Hunkering

WaPo headline: “Snowstorm’s Intensity Has D.C. Region Hunkering Down.” Since it’s D.C., I suspect a euphemism.

CONTEST: What does it mean for residents of Washington D.C. to “hunker down?”

Today -100: February 5, 1910: Of British elections

Nothing of interest in the NYT today, so I’ll backtrack to the British general election, which I think is finally finished. In those days voting didn’t take place in one day but over a couple of weeks – someone could lose in one constituency, then stand again somewhere else in the same general election. The result was a near exact split between Conservatives and Liberals, 273 to 275, but with the Liberal government firmly in control of Parliament with the support of the Irish Nationalists (82) and Labour (40, up from just 2 in 1900 and 30 in 1906). But the closeness between the two major parties gave the heavily Conservative House of Lords the excuse to continue obstructing implementation of the Liberal platform, leading to another “peers versus the people” election in December.

Today -100: February 4, 1910: Of negroes and Scots, and substitutes

Thomas Watson, twice the Populist candidate for president, in that party’s declining years, fiercely criticizes Andrew Carnegie for saying that “the lowest negro of the South is more advanced than were my ancestors in Scotland 200 years ago.” Sez Watson, “Every intelligent man knows that in saying what he did about the Scotch, he lied, and in blarneying the Afro-Americans he despicably lowered himself: at the same time he insulted – fragrantly – grossly – infamously – every man that has in his veins the blood of old Scotland.”

One of the many well-off Northerners who paid a substitute to fight for them in the Civil War was one Abraham Lincoln. A statue to his substitute, J. Summerfield Staples, who died 10 years before, has been proposed for his home town of Stroudsburg, PA.

Then why are they grunting and pounding the ground?

Quote of the Day: An AP article about the opinions of military personnel about gays in the military quotes an ex-infantry sergeant: “These are grunts, ground-pounding guys. They’re not gonna be thinking, I want to have a homosexual.”

Today -100: February 3, 1910: Of big thigh bones and awkward reunions

Republican congresscritters agree with President Taft on a legislative program: statehood for Arizona and New Mexico, an appointed legislative council for Alaska, postal savings banks, creating a court of commerce, and something I don’t quite understand about conservation of public lands. The Republicans seem united despite strong disagreements within the party, with the “insurgents” trying to oust or at least reduce the powers of Speaker of the House Joe Cannon.

Headline of the Day -100: “Biggest Thigh Bone Found.” Turns out to be one of a set of dinosaur bones from Tanganyika and not, as you might have expected, William Howard Taft’s.

In Indiana a woman runs into her husband, who she had believed was killed in the Civil War. She sold the house moved away, so he could not find her when he came home from war. She remarried 40 years ago, presumably bigamously, but her second husband died 10 months ago. She will now re-marry her first husband.

Good evening

The caption on this picture reads “Vatican City: A dove flies back into Pope Benedict XVI’s apartment after he released it.”


Evidently papal events are now based on Alfred Hitchcock movies. Which sort of explains why Pope John Paul II’s stuffed corpse is propped up on a throne in the basement of the Vatican.

CONTEST: Anyone have a papal “Strangers on a Train” joke? Rear Window? North by Northwest?

Today -100: February 2, 1910: Of unexpected senators, unconstitutional taxes, retaliatory car licenses, and how to end war

Names of the Day -100: Senator Fountain Land Thompson of North Dakota has resigned after less than two months in office following the death of the previous senator. This was news in D.C., which only found out about the doings in ND when his successor showed up, vouched for by the other ND senator, a Porter J. McCumber. Senators were still elected by state legislatures, but here’s something I didn’t know: the dates of those elections weren’t uniform. ND, for example, became a state in 1899, so McCumber, chosen then, was re-elected by the Legislature in 1905 and 1911.

Some corporations will refuse to file returns required by the corporation tax law, believing the law to be unconstitutional (the Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge in March). They fear that the real purpose of the law is not collecting the 1% tax, but collecting the information about the corporations from their returns.

Car license wars: New Jersey does not recognize car licenses from other states, so people whose cars are registered elsewhere have to pay additional fees before they can drive them in Joisey. Since other states don’t do this, there is an incentive for car owners in nearby states to register in NJ and only have to pay one fee. So nearly half the 34,000 cars registered in NJ belong to New Yorkers. The New York Legislature is about to consider a retaliatory measure, requiring licenses for people from states that do not recognize non-resident licenses. Penn. & Delaware already have such laws.

A Suffrage Settlement House opens in Harlem, financed by Mrs. Belmont. One of the speakers was Fanny Villard, who the NYT fails to mention was the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison. She said that she was the 2nd largest taxpayer in Dobbs Ferry, NY, but had no power to regulate or shut down its 26 saloons. And if women had the vote there would be no need of an army or navy, because the influence of women would make war unnecessary.

The most transparent White House in history

Obama had a “YouTube interview” today.

HE’S GOT A CERTIFICATE! “I would say that we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent White House in history.”

YOU’D THINK THOMAS JEFFERSON WOULD HAVE HAD THAT ON JEFFERƒON.GOV, BUT EVIDENTLY NOT: “We are the first White House since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the White House online so that you can look it up.”

SEE, AND YOU THOUGHT OBAMA DIDN’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING: “Well, I’m a big believer in net neutrality.”

ALTHOUGH GOD KNOWS WE’RE TRYING: “Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent Muslims of any entity out there.” Israel is also trying pretty hard. Actually, the competition to be the biggest killer of innocent Muslims is rather fierce.

NOT ACTUALLY IN YEMEN AND PAKISTAN, JUST IN PLACES LIKE THEM: “We have to project economically, working in country like a Yemen, that is extraordinarily poor, to make sure that young people there have opportunity. The same is true in a place like Pakistan.”

Today -100: February 1, 1910: Of the dignity paid by Americans to high office, and getting gay

Taft tells reporters that he enjoys strolling around D.C., looking in the shop windows, and “seeing some person give him a long look and then look away, while the next person would give a second look, then poke his companion in the ribs, ‘and in the dignity paid by Americans to high office, call out, “Hello, Taft!”’”

A NYT editorial says “We should advise our friends the protectionists not to ‘get gay’ over the statistics that show that more goods have come in free under the Aldrich tariff than under any other, and rather more than the total of dutiable goods.” So don’t get gay over that.

I’ve been skipping the many NYT stories about flooding in Paris, but there’s a new book, “Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910,” (see the NYT Book Review review of it).

God-given right to carry

Quote of the Day: Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, who wants to legalize the carrying of concealed firearms without a permit, says with the current law, “All we’re doing is handcuffing good people, restricting their constitutional, God-given right to carry and perhaps their ability to defend their families.”

Today -100: January 31, 1910: Of expensive bibles, slavery in Texas, train crashes, and corn mush

The price of Bibles is about to go up.

Federal agents have been investigating cotton plantations in Texas, where 2,000+ people – white as well as negro, the NYT reports breathlessly – have been held in a state of peonage after being abducted by force.

A single Pennsylvania train manages to get into two separate accidents, killing a husband and wife at a crossing, and hitting a car a few miles later, throwing it into the air and killing two passengers.

Harvard Prof. Franklin White, an expert on dietetics, says that workingmen could easily live on just 20¢ a day worth of food. For example, a nice meal of corn mush flavored with margarine and some cheap syrup would only cost 4¢ and fuel a day of hard labor. Or how about a potato flavored with smoked herring. Yum.

Political steel-cage match

We knew there’d be a problem with the trial of Scott Roeder when we heard that Judge Warren Wilbert paid for an election ad in the Kansans for Life newsletter in 2008. Turns out he’s as competent as he is ethical. First he allows Roeder to premise his entire defense on the argument that Dr. Tiller needed killing, then, evidently realizing that there was no basis in law for such an argument, took away the jury’s option of convicting for voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. While that was (at last) the right decision legally, the whole judicial bait and switch undermined Roeder to the point where the conviction might well be, and probably should, overturned. He was allowed to base his whole defense on a strategy aimed at securing a manslaughter verdict, effectively putting on no defense against first degree. He might, for example, not have admitted that he had considered chopping off Tiller’s arms with a sword rather than killing him, but realized that he would still be able to teach others abortion procedures. This idiot judge gave Roeder a platform, but didn’t give him a fair trial.

Obama told the House Republicans, “They didn’t send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive.” Well, yeah, but only because we didn’t know that option was available. Put the “Political Steel-Cage Match To See Who Comes Out Alive Act of 2010” on the ballot and see what happens.

Today -100: January 30, 1910: Of kaisers, Serbia, and odious jobs

Kaiser Wilhelm’s 51st birthday, “and the entire Fatherland song for twenty-four hours the patriotic refrain of ‘Hoch der Kaiser.’” (which I believe translates literally as “phlegm-like noise for the emperor.”)

An article by Jacques Bardoux in the French newspaper L’Opinion accuses Austria and Germany of conspiring in a scheme for the former to annex Serbia.

Lady Constance Lytton describes forcible feeding at length: “It was a living nightmare of pain, horror, and revolting degradation. The sensation is that of being strangled and suffocated by the thrusting down of a large rubber tube which arouses great irritation in the throat and nausea in the stomach. ... There is also a feeling of complete helplessness, as of an animal in a trap”. “After the first time the doctor as he left me gave me a slap on the cheek, not violently, but apparently to express his contemptuous disapproval. I said to him the next day: ‘Unless you consider it part of your duty, would you please not strike me when you have finished your odious job?’”

In 2010, prisoners at Guantanamo are being forcibly fed three times a day, some of them for several years now.

Today -100: January 29, 1910: Of Groce and Cannon, and bulldogs

Members of the court-martial in Nicaragua that “illegally” sentenced Groce and Cannon to death have been acquitted after former president Zelaya’s letters of instruction were shown to the court.

And in another sketchy report from the field, Estrada’s rebels may have defeated government forces in a battle at La Libertad.

NYPD Patrolman Arnold Samish, attempting to remove a drunk woman from the street car tracks on Lexington Ave., was attacked by “an unknown bulldog,” which removed his trousers. He had to walk 3 short and 1½ long blocks to his station house. “The urchins who attended the patrolman as far as the police station did their best to keep him from feeling lonesome.”

Your logic is not like our earth logic

Scott Roeder, testifying in his trial for murdering Dr. George Tiller, said he is against abortion because “It is not man’s job to take life”. Um, right. Also, he is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest because “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

SOTU addendum

EXCEPT PHILOSOPHY MAJORS, OBVIOUSLY: “In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

And it will kill Bill Murray with its laser eyes

PETA wants Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog replaced in the Groundhog Day festival with a robot groundhog (William Deeley, president of the Inner Circle of the Groundhog Club, responds that Phil is “treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania”) (true fact: by Pennsylvania law and custom, children must dig their own burrows, in which they live until their seventeenth birthday). And if the robotic rodent sees its own shadow, well I for one welcome our new robogroundhog overlords.

Today -100: January 28, 1910: Of billy clubs and snow balls, aerial warfare, and church-going saloon-keepers

Three more NYPD officers have been fired for clubbing citizens, including one who clubbed small children to break up a snowball fight. The mayor and police commissioner are also investigating police violence towards striking shirtwaist workers.

Wealthy aviator Charles B. Harmon insists in a lecture in Pasadena that aviation has rendered the battleship obsolete. “It has already been demonstrated that one balloon or aeroplane can carry enough explosives to annihilate any fleet in the world, while the warships would be powerless to protect themselves.”

A “colored woman suffrage mass meeting” will be held next month to organize a suffrage league among black women.

Indianapolis Mayor Shank has sentenced saloon keepers who broke the liquor laws to attend church, suspending their licences until they show a letter of attendance from a minister.

State of the Union Address: People expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills

WILL THIS BE ON THE TEST? “Again, we are tested.”

GOSH, HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: “One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt.”

BUT THE SHUTTER BUSINESS IS DOING GREAT! “But the devastation remains: One in ten Americans still can’t find work. Many businesses have shuttered.”

IT’S CALLED PENMANSHIP, TEACHERS: “I hear about them in the letters that I read each night. The toughest to read are those written by children”.


LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: “They don’t understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded, but hard work on Main Street isn’t”. You know, some people work quite hard at bad behaviour. Where’s their recognition? Where’s their recognition?

WAIT FOR THE PRESIDENT’S DAY SALE: “They’re tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can’t afford it, not now.”

CONSTIPATION IS A TERRIBLE PROBLEM, ISN’T IT? “One woman wrote to me and said, ‘We are strained but hopeful, struggling but encouraged.’”

BUT STILL MORE POPULAR THAN JOE LIEBERMAN: “And if there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans -- and everybody in between -- it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. (APPLAUSE) I hated it. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.”


LET’S INVADE THEM AND TAKE THAT SHIT! “There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains or the new factories that manufacture clean-energy products.”

CONTENTIOUS, GRIDLOCKED – WHAT SILLY BILLY SAID THAT? “From the day I took office, I’ve been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious, such effort would be too contentious. I’ve been told that our political system is too gridlocked and that we should just put things on hold for a while.”

AT THIS POINT WE’D SETTLE FOR SIXTH: “Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”

BUT WE’VE ALREADY BOUGHT THE WHIPS AND THUMB SCREWS: “Look, I’m not interested in punishing banks.”

HE SORTA UNDERCUT THIS ONE BY EARLIER COMMENTS ABOUT THE NEED FOR “A NEW GENERATION OF SAFE, CLEAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS”: “I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.”

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP FOR EVERYBODY! “So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support 2 million jobs in America.”


NO ONE AN ACCUSE HIM OF GETTING SOME LEGISLATIVE VICTORY UNDER HIS BELT: “I didn’t choose to tackle this issue [HCR] to get some legislative victory under my belt. And by now, it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.”

MICHELLE IS TACKLING FAT KIDS: “I want to acknowledge our first lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity”.

“Still, this is a complex issue. And the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering, ‘What’s in it for me?’” A pony? (‘cause of the horse-trading. Try to keep up.)

THIS SPEECH IS A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION: “By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance.”


HE THINKS REPUBLICANS WILL LET TEMPERATURES COOL. ISN’T THAT ADORABLE? “As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed.”

WAIT, HAS NO ONE EVER TOLD HIM ABOUT SINGLE-PAYER? “But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let me know.”

Three-year discretionary spending freeze. Bipartisan Fiscal Commission, which “can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem.”


NAKED JELLO WRESTLING? “Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new.”

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.” Decided by the American people – isn’t he just adorable?

And he has a really specific proposal: “And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.”

NO, HE THOUGHT HE’D HAVE TO BE SWORN IN TOO: “Now, I’m not naive. I never thought that the mere fact of my election would usher in peace and harmony and some post-partisan era.”

THEY SHOULD DO IT BECAUSE IT’S FUNNY: “Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can.”

BIDEN PREFERS TO TAKE THE TRAIN FOR THE HILLS: “To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.” Really? Is that what people expect?

poll by twiigs.com

AND NOW, OBAMA TRIES TO SHAME THOSE WITHOUT SHAME. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: “And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.”


SADLY: “Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated.” Yeah, the unity that was exploited to curtail our freedoms and propel us into two wars, it’s so very sad to see any of that dissipate.

“MAKE NO MISTAKE” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “But make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.”

INNOCENT BYSTANDER: “We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change.” Bystander? We were, and are, the leading contributor to climate change. We weren’t standing, we were driving our fat children to school in giant Hummers.

He says Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed this very year.

I FORGET, WHICH IS THE TOP-RATED CABLE NEWS CHANNEL AGAIN? “The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away.”

“Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved.” He did not say which ones.

“We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us.” Say what you will about the man, he totally knows how to read a calendar.

BIG FINISH: “We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment, to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.”

I refuse to punish the people

Rather than raise taxes on rich people, Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed cuts, or implemented them through the line-item veto, to support services for the blind and disabled, vision care for poor children, AIDS prevention, shelters for abused women, the welfare-to-work program, adult day-care, the Healthy Families program, etc etc etc. So why does he oppose tax increases? “I refuse to punish the people.”