Monday, January 10, 2011
Today -100: January 10, 1911: Little Oscar and the biplane of doom
Texas Governor-Elect “Little Oscar” Colquitt gets in a minor plane wreck. It was actually supposed to be a photo op of him in a plane on the ground, but he accidentally hit the accelerator and it went several hundred yards before the pilot, who was running along beside it or being dragged, managed to get the throttle closed.
Incidentally, Colquitt was a Democrat and the majority party in both houses of the Texas Legislature was the Prohibition Party.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
But not, you know, really
Boy it’s been a tough week for political metaphors, what with a congresscritter “targeted” by Sarah Palin actually being targeted by a loon with an automatic weapon. I mean, I’d hate for my metaphors to be taken as something I intended literally.
That said, fuck Sarah Palin.
Today -100: January 9, 1911: Of senators and remembering the Maine
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote this week for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of US senators. Opponents may try to derail it by setting qualifications for electors or having the federal government oversee the elections, which would be opposed by Southern Democrats as potentially giving the vote to black people. But the Committee is expected instead to allow the states to set qualifications by making electors for Senate the same as for the lower house of the state legislatures (which is what the 17th Amendment says).
The WaPo reports that the Department of War has concluded that the Maine blew up in 1898 because of an internal explosion, not a Spanish torpedo. So, um, whoops.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Oops
Israeli soldiers kill 65-year-old Palestinian asleep in his bed in Hebron instead of the Hamas member who lived in the apartment downstairs. The IDF apologizes, saying, “Sorry, we meant to kill a different unarmed guy asleep in his bed.”
I’m kidding, of course.
The IDF never apologizes.
Today -100: January 8, 1911: Of monks & nuns, and women voters
Portugal bans monks & nuns from wearing distinctive dress. And anybody is empowered to arrest them for it, or any of the Jesuits already expelled from the country.
The 1910 election has been followed by criminal prosecutions of hundreds of people in various places for vote-buying. Maybe it was like that after every election, I don’t know. In the Billtown School District in Ohio, which is near, um, Ohio I guess, every single male has been disfranchised for vote-selling, so in the next election only women will be able to vote or stand for school trustee.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Today -100: January 7, 1911: Of pardons & peonage, fireworks, mosquitos, suffragettes, mutinies, and pensions
Taft refuses to pardon the president of a lumber company in Florida convicted of holding foreign laborers in involuntary peonage (however, Taft had previously commuted the sentence from 18 months to 6 months). Taft says that “Fines are not effective against men of wealth. Imprisonment is necessary.”
The city of NY has won a court ruling that may allow it to recover from William Randolph Hearst the $250,000 it had to pay out to victims of a fireworks display at Madison Square Garden on election night 1902, put on by the National Association of Democratic Clubs of which Hearst was president, which killed 18 people.
The House votes a $72 a month annuity to a soldier who volunteered for a medical experiment, allowing himself to be bitten by yellow fever mosquitos to test the theory that that’s how you get yellow fever. It is.
The Archbishop of Lyons, France, forbids Catholics reading four republican newspapers, says it is a sin to do so.
British suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst is visiting NY, giving speeches and raising money. The NYT article begins by referring to her as “a little rosy-cheeked slip of an English girl” and keeps up the condescension throughout, using the word “girl” a lot and calling her “little Miss Pankhurst.” It says she is 20 and looks younger. She is in fact 28, and doesn’t. She said she expects British women to be enfranchised “this very year.”
A couple of months ago, some sailors on 2 Brazilian battleships and some other ships mutinied, demanding more pay, the abolition of corporal punishment on ships, etc, or they would bombard Rio. Which they did. The Brazilian Congress voted to accept their demands and give them amnesty but naturally they were arrested when they set foot on shore. Since then 45 of the imprisoned mutineers have mysteriously died of sunstroke, gangrene and suffocation.
There is still no quorum in the Tennessee Legislature, so still no governor. The NYT notes that the situation can’t continue for long because without a government, pensions to Confederate veterans would be stopped and “No man or set of men with political aspirations would care to hazard even an indirect connection with such a situation as that.”
Thursday, January 06, 2011
More Daily Telegraphy: Cats do not talk
From the newspaper of record, the Daily Telegraph:
Scientists prove that women crying is a big turn-off for men. The scientists, wearing lab coats and everything, “collected tears from women watching a sad movie and then had a panel of 24 men smell them while at the same time looking at pictures of the opposite sex. This was then repeated using a salt water solution trickled down the cheek of the same women. When asked to rate the attractiveness of the pictures, the men who had sniffed the real tears found the images much less attractive than when smelling the fake tears.”
The makers of Super Scoop kitty litter are suing Fresh Step for its commercials suggesting that cats prefer the latter litter to the former, citing the alleged fact that “Cats do not talk”.
This nattily dressed gentleman, one Phoenix Jones, practices the trade of superhero in Lynwood, Washington.
Romania is imposing income tax on witches for the first time. The witches are resisting with, yes, spells.
Today -100: January 6, 1911: Of governors, skyscrapers, and first class tickets
Tennessee’s Governor-Elect Ben Hooper is still just governor-elect. A Fusionist, he’s pretty much an accidental, minority governor, his election the product of a bad split in the Democratic Party, mostly over prohibition. Now, mainstream Democrats elected to the Legislature are refusing to be sworn in until the Fusionists stop challenging the results in several seats D’s supposedly won. Without a quorum the Lege can’t swear Hooper in.
Chicago will limit all new buildings to 200 feet, a reduction from the current 260.
The Trial of the Century? The Pennsylvania Railroad files suit against Altern Miller, the president of the Union Electric and Power Company, for $2.16, the price of a first class fare, which Miller had refused to pay for the second part of his journey after being forced to stand from West Philadelphia to Belmar despite having paid first class. Miller vows to fight it to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Meet your new, orange Speaker of the House, America. Who’s crying now?
John Boehner was sworn in today as Speaker of the House,
so I guess I have to start paying attention to John Boehner now, so let’s blog his stupid first speech as stupid speaker of the stupid House of Representatives.
NOT LIKE THOSE CRAPPY, LAZY ONES – I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MASSACHUSETTS’S SEVENTH DISTRICT: “I am honored and humbled to represent a great, hard-working community in Congress.” (Note to any readers in Massachusetts 7th; I picked that number at random, I don’t even know where you are, except probably in Massachusetts, I’m sure you’re lovely, so no complaints please.)
YEAH, WE’RE ALL REALLY GRATEFUL, OHIO’S 8th: “The people of Ohio’s Eighth Congressional District continue to afford me the privilege to serve, for which I am deeply grateful.” And the privilege of leaving Ohio in the winter, or any time, really. (Note to Ohio... ah, screw it.)
BECAUSE THERE WON’T BE ANY MORE ROAD MAINTENANCE FUNDING, SO THE CAN WOULD JUST FALL INTO AN ENORMOUS POTHOLE: “No longer can we kick the can down the road.”
BECAUSE WHEN YOU THINK HUMBLE, YOU THINK JOHN ANDREW BOEHNER: “The American people have humbled us.”
OR SELL IT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. YOU KNOW, WHATEVER. “Our aim will be to give government back to the people.”
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER: “We will dispense with the conventional wisdom that bigger bills are always better...”
NO PREMATURE LEGISLATION: “...that fast legislating is good legislating”.
HE CAN SOMEHOW GET THROUGH THIS SENTENCE WITHOUT LAUGHING MANIACALLY, THAT’S WHY THEY GAVE HIM THE JOB: “Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it openly, honestly, and respectfully.”
OR EVER: “We will not always get it right.”
THAT IDEA: I THINK I’LL HAVE SOME MORE NACHOS: “More than a country, America is an idea”.
IT’S THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE? THAT’S GREAT, CUZ THE PEOPLE JUST GOT FORECLOSED ON: “Welcome to the people’s House. Welcome to the 112th Congress.”
Another edition of “Why Do We Need To Keep Saying This?”
Lots of people have rightly piled onto Ross Douthat for his recent column. But let’s boil it down, shall we? The desire of infertile couples for adorable white babies places absolutely no moral obligation on women with unwanted pregnancies to fill that need. None.
Today -100: January 5, 1911: Of large dirigibles, earthquakes, anarchist demonstrations, and college women
A dirigible capable of carrying 50 passengers is supposedly being built. Its designer promises it will neither explode nor fall.
An earthquake in Russia, 7.7 on the Richter scale, destroys Vyerny, the capital of Semiryetchensk.
Chicago bans anarchists holding a demonstration in honor of the Sidney Street burglars.
The endless discussion in the NYT letters pages about the women’s suffrage movement in colleges continues with a letter from “E.K.R.”, whose daughter is a student in a “prominent college.” She informs him that “without doubt most girls comes out of college suffragettes. ... I have three other daughters, and I am quite sure that no other girl of mine shall go to college to have this stuff ground into her head. It seems to me too bad that our girls should have their poor little heads filled up with this nonsense, thereby constantly increasing the already large army of spinster ladies in the United States of America; for what young man, except one of those long-haired poltroons, would marry a girl who is both a college graduate and a suffragette?”
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Today -100: January 4, 1911: Of sieges, debt peonage, and run-over New Yorkers
The Siege of Sidney Street in London. Several weeks before, some Latvians who the press would make out to be anarchists trying to finance their hideous cause but were probably just small-time burglars were interrupted by police while tunneling into a jewelry store. They killed two cops (three?) and escaped, going to ground in a house in Stepney, where they were discovered three weeks later. Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who naturally went along himself to observe the fun (a bullet passed through that nice top hat – questions about his recklessness were later raised in Parliament), sent in pretty much every cop in London to surround the house, plus Scots Guards from the Tower of London, who brought along a Maxim gun (which wasn’t used). A major gunfight ensued, lasting two hours, against what turned out to be just two people. The building was set on fire, Churchill refused to let the fire brigade put it out, and the two Latvians died, evidently at their own hands.
Click for the Manchester Guardian’s coverage.
Click for newsreel footage (3½ minutes):
LONDON - BATTLE OF LONDON - SIDNEY STREET SIEGE
The Supreme Court rules that Alabama’s labor contract law violates the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. The law prevented people who received pay in advance from quitting their jobs until it was repaid, and was used to reduce negroes to debt peonage.
Henry Cabot Lodge, although a three-term US Senator, is only now giving his first election speech, in advance of the Massachusetts state legislature’s vote on whether to give him a fourth term.
In 1910 376 people were killed by vehicular traffic in New York City, of whom 104 were killed by automobiles, 114 by or in trolleys, and 158 by horse-drawn vehicles. Part of the reason for the large number in the latter category is that while there is a stiff fine for drunk-driving an automobile it is not even illegal to drive a wagon drunk.
In 1910 there were roughly 500,000 automobiles in the US.
Monday, January 03, 2011
John Boehner, the man whose skin color has no rhyme
John Boehner still lacks a widely agreed upon nickname. He was called Boner by his oh-so-imaginative high school classmates, and lately I’ve been seeing Orange Julius. There’s The Great Pumpkin – I just had to google to see if I coined that one (evidently not) – Agent Orange, the Town Crier....
What else have you heard? What did Bush call him? Answers in comments, along with any suggestions of your own.
Today -100: January 3, 1911: Of coups, recovered heads, hands on ice, and umbrellas
Honduras’s deposed president (or coup leader, if you will) (1903-7) Manuel Bonilla re-enters the country and declares himself president again. The NYT notes that “There are disquieting rumors from Washington... that the State Department rather favors the revolutionists in Honduras.” State Department, United Fruit Company, no big diff.
An American military campaign in Mindanao (in the Philippines) against “bandits” ends. One private was killed and “The head of a soldier, which was held as a trophy by the bandits, was recovered.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Dead Hand out of the Ice.” A small boy finds an axe-murdered Italian in a frozen stream in New Jersey.
Oh, and the very next story: “Umbrella Stab to Brain.” Also in Jersey.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Today -100: January 2, 1911: Of revolutions and car accidents
If you’re wondering why I haven’t had much on the ongoing Mexican Revolution, a NYT editorial beginning “One who reads the newspapers with some care may note that there is ‘war’ in Mexico” goes some way towards explaining it. The Times says that the war, which “has the proportions of a riot,” may be confined to a small part of Chihuahua, although there may be uprisings elsewhere, “But of these disturbances we only get the vaguest reports”. Those reports insist that the Díaz government “is beaten daily if not hourly. One feels sorry for a Government that is so persistently beaten, and yet is unaware of its plight.” So the NYT has only crappy sources which it doesn’t trust and it doesn’t think that its job as a newspaper is to do anything about that.
In 1910, 76 children were killed by automobiles in New York City and 215 seriously injured. The National Highways Protective Society blamed 40% of these on the children and has begun an educational program in schools about not getting run over.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Today -100: January 1, 1911: What goes up must come down
Headline of the Day -100: “Moisant and Hoxsey Dare Winds and Die.” Aviator Archibald “Arch” Hoxsey (who took Teddy Roosevelt up in a plane in October) dies in a crash near LA blamed on “holes in the air,” which was evidently a problem in 1910. Earlier in the week he had set a new altitude record (11,474 feet). (Ralph Johnstone, another pilot who had a fatal crash in November, also did so just a few days after setting an altitude record. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.)
And in Louisiana, another famous aviator, John Moisant, was thrown from his plane, broke his neck and died.
32 people died in airplane crashes in 1910.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Haley and the kidney
Procrastination is good. I knew if I waited long enough, someone, in this case the AP, would write about the ethical implications of Haley Barbour pardoning the Scott sisters on the condition that Gladys give a kidney to Jamie. I’m so glad that Barbour has found a way of giving something to the black folks that won’t piss off his white racist base too much, and save the state hundreds of thousands in dialysis costs at the same time, but this is an ethical slippery slope. He can and should pardon them (16 years served so far for an $11 robbery!) so they can do the transplant, but making it a condition is a step too far, especially in a state that used to mass arrest black people on vagrancy and other flimsy charges and put them on chain gangs right before harvest season. We do not use our prisoners for spare parts.
Today -100: December 31, 1910: Of bathtub men
Headline of the Day -100: “Bathtub Men’s Plea for Clemency Fails.” This would be 14 corporations and 37 individuals comprising the Bathtub Trust, currently being prosecuted under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The Justice Dept is going after them personally, seeking jail sentences.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Today -100: December 30, 1910: Of mercenaries, white-capping, and lepers in cars
There’s a revolution going on in Honduras, led by ousted President Gen. Manuel Bonilla and the improbably named Gen. Lee Christmas, an American mercenary. This “revolution” was financed by the United Fruit Company. The NYT thinks that a recent story of two Americans being whipped by the Honduran police is a plant.
80 prominent farmers in Corsicana, Texas are indicted for “white-capping” (basically KKK-type vigilante intimidation) aimed at driving negroes out of the county.
Two Headlines of the Day -100 today, both public transportation related. #1:“Lepers Ride in Cars.”
#2: “Dies in Sleeping Car.”
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