I don’t know how much tea he’s getting with his Mexican food...

but I’m pretty sure he’s getting a lot of pee.

Butter pecan burping during Ramadan

Another way in which Obama administration policies go further than Bush’s did: officials at Guantanamo no longer tell us how many hunger strikers they are force feeding.

But they do inform us that they are doing it in a culturally sensitive way, force feeding them only between dusk and dawn during Ramadan.

So that’s okay then.

“By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.”

Today -100: August 24, 1910: Teddy Roosevelt is against a crook

Roosevelt gives a speech in upstate New York, supporting a state senator who VP Sherman opposes. TR sez, “the only kind of politics I care for is the kind of politics where decency is combined with efficiency,” whatever that means. He also said, “I am against a crook – rich or poor” and “There is only one person I place above the veteran, and that is the mother who does her full duty. I like all your crops, but I like children best.”

José Dolores Estrada, brother of the insurgent general, declares himself president of Nicaragua. He claims there will be an election within six months.

Fashion victim -100: A Pittsburg tailor fell asleep in his shop and died in his sleep, choked to death by a high collar.

Boars and zombies

Headline of the Day... well, it’s a tie:

“Italian Priest Shot Dead after Being Mistaken for Wild Boar” and “Minneapolis Will Pay $165,000 to Zombies.”

Actually, the money will be paid to “seven zombies and their attorney.”

Contest: what would be a good name for an attorney’s firm that specializes in representing zombies?

Today -100: August 23, 1910: Of referenda, regime change, and Republicans

Arizona Democrats want the not-yet-state’s constitution to have provisions for initiatives and referenda, and are willing to risk the Republicans in Congress and the White House denying them statehood on that account.

The insurgents capture Managua without a fight. Madriz goes into exile.

The US has declared that it will consider it unconstitutional if Panama’s National Assembly elect the acting president, Carlos Mendoza, the VP who took over when President Obaldia died, to serve out the remainder of his term. Mendoza is black. (A week later he dropped out.)

Taft finally breaks his silence about the NY Republicans’ snubbing of TR, saying he had nothing to do with it and hanging his veep out to dry, releasing a telegram which he had sent to Sherman advising him to talk with Roosevelt before the vote by the committee on the chairmanship of the party convention – which Sherman failed to do. In fact, Taft suggests that when he spoke with Sherman before the vote, Sherman had not told him that his name would be put forward against TR’s.

Did someone forget to tell the Iraqis that the war is over?

A rocket killed an American soldier near Basra today.

Today -100: August 22, 1910: Of regime changes, German nudists, bites, and cucumbers

The Madriz government in Nicaragua is on the verge of falling, with the Estradists threatening Managua.

Korea is about to cease to exist as a nation and be annexed completely by Japan. Newspaper censorship has ensured that Koreans have no idea this is about to happen. The NYT thinks most Koreans will be better off under Japanese rule and won’t object too much to the change.

The King of Saxony and two of the princesses, taking a stroll through the woods, stumbled across a nudist. The princesses ran away, screaming.

John Tully of Brooklyn was bitten by a dog one month ago and then by a Mr. Stanford Waltbridge, also of Brooklyn, last Saturday. Headline of the Day -100: “Prefers A Dog’s Bite.” In case you were wondering.

Or is this the Headline of the Day -100: “Assaulted with Cucumber”? A grocer is the assaultee, the offending fruit being hurled at him by a youth he caught trying to shoplift it.

Loser issue

Jeb Bush says the Democrats are showing their desperation by focusing so much on the manifold failures of his brother. “It’s a loser issue.”

He said it, not me.

Today -100: August 21, 1910: Of Republican in-fighting and castles

Taft’s people have been claiming, truthfully or not I cannot say, that he didn’t even know about the scheme of the New York Old Guard Republicans to defeat Roosevelt as temporary chairman of the party convention in favor of VP Sherman (it should be noted that TR and Sherman were both New Yorkers). Nevertheless, the break between Taft and TR seems to be complete.

Speaking of Sherman, the House committee investigating Indian land contracts in Oklahoma exonerates him of having anything to do with the attempt to bribe Sen. Thomas Gore. It’s not clear how hard they really tried to find out the truth.

At an air meet in New York, a Lt. J.E. Fickel fired a rifle at a target on the ground from aviator Glenn Curtiss’s plane. This was the first time gunfire ever emanated from an airplane (but not the last). Fickel missed by six feet.

Kaiser Wilhelm is opening a big new imperial castle in Posen, Poland, a symbol of German control of Poland. The Polish nobility will be staying away from the dedication ceremony in droves. A new law in German Poland bans public political meetings held in Polish or any other language than German.

More news stolen from the Daily Telegraph

Karmic Death of the Day: Sam Mazzola, whose business included bear wrestling, is mauled by one of his bears.

Another albino child killed in Swaziland because, as you know, albino parts (in this case evidently her head) are great for magic.

The descendants of Ivan the Terrible and the Rurik dynasty are suing to regain ownership of the Kremlin. Funnily enough, no one has official title to it now.

Headline of the Day: “Japanese Man Kept Dead Mother in Backpack.” And if I know the Japanese, it was a Hello Kitty backpack.

Today -100: August 20, 1910: Of not whining

Theodore Roosevelt addressed the National Negro Business League. He told them “that they should not whine about privileges they did not enjoy, but should plunge ahead and make the best of the opportunities they have.” And “slouchy, ne’er-do-well” negroes hurt the whole negro race. And the best friends the negroes can have are their white neighbors in the South (say WHAT?).

Canadian MP Henri Bourassa, leader of the Quebec Nationalists, calls for annexation of Canada by the United States.

News you can use

South Sudan plans to rebuild its cities in the shape of rhinos and giraffes.

The White House actually sent out someone to tell the press that Obama is a Christian.

A Disneyland hostess is suing to be allowed to wear a hijab. Did no one consider the obvious compromise?

The obvious compromise is Mickey Mouse ears over the hijab.

A man in a banana costume, brandishing a shotgun and his penis and shouting “something or other about white supremacy” in Washington state, is arrested for, among other things, indecent exposure (either because the banana costume was child-sized or because he was exposing himself to women, depending on which story you read). Name of the Day: the cop telling all this to the press: Sgt. Randy Pieper. Said Pieper, “he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn’t really have a reason for the costume.”

Headline of the Day (and the photo caption’s pretty good too).

Today -100: August 19, 1910: Of sitting up, Teddy, trolleys, and slapping

The Times has naturally been keeping its readers apprised of every detail of Mayor Gaynor’s recovery from the shooting. Today’s report: Gaynor Expects to Sit up To-day.

Roosevelt has decided on a strategy: he will stand aside from the elections in New York and let the Old Guard Republicans take the blame for their inevitable loss to the Democrats. He will neither endorse nor criticize the Taft administration unless it, you know, starts it. And he’s definitely probably maybe not running for president in 1912.

The Columbus trolley strike continues, more peacefully (rocks thrown, one car dynamited, ok not that peacefully). Mayor Marshall is more or less daring the governor to remove him from office. Soldiers ordered to protect the scabs have been making generous donations to the strike fund.

Headline of the Day -100: “Governor Slaps Editor.” That’s Governor Denver Dickerson of Nevada and George Montrose, editor of the Carson City News, who may or may not have written an article accusing the governor of grafting $5,000 on a land deal for a new prison.

Who hijacked term moron?

Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed:


What “singular issue” does she mean? Abortion? Also, Sarah, if you’re looking to be crowned the Queen of the True Feminists, you might not want to refer to a “cackle” of women.

(Update: and in other tweets today, she advises Dr. Laura “don’t retreat...reload!” which I think means she wants her to say nigger a bunch more times, and called opponents of Dr. L’s hate speech “Constitutional obstructionists” – “her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence ‘isn't American,not fair’”).

The Burlington Coat Factory

is neither a factory nor in Burlington. Radical Muslim plot? Discuss.

Today -100: August 18, 1910: Of vivisection and California insurgents

The Washington D.C. Humane Society is threatening to sue the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Dept of Agriculture and other government bureaus for allegedly vivisecting dogs.

In California’s Republican primaries, Insurgents sweep up the nominations for every office, with Hiram Johnson winning 51 of the 52 counties (exc San Francisco). A couple of incumbent US congresscritters lose. Former congressman and state legislator Grove Johnson loses his bid for a seat in the Assembly. He was an Old Guard Republican and a bitter political enemy of Hiram Johnson; he was also his father. This election marks the end of Southern Pacific’s long dominance over California politics.

Headline-That-Sounds-Like-It’s-Dirty-But-Really-Isn’t of the Day -100: “Barber Out After Dick.” O.C. Barber of the Diamond Match Company – “America’s Match King” – will stump to rid the Republican Party of Old Guard types like Sen. Charles Dick.

Everyone’s a critic

I think it’s time to go to sleep. I just mis-read the WaPo as calling the flooding in Pakistan a tragedy of unimaginative proportion.

Today -100: August 17, 1910: Of Republicans and Roosevelt

Taft’s plans to change the leadership of the Republican party seem to have failed. Speaker Cannon in particular “is making it clearer every day that he intends to go down fighting and to do all the damage he can in the process.” The same could be said more or less of the entire Old Guard Republican leadership, who seem content to lose the 1910 elections if it means they retain control of the party in defeat. The Republican Party is fragmenting (which is fun to read even if it’s only in 1910, by the way) and “The use of the party whip to compel discipline in States where the insurgent sentiment has been growing has resulted disastrously in practically every instance.” Taft is simply too weak and uninfluential to hold the party together, especially with the return to America of Theodore Roosevelt. The old guard is trying to make Roosevelt, in the words of one anonymous party leader, “know his place,” and has just engineered his defeat for the post of temporary chairman of the NY state convention next month (evidently it’s more important than it sounds, if only symbolically) in favor of VP Sherman, who had worked hard to ensure the defeat of TR’s nephew, Theodore Douglas Robinson, for a state senate seat nomination, making the choice of him over TR especially insulting. TR, who is royally pissed off, will (probably) be at the convention as a delegate.

One “Roosevelt Republican,” insurgent Hiram Johnson, has won the first-ever direct primary for governor in California.

The NYPD has begun issuing photo i.d. cards to “persons of good character,” which will allow holders who break minor laws and city ordinances, especially while driving, to be served with a summons rather than be arrested. To get the card, applicants must send their personal details, employment and criminal history, with affidavits attesting to their character signed by three men who are over 21, not relatives, and not saloon-keepers.

He doesn’t have an American experience

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), responding to a constituent who called Obama a Muslim Marxist, said, “He’s at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture. ... He doesn’t have an American experience.” I love how merely understanding Muslim culture – pardon me, the Muslim culture – is elevated into something akin to treason. Yes, he understands stuff, let’s throw rocks at him.

Also, of course, King makes the assumption that Islam and “an American experience” are antithetical.

Also, Obama is a black man having abuse shouted at him by bigots – what experience is more American than that?

Mad Fucking Men

You know what I want to see? An episode of Mad Men written by David Mamet (that was his daughter as Peggy’s new friend in last night’s episode).