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WHAT THIS DEBATE IS MORE ABOUT THAN JUST: “This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page, more than just cutting and spending. It’s about the kind of future we want. It’s about the kind of country we believe in.”
FAITH: “From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity.” Unless you count the high protective tariffs and, you know, slavery.
RUGGED: HAVING A ROCKY AND UNEVEN SURFACE. “More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.” Actually, by definition, everyone is against too much government because it’s, you know, too much.
YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND: “But there has always been another thread running throughout our history - a belief that we are all connected”.
WHO THE TEA PARTY WOULD DENOUNCE AS A BIG-GOVERNMENT TRAITOR WHO WAS PROBABLY BORN IN KENYA RATHER THAN A LOG CABIN: “We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln...”
BURNING ATLANTA? “...that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”
He says we “would not be a great country” without Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance.
THAT VALUES WHAT NOW? “As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally born a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate.”
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF: “This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well”.
AH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS: “But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed.”
WHAT SOME OF YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING: “Now, before I get into how we can achieve this goal, some of you might be wondering, ‘Why is this so important? Why does this matter to me?’”
AMERICANS HATE ABSTRACT THINGS: “You see, most Americans tend to dislike government spending in the abstract, but they like the stuff it buys.”
EAGER: “politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse -that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices. Or they suggest that we can somehow close our entire deficit by eliminating things like foreign aid, even though foreign aid makes up about 1% of our entire budget.” Phew, that clears up that little misconception, I’m sure.
OH, A SERIOUS PLAN: “So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget.”
He goes on to criticize “one vision” – for some reason he can’t bring himself to use Paul Ryan’s name. (By the way, I think much more attention should be paid to another Wisconsin congresscritter: Rep. Reid Ribble (R). I don’t know anything about him, I just want to hear his name on the news as often as possible: Reid Ribble Reid Ribble Reid Ribble Reid Ribble.)
He says it “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history. A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year.” Have we had “clean energy” and Pell Grants for most of our history? “These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in.”
RYAN’S A REAL DOWNER, MAN: “And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic.”
He’s nicely tough on Ryan: “ It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck - you’re on your own. ... This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves. Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. ... They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? ... The fact is, their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. ... There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”
BOY, WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN THE MYTHICAL AMERICA THAT HE “KNOWS?” “And this is not a vision of the America I know. The America I know is generous and compassionate”.
So he wants a “more balanced approach” and to preserve “core spending.” Oh, and to “win the future.” Phew, for a second there I thought he was going to propose losing the future.
He says he’ll find “additional savings” in the military budget. He doesn’t say what those might be.
And “to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Here, the difference with the House Republican plan could not be clearer: their plan lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself.” More generic drugs, no “erroneous payments,” incentives to doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries, and “an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services seniors need.” DEATH PANEL! DEATH PANEL! DEATH PANEL!
He will refuse to renew again the tax cuts to the wealthy that he said he wouldn’t renew in the first place, before he renewed them.
He wants to limit itemized deductions for the wealthy.
He says his approach will cut $2 trillion in spending over 12 years, $1 trillion in interest payments (does that make sense?), and $1 trillion in tax reform (which he calls “reducing spending in the tax code,” just in case you thought he was calling for tax increases).
REALLY? ARE YOU SURE? “Of course, there will be those who disagree with my approach.”
DOES HE ACTUALLY KNOW ANY WEALTHY AMERICANS? “And I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.” See, and you thought they were all greedy fuckwads, when in fact they were just sitting at home (well, mansion), waiting for an engraved invitation to give back to the country that’s done so much for them, because they’re just polite that way.
HE STILL BELIEVES IN THE BI-PARTISANSHIP FAIRY: “Of course, there are those who will simply say that there’s no way we can come together and agree on a solution to this challenge. They’ll say the politics of this city are just too broken.... But I also know that we’ve come together and met big challenges before. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill came together to blah blah blah... I believe we can and must come together again.”
HOW MANY ENDS DOES A SPECTRUM HAVE? “I don’t expect the details in any final agreement to look exactly like the approach I laid out today. I’m eager to hear other ideas from all ends of the political spectrum.”
Pierre Prier flies a monoplane from London to Paris without stopping, in under 4 hours.
The owners of the Triangle Waist Company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, are indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter, for having locked the factory’s doors (which was a misdemeanor, making the deaths manslaughter).
Now we know the Mexican government is desperate: it raises soldiers’ wages and may even hold a real election in Sonora.
I mentioned that female Cornell students petitioned against two black students being admitted to the dorms. The Cornell president decided to let the ladies in. The NYT suggests that this may not do race relations any good: “It may... by compelling a closeness of physical association that one of them considers objectionable, lead to a psychical separation much wider than would otherwise be the case. There is as little likelihood of happiness for negroes as for other people when they go where they are not wanted, and there is such a thing as insisting too strongly on rights, even when they are unquestionable. Rights are valuable, but so are voluntarily granted privileges”. The Times says that the two students were “unwise” to press their case, in which case they will effectively have neither. But note the unquestioned assumption that it is for the white students to say who is or is not “wanted.” The paper suggests the black students now “so carry themselves as to overcome the present antagonism to them as near neighbors.”
Pres. Taft denies that his sending 20,000 troops to the Mexican border had anything to do with a rumored (falsely rumored) secret treaty between Japan and Mexico giving the Japanese a coaling station on the west coast of Mexico. There does seem to have been a tendency for people to believe almost any rumor about Japan. Rep. David Foster (R-Vermont, the former chairman of the foreign affairs committee) believes these rumors constitute a conspiracy to stir up a US-Japanese war by those with financial interests in building battleships.
Headline of the Day -100: “Voted for Lorimer, Dies in His Bath.” In that order. This would be Illinois State Legislator Michael Link, who was bribed (he insisted the $1,000 was a “gratuity”) to vote for William Lorimer for US Senate, but turned state’s evidence.
King George V revives the court custom, discontinued – for some reason – by Edward VII, that divorced people not be received at Court.
Headline of the Day -100: “Want Beer at Cornell.”
Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles acquitted by Texas court.
There was a budget agreement and Obama congratulated himself.
MONUMENTAL BUSINESS: “Tomorrow, I’m pleased to announce that the Washington Monument, as well as the entire federal government, will be open for business.” Or open its legs to business. Same thing, really.
SO THAT’S OKAY THEN: “And that’s because today Americans of different beliefs came together again.”
PAINFUL: “Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. Programs people rely on will be cut back.” I’d feel better about Obama personally if he’d specified which people will no longer have the programs they relied on, whose pain will be created by these painful cuts.
“And I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances.” The “circumstances” thing can be read in two different ways: economic or political. He needed to distinguish whether he was saying that the state of the economy makes cuts necessary, or that the state of the House of Representatives makes them politically inevitable. This is an important distinction. He also failed to mention at any point that spending cuts were necessitated by the tax cuts for the wealthy that the Republican insisted on, and he agreed to.
WINNING! “We protected the investments we need to win the future.”
“At the same time, we also made sure that at the end of the day, this was a debate about spending cuts, not social issues like women’s health and the protection of our air and water.” Dude, a budget is always about social issues and priorities. And since you threw abortions for women in D.C. under the bus (yes, that’s a really repulsive image I invoked there), you can’t say this wasn’t about women’s health.
COMING TOGETHER: “A few months ago, I was able to sign a tax cut for American families because both parties worked through their differences and found common ground. Now the same cooperation will make possible the biggest annual spending cut in history, and it’s my sincere hope that we can continue to come together as we face the many difficult challenges that lie ahead, from creating jobs and growing our economy to educating our children and reducing our deficit. That’s what the American people expect us to do.” Is that really what the American people expect them to do? Only if they’re paying absolutely no attention whatsoever, so... maybe.
In order to continue to fetishize compromise and bipartisanism, he has to portray this deal as a good thing. Biggest annual spending cut in history, hurrah! Winning the future, yay! Programs people rely on will be cut back, yippee! Austerity forever!
But in the end, it’s all about... wait for it... the children: “A few days ago, I received a letter from a mother in Longmont, Colorado. Over the year, her son’s eighth grade class saved up money and worked on projects so that next week they could take a class trip to Washington, D.C. They even have an appointment to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.” The Unknown Soldier has appointments? “The mother wrote that for the last few days the kids in her son’s class had been worried and upset that they might have to cancel their trip because of a shutdown. She asked those of us in Washington to get past our petty grievances and make things right.” I hope he shared this letter with John Boehner, just to watch him weep. “And next week, when 50 eighth graders from Colorado arrive in our nation’s capital, I hope they get a chance to look up at the Washington Monument and feel the sense of pride and possibility that defines America”. The possibility of peeing off the top on all the tourists below. They look just like ants, don’t they, kids?
At the annual encampment (reunion, I guess) of the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic), Dept of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, now taking place in Georgia, three black attendees were dragged from their hotel by a mob in the middle of the night, whipped and made to leave town.
Three black men are lynched in Georgia in one incident, and one in another.
Lots of competition for Headline of the Day -100: “Rabbis Condemn Dancing.” “Nihilists Dance to Aid Refugees.” “French Now Drink Tea.” “‘I Shave Myself,’ Says Taft.” “Queen Forbids Kissing.” (The queen of Spain doesn’t want her children, or anyone else’s, kissed, on hygienic grounds.)
Headline of the Day That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t -100: “DETECTIVE DONS SKIRTS.; Zavat, Disguised as a Woman, Traps a Black-Hander.”
“President Taft has adopted a unique method of meeting the new members of the Senate.” He will have them all over for dinner. Trust Taft to come up with a food-based solution to a logistical problem.
Remember Caleb Powers, the new Republican member of Congress from Kentucky who was elected in 1910 despite his involvement in the assassination of Gov. William Goebel in 1900? Well, the 9 Democratic congresscritters from KY are all refusing to serve alongside him on any congressional committee, effectively keeping him off any committee of interest to his constituents.
Peace talks in the Mexican Revolution break off. Pres. Díaz refused to resign.
For the first time ever, an airplane carries not one but two women passengers.
There’s been much confusion about orders for those negro 9th Cavalry troops. For now they’ll be staying in San Antonio, after vigorous protests from various towns they were going to be coming through and forcible representations to Pres. Taft by local congresscritter John Nance Garner (FDR’s vice president). One of the towns objecting to the proposed deployment was Brownsville, where there was a similar incident with black troops in 1906. Just as these 1911 reports of running battles in San Antonio seem to come down one actual incident of a black soldier punching a street car conductor and running off, hugely exaggerated by panicky white folks, in 1906 in Brownsville, hostility between townspeople and black troops culminated in the former claiming the troops had shot up the town and planting spent shells as evidence. When none of the troops ‘fessed up, because they hadn’t done anything, Pres. Roosevelt dishonorably discharging all 167 troops in an impetuous act of collective punishment.
A White Plains, NY policeman saves a black man who slashed a trolley conductor during a fare dispute from being lynched, holding off a mob of 200 with his gun.
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?
