It’s not for us

Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister slash sock puppet, says that the WikiLeaks reports of torture and murder of Iraqi civilians are “distressing to read about” and “need to be looked at.” But not by Britain. No, “I am assuming the US administration will want to provide its own answer. It’s not for us to tell them how to do that.” (Nick Clegg’s sole function in life is to enable awful things to take place while denying any personal responsibility for them. And to fetch the tea.) And of course Frago 242 said that once the US handed people over to the Wolf Brigade or other Iraqi death squads, it wasn’t for us to tell the Iraqis not to torture/kill/tickle/eat them. Guess everyone’s looking forward, not back at the smelly mound of bodies.

Today -100: October 24, 1910: Of strong campaign issues, and Crippen

Roosevelt and the Republican State Committee of NY announce that they will continue to accuse John A. Dix of involvement with the wallpaper trust. The committee’s chairman, Ezra Prentice, says he does not believe Dix’s statement denying a connection; “I do not think it will stand examination.” Asked if he had actually read the statement, he admitted he hadn’t. “I am not very well informed at present on the matter, but we are going to make it a strong campaign issue.” And that sentence has been the Republican Party motto ever since.

Dr. Hawley Crippen is convicted of the murder of his wife. Click on the image below and click again to enlarge for a bit of the London Times.

Political timing

Iraqi Temporary Interim Acting Caretaker Prime Minister Maliki accuses the latest WikiLeaks doc dump of being politically timed. You know, because it was released during that brief but critical period between the Iraqi elections and the formation of a government.

Today -100: October 23, 1910: Of exiled monks and hilarious cows

Britain proposes, and Germany agrees, that all the large European powers recognize the government in Portugal simultaneously. That’s fast. I would have expected more resistance from the kaiser over the abolition of the Portuguese monarchy.

Italians are up in arms against the influx of monks and nuns recently expelled by the new Portuguese government (Spain refused to take them). Poorer Italians remember the previous immigration from France when religious orders were banned there, and the priests used the wealth of their orders to drive up rents in Rome.

Headline of the Day -100: “Cows Acted Hilarious.” Got into some cider.

No investigation required

Today’s WikiLeaks dump shows a formal military policy (dated June 2004) of ignoring violence, torture, executions, sexual assaults, etc by Iraqi military or police, beyond giving reports on the incident to the very Iraqi unit that committed the abuse, and recording “no investigation required” on the file. Which I believe was the Obama campaign motto four years later. Spooky, huh?

Fred Kaplan says that the latest leaked documents won’t necessarily please anti-war types. For example, he says, they prove that “most Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis” and that Lancet vastly over-estimated the number of civilian deaths. Well, they prove that if you believe that the number of civilian deaths in the two assaults on Fallujah was exactly zero, the number the Pentagon recorded. Otherwise you might think that there’s a bit of selective blindness in the record-keeping.

Today -100: October 22, 1910: Of wallpaper trusts, big boats, land grabs, and friendly mobs

Teddy Roosevelt has accused Democratic NY gubernatorial candidate John A. Dix of being connected with a wallpaper trust, which Dix denies. Dix became a director of a wallpaper company several years after a judge essentially dissolved the trust.

The Cunard Steamship Company has approved plans to construct a 60,000-ton steamship. I wonder what such a titanic object should be called?

The New Mexico Constitutional Convention wants a new boundary, giving it 200 square miles of Texas.

A story by-lined from Lynchburg, VA reports an un-lynching in nearby Lovingston. John Moore, sentenced to death for the murder of one Frank Howl, is broken out of jail and freed by a “friendly mob” of 75 men. The mob objects that Roxie Howl (!), the widow of the murdered man, was not convicted along with him. One or the other of them poisoned Howl so that they could marry each other. There is also a theory that Howl’s moonshine was poisoned by ‘shiners who thought he was a revenooer.

All the news that’s fit to print in the Daily Telegraph

Here’s a nice Telegraph sort of headline: “Cross Dressing Air Force Colonel Jailed for Sex Murders.” Canadian Air Force. He once flew the queen. There’s actually nothing in the article that justifies the phrase “cross dressing.”

“MP’s Wife to Face Trial over Kitten Theft Claims.” The wife of Liberal MP John Hemming will be tried for breaking into his mistress’s home and the cat is still missing. The wife has actually known about the mistress since 2005, when she gave birth to Hemming’s child. Hemming later voted for himself in a newspaper poll for “Love Rat of the Year,” saying “At the end of the day you’ve got to laugh at something.”

An American former football player overstayed his visa in Singapore and they’re planning to cane him. This would be the first caning of an American since Michael Fay – remember him?

A small plane crashed in Congo-Kinshasa, killing everyone on board except one person and a crocodile. Can you guess why the plane crashed? If you guessed it had something to do with the crocodile, you guessed correctly.

“Escaped Chimp Attacks Police Car.” There’s video, but it’s rather disappointing.

Today -100: October 20, 1910: The nose of a conqueror

A letter to the NYT by Eugene V. Brewster (presumably the lawyer/painter/film director) suggests that the NY Democratic Party is wrong not to send John Dix campaigning around the state in his gubernatorial quest, which they evidently decided because he is a crap speaker and “is not a man of prepossessing appearance”. Not so, says Brewster, obviously crushing on Dix big time: “Mr. Dix is tall, broad-shouldered, dignified, stately, yet democratic in bearing and manner, with the brow of the philosopher, the nose of a conqueror, and the chin of a determined, strong-willed man, born to lead and to command.”

A NYT editorial about a “convention of negroes” in Oklahoma which declared that negroes, while being 15-20% of the state’s population and having loyally supported the Republican Party, have gotten nothing back, so all black people should vote socialist instead (which seems to ignore that the state just disenfranchised most of them two months ago by adopting literacy tests). The NYT warns them that they will not get social equality “by any political methods. A great many of their best leaders declare they do not desire it, preferring a social code for their own race alone, and disdaining to seek intercourse with others.” And they would gain political equality “more surely and sooner if they vote independently as men and not in a body as a race.”

When you gotta go

Carl Paladino wandered off the stage during the closing statements of yesterday’s wacky NY goober debate. Explained his campaign manager, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” That could be his new campaign slogan.

Christine O’Donnell, in the 3rd Delaware senate debate, asked “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Chris Coons explained it to her, presumably using small words so she’d understand. But she didn’t. “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

When Obama visits India next month, he will skip the Golden Temple in Amritsar because he would have to wear a headscarf or a skullcap and... oh, I give up. His staff proposed that he wear a “modified” baseball cap and the temple people said no.

Today -100: October 19, 1910: Of the America, divorce, and late starts

The America was crippled by, you know, wind. The crew and cat escaped in a lifeboat and were picked up by the steamer Trent 400 miles east of the North Carolina coast. The airship was blown away, never to be seen again. Walter Wellman provides a lengthy account to the Times. He blames the equilibrator, which was too heavy. Still, the America covered 1,000 miles in 71 hours, which was a record.

Wellman lived until 1934 and never left the ground again.

The Episcopalians now ban any member who has had a divorce from re-marrying. Previously, the innocent party could do so.

One of the Democratic candidates for governor of Massachusetts, Charles Hamlin (later the first chairman of the Fed), breaks the deadlock by withdrawing, so Eugene Foss will soon probably become the party nominee, less than 3 weeks before the election (Frederick Mansfield, who was named by the party convention as a holding candidate when they couldn’t settle on a real one, also has to be convinced to withdraw).

Spoiler alert: Foss will win the election, despite all the chaos. It’s really not the Republicans’ year.

A gravy train in the hands is worth two in the gravy train station

An email I received (why?) from Michele Bachmann on behalf of the Republican National Committee is chock full of right-wing clichés (“socialist, Big Government agenda,” “takeovers of private enterprise,” “opponents of freedom”), but check out how many of them she jams into a single sentence: “These radical Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars from their liberal special interest-filled campaign war chest to retain power and keep the publicly funded gravy train rolling into the hands of Big Labor, limousine liberals, radical protest groups, and billionaire globalists.”

Is a gravy train something you’d actually want in your hands? It sounds either very messy or very dangerous. What is a gravy train, anyway?

Tuesday?

In the Kentucky Senate debate, Jack Conway asked Rand Paul the most important political question of our times (the second most important question is why Rand Paul has a first name for a last name and a last name for a first name): “When is it ever a good idea to tie up a woman and ask her to kneel before a false idol, your god, which you call Aqua Buddha?”

Indeed, when is that a good idea? Answers in comments, please.

Today -100: October 18, 1910: Whither America?

What has happened to the America? And more to the point, what happened to Kiddo the cat? The airship (and the cat) have disappeared and have stopped sending wireless communications. Ocean liners (including the Lusitania) are on the lookout.

The French train strike is over, after PM Briand conscripted strikers, arrested strike leaders, ordered in the military, but also arranged a settlement favorable to the strikers. In addition to the “sabotage” of ties, the strike was marked by bomb incidents, which the police attribute to anarchists taking advantage of the strike rather than to trade unionists. A bomb was thrown at a passenger train as it came into the Chantièrs station, but it bounced off a tree, harming no one, though it did make a big boom.

Today -100: October 17, 1910: Of Kiddo the wonder cat

Kiddo the cat jumped out of the dirigible America but was fished out of the sea.

No questions, please

Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate debate: “If you’ve ever questioned whether America is a beacon of freedom and justice, then he’s your guy.” If you’ve never questioned or thought about anything ever, vote Christine!

By the way, when she was stumped about what Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with, she said someone of her staff would figure out which ones she disagreed with and put them up on her website. Evidently, she’s now been told that she disagrees with Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Kelo v. City of New London.

Maybe he just thinks that’s what they deserved

Bob Herbert suggests that Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned five convicted murderers because they were in a program that let them work in the governor’s mansion. Yet I can’t help noticing that 4 of the 5 killed women, indeed women they knew: 1 murdered his girlfriend while 3 killed their former wives or girlfriends.

Today -100: October 16, 1910: America!

Mass. congresscritter Eugene Foss finally tiring of waiting for the Democratic Party to pick a candidate for governor for the Nov. 8 elections, gathers 500 signatures and files independently under the rubric of Democratic Progressive.

The Columbus trolley strike has failed, after 3 months.

Walter Wellman, journalist, Arctic explorer and daredevil, is attempting to take a dirigible, the America, across the Atlantic, starting from Atlantic City and landing wherever in Europe the winds take him. A French member of the crew got cold feet at the last minutes, as did a feline mascot. The Frenchman escaped, the cat, Kiddo, was tossed back in. The voyage is sponsored by several newspapers, so Wellman is filing dispatches via wireless. The first radio message ever sent from an airborne vessel in history was, therefore, “Roy, come and get this goddamn cat.”

Today -100: October 15, 1910: Of escapes

The Chinese occupying Tibet seized the Dalai Lama’s rep, intending to behead him, but Tibetans spirited him away.

Papal caption contest

Today -100: October 14, 1910: Of road trips and scandal and sensation

Taft will make a quick trip to Panama next month, to make some decisions about construction, fortifications, toll rates, etc. Don’t quote me, but this may be only the 2nd time a sitting president left the country, the first having been Roosevelt 4 years earlier, also making a trip to the Canal Zone.

NYC Mayor Gaynor is now at odds with President of the Board of Alderman John Purroy Mitchel, who, when serving as acting mayor while Gaynor was in the hospital, directed the police to investigate various suspected disorderly houses and gambling establishments (leading, as we saw, to a raid on the US Army Building, but mostly to letters to property owners). Gaynor says the list was “made up in a wholly untrustworthy newspaper office for scandal and sensation,” which I’m guessing means Hearst’s paper, and orders the police commissioner to apologize to the property owners. Mitchel insists the list was derived from perfectly legitimate, um, anonymous letters.

Francisco Madero, who ran against Porfirio Díaz for the presidency of Mexico in April and was subsequently arrested, has fled the country, disguised as a peon, emerging in San Antonio. This actually happened more than a week ago, but the NYT seems not to have reported it. Instead, we now get a rather sarcastic editorial, which suggests Madero should stay in San Antonio: “As a revolutionary his doings from first to last have savored of opera bouffe. There are good openings in that part of Texas for every live man. One thing is certain, Señor Madero is no longer to be enrolled, seriously, among the ‘men who may succeed Diaz.’” That’s true: there was actually a six-month interim president before Madero became president in November 1911.