Today -100: February 29, 1912: Of routs and leather minorities

Headline of the Day -100: “CAVALRY ROUTS WOMEN.” At the Lawrence, Massachusetts mill strike.

Kinky Headline of the Day -100: “Leather Minority Ignored.” Minority shareholders of the Central Leather Company.

Today -100: February 28, 1912: Of cowboys and Mexicans

The new Sun Yat-Sen government in China has lost no time in threatening to start a war, with the Netherlands yet. Evidently Dutch soldiers in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) killed some Chinese people, and China will send ships to bombard Batavia (Jakarta) if it doesn’t receive an indemnity.

Headline of the Day -100: “Cowboys Rout Mexicans.” Some Mexican rebels who crossed the border in a cattle-stealing raid.

Rebels have captured Juarez. President Madero says yeah, whatever.

The NYT absolutely will not shut up about Roosevelt’s promise in 1904 not to seek another term, which TR now says meant another consecutive term.

9 Republican governors come out in favor of Taft. 7 support TR, 1 LaFollette, which leaves 5, of whom the Tafties claim 3.

Today -100: February 27, 1912: Down with the fools!

Two near casualties of the turmoil in Mexico: employees of a London phosphate company on Clipperton Island, a French possession (which Mexico also claimed) in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles off Acapulco (today it’s uninhabited). The Mexican government forgot to send a scheduled supply ship.

Charles Maurras, editor of the far-right newspaper L’Action Française, duels (with swords) the editor of L’Autorité, Paul de Cassagnac. When French editors edit, they fucking edit! Maurras is wounded in the arm but sadly is not hurt more seriously. He will duel Cassagnac’s brother Guy next.

Someone leaks the private letter Roosevelt sent Taft a year ago offering to raise and lead a cavalry regiment if the US went to war with Mexico.

A man dressed like a clergyman fires a gun in the lobby of the British Houses of Parliament, shouting “Votes for women! Down with the fools!” Samuel Henry also claimed the government had suppressed his book, “Tolstoy on the Messiah.” At his trial he said that firing a gun in the air is “a simple, straightforward way of drawing attention to a fact.” The magistrate replied, “That is not the proper way to do it.”

Wicky fwows up

Rick Santorum: “What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”

People of non-faith?

Today -100: February 26, 1912: Of hats and rings

Theodore Roosevelt finally responds to a letter from 8 governors asking him to run for president (the cynics among you will rightly suspect that he asked them to write the letter), and says that why yes he will accept the Republican nomination, if it should happen to be offered to him.

Woodrow Wilson is asked by a reporter if he will fight his opponent for the Democratic nomination Beauregard “Champ” Clark’s monopolizing of the “dog song,” which the reporter describes as making a universal appeal to the spirit of Democracy (i.e., the Democratic Party). Wilson asks to hear the song. It goes a little something like this:

Every time I come to town
The boys keep kicking my dog aroun’
Makes no difference if he is a houn’,
Gotta quit kickin’ my dog aroun’.

Wilson decides the song is not worth fighting over.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Taft Showing Rapid Strides.” I would have thought more like waddles.

I’m an elite snob, and I vote, motherfucker

Prick Santorum has gotten some attention for saying that Obama is a snob for wanting Americans to go to college, which are to Santorum’s mind giant de-christianization factories. But it’s not just knowledge that Frothy despises, it’s smarts: “Barack Obama’s view of America is the same view, well, that the sovereigns of old had, which is that Americans are better off being ruled by smart people, the elite snobs.”

It’s not often that politicians will come right out and brag about not being smart, although most politicians know that Americans largely share Santorum’s suspicion of smart people, the feeling that smart people are laughing at them behind their backs (as well they should be). You never heard Bill Clinton talking about his Rhodes Scholarship.

The WaPo article contrasted the bumper stickers at Santorum & Romney rallies:

Santorum’s was a car-decorating crowd: “Abortion is NOT Healthcare.” “Warning — In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned.” At the Romney rally, the most you got was “My Child Is an Honor Student”.

If Santorum’s supporters had a child who was an honor student, they’d shackle her in the basement and whip the book larning out of her.

Today -100: February 25, 1912: Of bombardments, booze, co-education, and decolletage

Italian warships bombard Beirut, killing 60, because why not.

The LAT reports that “official circles” in Constantinople believe Italy is trying to provoke “Moslem fanatics” to massacre Christians in Beirut.

Woodrow Wilson supports local option on liquor, but he says that because the issue is so divisive and cuts across normal party loyalties, he prefers to avoid the Democratic Party taking a position. Wilson had to make a public statement because a letter of his advocating prohibition in Texas last year just became public. He says statewide prohibition is okay in Texas because that state is so homogeneous.

Virginia’s state senate votes down a proposal to establish a women’s college associated with the University of VA.

Mexican President Madero orders Federal troops to take no prisoners in fighting the rebels.

The pope has banned ecclesiastics from attending any social functions (possibly just in France?) where women show too much cleavage.

Today -100: February 24, 1912: Of strikes, annexations, and heckling

Secretary of State Philander Knox is going to Colombia after all, and the ambassador who said he wouldn’t be welcome has been recalled.

The Lawrence, Mass. strikers plan to send their children away to NYC and Philadelphia. Lawrence police are determined to stop them.

The Italian parliament officially annexes Libya (Italian North Africa, as it is now known; the name Libya is some time in the future) by a vote of 431 to 38.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George speaks, or tries to speak, at a meeting of moderate suffragists at the Albert Hall, but is heckled (London Times sub-hed: “A Much Interrupted Speech”) continually by less moderate suffragists.

And NY State Senator Harold Bayne is laughed at during a speech to the Woman’s Suffrage Party in which he says that “In time, the average woman will have the intelligence of the average man.” Sen. Bayne is a very average man indeed.

This must be some definition of honorable with which I was not previously familiar

Sgt Frank Wuterich, the only person involved in the Haditha Massacre the military managed to convict of anything, if not actually put in prison, has been given a general discharge under honorable conditions from the Marine Corps.

He gets to keep all his veterans benefits, because of course he does.

Today -100: February 23, 1912: The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff

Teddy Roosevelt is rumored to have told an Ohio politician who asked him about maybe possibly running for president again: “My hat is in the ring. The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff.”

There’s a taxicab drivers’ strike in Paris. Strikers have been leaving bombs in taxis, blowing up 20 so far.

Headline of the Day -100: “Fruit Man Attacks Court.”

(Update: Let’s pair that one – or should I say pear that? – no, no I shouldn’t – with a headline from tomorrow -100’s paper: “Butter Men Try to Stop Inquiry.”)

Republican Debate #20: Oh, look at him talking about these things

Transcript, part 1, 2, 3, 4.

CNN asked those of us watching at home to rise for the National Anthem. I did not, and surprisingly was not struck down by lightning bolts from Uncle Jesus and/or Uncle Sam.

BE VEWWY VEWWY QUIET: The CNN intro calls Ron Paul “the delegate hunter.”

HEH HEH, HE SAID BOTTOM: In their opening statements, Santorum says he wants to “include everybody from the bottom up,” because it’s always nice to start a debate off with a good snigger.

(Update: searching the transcript, I find that Santorum said Ron Paul is in the bottom half of Republicans by conservative voting record, he used the phrase “bottom line” 3 times, and no one else used the word bottom at all. Hmmm.)


MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN: Romney says the promise that if you worked hard, went to school and learned the values of America, you’d be rich and secure has been broken by Obama. Bad Obama, bad! Then he (mis)quotes George Costanza (when they’re applauding, stop) (I see Romney as more of an Elaine, what do you think?).

Gingrich promises $2.50 a gallon gasoline.

Ron Paul explains that the reason his commercial says that Rick Santorum is a fake is because Rick Santorum is a fake. Santorum offers to let Paul touch him.

SANTORUM: I’m real, John. I’m real.

PAUL: Congratulations.

SANTORUM: Thank you.

Paul: foreign aid goes to “all our enemies.”

For the second time, Romney says that if businesses don’t balance their budgets, they go out of business. Hey, have you noticed that that doesn’t happen with nations,* so that maybe that analogy is flawed?

*except Greece.

Santorum admits he was an “earmarker,” defends it by saying the government’s budget priorities aren’t always right and he had to redress them in Congress. And he would ban earmarks. Mittens says he didn’t follow that. Mittens admits he asked for earmarks for the Olympics, defends it by saying it’s traditional. And he would ban earmarks. Also, too, the bridge to nowhere.


Mittens keeps mentioning the Olympics, because surely Americans’ love of luge and bobsledding will propel him straight into the White House.

Gingrich’s attempts to smile avuncularly are astonishingly creepy.

Romney says Obama “gave” the auto companies to the UAW. Gingrich says the bailout was “an unprecedented violation of 200 years of bankruptcy law by Barack Obama to pay off the UAW”.

Paul: “I opt for the free market in defense of liberty. That's what we need in this country.”

GINGRICH ALWAYS WANTS TO BE CLEAR: Gingrich to moderator John King: “But I just want to point out, you did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. OK? So let’s be clear here.”


LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AT HIM!!! Asked about his opposition to contraception, Santorum complains about children raised out of wedlock, which would obviously cease to happen if we outlawed Planned Parenthood, or something. “The left gets all upset. ‘Oh, look at him talking about these things.’”

DON’T BLAME THE PILLS. Ron Paul says it’s not the pills (i.e., The Pill) that create immorality, “I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. So you don’t blame the pills.” He invokes the NRA slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” So I guess pills don’t fuck people, sluts do. Or something. At any right, libertarian Ron Paul is no more in favor of women having sexual autonomy than anyone else on that stage.

Romney also hates out-of-wedlock births, which are especially high “among certain ethnic groups.”

Romney denies that the Catholic Church in Massachusetts was ever forced to provide Morning After pills to rape victims, that’s just crazy talk.

THE POWER OF FORCE: Gingrich says that’s not what he heard, and this just shows the problem with government providing services: “you inevitably move towards tyranny, because the government has the power of force.” Astonishing (well, no it isn’t, not at this stage in the degeneration of our political discourse) that Gingrich could talk about the power of force in this scenario and not be referring to that used by the rapist, whose victim Gingrich is trying to force to carry his baby, because otherwise you’d have tyranny.

See in this scenario, the Republicans see the Catholic Church as the real victim, not the rape victim.

Everyone talks about how they hate Planned Parenthood. As well as planned parenthood.


WHO KNEW? This is new: Romney says we once have Obamacare because Arlen Specter voted for it, and Arlen Specter (“the pro-choice senator of Pennsylvania”) was only re-elected because Santorum supported him, so Obamacare is all Santorum’s fault. “So don’t look at me. Take a look in the mirror.”

Gingrich would move half of Homeland Security personnel to the border with Mexico.

Someone was wondering who would be the first to talk about the threat of Hezbollah in Latin America. It was Romney.

Gingrich denies that Iran is a rational actor. And that if Israel, which presumably is a rational actor, wants to bomb Iran... (I put in the ellipses because he didn’t finish the sentence).

Gingrich: “I’m inclined to believe dictators.” Well, Santorum’s inclined to believe the voices in his head, so...

VOTE FOR OBAMA AND THE WORLD BURNS: Twitt Romney says Obama shouldn’t have removed Eastern European Star Wars sites without getting Russia to support “crippling sanctions” against Iran in exchange. And Obama shouldn’t oppose Israel taking military action against Iran. And we should take military action against Iran. If Obama is elected, Iran will have nukes “and some day, nuclear weaponry will be used. If I am president, that will not happen. If we reelect Barack Obama, it will happen.”

Santorum: Syria and Iran is an axis. And Obama is “afraid to stand up to Iran.”

The first thing Gingrich would do to deal with Syria would be drilling on federal lands and offshore and eliminating the EPA.

Gingrich and Romney say we should get our good buddies in the Middle East to arm the Syrian opposition.

Gingrich: “This is an administration which, as long as you’re America’s enemy, you’re safe. You know, the only people you’ve got to worry about is if you’re an American ally.”


I’LL BET HE DID, I’LL BET HE DID: Santorum voted for No Child Left Behind in the Senate even though it was against his principles, to “take one for the team,” even though he was always picked last for the team, I mean every single time. But he made a mistake and will never support education again in any way, shape or form. Also, he’s “a home schooling father of seven,” so for god’s sake give me a job so I can get away from the little fuckers.

Romney just wants to screw the teachers’ unions.

Gingrich says teachers’ unions don’t care about the kids. And something about schools teaching self-esteem.

(Somewhere in there, but it seems to be missing from the transcript, the candidates were asked to summarize themselves in one word, Gingrich said cheerful, Romney said sneezy, Santorum said dopey, and Paul said sleepy. Actually, Romney said resolute, although if you don’t like that word he’ll come up with another one.)


What’s the biggest misconception about you?

Paul: That I’m a hobbit That I can’t win. Why there was this one poll one time in Iowa that showed that I could maybe win.

Gingrich ignored the question. Romney did the same, except King called him on it. Romney: “You know, you get to ask the questions want, I get to give the answers I want” “Fair enough,” King responds. No, not really, but those words tell you everything you need to know about cable news.

Santorum says his campaign shows he’s “someone who can do a lot with a little.” The fact that he has a lot of children also shows that.

He has a tiny penis, is what I’m saying.

Actually, he is a tiny penis, is what I’m saying.

What’s your one-word summary?

Today -100: February 22, 1912: Of martians, recalls, and duels

Headline of the Day -100: “What Martians Are Like.” Edmond Perrier, the director of the French Botanical Society, says they’re tall, like Scandinavians, but twice the size of human beings, with big noses and white hair and thin legs and no necks.

Addressing the Ohio constitutional convention, Theodore Roosevelt endorses the recall of judges (as well as other progressive causes such as the initiative, referendum, and direct election of senators and presidential electors), flatly disagreeing with the view that “the American people are not fitted for popular government, and that it is necessary to keep the judiciary ‘independent of the majority of the people.’” Just like Newt Gingrich! Though he does not say it, everyone knows that keeping the judiciary independent of the majority the people is a strongly held view of President Taft, who vetoed statehood for Arizona until it removed a provision for judicial recall from its constitution. TR, however, says that “it is both absurd and degrading to make a fetish of a judge or of any one else.” Of course, Scarlett Johansson hadn’t been invented yet. He gives as an example of the sort of judicial behaviour the people should be able to reverse by referendum the recent NY court of appeals decision striking down a workmen’s compensation act. He’s saying, basically, that the final say on the proper interpretation of the Constitution should belong to the people.

The NYT declares that by this speech, Roosevelt has removed himself from the Republican Party. The editorial declares him a dangerous radical.

The commander of the Palatine Guard at the Vatican, a nephew of the late Pope Leo XIII, challenges Prince Alberi to a duel. The pope sends him a letter telling him to knock it off.

Today -100: February 20, 1912: Of justices, corruption, lynchings, and republican forms of government

President Taft nominates Mahlon Pitney to fill the vacant Supreme Court position. Pitney is a former congresscritter, a former justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and is currently Chancellor of New Jersey, whatever that means. He was also the great-grandfather of actor Christopher Reeve.

Sen. Isaac Stephenson (R-Wisc) is exonerated by a Senate committee of a charge of winning his seat through corruption. The minority report, however, signed by 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats, notes that he spent $107,793 on his 1908 campaign and that the state legislators who supported him also spent large sums, saying (actually quoting the majority report), “Such expenditures were in violation of the fundamental principles underlying our system of Government, which contemplated the selection of candidates by the electors and not the selection of electors by the candidate.” How quaint.

Secretary of State Knox has decided not to go to Colombia after all.

A Shelby, Tenn. mob keeps trying to lynch three black men accused of killing a railroad cop who “had tried to quiet boisterous negroes in the ‘Jim Crow’ car.” In two separate attacks, the mob has killed one of the men and wounded the others.

The Supreme Court, in a case brought by the Pacific States Telegraph and Telephone Company, refuses to declare the provisions in the Oregon constitution for initiatives and referenda unconstitutional, although its ruling is on jurisdictional grounds, saying it is up to Congress to decide if they violate the Constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government.

Today -100: February 19, 1912: Of ignorant heathen masses, and dis-invitations

Mexican President Madero asks the Permanent Committee of Congress to suspend the free press. It says no.

A letter in the NYT from one “G.B.R.,” which is mentioned in an editorial which suggests that G.B.R. is someone famous, says the US can’t recognize the republic in China, that is, “the ignorant, heathen mass of China,” without calling into question its refusal to give independence to “the more intelligent Christian” Filipinos, which G.B.R. doesn’t want to do.

In response to Secretary of State Knox’s plans to visit Latin America, the Colombian ambassador says that Knox can fuck off. Still pissed off about the whole Panama thing, evidently.

Endowed

Oh fer... this is gonna be a Republican thing now, isn’t it?

At another point, as Santorum was talking about the Constitution, he uttered the words, “And endowed by –”

“Their creator!” the crowd shouted back, giving Santorum a standing ovation.

Today -100: February 18, 1912: Of the pleasures of joy riding

The NYT makes fun of a new California law taking away “one of the pleasures of ‘joy riding’” by making it a felony to have an accident while driving an automobile while drunk. However, a superior court judge has ruled the law unconstitutional because it discriminates between vehicles (i.e., it is not illegal to drive a horse-drawn wagon drunk). The case has been appealed to the CA Supreme Court.

Today -100: February 17, 1912: Of cavalries, queues, and warships

Congress votes to reduce the cavalry from 15 regiments to 10, and to increase the term of enlistment in the Army from its current 3 years to 5. The military and the Taft administration opposed both measures.

New Chinese president Yuan cuts off his pigtail.

The NYT says that the purpose of Secretary of State Philander Knox’s trip to Latin America will be “to bring about an understanding with Mexico and impress on the Mexican people the friendliness of this Government toward their republic. It is the belief that this may be best accomplished by sending the American Secretary of State in a warship with full honors as a special ambassador of peace and good-will.” Because nothing says peace and good-will like a warship.

The Parable of the Kosher Deli

One of the witnesses at Darrell Issa’s Sausage Fest Committee today was the Bishop of Bridgeort, representing the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. He recounted for the committee what he called “The Parable of the Kosher Deli.” In it, “once upon a time” a law mandated that any business serving food had to serve pork, including kosher delicatessens, which pisses off the Orthodox Jews but “those who support the mandate respond, ‘But pork is good for you. It is, after all, the other white meat.’ Other supporters add, ‘So many Jews eat pork, and those who don’t should just get with the times.’ Still others say, ‘Those Orthodox are just trying to impose their beliefs on everyone else.’”

What’s hilarious is that he goes on and on about this pork thing, without ever mentioning women or contraception. Here’s a bit more:

the question generated by a government mandate is whether the government will impose its belief that eating pork is good on objecting Orthodox Jews. Meanwhile, there is no imposition at all on the freedom of those who want to eat pork. That is, they are subject to no government interference at all in their choice to eat pork, and pork is ubiquitous and cheap, available at the overwhelming majority of restaurants and grocers. Indeed, some pork producers and retailers, and even the government itself, are so eager to promote the eating of pork, that they sometimes give pork away for free. In this context, the question is this: can a customer come to a kosher deli, demand to be served a ham sandwich, and if refused, bring down severe government sanction on the deli. In a nation committed to religious liberty and diversity, the answer, of course, is no.

The answer to a deeply stupid question, that is.

Today -100: February 16, 1912: Of presidents and forts

Sun Yat-Sen resigns as provisional president of China; National Assembly elects Yuan Shi-Kai.

A Turkish fort fires on a British cruiser, mistaking it for Italian. Oops.

Today -100: February 15, 1912: 48

Arizona is now a state. Evidently, the official national flag still has only 46 stars, because they only inaugurate new flags on July 4ths. George W.P. “Old Walrus” Hunt (D) is inaugurated as the state’s first governor.

41 people associated with the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers are arrested for complicity in a “vast dynamite conspiracy.” Many more have been indicted but not yet taken into custody.

The Georgia Republican Convention meets, and systematically excludes all Roosevelt supporters. c.300 of the 500 delegates were African-American (the delegates selected to be sent to the national Republican Convention, instructed to vote for Taft first, last and always, will be half white and half black).

The big mill strike in Lawrence, which I guess I haven’t written much about, is ending, and the employers are black-listing all their Italian workers.

Percival Roberts, Jr., a director of the US Steel Corp., tells the Congressional investigating committee that his workers actually prefer 12-hour days. Why, you can hardly find any workers willing to take up 10-hour jobs.