Don’t make us get all Viking on your ass

One of the delegates at the Copenhagen summit refers to the controversy over the hacked emails as “a storm in a teacup.” There’s probably a weak joke in there somewhere.

No one expected Obama to attend every Nobel Prize event (I understand the toga party is a highlight), but his ungracious decision to skip even the traditional lunch with the Norwegian king is being taken as a rude snub. In other words, the newest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has managed to piss off... the Norwegians.

Today -100: December 10, 1909: If President Taft set off by train from New York to Chicago and weighs 300 pounds...

The NYT Times Traveler Blog, which inspired my own (lamely titled) Today -100 feature, is being discontinued, but don’t worry, Taft-lovers, we will be continuing together into the brave new world of the 1910s.

Headline of the Day -100: “Democrats Elect Money.” That’s Hernando De Soto Money of Mississippi, who was elected Senate minority leader.

In France, authors of textbooks used in the state schools have sued the Archbishop of Paris for damages for putting their texts on the Index of banned books.

In his State of the Union message, Taft proposed raising the postage rates for magazines, on which the Post Office was losing money because it was paying 9¢ a pound to transport it by rail. One M. T. Richardson, in a letter to the NYT, thinks this is excessive, noting that the railroads charge that rate to convey a 200-pound man, who they have to provide with heat and light and a seat, from NY to Chicago, while someone like, oh say President Taft, is charged less than 6¢ per mile. Because he’s fat, geddit?

Not unlike Jefferson and Adams, I’m sure

CONTEST: Sample dialogue from this meeting of the minds, please.

That’ll leave a mark

Alberto Gonzales has written something for Esquire. He says it was cool to work in the White House. He says that “The notion that what happened at Abu Ghraib was a result of the policies of the Bush administration I just think is totally ridiculous.” And “This may sound egotistical, but to me it is important that when I leave this earth, I would have made a difference -- that people would know Al Gonzales lived, he touched lives, he made a difference, he left a mark.” Oh, I’m sure the prisoners at Abu Ghraib (and Guantanamo and Bagram and....) will tell you that he left a mark.

Today -100, December 9, 1909: Of pro-Americanism in Nicaragua

Sloooow news day. The fighting in Nicaragua too is in a lull. The NYT says “President Zelaya, recognizing the growing sentiment in Nicaragua favorable to the revolutionists and to the part the United States is playing in the contest, has recently been making every effort to incite the people to anti-American demonstration. These efforts have been utterly futile, and nothing but fear of him prevents a pro-American demonstration.” Ain’t it the way. At any given moment, pro-American demonstrations are about to spontaneously break out all over the world, but something always gets in the way.

Who does Blair think he is, Thomas Friedman?

Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq could launch WMDs on 45 minutes’ notice evidently came from... a taxi driver. Who said he’d heard it from two army officers talking in the back of his cab. MI6 told Blair it was “verifiably inaccurate” (so why were they passing it on to Downing Street?) but he used it anyway.

Today -100: December 8, 1909: Of the State of the Union and pickle secrets

Taft has sent Congress his first State of the Union Address (which nobody seems to call by that name). Throughout it, notes the NYT, “runs a strong note of consideration for the commercial welfare of the country.” Unlike the addresses of Teddy Roosevelt, “There is not a bludgeon or a big stick in it”. Taft talks about the maximum tariff feature of the Payne-Aldrich law. Anyone care about that? Then we’ll move on. He recommends an executive council for Alaska and statehood for New Mexico and Arizona, postal savings banks, requiring Congressional candidates to file a statement of their contributions and expenditures, pensions for civil servants, and that army promotions be based on merit. He wants reform of federal court procedures to make them cheaper to use and faster, adding, “I do not doubt for one moment that much fo the lawless violence and cruelty exhibited in lynchings is directly due to the uncertainties and injustice growing out of the delays in trials, judgments, and the executions thereof by our courts.” He says, obviously referring to Nicaragua, that neither the Monroe Doctrine “nor any other doctrine of American policy should be permitted to operate for the perpetuation of irresponsible government, the escape of just obligations, or the insidious allegation of dominant ambitions on the part of the United States.”

Germany’s Prince Frederick von Sayn Wittgenstein is forced to renounce his title because he married a woman of the middling classes.

Headline of the Day -100 Years: “D. W. Bowles Arrested: Son of Samuel Bowles Accused of Trying to Steal Pickle Secrets.”

He knows what he did

The Archbishop of Canterbury can just go fuck himself.

Today -100: December 7, 1909: Of white slaves, mud flats, black hands, and employes

Congress is back in session. Rep. James Mann (R-Ill.) introduces a White Slave Traffic Act (yes, the Mann Act). And Rep. William Sulzer (D-NY) introduces a joint resolution directing the Taft admin to demand the “arrest, trial, and punishment of Zelaya by an impartial tribunal in Nicaragua for the willful murder of citizens of the United States, and ample apology from Nicaragua and such damages and reparation as may be just.” Oh, and “to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, to such an extent as may be necessary,” to establish a responsible republican form of government in Nicaragua.

Not that Taft (who has a cold) is waiting on permission from Congress. 700 marines are finally underway to Central America, possibly to be used in Nicaragua. Their transport ship got stuck in some mud flats in the Delaware River and had to be replaced after they spent a couple of days trying to get it out.

The Italian Black Hand criminal secret society has been recruiting Italians working on the Lötschberg Tunnel in Switzerland for the American branch of the Black Hand, paying for the passage of 40 men.

The first time I saw this I thought it was a misprint, but evidently in 1909 employee was spelled employe.

The Case of the Funnel Cake Hit-Man

Harry Reid on Max Baucus: “Max is a good friend and an outstanding senator and he has my full support.” This is why people distrust the ethos of Washington: Reid sees nothing inappropriate in citing personal friendship as a reason for him to ignore a scandal. The NYT mentions something I’m kind of curious to hear more about: “Ms. Hanes handled a number of high-profile trials, including a double murder at the Iowa State Fair in 1996, where a husband and wife who operated a funnel cake stand were killed in a murder-for-hire case.”

(Update: Hired by the couple’s daughter and her husband, looking to inherit their property and of course the lucrative funnel cake business.)

Farewell, Big Bill Lister, “Radio’s Tallest Singing Cowboy,” we hardly knew ye.

Something fairly obvious occurred to me while reading Thomas Friedman’s column today, in which he says, “You can’t train an Afghan Army and police force to replace our troops if you have no basic state they feel is worth fighting for.” Indeed. And since there is in fact no basic state in Afghanistan, worth fighting for or otherwise, it follows that the army we’re building is by definition an army of mercenaries.

Swing swing together

Gordon Brown has been making fun of the Conservative leaders for being toffee-nosed (whatever that might mean) upper-class twits. And indeed, the Tories seem rather embarrassed about their upbringings, if by upbringing you mean being shipped off to a boarding school at age 7. David Cameron’s resumé doesn’t even mention his time at Eton, and the Tories’ other public-school-educated leaders have also omitted this information, while attendees of state schools do make note of the fact.

I think it’s a shame that the Tories are not turning their schooling to their advantage, and to that end I propose a CONTEST, an Eton contest if you will, although I understand that for an American blog an eating contest is more traditional: come up with a motto for the Conservative party that is unafraid of its leaders’ status. I’ll get you started:

Waterloo, Eton, playing-fields, ‘nuf said old chap?

We know what it’s like to be forcibly sodomized – now it’s your turn.

Droit de seigneur, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law

Today -100: December 6, 1909: Of peppermint, normal women, and kings carrying coal

Bridgeport, Ohio, where the tin plate strike erupted into violence, is now under martial law, occupied by 1,500 militiamen.

John Kipp of the Warren County (NJ) Almshouse is about to turn 103 years old. The secret of his longevity: peppermint.

Charles W. Eliot, who has just retired after 40 years as president of Harvard, says that home-making should be the crowning desire of every woman, who should only exercise their intellect on the problems presented by home-making, companionship with her husband, and the vital problems of the rearing of children. He acknowledges that “exceptional” women can and do follow male professions, but such women, as a rule, contribute less to society than, you know, “normal” women. Only 100 years from Eliot to Lawrence Summers.

Mrs. Alva Belmont of the suffragist Political Equality Association hired the Hippodrome for a mass meeting (8,000, capacity) in support of the shirtwaist strike. Top city officials were invited to attend, but from the mayor down they all seemed to have more pressing business elsewhere. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw told the audience, which the NYT estimates as 85% female, that “Our cause [women’s suffrage] is your cause, and your cause is our cause.”

George Bernard Shaw was evidently considering visiting the US but has decided not to, and the NYT is sarcastically thrilled. “The threat of his coming has been hanging over us, and now that it is lifted our hearts should be appreciably lighter.” (They don’t do sarcasm a fraction as well as Shaw does.) Shaw is just a tad too critical of the US for the Times’s taste, one gathers.

An editorial disparages William Jennings Bryan’s plan to make prohibition into a national issue as “an unreasonable, even an absurd and ridiculous, thing,” but makes clear that it doesn’t condemn the Prohibitionist movement itself (so long as it stays on the local level).

France will prosecute a priest for placing a state school under an interdict.

King Gustave of Sweden disguised himself as a stevedore and spent a day carrying sacks of coal around to see what conditions among the workers are like. What’s the Swedish for “condescending publicity stunt”?

Merited – wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean? Merited. Say no more.

Headline of the Day (AP): “Baucus: Girlfriend Merited US Attorney Nomination.”

Tone-Deaf Quote of the Day: In a story about how, when Gordon Brown visited wounded troops, the majority refused to speak to him, Brown is quoted thusly: “There is nothing more heartbreaking than, as I did this week, meeting a teenager who has lost a leg.” Unless perhaps it’s being a teenager who has lost a leg.

Today -100: December 5, 1909: Of commissions, strikes, Hebrews, and aerial sign-posts

President Zelaya finally responds to the downgrading of diplomatic relations, and it’s a bizarre response: he asks the US to send a commission to investigate conditions in Nicaragua. He says he will resign if it finds his administration is detrimental to Central America.

In a 5-month-old strike against a subsidiary of the United Steel in Bridgeport, Ohio, five people have been shot, none fatally, in what the NYT calls a riot. It’s a man-bites-dog story in that the five who were shot are not strikers but three guards, a bystander and a 15-year-old. The strike began when the company declared its plants would all be open shops.

Various Jewish societies are asking the Immigration Commission to stop referring to Jewish immigrants as “Hebrew” in immigration reports, but instead refer to their nation of origin.

French aviator Louis Paulhan (who holds French flying license no. 10) has reached a height of 2,000 feet. He believes planes can go even higher. However, he did get a little lost on his test flight and says there really need to be “aerial sign-posts.”

Today -100: December 4, 1909: Of women in unions and hats in museums

Striking shirtwaist makers marched to NY City Hall to protest the “insults, intimidations, and... abuses” of strikers by the police, including arresting them but not the “toughs” hired by the employers after skirmishes. Mayor George McClellan, Jr. (son of the Civil War general, if you hadn’t guessed) says he’ll look into it.

The NYT attempts to explain, with maximum condescension, why the idea of union appeals to the shirtwaist makers (most of whom are women, many of them Italian or Jewish immigrants): equal pay, sure, but also “the idea of sacrificing themselves, if necessary, for the sake of a principle they believe for the good of the weaker worker... appeals to them powerfully. For they are women. The idea, too, of this vague and powerful protector, ‘the union,’ as they think of it, draws them into it.” “For them the strike is a sort of gay holiday, all mixed in with a vague and pleasant new worship, with lots of speeches, lots of dancing, much running to and fro, some danger, and a very great deal of excitement.”

A letter by a H. H. D. Klinker objects to men wearing hats in the Museum of Art and suggests a conspicuous sign advising them “that they should no more wear their hats in the Museum than in a church or theatre.”

Just in case you were confused about whether they were supposed to do that

AP headline: “Renegade Soldiers in Guinea Open Fire on President.”

Probably could have left out the word “renegade.”

Note on the 25th anniversary of Bhopal

It might be easier to treat victims, prevent birth defects etc if Union Carbide/Dow Chemical had not refused, as it continues to refuse, to tell what chemicals were released.

Today -100: December 3, 1909: Of lepers

The NYT reports that while other Central American governments aren’t that happy with Zelaya, the US’s de-recognition of his presidency scares the piss out of them.

Otherwise, a slow news day, so let’s focus on Man in the News John P. Early, who was arrested in Washington D.C. on the charge of being a leper. Early was a famous leper. Diagnosed the year before at 35, Early was a Spanish-American War veteran who probably contracted the disease in the Philippines. He was kept under armed guard in an abandoned farmhouse for a time, then eventually incarcerated in the Carville leper colony in Louisiana, which stole most of his army pension to pay for his involuntary stay. He escaped repeatedly over the next 20 years to bring attention to his unfree condition, appearing in 1916 at a Congressional committee considering a bill for the federal takeover of Carville, asking that it treat the disease rather than simply imprison its sufferers. He stayed in the committee room until they approved the bill. After one of his other trips to D.C., a newspaper reported that he’d spent a $2 bill, and for days people refused to accept the bills (thus the expression “as leprous as a $2 bill”). He died in 1938.

Camels are very sturdy animals

Now another breathtaking edition of Here Are Some News Stories, Write Your Own Damn Jokes, I Have a Headache:

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told Hillary Clinton that Obama’s Afghanistan strategy reminds him of the old adage that a camel is a horse designed by committee (he was sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee when he said this). Clinton responded, “Congressman, camels are very sturdy animals. They are patient and may be plodding, but they eventually get to where you hope they will arrive.” Unless they hit an IED. Readers in the WIIIAI-o-sphere: form a committee and write your own damn joke. For example, how else is Obama’s Afghanistan strategy like a camel?

Today -100, December 2, 1909: Of diplomatic breaks, startled mules, what the black cat said to the monkey, and pshaws

Taft breaks off diplomatic relations with Zelaya’s government and opens “unofficial” relations with the Estradaites (General Estrada, by the way, is governor of Zelaya province) while telling the charge d’affaires of the Zelaya government, who he just broke off official relations with, that he can, if he likes, continue to represent his government unofficially. In other words, the US will put both sides on an equal footing. The NYT notes that this is rather unusual, and further that it is being done on the basis of allegations (that Cannon and Groce were tortured before their execution) that even the US admits have not been proved.

Secretary of State Philander C. Knox’s letter to the Nicaraguan charge d’affaires says that Zelaya has “almost continuously kept Central America in tension of turmoil”, that public opinion and the press in Nicaragua have been “throttled,” and that “prison has been the reward of any tendency to real patriotism.” Appeal for intervention has been made to the US by a majority of Central American republics, the letter says, and also “through the revolution, of a great body of the Nicaraguan people.” Indeed, “the revolution represents the ideals and the will of a majority of the Nicaraguan people more faithfully than does the Government of President Zelaya”.

A Norwegian ship has arrived in Nicaragua from New York with arms for the rebels.

Two of the striking women waistshirt strikers snuck into a shirtwaist factory that was still operating (on the 8th floor of a building on W. 20th Street) and yelled Fire, creating a panic.

Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, asked by reporters about rumor that he intends to step down, says “And the black cat said to the monkey, hurrah.” Whatever that might mean.

The Spanish Episcopate has petitioned the Spanish government to close all secular schools in the country.

At the AAA annual meeting this week -100, one reason mentioned for the need for stricter driving laws was the tendency for reckless driving to provoke violence. Well, in Georgia today -100, a black preacher got into a shoot-out with a presumably white automotist whose car startled the mules on his wagon. A mob tracked him down and burned him at the stake. They let him pray first.

Rockefeller denies taking the purported plot against him seriously. “Pshaw!” he said.

I miss the days when people said “pshaw,” don’t you?