Today -100: November 15, 1910: Of ostriches

In New Jersey, William Ford is on trial for obtaining $2,000 from a William Koch ostensibly to start up ostrich races at county fairs. As an opponent of animal cruelty but a proponent of awesomeness, I’m a little conflicted on this one.

The sober guy

George W. Bush, Decision Points: “Being the sober guy helped me realize how mindless I must have sounded when drunk.”

Today -100: November 14, 1910: Of hot sweeties, accidental colonialism, and lynchings

Headline of the Day -100: “Sweet Potato Men Revolt.” That conjures up a rather odd but pleasing image. In fact, these revolting sweet potato men would be street vendors. Does New York still have sweet potato men? The 900 or so sweet potato men, who rent their push-cart-charcoal-stove contraptions for 30 to 50¢ a day, have been told this year that they will also have to buy their potatoes from the owners, at inflated prices. Thus the revolt against what they call the Hot-Sweetie Stove Trust.

A NYT editorial on the Philippines is a lovely example of the thesis, not entirely unknown down to the present day, of American Innocency. “We took the islands practically by accident, as the only feasible policy, the only rational alternative to leaving them to chaos and rapine in the feeble hands of Spain, or as the result of savage civil war among the natives. We took them with the intention and the promise that ‘when the Filipino people as a whole show themselves reasonably fit to conduct a popular self-government... and desire complete independence of the United States they shall be given it.’” (That quote is from Taft when he was governor of the Philippines).

Mexican President-for-Life Díaz responds publicly to a telegram sent privately by Taft about the burning at the stake of Mexican national Antonio Rodriguez in Texas. Evidently Taft promised to punish the guilty parties (although the federal government would have had no power to do any such thing in 1910). Meanwhile, a Mexican has shot the police chief of Anadarko, Oklahoma and the State Dept has written to the OK governor asking that he prevent the man being lynched (if he is captured).

Nothing more intimate

What’s more disturbing, that Obama’s newly appointed commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos vocally opposes ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, or that he did so on the grounds that “There’s nothing more intimate than combat”?

Let’s see, there’s the Intimate Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Cuddling Above and Beyond the Call of Duty award, the...

Today -100: November 13, 1910: Of rots and spots, and smoking women

The New York World has an exposé about the market in NYC for rotten eggs, 1,000 cases a day of “rots and spots” sold to bakers. My advice after reading this story: do not buy a sponge cake in 1910 New York.

Lillian Stevens, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, insists that the women of America are not taking up smoking. “In the course of my travels in England and American I have never seen a woman with a cigarette in her mouth, except in certain localities in New Mexico, where the surroundings were not at all pleasant to contemplate.”

Today -100: November 12, 1910: Of racing, peace, and peers

J.C. “Bud” Mars races a horse with his airplane. He won, but he cheated.

The NYT analyzes the election results: “The country voted for peace last Tuesday”. The Republican Party lost because under Roosevelt’s guidance it is becoming the radical party and the Democracy (as the Times likes to call the Democrats) has become conservative post-William Jennings Bryan.

With negotiations for reform of the House of Lords broken down, Britain is heading towards its second general election of 1910, to be fought on the issue of the Lords’ veto. The suffragettes will be working for the defeat of Liberals, pointing out that Prime Minister Asquith has been vetoing votes for women.

Just admit you want to kill people

Arthur Silber notes that no one has resigned from the Obama administration over its claim to have the power to murder American citizens (and anyone else) at will, with no judicial oversight. Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning for some time to point out that Obama has never been asked to make this claim in his own words out of his own mouth. Remember when presidents used to take questions from the press from time to time? Me neither. In this regard, Obama may be even more embubbled than Bush was, although Jon Stewart did call him “dude” that one time, and the republic’s foundations trembled.

In the same way, he’s been able to wage undeclared wars in Pakistan and Yemen without ever being forced to acknowledge his lethal actions, much less make any sort of public argument for their necessity.

Speaking of acknowledging shit, everybody points out that Bush’s memoirs admit that he ordered waterboarding (“Damn right!”), but as an admission of torture it actually goes further: “No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm.” In other words, he admits that waterboarding caused physical harm, just not lasting harm.

Also, I want the names of these medical experts. Some medical licenses need to be revoked.

Today -100: November 11, 1910: Of unknown Mexicans and unknown mobs

The NYT follows up on the Texas lynching that caused all the insulting of flags and whatnot in Mexico City. On November 3rd a 20-year-old Mexican national, Antonio Rodriguez, was begging for food in Rock Springs. A rancher’s wife “talked mean” to him, so he shot her; he was taken from his jail cell and burned at the stake. No arrests were made. The coroner’s jury’s verdict was that “an unknown Mexican met death at the hands of an unknown mob.” NYT: “No effort was made to discover the identity of the members of the mob and little was thought of the occurrence until the trouble was reported in Mexico City.” Secretary of State Philander Knox: “It is most unfortunate that the brutal crime in our country of which a Mexican was victim should be made the excuse for a demonstration of hostility toward Americans in Mexico.”

NY Supreme Court Justice Crane denies a decree of separation to a Mrs. Edith Robinson, whose husband hit and yelled at her, because she nagged him. Crane rules: “When the wife tantalizes the husband into a temper the resulting hasty words and violent deeds may not amount to cruel and inhuman conduct, as the law uses these words, although men agree that insults and violence to a wife are inhuman. Otherwise she would be permitted when seeking relief in court to profit by her own acts.”

The Prussian and Bavarian governments are refusing to let the Vatican make Catholic professors and clergy take an oath against modernism.

A black man, Thomas Jennings, is convicted for murder in Chicago on the basis of fingerprints he left in fresh paint – the first ever conviction in the US based on fingerprint evidence.

Today -100: November 10, 1910: Of gifts and insulted flags

Women’s suffrage referenda passed in Washington state (having previously failed in 1889 and 1898, this time it succeeded 52,299 to 29,676), the fifth state to enfranchise women and the first to do so in 14 years, but failed in Oregon (for the 5th time, and by the widest margin yet), Oklahoma (88,808 to 128,928) and South Dakota. Condescending Headline of the Day -100: the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Women of the State Get the Ballot by Gift of Men.”

“Our flag insulted” in Mexico City and the NYT is outraged.
The flag was torn down, trampled and spat upon “[w]hile the police looked on and seemingly made no effort to prevent it”. The Mexicans were objecting to an incident a few days ago in which a Mexican was burnt at the stake in Rock Springs, Texas (the story doesn’t seem to have made the Times, so I don’t know what the Rock Springs police were doing while that occurred). The newspaper El Diario del Hogar calls Americans “giants of the dollar, pigmies of culture, and barbarous whites of the North.” Rioters attacked actual Americans, not just the flag, including the ambassador’s son.

Now, a word from your sponsor

Another Bush (and earlier) policy unchanged by Obama: utilizing the list of state sponsors of terrorism as a carrot/stick to achieve ends unrelated to terrorism, rather than for, you know, listing states that sponsor terrorism. NYT: “President Obama has told Sudan that if it allows a politically sensitive referendum to go ahead in January, and abides by the results, the United States will move to take the country off its list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as next July, administration officials said Sunday.”

Today -100: November 9, 1910: Election 1910

Election results are coming in.

Governors:

-Woodrow Wilson (D) is elected governor of New Jersey, his first elective office, on a huge swing to the Democrats that also carried the legislature and 8 of 10 congressional seats.

-Simeon Eben Baldwin (D) is elected governor of Connecticut, despite Roosevelt having called him retrogressive (and despite no other D winning state-wide office). The NYT is sorry that Baldwin probably won’t be suing the Colonel for the slander, given that since he won it would be difficult to prove damages; the Times says we have “lost an entertaining lawsuit.”

-John A. Dix defeats Henry L. Stimson in NY by almost 2 to 1, reversing Charles Evans Hughes’ almost equally large win in 1908. The D’s take the Legislature as well. Republican voters largely just stayed home.

-Eugene Foss (D) wins in Massachusetts, another state where D’s failed to win other state-wide offices.

-John Tener (R), a former minor-league baseball player who was once given the job of explaining baseball to the Prince of Wales, wins Pennsylvania.

-Progressive Republican and radical reformer Hiram Johnson wins in California. Sorry not to have had more on that; the NYT sucked on California.

-Judson Harmon, incumbent D governor of Ohio, crushes Warren G. Harding. This is a special humiliation for Taft, whose state Ohio is.

Congress: Democrats will increase from 172 seats to 230, Republicans drop from 219 to 162, losing control of the House for the first time in 15 years. Most of the D gains were in NY, Mass., NJ, Penn, W Virginia and Illinois. R did better in states where the party is controlled by Rooseveltite progressives rather than the old guard.

There will be a socialist congresscritter, the first ever: Victor Berger of Wisconsin.

Senate: Democrats have taken control of at least 4 of the legislatures of 24 states now represented in the US Senate by Republicans (Maine, New York, Missouri, New Jersey, and probably Indiana & West Virginia), meaning a gain, when those new legislatures pick senators, of 7 seats, but Republicans will retain a majority of 12 out of 92. 12 of the Republican senators who lost their seats were members of the party’s old guard.

Whatever happened to voting in schools? In New York, Stimson’s polling station was in a barber shop, Gaynor’s was in a tailor’s shop. In Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt voted in a fire station, along with son Kermit, best known for his role in overthrowing the elected government of Iran in 1953, voting for the first time, and various Roosevelt family retainers, including his negro butler. He reminisced for the press about his own first time voting 31 years before, with his then butler, also negro. Woodrow Wilson voted in a furniture shop.

NYC election investigators swore out a warrant for illegal registration for US Attorney General George Wickersham when they couldn’t find him at his address on East 61st, but later withdrew it when they figured out who he was and that he was probably in, you know, Washington.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 28, is elected to the NY state senate, his first but not last public office.

Democrats actually did relatively badly in cities, evidently because of hostility from the labor vote. One big exception is NYC, which will have an entirely Democratic congressional delegation.

New Hampshire Name of the Day -100: Congressman Cyrus A. Sulloway (R), reelected. Was there ever a more perfect name for a New Hampshire congressman than Cyrus A. Sulloway?

In a negro town in Oklahoma, blacks took over a polling station and threw out the white election officials, declaring they would vote despite the grandfather clause. And in Tulsa, a negro minister who was turned away from his polling station got the US Commissioner to swear out a warrant for the arrest of the election officials responsible. And US marshals arrested election officials in McAlester who refused to let blacks vote without bothering with the formality of the literacy test.

Headline of the Day -100: “King Pelted With Paper.” Albert, king of the Belgians, is pelted with a million slips of paper demanding universal suffrage.

Electoral Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Went to Bed.”

That’s not particularly persuasive to us

Obama was interviewed by 60 Minutes, which has provided an unusually folksy transcript, with many lottas and gottas and dropped g sounds being attributed to Obama.

It’s all pretty much the same thing as he’s been saying since the election: it’s the fault of the economy not his policies, he hopes for more cooperation between the parties, etc. Any faults were of implementation rather than policy, and that is attributable to the “emergency” he found upon taking office: “But necessity created circumstances in which I think the Republicans were able to paint my governing philosophy as a classic, traditional, big government liberal. And that’s not something that the American people want. I mean, you know, particularly independents in this country.” So Americans hate liberals. And all “independents” are to the right of the Democratic Party. In fact, there is nothing and nobody to the left of the Democratic Party.

Indeed, asked about the Tea Party, he said, “We have a long tradition in this country of a desire for limited government, the suspicion of the federal government, of a concern that government spends too much money. You know? I mean, that’s as American as apple pie.” Any minute now, he’s going to start ranting about death panels.

George Bush had a lot of (or as the CBS transcript would doubtless put it, lotta) made-up conversations with the American people and with the voices in his head. Let’s see what Obama’s made-up conversations sound like: “So, people are looking and saying, ‘Well government intervened a lot, spent a lot of money, and yet, I still don’t have a job or my neighbor still doesn’t have a job or that home is still being foreclosed down the block.’ And our argument was, ‘Well, we had to take these steps to stabilize the economy and things would be a lot worse if we hadn’t taken these steps.’ And people say, ‘Well, you know what? That’s not particularly persuasive to us.’” Yes, the fake America that Obama talks to, in his head, says things like “not particularly persuasive”. Don’t ever change, fake America in Obama’s head.

WHAT OBAMA ENJOYS MOST ABOUT THE PRESIDENCY: “You know, the thing I enjoy most about the presidency is when I’ve got a chance to interact with folks in a backyard town hall, in you know, buyin’ some donuts in a store. You know, that’s when things aren’t scripted, that’s when you’re not, you know, spending all your time just goin’ through a bunch of talkin’ points.” So what he enjoys most about the presidency is buying donuts. Hey, do you suppose he knows that you don’t have to be president to take to people in backyards or go buyin’ some donuts in a store? He doesn’t even get free donuts, and he’s the freaking president.

GET BOUNCING, PEOPLE! “And you know, the country has bounced back. It’s not bounced back all the way, but people are tough, and folks work hard, and they’re not easily shaken.” Line from the next James Bond movie: “Vodka martini, shaken, not bounced.” Also, maybe we’d bounce better if we were less tough and more, you know, rubbery.

Asked if he ever gets discouraged and indeed if he is discouraged now: “No you know, I do get discouraged, I mean, there are times where you think, ‘Dog-gone-it you know, the job numbers aren’t movin’ as fast as I want.’” Boy, the fake Obama in Obama’s head is a lot less erudite than the fake America in Obama’s head.

A crucial time

John McCain posted this picture with the caption “@JoeLieberman @Grahamblog & I had good meetings with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad today at a crucial time.”


Judging by McCain’s appearance, I think by “crucial time” he meant that he needed to go to the bathroom.

Can we do better than John McCain? CAPTION CONTEST!

Lost & found

When I wrote my post on McConnell’s Heritage Foundation speech last week, I deleted mention of one piece of moronity. Talking about the stimulus, he said, “And it shouldn’t be lost on anybody, by the way, that the only one that refused a bailout, Ford, is the one that’s doing best today.” Yes, clearly what hurt Chrysler and GM was accepting the bailout money. The logic is inescapable.

Today -100: November 8, 1910: Happy Dough Day!

Yesterday was the day before election day, the day traditionally known in Tammany as “Dough Day,” when all the money is distributed to district leaders (although Boss Murphy, who has delusions of respectability, likes to call it Paraphernalia Day).

A Wright Brothers’ plane carried some silk for a dry goods company – the first ever commercial air flight.

Polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society

From NYT story about people who object to tolerance programs in schools:

“We do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society,” Mr. DeMato, 69, told his flock at Liberty Baptist Church.

But what about you, readers? Are your minds polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society? Let’s put it to a little test. When you read that quote did you think

a) He probably hates gay people because he’s sixty-nine years old.

b) What an odd sexual position from which to deliver a sermon.

c) DeMato, DeMahto, let’s call the whole thing off.

If you chose a, your mind is not unduly polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society. If you chose b, your mind is in fact quite polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society. If you chose c, you’re just weird.

Today -100: November 7, 1910: Of profanity, tariffs, and women’s suffrage

Several thousand Catholics marched in Washington D.C. to protest against profanity.

Dix and Stimson hold a debate of sorts, via telegram. Stimson sent a series of questions, mostly about tariffs, to Dix, who now responds, denying any inconsistency in his demands for a reduction in tariffs. Tariffs, with their “natural offspring – the trusts and combinations – which have increased the cost of the necessaries of life. No one knows this better than you, for you and your former law partner, Senator Root, had charge of the organization of more trusts and combinations than any other firm of corporation lawyers in the country.” (The governor of New York, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with tariff policy.)

The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association says that 20% of Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress are in favor of women’s suffrage. That is, 180 of 672 candidates replied to NAWSA’s survey, of whom 107 (64 D’s, 43 R’s) support full suffrage, 36 (21 D’s, 15 R’s) favor partial suffrage (municipal or school board but not federal, for example), and 9 (all D’s) were completely opposed. The rest gave noncommittal replies.

The formula is simple

Do conservatives really call Marco Rubio the “great right hope”? Trust the Repugs to adapt a racist term for a brown-skinned guy.

Mitch McConnell’s post-election speech at the Heritage Foundation, though widely quoted in snippets, is worth a skim.

“By sticking together in principled opposition to policies we viewed as harmful, we made it perfectly clear to the American people where we stood.” Well, you made it perfectly clear what you stood against, which is not the same thing. He doesn’t seem to know the difference.

He complains that since the 2008 election, “The Democrats’ idea of consensus was for Republicans to do whatever the administration wanted us to.” Which was bad. So he presents his idea of consensus, which you’ll be surprised to hear is for Obama to do whatever McConnell wants him to do: “If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.” No hint that cooperation could ever involve the R’s moving in Obama’s direction.


But of course they can’t do that, because the Republicans are the American people and speak for them: “The formula is simple, really: when the administration agrees with the American people, we will agree with the administration. When it disagrees with the American people, we won’t. This has been our posture from the beginning of this administration. And we intend to stick with it.” Take a moment and just take in the arrogance of that statement. Also note that he can’t be saying that the position of the American people, with which the administration is invited to “agree,” was set forth by this week’s election, since that simple formula has been “our posture from the beginning of this administration.” That is, from January 2009 to November 2010, when the House, Senate, and presidency were all dominated by Democrats elected by the American people. So elections must be irrelevant to the determination of the position of the American people, which is always conservative and always unitary. Hard to know why the Republicans bother to let us vote really; we might just continue to elect people who don’t agree with the American people.

Today -100: November 6, 1910: Of elections, Crippen, co-eds, the true protector of Islam, and fertilizer wars

The Arizona Constitutional Convention is fighting over whether to include the local option for prohibition.

Dr. Crippen loses his appeal against the death penalty for killing his wife (or whoever that torso was), and will be hanged in a couple of day.

A few days ago, Henry L. Stimson, Republican candidate for governor of NY, spoke to several campaign rallies in NYC, driving from one to the next, while Roosevelt did the same 20 minutes later, so that if people wanted to hear TR, they’d have to sit through Stimson. Yesterday, the Saturday before election day, Stimson repeated the performance, but without TR as his closing act, so that the audiences were rather smaller, in one case so small that he refused to speak. There was a large audience at a Cooper Union meeting which amounted to “a grand testimonial meeting in favor of Theodore Roosevelt,” whose name was repeatedly cheered and who was praised to the skies by all the speakers, who “accepted the charge that he is the issue in this campaign”. Gov. John Franklin Fort of NJ said TR was at least as great as Lincoln and “as great as any man that ever lived and wrought in this land”. A man in the audience who called for him to “keep to state issues” was threatened by members of the audience until he left.

Pope Pius X has instructed the papal nuncio of Munich to order ecclesiastics under his authority not to read newspapers.

H.B. Hutchins, president of the University of Michigan, urges women students to study only subjects that would fit them to become homemakers and mothers. “Deliver me from the woman who comes to the university to prepare for a career.”

And a NYT editorial declares that women’s suffrage is unnecessary and that women themselves “do not favor suffrage for their sex, for very good and sane reasons”.

A meeting of Muslims in Constantinople acclaims Kaiser Wilhelm the “true protector of Islam” and appeals to him to save Persia from Anglo-Russian aggression.

Judge Simeon Baldwin, Dem. candidate for governor of Connecticut, says he will sue Roosevelt for slander for misrepresenting his views on labor law.

Roosevelt gives a speech in Cleveland, although since his progressives are not in charge of the Ohio Republican Party, he didn’t have much to say about the actual candidates. This is the sum total of what he said about gubernatorial candidate Warren G. Harding: “If Mr. Harding is elected you will have a governor who will put through a public utilities bill.” I don’t think they’d invented the bumper sticker yet but wouldn’t that be a great one?

State prohibition amendments will be up for vote by the electors in Florida, Missouri, Oregon and Texas, while Oklahoma will vote on substituting local option for the current state-wide prohibition.

Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Washington’s male voters will vote on women’s suffrage and Oregon’s on granting suffrage to all taxpayers, regardless of sex. Oregonians will vote on 32 initiatives and referenda, including two on liquor and one for a constitutional convention.

One place there won’t be elections any time soon is Nicaragua, where members of the regime of self-proclaimed Nicaraguan President Estrada sign a convention keeping him in power another two years. The US Special Commissioner Thomas C. Dawson also signs, although with what authority is unclear.

In Britain, suffragists will begin a “suffrage demonstration week” in favor of the women’s suffrage bill. So was the NYT headline “Votes for Women Weak” a typo or a pun or what?

A war between the US and Germany seems inevitable, says the NYT (although Germany thinks the US is bluffing). A tariff war. Over potash. That is, fertilizer.

Today -100: November 5, 1910: Of annexations and the seltzer of doom

Today -1 I ran the first Today -100 post. Seems like only Today -0.75, doesn’t it?

The Chinese emperor decrees the establishment of an Imperial Parliament in 1913. “The police went from house to house informing the occupants of the edict.”

Rumors are going around Panama that Taft’s forthcoming visit is part of a plan to annex it to the United States. This has been denied.

The writer of a letter to the Times shares a pamphlet he received which was put out on behalf of the Prohibition Party, “Fruits of the Liquor Traffic: a Brief Record of 100 Murders Caused by Drink,” by Gomer D. Reese. One of these “murders” was one Harris Cohen, aged 70, who, the letter-writer relates, no doubt paraphrasing slightly, “feeling unwell, viciously and deliberately entered a saloon in Trenton, N.J., calling for and obtaining a ‘seltzer,’ and having publicly imbibed the same, incontinently fell dead of heart disease. Will Mr. Reese kindly explain, before this cruel campaign is over, just what he would have us learn from this horrible example? 1. Was the seltzer very bad? 2. Or, being good, was the said awful Cohen so accustomed to stronger drink that the shock of plain seltzer slew him? 3. Is it wicked to drink seltzer? 4. Had we not better drink nothing?”

All good questions.