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Obama held a not-very-interesting press conference today.
CLEAR! “Our economy really needs a jolt right now.”
BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS THE TIME FOR THE USUAL POLITICAL GRIDLOCK, RIGHT? “This is not a game; this is not the time for the usual political gridlock.”
RICH PEOPLE AREN’T ASKING FOR TAX CUTS? RICH PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS ASKING FOR TAX CUTS. “We can fight to protect tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them, or we can cut taxes for virtually every worker and small business in America.”
THAT’S A RHETORICAL QUESTION, RIGHT? “historically, Republicans haven’t been opposed to rebuilding roads and bridges. Why would you be opposed now?”
WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FOR A LONG TIME: “The American people are very frustrated. They’ve been frustrated for a long time.”
Have you heard about this Occupy Wall Street thing? “Obviously I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen it on television.” No word on whether he’s keeping up on the economic plight of ordinary Americans by watching “Two Broke Girls.” “So, yes, I think people are frustrated”. And evidently they’re mostly frustrated by Republicans who want to roll back Dodd-Frank. And bankers and the financial system and whatnot. If they’re frustrated by Obama and the Democrats in any way at all, Obama must not have seen evidence of it on television.
Jake Tapper asks if they aren’t frustrated that no one on Wall Street has been prosecuted. Obama says that’s because all those corrupt practices were actually legal and shouldn’t be. Way to undercut future prosecutions.
Re “Fast and Furious” (selling guns that went to Mexico so we could track them, without the actual tracking them part), he has “complete confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder, who has “indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious,” which you’d think would undercut that complete confidence just a little bit, but evidently not. “And I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America.” So that’s okay then.
IRONY! “The irony is the same folks that the Republicans claim to be protecting, the well off -- the millionaires and the billionaires -- they’d be doing better, they’d be making more money if ordinary Americans had some money in their pockets and were out there feeling more confident about the economy. That’s been the lesson of our history -- when folks in the middle and at the bottom are doing well, the folks at the top do even better.” Heads, the rich win, tails the rich still win.
Oh, and that is not at all the lesson of our history.
GIVE ME WHAT I WANT, OR I’LL GO MAKE SOME MORE SPEECHES: “I would love nothing more than to not have to be out there campaigning because we were seeing constructive action here in Congress. ... And I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can’t campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress.” The R’s must really be trembling in fear right now.
“It is reported to be the ambition of King Victor Emmanuel to extend his African possessions and attract there Italian emigration so as to make a vast Italian empire and resurrect for his house the title of the ancient Roman Emperors.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Mayor Buys More Potatoes.”
Italy is bombarding Tripoli.
Dr. Joseph Bell, Arthur Conan Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes, dies.
LA Times, “Concerning Woman Suffrage”: “Voting is not, as is often loudly asserted, ‘a right.’ If it is a right, why is it refused to men who are only 20 years and 364 days old? Why is it refused to men over 21 who have been in the State only 364 days? Why is it refused to men because their skins are yellow? Why is it withheld from Alaskans, and Porto Ricans, and Fillipinos?” All good questions.
British Home Secretary Winston Churchill gives a speech in which he alludes to the increasing number of war scares in Europe lately, but reassures his Dundee constituents that “States and Governments to-day find themselves bound together, interlaced and interwoven one with another, by the tenacious network of trade interests, of commercial transactions, of intercommunication, of reciprocal insurance, and of friendly connection. They find themselves standing upon the dizzy and precarious platform of international credit and complex artificial industry, a platform which, were it to collapse or be violently overturned, would produce consequences which no man and no monarch can foretell.” He adds that the strongest nations – Britain, Germany and France – are those with the most to lose and the furthest to fall in the event of war, so they’ll try to prevent one. So that’s okay then.
Turkey may respond to the Italian attack on Libya by occupying the coast of the Italian colony of Eritrea.
Austria threatens Italy over the seeming expansion of its operations against Turkey into the vicinity of Albania, and will send some warships there, just to make its point clear.
Italy is pretending to believe that Turkey had plans to use its vast navy to attack the Italian coast and merchant ships. So Italy was justified in pre-emptively defending itself.
More monarchist uprisings in Portugal. Easily put down.
Headline of the Day -100: “Commodities Little Excited by the War.”
Obama spoke this evening at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner. I assume he dined on the flesh of his enemies. The Human Rights Campaign is a gay group, so he started off with a joke about how he had held “productive bilateral talks with your leader, Lady Gaga.” Stop trying to make jokes, Barry. Just stop.
Fox News begs to differ.
INSERT, ER, INTERJECT YOUR OWN DOUBLE ENTENDRE HERE: “you should never have to look over your shoulder -- to be gay in the United States of America.”
INTERJECT YOUR OWN DOUBLE ENTENDRE HERE: “it took two years to get the [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] repeal through Congress. (Applause.) We had to hold a coalition together. We had to keep up the pressure. We took some flak along the way.” Adding, “No one has to live a lie to serve the country they love.” I was contemplating some joke about him being a Kenyan or something when it occurred to me that somewhere along the line the phrase “serve their country” has come to mean military service exclusively.
He does keep inching closer and closer to supporting gay marriage, without ever quite doing so. Zeno’s Gay Marriage Paradox. He warned today against those trying to turn back the clock, “who, as we speak, are looking to enshrine discrimination into state laws and constitutions,” which can only mean bans on gay marriage, but I guess he wants credit for supporting marriage equality without saying words that would be used in attack ads. Sigh.
He castigates the candidates at the last debate for not criticizing the audience members who booed the gay soldier dude. “You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it’s not politically convenient.” Kind of a weird sentence, that.
Evidently progress in America “happens when a father realizes he doesn’t just love his daughter, but also her wife.” But not in a creepy way.
That said, any time Obama refers to someone in a gay marriage as a husband or wife – I believe I’ve noticed him doing so once before – it counts as a win.
“It [progress, that is] happens when a soldier tells his unit that he’s gay, and they tell him they knew it all along and they didn’t care, because he was the toughest guy in the unit.” Heh, he said “toughest guy in the unit.” Note that to be accepted, gay soldiers evidently have to be “tougher” than straight soldiers.
The Italian fleet is bombarding Tripoli.
Almost 1,000 people, one-fourth the population of Austin, Pennsylvania, are killed by flood and fire when the new, badly built dam bursts (the fire was the result of flood waters rupturing natural gas pipes). (Update: or maybe just 78 people died, according to Wikipedia.) The nearby small town of Costello is wiped out, “not a building standing on its foundation,” but a man in an automobile raced to give the town warning of the flood, arriving 3 minutes ahead of the waters, which gave most of the population time to flee into the hills.
Evidently the Southern Pacific Railroad has come out against women’s suffrage in California (referendum coming up in a couple of weeks).
Maybe someone can confirm (or refute) something I read somewhere or other, that the Saudi king’s magnanimous grant to women of the right to vote in elections in 2015 for the minority of members of mostly powerless municipal councils is subject to those women’s male owners relatives’ giving them written permission to vote?
Italy declares war on Turkey, which looks like it plans to roll over and not resist the occupation of Libya. Italian troops have landed, and Italian cruisers fired on Turkish transports.
The rest of Europe is mostly concerned with keeping the fighting localized, which may be difficult as other Ottoman provinces, including Albania and Crete, are showing signs of unrest.
The NYT notes that no one believes Italy’s pretext of disorder in Libya and danger to Italian subjects and businesses there, and says that Italy is without justification, but “The dying nations must yield as the living nations press forward, just as savage tribes in all history have been forced back or annihilated by the advance of civilization. ... If any race could set up a claim to be the Tripolitans by indigenous right it would be the Arabs” but “There is nothing national about Tripoli. She is and has been a possession, and, like a negotiable instrument, passes from hand to hand.”
In Mexico’s presidential elections tomorrow -100, men can vote at 18 if married and 21 if unmarried. Madero is for all intents and purposes unopposed.
Headline of the Day -100: “Taft in Circus Tent Ends Tour of Iowa.” Sometimes he just liked to feel pretty.
The American Federation of Catholic Societies comes out against the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Evidently, all the articles on religion weren’t written by Catholics.
Obama answered some questions from Hispanics. Asked about Cuba, he more or less said that he would lift sanctions if it released political prisoners and had human rights. What, asked one of the hosts, they could still have a socialist economy? Obama, realizing his mistake, quickly backtracked: “Well, it’s very hard to separate liberty from some economic reforms.” Everyone would have to have a right to start their own business, for example. “So some elements of freedom are included in how an economic system works.” So it’s official: Obama thinks “freedom” must include capitalism.
Not addressed: the program under which the Border Patrol now transports Mexicans caught crossing the border illegally to some other random part of the border thousands of miles away before pushing them back over the border, just to be dicks.
40,000 Italian troops are off the coast of Libya. Italy has sent an ultimatum to the Turks that unless they agree to an Italian occupation of Tripoli, Italy will occupy Tripoli.
Hah! Just kidding; I’m not gonna read David Brooks.
US Steel says that it’s not an illegal monopoly and won’t dissolve itself “either voluntarily or at the demand of the Government.”
The French battleship Liberté blows up and sinks at Toulon, the explosion also damaging several nearby battleships. 300 or so people are killed, including 200 of the crew and people on other ships and in the port.
Before:
After:
The Liberté’s captain, who was not on board when it exploded, was Louis Jaurès, whose brother Jean was leader of the Socialist Party and a pacifist MP who was assassinated a couple of days before World War I began.
President Taft gives a speech to the National Conservation Congress in Kansas City. He says that agricultural productivity must be increased if the US is to feed its ever-increasing population. But he is optimistic that the US can support the 200,000,000 Americans that he predicts might exist in 50 years, although he does not say if that’s 200 million Taft-sized Americans or the economy-sized ones.
The State Dept says it doesn’t care if Italy invades and takes over Libya, as long as American traders still have rights under the Treaty of Tripoli (1796-7).
The Denver Evening Post suggests that the Philippines be sold to Japan, since the Filipinos have proven too uncivilized to ever be given self-government.
In Belfast, a conference of Unionist leaders pledges not to acknowledge any Irish government established under Home Rule and to create a provisional government for Northern Ireland in the event of Home Rule.
Booker T. Washington charters a Pullman car for his sole use to avoid Jim Crow laws while traveling in Texas.
The NYT seems to think that in any war, Italy, with its larger, more modern navy, would definitely beat the Ottoman Empire, which has an army 1 million men larger.
The timing of the Italian move on North Africa derives from a claim that it deserves to be “compensated” for France’s achieving exclusive dominance over Morocco by being given similar status in Tripoli.
Some reverend dude giving a sermon against booze read out a letter from President Taft: “The excessive use of intoxicating liquor is the cause of great poverty and crime... Each person must determine for himself the course he will take in reference to his taste and appetites; but those who exercise the self-restraint to avoid it altogether are on the safer and wiser side.” Well, if anyone knows about exercising self-restraint, it’s William Howard Taft.
No war in Europe! France and Germany agree on Africa carve-up: France gets Morocco, with safeguards for German businesses, and Germany gets 150,000 square miles of the French Congo. Germans are evidently pretty pissed off at Britain for siding with France, which ensured that Germany didn’t get nearly as much out of its gunboat diplomacy as it expected.
War in Europe? Italy prepares two army corps and a naval squadron for war with the Ottoman Empire over Libya.
Headline of the Day -100: “New York Too Gay For Tampa Sheriff.” A Tampa deputy – nicknamed Babe – arrived to take an embezzler back to Florida, but decided to have a little fun on the town first. More than a week later, Tampa had to send another deputy, a teetotaler this time, to bail out the first deputy and bring them both back.
I couldn’t find a transcript for the Republican debate last night, so I thought I was off the hook but oh look, here it is, sigh. The debate was sponsored by Google and the Florida Republican Party. Make your own joke about old people and computers.
Perry brags of tort reform that “told personal injury trial lawyers, don’t come to Texas”. Evidently no personal injury trial lawyers are Texans, they all sneak in from elsewhere, possibly Mexico.
234 EXECUTIONS? Perry: “People understand that the state of Texas, during the last decade, something special happened there.”
Romney says Obama has hurt the middle class, but when asked to define where the category of the rich begins, absolutely refused: “I don’t try and define who’s -- who’s rich and who’s not rich,” adding, but if you buy a McMansion as a vacation home, then knock it down to build a bigger one, you might just be... a completely regular guy, who’s middle class just like you. JUST. LIKE. YOU.
Asked how much people should pay in taxes, Michele Bachmann said zero. “You should get to keep every dollar that you earn. ... Obviously, we have to give money back to the government so that we can run the government, but we have to have a completely different mindset. And that mindset is, the American people are the genius of this economy. It certainly isn’t government that’s the genius.” Um, right.
Oh, and Obama has “destroyed the economy.”
Santorum wants to ban collective bargaining by public-sector unions.
Gingrich opposes extending unemployment benefits without mandatory “training.” “I believe deeply, people should not get money for doing nothing,” adding that he prefers giving people Tiffany jewelry in exchange for blowjobs.
Perry: “For those people that are approaching Social Security, they don’t have anything in the world to worry about,” adding, except for their approaching deaths, of course.
Romney and Perry each accuse the other of retreating from things they wrote in their own books. Next week, they’ll be discussing The Bridges of Madison County. Romney adds, “And I believe that the people of this country can read my book and see exactly what it is,” adding, except for people who went to school in Texas, obviously.
Governor Romney, is Obama a socialist? He won’t say, but “what President Obama is, is a big-spending liberal. And he takes his political inspiration from Europe and from the socialist democrats in Europe. Guess what? Europe isn’t working in Europe. It’s not going to work here.” Remember, Romney knows all about Europe, from all that time he spent failing to get French people to convert to Mormonism.
Romney makes a widdle joke: “I only spent four years as a governor. I didn’t inhale.” Really, the RomneyBot’s manufacturers should have made him more life-like.
Santorum, near as I can make him out, calls for the abolition of state education, because it interferes with parental responsibility to educate their children.
Everyone is against the federal government having any role in education whatsoever. Most say they would shut down the Department of Education, no one says they would keep it open. And they want school choice and vouchers.
Romney says the talk about smaller classrooms being a good thing is just propaganda by the teachers’ unions. He says as president he will stand up to the national teachers’ unions, which is odd because he just said that we need to get the federal government out of education.
Romney says he “just can’t follow” Perry’s argument that children of undocumented aliens should be educated. He calls it a magnet.
Perry says “if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” risking offending the largest constituency in the Republican party, those without hearts.
Romney on Israel: “You don’t allow an inch of space to exist between you and your friends and allies.” Kinky. “The right course -- if you disagree with an ally, you talk about it privately. But in public, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your allies.” So foreign policy should be secretive and hypocritical and hidden from the American people. No change there, then.
Oo, a hypothetical, everyone loves a hypothetical: what would you do if the Pakistan’s nuclear weapons fell into the hands of the Taliban. Perry says that he would already have built “a relationship in that region,” which Obama hasn’t. What, military aid and drone attacks aren’t a relationship?
Perry refers to Pakistan as “the Pakistani country.”
Also, he’d sell weapons to India. And Taiwan. Because that would totally help if the Taliban got nukes.
Santorum thinks we should establish relationships with exiled President Musharraf, and then would respond to the hypothetical, which he reinterprets as a Taliban coup in Pakistan, by invading Pakistan and re-installing Musharraf as dictator.
THIS IS MY RIFLE, THIS IS MY GUN: After the famous booing by the audience of the gay soldier, Santorum said: “I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military.” Except jerking off to prisoners of war stacked in naked human pyramids, obviously. “And the fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to -- to -- and removing ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’ I think tries to inject social policy into the military.” (Heh, he said “inject”). Pretending that gay people don’t exist and ordering them to repress evidence of their sexuality is, I guess, somehow, not injecting social policy into the military. Note that Santorum stalled out when he tried to say what “special privilege” gay people would be getting. He said said that in the future, “we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past. Which was, sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue. Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual.” (Heh, he said keep “it” to yourself.)
Ron Paul: “nobody can out-do me on respect for life. I’ve spent a lifetime dealing with life.”
Applause line:
WALLACE: Mr. Cain, you are a survivor of stage 4 colon and liver cancer. And you say, if Obamacare had been...
(APPLAUSE)
Given how the audiences at these things have been behaving, I can only assume that they were applauding stage 4 colon and liver cancer.
Bachmann denies ever having said that the HPV vaccine causes retardation. “I didn’t make that claim nor did I make that statement.” She adds that Perry “gave parental rights to a big drug company.”
HOW PERRY WILL ALWAYS ERR: Perry says he “erred on the side of life” and he will always err on the side of life.
WHAT NO OTHER PEOPLE ON EARTH DO: Romney: “We place our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. No other people on Earth do that.”
WAY TO MAKE FUN OF A DUDE WITH ALZHEIMER’S, FROTHY: Santorum: “The last words Ronald Reagan said as president of the United States in his farewell address, he was concerned about the future of our country because we were forgetting who we were, didn’t remember what America was really all about.”
Johnson made a dog shit joke.
Asked who among the other candidates they’d pick as their running mate, Johnson said Paul, Santorum said Gingrich, Gingrich called the question a “Hollywood game,” adding, “I don’t have any idea who I would pick as the vice presidential nominee.” He’s really thought through this whole running-for-president thing, hasn’t he? Perry indulges in some slash fiction: “I don’t know how you would do this, but if you could take Herman Cain and mate him up with Newt Gingrich, I think you would have a couple of really interesting guys to work with.” Um, right. Paul, Romney and Bachmann refuse to answer, or to say who they’d like to see pair up. Huntsman says he’d pick Cain, because they have similar taste in ties (yellow).
Bellicose Headline of the Day -100: “Italian Navy Ready for War.” With Turkey if it refuses to let Italy establish a “protectorate” over Libya (as they did not then call the Ottoman province of Tripoli).
Thomas Edison is enjoying a vacation in Germany. He declares himself feeling much improved. Not so improved is the child his car ran over and killed (the report does not say if he was driving).
At an air show or county fair or something in Troy, Ohio, aviator Frank Miller, who had been reluctant to go up in a malfunctioning airplane, is shamed into it by the crowd calling him a coward. The plane’s engine cut out and then exploded and Miller was “burned to a crisp” mid-air. But at least he wasn’t a coward.
In a speech in Peoria, President Taft admits that he never wanted to be president, he wanted to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. What an odd thing for someone hoping to be re-elected in a year to say out loud.
