President Pepe? Really?

Name of the Day: Honduran not-quite-legitimate-president-elect Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo.

Actually, I don’t think I believe the high turnout figures they’re claiming.


What do you think, does he look more like a Porfirio or a Pepe?

Today -100, November 30, 1909: Of demon rum victorious, presidential prowling, and that despicable creature the New York masher

The prohibition referendum in Alabama failed by a large margin. In Birmingham, “Brass bands stationed around the polling places by the anti-amendment forces were playing lively airs to drown out the prayers and songs and pleadings of the women and children, who gathered early in the morning in an effort to influence votes for the amendment.” There were fist fights at every polling station. Jefferson County, in which Birmingham is located, voted against state-wide prohibition, although the county voted itself dry two years ago. “As an instance of the deep feeling displayed, a clergyman on whose coat a young woman attempted to pin a white ribbon at the polling booth, declined to accept the ribbon, telling her it was improper for young women to speak in the street to men whom they did not know. The girl wept and there was a great deal of excitement until the minister apologized.”

President Taft has taken to “prowling” (surely the correct term is “waddling”) the streets and parks of D.C. at all hours, evidently without Secret Service escort. And yet, oddly, he was never accosted by reality show contestants.

The American consul in Nicaragua (who has been out of contact, presumably due to government interference, for a week) is claiming that Zelaya has threatened him “again.” He also claims that Cannon and Groce were a colonel and lt. colonel respectively in the rebel forces and therefore should have been treated as prisoners of war. And the Red Cross says that, far from attempting to blow up a ship full of soldiers, they were actually lost when captured by the captain of a river boat, who promised not to kill them if they surrendered and who was himself arrested after refusing Zelaya’s orders to shoot them. No particular evidence is given for any of this. The NYT also offers obscurely sourced reports that Zelaya is becoming increasingly unpopular and has considered fleeing. Which may all be true, but the Times is very clearly after Zelaya’s blood.

The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party has expelled Maxim Gorky for his “tendency to good living and love of comfort”.

A Men’s League for Woman’s Suffrage of the State of NY is formed. George Foster Peabody (of the eponymous award) is president, Max Eastman secretary and treasurer.

A letter from “A Working Girl”: “I rise to ask why I, a girl of 18, only fairly good looking, with the natural feminine love of nice clothes, born and reared in the chivalrous South, should be grossly insulted at least a dozen times a day by that despicable creature ‘the New York masher?’ Unless escorted by a man there is no place day or night (except in my own lodging house room,) that I feel safe from the specimens that pass as men, who prowl your streets... men that I don’t even see until they come smirking up beside me and without encouragement or provocation insult me, and when repulsed slink off to look for another victim. My cheeks even now grow hot with the shame of it all. In New Orleans, where I have lived for eighteen years, I never have been insulted once, no not even by a nigger.”

The dog ate my prime ministership

And now another exciting edition of Here Are Some News Stories, Write Your Own Damn Jokes, I Have a Headache:

Edward Natapei lost his job as prime minister of Vanuatu and his seat in parliament because he forgot to send a note explaining his absence (he was at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting), and if you’re going to miss three sessions of parliament, you need to send a note.

Australian scientists are attempting to breed a sheep that doesn’t burp.

Switzerland and the minarets of doom redux

Switzerland, the country that asked Nazi Germany, “Say, could you identify all the Jews in their passports so we can make sure not to let them in?”, votes 57.5% to write a ban on minarets into its constitution.


European nations practiced toleration-as-long-as-you’re-invisible for minority religions long after they ended the torturing-heretics-to-death phase. In France, the Edict of Nantes (1598) forced Protestants to worship no closer than 5 leagues (c. 17 miles) from Paris. Even after restoring political rights to Catholics in 1829, Britain still banned Catholic churches having towers or bells. In Austria under the Patent of Toleration (1781), Protestant churches were required to have “no chimes, no bells, towers or any public entrance from the street as might signify a church.” (Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” American Historical Review, October 2002.)

Switzerland doesn’t have an established state religion, but now it has a state non-religion.

The vote came as a surprise to the Swiss authorities (somewhat less of one to me), because the polls showed only 37% in support of the ban. There’s a certain twisted logic of invisibility here: if I have to keep my religious bigotry secret even from pollsters, you have to keep your religion secret too.

Many of Switzerland’s 300,000 Muslims are refugees from religious wars in the former Yugoslavia.

Name of the Day: Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf.

Today -100: November 29, 1909: Of election expenses and family reunions

The Association to Prevent Corrupt Practices at Elections reports statements of campaign expenses it has received from NY candidates and party county committees. The paper prints the county figures, which range from 96¢ spent by the Niagara County Democratic Committee in the last election (compared to $1,737.92 spent by the Republicans) to $214,558 spent by the Republicans of NY County (Manhattan). The Republicans greatly outspent Democrats in almost every county.

Mrs Thomas Kinney is about to see her daughter for the first time in 26 years, since the daughter was 17 months old. In 1883 she was seeing off her sister’s steamer to Germany, stepped off the ship for a minute and it sailed, taking her child with it. The sister refused to send her back and Mrs Kinney couldn’t afford to send for her. The daughter, now married with two children, is coming back to America to settle in Trenton, so her mother will see her soon. (The cable channels would be all over this one, wouldn’t they? The NYT, never very good at the human interest stuff, didn’t even get the daughter’s first name – or the mother’s)

A very small flap

Headline of the Day (BBC): “Sweden Woman’s ‘Murder’ Committed by Elk Not Husband.” The elk was probably stoned out of its gourd on fermented apples. I guess that’s a problem in Sweden.

The London Times reports that British soldiers are experiencing certain injuries more frequently than American ones because of a certain deficiency in their body armor. So it wouldn’t be right at all to giggle shamelessly at phrases such as “The Ministry of Defence (MoD) refuses to disclose how many soldiers have suffered serious groin injuries” and “‘It’s a very small flap which covers the groin,’ an MoD official said.”

Factoid of the Day: “more than 10 percent of marriages worldwide are between people who are second cousins or closer”.

Today -100: November 28, 1909: Of the demon rum, Halley’s comet’s tail, the white man’s burden, and the shadow of obscurity

Alabama will vote this week on prohibition. One problem: it’s an off-year election, so many people haven’t bothered to pay their poll taxes and will be unable to vote. Opponents of the amendment say it allows the cops to search private homes for liquor.

Astronomer John Brashear predicts that when Halley’s comet next comes around (May 1910), the earth will be submerged in the comet’s tail. However, he reassured his audience at the Outlook Club that earthlings would not be harmed by it and will “know no more of the presence of the tail of the comet than if a gentle breeze distributed the smoke of a campfire over a good-sized country.” However, the dead will definitely arise as zombies and eat the brains of the living. But other than that, it’ll be the gentle breeze distributing the smoke of a campfire thing.

Vice President James Schoolcraft Sherman found that the clerk at a post office in Albany did not recognize him (NY is his home state). Also the doorman of a theater. In a letter to the NY secretary of state, he writes, “in the shadow of obscurity I am unhappy.”

Headline of the Day, That Day Being November 28, 1909: “Does New York Want Woman Suffrage? Interesting Views of Prominent Men Who Discuss the Question.” They’re not kidding about the men thing: they sent a questionnaire out and printed the responses of 15 politicians, theologians and whatnot, all men. Oscar Hammerstein I, for example, approves of women voting in municipal and state, but not national elections.

Teddy Roosevelt, still in the middle of his long post-presidential shooting spree in Africa, writes in Scribner’s that Africans are much better off under colonial rule. While there have been mistakes, they most often arise from zeal to accomplish too much in the way of beneficence. So that’s okay then. Indeed the British colonialists’ error, like that of the US in dealing with Indians, is interfering too little with natives’ customs and practices. Missionaries and colonial officials should work hand in hand.

Today -100, November 27, 1909: Of Chinese loans, opium, delicious dogs, and gunboat diplomacy

The US will participate, along with Britain, France and Germany, in a $30m loan to China to build a railroad. See, in those quaint old days of yore, the United States made loans to China in order to be able to exercise indirect imperialist control over its government and economy, instead of the other way around.

Britain may agree to an international conference on the opium trade, but will not agree to stop forcing China to accept opium (hell, they fought a war for the right) or to confine the trade to medicinal uses. Britain says that while there is growing opium abuse in the US, Canada and China, the people of India are perfectly okay using it recreationally.

The authorities in Paris are considering applications for the establishment of slaughter houses for dogs, for human consumption.

The NYT reports rumors that the US has approached Mexico about it possibly cooperating in overthrowing the Zelaya government in Nicaragua. The US has ordered a gunboat to the region – ships are being sent from both coasts – but would prefer that Zelaya be overthrown “without the semblance of aid from this country.” Which looks increasingly likely. For this reason, the US is dragging its feet on formally recognizing the rebels.

Feral camels and deformed rapist popes: you know, the traditional Thanksgiving Day post

Headline of the Day (yesterday): “Feral Camels Terrorise Australian Outback Community.” The town of Docker River in the Northern Territory is now home to 350 people and 6,000 camels. The Australian government plans to kill them. The camels, that is. Camels, by the way, were imported into Australia in 1840. When they were replaced by cars and trucks, they were simply turned loose in the desert to die, as is the Australian way, but they didn’t, and there are now estimated to be a million “feral” camels. One possible solution: camel burgers.

Obama plans to make his Afghanistan speech at West Point. Well, if you’re going to adopt Bush’s policies, you might as well adopt his practice of announcing those policies in front of captive military audiences.

Part of the pre-Thanksgiving news-dump: Obama will not sign the treaty to ban landmines.

Headline of the Day (today): “BBC Abandons Ballet with Deformed Rapist Pope.” “The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns that it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule.” Obviously just a rip-off of the plot of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Today -100: November 26, 1909: Of provisional governments and hookworms

The NYT has taken to referring to Gen. Estrada, leader of the Nicaraguan insurgents, as head of the “provisional government.” The US government is accepting telegrams from the rebels and otherwise treating them as a legitimate government.

A San Francisco divorce story, quoted in its entirety:

Judge Graham has divorced Anita Coover from David R. Coover. The hookworm was the cause.

“My husband was dull, stupid, lazy, languid, slow,” said Mrs. Coover.

“He must have been a victim of the hookworm,” said the Court.

Mrs. Coover expressed some doubt as to this diagnosis, but Judge Graham stuck to his opinion and granted the decree.

Pardon

Obama has pardoned two turkeys, as is the tradition. They were named Courage and Carolina by their breeders.

You are healed!
During the Bush administration, the naming was done by a poll on the White House website, and whatever interns had to come up with five or six pairs of names every single year was clearly running out of ideas by 2008. But Obama’s break with the venerable naming tradition doesn’t mean we in the WIIIAI-o-sphere have to break with our own venerable tradition of holding an alternative naming contest (it just means I forgot all about it until now). Remember, there are two turkeys that need names. To get you started: Audacity & Hope, Public & Option, McCrystal & Eikenberry, Death & Panel...

Today Minus 100 Years, November 25, 1909: Of scabs, more horsies, Turkey Day, giant possums, and Bernard Shaw

Some of the large NYC shirtwaist manufacturers have been meeting secretly to organize owners against the strikers (and the smaller firms that have settled). One of the larger manufacturers, not identified by the NYT, claims that its employers are perfectly satisfied and calls the strike foolish and hysterical. 17-year-old Mina Bloom, one of the strikers, was fined $10 for hitting a scab.

At the Madison Square Garden Old Glory horse sale, hundreds of horses were auctioned off, along with a single automobile, “led on to the track with a halter attached,” “[a]mid the jeers, laughter, and hoots of a thousand horsemen”. It sold for $1,000, less than some of the horses.

The Wright brothers plan to open “the first are largest airship factory in the country” in Dayton, Ohio, producing four planes per month.

An editorial warns against acting hastily against the Zelaya government in Nicaragua, which risks damaging commerce with other Latin American countries and inclining them to trade more with Europe. Amusingly, the NYT thinks if the US shows it carefully weighed up such factors as whether Cannon and Groce were free-lancing or were part of a legitimate combatant rebellion and therefore entitled to prisoner of war status, our decision to send in the marines or whatever won’t look like an imperialist power grab. “We are a pretty big brother to the nations down there, and some of them, perhaps because they do not understand us very well, are not a little afraid of us.” The ones that do understand us well are very afraid of us, in 2009 as in 1909. “They have not forgotten, they never will forget, the international crime by which we separated Panama from the United States of Colombia.”

Thanksgiving at the Taft White House will feature a large turkey (but I repeat myself), a 50-pound mince pie, and a 26-pound possum “reputed to be the largest that ever came out of Georgia”. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a giant possum.

Now an appearance in Today Minus 100 Years by a guest Times, the NYT’s even snootier older brother, the Times of London, which Today Minus 100 Years printed a letter from George Bernard Shaw (who wrote many witty, cranky letters to newspapers over many decades on a wide variety of subjects – Shaw so needed a blog) about the recently begun forcible feeding of suffragette hunger strikers. Shaw offers to provide Home Secretary Gladstone, who has downplayed the unpleasantness of the practice, with “a banquet which Sardanapalus [the possibly fictional last king of Assyria and a noted party animal] would have regarded as an exceptional treat. The rarest wines and delicacies shall be provided absolutely regardless of expense. The only condition we shall make is that Mr Herbert Gladstone shall partake through the nose; and that a cinematograph machine be at work at the time registering for the public satisfaction the waterings of his mouth, the smackings of his lips, and other unmistakable symptoms of luxurious delight, with which he will finally convince us all of the truth of his repeated assurances to us that the forcibly-fed suffragist is enjoying an indulgence rather than suffering martyrdom.” I pause to remind you that here in 2009, roughly 30 prisoners at Guantanamo are being forcibly fed, also roughly, through the nose. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Idiot meme warning

Sarah Palin, or whoever writes her Facebook page for her, calls the idea of a surtax to pay for the Afghan war “a tax on national defense.” Expect the other morons to follow suit.

State din din

Barack Obama held his first state dinner tonight (vegetarian, out of deference to the Indian prime minister, but not teetotal) and, oh sure, very dashing and all


(although to Fox viewers, black man + bow tie = Nation of Islam). But Queen Elizabeth visited Bermuda today,


and that’s the governor of Bermuda in his official uniform and all I’m saying is, don’t you think Obama could totally rock a plumed hat?

Well la-di-da, la-di-da

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

Carla Bruni will appear in Woody Allen’s next movie.

Today Minus 100 Years – November 24, 1909: Of shirt-waist girls, Gringo conspiracies, horsies, and a bad, bad word

18,000 shirt-waist workers (or as the NYT calls them, “shirt-waist girls,” which sounds naughty) so far are out on strike. 11 employers have already come to terms with the union.

The NYT passes on reports – rumors, really – that the Zelaya government in Nicaragua has been imprisoning Americans. Posters have gone up denouncing the “Gringo conspiracy.”

The Pennsylvania home of Secretary of State Philander Knox was robbed, the thief or thieves taking only documents and leaving all the valuables behind. Very mysterious.

A letter to the Times complains about the title of a play opening at the New Theatre about race relations in the South: “The Nigger.”

A letter from First Lt. William MacKinlay of the 11th Cavalry agrees with a Nov. 10th editorial that “commerce will soon be done with the horse”, but insists that horses will still have military uses for many years to come. He warns that Canada and Mexico have many more cavalry than the US does, and that it’s very hard to build up cavalry quickly once war has already started.

Nick Clegg’s democratic duty

Nick Clegg of the British Liberal Democrats has announced that in the event of a hung Parliament (it won’t happen, but the media love to talk endlessly about the possibility before every single election), the LibDems will support the party, Labour or Conservative, that gets the most votes, dropping the previous long-time policy of making its support contingent on the implementation of proportional representation. Clegg claims that it is his democratic duty to back the top vote-getter. He says, “Whichever party has the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me obvious in a democracy they have the first right to seek to try and govern, either on their own or with others.” This is an odd theory for the leader of a third party, one which will be very lucky to break 20%, to hold, since under it, the Lib Dems don’t really have any right to exist. Indeed, the voters whose opinions matter least in Clegg’s formulation are the ones that vote for his party, since the “mandate” will come exclusively from those members of the electorate who vote for either the Tory or Labour party. LibDem voters will be entirely irrelevant in determining what their MPs will do in Parliament. Democratic duty, indeed.

At least when LibDem leaders in the past talked complete crap, you knew it was because they were drunk.

Today Minus 100 Years – November 23, 1909: Of shirtwaists, turkeys, severe ladies, and pistols in Paris

The shirtwaist-makers of NY vote to go on strike at meetings held in five different halls. At Cooper Union, Samuel Gompers of the AFL spoke, and a B. Finegbeim, who spoke in Yiddish, presided. Their demands are for recognition of the union, a wage increase of 25 to 30% over the present rates, which are between $10 and $12 a week, and a 52-hour work week.

Rhode Island turkeys for Thanksgiving 1909 are selling for an unprecedented, outrageous 32¢ a pound. Pumpkins are 3¢ per pound.

The US is sending another ship to Nicaragua, and 400 marines, but still claims to be weighing whether to demand reparations.

19th century meets 20th: There was a duel yesterday in Paris between journalist Urbain Gohier and author Laurent Tailhade, both well-known lefties and Dreyfusards, which was filmed by a movie camera. No one was hurt, only one gun was fired. Details are scanty. A stunt?

A letter to the editor objects to a classified ad in one of the NY dailies, in which a Ray P. Oliver of Rochester advertises for “A LADY wanted, take charge of boy; good inducement to firm, severe party not averse to corporal punishment.” The letter-writer goes on at some length about the moral and practical objections to corporal punishment, without ever mentioning that the “boy” in question is eighteen.

DIY blog

This is the first edition of my new occasional feature, Here Are Some News Stories, Write Your Own Damn Jokes, I Have a Headache:

1) Astronaut becomes a father while in space.

2) Disney is forcing the people being thrown off the land on which it wants to build a Disneyland in mainland China (“a Magic Kingdom theme park with characteristics tailored to the Shanghai region”) to dig up their ancestors’ graves, disturbing their spirits.

3) Sarkozy’s plan to move the remains of Albert Camus into the Panthéon is being denounced as a stunt to associate himself with Camus’s... glamor.

Today Minus 100 Years, November 22, 1909: Of trusts, canals, cyanide pills, and reparations for mercenaries

The NYT is not happy about yesterday’s decision dissolving Standard Oil of NJ, saying such decisions make it impossible to do business on a large scale and anyway sometimes monopolies are just more efficient and result in lower prices.

The Isthmian Canal Commission reports that the Panama Canal is progressing nicely, at only $250,000,000 over the initial budget. They’ve got a whole mini-US going on in the Canal Zone, with a supreme court, district and circuit courts, and segregated schools.

Many recently promoted captains on the Austro-Hungarian General Staff received sample boxes of pills purporting to be for nervous debility but actually containing cyanide. One of them died. The NYT speculates that it might be the work of a disappointed officer or an “Anarchist outrage.”

Secretary of State Philander Knox is threatening to demand reparations from Nicaragua for the execution of the American mercenaries Cannon and Grace (or possibly Groce – the NYT keeps going back and forth), who I’ll repeat were caught in the act of trying to blow up Nicaraguan soldiers. The Times speculates that the US may be preparing to invade, either to “throw President Zelaya into prison” (whose prison?) or seize a port in lieu of those reparations. Some things never change. Except that Philander is probably not going to make a comeback as a popular name.