Smokescreen

The worst thing about Obama junking his plans to reverse Bush’s lowering of standards for air pollution is, of course, that people will die because of it, and he knows it. The second worse thing is that he justified it with the argument that protecting the environment and people’s lungs is an optional extra in bad economic times, that profits must always come first. But I want to point out the third worst thing, the craven sneakiness of announcing the decision in a news dump on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend. Obama’s promised transparency has turned out as transparent as the air over Houston.

Oh, and EPA head Lisa Jackson should have resigned in protest. I miss people resigning in protest over matters of principle.

Today -100: September 4, 1911: So that settles that

In Berlin, 200,000 attend a Socialist-organized protest against “the infamous war agitation” which is agitating for a war with France over the Morocco crisis.

Today -100: September 3, 1911: Of land sales, food riots, conspiracies and secessionists

The California congressional delegation is pressuring the State Department to press Mexico to sell the US a strip of the Imperial Valley 50 miles X 20, an area which includes a canal providing the valley with water from the Colorado River. During the Mexican Revolution, rebels demanded (and received) money not to blow up the canal.

There have been food riots in France. The NYT does not approve. It says that people have non-riotous recourse: “To refuse to pay prevailing prices for food is within the rights of all.” Just don’t eat; I don’t know why the French didn’t think of that themselves. Stoopid French people.

The Vatican denies being part of a conspiracy to overthrow the republic in Portugal and re-establish the monarchy.

Southern members of the American Bar Association are threatening to secede after the Association admitted a negro, Assistant United States District Attorney William Lewis.

Today -100: September 2, 1911: A man, a plan, a canal, a cockfight

President Taft bans cock fights, dog fights and bull fights in the Panama Canal Zone.

Headline of the Day -100: “Few Hoboes at Convention.” Hoboes, it turns out, don’t really go to hobo conventions.

This headline is also good: “CROWD GOADS AIRMAN TO FLIGHT AND DEATH; J.J. Frisbie Goes Up in Crippled Machine Because Kansas Spectators Call Him a Faker.” J.J. Frisbie. That name just screams out “man wearing a straw hat,” doesn’t it?

Some days there are no headlines of the day -100, then there are days like this when you get several in a row: “Sultan Receives Women.” “Receives” as in met with a deputation of them complaining about the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire, not “receives” as in “received a new shipment of dancing girls.”

Rep. Charles Carter (D-OK) beats up four clerks in a store, with his fists and his cane, for allegedly insulting his daughter. The NYT offers an explanation: “Carter’s Blood is Almost Half Indian.”

Double, double, double your fun

Mitt Romney, 2011: I’m only doubling my mansion.

Mitt Romney, 2007: My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.

Coincidence?

Today -100: September 1, 1911: When blackjacks are outlawed...

A New York state law goes into effect requiring the registration of all firearms and banning the carrying of blackjacks. Another new law makes it illegal for hotels and theaters to refuse admission to soldiers and sailors in uniform (unless they’re drunk).

Today -100: August 31, 1911: Of neutrality, fans, and gala picnics

Belgium is preparing for war, creating a military council to determine how to keep France, Germany and/or Britain from violating its borders if they go to war with each other over Morocco. Shells and ammunition has been sent to frontier forts, and artillery and machine guns to posts on the German border. Good luck with the whole neutrality thing, Belgium, you’ll need it.

General Electric has just finished making the most expensive electric fan ever, gold-mounted with an ebony switch. It’s for Queen Mary.

Mississippi has its first public hanging in 35 years (the NYT says that in the South, “executions are universally private and as far removed from the public gaze as possible”. Suuuuure they are.). You’ll be surprised and amazed to hear it’s a black man, who killed his wife. Stands were set up around the scaffold to sell the crowd sandwiches, coffee, lemonade, peanuts and everything else you need to make a day of it. “It was more like a gala picnic than the dispatching of a soul to eternity.”

This can’t possibly go horribly, horribly wrong

Indy: “Israeli Military to Equip Jewish Settlers with Gas and Grenades.”

Every single one

Today, Obama spoke to the American Legion’s annual conference. He found something good to say about every war every member of the Legion might have fought in. Here are his remarks about Vietnam:

When communist forces in Vietnam unleashed the Tet Offensive, it fueled the debate here at home that raged over that war. You, our Vietnam veterans, did not always receive the respect that you deserved —- which was a national shame. But let it be remembered that you won every major battle of that war. Every single one.

So yay for our triumph in Vietnam.

Still Dick

On the Today show, Dick Cheney explains the continuing benefits of having invaded Iraq: “What would’ve happened this week if Moammar Gadhafi had still been in power with a nuclear weapon in Libya? Would he have fled? I doubt it.” The logic is impeccable. The logic also gives the credit for Qaddafi’s ouster to Bush ‘n Cheney rather than Obama or the Libyan people.

Invading Iraq was “sound policy” because Saddam Hussein was “a major source of proliferation” [of weapons to terrorists]. He still offers no proof of that. And the war did not damage the US’s reputation.

Asked whether the US, having waterboarded people, could complain when another nation waterboarded an American citizen it suspected of being a spy, Cheney said, “We probably would object to it on the ground that we have obligations to our citizens and we do everything we can to protect our citizens. I think we would object because we wouldn’t expect an American citizen to be operating that way.” This is not a double standard, he explained, because the people we tortured, well, “These are not American citizens.” Not sure why he thinks other countries would accept the proposition that Americans, and only Americans, are too good for waterboarding.

He added, “I would argue that it’s important for us not to get caught up in the notion that you can only have popular methods of interrogation if you want to run an effective counterterrorism program.” Yes, that’s the problem with waterboarding: it’s not “popular.”

Today -100: August 30, 1911: The hope of the negro

In a speech in Virginia, Taft says that “those of us who study the question at all know that the hope of the negro is in his white neighbor in the South. ... the negro ought to come, and is coming, more and more under the guardianship of the South.”

Las Vegas, “a town hitherto devoid of large fame,” is thinking about setting up a divorce colony to rival Reno’s.

Chip chip chip

The British government is following the lead of American anti-abortion states like South Dakota by stripping the funding for abortion counseling conducted by groups that also provide abortions and shifting the funding to counseling conducted by Catholic and other anti-abortion groups. Because the Tories are all about offering women “independent” advice and information. And eroding their rights incrementally.

Today -100: August 29, 1911: Of trusts and ’roos behaving badly

Headline of the Day -100: “BATHTUB TRUST KILLED.; Government Also Reaches an Agreement with the Electrical Trust.” I hope they didn’t fiddle with the electrical trust while they were in the bathtub trust, because that would just be dangerous.

The battleship Wisconsin has fired its mascot, a kangaroo named Murphy, for “bad behavior.”

Today -100: August 28, 1911: Of Huckleberries and Hamburgers

Headline of the Day -100: “Huckleberries’ Pow-Wow.” There’s a Native American tribe called Huckleberries?

Mmm, Hamburgers: Headline: “Kaiser for More Navy. To Keep for Germany Her Due Place, He Tells Hamburgers.” In fact, the phrase he used is “the place in the sun that is our due.” We may be hearing more of that phrase from Germany in the future.

Today -100: August 27, 1911: Of real fires, fake fires, and non-existent canals

William Van Schaick, captain of the paddle steamer General Slocum when it caught fire in the East River in 1904, killing over 1,000 people on their way to a church picnic, is paroled after serving 2½ years for criminal negligence.

It really is a bad idea to shout fire in a crowded theatre. Some drunk does so in a movie theatre in Canonsburg, PA, and 28 people die in the stampede. There was no fire.

Interplanetary News of the Day -100: “Martians Build Two Immense Canals in Two Years.” According to astronomer Percival Lowell, who should know. Each of the canals is 1,000 miles long and 20 miles wide. Which certainly puts the Panama Canal into perspective.

Today -100: August 26, 1911: Of beards & bridges

When he was 21, Jonas Pendleton of Saybrook, CT, vowed never to shave his beard until there was a bridge over the Connecticut River linking Saybrook and Lyme. Now just such a bridge has opened, so Pendleton, now 81, marched off to the barber shop, but it was closed because everyone in town was watching the bridge-opening ceremonies. The next day, however, everyone in town was on hand to witness him being shaved.

The people of Saybrook, Connecticut really needed to get a life, is what I’m saying.

State Rep. Phil Hinkle (R-Ind) insists he didn’t pay rent boy to fill his hinkle

Actually, the post title is really all I wanted to say about the story.

Today -100: August 25, 1911: Of lynchings, block-busting, and hoboes

A negro accused of attacking a white woman is burned to death by a mob in Purcell, Oklahoma. The twist: he was captured by three black guys and turned over to the mob.

There was a report a day or two ago about an apartment building in Harlem that displayed a red T in its “To Let” sign, a coded signal that only negroes would be rented to. At the same time, the building started evicting its white tenants. The NYT notes that “Race prejudice in this city is capitalized, and this is the way the colored folk reap the rewards of the prejudice.” The way race prejudice is “capitalized” is that the building’s owner is blackmailing neighboring landlords with the threat of letting blacks move into a previously white street. Either they buy his building from him for more than its market value, or they’ll wind up selling their own properties to negro speculators at a ¼ discount. The Times suggests fighting such tactics by voluntary agreements of property-holders in a neighborhood not to rent to blacks. Problem solved.

Hoboes plan a 2,000-bum march on Washington to demand free national employment bureaus. If they can get there, that is. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is refusing to provide transportation (free transportation in box cars, naturally).

Quote of the Day, Sexology Division

From that NYT article about bisexuality being “real”: Ellyn Ruthstrom of the Bisexual Resource Center: “Researchers want to fit bi attraction into a little box”.

I’ll bet they do, I’ll bet they do.

Rat-cleansing

Japan’s prime minister will resign, after Japan’s debt is downgraded. Didn’t do it when caught repeatedly lying about exposure to radiation.

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Qaddafi: “All youth, men and women should go out to cleanse their areas from the rats.” Seems like an odd time to be worried about rats.

Juan Cole has some helpful advice on “How to Avoid Bush’s Iraq Mistakes in Libya.” #3. “Some Libyans are complaining about the prospect of retaining the same police as in the old regime, and want local security committees instead. A compromise would be to establish a strong civilian oversight over police.” The old police were hired, and promoted, solely on their ability to keep the Qaddafi regime in power. That’s their skill set. But forgive and forget, I guess. #6. “Consult with Norway about how it is possible for an oil state to remain a democracy.” Yes, if only Qaddafi had consulted more with Norway, none of this unpleasantness would have arisen. And, of course, #9: “Recognize Berber as a national language.” Or possibly Norwegian. I don’t know how Libya has survived without Juan Cole’s advice up until now.