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Here’s the thing about Barack Obama. He can look just as solemn and intense staring at a souvenir football, as he did this afternoon,
as he can when staring at an eternal flame at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, as he did this morning.
So today he met Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors, and also the Fighting Falcons, and gave speeches to both. See if you can tell which excerpts are from which speech: And most of all, we are honored to be in the presence of men and women whose lives are a testament to the endurance and the strength of the human spirit -- the inspiring survivors.
Even when they were dogged by injuries, this team pulled together when it mattered most.
These guys faced a brutal schedule, but they never backed down.
despite all the tanks and all the snipers, all the torture and brutality unleashed against them, the Syrian people still brave the streets.
As Coach Calhoun said, “This group had a warrior spirit in them.”
To stare into the abyss, to face the darkness and insist there is a future -- to not give up, to say yes to life, to believe in the possibility of justice.
These guys toughed it out
So God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
and God bless Air Force.
Bram Stoker dies. The two articles about him in today’s NYT mostly refer to him as Henry Irving’s theatrical manager. Dracula is mentioned only in a list of his writings (unless you count the comment that “his stories, though they were queer, were not of a memorable quality.”)
More Titanic waifs. A different two “waifs” than those in yesterday’s story. Two French children, Louis and Lolo, roughly 3-4, may be the children of a French woman whose estranged husband kidnapped them after telling friends he was going to America. Ship officers, enforcing the “women and children” first rule, evidently kept the kids’ father from entering the lifeboats. That rule certainly created a lot of widows and orphans.
Virginia Brooks is elected president of the Board of Education of West Hammond, Ill. (which is now Calumet City) “after scenes of violence, during which her women supporters all but drowned one political foe and administered beatings to others.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Zionist Riot Over Smoking.” That is, residents of Zion City, Illinois, a planned community built a few years ago by a faith healer in association with his Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Smoking is banned in the town, but some “crusaders” learned that factory workers were smoking, so they formed a posse to escort those workers forcibly to view the “no smoking” signs. The workers resisted and... now, “Every person in Zion City owning a revolver carried it to-day. Others paraded the street with pieces of lead pipe.”
Justice Charles Evans Hughes sends reassurances to President Taft that he won’t accept the Republican nomination for president as a compromise candidate.
And a former Texas land commissioner, A.J. Baker, announces his candidacy for vice president for the Democrat party. Evidently people did that then.
Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, blames the Titanic sinking on “the excessive pursuit of luxury.”
Tear-Jerking Titanic Headline of the Day -100: “Seek Waifs of Titanic.”
There are no funny headlines about Archibald Butt today. Let the national mourning begin.
The White Star Company is keeping the Titanic crew members who testified before Congress under guard aboard the Celtic. They have been told they’ll be fired if they talk to the press. A NYT editorial denounces the crew’s ill-preparedness for the fact that so many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them.
In addition to the much-vaunted “chivalry” of the men, such as Astor, who died so that women & children could live (a subject under some discussion by British suffragists), there has also been praise for the women who refused to let that policy turn them into widows and chose to stay with their husbands to the end.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Pope Mourns for Butt.” Runner-up: “Official Praise of Butt.”
A petition signed by many German academics, lawyers, military men, scientists, etc, has been sent to Russia, denouncing the notion of ritual murder by Jews.
Roosevelt wins West Virginia’s county-level primaries.
Headline of the Day -100: “War Is Right, Peace Wrong, Says German General.” Friedrich von Bernhardi, author of “Germany and the Next War,” a best-selling (in Germany) bit of warmongery. Sadly, Gen. Bernhardi did not die in Germany’s next war.
Some French dude invents a motorless, hand-cranked airplane.
The revolution in China seems to have made little difference to the occupation in Tibet (yet another sentence that applies to Today or Today -100). The Chinese army is using machine guns to mow down thousands in Lhasa.
The proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the Arkansas state constitution for which suffrage groups are circulating petitions is so worded as to apply the “grandfather clause” in order to disenfranchise black women.
The Daughters of the American Revolution condemn Mormonism, saying that Mormon missionary work is another form of white slavery.
Roosevelt wins the Nevada Republican primary, by a lot. Champ Clark wins the Democratic primary, followed by Harmon, then Wilson. TR and Woodrow Wilson win the Oregon primaries.
The Senate passes the Dillingham Immigration Bill, requiring that every male immigrant be literate. Unlike earlier versions of the bill, Canada is not exempt. An amendment to exclude all negro immigrants loses 28-25. An amendment for the deportation of aliens conspiring to overthrow other government (i.e., Mexico) passes. Chinese will of course continue to be excluded.
Steamship lines have agreed to take more southerly, but longer, routes in the future.
The Senate is already investigating the Titanic sinking. It’s been focusing on how many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them. It heard from J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Company, who was onboard as a passenger and who has been taking a lot of shit – and I mean a lot of shit – for still being alive.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Butt Was Tireless in Helping Women.” Runner-up: “Roosevelt’s Praise for Butt.”
Taft’s campaign manager Rep. William McKinley (no relation) asks if “the lavish expenditures of money” by Roosevelt supporters is responsible for his victories in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. “Plain bribery and corruption,” he calls it, claiming that they spent between $250,000 and $500,000 in Pennsylvania.
Italian warships bombard two Turkish forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles.
They finally have the numbers: 1,595 went down with the Titanic, 745 survived. Which isn’t what Wikipedia says.
Titanic Headline of the Day -100: “Col. Astor Went Down Waving Farewells to His Bride.”
Onboard the Carpathia, women Titanic survivors raised $7,000 for needy survivors.
Poetical Titanic Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “The Carpathia’s Arrival: Like Pall Bearers at a Shadow Funeral Tugs Clustered Around the Ship of Sorrows.”
Titanic Survivor Names of the Day: Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Despairs of Butt.”
According to an Army spokesmodel, “It is a violation of Army standards to pose with corpses for photographs outside of officially sanctioned purposes.” Ya know, that kind of raises the question what officially sanctioned purposes require posing with corpses.
The Carpathia has been in only spotty wireless communication, so the names of 300 of the survivors (and therefore by process of elimination the names of all the dead) are unknown.
Taft sends his secretary of commerce and labor to New York to take charge of the immigration inspection of the Titanic survivors. NYC Mayor Gaynor has offered housing for any steerage passengers who need it. The Cunard Company (owners of the Carpathia) and the city of NY will make sure reporters and photographers don’t get near the survivors.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Still Hopes for Butt.”
The New Mexico Legislature is asking Congress to let white people (well, non-Navajos, but we know what they really mean) settle in the Navajo Reservation. Also, they’re pretty sure there’s gold and silver on the land, and they want that too.
An issue in the Texas gubernatorial race is Confederate pensions. Gov. Colquitt is accused of not being as supportive of them as he should be.
From the peerlessly objective LA Times: “Emma Goldman, the high priestess of red anarchy, and recognized leader of American nihilism, is to play ‘Joan of Arc’ – with her own interpretation of the role of Maid of Orleans – to the tattered army of I.W.W. malcontents boiling like some ill-smelling cauldron on the outskirts of San Diego.” (The LAT also likes to call the IWW the “I Won’t Works.”)
The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its First Reading in the House of Commons, 360-266. Tory opposition leader Bonar Law threatens civil war, declaring that the people of Ulster are ready to resist this measure with their lives, and that if it is not put to a referendum, “you will succeed only in breaking the parliamentary machine.”
They still know the names of less than half the Titanic survivors, which is all that the Carpathia wirelessed, possibly because of electrical storms.
(The Carpathia, by the by, was torpedoed by the Germans in 1918.)
The LAT says that relatives of lost Titanic passengers won’t be able to collect damages from the White Star line because the ship was on the high seas, covered by no nation’s laws. They can be reimbursed for lost property (which was insured, so the company will lose nothing).
The NYT editorializes on the importance of the unwritten “women and children first” rule. If men violate it, “they will find themselves shunned as alien to humanity wherever they go ashore. ... However valuable to his race a man may be, he can serve it best by giving his life for the inexorable maintenance of this ancient custom.” The narrative of civilized, chivalrous men calmly giving up their places on the lifeboats to women ‘n children will be central to the story this era told itself about itself (another NYT editorial two days from now: “There was no disorder, no rioting, the rule of the sea prevailed over the rule of nature. With band playing and the lights of the sinking ship still burning, the doomed company awaited the end. They died like heroes, they died like men. It is a tragic and dreadful story, but it tells us how civilization conquers the primal, savage instincts and brings into being and dominance the higher and nobler qualities of man’s nature. There is not in history a more splendid and inspiring example of self-control, of sacrifice, of courage, and of manliness.”)
Of course in 2½ years it’ll be all made-up propaganda about Huns ripping the fetuses out of pregnant Belgian women with bayonets.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Taft Concerned for Butt.”
Silvio Berlusconi explains that his giving large sums of money to prospective witnesses in his trial for paying a underage prostitute for sex, including 100,000 to showgirl slash dental hygienist slash regional councillor slash pimp Nicole Minetti was an example of his “usual generosity,” (update: correction, that’s his lawyer speaking) and that “When someone in difficulty asks for help, you don’t ask what for.” Of course since she’s about to go on trial for procuring prostitutes for him, he probably didn’t need to ask what for. “When I am confronted with dramatic and touching cases, I don’t hesitate to intervene whether it be for individuals or for charities.” Yeah, touching... cases.
Berlusconi is finally on trial for the underage prostitute thing. Evidently his parties featured women, including Lombardy regional councillor (that’s roughly the equivalent of a US state legislator) Minetti, dressed as nuns, stripping. Also, a stripper dressed as AC Milan footballer Ronaldhino. Also, twins.
Headline of the Day -100, some more objective coverage by the LA Times of the IWW plan to send members to San Diego to assert the IWW’s right to organize in the city without being beaten and kidnapped by vigilantes: “Hoboes in Marching Order. Enemies of Toil and Order Invade Fresno En Route to San Diego.”
The Titanic hit an iceberg and you know the rest. Fortunately, it was insured.
Among the non-millionaire dead (and at this point it’s not known who or how many survived; the Carpathia, the only ship that arrived in time to rescue survivors, hasn’t radioed a list of them yet) are:
-Taft’s military aid Archibald Willingham Butt, aka Major Butt (NYT: “Throughout Washington to-night every comment on the disaster is followed by the expression, ‘I hope Butt is safe.’”).
-W.T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, one of the creators of modern journalism, who once (1885) set out to uncover the white slave trade and confirm that one could buy a virgin for £5 (he had a doctor confirm her virginity)(He also found out that you can go to jail for buying a little girl from her mother at least you can if you don’t also pay off the father).
-Painter Frank Millet, coming over because he’d been commissioned to paint four panels of the new Wisconsin State Capitol.
-Jacques Futrelle, an author who created a Sherlock-Holmes-type detective, Professor Augustus van Dusen, “The Thinking Machine.”
-The Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, who went down with the ship.
An interesting point, which may or may not actually be true, about the insufficient number of lifeboats: it was impossible to carry enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers and crew and also have them in positions where they could be lowered into the water quickly.
On the other hand, without the invention of the Marconi wireless, there would have been no survivors.
Titanic Headlines of the Day -100: LA Times: “Wonder Ship of Brief Career in the Graveyard of the Sea.” For a story which opens rather crassly by totting up the fortunes of the richest men on the Titanic: John Jacob Astor IV, $150 million, Benjamin Guggenheim $95 million, etc. (For comparison, the Titanic itself was worth $7,500,000.)
Newburyport (Mass.) Morning Herald: “Band Played Till End!”
NYT:
The Onion:
In his weekly radio address, Obama talked about the “Buffet rule”.
IT’S WORTH POINTING OUT THAT YOU’RE ALL SUCKERS: “as many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part.”
1) THEY DON’T NEED TO “ASK”, 2) THEY DON’T “ASK” FOR ANYTHING: And we can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them.”
IF I’M GOOD, HE LETS ME CALL HIM WARREN: “As Warren points out, that’s not fair and it doesn’t make sense.”
A boat ferrying passengers disembarking from the British steamship Seang Chun sinks in Amoy (China), drowning 40. On another day, this might be bigger news.
The Industrial Workers of the World plan to send large contingents into cities where they have recently been violently driven out by Vigilance Committees, including San Diego, Fresno, L.A., Spokane, Kansas City, etc. Or as the always hysterically anti-union LA Times’s headline terms it, “I.W.W.’s Plan Armed March on San Diego.”
A NYT editorial complains about British suffragettes getting out of prison through use of “the so-called hunger strike” (the term hunger strike was new in the English language, popularized by the suffragettes but adopted from the Russian) and says that forcible feeding by tube is not torture. So why don’t ordinary criminals use it to get out of prison? Probably, says the Times, because of “the low intelligence of the ordinary criminal, his acceptance of confinement as more or less a matter of course, to be made the best of, and his inability to resist the temptation to eat when he is hungry.”
When today’s edition of the NYT went to press, they knew only that the Titanic has hit an iceberg and that rescue ships are on the way.
The NYT notes that several steamers have recently arrived in NY with damage caused by making their way through ice packs.
The House Committee on Election of the President and Vice President unanimously supports a bill to make public the names of contributors of $100 or more to presidential campaigns, as well as the amounts spent and what on.
Another Republican convention, in Davies County, Missouri, turns into a brawl.
To everyone’s surprise, Roosevelt wins the Pennsylvania primary.
And Woodrow Wilson wins the D. primary there.
The courts are ordering deportations of IWW members of foreign origins.
Taft signs a bill to put a prohibitively high tax on white phosphorus matches. There was no legal way to outright ban the things, even though they tended to poison the workers who manufactured them, so they’re doing this.
Several British suffragettes imprisoned for the window-smashing raid in London have secured their release through a hunger and thirst strike.
Headline of the Day -100: “POPE MUST NOT HEAR PEALS.; Physician Forbids Listening to Venice Bells Lest It Kill Him.” He was going to listen to them over the telephone, because he’s homesick, but his doctor thinks the emotional impact would give him a heart attack. Also, they can’t figure out how to transmit the sound of the bells over the phone.
Clara Barton, one of the first female employees of the federal government in the 1850s, a nurse during the Civil War and other wars throughout the world, and the leading founder of the American Red Cross and its president for many years, dies at 90.
In the British Parliament, Liberal MP Joseph Martin calls Rudyard Kipling’s anti-Home Rule Bill poem “Ulster” seditious and asks whether it will be prosecuted. I don’t know about seditious, but pee-yoo:
The dark eleventh hour
Draws on and sees us sold
To every evil power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine hate
Oppression, wrong and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,
By England’s act and deed.
The Faith in which we stand,
The laws we made and guard,
Our honour, lives, and land
Are given for reward
To Murder done by night,
To Treason taught by day,
To folly, sloth, and spite,
And we are thrust away.
And it doesn’t get any better from there.
The House passes a bill banning weapons in D.C., including knives with blades longer than three inches.
Foreboding Headline of the Day -100: “Carmania [a Cunard liner] Meeting Many Icebergs.”
The Republican state convention in Michigan turns into a riot between Taft & Roosevelt supporters. Both sides name their own delegates to Chicago, literally at the same time and in the same hall.
Prime Minister Asquith introduces the Irish Home Rule bill.
Obama yesterday: “In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few. Prosperity has always come from the bottom up, from a strong and growing middle-class.”
See, Barack, the middle class are not the bottom, thus the word “middle.” You have literally forgotten about the existence of the poor, or “lower” class.
The Republican establishment in Illinois is scheming to rob Roosevelt of the fruit of his primary upset by controlling the Congressional-district conventions and selecting Taft delegates to the national convention.
The NYT, in denial, insists that Illinois did not, all appearances to the contrary, go Progressive. They say this is proved by the strong vote for former Speaker Joe Cannon, a reactionary old-guard Republican, in his district. They say the real issue in Illinois is not Taft or Roosevelt but Senator William Lorimer (R). Lorimer was just “cleared” by another whitewashing investigation into his bribery-fueled election to the Senate, but was denounced loudly by Roosevelt in speeches right there in Illinois (Spoiler Alert: Lorimer will finally be expelled in July). Roosevelt said that Taft, Lorimer, Guggenheim, and their allies want to make “a government by corporation attorneys.” The NYT says this language shows he is not fit to be president.
Taft’s people also insist their Illinois defeat was due to “local issues.”
Roosevelt, who speaks entirely in editorial cartoons, says “We knocked them over the ropes in Illinois.”
Some desperate Republicans are suggesting that the party needs some third candidate in place of Taft or TR, such as Supreme Court Justice and recent NY governor Charles Evans Hughes.
There is some question whether the Electoral College this year should be based on the pre- or post-reapportionment numbers.
A Superior Court judge in Seattle is asking suspected “reds” applying for citizenship whether they would obey court orders that conflicted with those of their union. When one Lars Emanuel Boman said “A man who belongs to an organization should stick to it,” the judge told him to fuck off, and if anyone else in the court “would supplant the Stars and Stripes with the red flag,” they could also fuck off. A dozen walked out.
The Ohio Constitutional Convention rescinds its invitation to US Assistant Attorney General William Lewis to speak, presumably after realizing that he’s black.
Foreboding Headline of the Day -100: “Titanic In Peril on Leaving Port.” The huge ship created so much suction (I know there’s a technical boating term for that) that another liner broke free of its mooring and almost crashed into it.
Headline of the Day -100: “Human Dike Used to Hold Back Flood. Negroes Lie on Top of Weakening Levee and Save Day Near Greenville, Miss.” Yes, when they ran out of sandbags, they used negroes.
George Bush says he wishes the Bush tax cuts weren’t called the Bush tax cuts, because “If they were called someone else’s tax cuts, they’d be less likely to be raised,” because everyone hates him. Evidently someone finally told Bush that everyone hates him. Good. I’d hate if he went the rest of his life without coming to that realization.
Oh wait, then he says he doesn’t criticize Obama because “I don’t think it’s good for our country to undermine our president and I don’t intend to do so.” So evidently he still thinks that his criticizing Obama would undermine Obama. I guess he doesn’t realize that everyone hates him after all. Sigh.
IN OTHER WORDS: “we believe that government oughta trust the people, the collective wisdom of the people. In other words, we trust people when it comes to spending their money, and so should the government.”
SO-CALLED BECAUSE THEY FUCKING ARE: He objects to taxes being raised on “the so-called rich.”
WHAT THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD OFTEN ASK HIM: “I’m often asked ‘Do you miss the presidency?’ I really don’t.” Although “it was really inconvenient having to stop at stop lights”. Actually, he may just miss the days of drunk driving all over Houston.
Maverick John McCain & Holy Joe Lieberman issue a statement from a refugee camp for Syrians in Turkey, saying the usual stuff. Including that the international community needs to supply the Syrian rebels with arms because “The slaughter in Syria has now claimed more than 10,000 lives. And it is not a fair fight.”
No one who uses the term “fair fight” about a war deserves to be taken seriously.
