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McCain & Holy Joe Lieberman have introduced a resolution for an immediate no-fly zone in Libya.
In a speech in the Senate yesterday, McCain said of the need for a no-fly zone, “It is Libyans themselves who want to do the fighting against Qaddafi, but they want it to be a fair fight. So should we.” Because if there’s one thing John McCain hates, it’s an unfair fight.
He added that we must immediately recognize the opposition as the sole legitimate governing authority: “Some continue to say that we do not know who the opposition is and thus we cannot assist them. This is ridiculous.” Yes, it is ridiculous to elevate people we do not know.
Headline and Opera of the Day -100: “KAISER MAY HAVE URGED ‘TWILIGHT’; But Nevin’s One-Act Opera Is Not Likely to be Given at the Metropolitan This Season.” Kaiser Wilhelm was a big fan of the opera about a teenage girl in love with a brooding, shirtless vampire (Enrico Caruso).
There is a furore in Boston over a planned women’s club that will allow... wait for it... smoking.
The Obama administration takes ownership of another Bush policy: support for the Haitian coup and the exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today the State Dept publicly urged him not to return home before the elections, which is said would be “destabilizing” and “could only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections.” And, er, what exactly is wrong with that? However, spokesmodel Mark Toner declared, “The decision to allow Mr. Aristide to return is up to the Government of Haiti. Under the Haitian constitution, he has the right to return to his country.” If he has a constitutional right to return, how is it “up to” the government of Haiti whether to ban him? Toner is unambiguously signaling that we’d be okay with Haiti continuing the unconstitutional policy of banning Aristide from the country (just as they ban his party from elections). Condi Rice, another supporter of the forced exile of Aristide, couldn’t have said it better.
Buffalo Bill Cody is rumored to want to be Arizona’s first senator.
The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of corporate tax law. Taft is delighted.
In Albany, the Children’s Society is demanding a state law for the segregation of sexes in the audiences of motion pictures. And that they be shown with the lights on (the motion pictures, that is, not the sexes).
Teddy Roosevelt writes President Taft (privately) about the Mexican Revolution, offering that if “by any remote chance... there should be a serious war, a war in which Mexico was backed by Japan or some other big powers, then I would wish immediately to apply for permission to raise a division of cavalry, such as the regiment I commanded in Cuba...”
While the firing of P.J. Crowley is certainly ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid, to coin a phrase (or, as Obama would put it, “appropriate and are meeting our basic standards”), since he appended to his remarks about the treatment of Bradley Manning that Manning, who has been convicted of precisely nothing, belongs behind bars, I can’t bring myself to feel sorry for Crowley.
Obama on Boehner: “I used to think that it was a tan, but after seeing how often he tears up I’ve come to realize that’s not a tan -- that’s rust.”
Out of curiosity, does anyone know where Japan puts the waste from all its nuke plants?
“Los Angeles horsewoman” (and women’s suffragist) Flora S. Russell broke through the lines of both Mexican and US troops to plant the flag of something called the “Republic of Díaz.” “I wanted to prove that women have the courage of men,” she said.
Mexican Prez Díaz tells the AP that he is completely healthy, that conditions are improving in Chihuahua, and that military operations there do not constitute warfare but “hunting.”
A US Army private, part of the mobilization on the Mexican border, was stabbed in Galveston after his companion made some sort of racist remark in the black part of town. Soldiers responded with a rampage, beating up blacks and Mexicans, and setting a house on fire.
In a “humorous” editorial about Mormon proselytization in Britain, the NYT suggests that English suffragettes should consider emigrating to Utah and becoming polygamous wives because, not having to pay as much attention to their husbands as monogamous wives, they’d have plenty of time for politics.
French standard time was officially set back 9 minutes and 21 seconds, to fall in with Greenwich time. Parisians celebrated the two midnights in cafés and restaurants, because why not? Up until now, French clocks on the outside of railway stations marked the real time, while clocks inside railway stations were five minutes slower. It kept lazy French people from missing trains, or something.
Headline of the Day -100: “Quakers No Match for Tigers.” The University of Pennsylvania and Yale wrestling teams, respectively, not actual Quakers and tigers.
The Anti-Treating Bill passes the Missouri House 82-17. If it passes the senate, it will be illegal to stand a friend to a drink in a bar.
The Mexican authorities will begin summarily executing rebels. Which includes anyone caught in the act of highway robbery, cutting telegraph or telephone wires, or throwing a rock at a train.
One of rebel leader Madero’s spokesmodels claims the Mexican government has a scheme to import 15,000 Japanese veterans of the Russo-Japanese War and settle them along the border prepared to fight off the American Army if the US invades.
Los Angeles District Attorney John Fredericks orders that movies about the Mexican Revolution (fictional ones, not newsreels) be censored because such movies might cause trouble among Mexicans in America.
Commerce and Labor Secretary Charles Nagel gives a speech about immigration to the Republican Club. He says there is a need to “draw the line. If we are to hold aloft the flag of a republican form of government we must see that the people we admit are capable of self-government.” Nagel has absolute authority to send any prospective immigrant back from whence they came.
The German minister of war says that he will not tamper with the “free institution” of the military, by which regiments select their own officers. And since there is – he said it, not me – “widespread anti-Jewish sentiment in the country,” this mean effectively no Jewish officers allowed.
Sen. Reed Smoot (famous much later for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, but in 1911 famous as the senator from Utah who was kept from taking his seat for four years while the Senate debated whether an “apostle” of the Mormon church could do so) defends a silver service with the portrait of Brigham Young which is to be presented to the battleship Utah. There have evidently been many protest meetings against the silver service (news to me).
Smoot also said he’d welcome an investigation of charges by British Home Secretary Winston Churchill that Mormon missionaries in Britain are trying to recruit girls to emigrate to Utah (where more wives are needed, for some reason).
Obama held one of his rare press conferences today.
He began by expressing his condolences to Japan on behalf of the American people (so expect a rebuttal from Mitch McConnell) for the earthquake/tsunami/volcano/Godzilla attack, which he called “a potentially catastrophic disaster”. Potentially?
Then he moved on to a real catastrophic disaster: rising gas prices in the US. But, he says, there is “good news. The global community can manage supply disruptions like this.” If by “manage supply disruptions,” you mean use the excuse of a tiny hiccup in a country accounting for a small percentage of the world oil supply to jack up oil company profits.
He talked about his “commitment to do everything that we can to get gas prices down,” but will he invade Libya and steal their oil? I think not.
I DON’T SEE HOW ANYTHING COULD GO WRONG WITH THAT. He said that domestic oil production is at a high, including in the Gulf of Mexico.
HAVE YOU READ SARAH PALIN’S TWITTER FEED LATELY? “I don’t think anybody has forgotten that we’re only a few months removed from the worst oil spill in our history.”
BY WHICH I MEAN MOONSHINE: “Right now, all across America, our farmers are producing homegrown fuels”.
WHAT WE’VE BEEN HAVING FOR NEARLY FOUR DECADES NOW: “We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now. Every few years, gas prices go up; politicians pull out the same old political playbook, and then nothing changes. And when prices go back down, we slip back into a trance. And then when prices go up, suddenly we’re shocked. I think the American people are tired of that. I think they’re tired of talk.” Oh, wait, they’re not tired, they’re just still in that trance.
IF BY “SLOWLY,” YOU MEAN IMPERCEPTIBLY: “across the board we are slowly tightening the noose on Qaddafi.”
I DON’T THINK “BEING ISOLATED INTERNATIONALLY” IS AS SCARY TO DICTATORS AS AMERICAN PRESIDENTS ALWAYS SEEM TO THINK IT IS: “He is more and more isolated internationally, both through sanctions as well as an arms embargo.”
CONVERSATIONS! A SERIES OF THEM! IF THAT DOESN’T SCARE QADDAFI, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL. “And what we’ve done is we’ve organized in NATO a series of conversations about a wide range of options that we can take...”
24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE! IF THAT DOESN’T SCARE QADDAFI, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL. “...everything from 24-hour surveillance so that we can monitor the situation on the ground and react rapidly if conditions deteriorated, to further efforts with respect to an arms embargo, additional efforts on humanitarian aid, but also potential military options including a no-fly zone.” NATO will be discussing that one on Tuesday. No rush, have a nice weekend.
WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THEY HAVEN’T TAKEN ANY OPTIONS OFF THE TABLE, AREN’T THEY JUST BRAGGING ABOUT THEIR LACK OF ABILITY TO MAKE A DECISION? “So the bottom line is, is that I have not taken any options off the table at this point.”
SO WE’RE WATCHING AND WE’RE PAYING ATTENTION. IF THAT DOESN’T SCARE QADDAFI, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL. It’s important “to continue to find options that will add additional pressure, including sending a clear message to those around Qaddafi that the world is watching and we’re paying attention”.
Mimi Hall (USA Today) asks if it’s an “acceptable option” that Qaddafi not leave. He doesn’t like that question, so he decides he’s being asked if the US would invade Libya, and um, doesn’t answer that question either, even though he asked it of himself.
WHAT RAISES OUR ANTENNA: “And some of the rhetoric that you’ve seen -- for example, the idea that when Qaddafi said that they’d be going door to door hunting for people who are participating in protests -- that implied a sort of lack of restraint and ruthlessness that I think raises our antenna.” Isn’t that exactly what US troops do in Afghanistan? Does that imply a sort of lack of restraint and ruthlessness?
D’UH, WINNING: “We can’t stop investing in infrastructure -- those things that are going to make us competitive over the long term and will help us win the future.”
WHAT IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND: “I think it’s very important, when we think about the budget, to understand that our long-term debt and deficits are not caused by us having Head Start teachers in the classroom.” Not unless we pay them, and Gov. Walker is leading us inexorably towards a slave-based educational system.
AFTER ALL, NO STANDARDS ARE MORE BASIC THAN COMPLETE NUDITY: On Bradley Manning: “I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.” So that’s okay, then.
At the end of it, he was asked by a Japanese reporter about the earthquake/tsunami/volcano/alien invasion/mecha-Godzilla attack in Japan and said, no doubt in calm, measured tones, “I’m heartbroken by this tragedy.”
Naturally, he buried his heartbreak in the only way he knew how, by meeting the Chicago Blackhawks. He got a jersey and a ring and a miniature Stanley Cup, which he held aloft with an expression that clearly betokened his intention to use it to pound his enemies into dust.
Francisco Madero’s brother Gustavo says the insurrectos will be in Mexico City by Cinco de Mayo. As guests of President Díaz? some smart-ass reporter asks. No, to raise a new flag.
In Yucatan, the rebels capture two (or more) towns. They rename one Madero.
Meanwhile, the 80-year-old Díaz sends a telegram to the NYT that his health is “perfect.”
The German military wants to train pilots and is asking for unmarried lieutenants to volunteer for a two-month flying course, from which it will pick the 60 with the best sight and lowest weight.
Booth Tarkington says he is done writing plays. He never wants to look at a rehearsal again. He will change his mind.
Rep. Peter King (R-Hysteria) says, in an email to his supporters that links to his website which has a video labeled “Rep. King trains at the Bellmore Kickboxing Academy as he gets ready to hold hearings on the radicalization of Muslim Americans,” “I will not back down to the hysteria created by my opponents”. Because Tailgunner Pete is totally against hysteria.
And as King likes to say, “100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims”.
The NYT says that the “worst feature” of the Mexican Revolution is the Mexican government’s suppression of news.
Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin blows up. That explosives factory turns out to be maybe not such a good idea. The explosion was felt up to 500 miles away, doing $10,000 in damage to plate glass windows on State Street, Chicago alone. Only one person was killed, unlike the 1906 explosion at the plant, in which 9 were killed. There have been 9 explosions there in the last 10 years.
Stupid proposed laws: 1) One in the Connecticut legislature to ban the publication of pictures of policemen or to report on crimes until all suspects in the crime have been arrested. 2) One proposed in the Illinois legislature to ban harem skirts and hobble skirts.
The British Foreign Office says they did not ask the US to intervene in Mexico to protect British nationals and business interests, as rumors have been claiming.
NYT: “Administration and War Department officials frankly admitted to-day that the ‘manoeuvres’ explanation of the sudden mobilization of an army division in Texas and Southern California strains credulity for acceptance, and then calmly repeated it and declared that it is the real explanation.”
Neither the Mexican government nor the insurrectos want American intervention. In case you were wondering.
The US is moving 20,000 troops, one-forth of the entire army, to California and Texas along the Mexican border. Also part of the fleet. The government is claiming that these are just “maneuvers” to demonstrate that the army can be rapidly mobilized and that they have nothing to do with the Mexican Revolution. But what will the troops actually do? Enforce “neutrality” by preventing the movement of rebels and arms back and forth across the border? Engage in a full-scale military intervention? Or wait for the inevitable chaos in the event of the (falsely) rumored imminent death of 80-year-old dictator Porfirio Díaz?
Catholic bishops in the US announce, in obedience to a 13th-century papal law, that henceforth no absolution will be given to parents who fail to send their children to Catholic schools.
Joseph Cooney of San Francisco murdered his cousin. The next day, he went to observe the California State Assembly as it debated capital punishment; “He showed great anxiety while the vote was being taken.” The vote was 46 to 31 to abolish the death penalty, so Cooney immediately turned himself in to the San Francisco sheriff, who was in Sacramento in his other capacity as a state senator.
The British, who I’m given to understand used to run an entire empire, sent what Foreign Secretary William Hague calls “a small British diplomatic team” to Benghazi by helicopter, equipped, as all diplomatic teams are, with guns, explosives, and false passports. Given that no one was expecting armed SAS soldiers to drop from the sky, the anti-Qaddafi rebels they were supposed to be making contact with immediately took them prisoner (Hague: “They experienced difficulties”), and subsequently expelled from the country (“which have now been satisfactorily resolved”).
Meanwhile, a former aide of Qaddafi claims that the reason Qaddafi was elected head of the African Union in 2009 was that Silvio Berlusconi got the leader of an unnamed nation who was opposing him to change his vote by sending two prostitutes to... convince him.
A black man is murdered by a mob in Marianna, Florida, after threatening to shoot the town marshal. The mob broke in the jail door to get at him.
Railroad firemen on the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad are voting on whether to call a strike against the practice of promotion by seniority. Because under it, black people can be promoted. And we can’t have that.
The NYT is worried about a medium-sized “army,” largely consisting of Americans, now in the Chihuahua region with the intention of turning Lower California into a “socialistic republic,” which would eventually join the United States.
Sharia law, Cajun style: a 78-year-old convicted child molester was castrated as a condition for parole in Louisiana. Because mutilating old men is how they roll down there. His prostate cancer delayed the operation, but finally the judge insisted that “it’s time to give Caesar what Caesar is owed,” which is evidently one wrinkly old penis. “They tell me it’s comparable to having your wisdom teeth pulled,” says Maj. Richie Johnson of the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office. I’m pretty sure having your wisdom teeth pulled and having your dick, um, pulled are actually in no way comparable, but I’m loathe to argue the subject with someone named Major Johnson.
Update: the CBS story on this begins “Convicted pedophile Francis Tullier, 78, cut his prison sentence in half - and that’s not all”.
The operation (a medically unnecessary procedure for which some doctor needs to lose his license) was performed at the Earl K. Long Medical Center. Which looks like this:
Just saying.
The French prime minister praises Henri Bernstein for withdrawing his play, but the violence does not end. The son of the the Comédie-Française’s director fights a duel with the editor of the Camelots du Roi organ L’Action Française. They exchanged four bullets before moving on to rapiers. The son guy got injured. The NYT says that the whole brouhaha couldn’t happen here: “if any representatives of the lawless tried to disturb a performance of a play they would be suppressed, partly by efficient police, largely by the opposition of playgoers in general to rude conduct in theatres. We do not even hiss plays here.”
The Honduran peace conference between the government and rebels agrees on a provisional president, pending new elections in October, so the US envoy doesn’t have to pick one for them. Dr. Francisco Bertrand is a backer of the former president and current rebel leader Manuel Bonilla. His cabinet will consist of equal numbers of men from both sides. There will be an amnesty and the government will pay the war expenses of both sides.
On the last, remarkably foul-tempered day of the lame-duck Congressional session (though Taft plans to call a special session of the newly elected Congress to vote on the dreaded Canadian reciprocity treaty), Sen. Robert Owen (D-OK) filibusters everything in sight to prevent the admission to statehood of Republican New Mexico unless Democratic Arizona is admitted at the same time. He wins that, but the final bill for both territories falls short of the necessary 2/3 vote (45-39).
Then, Sen. Joseph Weldon Bailey (D-TX), who once beat up another senator during a debate, melodramatically resigns – or tries to resign – from the Senate in fury at his fellow Democrats for voting for the Arizona constitution despite the inclusion of provisions for initiative, referendum and recall, which he calls “populistic heresies” in his resignation telegram to the governor of Texas. He had to send that telegram because Vice President Sherman, presiding over the Senate, refused to accept his resignation. The governor didn’t accept it either. Bailey later calmed down and rescinded his resignation, accepting the Democratic senators’ explanation that they also hate those provisions but wanted to let the people of Arizona decide for themselves.
The immigration authorities prevented a ship smuggling “contraband” Chinese coolies landing at San Pedro, shooting at the launch. So the coolies were dumped into the Pacific Ocean and drowned instead. The same thing happened two weeks ago, so they knew what might happen when they stopped it from landing.
Headline of the Day -100: “Leather Insurgents Gain Part Victory.” Some court case by stockholders in the Central Leather Company. Whatever. But: leather insurgents!
Speaking of insurgents, Francisco Madero is demanding the city of Chihuahua surrender or be starved into submission.
The federal government sues to dissolve the “electrical trust,” 34 companies centered on General Electric and the National Electric Lamp Company, which has gained control of 97% of the 80 million lamps sold annually in the US since the patent on carbon filament incandescent lights expired in 1904. One tactic: setting up fake “independent” companies to sell inferior lamps to damage the reputation of real independents.
Headline, er, Other Headline of the Day -100: “Term in Prison for Banker Belling.” Sadly, it turns out to be a banker named Charles Belling (for forgery); there was not a crime of banker-belling.
Henri Bernstein withdraws “Après Mois” from the Comédie-Française, saying he does not wish to be responsible for more bloodshed.
You know how you can tell that the White House-Congressional meeting on the budget went really, really, really well? Joe Biden’s statement afterwards is just ten words long.
