Today -100: August 3, 1912: Of gunboats, harbors, black bull moose, and lepers

Revolution in Nicaragua, again. Taft sends a gunboat, as is traditional.

Remember the baseless panic about the Japanese supposedly secretly buying Magdalena Bay in Mexico? The Senate has voted to expand the Monroe Doctrine to oppose any harbor in the Western Hemisphere falling into the hands of any corporation or association connected to foreign powers (except for the US, of course). During the discussion, one (unnamed) senator suggested leveraging US claims for compensation for damage from the two Mexican revolutions to force Mexico to give us Baja California.

The only Bull Moosers that they could find in South Carolina willing to be delegates to the national convention were black. So... there will be no South Carolina delegates to the national convention. There will be competing black and white delegations from Miss., Alabama and Georgia.

Who knew so much of the talk about the new third party would revolve around race? Certainly not Theodore Roosevelt, who tries to explain how he’s really a great friend of the negro in a letter – and I swear to god I’m not making this up – to Uncle Remus Magazine. He says he’s in favor of treating all men the same. He says that in the South the Democrats have maintained their power by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black, while the Republican machine has tried to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man. In fact, it was the corrupt black delegates to the 1912 Republican convention, by “their own greed for money or office” (i.e., their support for Taft and the party establishment), who brought about the split in the party. And as long as the parties in the South exploit race in the way he describes, we can’t “secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence, integrity, and self-respect which justify such right of political expression in his white neighbor.” So anyway, the exclusion of negro delegates from the South from the Bull Moose convention is really for the benefit of negroes, the end.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Leper Worrying Denver.”

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When Ann Romney says...

that a certain family member is “consistent and elegant,” “did not disappoint” and “thrilled me to death,” you can be pretty sure she is not talking about her husband.

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For those majoring in crazy and/or meatheadedness

If you were a student of one of these Southern Californian universities, I’m not sure which would be more worrying to read in today’s LA Times:

1) A pharmaceutical sciences professor at UC Irvine (his UCI faculty page only misspells pharmaceutical once) set several fires and planned to get “a dozen machine guns” to shoot up the high school attended by his son, who committed suicide.

2) USC will establish a think tank in association with well-known thinker Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sez the former governator, “It would be a shame to think what I learned from my governorship over seven years … ways of solving problems — will now be left behind and no one will benefit.” Yup, that would be a shame all right.

Oh lord, USC will make him a professor of state and global policy. And “The university is also in discussions with Schwarzenegger to house his personal collection at the institute.” Personal collection of what, the LAT does not explain. The mind boggles, really.

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Today -100: August 2, 1912: Of race and progress

Blacks in Mississippi hold their own Bull Moose convention separate from the white convention and elect their own delegates to the Chicago convention.

Roosevelt sanctions the exclusion of negro delegates to the national “Progressive” Party convention from the Southern states, but he tries to position it as a principled position, to prevent a situation like that at the Republican Convention, where black delegates from the Democratic South represented no one, there being no functioning R party there, and were used as fodder by the national party establishment. There will be black delegates from the North, he says, a fair number of them in fact.

At the White House, Taft gives a speech accepting the nomination. He is against socialism. I mean, if you were wondering about that. He admits that certain douchebags have accumulated “ill-gotten wealth,” but says the best way to deal with this is “to await the diminution of this evil by natural causes”. He says Wilson and Roosevelt’s policies both lead to “appropriation of what belongs to one man to another.” He is also against Progressive reform of political institutions, because the American people are too lazy to handle referenda and recalls and so on.

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Today -100: August 1, 1912: Of third parties and Prince Alberts

The nascent Bull Moose/Progressive Party is looking to be an ill-thought-out mess. The problem is that it’s not clear whether it’s intended to be simply a vehicle for Roosevelt’s ambitions or a real third-party, and until that’s clear few people are willing to commit to it. The man the party intended to run for attorney general in Illinois, for example, State Sen. Albert Isley, refuses to run, saying there is no need for a third party.

Former House Speaker Joseph Cannon pops in to the White House offices to ask if he needs to wear his Prince Albert to the ceremonies notifying Taft of his re-nomination. Um, right.

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Today -100: July 31, 1912: Of race riots, supremacist progressives, and electrifying defectives

The British inquiry into the Titanic sinking blames it on the ship going too fast. And not keeping a proper watch (although it didn’t rule that binoculars are necessary in the future). It says there was no discrimination against third-class passengers in the evacuation.

Oh good, more race riots. 1) At a brick yard in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Weapons of choice: razors and bricks.

2) And in Fordyce, Arkansas, where the state national guard raided the negro neighborhood for unknown reasons.

Asked about his Progressive Party being organized in the South on a lily-white basis, Theodore Roosevelt totally wimps out, saying he has nothing to do with it, and it’s up to the guys who organize it in the South who they want to invite to their state conventions.

Worrying Headline of the Day -100: “Electricity for Defectives.” The NY Board of Education is being asked to try out a wacky idea of Nicola Tesla’s to test whether putting wires with high-frequency currents in the walls of classrooms containing “defective” children will improve them in some way. What could go wrong?

He’s making less and less effort to disguise his contempt

Romney’s claim in Israel that the Israeli (Jews) are richer than Palestinians because of their superior “culture” and the “hand of Providence” is nothing special. It’s just a Middle East variant of his belief that poor people are poor because they are big ol’ losers. Just like, according to Mittens in the same speech, Mexicans and Ecuadorans.

Today -100: July 30, 1912: Of mikados, race issues and race wars

Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito dies after a reign of 45 years.

Headline of the Day -100: “Race Issue Bothers Taft.” Some negroes, including the two in his administration, are pressing for the appointment of one Ulysses Mason as collector of internal revenue for northern Alabama. (Taft will go with a white dude instead.)

Nothing further on yesterday’s report of race riot/war in Georgia, but there is a fatuous NYT editorial which suggests that such stories are always fakes and that blacks in the South are actually “living in fairly prosperous circumstances... do not care particularly about political questions... and, while the race wars are raging in the dispatches, keep on making more corn and cotton than they can sell at the prices they would like.” So that’s okay then.

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.