Virginia passes a bunch of pro-gun bills, including allowing them in shelters – that’ll work out well – as well as churches and restaurants that serve alcohol. Also, you can shoot a burglar. And they’re rescinding the ban on buying more than one handgun per month. Which means VA will once again become the number one provider of guns to the gangs of
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Batman needs to kick some Virginian ass again
Virginia passes a bunch of pro-gun bills, including allowing them in shelters – that’ll work out well – as well as churches and restaurants that serve alcohol. Also, you can shoot a burglar. And they’re rescinding the ban on buying more than one handgun per month. Which means VA will once again become the number one provider of guns to the gangs of
Today -100: February 17, 1910: Of being hammered, and 9¢ of waste
Speaking to Civil War veterans, Taft said that the criticism with which he was “hammered” during his first year in office was nothing compared to what Lincoln faced, and anyway every president faced intense criticism, with the possible exception, he added wistfully, of Teddy Roosevelt.
A letter to the Times notes that some contractor pays $1,717 a week to take whatever he wants from the city dumps and sells salvaged junk for $350,000 per year. The letter-writer thinks this proves that all the talk about the high cost of living is nonsense because people are wasting so much stuff. The NYT rather sarcastically headlines this letter “New York Extravagance. Proof That Each of Us Wastes at Least 9 Cents a Year.”
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Today -100: February 16, 1910: Cocaine goes wrong
NY State Senator Timothy D. Sullivan, the corrupt Tammany politician, had a problem with cocaine. Evidently it was used during a minor operation – as an anaesthetic? – went to his heart and nearly killed him. “About once out of 7,000 times,” he said, “cocaine goes wrong.” They all say that.
Monday, February 15, 2010
A major shootout
Another quote from Cheney’s “This Week” interview: “I can remember a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House where we had a major shootout over how this was going to be handled between the Justice Department, that advocated that approach, and many of the rest of us, who wanted to treat it as an intelligence matter, as an act of war with military commissions.”
Maybe a guy who once shot his friend in the face should pick another metaphor than “major shootout.”
A capital crime in Afghanistan: digging.
Headline of the Day
The Independent: “Bishops Meet Pope over Child Abuse Scandals.” Is that like “bishops meet pope over coffee”?
Today -100: February 15, 1910: Of trains and planes and war balloons
Taft tells that delegation of airplane boosters that strict economy means he won’t be endorsing their project for war balloons and military planes this congressional session, but might do so next session.
Not much going on today, although there were I think 3 different stories about train accidents, including a head-on collision between two trains in Georgia which killed eight people and an incident in which a train bumped Andrew Carnegie’s carriage, causing no injuries but upsetting his lunch party (headline: Carnegie Shaken Up) – guess which story, both on the front page, is longer.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A big supporter of waterboarding
Dick Cheney went on “This Week” this morning, because nothing starts off Valentine’s Day right like Dick Cheney, and said about what you’d expect Dick Cheney to say.
If the Obamaites are going to take credit for Iraq, “it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘Thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, were just dead wrong.” Is there such a thing as a healthy dose of Thank you, George Bush?
The Underpants Bomber should be tortured – “the professionals need to make that judgment ... how they can best achieve his cooperation” – and says the Obamaites “didn’t know what to do with the guy.”
“I was a big supporter of waterboarding.”
Thinks we should be threatening Iran with war.
Thinks it’s time to reconsider gays in the military. Then send the gays to invade Iran.
Today -100: February 14, 1910: Of war balloons
The president of the Aero Club will meet the president of the United States to urge the military necessity for airplanes and dirigibles. He will point out that there is a war balloon gap: Germany has 14 military dirigibles and 5 airplanes, France 7 and 29, Russia 3 and 6, England 2 each. The US Army has just 1 dirigible and 2 planes.
Is there a more chilling phrase in the military lexicon than “war balloon?” I think not.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Some good news, at last, for Marya Aman
The Israeli High Court has ordered the government to provide the family of Marya Aman, the 8-year-old girl paralyzed by an Israeli rocket attack (details at my previous post on Marya, with links to earlier posts), with a home near her Jerusalem hospital, and to allow her father to actually leave the hospital without fear of arrest and deportation for the first time in 4 years.
Today -100: February 13, 1910: Of Lincoln, boy highwaymen, aeroplanes and dirigibles, and the physical condition of women
In 1910, Lincoln was still a living memory. At the Graduates’ Club of the City of New York, Lincoln Day speeches were given by people who knew him personally. And the principal speaker at a Springfield, Illinois banquet at which the governor was toastmaster was Booker T. Washington, who recounted that his first knowledge of Lincoln was in a slave cabin, hearing his mother pray that Lincoln might succeed. NYT headline: “Negro at Lincoln’s Home.” Sigh.
A better headline, to a story about a “boy highwayman” who robbed a bank in Highland, CA, then escaped arrest by joining the posse looking for him: “Robber Pursues Himself.”
Airplane factories are having trouble keeping up with demand, with 600 expected to be delivered for the spring season. People wanting immediate delivery are having to pay as much as $8,200. The cheapest, the Demoiselle, is only $1,000.
France has many more planes flying about than the US does, and manufactures more of them.
The British Army has developed a military dirigible.
William Jennings Bryan declares war on liquor. He castigates the shift from locally owned saloons, which the community could pressure, to branch saloons owned by liquor producers, which “adds the evils of the trust system to the evils of the saloon itself. The saloon is constantly used to debauch politics, and to prevent the intelligent consideration of public questions.”
Dr. D.A. Sargent, Direct of Physical Training at Harvard, says that the physical condition of woman has been improving rapidly, but it would be “absurd” to say that she will ever be the physical equal of man. Nor is it desirable, because that would “interfere with her physiological functions”. By “physiological functions,” he of course does not mean respiration, digestion, etc, but rather pumping out babies. However, he does say that women are now far improved from the “weak, hysterical little thing” of a few years ago.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Name (and Title) of the Day
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Igor Judge (presiding
over the case of Binyam Mohamed, tortured by the Americans with the complicity of MI5). That is, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge.
Happy Lincoln’s Birthday
Hope everyone is celebrating in an appropriate manner. Remember: it’s split a rail and free a slave, not vice versa.
Today -100: February 12, 1910: Of $10,000 bills and no taxation without representation
Chicago music teacher Belle Squire will refuse to pay her property tax in protest at the lack of women’s suffrage. She says paying would encourage tyranny.
The Wall Street messenger who lost the $10,000 bill (which still hasn’t been found) is in jail, charged with grand larceny, with a $10,000 bond. Also, it seems that he likes to shoot craps with other messengers.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Morale welfare recreation
Employing a prostitute, and charging the US for her, isn’t among the 10 or even the 100 worst things Blackwater has ever done.
Today -100: February 11, 1910: Of duels, unknown biological laws, hung parliaments, deportations, kids in jail, Japanese exclusion, and horse thieves
A jail guard and a police superintendent fight a duel on the streets of Chattanooga. The former dies, “his body perforated with bullets.”
Dr. James Walsh, Dean of Fordham University Medical School, says that if women’s suffrage were granted, “nature would eliminate form the race all who cared about exercising it in the course of three or four generations. He quoted history in support of his argument, and showed how often women had made a sudden burst to the front in intellectual matters, to fall back again inevitably to domestic duties through the working of some unknown biological law.” And he’s the dean of Fordham University Medical School, so he should know.
In Britain, Asquith is putting together a new cabinet. Given the Liberals’ lack of a parliamentary majority, he will have to attend carefully to the demands of other parties. John Redmond, head of the Irish Nationalists, says he will subordinate every other issue to Home Rule for Ireland: the 72 Nats will vote for Asquith’s budget if they get it, and against it if they don’t. The Labour Party has met and adopted a demand for adult suffrage, which would eliminate the remaining property qualifications for men and extend the franchise to women (this will be unwelcome to most women’s suffragists, who want a stand-alone measure giving women the vote on the same terms as men. Given that relatively few women owned property, this means that what even the most radical suffragettes are calling for is an electorate that would be 90% male.) Interestingly, in 2010, with the polls predicting a similar hung parliament after the next elections, Gordon Brown has developed a sudden interest in parliamentary reform, although in its weakest form, the Alternative Vote.
Headline of the Day 1: An Italian silk finished insists on pleading guilty to assault in the first degree in a NYC court rather than a lesser charge, preferring a long prison sentence here to deportation back to Italy “where he would be under the surveillance of authorities he had found unkind.” Headline: “Prefers Jail to Italy.”
Headline of the Day 2: “10-Year-Old Jailed For Debt.” A Newark boy who failed to pay $95.35 damages awarded against him by a court after a fight with a 16-year-old. However, by evening his lawyer had put up a bond and got him out.
The House Immigration Committee votes unanimously for the Japanese Exclusion Bill.
The NYPD have arrrested the leaders of a gang of horse thieves operating in Manhattan and Long Island. In 1910, Manhattan had horse thieves. And Chattanooga had duels.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
To begrudge or not begrudge
Obama says of multi-million-dollar bonuses paid to bankers, “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.” Speak for yourself, dude, I totally begrudge people success and wealth. How ‘bout you, readers?
Today -100: February 10, 1910: Of the vermiform appendix of football and management 1910-style
With constant talk about changing the rules of football to make it less lethal, the Yale football coach says the forward pass is the “vermiform appendix of football, a totally useless and highly dangerous play.”
One of Andrew Carnegie’s executives, an Alexander R. Peacock (the interwebs say that when Carnegie chose him, he asked, “Peacock, what would you give to be made a millionaire?” and Peacock replied, “A liberal discount for cash, Sir.”), upon finding that some of his employees had embezzled $25,000, “locked himself in a room with each of these men, one at a time, and beat them soundly with his fists. Then he drove them from his office. He declines to prosecute them.”
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Today -100: February 9, 1910: Of the feminine nature
NY state senator Edgar Brackett introduces a bill to put the question of women’s suffrage to a vote of all women over 21. Suffrage groups strongly oppose the idea. A NYT editorial, which isn’t quite sure whether Brackett is pro- or anti-suffrage (anti, I think), notes that such a referendum would have no legal force and that if it failed it wouldn’t stop the suffrage agitation because “Is it not a part of the feminine nature to seek more eagerly and persistently privileges that have been denied?”
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