Today -100: January 20, 1911: Of passports, skyscrapers, and wine riots

For 30 years Russia has refused to recognize American passports held by Jews, in violation of the 1832 treaty between the two countries.

F.W. Woolworth announces plans to build the Woolworth Building, which at 57 stories will be the tallest skyscraper in the world (but shorter than the Eiffel Tower) and is expected to cost $12 million (it will actually cost $13.5m and open in 1913, and a very nice building it is too).

Headline of the Day -100: “Troops Stop Wine Riots.” By under-paid wine workers in the Champagne region of France.

Today -100: January 19, 1911: Of senators, war, and planes & boats

Henry Cabot Lodge is narrowly re-selected as US senator for Massachusetts, despite the fierce opposition of Gov. Eugene Foss.

Colombia has invaded Peru.

Aviator Eugene Ely successfully lands his plane on a naval cruiser in the San Francisco Bay, the first time this has been accomplished. Ely says, “I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.” A great step forward in warfare. Hurrah.

Bet that name’s looking a little limiting now, huh?

Officials of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party have spent the day frantically cold calling everyone named Lieberman in the Hartford phone book, looking for a new candidate to run for Senate under its imprimatur.

Wherein your faith in The Youth of Today will be restored

LA Times headline: “Student Apologized to Classmates after His Gun Went Off, Hitting Two Students.” Who says that kids today lack proper manners?

I’m starting to think the Catholic Church is a little weird

Indy: “Vial of Late Pope’s Blood to Be Kept in Polish Church after His Beatification.”

Today -100: January 18, 1911: Of segregation, fleeing senators, and leather

In a physical culture class in a public school in Flushing, NY, a white girl basically goes into hysterics when asked to dance with a black boy. An agitation is now beginning to return to segregated schools, which were abolished by Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 when he was governor.

The Calif. Legislature is considering a bill to segregate all Asians in the public schools. And Native Americans.

The West Virginia state senate is evenly split between the parties, but the D’s are trying to oust two R’s, so the R’s have been preventing a quorum. When the D’s issued warrants to arrest them as absentees, all 15 R’s have fled to Ohio.

An insane guy shoots at French Prime Minister Briand in the Chamber of Deputies, wounds the director of public relief instead.

Headline of the Day -100: “Stir in Central Leather.”

I watch Sarah Palin on Hannity so you don’t have to: You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements

Her hope for the families of the Tucson victims: “May He turn their mourning, somehow, supernaturally into joy.” Yeah, God, get right on that, wouldja?

She didn’t deny that those were crosshairs on that map, but said that for many years maps have been used to target certain districts. So that’s okay then. In fact, Democrats invented the use of crosshairs on maps.

Ah yes, the obligatory Martin Luther King Jr quote: “A lie cannot live.” The lies about her, of course.Because even Martin Luther King was All. About. Her.

She used the term “falsely accused” I think 4 times about the linking of her and talk show hosts and the Tea Party to the shootings. I’m not really sure why that term annoyed me so much, but it did.

At one point she referred to the mainstream media and quickly corrected that to lamestream. Phew, hate to make a gaffe like that.

Asked about Obama’s speech, she said “some parts” of it hit home, but that it was too much like a campaign rally.

Re “blood libel”: “You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements”. That term has been used for aeons; it’s double standards to criticize her for using it. And if her enemies didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all, she said twice as if she’d just come up with it.

One of the things that makes the US “exceptional” is that we have free speech. No other country in the world has free speech, evidently. Yay for us.

As such

Berlusconi says he couldn’t possibly have paid all those young women and under-aged girls to have sex with him, because he has been in a stable relationship with one woman since his wife divorced him for having sex with women he paid money to. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Former dictator Baby Doc Duvalier returns to Haiti “to help the people of Haiti,” and is not immediately tossed into prison (or torn apart by angry mobs).


Prime Minister Bellerive says Duvalier “is a Haitian and, as such, is free to return home.” He’s also a mass murderer and, as such, shouldn’t be free to do anything but rot in a cell. I have nothing funny to say about this.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still in exile.

Today -100: January 17, 1911: Of senators, Gypsy queens, and Coleman Livingston Blease

In a process that makes a good argument for popular election of US senators (Congress is just beginning to consider the 17th Amendment), NY Democratic “Boss” Murphy is trying to fix a Senate seat for his man William Sheehan, now that the D’s have taken control of the Legislature. Murphy called a caucus of the Democratic state legislators, but 25 of the 116 refused to come so that they would not be bound by the caucus vote. One of the 25 was brand-new state senator Franklin D. Roosevelt. Gov. Dix puts forward the odd proposition that legislators should vote in accordance with their own consciences and the will of their constituents, which is just adorable. Neither Democratic faction has enough votes to put through their candidate without R votes. This fight is going to go on for 74 days before a compromise candidate is chosen, and is way too complicated for me to detail here (or to put it another way, I’m too lazy to try to figure it all out).

Meanwhile, the NY Republican caucus nominates the incumbent, Chauncey Depew, nearly unanimously, with a couple of votes going to Teddy Roosevelt.

Immigration deports the new wife of the Gypsy King (who the Times informs us is “inclined to stoutness”). And after he paid $60 for her in Bosnia, too.

Headline of the Day -100: “Auto Takes His Trousers.”

The new governor of South Carolina, Coleman Livingston Blease, is sworn in. Let’s look at his inaugural speech at some length, shall we? He begins by crowing about his victory over “a set of political character thieves, the meanest and most contemptible people known to man,” who tried to “crown him with a crown of persecution, envy and malice.” He recounts how he called on the author of an editorial against him in The State to show up at one of his rallies and repeat his statements in person (the editor didn’t, possibly remembering how his brother, a previous editor, was shot dead in 1903 by Lt. Governor James Tillman, who blamed the paper for his having lost the 1902 governor’s race) (Tillman was acquitted) and demands that the Legislature pass a bill to punish newspaper editors and reporters who say false things about people with a fine and imprisonment. He goes on for quite some time, Sarah Palin-style, about the newspapers that sullied his reputation.

He calls for more support for Confederate veterans, “for any man who does not love the ex-Confederate soldier is either a Yankee or has negro blood in his veins.”

He calls for liberal spending for schools. Well, for schools for white children. But he is against compulsory education because it “dethrones the authority of the parents and places the paid agents of the State in control of the children, and destroys family government” by tacitly telling children “we are giving you what your unnatural parents would not give,” thus imparting “the spirit of rebellion against parental authority”. And he says everyone should stop “parad[ing] figures to show the percentage of the ignorance of” South Carolinians. Any government officials who make such figures public should be fired. What he’s really against, though, is “white people’s taxes being used to educate negroes. I am a friend to the negro race. This is proved by the regard in which negroes of my home county hold me. The white people of the South are the best friends to the negro race. In my opinion, when the people of this country began to try to educate the negro they made a serious and grave mistake... So why continue?”

He wants a law against smoking by boys (not girls?) under 16. Also one against possession of toy guns (and real guns) by children under 16.

He wants to amend the law which currently allows white convicts to be placed in the same camps as negro convicts and worked in the same squads, threatening to pardon any white prisoner so grievously treated.

He is in favor of counties enacting licensing systems for the sale of liquor but only if a majority of the white people want it.

He wants “to make executions for the crime of rape, or assault with intent to ravish, public, as I believe this will bring about more satisfactory results – allowing others, and particularly those of the younger generation of that race from which most of these culprits come, to have a full view of the punishment meted out.” This he says, might prevent some lynchings. Not that there’s anything wrong with lynchings, of course: “Some newspapers and some people, in every controversy between the white man and the negro, seem to take delight in taking the side of the negro and denouncing the lynching, but this is a white man’s country and will continue to be ruled by the white man, regardless of the opinions or editorials of quarter or half breeds or foreigners. The pure-blooded Caucasian will always defend the virtue of our women, no matter what the cost. If rape is committed, death must follow.”

He wants to make cocaine illegal. “I also, in this connection, beg leave to call your attention to the evil of the habitual drinking of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and such like mixtures, as I fully believe they are injurious.” He recommends beer instead.