Today -100: July 25, 1912: Of serpents and battleships

Novelist H. Rider Haggard reports that his daughter saw a sea serpent off Lowestoft, England.

US House Dems refuse to fund the two battleships a year the Taft administration wants built, despite the escalating German-British naval arms race and the alarming increase in sea serpents.

The first international Eugenics Congress opens in London.

Today -100: July 24, 1912: Of ships

Following Churchill’s announcement of an increase in Britain’s warship-building, the NYT says the US really needs to build more warships too, in case there’s a naval war with Germany or something.

Exercises

A paywalled Ha’aretz article reports that Israel will demolish eight Palestinian villages, claiming the IDF needs the land for training exercises. And what are they training for? I’m guessing they’re training to evict Palestinians from their villages. Circle of life.

Today -100: July 23, 1912: More rum, more sodomy, more lashes

Britain: First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill calls for more naval spending and ship-building to counter that of Germany.

Today -100: July 22, 1912: Of doctors’ strikes

The British Medical Association breaks off negotiations with Lloyd George over what the fee should be to handle National Insurance patients. And the BMA says that if any doctors accept the governments blackleg (that’s British for scab) rates, they will be ostracized socially by all respectable doctors.

Today -100: July 21, 1912: Of slanderous eruptions and wolves

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease again denounces the investigation into his alleged corruption; he is also not happy with the “slanderous eruptions from the impure mind, foul mouth, and slanderous pen of Tom Felder” and with the man running against him for governor, former Chief Justice Ira Jones, who is “a cowardly liar.”

Such a great orator, isn’t he? He won an oratorical contest when he was a student at South Carolina University, which resulted in him no longer being a student at South Carolina University when they discovered he’d plagiarized it.

Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico are to cooperate in wiping out the wolf population of the region.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Negro May Lead Harvard.” The Harvard track team, anyway.

Today -100: July 20, 1912: Of transportation

Portugal, having defeated the abortive monarchist uprising, is deporting royalists to the colonies. Very retro of them.

Without incident

Texas is experimenting with executing people using a single drug. I say experimenting although it’s a little hard to ask executed prisoners if it really did kill them more painfully than the old three-drug executions. Not a lot of scientific method, is what I’m saying.

Anyhoo, Texas claims the first execution using this method, performed Wednesday on Yokamon Hearn, was “carried off without incident.”

Unless you count the state of Texas killed a retarded dude as an “incident.”

Blog fail

Well, I tried:

1) Came up with “We, the ‘you people,’” googled it, found lots of people had already thought of it.

2) Texas state’s attorney John Hughes, defending voter i.d. law, told the court it’s not a big deal that some Texans would be forced to go 100 miles in each direction to obtain the i.d. Tried to find his phone number so Texans could ask him for a ride, since it’s not a big deal, but couldn’t find it.

3) Yesterday someone in his audience told Romney that Obama is a monster. The newspapers reported that Romney “disagreed” with her, but he actually said “That’s not a term I would use,” which is not the same as disagreeing. Anyway, I was thinking of having an “Obama’s not a monster, but if he were, what sort of monster would he be” contest, like I did with Hillary four years ago, but decided meh.

Today -100: July 19, 1912: Of hatchets and pusso alliances

Alma Belmont opens a women’s suffrage headquarters in Newport, Rhode Island, so it was obviously necessary that the NYT describe, in detail, what she was wearing.

British Prime Minister Asquith is in Dublin. A suffragette throws a hatchet at his carriage & others try to burn down the Theatre Royal a day before he is due to speak there.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “PUSSO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE?; Expected Outcome of Prince Katsura’s Visit to St. Petersburg.” Probably some weird anime thing.

Today -100: July 18, 1912: Of transformations

Mathematician Henri Poincaré dies at 58.

No worthy person

David Brooks complains that Obama’s anti-Bain Capital ad involves “the assumption that no worthy person would do what most global business leaders have been doing for the past half-century.”

Yes. Quite. And your point is?

(Incidentally, the complaint that Romney isn’t defending capitalism and out-sourcing properly, because surely everyone would agree that What’s Good for Bain Capital is Good for the Yoo Ess Ay if it were only explained to them slowly and using short words, is the exact mirror image of the complaint that Obama is failing to explain ObamaCare properly.)

Today -100: July 17, 1912: Of worrying insurance and buffaloes

The NYT says National Insurance is “worrying Britain.” A Mrs. Robinson Guffy has fired her 8 servants in protest at having to pay their insurance under ObamaLloyd George-care, and is trying to keep her 15-room house (and the garden) (and a stable full of horses) all by herself. I’m sure everyone’s hearts went out to Mrs. Robinson Guffy, in the extremely unlikely event that she wasn’t just made up by a Tory newspaper.

Headline of the Day -100: “Aviator Latham Slain by Buffalo.”

Today -100: July 16, 1912: Of socialised medicine

Britain’s National Insurance Act goes into effect. The NYT says it could never be implemented here as no one would put up with it because, you know, freedom and shit.

Today -100: July 15, 1912: He’s got mixed blood in him, and I can’t get him to admit it

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease calls the committee of the Legislature which is investigating him “gutter snipes,” adding, “If they will come to me, I will call them something that will make any man in South Carolina fight.” He offers to “shoot it out” with any member of the committee who says they believe the charges against him. He says of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ira Jones, now running against him (after, according to Blease, “shaving the feathers off his legs,” whatever that means), “He’s got mixed blood in him, and I can’t get him to admit it.” And, just because he’s on a roll, Blease adds that the governor of Georgia doesn’t have the sense to raise a watermelon.

The NYT notes that Blease recently vetoed a bill for the medical inspection of school children, on the grounds that it was an infringement of personal liberty. Don’t ever change, South Carolina. Oh, right, you never do.

Today -100: July 14, 1912: Of pardons, the need for more Germans, ex-senators, and congresswomen

A private detective testifies to the South Carolina investigating committee that a friend of Gov. Coleman Blease promised that for $5,000 Blease would pardon James Johnson, alias Edward Murphy, alias Ed Howard, alias Gus Befold, alias G.M. Defeld, who blew open the safe of the Knoree Manufacturing Company.

Blease, who last year tried to get Atlanta attorney Thomas Felder extradited from Georgia, evidently in retaliation for Felder accusing him of having taken bribes when he was a state senator, last week tried to get him arrested on that warrant in Maryland, where Felder was a delegate at the Democratic convention.

President Taft will not campaign for re-election, because that sort of thing is beneath the dignity of the office.

The German government issues a warning against the “perilous decrease” in the birth-rate. There will be an inquiry.

The Senate expels William Lorimer (R-Ill.) 55-28 due to the massive corruption involved in his election. Lorimer says it’s okay because his family still loves him. Roosevelt takes credit for it, because two years ago he refused to sit at the same table with him at a public dinner.

Democrats in the 9th Congressional District of California (L.A.) select a woman, Musa Rawlings, as candidate.

Britain: a couple of suffragettes are arrested trying to burn down Colonial Minister Lewis Harcourt’s mansion.


Hey, did I mention the 1912 Olympics are going on? They totally are.

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.")