A lot of things that aren’t accurate

Yesterday (but airing today), George Stephanopoulos interviewed Romney.

Walking slightly back his attack on the tweets by the US embassy in Cairo, he now suggests the problem isn’t that they were issued after the attack on the embassy as he first falsely claimed, but that they “stayed up on their website for, I think, 14-15 hours.” So he’s complaining that while mobs were attacking the embassy, the embassy staff wasn’t editing its Twitter account.

He suggests that he said the statement (tweet) was “inappropriate” (I seem to recall that the actual word he used was “disgraceful”) and that the White House also thought it was “inappropriate” (although he initially attributed it to “the Obama administration,” which by the transitive property states that the White House condemned itself, in total agreement with Romney’s condemnation of it. Who said there’s no agreement in politics any more?

Mittens repeats the word “inappropriate” over and over (including “not appropriate,” 9 times during the interview), and can I just say how annoying I find the use of that condescending, nanny-scold word by pretty much fucking everyone?

He says that Obama’s comment that Romney “shoots first and aims later” is just “politics.” As opposed to whatever it is he thinks he’s been doing.

He says he never intends to see Ed Wood’s Life of Brian and “the idea of using something that some people consider sacred and then parading that out a negative way is...” wait for it.... “simply inappropriate and wrong.” And fuck you Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

He thinks people should never offend other peoples’ faiths. As opposed to knocking at their doors at dinner time to tell them that their religion is wrong and would you like a free copy of the Book of Mormon.

He wants “to bring Egypt closer to us. I think it’s important for them to understand that it’s an advantage to have a close relationship with the United States”. Just ask Mubarak, the dictator we armed and help keep in power for decades. Egypt, he says, “is the heart of the Arab world.” Except for not being Arabs. And he wants to keep them as an ally, by which he means, “I would do virtually everything in my power to make sure they understand what the requirements are to remain an ally of the United States”. Funny how the “requirements” are all on one side.

Asked what his “red line” would be for Iran (another country for whom the requirements are all on one side), he says “Well, my red line is Iran may not have a nuclear weapon. It is...” wait for it... “inappropriate for them to have the capacity to terrorize the world.” UnfitMitt (© Watertiger, I think) doesn’t seem to understand what everyone else means by red lines in this context, which is the steps well shy of having a nuclear weapon (centrifuges, enrichment to a certain level, etc) that would cause us to attack.

He says he wouldn’t reappoint Ben Bernanke. Of course Bernanke’s term doesn’t expire until 2014, so that could get a little awkward.

He won’t raise taxes on middle-income people, which he helpfully defines for us as “$200,000 to $250,000 and less.”

He refuses to say which deductions he’d eliminate because “I’ve found that you have to work with the people across the aisle. ... So if I’d have come out and said, ‘Here this is my bill. This is the way I want it,’ you’d never get it done. You lay out your principles.” So he’s laying out principles rather than a plan, except he earlier referred to it as “my plan... my tax plan... my plan”.

Little George brings up a stupid poll question ABC asked, “Who would you rather have dinner with?” No one wants to have dinner with Mittens, probably because they find unicorn meat to be too gamey. George asks what dinner would be like at the Romney home, and evidently it involves his grandchildren climbing all over you and throwing food across the table, like anyone believes Mittens would tolerate that sort of behaviour for a minute. But note that in his attempt to make himself more likeable, he doesn’t say a thing about himself but about the genetically perfect clone-babies.

What will Obama do to him during the debates? “Well I think he’s going to say a lot of things that aren’t accurate. ... But I think the challenge that I’ll have in the debate is that the president tends to, how shall I say it...” Yes, Mitt, how will you say it? “...to say things that aren’t true.”

During debates, Ann is always in the front row, “I look and see her. Typically, her eyes are down. She’s more nervous in the debates than I am.” And certainly not from shame at all.

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Today -100: September 14, 1912: Of happy wilsons, claims, seppukus (if that is the correct plural), scandals, and forcible bathing

Headline of the Day -100: “Wilson Boyishly Happy.” A major squabble between him and NY Gov. John Dix, who he denounces as a tool of Tammany, which is fair enough.

Mexico rejects the Manning & Mackintosh claim, but they don’t explain what it’s about either. I suspect no one really knows.

Count Nogi Maresuke, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and former governor-general of Taiwan, commits seppuku to coincide with the funeral of the emperor. The same emperor had refused him permission to kill himself in atonement for the loss of life during the siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. Nogi’s wife also kills herself.

Nogi will now pass into history as some sort of super-bushido, the epitome of Japanese military somethingorother. Not sure what this makes his wife.

The US State Department is not quite sure how to respond to a patriotic ritual suicide. Condolences? Congratulations?

Unhelpful Headline of the Day -100: “Scandal Attacks English Statesman.” Specifically, “a prominent and much-hated leader.” The article goes on for some length but fails to name him (Lloyd George?)

Last month, the British Medical Journal had an article by several pro-suffrage doctors which denied the British governments claim that the forcible feeding of hunger-striking suffrage prisoners was not dangerous and painful. Today, the Lancet responds by publishing a parody of that report by a Dr. Charles Mercier. Evidently finding hilarious and unbelievable the idea that forcible feeding fails in its objective of providing adequate nutrition, his article is entitled “Preliminary Report on the Forcible Bathing of Prisoners,” which purports to find that dirt actually adheres more readily to the forcibly bathed etc etc. Hilarious.

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Today -100: September 13, 1912: Of majors and federation all round

A Charles C. Young is believed to be the first black major in the US Army (and the only black graduate of West Point). He is the military attaché to Liberia.

In what the London Times describes as his “annual visit to his constituents in Dundee”, Winston Churchill proposes several local English parliaments, “federation all round.” Much heckling of the speech by suffragettes. Actually, you can pretty much take that as read for any speech by any cabinet minister for the next two years.

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I don’t think that we ever hesitate

Twitt Romney spoke this morning (always a mistake).

ESPECIALLY ANN: “OH, I’M STILL MARRIED TO THAT DOUCHE: “Americans woke up this morning with tragic news”.

He refers to the “attack in our embassy in Benghazi,” suggesting he’s still not paying much attention to the actual facts (it was the consulate).

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING IF AMERICA WILL TOLERATE ATTACKS AGAINST OUR CITIZENS AND OUR EMBASSIES (AND CONSULATES): “America will not tolerate attacks against our citizens and our embassies.”

WHAT HE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN: “We have confidence in our cause of America.”

SPEAKING OF STANDING BY STATEMENTS... “I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions.” This is a Dubya-like inability to admit having gotten even the tiniest thing just the tiniest bit wrong.

DUNNO, I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON MYSELF: “It’s never too early for The United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.”

SPEAKING OF SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL... “America leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don’t spin out of control.”

THAT’S A LONG FUCKING SPRING: “Over the last several years we’ve stood witness to an Arab Spring...”

SEE IF YOU CAN SPOT THE KEY WORD IN THIS NEXT BIT: “...that presents an opportunity for a more peaceful and prosperous region but it also possess the potential for peril if the voices of extremism and violence are allowed to control the course of events.” The key word is “allowed.” By us.


SO HE’S AGAINST SEASONS NOW: “We must strive to ensure that the Arab Spring does not become an Arab Winter.”

Then he condemned the US embassy in Egypt for its tweet against Ed Wood’s Life of Brian. They “stand in apology for our values. ...An apology for America’s values is never the right course.” To be fair, stupid, offensive films kind of are our values. He later called the embassy’s or possibly the administration’s statements on the film “disgraceful.”

Did he maybe just a little jump the gun yesterday, speaking before he had all the facts? “I don’t think that we ever hesitate when we see something which is a violation of our principles.”


HEY, HIS FOREIGN POLICY HAS THREE BRANCHES. JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T THINK IT HAD BRANCHES AND WAS JUST A BUNCH OF SLOGANS: “I think president Obama has demonstrated a lack of clarity as to the foreign policy. My foreign policy has three fundamental branches. First, confidence in our cause, a recognition that the principles America was based upon are not something we shrink from or apologize for. That we stand for those principles. The second is clarity in our purpose, which is that when we have a foreign policy objective we describe it honestly and clearly to the American people, to Congress and to the people of the world. And number three is resolve in our might.”

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The first response of the United States must be outrage

Romney on the killings of the ambassador to Libya and others: “When our grounds are being attacked, being breached, the first response of the United States must be outrage.”

Evidently, as the rest of his remarks indicate, the first response of the United States must be outrage against Barack Obama.

Prick.

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What all the fuss is about

Here’s the 14-excruciatly-bad-minutes-long trailer for the movie about Mohamed that’s causing all the rioting. Sort of an Ed Wood’s Life of Brian. The movie that dares to ask the question, was the Prophet Mohamed a top or a bottom?

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Today -100: September 12, 1912: Of Balkans, and missing suffragettes

Bulgaria is threatening to go to war with Turkey unless Macedonia is given autonomy.

British suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst has surfaced in Paris, from where she will general the Women’s Social and Political Union. She can’t be extradited because the charges against her are political, not criminal.

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Today -100: September 11, 1912: Of lynchings, janitors, old soldiers, and corsets

A mob in Cumming, Georgia lynches a black man.

The US allows Mexico to send troops through US territory to fight rebels in Sonora.

It’s illegal in California for schools to hire Japanese janitors, according to the LAT.

With a retirement, there remains but one Civil War veteran on active service in the US Army, Col. John Clem (he was a 13-year-old drummer boy when the war ended).

Headline of the Day -100: “Corsets Fatal to Him.” An English amateur actor dies of asphyxia.

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Today -100: September 10, 1912: Of interventions, contributions, and winstons

Taking the hint from all that intervention talk, Mexican President Madero diverts troops away from fighting the rebels to go protect Americans in the north.

The DNC releases the list of its contributors. Corporations are not allowed to contribute.

The Bull Moose Party will run Winston Churchill for governor of New Hampshire. Not that Winston Churchill, some other Winston Churchill, a novelist, no relation. So we’re meant to believe another Mr. and Mrs. Churchill randomly named their kid Winston. Fine, that’s totally believable.

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Today -100: September 9, 1912: Of intervention, Romneys, and legs

There is increasing talk of the US intervening in Mexico.

The Senate sub-committee on Mexico hears from the head of the now abandoned Mormon colony in Mexico (one Junius Romney, Mitt’s grand-dad) that the Mexican rebels want the US to intervene in the revolution, and that rebels are demanding Americans in Mexico surrender their arms.

Heartwarming Story of the Day -100: Peter Waltar of Wilkesbarre, PA, was run down by a trolley and his left leg amputated. And who was in the very next hospital bed? His son, who had been in some sort of freight train accident and had just had both legs amputated.

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Today -100: September 8, 1912: Of hatchets, claims, race riots, lynchings, and short ballots

Margot Asquith, the prime minister’s wife, was hoping for a souvenir: the hatchet thrown by suffragettes at her husband’s coach in Dublin. But it’s in the hands of the court.

The State Dept won’t push the $100 million Manning & Mackintosh claim on Mexico, mostly because they don’t have any idea what it’s about either, I’m guessing.

Vice President Sherman “laughed” over the story that he’s so sick he may have to decline renomination, saying, “You will find my name on the Republican ticket on the 5th of November.” True. Also, the obituaries page.

A “race riot” begins in Brownsville, Brooklyn, when a negro pulls the whiskers of an elderly white man waiting for a train.

After the attempted cross-border horse-stealing incident, Taft has ordered troops to the Mexico-Texas border. And Treasury has authorized the export of 500 rifles & 150,000 cartridges to Mexico for Americans to use to protect themselves and their property.

A black man is lynched in Princeton, West Virginia, after an attack on a white girl, although he bore no resemblance beyond gender and race to the description of the victim. Gov. Glasscock says he will prosecute the lynch mob, and being Glasscock, the un-Blease as it were, it might even be true.

The NYT prints a not hugely interesting letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt of Hyde Park in favor of the short ballot (removing offices like attorney general, controller, state engineer etc from the NY ballot and making them appointive).

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Today -100: September 7, 1912: Of suicides, horses, claims, bull moosers, and altitude

The Paris authorities refuse to allow a Monsieur Paul Robin to be cremated, because he committed suicide. That’ll show him.

Mexican rebels cross the border to steal some horses from the US 3rd Cavalry. It does not end well for them.

For 50 years Mexico has been contesting something called the Manning & Mackintosh claim, first with Britain, and now with the US, or the syndicate which now owns the claim. Claim for what, the article never explains, but the syndicate is demanding $100 million from Mexico, including interest. Maybe Mexico knows what they’re on about.

Much of the Taft-Roosevelt fight is taking place in the courts. A US Circuit Court just refused to kick 8 Roosevelt electors off the Republican ballot in Kansas.

The New York Bull Moose Party convention nominates for governor Oscar Straus, TR’s secretary of commerce and labor (the first-ever Jewish cabinet member) and former ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

A new altitude record is set by Roland Garros in France, 16,240 feet. At which point his engine cut out and he had to glide to earth.

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In which I try to live-blog Obama’s convention speech, but completely lose interest and sputter to a halt

He starts off being a dick to Malia and Sasha. Yes, they have to go to school in the morning.

And he accepts the nomination. Should have let some suspense build.

His grandmother worked in a ‘bama assembly line in World War II?

(Sorry, got bored and went to the kitchen to make myself an egg cream. In honor of our first black president, I used too much chocolate syrup.)

Climate change is not a hoax. Oddly enough, it’s a pun.

I was more amused than I should have been by the woman holding the “Forward” sign upside down.

It’s not a proper egg cream without Fox’s U-Bet, by the way.

“My opponent and his running mate are... new to foreign policy.” “Cold war mind warp.”

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Biden’s convention speech, literally

Biden begins by complaining that Jill didn’t accept his marriage proposal until the fifth time.

FOR EXAMPLE, OBAMA NOW KNOWS THAT MY FIRST NAME IS JOE. “We’ve learned a lot about one another.”

THAT WORD, IT DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS: “the enormity of his heart”

Biden keeps saying “Barack” because he’s totally on first-name terms with him.


UNLESS YOU’RE VICE PRESIDENT, OBVIOUSLY. A job is about much more than a paycheck.

WHO LET BIDEN IN HERE? At every critical meeting, Barack asks the one fundamental question.

LIKE A TRANSFORMER? “My dad was an automobile man.”

Fine, he doesn’t know what literally means either.

Romney looked at the auto bailout “the Bain Way.” Good one.

Oh, it took this long to get to the dancing-on-bin-Laden’s-watery-grave portion of the speech.

Killing bin Laden was about “healing an almost unbearable wound in America’s heart.” Sigh.

Oh fer fuck’s sake, he gets the crowd to chant “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”


He keeps saying literally, wrongly.

It literally amazes him.

“We have no intention of downsizing the American dream.” Or the big gulp. Lookin’ at you, Bloomberg.

Fallen angels, is that what we’re calling dead soldiers now?

NOT FIGURATIVELY: “The direction we turn is not figuratively, it’s literally in your hands.”

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Today -100: September 6, 1912: Of deceivers and lieutenant generals

Harriot Stanton Blatch complains that Roosevelt and the Progressives did nothing to assist the women’s suffrage amendment in Ohio. “I went out there with an open mind, but I found that men are deceivers ever.”

Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, former governor-general of the Philippines, dies of complications of having a hilarious name. Actually, he dropped dead while reliving the glory days of the Civil War in a speech to a veterans’ group. He was, of course, Douglas MacArthur’s father. And the last person to hold the rank of lt. gen., which was abolished.

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Today -100: September 5, 1912: Of constitutions, new lawns, phonographs, and cattle-maiming

Ohio voters vote on no fewer than 42 constitutional amendments, passing 34. Women’s suffrage, however, lost 249,420 to 336,876. One to remove the word “white” from the definition of citizens eligible to vote also lost, 242,735 to 265,693, although blacks were in fact able to vote both before and after 1912, despite an 1868 law imposing heavy punishments for their doing so (the word “white” was removed in 1923). An amendment to end capital punishment also lost. Winning amendments include the initiative and referendum, preferential primaries, ending poll taxes, a minimum wage, and something about licensing saloons, which is of course the only one most people cared about.

The NY Times doesn’t like the amendments that won, saying “Ohio could not have done worse if the women had voted.”

Caroline Riley of the National Suffrage Association blames the defeat of women’s suffrage in Ohio on the combined forces of the “grafters, boodlers, monopolists, machine politicians, gamblers, white slavers, and others of that class.” You know, men.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100: “FACTORY TO QUIT OHIO.; Shoe Company Official Declares the New Lawn Will Drive It Out.” Laws, that is. The shoe guy cites the initiative and referendum, but of course it’s really about the minimum wage thing.

Headline of the Day -100: “Edison Forgets to Sleep.” He’s working on perfecting the iPod disc record.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is interested in cattle-maiming. That is all.

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Today -100: September 4, 1912: Of vasectomies, and waitresses at Chinese restaurants

The Washington State Supreme Court upholds a law for sterilizing habitual criminals and those found guilty of unnatural crimes (in this case, a child rapist). The court decided a forced vasectomy is not a cruel punishment (unusual punishments were okay under the Wash. constitution).

In the Vermont state elections, the presence of a Bull Moose candidate results in no one winning a majority for governor, which means that the Legislature gets to decide.

Panama has finally agreed to the US’s demand that that police captain be fired.

The Los Angeles police chief recommends to the Police Commission that white women be banned from working at restaurants owned by Orientals, as they often fall into the moral clutches of foreigners.

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Today -100: September 3, 1912: Of short-sleeve riots, fat men and baronesses & boars

Headline of the Day -100: “Short Sleeves Cause Riot.” A bishop in a cathedral in Rome interrupted a confirmation to order a woman with the aforementioned sleeves out of his church. She didn’t leave, so he attempted to remove her physically, but was stopped by several men. Later, he tried to give an address from the window of the episcopal palace and was pelted with tomatoes, as was the custom.

Sports Headline of the Day -100: “Fat Man Breaks Arm in Baseball.” The Fat Man’s Club (I’m assuming) of Montclair, NJ, playing the Thin Men’s Club. The fat men won, as is so often the case in life.

Berlin: the Baroness Frieda von Eckhardstein is accidentally shot and killed during a boar hunt by Count von Finckenstein. The moral of the story: German names are funny.

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Today -100: September 2, 1912: Of money in politics, and lawsuits

Theodore Roosevelt writes a long letter to Sen. Clapp, chair of the Senate Sub-Committee on Privileges and Elections (because they wouldn’t let him testify), about the charge that he knew about Standard Oil’s 1904 campaign contributions. Wait, the Standard Oil guy says he gave the $100,000 to a guy who’s dead now, in cash, not a check, and he didn’t keep the receipt?

A lawsuit in Spain over ownership of the Alhambra Palace has been decided, with the Marquis Campotejar having to give it up to the king, plus court costs, which must be considerable, given that the lawsuit has been going on for a century.

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Today -100: September 1, 1912: Of pardons, mooseless in Maryland, and mooseful in San Francisco

South Carolina’s Sen. Ben Tillman says that SC Gov. Blease promised in a speech (not sure when exactly) that he would pardon anybody who killed certain of his enemies.

In the continuing collapse of the Bull Moose Party as anything other than a vehicle for Theodore Roosevelt’s third-term ambitions, the Maryland Moosers have decided not to run candidates for Congress, but to ask members to vote for Republicans.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Completing Theft of Republican Organization.” The San Francisco Republican County Central Committee ousts all the Taft supporters on the committee.

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