Heat

Just one comment about Arizona State Senator Lori Klein pointing a loaded gun at a reporter: someone who refers to walking around with a lethal firearm as “packing heat” should on no account be allowed to do so.

Today -100: July 17, 1911: Of socialists, exciting bombs, and hair-raising films

Socialists are now in charge of the city government of Berkeley. I know! In large part through the efforts of young radicals at the university. I know! However, the elected socialists have been fighting amongst themselves – I know! – over the distribution of patronage positions. (Update: the LA Times of 7/10/11 says that new Socialist Mayor Stitt Wilson is refusing to give his party leaders an undated resignation to be used at their convenience, so they are already threatening to recall him.)

Headline of the Day -100: “Bombs Excite Pasadena.” I should think. Someone left a couple of bombs in a basket in front of the home of a retired dental-instrument manufacturer.

A movie actor, Albert Brighton (not listed in IMDB), drowned last week while filming a movie. There are already ads for the film: “Film actor’s sensational fight for life. Hair-raising act shown in detail before and during the fatal plunge, in which Al Brighton lost his life to make drowning scene realistic. A marvelous picture film, containing 41 scenes, 1,000 feet of film, and in which 100 actors are employed. The noted picture player plunges to his death while hundreds applaud his death struggles, appreciating, as they thought, his usual great efforts to make a scene real. Order now.” Hair-raising may not be the best choice of words: one of the men trying to save Brighton grabbed him by the hair, which, being a toupee, came off. He did not surface again.

Today -100: July 16, 1911: Of false hair, French divorce, goats, and disgusted burglars

Headline of the Day -100: “Wrestles With False Hair.” Part of an endless series of stories since the passage of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909 in which the Treasury categorizes various imported products to determine the tariff to be paid on them. In this case, the law specifies that “drawn” hair is subject to a 20% duty while “raw” hair may be imported free, so the Treasury is busy determining which is which. “One section of the Treasury offices looks like an Indian camp after the visit of a scalping party.”

An article about the income tax amendment mentions parenthetically that of 15 state legislatures which have yet to vote on it, 9 are out of session until 1913.

A couple of French dukes sue because Louis XV gave their ancestor rights to a box at the Opéra Comique with a room behind it, a separate staircase and a private entrance, but since the reconstruction of the opera house in 1887, they’ve had only the box. The court (which evidently hasn’t heard of the abolition of aristocratic privileges during the French Revolution) awards them $2,000 in damages, but won’t order that the building’s entire facade be rebuilt to accommodate them.

More upper-upper-class French people news: with divorce rising (and fewer people shunning divorced women from polite society) but with French divorce proceedings pretty secretive, the question has arisen of whether and how one should announce one’s divorce in the pre-Facebook age. If you send out divorce cards, do you say “Monsieur and Madame X regret to announce,” when you obviously regrette rien, or “Monsieur and Madame X have the pleasure of announcing,” which some find frivolous? “Monsieur and Madame X have the honor”? The younger set dislike “The court has declared a divorce between Monsieur and Madame X” because it’s legalistic instead of sentimental. And what about the recipient: do you send congratulations or condolences?

Candidates to join the Elks will no longer have to ride the goat. That’s a euphemism for... oh, wait, for riding a goat.

Politically Correct Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “YELLOW PERIL IS IMMINENT.; FLOOD OF CHINESE MARCHING ON LOS ANGELES; Plague-stricken Contrabands Are Crossing the Line, and Four Hundred Waiting at Ensenada.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Burglar Caught, Disgusted.” Said the burglar, as he was led by police out of the home of an electrical engineer who had choked him into submission, “Richmond Hill is the worst place I ever saw. If I robbed every house in the place I wouldn’t get more than 25 cents.” In burglary as in real estate, it’s location location location.

Obama press conference: It is hard to do a big package

Hillary Clinton announces in Istanbul that the US now recognizes the Libyan Transitional National Council “as the legitimate governing authority for Libya... In contrast, the United States views the Qadhafi regime as no longer having legitimate authority in Libya.” Still no definition of the process by which legitimacy is conferred or withdrawn, despite the fact that US foreign policy seems to be based on our ability to discern and measure the magical property of legitimacy without having to resort to anything as old-fashioned as an election. We shall be handing over billions of dollars of assets belonging to the regime which no longer has legitimate authority and handing it to the one that has acquired it.

She added that Syrian President Asad “has lost his legitimacy in the eyes of his people because of the brutality of their crackdown”.

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Obama press conferences are like buses: you wait forever and then three arrive right behind each other. Today, another.

WHAT WE HAVE A CHANCE TO DO: “We have a chance to stabilize America’s finances for a decade, for 15 years, or 20 years, if we’re wiling to seize the moment.” Because nothing creates stability like giving in to Republican demands.


WHAT HE IS WILLING TO DO: “And I have already said I am willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage of our overall economy since Dwight Eisenhower.”

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: “Now, let me acknowledge what everybody understands: It is hard to do a big package.”

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: “So I am still pushing for us to achieve a big deal.”

He spent a bit of time explaining that polls, including Republican polls, show that the American people, including Republicans, want a deficit package to include tax increases (or “revenues,” as Obama calls them) in a “balanced approach.” Then he says, “And I’ve already taken some heat from my party for being willing to compromise. My expectation and hope is, is that everybody, in the coming days, is going to be willing to compromise.” (Really, that’s your expectation? Have you met Eric Cantor?) So why is the only heat he’s talking about the heat coming from “my party”?

We don’t need a balanced budget amendment: “what we need to do is to do our jobs.”

OBAMA HAS A VERY COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP WITH LAYER CAKES: “I think about this like a layer cake. You can do the bare minimum and then you can make some progressively harder decisions to solve the problem more and more.”


On Eric Cantor’s snit-fest, but without mentioning Cantor by name: “I think this notion that things got ugly is just not true. ... The American people are not interested in the reality TV aspects of who said what and did somebody’s feelings get hurt. They’re interested in solving the budget problem and the deficit and the debt.” Has he ever met the American people?

AIN’T IT THE TRUTH: “The bottom line is that this is not an issue of salesmanship to the American people; the American people are sold. The American people are sold.” And the Chinese have the receipt.

WE? YOU DON’T SEEM TO HAVE ANY TROUBLE FUCKING OVER THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR YOU: “We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases.” In fact, he can’t even remember which rhetorical flourishes belong to which parties, and a minute later comes out against “job-killing tax cuts.”


PHEW: “Contrary to what some folks say, we’re not Greece, we’re not Portugal.”

DARE TO DREAM: “With respect to Senator McConnell’s plan, as I said, I think it is a -- it is constructive to say that if Washington operates as usual and can’t get anything done, let’s at least avert Armageddon.”

AND THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR ME CAN EAT A BAG OF DICKS: “The proposal that I was discussing with Speaker Boehner fell squarely in line with what most Republican voters think we should do.”

I NEVER READ MY REVIEWS: “I generally don’t watch what is said about me on cable. I generally don’t read what’s said about me, even in The Hill.” Wouldn’t it be funny if he really had no idea what his enemies are saying about him, and only found about it after he retired?

MOSTLY, IT INVOLVES GETTING RID OF ALL THAT PAPER: “I’ve got reams of paper and printouts and spreadsheets on my desk, and so we know how we can create a package that solves the deficits and debt for a significant period of time.”

WHAT’S OBAMA’S DEFINITION OF “PROGRESSIVE,” ANYWAY? “And so that’s where I’d have a selling job, Chuck, is trying to sell some of our party that if you are a progressive, you should be concerned about debt and deficit just as much as if you’re a conservative.” No, no you shouldn’t be. (Also, of course, conservatives are not really concerned about debt and the deficit.)

“And the reason is because if the only thing we’re talking about over the next year, two years, five years, is debt and deficits, then it’s very hard to start talking about how do we make investments in community colleges so that our kids are trained, how do we actually rebuild $2 trillion worth of crumbling infrastructure.” You know what else would stop that being the only thing we’re talking about over the next year, 2 years, 5 years? If the president of the United States talked about something else. “If you care about making investments in our kids and making investments in our infrastructure and making investments in basic research, then you should want our fiscal house in order, so that every time we propose a new initiative somebody doesn’t just throw up their hands and say, ‘Ah, more big spending, more government.’” Yes, that would totally stop somebody doing that.

Today -100: July 15, 1911: Of singing suffragists

Women suffragists were told they couldn’t give suffrage speeches in Hollenbeck Park in Los Angeles (there is a city ordinance against the discussion of political questions in public parks). So they sang their speeches.

Britain and Japan renew their treaty of alliance, but Britain insists on dropping the clause by which it was obliged to join Japan in any war between the US and Japan. In a telling Freudian slip, the LA Times refers to this as a “racial change.”

Searching for the known unknowns

Good gracious, Donald Rumsfeld was searched by the TSA yesterday at O’Hare.

CAPTION CONTEST.

Today -100: July 14, 1911: Of taxation

The NYT is opposed to a constitutional amendment allowing a national income tax (the future 16th Amendment), which it considers, not without reason, an attempt by the rest of the country to screw New York (before the 16th, the Constitution specified that any direct taxes had to be apportioned among the states according to population). The Times quotes an unnamed Arkansas advocate of the amendment who says that for every dollar paid by Ark., NY would pay $1,000 and a NY assemblyman who believes NY would pay 1/6 of the amount raised by a national income tax. Such people assume that Congress would only tax the rich, of whom NY had (and has) rather more than Arkansas. The NY state Assembly disagreed, voting its support of the amendment by a bare majority.

Politically Correct Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Chinks Head for the Border.” “Contraband” Chinese are arriving from Mexico.

Yes, I have started adding in a little coverage from the LAT, though probably without links.

Today -100: July 13, 1911: Fire!

The NY Assembly passes a bill to allow local referendums on allowing baseball on Sundays. Assemblyman McCue said blue laws against Sunday sports do more to fill the prisons and insane asylums than do saloons.

The NY Senate defeats women’s suffrage by a single vote.

The NY Legislature authorizes the formation in NYC of a wholly negro regiment of the National Guard.

The US Senate abolishes a number of federal positions, including one held by Jefferson Davis’s old negro bodyguard, Jim Jones, who’s been out sick for the last 2 years. His position is restored after a kerfuffle in which Sen. Heyburn (R-Idaho) says he’ll support retention of Jones because of his past service to the Senate, but not for his loyalty to an “infamous cause.” Hilarity ensued.

Thomas Jolliff, a British-born miner in Renton, Washington, is denied US citizenship after saying that in event of a strike, he would obey his union rather than the courts. When the judge told him he would be barred from citizenship, Jolliff said he changed his mind. Will have to wait to September while his case is investigated.

Headline of the Day -100: “Congressman Afire.” In the House of Representatives, a box of matches in the pocket of Rep. Frank Willis (R-Ohio) burst into flame. Several other congresscritters put him out.

Media Analysis of the Day

NYT: “After David Cameron was elected prime minister, one of the first visitors he received at 10 Downing Street was Mr. Murdoch — discreetly through a back entrance”. I’ll bet he did, I’ll bet he did.

We have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power

Following the attacks by mobs on the US and French embassies in Syria, Hillary Clinton says of President Assad, “I mean, look - I mean, from our perspective, he has lost legitimacy”. As with her and Obama’s remarks about Qaddafi, she does not say when and how Assad acquired his previous legitimacy, or perhaps that should be his legitimacy “from our perspective,” since it is our perspective that is the vital element in determining any regime’s legitimacy or illegitimacy. To make that point even more clearly, she also said that “President Asad is not indispensable, and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.” Because it’s all about us.

Today -100: July 12, 1911: Of skyscrapers

Plans have been drawn up, not necessarily seriously, for a 100-story building in NYC. (However, the tallest... actually I don’t know what the tallest existing building was in 1911, but the foundation had just been laid for the 57-story Woolworth Building.)

(Update: It was the Met Life Tower.)

Obama press conference: This is the United States of America, and we don’t manage our affairs in three-month increments

Barack Obama held another press conference today.

DAMMIT, WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THIS RELATIONSHIP WORK! “As all of you know, I met with congressional leaders yesterday. We’re going to be meeting again today, and we’re going to meet every single day until we get this thing resolved.”


ACTUALLY, IN THE 1780s... OH, NEVER MIND. “We cannot threaten the United States’ full faith and credit for the first time in our history.”

DEFINE “GOOD-FAITH”: “Speaker Boehner and myself had been in a series of conversations about doing the biggest deal possible so that we could actually resolve our debt and our deficit challenge for a long stretch of time. And I want to say I appreciate Speaker Boehner’s good-faith efforts on that front.”

BUT MOSTLY MEANER: “We have agreed to a series of spending cuts that will make the government leaner, meaner, more effective, more efficient, and give taxpayers a greater bang for their buck.”


IF BY “DO ANYTHING” YOU MEAN “CUT PAYMENTS TO THE POOR, SICK AND ELDERLY, I WOULD HOPE SO. OR IS THAT NOT WHAT YOU MEANT BY “DO ANYTHING”? “There is, frankly, resistance on my side to do anything on entitlements.”

IF BY “DO ANYTHING” YOU MEAN “CUT TAXES ON THE RICH AGAIN”.... “There is strong resistance on the Republican side to do anything on revenues.”

UNLESS YOU CAVE COMPLETELY. BUT THAT COULD NEVER HAPPEN, COULD IT? “But if each side takes a maximalist position, if each side wants 100 percent of what its ideological predispositions are, then we can’t get anything done.” Okay, for Republicans the “maximalist position” is the total refusal of tax increases, but what’s the maximalist position this even-handed phraseology is implying has been taken by the Democrats? Not cutting Medicare and Social Security?

WE’RE NOT THAT FAR-SIGHTED: “The things that I will not consider are a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day or a 180-day temporary stopgap resolution to this problem. This is the United States of America, and we don’t manage our affairs in three-month increments.”


WHAT IT’S NOT GOING TO GET: “It’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now -- pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas.” Or in Rand Paul’s case, vice versa.

ACTUALLY, THEY WON’T PAY FOR THE HIGHWAY EITHER: “I mean, if the basic proposition is ‘it’s my way or the highway,’ then we’re probably not going to get something done because we’ve got divided government.”

HAVE YOU ACTUALLY MET MITCH MCCONNELL AND JOHN BOEHNER? “And so if, in fact, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are sincere -- and I believe they are...”

OBAMA DOESN’T SAY WHICH OF THE PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS DON’T KNOW BETTER: “I will say that some of the professional politicians know better. And for them to say that we shouldn’t be raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible. They know better.” Knowing and caring are of course two separate things.


THERE’S THAT WORD AGAIN: “I think Speaker Boehner has been very sincere about trying to do something big.”

FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN I PROMISED YOU GUYS “HOPE”: “And this is part of the problem with a political process where folks are rewarded for saying irresponsible things to win elections or obtain short-term political gain”.

AGAIN, IF BY “DO ANYTHING” YOU MEAN “CUT PAYMENTS TO THE POOR, SICK AND ELDERLY: “I mean, the vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill would prefer not to have to do anything on entitlements... And I’m sympathetic to their concerns, because they’re looking after folks who are already hurting and already vulnerable”. Note that he isn’t expressing any sympathy for the actual “folks who are already hurting and already vulnerable,” just for the concerns of Democrats on Capitol Hill. I’m sure it’s just an oversight.

WELL NOT WITH AN ATTITUDE LIKE THAT, MISTER: “Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.”

YA KNOW, AT THIS POINT, I DON’T THINK YOUR WILLINGNESS TO MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF THE REPUBLICANS IS REALLY IN ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER: “My point is, is that I’m willing to move in their direction in order to get something done.”

YEAH, YOU’D HAVE TO BE A FUCKING IDIOT TO BELIEVE THAT: “I am not somebody who believes that just because we solve the deficit and debt problems short term, medium term, or long term, that that automatically solves the unemployment problem.” So why are you spending all your time on the deficit and none on jobs?

REALLY, JOHN BOEHNER? ORANGE DUDE WHO ALWAYS SMELLS OF BOURBON? THAT JOHN BOEHNER? “My experience with John Boehner has been good. I think he’s a good man who wants to do right by the country.” You know, we made fun of George Bush for saying he looked into Putin’s soul...



“This recession has been hard on everybody...” Has it? Has it really? “...but obviously it’s harder on folks who’ve got less.” So why are you so eager to cut holes in their safety net?

(Update: However, Obama calling John Boehner sincere and a good man who wants to do etc is not quite as bad a judgement of character as that of Nick Clegg, who called on Rupert Murdoch today to “do the decent thing.”)

Today -100: July 11, 1911: Of heat and non-ritual murder

Another very hot day, many deaths reported.

Jews in Kiev have been on edge since a (Christian) boy was found murdered and mutilated in February, leading to the usual rumors of ritual murder. His step-father (an anti-Semite) has just been arrested.

Today -100: July 10, 1911: Of paperbacks and negroes in public office

A publisher predicts that novels will soon be sold in cheaper paper covers.

The NYT quotes the Tampa Tribune’s explanation of why black candidates in recent municipal elections in Jacksonville, FL received so few votes, even though blacks are in the majority there: negroes “realize that the whites resent the presence of a negro in any public body. They know, too, that a negro in important public office can bring only discomfort to himself and ill-feeling against his race. They prefer to pursue the even tenor of their way” (the Trib’s saying they’re lazy) “content to let the white men rule, and asking from them only the right to make honest livings and conduct themselves in their own sphere.” The NYT says that there are differing opinions about whether blacks should be allowed to vote (and doesn’t really come down on either side): “the negro in his civilized environment is making rapid strides; he is becoming industrious and propertied. But the disparity between his acquired thrift, industry, and perseverance and that of his white neighbors is still great. His opportunities under a white man’s Government do not wear the forbidding aspect of oppression. It matters little to the negro whether he votes or remains away from the polls, and, when he feels a real need for the franchise, he may exercise his privilege. But the negroes of the South should turn a deaf ear to their Republican machine leaders, and heed the industrial gospel preached by Booker T. Washington. The negroes of Jacksonville seem to have the right idea.”

Today -100: July 9, 1911: Of seals, feuds, marriage vows, and fans

The US, Britain, Russia and Japan have signed a treaty to protect seals and otters. Although by protect, I mostly mean divide up their skins.

The owner of two apartment buildings on 98th Street in NYC is annoyed that large new apartment buildings (one is eight stories) being built next door will cut off the light and air from his buildings. So he’s threatening to put up a 3-story-tall fence on the top of his building to block the windows of the new buildings. And he put up a big sign saying that his apartments are now for lease to colored tenants only. That’ll show ‘em.

The Church of England decides to revise the marriage service, including this part: “marriage is not by any to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts, that have no understanding, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.” The carnal lusts & brute beasts would be removed. From the sentence, I mean, not from the marriages, obvs. Also the bit about marriage being ordained for the procreation of children, because “procreation” is a naughty word.

Vice President Sherman broke precedent in presiding over the Senate, bringing in an electric fan to cool himself in the record-breaking heat wave. Hitherto, senators used only palm leaves. Instantly, several senators brought in their own fans.

Advancing a narrow social agenda

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas), introducing provisions, which passed the House 236-184 today, to ban gay marriages taking place on military bases and cutting off funds to train military chaplains on post-DADT policy, says he wants to ensure that “America’s military bases are not used to advance a narrow social agenda.” Because if there’s anything Tim Huelskamp hates, it’s using America’s military bases to advance a narrow social agenda.

Today -100: July 8, 1911: Of docked pay

Gov. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey was surprised to find his pay docked for all the time he spent out of the state making speeches that certainly had nothing to do with any presidential ambitions. His pay for those days went to the guy who was acting governor (the president of the state senate – I guess NJ didn’t have a lieutenant governor).

Caption contest

Not NOTW

Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World is to close forever after Sunday, having been caught hacking the phones of murdered girls, dead soldiers, police, celebs, etc. Probably Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, which now runs 6 days a week, will simply add a Sunday edition to replace the weekly NOTW (the New Statesman noted that The Sun ran only a short story of the NOTW hacking on page 2, “opposite some tits”) (it’s the word “some” that makes that phrase work so well), so don’t worry about the Murdochs losing any money off this scandal.

Okay, NOTW was never exactly what you’d call classy even before Murdoch bought it, its first issue in 1843 featuring the story of an “Extraordinary Charge of Drugging and Violation,” still, it’s impressive that they managed to so destroy the name of a British tabloid paper as to make it commercially untenable.

CONTEST: What would Fox News have to do to so poison the brand that it would close?

California Republicans and teh gayz

The California Assembly voted 49-25 to include mentions of the historical contributions of gays and lesbians in public schools’ social studies classes and textbooks (did you know some gay Prussian dude taught George Washington everything he knew about military drilling? It’s true!).

Here’s the thing: it was a party-line vote, with just one Republican crossing over (Nathan Fletcher of San Diego, who plans to run for mayor). If I may apply sophisticated political analysis here, that’s just stupid. A few New York Republicans were able to vote for gay marriage, but here they’re not even allowed to vote for the most piddling of pro-gay measures?