Today -100: September 2, 1910: Of gambling, women in court, lynchings, and reviews

New York bans all betting, whether “orally or otherwise.” The bill was originally aimed just at racing, but amendments got out of hand. The racing season was just aborted prematurely, before this law came into effect.

NYC opens a separate Women’s Night Court. Feminists are organizing against it.

A negro is lynched in Jackson Crossing, Mississippi. A crowd of 2,000 participates.

Headline: “Kaiser Reviews 30,000 Men.” Boy, everyone’s a critic.

Boxer-Fiorina California US Senate debate: I want to see the words “made in America” again

Tonight Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina debated for the California Senate seat (flawed transcript).

Carly: “But I think our founding fathers intended for ours to be an elected government.”

Boxer: “When she was CEO of Hewlett Packard, before she was terminated, actually, she shipped 30,000 jobs overseas. Think of it. That’s the size of Foster City.” On the other hand if she’d actually shipped Foster City overseas, would anyone have noticed?


Boxer: “I want to see the words ‘made in America’ again.”

Carly-cakes: “She voted against body armor.”

F: “Senator boxer has vilified the people of Arizona, even though the federal government isn’t doing its job.”

F: “she is also for big government and elite, extreme environmental groups.”


B: “And I have a record which won me an award from doctors who were trying to find out better treatments for burn victims.” What would such an award be named? The Burny? The Crispy?

Boxer: “So I love the military. In a very personal way.”

Questions from viewers. A Mr. Tim Tam, if that is his real name, asks, “Senator boxer, you have been staying in the office three terms. Why don’t you let other people try?”

B: “I don’t think we need those Wall Street values right now.”

F: “The truth is that California has higher-than-average unemployment rate because we are destroying jobs and others are fighting harder for our jobs. Texas is fighting harder for our jobs. So is North Carolina, Brazil, Guatemala, China, India, Russia, Poland. I know precisely why those jobs go. And I’ll tell you why. Because China for example, like Texas, like Brazil, gives companies huge tax credits. They help them cult through reg -- cut through regulation.” Fiorina’s new slogan: culting through regulation.


F: “And frankly, I don’t think there are enough people in Washington who understand why private sector jobs are important.”

SF Chronicle reporter Carla Marenucci asked Boxer about the most important moment in recent California political history, when Boxer asked Gen. Michael Walsh to call her senator rather than ma’am. Boxer says she called him general. Evidently after the scandalous event in question, she called the general and asked if she should apologize for upsetting him and he said no.

Fee-fi-fo-orina said it was just a shame that Boxer is using Hewlett Packard, “a treasure of California,” as a political football.

Asked if she ever disagreed with her boyfriend Obama on anything, Boxer said we need an exit strategy in Afghanistan and he should appoint Elizabeth Warren, right now.

Carly says she is pro-life because “My husband’s mother was told to abort him” because of health concerns, but “She lived a ripe old age to 98.” So clearly, as that anecdote demonstrates, nobody needs abortion rights.

Carly says Boxer “said that she doesn’t think a baby has rights until it leaves the hospital.” (In 1999, and she said no such thing. It was in a debate with Rick Santorum. She said she’d had 2 children, Little Ricky said he’s had 6, she said, no your wife had 6, he said no we both did, “That’s the way we do things in our family.”)

Fiorina says she’d overturn Roe v. Wade “If there were an opportunity. It’s not something I’m running on.”

F. keeps saying Boxer has sponsored only four successful bills in her Senate career. Eventually, Boxer notes that the way Fiorina is counting, neither McCain nor Feingold would get credit for McCain-Feingold.

F: “Recovery summer has become the summer of despair in California.”

F. seems to support Prop. 23 (to kill state global warming legislation), although she also refuses to take an explicit position, because “The only way to impact global warming is to act globally. A state acting alone will make no difference.”

B. says if you support Prop. 23, “China takes the lead away from us with solar. That Germany takes the lead from us with wind.” Heaven forfend Germany take the lead from us with wind. “But I guess my opponent is kind of used to creating jobs in China and other places.”


F: “I think it’s crystal clear that we have loads of laws.” So we should all be allowed to have assault weapons.

Today -100: September 1, 1910: Of exploding trolleys, legal fictions, new nationalisms, and fat tsars

Another trolley is blown up in Columbus, and there is a threat to turn the trolley strike into a general strike if it is not resolved in 72 hours.

Woodrow Wilson, speaking to the American Bar Association’s annual convention, says that the “fatuous, antiquated, and quite unnecessary fiction” that corporations are legal persons should be abandoned. When they do wrong, their directors should be punished, not their shareholders. Society “cannot afford to let its strongest men be the only men who are inaccessible to the law.”

And Teddy Roosevelt makes exactly the same point – “officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law” – in a speech at the John Brown Celebration in Osawatomie, Kansas which marked his first use of the term “new nationalism,” which would feature in his 1912 presidential campaign, and which meant a much stronger president, capable of overriding “local selfishness,” Congress, corporations etc in the national interest. He also called for a progressive income tax and a progressive inheritance tax on large corporations, and said, “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.”


Headline and Scoop of the Day -100: “Czar Growing Stouter.”

Obama’s Pretending the War in Iraq is Over speech: An age without surrender ceremonies

This time, it was the voluble Joe Biden who said it most succinctly: “We’re going to be just fine. They’re going to be just fine.” Obama spun that nonsense out at greater length, in a soporific monotone.

Transcript.

WHAT THIS MILESTONE SHOULD SERVE AS A REMINDER TO ALL AMERICANS OF: “But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment.” Funny, I’d have said the last 7+ years of the Iraq war have shown that the future is not ours to shape, no matter how much misplaced confidence and commitment we exude.

MAYBE WE SHOULD BURN THAT DESK, JUST TO BE SURE: “From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq.”


“A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency.” Here, Obama buys into the narrative that Bush began the invasion of Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein. Wouldn’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, you know.

EXCEPT FOR THAT WMD SNIPE HUNT, OF COURSE: “The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given.”

WHY WE FOUGHT: “Our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future.” And I’m sure the surviving residents of those blocks are standing by their piles of rubble, just being grateful for that chance for a better future.

“So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.”


“And Iraqi forces have taken the fight to Al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations.” And here (and elsewhere in the speech), Obama buys into the narrative that the Iraq war was about Al Qaida.

IT’S ABOUT FIVE MONTHS LATE FOR THAT “SENSE OF URGENCY” THING: “Tonight, I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people.”


IRAQ = PAGE. “Now, it is time to turn the page.”

WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT? “This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.”

I’M PRETTY SURE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO COULD DOUBT THAT: “Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”

HE NEVER WANTS US TO MAKE A MISTAKE: “But make no mistake: this transition will begin - because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”

“Over seven years before, American troops and coalition partners had fought their way across similar highways, but this time no shots were fired. It was just a convoy of brave Americans, making their way home.” So the big victory is that they didn’t shoot at us when we were leaving. Hurrah.

IT’S HARD TO GET TO KNOW SOMEONE YOU JUST SHOT OR BOMBED: “Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.”

THE LIGHT OF ELECTRICITY MORE THAN TWO HOURS A DAY WOULD ALSO BE NICE: “They stared into the darkest of human creations – war – and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.”

HOW WE MUST EARN VICTORY: “In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.”

PAINTED GRAY AND UNDERWATER? “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.” So, if I understand this metaphor correctly, we’re traveling through rough waters on a ship built out of troops (I’m picturing the pirate comic in Alan Moore’s Watchmen) in pre-dawn darkness to better days.


Today Obama also issued a proclamation for National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Just saying.

Justification

At the Israeli whitewash investigation of the flotillacide, Major General Eitan Dangot of the IDF insists “There was no justification for the flotilla, because there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

What does the IDF find justified? As Lenin reminds us, shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then going over and emptying a magazine into her to “confirm the kill,” that was considered justified. (My old posts on the case.)

Today -100: August 31, 1910: Of seminary students, assassination fall-out, trolleys, and cardinals

The pope has ordered the closing of the seminary in Perugia, Italy, because the students gave an ovation to the king and queen of Italy.

The NYT reports that Henry Reed Rathbone is near death. They’re wrong by a year, but this story was new to me, not being an assassination buff: In April 1865 Rathbone, a Union army major, and his step-sister Clara were guests of the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre. Rathbone received several stab wounds trying to stop John Wilkes Booth. He recovered and entered government service, but slowly went insane. In 1883, while US consul to Hanover, he shot Clara, who he had married in 1867, fatally, then tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself 6 times. He was committed to a German insane asylum for the rest of his life.

The trolley strike is still going on in Columbus. A couple of trolleys are dynamited, with passengers aboard, but no one is killed. The mob fights with soldiers.

Headline of the Day -100: “Brooklyn Helpless Before Cardinals.” Oh, baseball, not a Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren thing.

Today -100: August 30, 1910: Of Roosevelt Democrats

The governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver call for Theodore Roosevelt (who they were introducing in the Denver Auditorium) to run for president in 1912. They are both Democrats.

And if anyone can restore America’s honor, it’s Glenn Beck & Sarah Palin

Sorry, I just can’t. I didn’t read Beck’s speech and I got as far in Palin’s as “I must assume that you too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want,” then I had to lie down.

So feel free to caption these here pictures:



(The Reuters caption says that Beck is introducing a representative Jew, a representative Indian, a representative guy unafraid to wear a pink shirt that in front of a bunch of people who think anyone wearing a pink shirt is a fag and must be killed, and a descendant of Protestant settlers.)





(Update: Palin tweets “So honored to be a part of the ‘Restoring Honor’ rally today in D.C.” Yes, Sarah, “restoring honor” meant restoring it to you, because it’s always all about you.)

Today -100: August 27, 1910: Of the Divine Right of Kings, 20th century style

Kaiser Wilhelm delivered a speech
in which he insisted that the crown came to him “by God’s grace alone, and not by Parliaments, assemblages of the people, or resolutions of the people”. Predictable shitstorm ensues.

Russia gives special permission to Oscar Straus, the US ambassador to Turkey, to enter visit St. Petersburg. Permission is required because Straus is Jewish.

Cowabunga

Edward Kean, the Howdy Doody writer who coined that immortal word, has died. No mention of what his last words or, one hopes, word, might have been.

Today -100: August 25, 1910: Of colonies

Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson, visiting the Philippines, hears from Moros who want Mindanao annexed to the US, or made independent, but definitely not subsumed within the Philippines.

I don’t know how much tea he’s getting with his Mexican food...

but I’m pretty sure he’s getting a lot of pee.

Butter pecan burping during Ramadan

Another way in which Obama administration policies go further than Bush’s did: officials at Guantanamo no longer tell us how many hunger strikers they are force feeding.

But they do inform us that they are doing it in a culturally sensitive way, force feeding them only between dusk and dawn during Ramadan.

So that’s okay then.

“By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.”

Today -100: August 24, 1910: Teddy Roosevelt is against a crook

Roosevelt gives a speech in upstate New York, supporting a state senator who VP Sherman opposes. TR sez, “the only kind of politics I care for is the kind of politics where decency is combined with efficiency,” whatever that means. He also said, “I am against a crook – rich or poor” and “There is only one person I place above the veteran, and that is the mother who does her full duty. I like all your crops, but I like children best.”

José Dolores Estrada, brother of the insurgent general, declares himself president of Nicaragua. He claims there will be an election within six months.

Fashion victim -100: A Pittsburg tailor fell asleep in his shop and died in his sleep, choked to death by a high collar.

Boars and zombies

Headline of the Day... well, it’s a tie:

“Italian Priest Shot Dead after Being Mistaken for Wild Boar” and “Minneapolis Will Pay $165,000 to Zombies.”

Actually, the money will be paid to “seven zombies and their attorney.”

Contest: what would be a good name for an attorney’s firm that specializes in representing zombies?

Today -100: August 23, 1910: Of referenda, regime change, and Republicans

Arizona Democrats want the not-yet-state’s constitution to have provisions for initiatives and referenda, and are willing to risk the Republicans in Congress and the White House denying them statehood on that account.

The insurgents capture Managua without a fight. Madriz goes into exile.

The US has declared that it will consider it unconstitutional if Panama’s National Assembly elect the acting president, Carlos Mendoza, the VP who took over when President Obaldia died, to serve out the remainder of his term. Mendoza is black. (A week later he dropped out.)

Taft finally breaks his silence about the NY Republicans’ snubbing of TR, saying he had nothing to do with it and hanging his veep out to dry, releasing a telegram which he had sent to Sherman advising him to talk with Roosevelt before the vote by the committee on the chairmanship of the party convention – which Sherman failed to do. In fact, Taft suggests that when he spoke with Sherman before the vote, Sherman had not told him that his name would be put forward against TR’s.

Did someone forget to tell the Iraqis that the war is over?

A rocket killed an American soldier near Basra today.

Today -100: August 22, 1910: Of regime changes, German nudists, bites, and cucumbers

The Madriz government in Nicaragua is on the verge of falling, with the Estradists threatening Managua.

Korea is about to cease to exist as a nation and be annexed completely by Japan. Newspaper censorship has ensured that Koreans have no idea this is about to happen. The NYT thinks most Koreans will be better off under Japanese rule and won’t object too much to the change.

The King of Saxony and two of the princesses, taking a stroll through the woods, stumbled across a nudist. The princesses ran away, screaming.

John Tully of Brooklyn was bitten by a dog one month ago and then by a Mr. Stanford Waltbridge, also of Brooklyn, last Saturday. Headline of the Day -100: “Prefers A Dog’s Bite.” In case you were wondering.

Or is this the Headline of the Day -100: “Assaulted with Cucumber”? A grocer is the assaultee, the offending fruit being hurled at him by a youth he caught trying to shoplift it.

Loser issue

Jeb Bush says the Democrats are showing their desperation by focusing so much on the manifold failures of his brother. “It’s a loser issue.”

He said it, not me.

Today -100: August 21, 1910: Of Republican in-fighting and castles

Taft’s people have been claiming, truthfully or not I cannot say, that he didn’t even know about the scheme of the New York Old Guard Republicans to defeat Roosevelt as temporary chairman of the party convention in favor of VP Sherman (it should be noted that TR and Sherman were both New Yorkers). Nevertheless, the break between Taft and TR seems to be complete.

Speaking of Sherman, the House committee investigating Indian land contracts in Oklahoma exonerates him of having anything to do with the attempt to bribe Sen. Thomas Gore. It’s not clear how hard they really tried to find out the truth.

At an air meet in New York, a Lt. J.E. Fickel fired a rifle at a target on the ground from aviator Glenn Curtiss’s plane. This was the first time gunfire ever emanated from an airplane (but not the last). Fickel missed by six feet.

Kaiser Wilhelm is opening a big new imperial castle in Posen, Poland, a symbol of German control of Poland. The Polish nobility will be staying away from the dedication ceremony in droves. A new law in German Poland bans public political meetings held in Polish or any other language than German.