Disclose

Um, always?

Ray’s Hell Burger is other people

I hear the latest DVD of Dr. Caligari, the German expressionist classic about a deranged mesmerist who hypnotizes his assistant into killing on his behalf, is much more complete than earlier versions.

Anyway, Obama took Dmitri Medvedev to Ray’s Hell Burger for lunch yesterday. Medvedev had a Coke, so America wins. Wait, he and Obama shared an order of fries, so socialism wins. Oh noes!

CAPTION CONTEST:


(P.S. I’m also told that the restored material in the recent re-release of Metropolis changes your perspective on the film entirely.)

Today -100: June 25, 1910: What’ll we do with a problem like Arizona?

Oklahoma Sen. Thomas Gore claims in the Senate that he and a congresscritter from OK were offered large bribes to drop legislation that would limit the fees lawyers would receive for services in selling off lands of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians (estimated at $3 million to $16m, in 1910 dollars) (lands with oil or coal under them). Gore says congresscritters and former congresscritters have financial interests in the contracts.

The new almost-state Arizona has a population of only 200,000, 60% of whom are “of Mexican blood, and frequently ignorant of the English language.” The NYT concludes, “Arizona, it will be seen, is something of a problem at the very outset.”

The dirigible LZ 7 Deutschland’s second commercial flight carries 32 passengers and crew, the most ever flown in a dirigible. It ran into a storm, but rode it out. The Deutschland is sold out for its next week of scheduled flights, and the promoters are sure it will pay for itself.

I predict the LZ 7 Deutschland will carry passengers for a long, long time.

Name of the Day -100: Hootookatoo, a Tibetan high priest ordered executed by the Dalai Lama (for attempting to assassinate him – with sorcery) 3 years ago. China (which deposed the DL and occupied Tibet), has issued a royal edict ordering Hootookatoo reincarnated (can they do that?)

Headline of the Day -100: “Tainted Beef in Army Manoeuvres.” Scary.

Today -100: June 24, 1910: Of accomplishing all one’s goals

Taft brags that just 1/3 into his term, he has fulfilled all his election pledges. I guess he can spend the rest of his term at home in Ohio clearing brush, or whatever one does in Ohio.

Taft rejects an attempt to insert into a bill a provision banning the Justice Dept using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against unions.

Korea “agrees” to give Japan control over its police system.

Listen

AP: “New Gulf Spill Cleanup Head Says Job Is to Listen.” And what will Tony Hayward’s replacement, Bob Dudley, hear? Glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug....

But I won’t tolerate division

Obama fired Gen. Stanley “Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Us Into” McChrystal and replaced him with (sigh) David Petraeus. Then he went into the Rose Garden with Robert Gates, Col. Combover, the alliterative Mike Mullen, and Vice President Bite Me, and made a statement.


It’s not about McChrystal McCritizing him: “as Commander-in-Chief, I believe this decision is necessary to hold ourselves accountable to standards that are at the core of our democracy.” No fat chicks? No shirt no shoes no service?

WHAT HE WON’T TOLERATE: “I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division.” Especially long division. He really does get more like Bush every day.


WHAT WE NEED TO REMEMBER: “We need to remember what this is all about. Our nation is at war.” Hands up everyone who’d forgotten.

WHAT WE FACE: “We face a very tough fight in Afghanistan. But Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks. We persist and we persevere.” We perspire and we perseverate. We persiflage and we...

HE’S ALWAYS SO CONCERNED THAT WE’RE GOING TO MAKE A MISTAKE: “So make no mistake: We have a clear goal.”


SO THEY ARE WINNING: “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum.”

JUST LIKE WHEN I REPLACED GEORGE BUSH AND NOT A FUCKING THING CHANGED: “Let me say to the American people, this is a change in personnel but it is not a change in policy.”

He will not tolerate division, or any other hand position than in front of stomach, fingers interlocked
By the way, last night Obama hosted an LGBT Pride Month event at the White House and there’s not a single funny picture of it.

Today -100: June 23, 1910: Of dirigibles, savings, duels and... Throop?

In Germany, the very first passenger flight by an airship, the LZ 7 Deutschland, piloted by Count Zeppelin with 12 passengers and a buffet, flew the 250 miles from Friedrichschafen to Düsseldorf in 9 hours (their luggage went to Munich) (kidding!).

I predict the LZ 7 Deutschland will carry passengers for a long, long time.


The Postal Bank Bill passes, allowing people to open savings accounts under $500 (later raised) at post offices, at 2% interest, with deposits guaranteed by the government. The system existed until 1967. This was a Republican bill, opposed by Democrats and Robert La Follette. I’m not really sure why, perhaps because the bill was intended to stave off regulation and deposit guarantees for regular banks. The POs will re-deposit most of the funds in local banks, to keep the money in the local community (up to 30% may be put in government securities). Funds might also be invested in the Panama Canal, which is soaking up a lot of the federal budget.

A couple of Syrians fought a duel in Battery Park. One was shot in the hip.

Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. and his new wife, looking for privacy (and not getting it) (reporters went knocking on the hotel door of newlyweds, how tacky is that?) checked into a hotel in Chicago under an alias: William Throop Rogers.

Throop?

Today -100: June 22, 1910: Of flatties, aged colored women, and rheumatic justices

NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor orders the plainclothes division of the NYPD abolished, putting 203 cops back into uniform – and reassigning them to different precincts. Gaynor believes the plainclothesmen were corrupt, and that they were used by captains to collect money in protection rackets (especially from saloons).

The city of Annapolis voted on a local bond measure. Eligible voters included all taxpayers, including women and even, the NYT breathlessly reports, an “aged colored woman.”

Congress passes an act to get rid of ailing (rheumatism) Supreme Court Justice William Henry Moody (perhaps best known as a prosecutor on the Lizzie Borden case), by giving him a full pension although he’s only 56 and only served 3½ years (and he hasn’t actually showed up at work in over a year). Normally, a full pension would come only after reaching 70 years of age and serving 10 years.

Today -100: June 21, 1910: Of legislation, universal peace, revolution averted, and impure blood

The Congressional session is nearing its end. Taft has moved much of his agenda through a Republican Congress with considerable success, having passed his Railroad Bill (substantially rewritten by the Republican “insurgents”), statehood for New Mexico and Arizona (he thinks they will vote Republican in gratitude), and is on course with his Conservation Bill, though having some trouble with his Postal Savings Bank Bill.

The House passed a bill creating a Peace Commission, appointed by the president, to “consider the expediency of utilizing existing international agencies for the purpose of limiting the armaments of the nations of the world by international agreement, and of constituting the combined navies of the world an international force for the preservation of universal peace”. Taft never actually appointed the commission. In his next State of the Union Address in December, Taft explained that that was because he was waiting to hear back from foreign governments. And waiting...

The Mexican government has seized a cache of arms, arrested opposition leaders and declared martial law on the border regions with the US, thus averting any chance of a revolution. This “revolution” was evidently to take the form of going to the polls on election day (June 26) and demanding to be allowed to vote.

A NYT editorial explains why all those reports and rumors about Kaiser Wilhelm’s knee are actually important: “the reputed impurity of the Hohenzollern blood.”

Contest: Name that yacht

As you all know, BP CEO Tony Hayward, that Wooster without a Jeeves, took time out from his busy schedule of whatever it is he does to fly to the Isle of Wight for the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. His yacht is called “Bob,” possibly named after the evil spirit guy in Twin Peaks. Still, Bob seems a rather informal name for a luxury yacht and anyway Hayward needs a more appropriately named yacht, so here’s your chance to NAME THAT YACHT.

The Limey Bastard?
The Oil-Soaked Pelican?
Top Kill?
Top Hat?
The Shakedown?

Today -100: June 20, 1910: Of the kaiser’s knee, and dogs and husbands

TMI kaiser: Kaiser Wilhelm’s physicians deny that his knee was lanced, and say that “the discharge has now almost ceased.” A “comprehensive denial has been made in order to set the alarm of the public at rest.”

“A Brooklyn Suffragette” writes in, pointing out that in NY a marriage license costs $1 and a dog license $2. “Can any of your readers advise me – is the dog worth the difference?”

Say it, don’t spray it

At a protest in Argentina over the killing of a 15-year-old by police.

Today -100: June 19, 1910: Of TR’s triumphal return and the kaiser’s knee

Roosevelt arrived in the US. First quarantine, then a parade. The very first ticket-tape parade. I saw film of the ship arriving on YouTube, but it was spectacularly dull, so I didn’t embed it.

All the news that’s fit to print: “Kaiser’s Knee Lanced.”

The quality of mercy is not tweeted

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff announced the Medieval execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by the 19th century method of a firing squad via a 21st century mode of communication:


Dude, you just played a pivotal role in the shooting death of another human being, so you don’t really get to act all superior on your iPhone about “the mercy he denied his victims.”

Today -100: June 18, 1910: Of negro schools

A Court of Appeals rules unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring a majority vote of the (presumably white) electorate in any precinct before a negro industrial school can be located there.

Sanctification of the name of heaven

Intra-mural bigotry: an Ultra-Orthodox school in a West Bank settlement gets in legal trouble for segregating Ashkenazi and Sephardic girls (I assume the children are already separated by sex). 100,000 Ultra-Orthodox demonstrate in Jerusalem in favor of segregating Jews. Ha’aretz says the parents, who are facing prison sentences, “seemed elated Wednesday by the prospect of their impending arrest and two-week jail term, which some called ‘a historic stand for the sanctification of the name of heaven.’” They’ll be very pissed off if they get to heaven some day and find people not exactly like themselves there.

Today -100: June 17, 1910: Of trolleys, new states, abraded knees, wooden legs and glass eyes

A strikebreaker from the Philadelphia trolley strike is convicted of involuntary manslaughter for running down a 3-year-old girl, one of the many children run over by trolleys during the strike.

The Senate votes to admit Arizona and New Mexico as states. There is some difference with the House bill over whether to retain the educational requirement for voters in Arizona’s territorial constitution for the referendum for the state constitution; Republicans in the Senate stripped out that (racially motivated, I assume) provision. The two weren’t officially admitted until 1912 (Arizona delayed its entry so that it would coincide with the 50th anniversary of its becoming a Confederate Territory.)

More TMI about Kaiser Wilhelm: “Kaiser Again Indisposed. Abrasion on His Knee the Result of Friction in the Saddle.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Limits Decision to Legs.” The NJ Supreme Court declined to apply the “wooden leg” decision of Mullen [I think the Times means Goldman] v. Central Railroad Company, in which it reduced a verdict of $6,000 in damages to a man whose leg was cut off by a negligently operated railroad train to $3,500 because they make very nice artificial legs these days so his earning capacity won’t be too badly hurt, to the case of a man who lost an eye at the copper works at which he was employed. Evidently glass eyes are not as helpful as wooden legs.

The Times

It was hearing that the London Times was online that convinced me to go online 14½ years ago, so it’ll be sad when the day comes that I stop being able to get around the new pay wall. Today, for example, there’s a story about a python urinating on Prince Harry in Botswana (the headline adverts to “the royal wee.”

Cap in hand

Obama met with BP officials, who promised to put $20 billion in an escrow account. Obama said, “It’s also important to emphasize this is not a cap,” adding, “because those BP motherfuckers can’t motherfucking cap any motherfucking thing.”

No one, but no one, liked Obama’s speech yesterday. For me, it comes down to two underlying problems: 1) it seems to have been written entirely by his speechwriters. That is, it covered the bare minimum of things he had to say – doing everything we can, BP will pay, too bad about the shrimpers – but contained nothing that the president wanted to say – no call to arms, much less to conservation, nothing about the importance of the environment, no lessons learned – because the only thing this spill means to Obama is a PR problem he wants to get past. 2) By never telling us any difficult truths and never saying anything specific when a reassuring generality would do, he did not speak to us as as if we were intelligent adults. Bush would have given the same speech, word for word, except he’d have looked more sincere during the “blessing of the fleet” part.

The best Marine he can be

Evidently I missed the 2007 conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III for the kidnapping and murder in Iraq in 2006 of Awad the Lame, a former cop crippled in the line of duty who Hutchins and other pissed-off Marines randomly chose to murder, and left a weapon and a shovel with his body to try and make him look like he’d been planting IEDs, being overturned in April. So Hutchins, the last of the convicted Marines to be released for the 2006 killing, is back on active duty (although the Navy is appealing the court decision). “I’m going to be the best Marine I can be today,” the war criminal told the AP, which isn’t quite as quotable as “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder.”