MIA

Maybe Mitt Romney in 1999-2002 was hiding out in the same place that George Bush was when he was supposed to be doing National Guard duty in Alabama?

Today -100: July 13, 1912: Of bribes, imbeciles, prohibitionists, and ice floes

South Carolina is investigating Gov. Coleman Blease for taking bribes to pardon criminals, veto bills, and protect “blind tigers” (speakeasies).

US immigration officials will henceforth allow entry to all foreign-born children of naturalized citizens, even if they’re imbeciles or idiots.

The National Prohibition Party convention nominates Eugene Chaflin for president and Aaron Watkins for v.p., just as in 1908.

Theodore Roosevelt denies that Progressivism is a sectional movement after one of his supporters, 92-year-old Civil War general Daniel Sickles (who Wikipedia tells us was a member of Congress before the war when he killed his wife’s lover, the son of Francis Scott Key, and became the first person in American history to be acquitted on a temporary insanity defense. And that was just before they made him a general. He disobeyed orders at Gettysburg, but wasn’t punished because his leg got blown off. Oh, and when he was a NY state senator he was censured by the Assembly for bringing a prostitute into the chamber, a prostitute he later presented to Queen Victoria. Interesting Wikipedia entry, is what I’m saying), says that Wilson shouldn’t be elected because he’s a southerner. Why, TR responds, some of my uncles fought on the Confederate side, and everyone who fought on both sides was great.

A member of the Newfoundland Legislative Council says that all the Titanic passengers could have been saved, lifeboats or no lifeboats, by putting them on ice floes until rescue arrived, like the survivors of the Polaris in 1873.

Today -100: July 12, 1912: Of theft, prohibitionists, and royalists

Theodore Roosevelt makes the case in The Outlook that Taft’s re-nomination was the result of theft.

The Nevada Republican convention, whenever that was, named delegates to the national convention, but forgot to nominate any electors, so Taft may not be on the ballot in November.

The Prohibition Party is holding its convention now. The platform, besides the obvious, calls for women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, the initiative, referendum & recall, income tax, and abolition of polygamy & white slavery.

The royalist invasion force in Portugal has been forced to retreat into the mountains.

If you understood who I truly am in my heart...

Mitt Romney gave a speech to the NAACP today.

He was booed just twice, which suggests that they were very properly booing the ideas rather than the person. There isn’t enough booing of politicians. As the London Times said in an editorial entitled “A Good Word for Hecklers” in 1950, a few well-chosen and well-timed interventions, a sprinkling of laughter in the wrong places, will hasten politicians’ political development and might promote their spiritual welfare.

AAAAND, STRAIGHT TO THE CONDESCENSION: “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president.” Moving beyond the “you only hate me because you don’t understand” smugness, one might ask if it’s important to understand what’s in his heart, when we know what’s in his actions and his policies.

Also note the insertion of the word families – African-American families – which puzzled me for a minute until I realized he was trying to divide African-Americans, to deny or at least not admit that African-Americans might have collective interests as a community, because he certainly won’t be addressing those.

Also note the adjectives real and enduring in “the real, enduring best interest of African-American families,” which suggests, I guess, that blacks don’t understand their real interests.


AND THEIR DRESSAGE HORSES: “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color - and families of any color - more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president.”

BAD GRAMMAR ALERT! SOMEONE CHANGE HIS GRAMMAR CHIP! “The opposition charges that I and people in my party are running for office to help the rich. Nonsense. The rich will do just fine whether I am elected or not. The President wants to make this a campaign about blaming the rich. I want to make this a campaign about helping the middle class.” There’s a logic fault; the rich will do just fine is not a refutation of the proposition that Republicans want to help the rich. Also, greedy rich bastards are not satisfied merely to “do just fine.” Also, what is it Obama is supposedly blaming the rich for?

TRANSLATION: PLEASE DON’T HURT ME. “But, in campaigns at their best, voters can expect a clear choice, and candidates can expect a fair hearing - only more so from a venerable organization like this one.”


BUT WE’RE OVER IT NOW, SO LET’S GO BACK TO RICH WHITE DUDES: “If someone had told us in the 1950s or 1960s that a black citizen would serve as the forty-fourth president, we would have been proud and many would have been surprised.” And urine-soaked.

AFTER REPEALING OBAMACARE AND DECLARING CHINA A CURRENCY MANIPULATOR, OF COURSE: “On Day One, I will begin turning this economy around with a plan for the middle class. And I don’t mean just those who are middle class now - I also mean those who have waited so long for their chance to join the middle class.” I think he means poor people, but it’s too distasteful to refer to them directly.

Here’s the Obamacare reference that got the booing. I find it amusing that he phrased it as a deficit-reduction move: “we must, must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare”.


WHAT HE WILL RESTORE: “I will restore economic freedom. This nation’s economy runs on freedom, on opportunity, on entrepreneurs, on dreamers who innovate and build businesses.” Also on planet-destroying fossil fuels and misery.

DID I SAY BETTER? I MEANT BITTER. “If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him.”

(On how great he was for black school kids when he was governor): “The teachers [SIC!] unions were not happy with a number of these reforms.” He seems to say that federal education money will be entirely in the form of vouchers.

HE’LL BOO THEM TOO: “I can’t promise that you and I will agree on every issue. But I do promise that your hospitality to me today will be returned.”

Not having any civil rights record of his own, he decided to invoke his father’s, another reminder of the devolution of the Republican Party.



(Update: in comments, Sen. Bob says "Mitt went there to tease the lions in the zoo by throwing red meat. They growled, and now his supporters believe that he is a lion tamer. He isn't.")

Today -100: July 11, 1912: Of pardons, hollering, and boxing

A May E. Brown writes a sappy poem to President Taft, who issues her a pardon, which is the traditional response.

Oh, Mr. President, most exalted in the land;
To you I now appeal, for you hold my freedom in your hand.
Not for myself I humbly plead, but a little child
My love and care doth need. ...

Punishment ne’er changes one’s heart,
Only by repentance can all sinfulness depart.
God gives to us forgiveness, at any time the heart repents.
Then why should man himself hold fast when God relents?
And why the waiting through the weary years so long?
If God’s decree be right, then surely man’s is wrong.

Yeesh. Anyway, the pardon released her one year into a 5½-year sentence for white slavery (she coaxed a 16-year-old into prostitution).

Roosevelt is talking about including a downward revision of tariffs in his platform. The NYT, in the most condescending editorial ever, thinks he should drop it, as the tariff “is a subject that requires concentrated thinking, and that lies beyond the powers of the great mass of his followers. It would kill them in a week.” Anyway, the Times says, his movement is purely a personal one, not having anything to do with issues or principles at all. “Mr. Roosevelt knows very well that there is a propensity in human nature that makes large numbers of people, when they look upon him, get up and holler.”

Boxing champeen Jack Johnson is told that if he wants to box in NY, he can only fight a black man.

Today -100: July 10, 1912: Of putsches

Portuguese monarchists invade from Spain and seize the town of Cabeceiras de Basto. It’s one of those over-optimistic if-we-seize-a-tiny-bit-of-territory-everyone-will-rise-up-in-support-of-us deals.

Heh, he said member

The latest email from the Romney campaign asks me to “become a MyMitt Member.” Sounds like a euphemism.

Today -100: July 9, 1912: Of Progressives

The nascent Progressive Party is working out logistics. Given the time constraints, it will have to forego its democratic principles and select the delegates to its convention, now scheduled for next month, entirely through state conventions rather than primary elections. And it is negotiating deals with Republican and Democrat candidates throughout the country to give them support in exchange for help getting Progressive electors on the November ballot.

Today -100: July 8, 1912: Of rubber abuses, men overboard, and missionaries

Sexy, Sexy Headline of the Day -100: “End Rubber Abuses, America Tells Peru.”

Okay, not so funny, now that I’ve read it. I thought it was going to be a trade dispute story, but it’s the future late Sir Roger Casement’s investigation of Heart-of-Darkness-like exploitation of natives in Peru.

A headline that goes the other way: “Thrown Overboard Manacled in a Box.” Not some horrific crime, but Harry Houdini.




At the trial of 123 Koreans accused of attempting to assassinate Count Terauchi Masatake, Japanese governor-general of Korea (and later PM of Japan), the conspiracy is being blamed on an American Presbyterian missionary, a Rev. McClune.

Today -100: July 7, 1912: Of party realignments and mock ducks

Roosevelt plans for his Progressive Party (which I’m already beginning to see referred to sometimes as the Bull Moose Party) to run a full slate of candidates in NY, including judges.

There had been some talk of the Progressives running a Democrat for vice president in order to appeal to progressives in both parties, but the Democrats’ nomination of Wilson, a progressive, has taken the steam out of that idea.

And in California, Gov. Hiram Johnson explains that that state’s confusing laws are such that the Republican electors on the November ballot will be Progressives and there will be no Taft electors on the ballot unless each elector gets a petition signed by 11,000 qualified voters who hadn’t voted in the primaries.

Name of the Day -100: Mock Duck, head of a Chinese tong.

Today -100: July 6, 1912: Of free trade, a couple of emperors just chillin’, and lynchings

Theodore Roosevelt needs to distinguish his positions from those of the other Progressive in the race, Woodrow Wilson, and so is attacking him as being a supporter of free trade, which TR says would destroy farmers. He says the way to bring down the high cost of living is to control the trusts (the beef trust and whatnot).

Kaiser Bill and Tsar Nicky are meeting, as the former tries to coax the latter away from Russia’s military alliance with France.

A black man, John Williams, is lynched near Plummerville, Ark. A fight broke out at a “negroes’ picnic,” and Williams killed a “special deputy,” one of a posse sent to stop the fight (feels like there’s more going on here than is explained in the story).

Negro boxer Jack Johnson won another championship bout, and an army of cops goes into black neighborhoods in Chicago to prevent blacks celebrating the victory.

Today -100: July 5, 1912: Of unsatisfactory negroes, flags, and worms

White women in Savannah, Georgia are planning to replace all their “lazy and unsatisfactory negroes” with white servants imported from the Netherlands.

An IWW speaker is sentenced in Los Angeles to 40 days for “defiling and reviling and placing the American flag in contempt”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Worms Block a Train.” In Georgia. So many of them are crushed crossing the tracks that they grease the train’s wheels.

Today -100: July 4, 1912: Of sticking governors and unsticking governors

Woodrow Wilson won’t resign as governor of New Jersey while he runs for president, since that would mean a Republican taking over from him. Woody says he hasn’t read the party platform yet, and is rather surprised to hear that it limits him to one term in office.

The realignment within the Republican party goes on city by city and state by state, at too local a level to be covered here. In some places, Progressive Parties are being formed, in others, like California, Roosevelt supporters control the Republican Party. (The South Dakota Republican state convention, which just met, refuses to endorse Taft and elects 5 pro-Roosevelt electors). Some of the people Roosevelt had expected to follow him out of the Republican party are balking, while others, such as Mich. Gov. Chase Osborn, one of the governors who signed that letter months ago asking TR to challenge Taft, are suggesting that Progressive Republicans can vote for Wilson in good conscience because “The real Republican party has no candidate this year.” Osborn sees “no necessity for a new political party.” Roosevelt responds, “I didn’t think that Osborn would stick, anyway,” adding something not at all insulting about Osborn and Missouri Gov. Hadley’s lack of backbone.

The governor of Baja California forbids the San Diego and Southeastern Railway from running an excursion train which members of the Red Caps, an organization of black porters from Santa Fe, and their families were planning to take to Tijuana for an outing. He was afraid it was a cover for an invading private army of filibusters.

Today -100: July 3, 1912: Of Wilson, vile and malicious slanders, and mustache monopolies

Woodrow Wilson is nominated on the 46th ballot.

Champ Clark, who is not at all bitter, says he lost “solely through the vile and malicious slanders” of Bryan.

Incidentally, in 1917 Clark, still Speaker of the House, opposed entry into World War I. Had he become president, which he might so easily have done, history would have been rather different.

Indiana Gov. Thomas Marshall is nominated for vice president.

The NYT seems happy with Wilson, saying the party “escapes the thralldom of little men and ignoble leaders.” Wilson doesn’t owe his nomination to Wall Street or Bryan. And what they really like is that as a Progressive, he’ll take the wind out of Roosevelt’s sails.

The Democratic platform blames unequal distribution of wealth on the high Republican tariff; calls for a ban on corporations contributing to election campaigns and a limit on donations by individuals; a constitutional amendment for a single-term presidency; opposes American imperialism as “an inexcusable blunder which has involved us in enormous expense, brought us weakness instead of strength, and laid our nation open to the charge of abandonment of the fundamental doctrine of self-government,” and calls for the Philippines to be given independence.

Headline of the Day -100: “WANTS MUSTACHE MONOPOLY.” James Hazen Hyde, millionaire former insurance tycoon, fired sailors with facial hair on his rented yacht so he’d be the only one.

Today -100: July 2, 1912: Still waiting for the white smoke

The Democratic Convention has now held 42 ballots. Wilson took the lead on the 30th ballot and by the end of the day leads Clark 494 to 430 (104 for Underwood, 27 for Harmon), although he lost some votes on the last two ballots. He probably would have won by now, but delegates don’t want it to look like Bryan’s stunt tactics achieved anything.

The House passes a resolution expressing its confidence in the patriotism, honor & integrity of Speaker Clark.

The US battleships in Cuban waters are being recalled, as the Cubans have crushed the negro revolt and killed its leader. Hurrah?

Shit I was meaning to get back to

In that Obama fundraising email I mentioned a few days ago, he said “We can be outspent and still win -- but we can’t be outspent 10 to 1 and still win.” Er, why the hell not?

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In the dissent in the Obamacare case, the right-wing justices argued that young people didn’t need the health-insurance mandate: “the health care ‘market’ that is the object of the Individual Mandate not only includes but principally consists of goods and services that the young people primarily affected by the Mandate do not purchase. They are quite simply not participants in that market”. Sure they are, because even if they do not get sick a good 40% or so of them avail themselves of contraceptives. The four justices, all being male and Catholic, seem to have forgotten about that.

Also, what’s up with the quotes around market?

Today -100: July 1, 1912: Of bosses and ninety wax figures

Yesterday was Sunday and a day off for the Democratic Convention, which of course means a day for horse-trading and faux outrage.

Champ Clark says he’s confident of being nominated, but then so does Oscar Underwood.

Clark also denies having made a deal with the devil (i.e., Wall Street), and demands that Bryan either prove the charge or retract it. Bryan responds that he’s actually accusing Clark of failing to act while his lieutenants make the deal with the devil or at least with Boss Murphy and the “ninety wax figures [the NY delegation] which Mr. Murphy under the unit rule uses to carry out the will of the predatory interests.” Bryan suggests that either Wilson or Clark would be acceptable if they promised to rely only on the Progressive vote and forgo NY’s 90 delegates. He also names several other people who would be perfectly acceptable to him.

William Randolph Hearst accuses Bryan of being a boss.

Today -100: June 30, 1912: Of colossal impudence

The Democratic convention today was long, hot and (according to the LA Times) smelly. Also inconclusive. 14 more ballots were held today, for a total of 26. Champ Clark lost votes on each ballot after the 15th, 90 votes over the course of the day, dropping to 463½. Wilson gained 50, to 407½. 725½ are required. Gov. Harmon of Ohio (29) drops out. Clark’s people suggest that Wilson would make a good veep for Clark; Wilson’s people think not. Clark’s people also suggest another solution to the deadlock: every candidate except for Clark should withdraw.

Drama was provided by William Jennings Bryan, because that’s what he’s there for, when he asked to explain to the convention his shift from Clark to Wilson and more or less said that he will bolt the Democratic Party if its presidential candidate wins the nomination with the support of the 90 votes of the New York delegation, which he says is controlled by Wall Street and Boss Murphy, which it is, and therefore “does not represent the intelligence, the virtue, the democracy or the patriotism of the ninety men who are here”.

Part of the problem in getting a nominee is that under party rules each delegation must vote as a bloc. So the many Wilson supporters among those 90 NY delegates have to vote for Clark.

Headline of the Day -100: “William J. Bryan a Man of Colossal Impudence.”

The editor of the German Anti-Semitic Party’s newspaper has been convicted for slandering the Jewish religion and sentenced to one week in prison.

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt is facing a primary challenger who is bringing up the large number of pardons Colquitt has issued. Colquitt responds by noting that most of those pardons were of young men who had left farms for the city and been led astray. Let’s see if you can spot what else he wants to highlight about the pardonees: “Out of the men I have pardoned some 225 of them were young white men who were serving their first terms in prison for their first offenses against the law, young white men who were without means for defense, young white men etc”.

Today -100: June 29, 1912: Of nominations and shaking prime ministers

On the Democratic Convention’s 10th ballot, there is finally some movement, with Champ Clark increasing his lead, with 556 votes to Wilson’s 350½, with Underwood & Harmon hanging in somewhere in the 100s. It would all have been over by now, with Clark the winner, but nomination requires 2/3 of the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: “Woman Shakes Asquith.” The prime minister meets a suffragette. Who shakes him. She is thrown downstairs, as is the custom.

What the Framers knew

Verily John Roberts says, “The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing.”