Caption contest:
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Today -100: September 26, 1912: Of aroused judges, and tea
Headline of the Day -100: “Divorce Judge Aroused.”
Mary Wood, President of the Pasaic, NJ branch of the Equal Suffrage League, resigns, saying the members do nothing but drink tea.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Obama at the United Nations: There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy
Obama spoke this morning to the UN General Assembly (otherwise known as the bit of the UN that doesn’t count because France doesn’t have a veto in it).
HE WAS A STEEL-DRIVING MAN: “Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentleman: I would like to begin today by telling you about an American named Chris Stevens.”
IT’S JUST ALWAYS ALL ABOUT US, ISN’T IT? “The attacks on the civilians in Benghazi were attacks on America.”
SO IT’LL JUST BE CANADA AND MONACO? “Today, we must declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our United Nations.”
Then he talks about the Arab Spring. “the world has been captivated by the transformation that’s taken place, and the United States has supported the forces of change,” adding, “except for, you know, Bahrain. Oh, and the Saudis, and, um...”
IT’S JUST ALWAYS ALL ABOUT US, ISN’T IT? “We were inspired by the Tunisian protests that toppled a dictator, because we recognized our own beliefs in the aspiration of men and women who took to the streets.”
AND BY ULTIMATELY, I MEAN AFTER DECADES OF BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE: “We insisted on change in Egypt, because our support for democracy ultimately put us on the side of the people.”
THE UNITED STATES IS ALWAYS GOOD AT TELLING EXACTLY WHEN THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE STOP BEING SERVED BY A CORRUPT STATUS QUO: “We supported a transition of leadership in Yemen, because the interests of the people were no longer being served by a corrupt status quo.”
WELL, ASPIRATIONS AND AIR STRIKES: “We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition, and with the mandate of the United Nations Security Council, because we had the ability to stop the slaughter of innocents, and because we believed that the aspirations of the people were more powerful than a tyrant.”
OR TO TAKE THAT SECOND CRULLER: “Those in power have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissidents.”
LOOKIN’ AT YOU, ROMNEY: “In hard economic times, countries must be tempted -- may be tempted to rally the people around perceived enemies, at home and abroad, rather than focusing on the painstaking work of reform.”
It occurs to me that while he once again castigates the “crude and disgusting video” whose “message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity,” at no point has he ever specified what problems he has with the film. What do you find so disgusting, Barack? The acting? The portrayal of Mohammed? Or are you simply outsourcing your disgust – Muslims claim to find it disgusting, therefore in solidarity we all have to?
In the next paragraph, he notes that he himself is a Christian, because of course he did. But we don’t have blasphemy laws protecting the sensibilities of Christians. And “As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day -- (laughter) -- and I will always defend their right to do so.” Oh good, he just implicitly compared himself to Mohammed; that’ll go down well.
He goes on for a bit with a boilerplate defense of free speech – okay, but not particularly inspired – then uses a word, well let’s see if you spot the problematic word: “We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.” The word, of course, is blasphemy, which does not belong in any proper defense of free speech.
ON THIS WE MUST AGREE (BUT DON’T): “And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy.” Mindless violence? It’s precisely the minds behind the violence that’s the problem.
BUT SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET: “In this modern world with modern technologies, for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers any individual who engages in such speech to create chaos around the world. We empower the worst of us if that’s how we respond.”
AND BY “BE CLEAR,” I MEAN “LIE LIKE A WEASEL”: “Now, let me be clear: Just as we cannot solve every problem in the world, the United States has not and will not seek to dictate the outcome of democratic transitions abroad.”
AND HERE’S THE PART WHERE HE TAKES BACK WHAT HE JUST SAID ABOUT FREE SPEECH: “It is time to marginalize those who -- even when not directly resorting to violence -- use hatred of America, or the West, or Israel, as the central organizing principle of politics. For that only gives cover, and sometimes makes an excuse, for those who do resort to violence.” So Mr. Free Speech wants to suppress speech that “gives cover” or provides an excuse for violence. And I’m not sure what “marginalize” is supposed to mean, although I can guess, but the assumption behind the word is that the majority have the right to decide what sort of speech is acceptable.
UNLESS YOU COUNT FLAG RECOGNITION 101: “Burning an American flag does nothing to provide a child an education.”
UNLESS YOU COUNT WINDOW REPAIRERS: “Attacking an embassy won’t create a single job.”
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE GREAT SATAN....The impulse towards intolerance and violence may initially be focused on the West, but over time it cannot be contained.”
He says of “extremists,” “They don’t build; they only destroy.” You didn’t build that!
OH GOOD, I WAS HOPING SOMEONE WOULD TELL ME WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR THAT: “It is time to leave the call of violence and the politics of division behind.”
GUANTANAMO? “On so many issues, we face a choice between the promise of the future, or the prisons of the past.”
WHEREIN OBAMA TELLS MUSLIMS HOW TO BE CREDIBLE: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.” That sentence is weird, right?
WALK, NO, WADDLE, YES: “Understanding that such a [Middle East] peace must come through a just agreement between the parties, America will walk alongside all who are prepared to make that journey.”
REALLY? HAVE YOU CHECKED WITH STEPHEN HAWKING? On Iran’s nuclear program: “But that time is not unlimited.”
WHAT WE RESPECT: “We respect the right of nations to access peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United Nations is to see that we harness that power for peace. And make no mistake....”
Whenever a president or candidate says "Make no mistake," I go out & make 22 mistakes on purpose.
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) September 25, 2012
“...a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. It would threaten the elimination of Israel...” Or would if Israel didn’t have several hundred nukes. “...It risks triggering a nuclear-arms race in the region, and the unraveling of the non-proliferation treaty.” The one Israel didn’t sign.
HAS ANYONE TOLD THE IRAQIS? “The war in Iraq is over. American troops have come home.” Well, been transferred to Afghanistan. “We’ve begun a transition in Afghanistan, and America and our allies will end our war on schedule in 2014.” It says so right here on Google Calendar.
SO THERE’VE BEEN NO MORE THAN SIX ANGRY MOBS??? “for every angry mob that gets shown on television, there are billions around the world who share similar hopes and dreams.”
IS THAT LIKE WHEN ROOMMATES’ MENSTRUAL CYCLES SYNCH UP? “They tell us that there is a common heartbeat to humanity.”
Comment-geddon
For 6½ years this blog and many others relied on the commenting service Haloscan/Echo/JS-Kit. Thousands of comments were made here from 2005 to earlier this year and were entrusted to it. But Haloscan/Echo/JS-Kit decided to get out of the commenting biz, so on Monday, all those comments will vanish. All that cleverness, outrage and snark, gone.
There seems to be no way to import them into the Blogger system.
This is quite upsetting.
I switched to the Blogger comments system a few months ago, so you can make comments or, about twenty times more frequently, try to get spam past the filtering software. Seriously, does it seem likely that readers of this blog are that interested in Louis Vuitton bags?
Anyway, I wish Haloscan/Echo/JS-Kit luck in its future endeavours.
And by luck, I mean syphilis.
Today -100: September 25, 1912: Of marines, bull moose heads, and imbeciles
President Taft sends marines to patrol the disputed Haiti-Santo Domingo border, where Dominican rebels have been interfering with the Americans collecting the Dominican customs duties.
Roosevelt is campaigning in Oklahoma in a car decorated with the head of a bull moose. Gross.
Headline of the Day -100: “Ohio’s Many Imbeciles.” The president of the State Board of Administration says that if they don’t start sterilizing them forcibly, the state will go bankrupt within ten years from the cost of supporting the weak-minded. There are over 100 of them in the state institution.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Today -100: September 24, 1912: Of petticoats
Sign of the Times -100: A letter to the NYT bemoans the vanishing of the petticoat industry, thanks to “freakish French fashion, which insisted that women show their shapes instead of draping their shapely forms.”
Want to know what Woodrow Wilson sounded like? The Library of Congress has five brief recordings dated today -100.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The State Department deploys its strongest Word of Condemnation
saying the reward offered by the Pakistani Minister for Railroads and Assholery for the murder of the Innocence of the Muslims auteur is “inflammatory and”... wait for it... wait for it... “inappropriate.”
I’m sure Ghulam Ahmad Bilour feels thoroughly chastened.
Today -100: September 23, 1912: Of pathetic spectacles, nun grabs, angel dicks, and moose bribery
Theodore Roosevelt’s running mate, California Gov. Hiram Johnson, denies that he called President Taft “the most pathetic spectacle in our history.” Rather, he says, he said that politically Taft was the most pathetic spectacle in our political history. So that’s okay then.
NYT Index Typo of the Day -100: “TAFT LETS NUNS KEEP THEIR GRAB.” Nuns teaching in schools on Indian reservations will be allowed to wear their habits (but only the 51 nuns who are already teachers, not any future ones). Note that these are government employees in nun garb.
Paris authorities are refusing to unveil Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of an angel with a large penis on Oscar Wilde’s tomb (I’d include a picture, but I can’t find one from before some moron castrated the poor angel in the 1960s). Rodin supports Epstein, “a talented artist who will make his mark.” With penises!
Several suffragettes heckle British Chancellor David Lloyd George at a meeting in Llanystumdwy and are attacked by the audience. One of them is beaten and her clothes torn off and distributed amongst the crowd as souvenirs, as was the custom. (A longer description appears in the NYT magazine section in October).
Elsewhere, a suffragette threw a worm at Winston Churchill as he was playing golf.
Headline of the Day -100: “Charges Moose Bribery.”
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Today -100: September 22, 1912: Of whiskers, gum, stones, and so-called civil rights
Headline of the Day -100: “ROBBED OF HIS WHISKERS.; Old Bridge, N.J., Resident Reports an Odd Hold-Up.”
The British are developing the American habit of gum-chewing.
Northern Irish Headline of the Day -100: “Ulster Leaders Stoned.” Would explain a lot.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation (well, of Lincoln’s threat to issue it if the South didn’t surrender), and the NYT Magazine has an article about how “The Negro Has Accomplished Much Since Emancipation.” Let’s see how much I can read before I throw up. Well, it seems that in 1862 negroes were “ignorant, untrained, emotional, an easy mark for promoters and hypocrites, and in no sense equal to the obligations forced upon him for political uses,” but they’ve gotten somewhat better since then by working hard and not expecting anything from white folks. And Southern negroes “have not taken an active part in politics for years; but they have lost nothing of really intrinsic value by their abstention... and do not seem to feel the loss of their so-called civil rights.” So that’s okay then.
Want to know what Teddy Roosevelt sounded like? The Library of Congress has three short recordings dated today -100.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Today -100: September 21, 1912: Of lost hope, alliances, warplanes, and making imperial ends meet
Election 1912 Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Has Lost Hope.” According to one letter he allegedly wrote to some unnamed person in London (this story is sort of like the Huffington Post -100).
Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece (which last week initiated conscription) form a military alliance against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan League.
(Usage note: In English, Serbia was called Servia until early in World War I, when it was decided that Britain’s brave little ally needed a less, um, servile-sounding name.)
The Interparliamentary Union, whatever that is, approves a ban on the use of airplanes in warfare, proposed by Belgium’s former prime minister (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Auguste Beernaert. So that settles that.
Congress snuck into the Post Office Bill a provision that any newspaper going through the mail has to display the names of its owners, editors, and publishers.
In Britain, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks of the Tax Resistance League has been protesting the lack of women’s suffrage by refusing to pay income taxes. Thanks to a quirk of British law (tax law hasn’t caught up with the notion that married women can own property in their own right, which has been the case for a few decades now), it’s actually her husband who has to report her income (but he has no legal power to compel her to tell him what her income is) and pay the tax. Indeed, when the Inland Revenue seized her furniture, she went to court and won a claim that they could only go after her husband for her income tax. So now Mark Wilks, who in any case can’t afford to pay her tax from his own, smaller income (he’s a schoolmaster) is going to jail.
The former Empress of France Eugénie is shocked at the current price of gowns in Paris. Why, when she was empress, she never paid more than $120. “Even then I was accused of extravagance. If I had had to pay what you ladies pay I should never have been able to make both ends meet.”
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Kerry joins the Appropriateness Police
John Kerry castigates Iraq for letting Iranian planes overfly its territory on the way to Syria: “It just seems completely inappropriate that we’re trying to help build their democracy, support them, put American lives on the line, money into the country, and they’re working against our interest so overtly.”
Oh the utter ingratitude, after all we’ve done
Just a reminder
that Adnan Latif died in Guantanamo 12 days ago, and the government won’t tell us the cause of death.
We know he was a hunger-striker and was presumably forcibly fed, although the government claims that he wasn’t hunger striking at the time of his death. Of course, the Pentagon no longer tells us how many hunger strikers there are at Guantanamo.
Today -100: September 20, 1912: Of recalls and covenants
Theodore Roosevelt says he’d be okay with the recall even being applied to the office of president.
Next month, Ulster Unionists will all sign a “Covenant” to fight “the present conspiracy to set up home rule in Ireland”.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Today -100: September 19, 1912: Of in-touch candidates, airships, and dead mules
Election 1912 Headline of the Day -100: “West Finds Wilson in Touch With Life.” Evidently he’s not a cold scholar after all (spoiler alert: yes he is). Woodrow Wilson, campaigning in Minnesota, is doing the Romney thing of trying to connect to regular voters. He said the best response to Roosevelt’s idea of tight regulation of trusts is “Rats.” NYT: “When he added ‘Let Roosevelt tell it to the marines,’ the crowd became decidedly hilarious.”
Wilson speaks warmly of President Taft’s integrity and patriotism; “If he has got into bad company it is no fault of his, because he didn’t choose the company; it was there beforehand. And if he has taken their advice it has been because they were nearest to him, and he didn’t hear anybody else. That is why I would rather have the advice of a crowd like this than the advice of a Cabinet.” That is a nicely done takedown of the chubby chief executive.
Military Headline of the Day -100: “Navy Unafraid of Airships.” Even the newest battleships will not be equipped with anti-aircraft guns or protection against aerial bombs. Rear Admiral Twining thinks ordinary rifles are sufficient protection against planes and airships.
On the other hand, the British army had to abandon army maneuvers because aerial scouting made the implementation of strategic plans impossible.
The Army convenes a board of inquiry consisting of five officers to investigate which of two cavalry horses kicked a mule to death.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Romney and the Dependents of Doom
Romney went on Fox today in yet more damage control. He says he’s not really writing off the 47% (except on his taxes, ha!): “we go after every group we can to get votes.” Interesting that he thinks of voters as “groups.”
He says, more in sorrow than in anger, that he just won’t be able to get the votes of “those that are dependent upon government,” which is not a condescending way to describe people collecting entitlements at all.
He says his policies will give people “the privilege of higher incomes that allow them to be paying taxes,” as opposed to those with the privilege of super-high incomes that allow them to pay no taxes.
He repeated the bit about the 47% who “pay no tax” not responding to his message about lowering taxes. That’s nonsense, because this line of his has always been a, for lack of a better term, double dog whistle. See, the rich people hearing that line know that he shares their contempt for the poors, while the lower class all know that they do, in fact, pay taxes (there’s a reason Mitt leaves off “income” before “tax”), so Mitt must be talking about someone else, you know, those people.
Today -100: September 18, 1912: Of dead cocks, moral mandates, turned heads, gentleman burglars, small bills, and pink lemonade
Campaigning in Tuscon, Theodore Roosevelt calls Taft “a dead cock in the pit”.
The US has issued a public note to the Nicaraguan government and rebels, saying that the latter are very naughty boys and that “the United States has a moral mandate to exert its influence for the preservation of the general peace of Central America, which is seriously menaced by the present uprising”. The US’s purpose, it says, is to foster true constitutional government and free elections. This it justifies under the Washington Conventions of 1907, which the Central American nations took as banning them supporting rebellion in other countries, not as giving the US a “moral mandate” to suppress internal rebellions militarily.
Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, says that if women had the vote, “there is a probability that on the slightest provocation she would seek divorce. ... It might have the effect of turning their heads.”
Alphonse Bertillon, the French cop who introduced the collection of detailed description of criminals through measurements (anthropometry), which is what they had before fingerprints, says there is no such thing as a “gentleman burglar.”
New American paper currency will soon be issued, reduced in size by 1/3 (to the present size).
The Dutch Socialist Party organizes a (banned) demonstration for universal (male and female) suffrage to coincide with the opening of Parliament. The police “repulsed them with bare swords,” which may be a euphemism; it certainly sounds like a euphemism.
Obituary of the Day -100: Henry “Bunk” Allen, inventor of pink lemonade.
Monday, September 17, 2012
The worst thing about Romney’s remarks
and the three-question press conference slash damage control session tonight, in which he said he was just talking about “process” at the fundraiser, was how he consistently states that people’s voting behaviour will be based entirely on their personal economic self-interest, not on their ideals, not on the public good. It’s a very impoverished view of democracy, viewing people’s relationship with their government as a strictly financial interaction.
Distractions
WaPo headline: “Romney Campaign Faces Distractions.” Is Romney speaking honestly distracting from Romney lying?
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