Hmmm

What does it mean that the White House issued the proclamation for World Hepatitis Day the day after World Hepatitis Day?

Wailing? I’d rather be sailing.

Romney at the Western Wall.

“Yes, it has the right amount of wailing.”

“They’ll never find my tax records here.”

This is, of course, a CAPTION CONTEST.

Today -100: July 29, 1912: Of race riots and explorers

Race riot (or race war, according to the LA Times) in Plainville, Georgia. Evidently last week a white boy was hit with a stone, which naturally led to violence yesterday. All the negroes were driven out of the town (which is majority-black), and the sheriff was sent for. His posse was ambushed and the sheriff shot. Developing.

President Taft is such a bystander in his own re-election campaign that I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t, until now, made any response to Roosevelt’s claim that the Republican convention was stolen. Well, now, rather belatedly, he has. It’s not very interesting.

Explorer Capt. Ejnar Mikkelsen and his engineer have returned from three years in the Arctic (Greenland), most of that time waiting for someone to rescue them (a Norwegian fishing, or possibly whaling, ship, in fact). His message: the Arctic really really sucks.

Today -100: July 28, 1912: Of the foulest of liars

Another lively, um, primary debate, in South Carolina. Gov. Coleman Blease accuses Southern Railroad of having employed the son of Ira Jones to influence his father when he was chief justice of the SC Supreme Court. Ira Jones calls Blease the “foulest of liars” and rushes him. Partisans of both sides whip out their guns. The police chief pulls his revolver and jumps between Jones and Blease, threatening to shoot the first one who made a hostile move.

It would be great if we could just leave it at that

Seeing certain elements of the internet delighting in The Sun’s dubbing Romney “Mitt the Twit,” I had to look up when I first started calling him Twitt Romney. August 14, 2007, it was. In that post, I reported a line snapped by Romney at reporters: “I’m pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that.” I responded: “Really, would everybody just stop asking Romney any questions about his positions on issues, he doesn’t like it.” And nothing in his campaigning style has changed since then.


I’ve been looking for another old post, without success. I could swear that sometime in 2000, I drew up a list of unanswered questions about George Bush – where was he when he was supposed to be in Alabama in the Air National Guard, did he take cocaine, how many times was he stopped for DUIs, etc etc – and that months later, right before the election, I re-ran the post (except I can’t find that one either), noting that none of the questions had been answered and, indeed, almost none had ever been put directly to Bush himself. So no, it’s not inevitable that Mittens will be forced to release his tax returns.

Today -100: July 27, 1912: Of correctives and antidotes, and stews

Theodore Roosevelt says his address to the National Progressive Party convention next month will be “a corrective of socialism and an antidote to anarchy.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Roosevelt in a Stew on the Negro Question.” That is, he thinks he can win in a few Southern states, but not if he treats negroes like human beings (Southern racists still haven’t forgiven him for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House that one time).

Today -100: July 26, 1912: Of battleships, visible governors, and the electric chair

During parliamentary discussions over the proposed increase in naval spending, Prime Minister Asquith says Britain has no quarrel with Germany, it just doesn’t want anyone messing with its shit, which is half the world. Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey says that the arms race will increase the prospect of peace, because it will make everyone realize just how jolly expensive a war would be. So that’s all right then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Wilson To Be Visible For Just Two Hours.”

Georgia’s Bull Moose party holds a convention to nominate delegates to the national convention, but splits into two competing conventions over the “negro question.”

The electoral laws in many states did not really anticipate a situation where a third party springs up overnight out of an existing party after the primary but before the general election. This means that fights over ballot access and control over electors are developing in state after state. Roosevelt started out wanting to build his third party as a new independent party rather than a Republican splinter party, so that he could appeal to progressives of both the Democratic and Republican variety. In practice, though, in states where his followers control the Republican party machine, he is now willing to compromise and support Republican candidates (such as in Minnesota), if they support his presidential electors. In the Minnesota deal, the existing Republican electors would all resign and become Progressive electors by petition, and the Tafties would have to find new electors.

For 22 years, NY state has been executing people, 155 of them, in the electric chair, at a cost of $65,000+. An electrician charges $250 per execution (his assistant gets $50), plus travel and lodging.

Today -100: July 25, 1912: Of serpents and battleships

Novelist H. Rider Haggard reports that his daughter saw a sea serpent off Lowestoft, England.

US House Dems refuse to fund the two battleships a year the Taft administration wants built, despite the escalating German-British naval arms race and the alarming increase in sea serpents.

The first international Eugenics Congress opens in London.

Today -100: July 24, 1912: Of ships

Following Churchill’s announcement of an increase in Britain’s warship-building, the NYT says the US really needs to build more warships too, in case there’s a naval war with Germany or something.

Exercises

A paywalled Ha’aretz article reports that Israel will demolish eight Palestinian villages, claiming the IDF needs the land for training exercises. And what are they training for? I’m guessing they’re training to evict Palestinians from their villages. Circle of life.

Today -100: July 23, 1912: More rum, more sodomy, more lashes

Britain: First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill calls for more naval spending and ship-building to counter that of Germany.

Today -100: July 22, 1912: Of doctors’ strikes

The British Medical Association breaks off negotiations with Lloyd George over what the fee should be to handle National Insurance patients. And the BMA says that if any doctors accept the governments blackleg (that’s British for scab) rates, they will be ostracized socially by all respectable doctors.

Today -100: July 21, 1912: Of slanderous eruptions and wolves

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease again denounces the investigation into his alleged corruption; he is also not happy with the “slanderous eruptions from the impure mind, foul mouth, and slanderous pen of Tom Felder” and with the man running against him for governor, former Chief Justice Ira Jones, who is “a cowardly liar.”

Such a great orator, isn’t he? He won an oratorical contest when he was a student at South Carolina University, which resulted in him no longer being a student at South Carolina University when they discovered he’d plagiarized it.

Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico are to cooperate in wiping out the wolf population of the region.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Negro May Lead Harvard.” The Harvard track team, anyway.

Today -100: July 20, 1912: Of transportation

Portugal, having defeated the abortive monarchist uprising, is deporting royalists to the colonies. Very retro of them.

Without incident

Texas is experimenting with executing people using a single drug. I say experimenting although it’s a little hard to ask executed prisoners if it really did kill them more painfully than the old three-drug executions. Not a lot of scientific method, is what I’m saying.

Anyhoo, Texas claims the first execution using this method, performed Wednesday on Yokamon Hearn, was “carried off without incident.”

Unless you count the state of Texas killed a retarded dude as an “incident.”

Blog fail

Well, I tried:

1) Came up with “We, the ‘you people,’” googled it, found lots of people had already thought of it.

2) Texas state’s attorney John Hughes, defending voter i.d. law, told the court it’s not a big deal that some Texans would be forced to go 100 miles in each direction to obtain the i.d. Tried to find his phone number so Texans could ask him for a ride, since it’s not a big deal, but couldn’t find it.

3) Yesterday someone in his audience told Romney that Obama is a monster. The newspapers reported that Romney “disagreed” with her, but he actually said “That’s not a term I would use,” which is not the same as disagreeing. Anyway, I was thinking of having an “Obama’s not a monster, but if he were, what sort of monster would he be” contest, like I did with Hillary four years ago, but decided meh.

Today -100: July 19, 1912: Of hatchets and pusso alliances

Alma Belmont opens a women’s suffrage headquarters in Newport, Rhode Island, so it was obviously necessary that the NYT describe, in detail, what she was wearing.

British Prime Minister Asquith is in Dublin. A suffragette throws a hatchet at his carriage & others try to burn down the Theatre Royal a day before he is due to speak there.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “PUSSO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE?; Expected Outcome of Prince Katsura’s Visit to St. Petersburg.” Probably some weird anime thing.

Today -100: July 18, 1912: Of transformations

Mathematician Henri Poincaré dies at 58.

No worthy person

David Brooks complains that Obama’s anti-Bain Capital ad involves “the assumption that no worthy person would do what most global business leaders have been doing for the past half-century.”

Yes. Quite. And your point is?

(Incidentally, the complaint that Romney isn’t defending capitalism and out-sourcing properly, because surely everyone would agree that What’s Good for Bain Capital is Good for the Yoo Ess Ay if it were only explained to them slowly and using short words, is the exact mirror image of the complaint that Obama is failing to explain ObamaCare properly.)

Today -100: July 17, 1912: Of worrying insurance and buffaloes

The NYT says National Insurance is “worrying Britain.” A Mrs. Robinson Guffy has fired her 8 servants in protest at having to pay their insurance under ObamaLloyd George-care, and is trying to keep her 15-room house (and the garden) (and a stable full of horses) all by herself. I’m sure everyone’s hearts went out to Mrs. Robinson Guffy, in the extremely unlikely event that she wasn’t just made up by a Tory newspaper.

Headline of the Day -100: “Aviator Latham Slain by Buffalo.”