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Telegraph Headline of the Day: “First Homosexual Caveman Found.” (A Czech archaeologist is over-interpreting her evidence, if you ask me).
Poor Baby of the Day: “Nick Clegg: I Cry to Music and Even My Sons Ask Why Everyone Hates Me.”
Note to Antonio, Alberto and Miguel Clegg: because your father is a git.
Confectionaries of the Day: “Nazi Cakes Cause Outrage.” A bakery in Austria makes them:
Always trying to take over the Sudetenmuffins.
The first Socialist member of Congress, Victor Berger, introduces a resolution calling for Taft to submit to Congress all reports, papers etc on which he based the order for troops to be mobilized on the Mexican border, and calling for their withdrawal.
Scenes from the Supreme Court -100: a lawyer was trying to explain to the justices what a railway conductor meant when he told an engineer, “Oh, h--, back up.” Associate Justice Joseph McKenna enquired, “Did he mean what was once expressed by the slang phrase, ‘Oh, cheese it’?” “Exactly,” the lawyer replied.
Headline of the Day -100: “Aroused About Pussy.”
Obama, asked who the American people should blame ifwhen there is a government shutdown: “I don’t think the American people are interested in blaming somebody.” He don’t know us very well, do he?
WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AREN’T INTERESTED IN: “They’re not interested in finger pointing and neither am I.”
WHAT HE’S NOT WILLING TO DO: “But what we’re not willing to do is to go out there and say we’re going to cut another 60,000 head slot starts -- Head Start slots.” Now I’m going to be worried the rest of the day about those 60,000 head slot starts.
The new Congress convenes. The D’s, now in charge of the House, elect a new Speaker, James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark of Missouri. The 1912 presidential election is well and truly under way, since Clark will do his best to derail Taft’s legislative agenda while attempting to make himself the leading D candidate (and coming fairly close). For example, this is a special session, called by Taft for the sole purpose of passing his tariff reciprocity treaty with Canada, but Clark, giving a speech on his plans for the session, failed even to mention reciprocity, instead talking about lowering tariffs, popular election of senators, statehood for Arizona and New Mexico, etc etc.
Insurgent Republican senators demand from their party leadership, and get, ¼ of the Republican seats on all important Senate committees, with those members decided not by the party but by themselves. This means that if insurgents join with Democrats, they will be able to outvote the old guard Republicans (there are 50 R’s and 41 D’s in the Senate).
In local elections in Milwaukee, which has been run by Socialists for a year now, the Catholic Social Union fields candidates for the school board, though less Catholic than anti-socialist (there’s only one actual Catholic among the Catholic Social Union candidates who win 3 of the 5 contested seats). Women’s votes were evidently instrumental in the Socialist defeat, and for that of the socialists in Wichita.
On the other hand, Socialist John Menton is elected mayor of Flint, Michigan, and other socialists are elected aldermen, supervisors, and to other city positions there.
The Standard Oil Company issues a denial that it is financing the revolt in Mexico.
John Trower, reputed to be the richest negro in America, dies, purportedly leaving an estate of $1.5 million.
The Massachusetts Legislature defeats women’s suffrage by 161 to 69.
The Army is claiming that the decision to send the 9th Cavalry to patrol the desert had nothing to do with any fights with conductors over San Antonio’s Jim Crow laws. But another racial problem has developed: one of the colonels in the Illinois National Guard contingent of the border buildup is a... wait for it... negro. However, “Illinois Guardsmen are loyal soldiers, and despite their heart-burnings at having a colored man accompany them as their ranking office they gave no outward evidence of their chagrin.” What stoicism. Privately, some of the white Illinois officers said “that Gov. Deneen made a diplomatic mistake” in choosing him. Col. John Marshall, who was born a slave, was the first black colonel in the US Army, serving in the Spanish-American War, when his presence also pissed off white officers.
A NYT editorial blames the kerfuffle in San Antonio on white people selling whisky to black soldiers, but also on the incongruity between Jim Crow laws and soldiers “entitled to the respect deserved by one trained and ready to sacrifice his life in the defense of the Nation”. The obvious solution, the Times suggests, is to get rid of... negro soldiers. What, you thought they were going to say the Jim Crow laws? “They are good soldiers, as everybody admits, and as they have many times proved in both peace and war, but somehow they do not fit in well with the Nature of Things as They Are.”
An Army investigation has conveniently concluded that no one high up is in any way responsible for the “kill team” that murdered Afghan civilians for shits and giggles and gruesome souvenirs, not even the brigade’s commander, a Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, and... okay, I’m not even gonna try to hide that one reason I’m blogging this is because of my, you know, moral outrage and whatnot, but the larger reason is that I find the names of pretty much everyone involved so darned entertaining, starting with Spc. Jeremy “The plan was to kill people” Morlock, who has already been convicted for his role.
Anyway, Harry Tunnell the Fourth was known, well before he was sent to Afghanistan, when the unit was training in the States under... wait for it... Brig. Gen. Randy Dragon, for his contempt for the Army’s stated policy of protecting civilians and winning hearts & minds™, preferring a policy of “search and destroy.” But the investigation, led by one Brig. Gen. Twitty, could find “no causal relation” with the fact that his men went out and did exactly that. Nevertheless, Harry Tunnell the Fourth is getting a jolly stern letter of admonition. His boss, Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges (who somehow escaped being assigned a Wodehousian name) says, “I should have specifically told him that MG Carter and I had lost confidence in his ability to command from his failure to follow instructions and intent.” You know what would better than specifically telling someone that you have no confidence in their ability to command because of their failure to follow instructions? Not leaving them in charge of a bunch of heavily armed hash-smokers in a foreign country.
Oh, and that MG Carter was the commander of allied forces in southern Afghanistan, Major General Nick Carter, detective.
Teddy Roosevelt gives a speech in Reno, attacking Reno. He calls the divorce colony there a disgrace.
NY gets its first DMV offices (previously, you had to send to Albany for automobile registration). On the first day, it took 15 minutes on average.
Mexican Vice President Ramon Corral requests a leave of absence so he can go to Europe. For his health. Yeah, that’s it, for his health.
Oh, okay, I’ve looked it up and he had pancreatic cancer.
King George will be visiting Dublin soon. The Corporation of Dublin considered adopting a loyal resolution to mark the occasion, but decided not to.
Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Orders Negroes Out of San Antonio.” Specifically, the Ninth Cavalry, a negro regiment. Evidently they’ve been resisting the Jim Crow laws segregating street cars. The Ninth will be sent to patrol the Mexican border. In the desert. As far from cities as possible.
Pastor Terry Jones “promised in September not to set fire to the book, then he and his congregation discussed shredding, shooting, or dunking it in water instead.”
Obama condemns Pastor Terry Jones’s burning of a Koran: “The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry.” Intolerance and bigotry, yes, and I would add willful ignorance and dickishness, but the disposal of a, you know, book doesn’t seem to enter “extreme” territory, which is firmly held by the Afghans busy slaughtering actual humans others (with a little side-trip to a girls’ high school, which you will no doubt be surprised to hear was burned).
Obama condemns that as well: “No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people,” adding, “unless they’re a witch or a heretic or a Jew or something, but those people aren’t innocent according to those religions, because they’re witches or heretics or Jews or something.”
In French Guinea, a force of French soldiers sent to capture the Sultan of Goumbra to stop his anti-French activities and, allegedly, to suppress slavery, is ambushed, with 14 killed. They respond with machine guns, killing 300. Always nice to see a humanitarian mission in action.
Some sort of ongoing race war in Laurel, Delaware, no idea why.
Francisco Madero says he doesn’t trust President Díaz’s promises and that the insurrectos will not lay down their arms until the 1910 elections are declared void and new, free elections, with no literacy requirement, have taken place. He says he really doesn’t want American military intervention but trusts that it will never happen: “I have too high an opinion of the United States government to fear an unjust war.” Isn’t that just adorable?
Libyan government spokesmodel Moussa Ibrahim rejects the idea of a cease-fire, saying, “If this is not mad, I don’t know what it is.”
Canada has sent immigration agents to the Caribbean to recruit servants. However, “negresses” at $5 a month is one thing. African-American farmers who said fuck it to Jim Crow laws in Oklahoma and tried to move to Canada are evidently another thing entirely and have been turned back on spurious grounds.
Beleaguered Mexican President Porfirio Díaz makes a speech to Congress promising various reforms, including no reelection of current high officials (his term has only 5 years and 9 months left in it, by which time he’ll be 86), land reform, an independent judiciary, etc. He says the rebellion is confined to three states and the disorder elsewhere is mere “brigandage.”
Conflict of interest rules not so strict in 1911: Ohio Governor Judson Harmon will appear as a private lawyer before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company in a lawsuit he was involved with before taking office.
The District of Columbia’s excise commissioner orders that liquor not be sold to Native Americans unless they can prove they are American citizens.
British suffragettes plan to boycott the 1911 census.
Barbara Boxer and other Senate D’s are sponsoring a measure to ensure that if the government shuts down, members of Congress and the president are not paid their salaries. Sigh.
This same provision was included on a ballot proposition here in California in November, the faux populist sauce to make passing a budget by a mere majority in the Legislature more palatable to sceptical Californians. Here was my argument against: This is precisely the same thing, morally speaking, as offering legislators a bribe in a brown paper bag in a parking garage: it is an economic incentive to vote a certain way. Any politician this would work on is not worthy of holding public office. It would put a coercive weapon in the hands of obstructionist wealthy legislators to use against any of their brethren who might actually need their pay. Do we really want to drive out of politics everyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire?
(Also, it would be unconstitutional: the Constitution says the pay of a president cannot be altered during his term, and the 27th Amendment says the same for Congress.)
Ten UN workers massacred in Afghanistan (and 5 Afghans). It’s Pastor Terry Jones’s fault. Just had to burn a Koran. Jones denies any culpability.
Otto Ringling, one of the circus brothers, dies. What a great name. Say it out loud with me: Otto Ringling Otto Ringling Otto Ringling.
Also, some stuff happened in Mexico but I don’t know what and the NY Legislature finally named a new senator but I don’t know who because the NYT scans were totally unreadable.
The US issues a warning that it will bomb anyone in Libya, government or rebel, who kills civilians. Or as a spokesmodel puts it, “whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition.”
“Pro-opposition?” Don’t the positive and negative in that phrase cancel each other out?
And we will do so because UN Security Council Resolution 1973 applies to both sides. Of course so does Resolution 1970, the arms embargo on Libya, but we’re still planning to arm the rebels (I assume we actually already are).
But who counts as a civilian? In the past, ambassador to the UN Susan Rice refused to say whether rebels were civilians or combatants. And it’s not like there’s an official rebel army that people enlist in, put on a uniform, and serve in for the duration (when such un-uniformed irregulars fight American forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, we call them “unlawful combatants”).
And on the other side, the Libyan government is handing out assault weapons to pro-Qaddafi civilians, further confusing the definition of “civilian,” which some might consider a problem, since the only stated rationale for Operation Turd Sandwich is the protection of civilians. Obama in his speech Monday said that our military activities (i.e., blowing shit up) have no broader goals. An anonymous “legal adviser to the military campaign” says that Libyans “are so intermixed that it is not feasible to discern where the boundary between the civilians and opposition forces lie”. “There are also those civilians entitled to protection that may be armed in order to protect their families, homes, businesses, and communities. Other civilians may join the rebels at certain stages, becoming armed combatants, and then decide to return home for whatever reason, thus transitioning back to civilian non-combatants.” General Carter Ham, proud possessor of the WASPiest name in all Christendom, said “it’s not a clear distinction, because we’re not talking about a regular military force — it’s a very problematic situation.” These are admissions that the just-protecting-civilians rationale is effectively meaningless.
And what does it mean for the Libyans? Basically, if civilians and combatants are mixed together, as they are everywhere, neither side can attack territory held by the other side without fouling afoul of Resolution 1973. So stalemate forever, and effective division of Libya, is that our policy?
(Update: IOZ notes the natural extension of threat to bomb anyone who kills civilians.) (Belgium has it coming; I’ve always said so.)
(Update updated: Glenn Greenwald comment on Twitter: “We sit in the sky, over Libya, threatening to shoot lighting bolts at anyone who sins.”)
German Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg says that universal arbitration and universal disarmament are impossible ideals.
NYC Mayor Gaynor decides that the city will bury any unclaimed Triangle fire bodies. The Women’s Trade Union League and the Waistmakers’ Union have each been trying to claim them. The union also wants a parade. Er, procession.
The mother of one of the dead girls claims that $1,600 was robbed from her daughter’s body (okay, that seems like a lot, but most of these immigrant girls had never heard of banks and did carry their savings hidden on their persons).
The Russian Orthodox Church issues a ban on Jews having Christian first names.
Obama gave a speech about energy policy today, at Georgetown.
Credit where credit is due: this is a good line, concerning the last time gas was $4 a gallon, in 2008: “And because we were at the height of political season, you had all kinds of slogans and gimmicks and outraged politicians -- they were waving their three-point plans for $2 a gallon gas. You remember that -- ‘drill, baby, drill.’”
BECAUSE YOU’RE GOING TO BE KILLING EACH OTHER FOR A GALLON OF GASOLINE, “ROAD WARRIOR” STYLE: “We’re going to have to think long term, which is why I came here, to talk to young people here at Georgetown, because you have more of a stake in us getting our energy policy right than just about anybody.”
Another good line, somewhat hurt because he beat it into the ground: “We cannot keep going from shock when gas prices go up to trance when they go back down -- we go back to doing the same things we’ve been doing until the next time there’s a price spike, and then we’re shocked again.”
He announced his grand objective: to reduce oil imports by 1/3 in ten years.
He said we should import oil from stable countries like Canada and Mexico (has he seen Mexico recently?) and maybe Brazil. “Part of the reason I went down there is to talk about energy with the Brazilians. They recently discovered significant new oil reserves, and we can share American technology and know-how with them as they develop these resources.” Our oil! Our oil! Our oil!
Of course the “hey, let’s only import oil from friendly, stable countries” idea is nonsense, since the oil market is global. Almost none of the oil used in the US is from Libya, but that didn’t shelter us from a price spike.
HARNESSES: “But our best opportunities to enhance our energy security can be found in our own backyard -- because we boast one critical, renewable resource that the rest of the world can’t match: American ingenuity. American ingenuity, American know-how. To make ourselves more secure, to control our energy future, we’re going to have to harness all of that ingenuity.” Like in “The Matrix.”
HE JUST TOTALLY GETS YOUNG PEOPLE, DOESN’T HE? “and I know how passionate young people are about issues like climate change”.
OBAMA TOTALLY MAKES FUN OF AMNESIA PATIENTS. AMNESIA IS A VERY SERIOUS CONDITION, MR. PRESIDENT: “And lately, we’ve been hearing folks saying, well, the Obama administration, they put restrictions on how oil companies operate offshore. Well, yes, because we just spent all that time, energy and money trying to clean up a big mess. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have amnesia.”
He says Energy Secretary Steven Chu is “the right guy” to ensure that natural gas is extracted safely. “He’s got a Nobel Prize in physics. He actually deserved his Nobel Prize.” Oh good, Obama is finally admitting that he didn’t deserve his.
NERD! NERRRRRD!!! “And this is the kind of thing that he likes to do for fun on the weekend. (Laughter.) He goes into his garage and he tinkers around and figures out how to extract natural gas.”
Oh lord, he mentions switchgrass. Mark down “switchgrass” as another word ruined forever by George Bush. I hear it and I get flashbacks. Not that it tends to come up in casual conversation.
“We’ve also made historic investments in high-speed rail and mass transit”. 3,815 words before he mentions mass transit. It really could be a George Bush speech on energy, except he doesn’t make any disparaging jokes about electric cars looking like golf carts.
THE NICE THING ABOUT ENERGY EFFICIENCY: “The nice thing about energy efficiency is we already have the technology.”
Another goal: “By 2035, 80 percent of our electricity needs to come from a wide range of clean energy sources”. Of course he counts nuclear power and “clean coal” as clean energy sources.
He deplores the loss of our leadership in green energy: “in the 1980s, America was home to more than 80 percent of the world’s wind capacity, 90 percent of the world’s solar capacity. We were the leaders in wind.” Those were the days.
He wants those days of wind leadership back because “I want America to win the future.”
HE DIDN’T REALLY TEST IT: “I’ve tested an electric vehicle fresh off the assembly line. I mean, I didn’t really test it -- I was able to drive like five feet before Secret Service said to stop.”
Arizona has banned abortions motivated by the race or sex of the child.
Of course this is a non-problem, but reading the text of the act (pdf), I suspect that (beyond peacocking for the base), the key clauses are those empowering the father (if married to the pregnant woman) or her parents (if a minor), to bring a civil action on behalf of the fetus to stop such abortions, or to sue abortion-providers afterwards, allowing relatives to control their womenfolk by making false claims in court. Financing such an abortion is made a criminal act.
As is usual with anti-abortion measures, the woman is subject to no penalties, even though its her evil discriminatory motives that are the point of this bill. All the penalties (up to 7 years in jail, loss of medical license, lawsuits, fines) fall on medical professionals. This is not just a thought crime, but a someone-else’s-thought crime.
Abortion-providers must sign an affidavit that they have no knowledge that a pregnant woman wants the abortion because of the fetus’s sex or race. The patient must also sign. This will either 1) encourage doctors to pry into the motivations of their patients, 2) encourage them to talk as little as possible with their patients, in case the woman says something for which the doctor may later face legal jeopardy. Either way, the doctor-patient relationship is poisoned, with doctors trying to cover their own asses rather than deal with the needs of their patients. Doctors, nurses, counselors, etc must also report any “known or suspected” sex- or race-selection motivations.
The law states, “There is no place for such discrimination and inequality in human society.” Because if there’s one thing the state of Arizona is opposed to, it’s discrimination and inequality. It adds, “The purpose of this legislation is to protect unborn children from prenatal discrimination”.
Prenatal... discrimination!
See, it’s not about banning abortion, it’s about banning discrimination. And discrimination is bad, right?
The law states: “Sex-selection and race-selection abortions are elective procedures that do not in any way implicate a woman’s health.” You could say the same thing about abortions following rape or incest – so what?
By the way, the name of this thing: “The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011.”
Women’s suffrage fails in the Minnesota state senate 32-32.
Much of the NY state capitol burned down. It was uninsured. The State Library was destroyed, including many irreplaceable manuscripts, such as the correspondence of Gov. George Clinton. The sacred wampum of the Six Nations was (were? is wampum a singular or a plural noun?) also destroyed.
12 states have rejected the constitutional amendment for a federal income tax, meaning it can’t be ratified unless one of them retracts.
8-year-old Mary Tamplin dies “as a result of excessive rope jumping.” She was in a jump-roping contest with a friend. 698 times. Doesn’t say who won. Her classmates will be pallbearers. 8-year-old pallbearers?
