Spon!

It is my sad duty to report that the coveted Golden Spurtle (that’s the award for the best porridge) has returned to Scotland (you will of course remember that an American won it last year), thanks to the invention by Neal Robertson of the Tannochbrae Tearoom in Auchtermuchty (of those words, I’m pretty sure I can pronounce tearoom) of a wooden, double-sided spoon he calls a spon, which gives twice the power to mixing and beating (that’s what she said) and puts more air in the mixture (a commenter on the Guardian’s story offers this historical perspective: “It’s a little known fact, that traditional Scots oats cooks, were constantly innovating their oat stirrers. That’s how we ended up with billy clubs, clothespins, dildos, and the like.”)

Says Mr. Robertson, “It was a wake-up call last year to see how seriously porridge is taken across Scotland and around the world.” Evidently the trick is always to stir clockwise because stirring counter-clockwise lets the devil in. Don’t want devil-flavored porridge.

Ending assassination abuse without ending assassination, because that would be crazy

It’s always nice to watch the official “liberal” mind in action. The NYT editorial page today takes up the issue of Obama’s assassination program, intoning Very Seriously that “assassinations are a grave act and subject to abuse”. And if there’s one thing we hate, it’s seeing something noble and pure like assassination being... oh it hurts even to say it... abused.

Evidently Bush committed such abuses, but “So far, President Obama’s system of command seems to have prevented any serious abuses”. The Times doesn’t explain what an unserious abuse in a program of assassinating people might be.

The Times says that the Obama administration should forthrightly assert that it only assassinates in accordance with international law and strictly, strictly I say, in self-defense. And it needs to be a last resort (well, pretty much by definition...)

We should get the permission of foreign countries before killing people there “if practical.”

The Times’s answer to the problem of abusive assassination is, of course, to bureaucratize the machinery of murder. Because there’s nothing like a few oversight committees to make assassination shiny and clean. And we should establish secret courts to issue assassination warrants, because there’s nothing like a piece of paper, with official stamps and everything, to make assassination shiny and clean. Do all that, and the Times and all Americans can sleep soundly at night, safe and secure and morally pure.

Today -100: October 10, 1910: Of nuns and upsets

Portugal’s new government is expelling the religious orders, including 233 nuns.

Headline of the Day -100: “Killed by Auto Upsetting.” Yes, I should jolly well think it would be.

Today -100: October 9, 1910: Of the Battle of Cameron Dam

With elections one month away, Massachusetts Democrats have no candidate for governor. The party convention descended into fist-fights and decided to leave it to a Committee of Four, but they haven’t managed to make a decision either.

The Battle of Cameron Dam is over. In 1900 John Deitz bought a farmstead in Wisconsin and found that his property included the logging dam, which he blocked in 1904 after a lumber company owned by Weyerhaeuser refused to pay the toll he demanded. The company orchestrated an ambush by a sheriff’s posse in July 1906 in which one of Deitz’s sons was nearly killed. He and his family held off sheriff’s deputies for the next four years, surviving the siege with food contributed by readers of a sympathetic newspaper editor. They finally succumbing yesterday (-100) to an onslaught by a posse of 60 men. Deitz’s log cabin, where his family including minor children held out, was riddled with 1,000 shots during the five-hour gun battle. One deputy was killed and another had his ear shot off. Deitz was imprisoned for murder but his folk hero status forced the governor to pardon him in 1921. There’s an interesting article from the Wisconsin Magazine of History available online.

Today -100: October 8, 1910: Of nervous Spain and demon dogs

Headline of the Day -100: “Spain is Very Nervous” (about the Portuguese revolution provoking imitators).

Doggy Headline of the Day -100: “BOSTON TERRIERS BENCHED. The Demon Best Dog Judged at Madison Square Garden.” Turns out that the best of show at the show of the Boston Terrier Club of New York is named “The Demon,” he isn’t an actual demon best dog.

Mrs Harriet Johnston Wood, a lawyer, in a speech at a meeting of the Equal Suffrage League, called for women to attempt to vote in the forthcoming elections as a means of challenging their disfranchisement in court. But in her speech she “indirectly” used the word nigger – which I think means she used it in some figure of speech – and a Mrs. Kate Butler told her to knock it off, that “people of a race whose members were received by royalty abroad [the recent reception of Booker T. Washington by the Danish king and queen] should not be mentioned by a name to which all right-feeling colored people took exception.”

Today -100: October 7, 1910: Of revolutions and bi-partisan slogans

Portugal’s King Manuel II, or former king I should say, escaped on the formerly royal yacht to Gibraltar. He will live in Britain the rest of his life.

Manuel’s uncle, The Duke of Orleans, has an explanation for the revolution: it was the fault of the Masons.

The minister of justice and worship in the new Portuguese regime writes the NYT with a list of its objectives, including the expulsion of monks and nuns and closing of religious schools. Also education, justice, colonial autonomy blah blah blah. The new president is the writer Teófilo Braga.

The NYT notes that the slogan “A vote for Stimson is a vote for Roosevelt” works for both the Republican and Democratic parties. “It ought to be a great saving.”

A terrible accident

By blocking US military convoys, Pakistan has gotten the US to apologize (a “terrible accident”) for last week’s helicopter rocket attack that killed two Pakistani soldiers.

If only the Pakistani government responded to the many US attacks that kill innocent civilians as strongly as it did to an attack that killed soldiers, we might be a little more impressed. When David Petraeus says he’ll work to see this doesn’t happen again, he clearly meant accidentally killing soldiers, not accidentally killing civilians.

Speaking of Pakistan, did anyone notice that Musharraf admitted yesterday that when he ruled Pakistan he funded militants in Kashmir?

Today -100: October 6, 1910: Of republics and swackhammers

The revolutionaries in Portugal have declared a republic, with a new flag and everything. Britain, bound by treaty with Portugal, may have to go in to protect 21-year-old King Manuel II, who has fled Lisbon. The NYT declares Manuel an “amiable king” despite “very vague rumors” of affairs with actresses and foolish extravagance.” For the record, he was totally fucking actresses.

Portugal would never have a king again. Fascist dictator yes, king no.

Name of the Day -100: a Woodrow Wilson campaign speech was chaired by one Austin H. Swackhammer.

Unfortunate Headline of the Day

AP: “New High Court Era: Kagan Makes 3 Women on Bench.”

(Good article by Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick in Slate about “How the Roberts Court Disguises Its Conservatism.”)

Today -100: October 5, 1910: Of campaigns, revolutions, and gambling

Henry Stimson files a statement of expenses under the new campaign disclosure law: his campaign for the R. nomination for governor cost him $150.

But the NYT says Stimson’s campaign is doomed (spoiler alert: yes, yes it is. Doomed doomed doomed.) because many Republicans would just as soon see him lose if that would help prevent Roosevelt getting back into the White House: “Every man who has any stake in the orderly administration of the Government, in the maintenance of the integrity of the courts, every man who has respect for the country’s laws and its institutions, and who is moved to disquiet and alarm by Mr. Roosevelt’s appeals to mob passion and unreason, understands very well that this is the year to check and thwart his designs, not next year or the year after.”

In the meantime, the old governor Charles Evans Hughes is about to resign to take up his seat on the Supreme Court, so there will be a temporary governor until the end of the year, one Horace White.

A revolution has started in Portugal. Warships controlled by the rebels are bombarding Lisbon, and the king may have been captured.

One of the things NYC Mayor Gaynor finds on his return to work is that the police have been investigating the US Army Building on suspicion that it “was being conducted as a gambling house.” Evidently it wasn’t, and Gaynor has to write a letter of apology to the deputy quartermaster. What seems to have happened was that there was a gambling establishment over a saloon across the street from the Army Building and the two detectives who went to the Army Building were actually corrupt cops using the visit as a sneaky way to tip off the gambling joint that there was an investigation going on.

Today -100: October 4, 1910: Of revolting cops, and an Alabama negro in King Frederick’s court

Maryland Governor Crothers declares the Baltimore police board’s act in stationing of armed cops around hq to prevent being fired an armed revolt and an insurrection against the state, “and I shall take steps to put it down.” (What steps? There is no follow-up in the NYT in the next two weeks.)

The king and queen of Denmark entertain Booker T. Washington, the “first negro ever received at the Danish Court,” at Charlottenlund Castle. They talked about the Danish West Indies. The queen would like him to go there and apply the Tuskegee system of education.

NYC Mayor Gaynor returns to work, two months after his assassination.

Today -100: October 3, 1910: Of cops, censorship and queues

Governor Austin Crothers of Maryland is prosecuting two Baltimore police commissioners for incompetence and misconduct and trying to oust various other police officials, including the chief. But for two days the cops have been guarding police hq and the commissioner’s offices to prevent the temporary commissioners appointed by the governor taking over. Will he send the militia in?

18 leading British playwrights have penned a protest against the banning of Laurence Housman’s play about the attempt by George IV in 1820 to divorce Queen Caroline, Pains and Penalties, and a demand that there be a right of appeal against such bans. Bernard Shaw noted in the preface to his Plays Unpleasant that in 1737 Henry Fielding had “devoted his genius to the task of exposing and destroying parliamentary corruption, then at its height. Walpole, unable to govern without corruption, promptly gagged the stage by a censorship which is in full force at the present moment. Fielding, driven out of the trade of Molière and Aristophanes, took to that of Cervantes; and since then the English novel has been one of the glories of literature, whilst the English drama has been its disgrace.” The reason given by the Lord Chamberlain for the ban on Housman’s play was that it was about “a sad historical episode of comparatively recent date in the life of an unhappy lady.” Too soon? Queen Caroline had been dead for 90 years.

The former Chinese ambassador to the US is presenting the emperor with a memorial on behalf of Chinese living in the Americas asking to be allowed to stop wearing Chinese clothing and the queue (the long braid of hair).

Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman debate: The real tragedy here is Nicky

If Meg Whitman hadn’t taken such unpleasantly anti-illegal-immigrant positions, one might almost feel sorry for her. And the question she asked Jerry Brown in today’s Univision debate, “What would you have had me do?”, is actually pretty unanswerable; if she’d just kept repeating it he’d have been in an uncomfortable position. Many people find Whitman’s summary firing of Diaz after 9 years cruel and heartless to someone she claims to have considered as part of her family, but is Brown, California’s highest law-enforcement official, suggesting Whitman should have overlooked a violation of the law? Or instead that she should have checked Diaz’s documents more carefully and then reported her to the INS? Either answer would alienate a large swathe of voters. Instead, Brown responded with something about how Whitman should take responsibility and not blame everybody else, but that’s about the politics of it. What should she have done about Diaz herself?


Fortunately for him, Whitman’s politics are solidly anti-immigrant, opposing a path to legalization and telling an illegal immigrant Fresno State student at the debate that she shouldn’t have been given a university space that could have gone to a citizen, so Whitman couldn’t ask Brown how you act humanely in the light of inhumane laws, and she did in fact maintain the I’m-the-real-victim-here stance. She suggested that Diaz had been brainwashed by Brown’s henchmen: “The Nicky I saw at the press conference three days ago was not the Nicky that I knew for nine years. And you know what my first clue was? She kept referring to me as Ms. Whitman. For the nine years she worked for me she called me Meg and I called her Nicky.” Hmm, I wonder what could have changed that? Follow the clues, Meg.

By contrast, Whitman repeatedly referred to her summarily dismissed employee as Nicky.

Whitman suggested that the person who really exploited Nicky Diaz is Jerry Brown: “You put her out there. You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions.” Oh, so very self-aware. “The real tragedy here is Nicky. After Nov. 2, no one’s going to be watching out for Nicky Diaz.” What’s stopping you from hiring her the best immigration lawyer in the state, Meg?

Whitman said, “I cannot win the governor’s race without the Latino vote,” so, um, good luck with that.

Asked to list three of their opponent’s positive traits, Whitman could only come up with two for Brown (he cares about California and has had a long career in public service) before resorting to, “And I really like his choice of wife.”


I don’t believe she answered the question about when she would take the polygraph she offered a few days to take. Steve Lopez of the LAT has already lined up a guy to do it.

(My post on the previous debate here.)

Today -100: October 2, 1910: Of dynamite, cholera, spectacular prances, souls, and diplodocuses

Today’s (-100) NYT includes some of the blurriest scans I’ve seen yet, some of it quite unreadable. Sigh.

Still, things were much worse at the LA Times, where dynamite exploded in the LAT building, setting off a fire in nearby ink barrels which engulfed the building and killed 21 people (the lack of fire escapes didn’t help).


Another bomb exploded at the home of the paper’s proprietor, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis (who was not home), who had been waging a vicious war against unions in southern California in general and unions at the Times in particular. The LAT put out a single-page edition a few hours after the fire, screaming for revenge. Its headline: “Unionist Bombs Wreck the Times; Many Seriously Injured.” That it was unionists who planted the dynamite was only conjecture at that point. But (spoiler alert) true. There was a big trial, with Clarence Darrow defending the McNamara brothers, and then himself for supposedly bribing jurors.

There’s a Wikipedia page on the bombing and trial, and books, including one I’ve read and can recommend, Geoffrey Cowan, The People v. Clarence Darrow.

Two planes hit each other in Milan in the first-ever mid-air collision. I believe both pilots survived.

France is pissed off at Italy, as well they might be, for concealing the outbreak of cholera in Naples.

Election cycles really were shorter back then. John Dix, who just received the surprise nomination to be governor of NY, has decided – with the election just five weeks away – to have a vacation before he begins campaigning. “Regarding his campaign plans Mr. Dix remarked: ‘There will be no spectacular prance about the State.’” Fun fact about Dix and vacations (and I’ll save you some anxiety and just tell you now that he will in fact be the next governor): in 1912 he was scheduled to take one aboard the second voyage of the Titanic, had there been one).

Thomas Edison says that there is no such thing as the human soul. So that settles that. Scientifically.

Speaking of science, Charles Brooks, the African explorer, wants the British government to fund an expedition into the Rhodesia swamps, because he hears tell that there are dinosaurs there, possibly diplodocus, beside which an elephant “looks like a small cat.” Also there’s a race of copper-colored people. And, um, unicorns. And, er, dragons.

Confidence man

Silvio Berlusconi wins another vote of confidence.


He followed it up with a speech to the Italian Senate in which he took credit for persuading Bush to bail out the banks, persuading Obama to negotiate a nuclear treaty with Russia, and persuading Putin not to conquer Georgia in 2008, thus saving President Saakashvili being “hanged from the highest tree.”

Caption contest!

Today -100: October 1, 1910: It’s Icicle-Dix in NY

The under-emotional Barack Obama figure of his day? Henry Stimson says, “I want to overcome the impression which I am told is current among newspapermen that I am an icicle. I am not an icicle.” He says the impression arose because the public has hitherto only known him as a US district attorney.

And the vote (of Tammany Boss Charles Murphy) is in: the Democratic nominee for governor of New York is one John Alden Dix, nephew of a previous governor and Civil War general of the same name. Like Stimson, he’s pretty obscure and has never held elective office, though he did run for lt. governor in 1908 (the term for state offices like governor was two years). Dix had to have his arm twisted to run, and his wife pleaded with him in tears not to.

Here’s how it worked at the D. party convention: yesterday I said that there were 14 named candidates for governor. But then Boss Murphy made his choice of Dix and the others all dropped out except for one joker, Congressman William Salzer, who insisted his name be put forward and lost 434 to 16. Murphy’s choices for all the other offices were put through “by acclamation.” Oddly enough, one plank in the party platform is direct primary elections.

Artist Winslow Homer dies.

Today -100: September 30, 1910: Of four hundred and fifty sad-eyed men

The NYT today is officially the gossipy mother of every Republican politician, with headlines such as “GAYNOR BUSY ON ’PHONE.; Talks the Whole Evening, Perhaps to Somebody in Rochester” and “Roosevelt Early to Bed.”

The prosecution of Oklahoma Governor Haskell for fraud in the purchase of federal lands is dropped abruptly. A recent circuit court ruling had created a statute of limitations of only three years, and this particular criminal enterprise began in 1902.

The New York Democratic convention has opened, under the firm control of Tammany Hall. “The convention session meant nothing. The real convention was in Mr. [Boss Charles] Murphy’s room at the Whitcomb”. While “Four hundred and fifty sad-eyed men [were] wondering whom they were to nominate for Governor of New York”, Murphy has yet to decide which of 14 possible candidates will run in the elections – which are just 5½ weeks away. NYC’s assassinated-but-not-dead-yet Mayor Gaynor, now almost recovered enough to return to work, is the only really popular choice and therefore Murphy’s, despite his independence from Tammany control, but he has said in a public letter that he definitely absolutely does not want it and would not accept the nomination.

Today -100: September 29, 1910: Of Stimson and fallen kings

Very much under Roosevelt’s direction (for example he, rather than the delegates as custom dictated, named committee members), the NY Republican convention nominates Henry L. Stimson (yes, the later secretary of war under Taft, secretary of state under Hoover and secretary of war again under FDR) for governor (you’ll recall that the popular Republican governor Charles Evans Hughes is heading for the Supreme Court in a few days). The NYT criticizes TR for “advocating direct nominations in the forenoon and dictating nominations in the afternoon”. They kind of have a point.

Headline of the Day -100: “King Had to Fall Down.” Italian King Victor Emmanuel was inspecting planes at an aerodrome when someone who didn’t see him started up a plane, which started towards the monarch. He and the Count of Milan had to throw themselves to the ground; the plane just cleared them.

California gubernatorial debate: They’re fooling around with a lot of fat

The first debate between eMeg and former Governor Moonbeam took place at UC Davis (Motto: Come for the dachshund races, stay for the, er...) tonight.

Whitman says putting Brown in charge of the budget is “like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank.” Which was an old, unfunny joke when Dracula was still alive (1431–1476).

She sort of looks like a crucifix here, no?
Brown says “we’re all going to have to sacrifice.” Meaning college students and young people who won’t be able to afford to be college students because he’ll be increasing state university fees. “But I’d say those at the top, those at the commanding heights of our economy, should tuck in their belts first.” Tuck their belts into what? Does Jerry Brown not know how belts work?

Brown was asked if he’d run for president again: “if I were younger you know I would.” So he’s saying he’s too old to be president but not too old to be governor.

My prostate is like this big
Brown went on and on (as old guys will do) about why it’d be good to have an old guy as governor: “If everybody in state service worked as long as I have, the pension system would be overfunded by 50 percent, OK, and work until 72. By the way, if you elect me governor, I will not collect until I’m 76. And by my second term, I’ll be 80. So I’m the best pension buy California has ever seen.” I believe that’s his new motto.

Brown says he’d be more effective than the last time he was governor because he’s married now: “I come home at night. I don’t try to close down the bars in Sacramento like I used to do when I was governor of California.” At his age, he closes down the early bird specials.

Brown: “I pledge to the people of this state I will faithfully carry out our law on executions and I’ll do it with compassion but I’ll do it with great fidelity to the rule of law.” “Compassionate” executions. Must be what they taught him at that Jesuit seminary.

By the way, as attorney general Brown is desperately trying to get an execution under his belt, or whatever he uses to hold up his pants, before the election, but a federal judge halted Thursday’s scheduled execution because he’s not convinced that the lethal injection chemicals wouldn’t allow the executee to feel great pain while being paralyzed so it wouldn’t show. And all of the state’s sodium thiopental reaches its expiration date Friday.

Whitman attacked him for appointing Rose Bird to the state supreme court and said: “Jerry has a long, 40-year record of being quite liberal on crime.” And he once shot a guy, just to watch him die.

Brown: “We can cut. They’re fooling around with a lot of fat.” Boy, that’s an image I did not need in my head.

Jazz hands!
Whitman: “No company should put a call center in Phoenix, Arizona, they should put it in Fresno or Stockton.” The, um, call-out to Fresno is because last week she said Fresno “looks like Detroit. It’s awful.” Which is something we can all agree on. I believe that’s actually the city motto.

Whitman on not voting for all those decades: “I apologize to everyone in California.”

Whitman: “I don’t think you can buy elections. I think Californians are too smart.” She means that unions can’t buy elections, not that ultra-rich dilettantes can’t buy elections.

Whitman: “This state is in an enormous mess.” I believe that’s actually the new state motto.

Jazz hands!

No Apology Out of Butt

Follow-up: Last Tuesday our Headline of the Day (from the BBC) was “England Demand Apology From Butt.” Today: “Butt Makes No Apology to England.”