Still more Sarah Palin (sorry): I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person

North Korea says it will take “all-out strong measures to foil the treacherous, anti-reunification and anti-peace moves of the riff-raffs to bring down the dignified socialist system,” using its hitherto unrevealed “world-level ultra-modern striking force.” So keep an eye out for that.

Speaking of world-level ultra-modern striking forces, Sarah Palin was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox yesterday:

EVEN MORE SO MERGING: WALLACE: How do you see yourself as a member of the Tea Party movement or a member of the Republican Party? PALIN: Oh, I think the two are and should be even more so merging because the Tea Party movement is quite reflective of what the GOP, the planks in the platform are supposed to be about.

A BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT: “When the GOP strays from the planks in the platform, a people’s movement like the Tea Party movement is invited in to kind of hold these politicians accountable again and remind them of their constitutional limits there on the federal level and it’s a beautiful movement.”

SOME KIND OF REPLICATE: “No, I would hope that the Tea Party-ers don’t believe that they need some kind of well-oiled machine, some kind of replicate of the GOP or the Democrat Party and instead they remain a movement of the people uprising and saying, listen to us, we have some common sense solutions that we want our politicians to consider and to implement and this is much bigger than a hockey mom from Wasilla.”

GENERAL PERSONA REPORTING FOR DUTY: “PALIN: [Obama] has some misguided decisions that he is making that he is expecting us to just kind of sit down and shut up and accept, and many of us are not going to sit down and shut up. We’re going to say no, we do not like this... WALLACE: Wait, wait, where’s he saying sit down and shut up? PALIN: In a general just kind of general persona I think that he has when he’s up there at, I’ll call it a lectern. When he is up there and he is telling us basically, I know best, my people here in the White House know best, and we are going to tell you that yes, you do want this essentially nationalized health care system and we’re saying, no, we don’t.”

She explained that she wants to remove women’s right to choose in order to empower women: “I want to empower women though. I -- I want -- and -- and if Trigg is an example, and if Pam Tebow’s son, Tim Tebow is an example of the potential for every human life, then so be it. Let Trigg be that example. I want women to know that they are strong enough, and they are smart enough to be able to do many things at once -- including carrying a child.”

I’M LIKE NO: On resigning as governor: “And we said, ‘We’re going to get out there, and we're going to fight for Alaska’s issues,’ which usually involve energy independence. We’re going to fight for these issues on a different plane. And we’re not going to let you guys win. ... look it, I’m sitting here talking to Chris Wallace today. I think some of them are going, ‘Dang, we thought she’d sit down and shut up after we tried to do to her what we tried.’” ... So in that last -- in that lame duck session I’m like no.”

WHAT SHE’S NOT ONE TO BE: “Oh, you know, Rahm Emanuel, I think he had some indecent and insensitive ways of being, including his language. ... I’m not politically correct. I am not one to be a word police.” Although she does seem to have tasered a lot of words.

AND HEAVEN FORFEND SARAH EVER BE ABSURD: On running for president in 2012: “I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country.”

PLAYING THE WAR CARD: On how Obama might win re-election: “Say he played, and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be re-elected.”

TOO LATE: “WALLACE: What role do you want to play in the country’s future? PALIN: First and foremost I want to be a good mom.”

WHAT SHE’S NEVER GOING TO PRETEND LIKE: “And then I do want to be a voice for some common-sense solutions. I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I’m not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I’m going to fight the elitist because for too often and for too long now, I think the elitists have tried to make people like me and people in the heartland of America, feel like we just don’t get it and big government is just going to have to take care of us.” Heaven forfend our Sarah ever feel like she just doesn’t get it.

Today -100: February 8, 1910: Of really old beef, corsets, and a loving sort of whipping

The House committee investigating the high cost of food and the activities of the beef trust, which led to the meat strike, hears from a D.C. food inspector that Teddy Roosevelt liked to keep his beef aging until it was ready to fall to pieces before serving it. Evidently rich people liked really old, virtually rancid beef.

Dr. R. W. Lovett, professor in orthopedics at the Harvard Medical School, says that women should wear corsets.

U.S. Commissioner of Education Elmer Ellsworth Brown says “It strikes me that it is better to have a boy whipped than to let him go straight to the devil.” However, “There are cases, undoubtedly, where a loving sort of a whipping has shunted a boy off the downward track, but it is pretty hard to tell in any given case whether it will have that effect or not, and there are so many evils attending that form of punishment that it seems to be slowly dying out in this country.”

More Sarah Palin: talk to the hand

More from Palin’s tea party convention speech.

THINK OF THAT: “Do you love your freedom? (Cheers, applause.) If you love your freedom, think of that.”

REAL PEOPLE, NOT THOSE FAKE PEOPLE: “I look forward to attending more tea party events in the near future. It is just so inspiring to see real people, not politicos, not inside-the-Beltway professionals, come out and stand up and speak out for common-sense conservative principles.”

WE’RE TIRED, AND IT HURTS OUR NECK: “We’ve gotten tired now of looking backward. We want to look forward.”

“I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by any one leader or politician. The tea party movement is not a top-down operation. ...This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any king or queen of a tea party.” In other words, please don’t depend on me to do any actual leading, I’d just abdicate half-way through my term of office.

“[W]e should acknowledge that on Christmas Day, the system did not work. Abdulmutallab passed through airport security with a bomb...” How long do you think it took her to memorize “Abdulmutallab”? Or did she write it on one of her body parts?


She complained that Abdulmutallab was mirandized. “The protections provided, thanks to you, sir, we’re going to bestow them on a terrorist who hates our Constitution and fights to destroy our Constitution and our country? This makes no sense because we have a choice in how we’re going to deal with the terrorists. We don’t have to go down that road.” That awful, awful constitutional road.

Did you know that the Underpants Bomber was entirely the fault of Barack Obama? It’s true: “The events surrounding the Christmas Day plot reflect the kind of thinking that led to September 11th. The threat then, as the USS Cole was attacked, our embassies were attacked, it was treated like an international crime spree, not like an act of war. We’re seeing that mind-set again settle into Washington.”

WHAT WE NEED: “We need a foreign policy that distinguishes America’s friends from her enemies”,

DISSIN’ THE TENTH: “They were going to disrespect the 10th Amendment of our Constitution by essentially bribing us with, take this federal money, and then we’re going to be able to mandate a few more things on you, though.”

NOPE, NO IRONY HERE: “And underemployment now is 16.5 percent. We’ve got all these people who have just kind of given up right now”.

LAME DR. SEUSS: “Is that hope? Nope! It’s not hope!” said the dope.

“When our families, when our small businesses, we start running our finances into the red, what do we do? We tighten our belts, and we cut back budgets. Isn’t that what we teach our children, to live within our means?” Well it sure isn’t “use a condom.”

MORE LAME DR. SEUSS: “So what we’ve got to do is ax that plan for cap and tax”.

WHAT SHE SPENT THE LAST YEAR DOING: “Now, like a lot of you perhaps, I spent the last year thinking how to best serve. How can I help our country? How can I make sure that I, that you, that we’re in a position of nobody being able to succeed when they try to tell us to sit down and shut up, how can we best serve?”

“And you don’t need a proclaimed leader, as if we’re all just a bunch of sheep and we’re looking for a leader to progress this movement.”


NO SHEDDING ON THE COUCH: “I do believe that God shed his grace on thee.”

In the Q&A she referred to the “lame-stream media.”

BOTTOM LINE: “And when it comes to national security, as I ratchet down the message on national security, it’s easy to just kind of sum it up by repeating Ronald Reagan when he talked about the Cold War. And we can apply this now to our war on terrorism. You know, bottom line, we win, they lose. We do all that we can to win.” I wonder why no one ever thought of winning before?

Tea and mooseburgers: How’s that hope-y, change-y stuff workin’ out for you?

Sarah Palin spoke at the tea party convention.

OKAY, HOW’S THAT DOPEY, DERANGE-Y STUFF WORKING OUT FOR YOU? “How’s that hope-y, change-y stuff workin’ out for you?”

LIKE, DID YA EVER NOTICE THAT DOG SPELLED BACKWARDS IS GOD? “Let us not get bogged down in the small squabbles. Let us get caught up in the big ideas.”



LECTERNS ARE ENDANGERING AMERICA! LECTERNS ARE EMBOLDENING THE TERRORISTS! “Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risk because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.” I love the airy dismissal of “mere” law enforcement, and the suggestion that the way we “look at this” should be determined by radical Islamic extremists.

AND THEN MAYBE THE DESERT MENU: “America is ready for another revolution”. She also called Scott Brown’s election a “chowder revolution.”


BUT ONLY IF PEOPLE WHO ARE SEEKING FREEDOM FROM REPRESSIVE REGIMES ARE AS CONFUSED AS SARAH IS: “Around the world, people who are seeking freedom from repressive regimes wonder if Alaska is still that beacon of hope for their cause.”

GROUND-UP BEEF (OR MOOSE): “The tea party movement is not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-up call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way that they’re doing business, and that’s beautiful”.

SO TIRED: “We are just so tired of hearing the talk, talk, talk.” Says the person giving a speech, who quit her job in order to go on tv and talk.

WHAT SARAH WILL DO: “I will live, I will die for the people of America.” She did not say how she was planning to do that. Suggestions on how Sarah can die for the people of America in comments.


The national debt “should tick us off.”

WHAT THE FUTURE OF POLITICS IS: “The tea party movement is the future of politics”.

DON’T FAKE IT: “I would not be making the promises of bipartisanship if the promises can’t be fulfilled. Don’t fake it, don’t pretend that you want to work with the other party on [health care] because distrust is building and that makes us distrust all the decisions coming out of Washington and it makes us a less secure nation”. The logic is impeccable.


(Update: I’ve got the transcript now. More here.)

Today -100: February 7, 1910: Of shirtwaist strikers, gubernatorial candidates, colored meetings, Sioux in Central America, and veeps and popes

The Philadelphia shirtwaist strike is over. Wages will be decided by a shop committee, with binding arbitration in case of disagreement with the employers; a 52½-hour work week. No recognition of the union. The NYT hasn’t mentioned the NY strike in quite a while; I’m assuming it petered out.

Marilla Ricker (1840-1920), the first woman lawyer in New Hampshire, has announced that she is running for governor of the state (no, women did not have the vote in NH).

Mrs. Alva Belmont, president of the Political Equality Association, speaking at a presumably black Baptist church, invites black supporters of women’s suffragists to join the Association. The NYT says this was the first “colored meeting” in support of women’s suffrage ever held in NYC.

Chief Little Bison visited Nicaragua, where he hopes to relocate 8,000 Sioux from the South Dakota reservation, but President Madriz is worried that it’s some sort of plot with the insurgents under Gen. Estrada.

Former Vice President Fairbanks is visiting Italy. The pope cancels a scheduled meeting with him because he also planned to speak in the American Methodist Church in Rome. The pope objects to Methodists proselytizing among Italian Catholics.

Vulnerable

WaPo headline: “U.S. Outpost in Afghanistan Was Left Vulnerable to Attack, Inquiry Finds.” So the outpost that was attacked was vulnerable to attack, you say? Good job, military inquiry!

Today -100: February 6, 1910: Of Poles, suffragette militancy, patents, lost money, and medical risks

President Taft has promised to attend the American-Polish national congress in May, and Germany is pissed off. Rather like China complaining about Obama meeting the Dalai Lama. The Conservative Post (Berlin) says this would be a deliberate and unfriendly challenge to Germany, Russia and Austria, the countries which carved up Poland.

British suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst tells the NYT that the Women’s Social and Political Union will declare a truce in militant tactics as an experiment to see whether the new cabinet and the new Parliament will “yield to peaceful agitation”. She thinks that the loss of Asquith’s majority may make him more amenable to pressure (Spoiler alert: no it won’t).

In 1909, 37,261 patents were issued. Of those, 5,232 went to New Yorkers, the most of any state. 38 went to Nevada.

A messenger boy for the stock exchange company Hornblower & Weeks lost a $10,000 bill. He stopped to show it to his friends and it disappeared.

Dr. William Lawrence Woodruff, the author of Therapeutics of Vibration: The Healing of the Sick, an Exact Science, who believed in “the simple life and Spartan methods of raising children” and “first practiced his theories on his infant children, who thrive on coarse foods and ice baths and the wearing of only a single garment even in the coldest weather,” has died. A fat patient fell on him.

Hunkering

WaPo headline: “Snowstorm’s Intensity Has D.C. Region Hunkering Down.” Since it’s D.C., I suspect a euphemism.

CONTEST: What does it mean for residents of Washington D.C. to “hunker down?”

Today -100: February 5, 1910: Of British elections

Nothing of interest in the NYT today, so I’ll backtrack to the British general election, which I think is finally finished. In those days voting didn’t take place in one day but over a couple of weeks – someone could lose in one constituency, then stand again somewhere else in the same general election. The result was a near exact split between Conservatives and Liberals, 273 to 275, but with the Liberal government firmly in control of Parliament with the support of the Irish Nationalists (82) and Labour (40, up from just 2 in 1900 and 30 in 1906). But the closeness between the two major parties gave the heavily Conservative House of Lords the excuse to continue obstructing implementation of the Liberal platform, leading to another “peers versus the people” election in December.

Today -100: February 4, 1910: Of negroes and Scots, and substitutes

Thomas Watson, twice the Populist candidate for president, in that party’s declining years, fiercely criticizes Andrew Carnegie for saying that “the lowest negro of the South is more advanced than were my ancestors in Scotland 200 years ago.” Sez Watson, “Every intelligent man knows that in saying what he did about the Scotch, he lied, and in blarneying the Afro-Americans he despicably lowered himself: at the same time he insulted – fragrantly – grossly – infamously – every man that has in his veins the blood of old Scotland.”

One of the many well-off Northerners who paid a substitute to fight for them in the Civil War was one Abraham Lincoln. A statue to his substitute, J. Summerfield Staples, who died 10 years before, has been proposed for his home town of Stroudsburg, PA.

Then why are they grunting and pounding the ground?

Quote of the Day: An AP article about the opinions of military personnel about gays in the military quotes an ex-infantry sergeant: “These are grunts, ground-pounding guys. They’re not gonna be thinking, I want to have a homosexual.”

Today -100: February 3, 1910: Of big thigh bones and awkward reunions

Republican congresscritters agree with President Taft on a legislative program: statehood for Arizona and New Mexico, an appointed legislative council for Alaska, postal savings banks, creating a court of commerce, and something I don’t quite understand about conservation of public lands. The Republicans seem united despite strong disagreements within the party, with the “insurgents” trying to oust or at least reduce the powers of Speaker of the House Joe Cannon.

Headline of the Day -100: “Biggest Thigh Bone Found.” Turns out to be one of a set of dinosaur bones from Tanganyika and not, as you might have expected, William Howard Taft’s.

In Indiana a woman runs into her husband, who she had believed was killed in the Civil War. She sold the house moved away, so he could not find her when he came home from war. She remarried 40 years ago, presumably bigamously, but her second husband died 10 months ago. She will now re-marry her first husband.

Good evening

The caption on this picture reads “Vatican City: A dove flies back into Pope Benedict XVI’s apartment after he released it.”


Evidently papal events are now based on Alfred Hitchcock movies. Which sort of explains why Pope John Paul II’s stuffed corpse is propped up on a throne in the basement of the Vatican.

CONTEST: Anyone have a papal “Strangers on a Train” joke? Rear Window? North by Northwest?

Today -100: February 2, 1910: Of unexpected senators, unconstitutional taxes, retaliatory car licenses, and how to end war

Names of the Day -100: Senator Fountain Land Thompson of North Dakota has resigned after less than two months in office following the death of the previous senator. This was news in D.C., which only found out about the doings in ND when his successor showed up, vouched for by the other ND senator, a Porter J. McCumber. Senators were still elected by state legislatures, but here’s something I didn’t know: the dates of those elections weren’t uniform. ND, for example, became a state in 1899, so McCumber, chosen then, was re-elected by the Legislature in 1905 and 1911.

Some corporations will refuse to file returns required by the corporation tax law, believing the law to be unconstitutional (the Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge in March). They fear that the real purpose of the law is not collecting the 1% tax, but collecting the information about the corporations from their returns.

Car license wars: New Jersey does not recognize car licenses from other states, so people whose cars are registered elsewhere have to pay additional fees before they can drive them in Joisey. Since other states don’t do this, there is an incentive for car owners in nearby states to register in NJ and only have to pay one fee. So nearly half the 34,000 cars registered in NJ belong to New Yorkers. The New York Legislature is about to consider a retaliatory measure, requiring licenses for people from states that do not recognize non-resident licenses. Penn. & Delaware already have such laws.

A Suffrage Settlement House opens in Harlem, financed by Mrs. Belmont. One of the speakers was Fanny Villard, who the NYT fails to mention was the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison. She said that she was the 2nd largest taxpayer in Dobbs Ferry, NY, but had no power to regulate or shut down its 26 saloons. And if women had the vote there would be no need of an army or navy, because the influence of women would make war unnecessary.

The most transparent White House in history

Obama had a “YouTube interview” today.

HE’S GOT A CERTIFICATE! “I would say that we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent White House in history.”

YOU’D THINK THOMAS JEFFERSON WOULD HAVE HAD THAT ON JEFFERƒON.GOV, BUT EVIDENTLY NOT: “We are the first White House since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the White House online so that you can look it up.”

SEE, AND YOU THOUGHT OBAMA DIDN’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING: “Well, I’m a big believer in net neutrality.”

ALTHOUGH GOD KNOWS WE’RE TRYING: “Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent Muslims of any entity out there.” Israel is also trying pretty hard. Actually, the competition to be the biggest killer of innocent Muslims is rather fierce.

NOT ACTUALLY IN YEMEN AND PAKISTAN, JUST IN PLACES LIKE THEM: “We have to project economically, working in country like a Yemen, that is extraordinarily poor, to make sure that young people there have opportunity. The same is true in a place like Pakistan.”

Today -100: February 1, 1910: Of the dignity paid by Americans to high office, and getting gay

Taft tells reporters that he enjoys strolling around D.C., looking in the shop windows, and “seeing some person give him a long look and then look away, while the next person would give a second look, then poke his companion in the ribs, ‘and in the dignity paid by Americans to high office, call out, “Hello, Taft!”’”

A NYT editorial says “We should advise our friends the protectionists not to ‘get gay’ over the statistics that show that more goods have come in free under the Aldrich tariff than under any other, and rather more than the total of dutiable goods.” So don’t get gay over that.

I’ve been skipping the many NYT stories about flooding in Paris, but there’s a new book, “Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910,” (see the NYT Book Review review of it).

God-given right to carry

Quote of the Day: Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, who wants to legalize the carrying of concealed firearms without a permit, says with the current law, “All we’re doing is handcuffing good people, restricting their constitutional, God-given right to carry and perhaps their ability to defend their families.”

Today -100: January 31, 1910: Of expensive bibles, slavery in Texas, train crashes, and corn mush

The price of Bibles is about to go up.

Federal agents have been investigating cotton plantations in Texas, where 2,000+ people – white as well as negro, the NYT reports breathlessly – have been held in a state of peonage after being abducted by force.

A single Pennsylvania train manages to get into two separate accidents, killing a husband and wife at a crossing, and hitting a car a few miles later, throwing it into the air and killing two passengers.

Harvard Prof. Franklin White, an expert on dietetics, says that workingmen could easily live on just 20¢ a day worth of food. For example, a nice meal of corn mush flavored with margarine and some cheap syrup would only cost 4¢ and fuel a day of hard labor. Or how about a potato flavored with smoked herring. Yum.

Political steel-cage match

We knew there’d be a problem with the trial of Scott Roeder when we heard that Judge Warren Wilbert paid for an election ad in the Kansans for Life newsletter in 2008. Turns out he’s as competent as he is ethical. First he allows Roeder to premise his entire defense on the argument that Dr. Tiller needed killing, then, evidently realizing that there was no basis in law for such an argument, took away the jury’s option of convicting for voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. While that was (at last) the right decision legally, the whole judicial bait and switch undermined Roeder to the point where the conviction might well be, and probably should, overturned. He was allowed to base his whole defense on a strategy aimed at securing a manslaughter verdict, effectively putting on no defense against first degree. He might, for example, not have admitted that he had considered chopping off Tiller’s arms with a sword rather than killing him, but realized that he would still be able to teach others abortion procedures. This idiot judge gave Roeder a platform, but didn’t give him a fair trial.

Obama told the House Republicans, “They didn’t send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive.” Well, yeah, but only because we didn’t know that option was available. Put the “Political Steel-Cage Match To See Who Comes Out Alive Act of 2010” on the ballot and see what happens.

Today -100: January 30, 1910: Of kaisers, Serbia, and odious jobs

Kaiser Wilhelm’s 51st birthday, “and the entire Fatherland song for twenty-four hours the patriotic refrain of ‘Hoch der Kaiser.’” (which I believe translates literally as “phlegm-like noise for the emperor.”)

An article by Jacques Bardoux in the French newspaper L’Opinion accuses Austria and Germany of conspiring in a scheme for the former to annex Serbia.

Lady Constance Lytton describes forcible feeding at length: “It was a living nightmare of pain, horror, and revolting degradation. The sensation is that of being strangled and suffocated by the thrusting down of a large rubber tube which arouses great irritation in the throat and nausea in the stomach. ... There is also a feeling of complete helplessness, as of an animal in a trap”. “After the first time the doctor as he left me gave me a slap on the cheek, not violently, but apparently to express his contemptuous disapproval. I said to him the next day: ‘Unless you consider it part of your duty, would you please not strike me when you have finished your odious job?’”

In 2010, prisoners at Guantanamo are being forcibly fed three times a day, some of them for several years now.