Today -100: October 7, 1912: Of natural Bull Moosers, and Balkan wars

Thomas Edison endorses Theodore Roosevelt for president, declaring himself a “natural Bull Mooser.”

The Great Powers (note: the US was not a Great Power; Italy was. Huh.) are working on a deal for the Balkans. They would authorize Austria and Russia to guarantee the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire (i.e., that the countries of the anti-Turkish coalition would gain nothing from a war) and that reforms would be implemented in Macedonia. However, Bulgaria and the other would-be belligerents really have their hearts set on some bloodshed (assuming that the war hasn’t already started – the LAT reports a fight on the Turkish-Montenegrin border).

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Leon Panetta scolds our new-caught, sullen peoples

Secretary of War Leon Panetta tells Hamid Karzai to just shut up and be grateful for the 11-year war in his country: “Those lives were lost fighting the right enemy not the wrong enemy and I think it would be helpful if the president, every once in a while, expressed his thanks for the sacrifices that have been made by those who have fought and died for Afghanistan, rather than criticizing them.”

Indeed, according to Little Leon, “We have made progress in Afghanistan because there are men and women in uniform who have been willing to fight and die for Afghanistan’s sovereignty.” And nothing says “defending Afghanistan’s sovereignty” like ordering the wogs to express their gratitude to the soldiers occupying their country.

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Today -100: October 6, 1912: Terrorized into becoming Albanians

American Marines fight Nicaraguan rebels alongside government forces, despite the premise that they were sent there to protect American property and lives and, you know, property. Four marines die; the rebel general Zeledon is killed (or possibly captured and then killed) and the rebels routed.

The NYT explains the Balkans situation: “Old Servia has 1,050,000 inhabitants, of whom 700,000 are Servians and 350,000 Albanians, among which latter are 150,000 Servians, who have been terrorized into becoming Albanians during the last forty years.”

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Today -100: October 5, 1912: Of Balkan wars and civilizing bathtubs

France is trying to get the Powers to cooperate in preventing a Balkan war.

Condescending Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “NEW BATHTUBS AS CIVILIZERS. INDIAN AGENT GIVES APACHES START IN CULTURE.”

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Today -100: October 4, 1912: Of Balkan Wars, electors, homicides, brothels, and startled bankers

The war in the Balkans is rumored to have begun with an attack by Turkish troops on Serbia and fighting on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. I think these are false rumors.

Theodore Roosevelt is finally allowed to testify before the Senate about past campaign contributions. He introduces telegrams he wrote to the RNC in 1908 (when he was president but not a candidate) objecting to Standard Oil being asked for money (which he had also refused to do in 1904).

The California Supreme Court rules that President Taft’s electors cannot appear on the November ballot, even by petition. It rules that the state Republican convention, dominated by Theodores, was empowered by state law to select electors, even if it had repudiated the national ticket. California Tafties are trying to figure out what to do next. One option, challenging the constitutionality of CA’s primary law in order to ensure that California sits out the 1912 presidential elections entirely, was decided against because the Progressives would just call the Legislature into special session and name pro-Roosevelt electors.

NYT: “The increase of the number of homicides in American cities is disheartening, but it is probably explainable on other grounds than the degeneracy of the Nation.” So that’s okay then.

Oh, Christ, it goes on to blame immigrants from Southern Europe (i.e., Italy), and notes that the city with the highest homicide rate, Memphis, has a large negro population.

Woodrow Wilson is happy about the selection of William Sulzer as Democratic candidate for governor of New York, although he doesn’t seem to be entirely sure what his name is.

NYC Mayor Gaynor says William Randolph Hearst owns several brothels on West 58th Street.

Headline of the Day -100: “Heavy Woman Hit Bankers.” 265-pound Mary Bopa, drying her laundry on the roof of the Indiana Harbor State Bank, trips and falls through a skylight. Being bankers, they demanded that she pay for the skylight and the table she fell on. She refused.

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If there’s one thing we can all agree on about the debates

it’s that the next one has to be hosted by Louis C.K.

(Update: Patton Oswalt on Twitter has suggested 1) R. Lee Ermey, 2) the Dowager Countess/Maggie Smith, 3) Vic Mackey (of "The Shield"), presumably for separate debates. I imagine someone has suggested Big Bird. Consider this a Who Should Be the Next Moderator CONTEST.)

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Presidential debate: Zing, zing, zing goes my heartstrings

Mitt has a bigger flag lapel. That means he automatically wins the debate.

THE ROM-COM BEGINS: Romney says it’s very sweet of Obama to spend his anniversary with him.

First zinger™, I guess: Mittens says O. believes in “trickle-down government.”

Oh dear, Romney’s going to be smirking on the split-screen every time O. is talking.

R. says middle-class income drop is an “economy tax.” Guess he’ll just keep dropping made-up phrases on us.

R. says food prices are up. This would be a perfect moment for Jim Lehrer to ask him how much a gallon of milk costs. Waiting... waiting...

Evidently, the middle class are being “crushed.”

R: “I like coal.”

No tax cut that adds to the deficit.

Romney compares Obama to his “boys,” who are evidently incredible liars and just keep repeating their lies.

Wondering where Romney’s sons learned to lie like that?

Obama: R. would cut Donald Trump’s taxes as a small business, and Donald Trump doesn’t like thinking of himself as small anything. TrumpZing!

Donald Trump is a HUGE douche.

Mittens: I don’t want to cut jobs (he was for cutting jobs before he was against it).

R. likes Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, but he’ll sell PBS to the Chinese, who will stir-fry both of them.

So Romney will eliminate the deficit by ending Obamacare and PBS and nothing else he cares to name.

R: “I don’t want to go down the path to Spain.”

R on Solyndra: you don’t pick the winners & losers, you pick the losers. Zing!

O. talks about his grandmother who worked hard and blah blah blah, and could continue living independently because Social Security and Medicare guaranteed that there was a floor under which she could not go. Romney would totally put Obama’s grandmother under the floor.

R: “Try and get a mortgage these days.”

R: “Expensive things hurt families.”

O: “Obamacare says insurance companies can’t jerk you around.”

R. accuses O. of having continued working on Obamacare even after Scott Brown was elected, which was clearly a rebuke by the entire nation of the very idea.

O. says there isn’t a better way of dealing with pre-existing conditions than O-care. Um, I can think of a better way.

O: Is R. keeping his plans so secret because they’re too good?

I think that was a trick question.

Romney says Obamacare violates the 10th Amendment. Somewhere, Rick Perry just got an erection.

R: “I love great schools.”

R says the federal gov has no role in education. A minute later, Lehrer asks if the federal gov has a role in education; R. says yes.

O says R genuinely cares about education, but offers no proof.

R says the money O spent on green energy (which he then suggests was to reward O’s campaign contributors) could have paid for a bunch of teachers. Who R would never pay for.

Well, that was as interesting as it was informative and I need to lie down now.

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Today -100: October 3, 1912: Of Balkan wars, unbossed conventions, lynchings, and stamps

The four Balkan League countries allied against the Ottomans are on the verge of issuing their ultimatum, which will evidently be a demand for full autonomy for Macedonia, Albania and Old Serbia – implemented in no more than three days. Those countries all have small populations compared to the Ottoman Empire, but if they are to be believed, they have mobilized something like 1/5 of their adult male population.

Thanks to the presence of the Progressive Party on the ballot, no one got a majority in Vermont’s elections last month, which under the state constitution means that the Legislature gets to pick all the state officers from governor down. It picks all Republicans.

Tammany’s Boss Murphy graciously allows the New York Democratic Convention to dump the incumbent governor, John Alden Dix, and instead nominate William Sulzer, a member of Congress since 1895 (and Speaker of the state Assembly before that). During the roll call, Murphy failed to vote when called upon, leaving his minions in some confusion as to what they were supposed to do. Sulzer seems to have come out of nowhere (not that he needed a public campaign when the public had little to say about this decision). Just a few days ago it seemed that the anti-Dix faction had united around state Supreme Court Justice Victor Dowling.

I predict a long and successful career as governor for Mr. Sulzer.

A mob in Rawlins, Wyoming tries to lynch a black man accused of attacking an old lady, but while the mob was storming the front door of the county jail, the sheriff snuck him out the back door and brought him to the state pen. Where he is lynched by his fellow inmates.

Mark Wilks, imprisoned for not paying his suffragette wife’s income taxes in Britain, is released after 15 days, no explanation given.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Dies for Exposition Stamps.” Turns out to be dies, noun, the things used to print stamps.

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Crap dialogue is what I’m talking about

With Jerry Seinfeld entering the gladiatorial ring with a NYT critic over whether “Really?” is over-used by comedy writers, I feel I cannot continue to remain silent about the laziest, most over-used line of dialogue in the arsenal of tv and movie writers: “What are you talking about?” It’s everywhere, but like those circles drawn in the corner of the frame to signal reel-changes in movies from the days when there were still reel-changes, you don’t notice them until you start noticing them (I think it was an episode of Columbo that pointed those out to me) and then you can’t stop noticing them until they fade into the background again. Also, there’s a thing many actresses do with a certain facial feature that is so weird and so distracting once it’s pointed out to you that I will do you the favor of not doing so. I first noticed “What are you talking about?” on “24,” when Jack Bauer snapped it at someone literally every single episode (sometimes more than once) and Chloe every other episode, but then I realized it was everywhere.

Has anybody ever said “What are you talking about?” to someone else in real life? Have you?

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Comment-geddon redux

As threatened/foretold in the Book of Revelations, all the old comments are now gone.

Fortunately, thanks to the greater susceptibility of the Blogger commenting system to spam, I spend half the day deleting stuff like this:

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Was the comment linking to a weight-loss site put on my post about a hunger-striker in Guantanamo? Of course it was.

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Today -100: October 2, 1912: Of Balkan wars and watermelons

Turkey mobilizes its army and reserves. Various Balkans countries are stopping freight and shipping to each other, and Turkey will seize all Greek ships in its waters.

The NYT says there won’t be a war in the Balkans because wars in the Balkans don’t happen in October. So that’s okay then.

Headline of the Day -100: “Wilson Gets a Watermelon.”

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Today -100: October 1, 1912: Of Balkan wars, perfume, and fake lynch mobs

Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece are mobilizing their armies.

Latest fad in Paris: injecting perfume.

I mentioned that the US gave Mexico permission for some of its troops to travel through American soil to fight rebels. Texas Gov. Colquitt was asked to give his permission too and he did, but has changed his mind, though too late to do any good (especially since he sent his message to the departments of State and War on a Friday, and they are closed for the weekend).

The sheriff of Kenosha County, Wisconsin stages a fake lynching in which a fake mob pretends to overpower the sheriff and puts a noose around the neck of a black prisoner to coerce him into confessing to stealing a gun. It worked.

Want to know what William Howard Taft sounded like? The Library of Congress has two brief recordings dated today -100.

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What, you got something better to do?

On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan refused to explain which tax loopholes he’d close, because it would be very time-consuming, with the time and the math and the counting on his fingers and toes.

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Today -100: September 30, 1912: Of non-lynchings, red flags, Balkan wars, and kid gloves

A mob is thwarted from lynching Hugh Long, the mayor of Wagener, South Carolina and state representative-elect, after he shot and killed one Pickens N. Gunter, president of the Bank of Wagener, over their political differences. (Long will be acquitted next June).

Police in Lawrence, Massachusetts attack an IWW parade, essentially because they had red flags.

Russia is mobilizing seven army corps, as a precaution in case it gets involved in the increasingly likely war in the Balkans. Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece have all been issuing threats against the Ottoman Empire.

Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs holds a rally in Madison Square Garden. The NYT says the audience was equally divided by gender. Debs calls Woodrow Wilson “the kid glove on the paw of the Tammany tiger.” He notes that Taft, Roosevelt and Wilson have never had to look for a job, never been on strike, been slugged by a capitalistic policeman, been in jail, or produced enough to feed a gallanipper (mosquito).

Woodrow Wilson demands that the upcoming New York Democratic Convention not be run by Boss Murphy (Wilson’s been trying to force Gov. John Dix, Murphy’s man, out of office).

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Today -100: September 29, 1912: Of covenants, the typical Englishman of the year 3912, non-thinking people, and bears

Northern Irish Protestants sign the Covenant, pledging to resist Home Rule and never recognize the authority of an Irish Parliament, “in sure confidence that God will defend the right.”

A Dr. Forbes Ross suggests that with the current eugenic trends in England, 2,000 years from now the average Englishman’s face will be that of a typical criminal, with prognathous jaws and face, receding forehead, broad, flat nose, well-marked canine teeth, small eyes, short neck, head set well back between the shoulders, and a depraved gorilla countenance.


Taft attacks Roosevelt, though not by name, saying the Bull Moose Party split off from the Republican Party “not for any one principle, or indeed on any principle at all, but merely to gratify personal ambition and vengeance, and in the gratification of that personal ambition and vengeance, every new fad and theory, some of them good, some of them utterly preposterous and impracticable, some of them as Socialistic as anything that has been proposed in the countries of Europe... have been crowded into a platform in order to tempt the voters of enthusiastic supporters of each of these proposed reforms. ... an entire willingness to destroy every limitation of constitutional representative government in order that, by short cuts, these various reforms... may be accomplished by the decree of a benevolent despotism to be supported by the acclaim of hero-worshiping, emotional, undiscriminating, superficially minded, and non-thinking people.” Adding, probably, “But if superficially minded, non-thinking people want to vote for me instead, that’s cool.” Seriously, is that how you try to win back disaffected Republican voters? The rest of the speech was about the need to preserve the protective tariff.

An engineer, Carroll Livingston Riker, has written a book (which astonishingly seems to have been republished this year) proposing the building of a wall into the Atlantic from Newfoundland to redirect the Gulf Stream to the Arctic, melting the Polar ice caps and heating up the Earth, and all for only $190 million, less than the cost of building the Panama Canal.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Kaiser Throws Carrot To Bear.”

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Today -100: September 28, 1912: Of insurrections

Roosevelt is campaigning in the South (Louisiana today, Tennessee yesterday), which he knows will never vote for anyone but a Democrat.

Evidently Augusta, Georgia is in a state of “insurrection.” Ah, that means that locals were a tad upset about National Guard shooting at striking trolley workers, killing one.

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Today -100: September 27, 1912: Of very delightful meetings

William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson meet at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, the only time their paths will cross during the campaign. Wilson said afterward, “It was a very delightful meeting. I am very fond of President Taft.” They exchanged pleasantries about how their voices were holding out. The NYT notes that an hour before the two met, Wilson made a speech declaring Taft totally ineffectual. Oddly enough, Wilson had spent the previous night at the Taft Hotel in New Haven, in a bed specially made for President Taft.

Joseph Smith, president of the Mormon Church, endorses Taft (I think because he didn’t invade Mexico, endangering the future status of the Mormon polygamist colonies there). So that’s one state in the bag. One more state, and he’ll have two.

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Another caption contest (aka, a leftover picture I can’t think of anything to do with)

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Zombie-Eyed Granny Hunting (or, be vewwy, vewwy quiet, I’m hunting interns)

Caption contest:

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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.

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