Today -100: August 7, 1912: Of bull moosers, burning houses, and bears

Roosevelt gives a speech or, as he insists on calling it, his confession of faith, to the Bull Moose convention (this may be the first time a presidential candidate of any party has given a speech at a party convention). Excerpt: “the fundamental concern of the privileged interests is to beat the new party. Some of them would rather beat it with Mr. Wilson; others would rather beat it with Mr. Taft; but the difference between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft they consider as trivial, as a mere matter of personal preference.”

He calls for standardized factory and mine inspection; standardized compensation for industrial accidents and death; a ban on the employment of women over forty-eight hours per week; a ban on the seven-day working week; the protective tariff (set “scientifically”); women’s suffrage (“In those conservative States where there is genuine doubt how the women stand on this matter I suggest that it be referred to a vote of the women”); court rulings to be subject to the “final control of the American people as a whole.”

In a supposedly impromptu deviation from the prepared text, TR goes into the whole negro question, saying that the negro delegates to Republican conventions for the last 45 years have been of such a character as reflected discredit on both the Republican Party and the negro race. Which I guess is supposed to justify excluding Southern negro delegates of whatever character from the Progressive convention. He notes that many northern states and even Maryland and West Virginia voluntarily sent black delegates, “because they represent an element of colored men who have won the esteem and respect of their white neighbors,” which is obviously the important thing. And by not forcing negroes on the South, we shall “naturally and spontaneously” see the Southern states do what Maryland and West Virginia did in the, you know, future.

The NYT calls TR’s program “a vast system of State Socialism, a Government of men unrestrained by laws. ... business would be regulated and controlled from Washington... he would teach the weak, the unfortunate, and the unemployed to look to the Government for relief.”

At the trial of suffragists for attempting to burn down the Theatre Royal in Dublin, Gladys Evans says she was encouraged to do so by the words of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (that is to say, a member of the Cabinet), C.E. Hobhouse, who said that the suffragettes would accomplish nothing until they begin to burn houses.

Robert Taft, son of the president, is given a bear by the Blackfeet Indians.

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Today -100: August 6, 1912: Of bull moosers

The NYT on the Bull Moose convention: “It was not a convention at all. It was an assemblage of religious enthusiasts. ... It was a Methodist camp meeting done over into political terms.”


Jane Addams of Hull House is a delegate at the convention and is not happy with its fucking-over of Southern blacks.

Oh, those Marines Taft sent to Nicaragua were sent at the request of the government. If you say so.

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Today -100: August 5, 1912: Dat jes’ makes me laff

Just for laughs, the NYT has been asking Southern politicians what they think of Roosevelt’s bifurcated policy of white supremacy in the South/asking for negro votes in the North. Rep. Ben Johnson (D-Kentucky) says it “makes me think of the old darky down in the Blue Grass region, who, when asked what he thought of a certain utterance, said, ‘Dat jes’ makes me laff.’” Southern politicians – always ready with a good “darky” story.

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That’s upside-down economics

Today, Obama gave a little speech on the subject of tax cuts.

And who was with him, you ask? “I am joined here today by moms and dads, husbands and wives, middle-class Americans who work hard every single day to provide for their families. And like most Americans, they work hard and they don’t ask for much. They do expect, however, that their hard work is going to pay off.” Wow, they just don’t understand America at all, do they?

What do they want to know? “They want to know that if they put in enough effort, if they are acting responsibly, then they can afford to pay the bills; that they can afford to own a home that they call their own; that they can afford to secure their retirement; and most of all, that they can afford to give their kids greater opportunity -- that their children and grandchildren can achieve things that they didn’t even imagine.” Or at least pierce body parts that they didn’t even imagine.

BUT HE DOESN’T SAY HOW MANY AMERICANS FEELING THEIR FINANCIAL SECURITY SLIPPING AWAY IS THE RIGHT NUMBER: “We’ve got more work to do on their behalf -- not only to reclaim all the jobs that were lost during the recession, but also to reclaim the kind of financial security that too many Americans have felt was slipping away from them for too long.”

WHO DOES ALL THAT REBUILDING? I’M GUESSING MEXICANS. “Rebuilding a strong economy begins with rebuilding our middle class.”

BUT HE DOESN’T SAY HOW MANY WORKING FAMILIES STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET IS THE RIGHT NUMBER: “So, at a time when too many working families are already struggling to make ends meet”.

SO AMERICANS SHOULD GROW THEIR MIDDLES AND BOTTOMS? WAY AHEAD OF YOU, MR. PRESIDENT! “That’s not how you grow an economy. You grow an economy from the middle out, and from the bottom up.”

KINKY! “That’s not just top-down economics, that’s upside-down economics.”

WHAT WE CAN ARGUE ABOUT: “Let’s keep taxes low for 98 percent of Americans, and we can argue about the other 2 percent.”

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Today -100: August 4, 1912: With antlers on my forehead and a big stick in my hand

The NYT is surprised and fascinated and aroused by the number of women participating in the NY Bull Moose convention (one-fourth, they say). At any rate, its focus on the women allows the Times to treat the convention with all the condescension in its considerable arsenal. Mary Dreier, president of the New York Women’s Trade Union League (we’ve seen her before helping organize the shirtwaist-makers’ strike), is selected as one of 4 delegates.

The Bull Moose national committee is rejecting the credentials of negro delegates from the South in much the same way that the Republican convention rejected credentials of Roosevelt supporters. This would have been ironic, but I don’t think irony had been invented yet. In Florida, it seems that the party’s national committee told negro Roosevelt supporters that they should meet in St. Augustine – on the same day the state convention was being held in Ocala. In Mississippi they didn’t have to resort to a ruse, because they held the convention in a segregated hotel.

Here, by the way, is what seems to be the party song:

I like to be a Bull Moose
And with the Bull Moose stand,
With antlers on my forehead
And a big stick in my hand.

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Today -100: August 3, 1912: Of gunboats, harbors, black bull moose, and lepers

Revolution in Nicaragua, again. Taft sends a gunboat, as is traditional.

Remember the baseless panic about the Japanese supposedly secretly buying Magdalena Bay in Mexico? The Senate has voted to expand the Monroe Doctrine to oppose any harbor in the Western Hemisphere falling into the hands of any corporation or association connected to foreign powers (except for the US, of course). During the discussion, one (unnamed) senator suggested leveraging US claims for compensation for damage from the two Mexican revolutions to force Mexico to give us Baja California.

The only Bull Moosers that they could find in South Carolina willing to be delegates to the national convention were black. So... there will be no South Carolina delegates to the national convention. There will be competing black and white delegations from Miss., Alabama and Georgia.

Who knew so much of the talk about the new third party would revolve around race? Certainly not Theodore Roosevelt, who tries to explain how he’s really a great friend of the negro in a letter – and I swear to god I’m not making this up – to Uncle Remus Magazine. He says he’s in favor of treating all men the same. He says that in the South the Democrats have maintained their power by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black, while the Republican machine has tried to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man. In fact, it was the corrupt black delegates to the 1912 Republican convention, by “their own greed for money or office” (i.e., their support for Taft and the party establishment), who brought about the split in the party. And as long as the parties in the South exploit race in the way he describes, we can’t “secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence, integrity, and self-respect which justify such right of political expression in his white neighbor.” So anyway, the exclusion of negro delegates from the South from the Bull Moose convention is really for the benefit of negroes, the end.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Leper Worrying Denver.”

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When Ann Romney says...

that a certain family member is “consistent and elegant,” “did not disappoint” and “thrilled me to death,” you can be pretty sure she is not talking about her husband.

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For those majoring in crazy and/or meatheadedness

If you were a student of one of these Southern Californian universities, I’m not sure which would be more worrying to read in today’s LA Times:

1) A pharmaceutical sciences professor at UC Irvine (his UCI faculty page only misspells pharmaceutical once) set several fires and planned to get “a dozen machine guns” to shoot up the high school attended by his son, who committed suicide.

2) USC will establish a think tank in association with well-known thinker Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sez the former governator, “It would be a shame to think what I learned from my governorship over seven years … ways of solving problems — will now be left behind and no one will benefit.” Yup, that would be a shame all right.

Oh lord, USC will make him a professor of state and global policy. And “The university is also in discussions with Schwarzenegger to house his personal collection at the institute.” Personal collection of what, the LAT does not explain. The mind boggles, really.

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Today -100: August 2, 1912: Of race and progress

Blacks in Mississippi hold their own Bull Moose convention separate from the white convention and elect their own delegates to the Chicago convention.

Roosevelt sanctions the exclusion of negro delegates to the national “Progressive” Party convention from the Southern states, but he tries to position it as a principled position, to prevent a situation like that at the Republican Convention, where black delegates from the Democratic South represented no one, there being no functioning R party there, and were used as fodder by the national party establishment. There will be black delegates from the North, he says, a fair number of them in fact.

At the White House, Taft gives a speech accepting the nomination. He is against socialism. I mean, if you were wondering about that. He admits that certain douchebags have accumulated “ill-gotten wealth,” but says the best way to deal with this is “to await the diminution of this evil by natural causes”. He says Wilson and Roosevelt’s policies both lead to “appropriation of what belongs to one man to another.” He is also against Progressive reform of political institutions, because the American people are too lazy to handle referenda and recalls and so on.

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Today -100: August 1, 1912: Of third parties and Prince Alberts

The nascent Bull Moose/Progressive Party is looking to be an ill-thought-out mess. The problem is that it’s not clear whether it’s intended to be simply a vehicle for Roosevelt’s ambitions or a real third-party, and until that’s clear few people are willing to commit to it. The man the party intended to run for attorney general in Illinois, for example, State Sen. Albert Isley, refuses to run, saying there is no need for a third party.

Former House Speaker Joseph Cannon pops in to the White House offices to ask if he needs to wear his Prince Albert to the ceremonies notifying Taft of his re-nomination. Um, right.

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Today -100: July 31, 1912: Of race riots, supremacist progressives, and electrifying defectives

The British inquiry into the Titanic sinking blames it on the ship going too fast. And not keeping a proper watch (although it didn’t rule that binoculars are necessary in the future). It says there was no discrimination against third-class passengers in the evacuation.

Oh good, more race riots. 1) At a brick yard in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Weapons of choice: razors and bricks.

2) And in Fordyce, Arkansas, where the state national guard raided the negro neighborhood for unknown reasons.

Asked about his Progressive Party being organized in the South on a lily-white basis, Theodore Roosevelt totally wimps out, saying he has nothing to do with it, and it’s up to the guys who organize it in the South who they want to invite to their state conventions.

Worrying Headline of the Day -100: “Electricity for Defectives.” The NY Board of Education is being asked to try out a wacky idea of Nicola Tesla’s to test whether putting wires with high-frequency currents in the walls of classrooms containing “defective” children will improve them in some way. What could go wrong?

He’s making less and less effort to disguise his contempt

Romney’s claim in Israel that the Israeli (Jews) are richer than Palestinians because of their superior “culture” and the “hand of Providence” is nothing special. It’s just a Middle East variant of his belief that poor people are poor because they are big ol’ losers. Just like, according to Mittens in the same speech, Mexicans and Ecuadorans.

Today -100: July 30, 1912: Of mikados, race issues and race wars

Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito dies after a reign of 45 years.

Headline of the Day -100: “Race Issue Bothers Taft.” Some negroes, including the two in his administration, are pressing for the appointment of one Ulysses Mason as collector of internal revenue for northern Alabama. (Taft will go with a white dude instead.)

Nothing further on yesterday’s report of race riot/war in Georgia, but there is a fatuous NYT editorial which suggests that such stories are always fakes and that blacks in the South are actually “living in fairly prosperous circumstances... do not care particularly about political questions... and, while the race wars are raging in the dispatches, keep on making more corn and cotton than they can sell at the prices they would like.” So that’s okay then.

Hmmm

What does it mean that the White House issued the proclamation for World Hepatitis Day the day after World Hepatitis Day?

Wailing? I’d rather be sailing.

Romney at the Western Wall.

“Yes, it has the right amount of wailing.”

“They’ll never find my tax records here.”

This is, of course, a CAPTION CONTEST.

Today -100: July 29, 1912: Of race riots and explorers

Race riot (or race war, according to the LA Times) in Plainville, Georgia. Evidently last week a white boy was hit with a stone, which naturally led to violence yesterday. All the negroes were driven out of the town (which is majority-black), and the sheriff was sent for. His posse was ambushed and the sheriff shot. Developing.

President Taft is such a bystander in his own re-election campaign that I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t, until now, made any response to Roosevelt’s claim that the Republican convention was stolen. Well, now, rather belatedly, he has. It’s not very interesting.

Explorer Capt. Ejnar Mikkelsen and his engineer have returned from three years in the Arctic (Greenland), most of that time waiting for someone to rescue them (a Norwegian fishing, or possibly whaling, ship, in fact). His message: the Arctic really really sucks.

Today -100: July 28, 1912: Of the foulest of liars

Another lively, um, primary debate, in South Carolina. Gov. Coleman Blease accuses Southern Railroad of having employed the son of Ira Jones to influence his father when he was chief justice of the SC Supreme Court. Ira Jones calls Blease the “foulest of liars” and rushes him. Partisans of both sides whip out their guns. The police chief pulls his revolver and jumps between Jones and Blease, threatening to shoot the first one who made a hostile move.

It would be great if we could just leave it at that

Seeing certain elements of the internet delighting in The Sun’s dubbing Romney “Mitt the Twit,” I had to look up when I first started calling him Twitt Romney. August 14, 2007, it was. In that post, I reported a line snapped by Romney at reporters: “I’m pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that.” I responded: “Really, would everybody just stop asking Romney any questions about his positions on issues, he doesn’t like it.” And nothing in his campaigning style has changed since then.


I’ve been looking for another old post, without success. I could swear that sometime in 2000, I drew up a list of unanswered questions about George Bush – where was he when he was supposed to be in Alabama in the Air National Guard, did he take cocaine, how many times was he stopped for DUIs, etc etc – and that months later, right before the election, I re-ran the post (except I can’t find that one either), noting that none of the questions had been answered and, indeed, almost none had ever been put directly to Bush himself. So no, it’s not inevitable that Mittens will be forced to release his tax returns.

Today -100: July 27, 1912: Of correctives and antidotes, and stews

Theodore Roosevelt says his address to the National Progressive Party convention next month will be “a corrective of socialism and an antidote to anarchy.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Roosevelt in a Stew on the Negro Question.” That is, he thinks he can win in a few Southern states, but not if he treats negroes like human beings (Southern racists still haven’t forgiven him for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House that one time).

Today -100: July 26, 1912: Of battleships, visible governors, and the electric chair

During parliamentary discussions over the proposed increase in naval spending, Prime Minister Asquith says Britain has no quarrel with Germany, it just doesn’t want anyone messing with its shit, which is half the world. Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey says that the arms race will increase the prospect of peace, because it will make everyone realize just how jolly expensive a war would be. So that’s all right then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Wilson To Be Visible For Just Two Hours.”

Georgia’s Bull Moose party holds a convention to nominate delegates to the national convention, but splits into two competing conventions over the “negro question.”

The electoral laws in many states did not really anticipate a situation where a third party springs up overnight out of an existing party after the primary but before the general election. This means that fights over ballot access and control over electors are developing in state after state. Roosevelt started out wanting to build his third party as a new independent party rather than a Republican splinter party, so that he could appeal to progressives of both the Democratic and Republican variety. In practice, though, in states where his followers control the Republican party machine, he is now willing to compromise and support Republican candidates (such as in Minnesota), if they support his presidential electors. In the Minnesota deal, the existing Republican electors would all resign and become Progressive electors by petition, and the Tafties would have to find new electors.

For 22 years, NY state has been executing people, 155 of them, in the electric chair, at a cost of $65,000+. An electrician charges $250 per execution (his assistant gets $50), plus travel and lodging.