomas, who stands alone in this, opposes the release of the names of donors to political campaigns, citing the ability of the internet to harass those people. He goes on to cite many alleged instances of death threats and such against supporters of Prop. 8. “I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in ‘core political speech, the “primary object of First Amendment protection.”’” Or, alternately, you could pass laws against death threats, damaged or defaced property, etc. Oh, wait.
John Travolta is sending Scientologist missionaries to Haiti. Haiti is saved!
Today -100: January 21, 1910: Of billy clubs and meat
The new mayor of New York has been investigating cases of policemen beating members of the public with their clubs for no particular reason. Several cops have been suspended, fired or arrested. The NYT editorializes, though, that the police need their clubs, and that many of the stories about the “much-talked-of ‘third degree’” are “gross exaggerations.”
The meat strike has taken hold in St. Louis, and even Germany’s states, expressing their views on tariff negotiations are, in the words of the Headline of the Day -100, “United Against Our Meat.”
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Today -100: January 20, 1910: Of factory fires, aerial warfare, and meat
In a fire at a shirtwaist factory in Philadelphia, five are dead (so far), having leapt from the fourth floor. It would have been much worse but many of the factory’s workers had joined the strike. And of course this fire foreshadows (spoiler alert) one we might be discussing here in a little over a year.
The International Bureau of Peace at Brussels wants to re-adopt the expired provision adopted by the first Hague Peace Conference forbidding the dropping of explosives from balloons during war and extend it to cover planes and dirigibles as well. Good luck with that.
The meat strike is spreading from Cleveland throughout the Mid-West, but an editorial doubts its effect on the price of meat (down 2¢ a pound!) will be permanent. “Of course, the workingmen of Cleveland have no inclination or intention to become vegetarians as a settled policy of life. They want meat, just as all other sane people do”.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Today -100: January 19, 1910: Of suffering executives, meat, Transylvanian wolves, and suffragettes and snow shovels
President Taft addresses the Conference of Governors with complaints about the ability of the executives at state and federal level to get the legislation they want out of insufficiently pliant legislative branches. He called the governors “my dear fellow-executives and fellow-sufferers.” He talked of the need for uniformity in laws between the states, which was a major theme of Taft’s and, coincidentally, of big business.
The meat strike in Cleveland is working. Meat sales have halved, and the price is coming down.
At the big Los Angeles flight meet, French aviator Louis Paulhan set a new cross-country record, covering 47½ miles in a little over an hour.
The front page of the NYT was so much cooler in 1910: “Baron Otto von Orban, a wealthy land owner, while riding through the forest in Transylvania was pursued by a pack of wolves. The wildly excited horse threw him and the wolves tore him to pieces.”
Also on the front page: A cop asked an (unnamed) woman in Burlington, NJ to have the snow on her sidewalk shoveled. She refused until such time as women have the vote.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Light shining out of darkness
Trijicon Inc., which manufactures “brilliant aiming solutions,” i.e., gun sights, and boasts on its webpage of its support of “biblical standards” and the NRA (not necessarily in that order), has been inscribing New Testament references on some of the gun sights it sells the US Army and Marine Corps, such as 2COR4:6, meaning Second Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Because nothing says the light shining out of darkness like a night-vision rifle sight. Iraqi troops are being trained with the, in ABC’s words, “bible-coded sights.” Anyone remember how the Indian Mutiny of 1857 got started?
Today -100: January 18, 1910: Of hysteria, meat, and flimsy blue material
The NYT wishes that Taft would stop his innovation of presenting Congress with draft legislation.
The Czarina of Russia has had an attack of hysteria.
An anti-meat strike has begun against high meat prices in Cleveland.
On the front page this slow news day: Lady Constance Stewart Richardson appeared at the Palace Theatre in London, dancing to the music of Tchaikovsky, Grieg and others, wearing – and this is the news-worthy bit – “a Greek short tunic apparently made of a single piece of flimsy blue material, through which flesh tints were plainly visible. In fact, the costume is described as the most daring ever seen on an English stage.”
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Solidarity – you’re doing it wrong
The Islamic Solidarity Games have been called off because Iran, which was to have hosted, put the words “Persian Gulf” on the medals.
Legitimately chosen
Richard Holbrooke, the Af-Pak special envoy, says that we should all “move on” from the stolen Afghan presidential election and that Karzai is “the legitimately chosen, legitimate leader of this country.” I don’t think that word, “legitimate,” means what you think it means. Also “chosen.” And “leader.” And “country.”
Speaking of legitimately chosen, the book Game Change says that in choosing Sarah Palin, John McCain was “flying by the seat of his pants.” Yeah, the seat of his pants...
Today -100: January 17, 1910: Of government by peers and beer, posthumous stabbings, and going on safari
The British election results are trickling in, showing a victory for the Liberal government. Lloyd George says, “England is declaring emphatically against government by the Peers and beer.”
A rich woman, Laura White, has died, and her will requires that ten days after her death she be stabbed in the heart three times (by a doctor, for a fee of $20). It seems that 45 years ago her fiancé died and when his body had to be removed to another cemetery a few months later, it was found that it had turned on its side, which gave her a life-long fear of being buried alive. Her only living relative is refusing to do it, but the Fidelity Title and Trust Company is insisting that it be done.
Last month I saved a lot of time by not reading any of the stories about Cook having faked reached the North Pole. This month I’m giving a miss to the many stories following TR cutting a bloody swathe through Africa, like this one:
ROOSEVELT AT LION HUNT.; Follows on Horseback as Natives Chase and Spear Beast. [PDF]
NAIROBI, British East Africa, Dec. 11. -- A long stream, of porters came winding across the veldt toward the station at Nairobi, looking for all the world like a string of ants. The stars and stripes was held aloft by a giant native, and the sound of horn...
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Resilient
The NYT, looking for an up side: “But if there is a benefit in the neglect that the Haitian people have experienced for so many years, it is that they are far more resilient than most.” As can be seen in their low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates. Let’s do condescend to the Haitians, NYT.
This morning, Bill Clinton and George Bush were at the White House in their new role doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing for Haiti. Obama noted, “As President, Bill Clinton helped restore democracy in Haiti” and Bush helped restore military dictatorship. Why is Bush involved in this, again? Hasn’t he really done quite enough
Bush said, “I commend the President for his swift and timely response to the disaster.”
He went on, “I am so pleased to answer the call to work alongside President Clinton to mobilize the compassion of the American people.” Trust Bush to make compassion sound scary.
“[Y]et it’s amazing how terrible tragedies can bring out the best of the human spirit. We’ve all seen that firsthand when American citizens responded to the tsunami or to Katrina”.
Haiti may just need even more of that fabled resilience.
Today -100: January 16, 1910: Of election-day rowdiness, hotel suicides, kissing the book, expensive electrocutions, leather whips, and short breeches
The British are voting. Just as crowds were hostile to members of the House of Lords breaking tradition by speaking to election meetings, a crowd at Grimsby, outraged at Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George addressing voters on polling day, which is just not done, forced him to abandon the speech and flee. There were also shouts of “Traitor” and “Pro-Boer,” evidently from people still pissed at his stance during the Boer War a decade earlier. In his speech, LG had actually been refuting Balfour’s alarmism about the German menace, saying that if the German navy tried anything, it would be at the bottom of the sea in a matter of hours.
In Dundee, Winston Churchill, himself a once and future Tory, denounced the Conservatives as “the party of privilege and class.”
Rep. Henry is proposing a constitutional amendment to push the presidential inauguration back from March 4 to the last Thursday in April. The move is supported by D.C. hotels and the like, hoping for more business if there is a prospect of better weather.
In other hotel news, there has been a rash of suicides in Germany lately, possibly by people contemplating the prospects of the Germany Navy against the British Royal Navy, and the Association of Hotel Owners has issued a statement asking potential suicides to please do away with themselves somewhere other than in hotels, because there are really lots of alternative spots where they’d cause less inconvenient to others, and do you know what that does to the reputation of a hotel?
In Britain, witnesses in court have taken to refusing to kiss the Bible on health grounds, and the practice has been abolished altogether in Lambeth (London) Police Court. However, “To the poorer class the old formula seemed to appeal strongly. Remember you have ‘kissed the Book’ was usually the most crushing comment a defendant could make when challenging the statements of a witness.”
The NYC Board of Education bans competition or prizes being offered in high schools without authorization. This is aimed at a $100 prize offered by Mrs. Belmont to the female students at Wadleigh High School for the best essays on women’s suffrage.
New Jersey electrocuted six men in 1909 at a cost of $7,028. The cost of maintaining living prisoners was 33¢ a day.
At another institution of the state of New Jersey, the State Home for Girls in Trenton, it has been revealed that girls and women up to the age of 21 are lashed with leather whips. The NYT believes that whipping has been abolished in every other state. The trustees of the home complain that it has to house insane and feeble-minded girls alongside reformatory cases, that the state gives them no resources but expects them to train the girls, and that it expects them to discipline them without having a “proper house of detention so that we can separate temporarily the vicious girl”.
The shirtwaist strikers in Philadelphia have picked up a sympathizer: Helen Taft, daughter of the president, along with her fellow members of the Bryn Mawr Suffrage Club. After hearing about the conditions of shirtwaist makers, she said, “Really, I’ll never put on a shirtwaist again without a shudder. ... Why, it’s just like reading Nietzsche, isn’t it?” “And then,” the NYT snidely reports, “Miss Taft and her friends boarded a Thirteenth Street car and went to the opera.”
Headline of the Day -100: “King Drops Short Breeches.” Those invited to meet King Edward at Lady Paget’s, the men anyway, have been told they are to wear evening trousers instead of the usual black silk breeches and black silk stockings. “[T]he reason of the innovation is unknown.”
Friday, January 15, 2010
Prince Frankenstein
Headline of the Day (Daily Telegraph): “Aborigines to Ask Prince William to Return Warrior’s Severed Head.” And why do they think he can help them? Because he “has his mother’s heart.”
Today -100: January 15, 1910: Of Hepburns
The NYT prints a letter in support of women’s suffrage by Katharine Houghton Hepburn, a leader of the suffrage movement in Connecticut and the mother of... wait for it... Katharine Hepburn. She writes that women would be more interested in public issues if they had the vote, but instead, “The Government has classed women with the mentally incompetent – those unfit to vote even in a democracy.”
Thursday, January 14, 2010
How can the most fucked-over people on the planet get even more fucked over?
Barack Obama, pledging “a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support recovery in Haiti,” asks for help from Bill Clinton and... George W. Bush. Because when you think swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support recovery from a natural disaster, you think George W. Bush.
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.”
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.”
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