No investigation required

Today’s WikiLeaks dump shows a formal military policy (dated June 2004) of ignoring violence, torture, executions, sexual assaults, etc by Iraqi military or police, beyond giving reports on the incident to the very Iraqi unit that committed the abuse, and recording “no investigation required” on the file. Which I believe was the Obama campaign motto four years later. Spooky, huh?

Fred Kaplan says that the latest leaked documents won’t necessarily please anti-war types. For example, he says, they prove that “most Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis” and that Lancet vastly over-estimated the number of civilian deaths. Well, they prove that if you believe that the number of civilian deaths in the two assaults on Fallujah was exactly zero, the number the Pentagon recorded. Otherwise you might think that there’s a bit of selective blindness in the record-keeping.

Today -100: October 22, 1910: Of wallpaper trusts, big boats, land grabs, and friendly mobs

Teddy Roosevelt has accused Democratic NY gubernatorial candidate John A. Dix of being connected with a wallpaper trust, which Dix denies. Dix became a director of a wallpaper company several years after a judge essentially dissolved the trust.

The Cunard Steamship Company has approved plans to construct a 60,000-ton steamship. I wonder what such a titanic object should be called?

The New Mexico Constitutional Convention wants a new boundary, giving it 200 square miles of Texas.

A story by-lined from Lynchburg, VA reports an un-lynching in nearby Lovingston. John Moore, sentenced to death for the murder of one Frank Howl, is broken out of jail and freed by a “friendly mob” of 75 men. The mob objects that Roxie Howl (!), the widow of the murdered man, was not convicted along with him. One or the other of them poisoned Howl so that they could marry each other. There is also a theory that Howl’s moonshine was poisoned by ‘shiners who thought he was a revenooer.

All the news that’s fit to print in the Daily Telegraph

Here’s a nice Telegraph sort of headline: “Cross Dressing Air Force Colonel Jailed for Sex Murders.” Canadian Air Force. He once flew the queen. There’s actually nothing in the article that justifies the phrase “cross dressing.”

“MP’s Wife to Face Trial over Kitten Theft Claims.” The wife of Liberal MP John Hemming will be tried for breaking into his mistress’s home and the cat is still missing. The wife has actually known about the mistress since 2005, when she gave birth to Hemming’s child. Hemming later voted for himself in a newspaper poll for “Love Rat of the Year,” saying “At the end of the day you’ve got to laugh at something.”

An American former football player overstayed his visa in Singapore and they’re planning to cane him. This would be the first caning of an American since Michael Fay – remember him?

A small plane crashed in Congo-Kinshasa, killing everyone on board except one person and a crocodile. Can you guess why the plane crashed? If you guessed it had something to do with the crocodile, you guessed correctly.

“Escaped Chimp Attacks Police Car.” There’s video, but it’s rather disappointing.

Today -100: October 20, 1910: The nose of a conqueror

A letter to the NYT by Eugene V. Brewster (presumably the lawyer/painter/film director) suggests that the NY Democratic Party is wrong not to send John Dix campaigning around the state in his gubernatorial quest, which they evidently decided because he is a crap speaker and “is not a man of prepossessing appearance”. Not so, says Brewster, obviously crushing on Dix big time: “Mr. Dix is tall, broad-shouldered, dignified, stately, yet democratic in bearing and manner, with the brow of the philosopher, the nose of a conqueror, and the chin of a determined, strong-willed man, born to lead and to command.”

A NYT editorial about a “convention of negroes” in Oklahoma which declared that negroes, while being 15-20% of the state’s population and having loyally supported the Republican Party, have gotten nothing back, so all black people should vote socialist instead (which seems to ignore that the state just disenfranchised most of them two months ago by adopting literacy tests). The NYT warns them that they will not get social equality “by any political methods. A great many of their best leaders declare they do not desire it, preferring a social code for their own race alone, and disdaining to seek intercourse with others.” And they would gain political equality “more surely and sooner if they vote independently as men and not in a body as a race.”

When you gotta go

Carl Paladino wandered off the stage during the closing statements of yesterday’s wacky NY goober debate. Explained his campaign manager, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” That could be his new campaign slogan.

Christine O’Donnell, in the 3rd Delaware senate debate, asked “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Chris Coons explained it to her, presumably using small words so she’d understand. But she didn’t. “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

When Obama visits India next month, he will skip the Golden Temple in Amritsar because he would have to wear a headscarf or a skullcap and... oh, I give up. His staff proposed that he wear a “modified” baseball cap and the temple people said no.

Today -100: October 19, 1910: Of the America, divorce, and late starts

The America was crippled by, you know, wind. The crew and cat escaped in a lifeboat and were picked up by the steamer Trent 400 miles east of the North Carolina coast. The airship was blown away, never to be seen again. Walter Wellman provides a lengthy account to the Times. He blames the equilibrator, which was too heavy. Still, the America covered 1,000 miles in 71 hours, which was a record.

Wellman lived until 1934 and never left the ground again.

The Episcopalians now ban any member who has had a divorce from re-marrying. Previously, the innocent party could do so.

One of the Democratic candidates for governor of Massachusetts, Charles Hamlin (later the first chairman of the Fed), breaks the deadlock by withdrawing, so Eugene Foss will soon probably become the party nominee, less than 3 weeks before the election (Frederick Mansfield, who was named by the party convention as a holding candidate when they couldn’t settle on a real one, also has to be convinced to withdraw).

Spoiler alert: Foss will win the election, despite all the chaos. It’s really not the Republicans’ year.

A gravy train in the hands is worth two in the gravy train station

An email I received (why?) from Michele Bachmann on behalf of the Republican National Committee is chock full of right-wing clichés (“socialist, Big Government agenda,” “takeovers of private enterprise,” “opponents of freedom”), but check out how many of them she jams into a single sentence: “These radical Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars from their liberal special interest-filled campaign war chest to retain power and keep the publicly funded gravy train rolling into the hands of Big Labor, limousine liberals, radical protest groups, and billionaire globalists.”

Is a gravy train something you’d actually want in your hands? It sounds either very messy or very dangerous. What is a gravy train, anyway?

Tuesday?

In the Kentucky Senate debate, Jack Conway asked Rand Paul the most important political question of our times (the second most important question is why Rand Paul has a first name for a last name and a last name for a first name): “When is it ever a good idea to tie up a woman and ask her to kneel before a false idol, your god, which you call Aqua Buddha?”

Indeed, when is that a good idea? Answers in comments, please.

Today -100: October 18, 1910: Whither America?

What has happened to the America? And more to the point, what happened to Kiddo the cat? The airship (and the cat) have disappeared and have stopped sending wireless communications. Ocean liners (including the Lusitania) are on the lookout.

The French train strike is over, after PM Briand conscripted strikers, arrested strike leaders, ordered in the military, but also arranged a settlement favorable to the strikers. In addition to the “sabotage” of ties, the strike was marked by bomb incidents, which the police attribute to anarchists taking advantage of the strike rather than to trade unionists. A bomb was thrown at a passenger train as it came into the Chantièrs station, but it bounced off a tree, harming no one, though it did make a big boom.

Today -100: October 17, 1910: Of Kiddo the wonder cat

Kiddo the cat jumped out of the dirigible America but was fished out of the sea.

No questions, please

Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate debate: “If you’ve ever questioned whether America is a beacon of freedom and justice, then he’s your guy.” If you’ve never questioned or thought about anything ever, vote Christine!

By the way, when she was stumped about what Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with, she said someone of her staff would figure out which ones she disagreed with and put them up on her website. Evidently, she’s now been told that she disagrees with Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Kelo v. City of New London.

Maybe he just thinks that’s what they deserved

Bob Herbert suggests that Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned five convicted murderers because they were in a program that let them work in the governor’s mansion. Yet I can’t help noticing that 4 of the 5 killed women, indeed women they knew: 1 murdered his girlfriend while 3 killed their former wives or girlfriends.

Today -100: October 16, 1910: America!

Mass. congresscritter Eugene Foss finally tiring of waiting for the Democratic Party to pick a candidate for governor for the Nov. 8 elections, gathers 500 signatures and files independently under the rubric of Democratic Progressive.

The Columbus trolley strike has failed, after 3 months.

Walter Wellman, journalist, Arctic explorer and daredevil, is attempting to take a dirigible, the America, across the Atlantic, starting from Atlantic City and landing wherever in Europe the winds take him. A French member of the crew got cold feet at the last minutes, as did a feline mascot. The Frenchman escaped, the cat, Kiddo, was tossed back in. The voyage is sponsored by several newspapers, so Wellman is filing dispatches via wireless. The first radio message ever sent from an airborne vessel in history was, therefore, “Roy, come and get this goddamn cat.”

Today -100: October 15, 1910: Of escapes

The Chinese occupying Tibet seized the Dalai Lama’s rep, intending to behead him, but Tibetans spirited him away.

Papal caption contest

Today -100: October 14, 1910: Of road trips and scandal and sensation

Taft will make a quick trip to Panama next month, to make some decisions about construction, fortifications, toll rates, etc. Don’t quote me, but this may be only the 2nd time a sitting president left the country, the first having been Roosevelt 4 years earlier, also making a trip to the Canal Zone.

NYC Mayor Gaynor is now at odds with President of the Board of Alderman John Purroy Mitchel, who, when serving as acting mayor while Gaynor was in the hospital, directed the police to investigate various suspected disorderly houses and gambling establishments (leading, as we saw, to a raid on the US Army Building, but mostly to letters to property owners). Gaynor says the list was “made up in a wholly untrustworthy newspaper office for scandal and sensation,” which I’m guessing means Hearst’s paper, and orders the police commissioner to apologize to the property owners. Mitchel insists the list was derived from perfectly legitimate, um, anonymous letters.

Francisco Madero, who ran against Porfirio Díaz for the presidency of Mexico in April and was subsequently arrested, has fled the country, disguised as a peon, emerging in San Antonio. This actually happened more than a week ago, but the NYT seems not to have reported it. Instead, we now get a rather sarcastic editorial, which suggests Madero should stay in San Antonio: “As a revolutionary his doings from first to last have savored of opera bouffe. There are good openings in that part of Texas for every live man. One thing is certain, Señor Madero is no longer to be enrolled, seriously, among the ‘men who may succeed Diaz.’” That’s true: there was actually a six-month interim president before Madero became president in November 1911.

Today -100: October 13, 1910: Of defective senses of responsibility and sabotage

Roosevelt, speaking at a Knights of Columbus banquet on Columbus Day, predicts that one day there will be a Catholic president.

A rather dickish NYT editorial says that TR’s spontaneous decision yesterday to accept an invitation to fly in that plane is typical of the impulsiveness that makes him such a dangerous politician, with a “defective sense of responsibility”.

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand calls a railway strike an attempted revolution. He’s using a law intended for wartime to mobilize (i.e., conscript) railroad workers as reservists, and it’s not going down very well. Strikers have been destroying railway ties, which were called shoes (sabots). This is the origin of the word sabotage in French; it entered the English language in 1918.

The Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman debate: Women know exactly what’s going on here

This was the final debate between Governor Moonbeam (his porn name) and eMeg (her online porn name). I watched this one all the way through, no thanks to the Bay Area tv stations, none of whom carried it, and early on noticed for the first time that Brown’s voice sounds exactly like that of Tommy Smothers.

Everyone got to apologize insincerely, Whitman for never voting, and Brown for the staffer who called Whitman a whore (“That does not represent anything other than things that happen in a campaign”), though he undercut it by muttering that it was a private conversation and it was probably illegal to record it (it’s illegal to record someone on the phone without their permission; it is certainly not illegal for your answering machine to record a message, which is what happened here. Does Brown not even know the details of what, pathetically, has been the biggest story in the California election for days now?), denying that it was as bad as using the n-word about a black person, then saying that anyway Pete Wilson (Whitman’s campaign chair) used the w-word about public employees unions (in 1995). Whitman said that was a completely different thing, although it’s certainly the same word (Update: after the debate, reporters asked her to explain the difference; she would not). WhoreGate may be a negative for Brown, but there’s no sympathy vote here for Whitman, given the patent insincerity of her faux personal outrage and attempt to play the feminist card, saying darkly, “Women know exactly what’s going on here.”

Do they? Are you a woman? Do you know exactly what’s going on here? If so, tell us in comments exactly what’s going on here.

Whitman trumpeted her endorsement by the police union whose pensions she promised to exempt from her cuts, but said it was because she was tough on crime. She attacked Brown’s endorsement by the California Teachers’ Association, which is responsible for the “mess” in education. Evidently the cops can be trusted on criminal issues, but the teachers can’t be trusted on educational issues.

Brown asked Whitman how much money she’d save personally with her proposal to end capital gains taxes. “Shitloads,” she said, “shitloads and shitloads.”

Actually, of course, she wouldn’t answer. She did say she’s been out creating jobs and Brown’s been engaged on a “war on jobs.”

Both support two-tier pension systems for civil servants. Whitman noted, wistfully, “The existing pensioners we can’t touch”, without explaining why she wanted to touch pensioners.

Actually, I thought that phrasing was telling. She didn’t say we can’t touch existing pensions, but existing pensioners, which seemed to evince a personal hostility to the retirees who stand in her way, like they think they’re too good for cat food or something.

Brown accused Whitman, correctly, of not specifying where she’ll make the huge budget cuts she proposes (“She doesn’t have a plan. She said $14 billion in cuts. She doesn’t say where.”)

His plan: cut the budget of the governor’s office by 10 to 15%. That’s his plan. She pointed out that this was a minuscule proportion of the state budget; he said something about leading by example. So really, neither one of them has a plan. At the end of the debate, both were asked what structural reforms they’d support to California’s broken institutions. She called for two-year budgets, which is sensible in and of itself but would do absolutely nothing to fix the budget stalemate situation. He called for a majority vote in the Legislature for the budget, but not for taxes, which would do almost nothing to fix the budget stalemate situation. Once again, he proudly mentioned that Howard Jarvis (d.1986) voted for him some time after Prop 13 passed. Jarvis was a mean, bitter, anti-government crank of a sort we’re rather familiar with these days, and every time Brown brags about the old bastard, his soul shrivels a little more.

Governor Moonbeam (his screen name on Twilight fanfic websites) said he didn’t want to get into “that story” of Nicky Diaz, then of course did, pointing out that after 9 years of employing her, Whitman didn’t even get her a lawyer. Whitman said it broke her heart to fire her. Sure it did. After the debate, she said she’d moved on from “Gloria Allred’s political stunt.” So I guess her heart has healed up.

Brown: “I’ve been in the kitchen. I’ve taken the heat. She’s been in the bleachers.” Well, it’s not like Meg had to spend time in the kitchen. She had “help” for that.

(My posts on the 1st debate, 2nd debate.)

Today -100: October 12, 1910: Of flying ex-presidents

The Massachusetts Dems still don’t have a candidate for governor. You know what doesn’t help? Leaving the decision to a Committee of Four. Which is now split 2-2. Odd numbers, people, odd numbers.

Roosevelt goes up in a plane for the first time. For four minutes. It was a spur of the moment decision when he visited an air show in St. Louis. “By George, it was fine!” he exclaimed.


That plane would crash, killing that pilot, Archibald Hoxsey, in December.

Today -100: October 11, 1910: Of censorship, cheap politics, and a Southern non-strategy

NYC aldermen are considering establishing a public board of censors for moving pictures. Among the strongest supporters: movie house owners. The only opposition, in fact, comes from the existing private board of censors.

John Dix certifies that he spent no money to be nominated the Democratic candidate for governor of NY.

TR says privately, “By George, if I thought I could carry a single Southern state, I would willingly run for the presidency!”