Today -100: March 5, 1913: Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good

Woodrow Wilson’s official inauguration was today -100 (er, yesterday -100, but in today -100’s paper).

Here’s a little from his inaugural address:

We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears...

Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been ‘Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,’ while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves.

There was a parade and everything. Not as entertaining or as violent as the women’s suffrage parade the day before, but it did have Native Americans, led by one Chief Hollow Horn Bear of the Lakota, who doffed his sombrero and exclaimed “White father, white father, white father!” Chief Hollow Horn Bear caught pneumonia during the parade and died of it, which is certainly symbolic of... something or other. The Indians were followed by a larger contingent from Tammany Hall, all wearing silk hats and carrying silver canes with which they saluted the president.

After the parade, Wilson and Taft returned to the White House for a farewell luncheon for the former president. So it may be a while before Taft actually leaves.

That may be the last “Taft was fat” joke in this blog.

With Taft’s exit, we come to an end of an era. I refer, of course, to the era of presidents with facial hair. Although if Hillary runs in 2016...

What was Theodore Roosevelt doing while all this was going on, you didn’t ask? He was viewing an exhibition of Futurist paintings in New York, which is certainly symbolic of... something or other.

Following Russia’s lead (in January), Britain has recently banned aircraft flying over it without permission, punishable by jail terms or, you know, being shot down.

Taft vetoes a bill to, among other things, abolish involuntary servitude among seamen. He says it would conflict with US treaty obligations. Not sure what he meant, and neither the NYT nor LAT are helpful about it.

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Today -100: March 4, 1913: 28

Woodrow Wilson is sworn in as the 28th president of the United States, with all due pomp and circumstance. (I have no idea what the word circumstance means in the phrase “pomp and circumstance.” Anyone?)

The NYT paints a picture: “Washington was Wilsonized for the day. Even the cheap, white-painted dairy lunch shops had his picture on their greasy bills of fare; and one of them announced grandly in letters three feet high: ‘White House Lunches Like Mrs. Wilson Will Cook Them–For 50 Cents.’”

But the big event of the day in D.C., in terms of spectacle and mayhem, was the women’s suffrage parade.

5,000 women, led, as was the custom, by Inez Milholland on horseback,

with bands, floats, and allegorical tableaux on the steps of the Treasury Building.

Maybe 500,000 people spectated (when Wilson slipped quietly into town, one of his staff asked where all the people were and was told they were watching the women).

The mayhem part was caused by the police, who had not properly cleared off the streets for the entire distance of the parade, and by rowdy men who were therefore able to harry and obstruct the marchers, jeering, slapping, spitting, tripping, etc, while the police stood by and watched, or even participated (after Congressional hearings, the DC superintendent of police was fired). Alice Paul, who organized the parade on behalf of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, said “The Boy Scouts were the only ones who did any effective police work”. The parade took hours longer than planned because of the obstructions. Eventually the secretary of war sent in some cavalry to restore order.

Alice Paul had tried to appease Southerners by making a group of black women from Chicago march separately, behind all the white marchers, but on the day they were allowed to march in the Illinois contingent.

The Woman’s Journal reported: “To those that feared that equal suffrage would make women less womanly, to those who feared that in becoming politically free we will become coarse and mannish looking.... the pageant offered the final word, the most convincing argument that human ingenuity can devise.”

Russian police in St Petersburg prevent suffragists speeches on Woman’s Day.

Headline of the Day -100: “Government Demands Hens.” When Armand Fallières became president of France in 1906, his wife brought in 34 hens to replace the inferior ones she found in the poultry yard of the presidential château (do you suppose Carla Bruni kept chickens when she was first lady?). When her husband’s term expired seven years later (did I mention that Raymond Poincaré recently became president of France? He totally did), the bureaucrats told her she could only take 34 hens with her, although the hen population had increased, and anyway the original two cocks were provided by the state. I’m assuming this argument will run for years and years.

Arts Headline of the Day -100: “Hisses Make Singer Insane.” A Swiss singer, unnamed, is hissed in the Imperial Opera House in Vienna during Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, tries to stab herself with a hatpin. It ain’t over until...

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Today -100: March 3, 1913: Of border skirmishes, and Jewish tailors

Various governors of Mexican states, and some rebel leaders, have been falling in line behind Huerta, although Zapata is demanding to be made governor of Morelos.

On the Arizona border, the 9th US cavalry – a negro unit – fights off a force of 60 Mexican soldiers, killing 6 of them. “It is said that the American troops became so excited that they crossed the boundary and pursued the Mexicans for some distance.”

The NYT gives an “amusing account” of how the Czar of All the Russias scared the shit out of a Jewish tailor. It seems that Czar Nicholas II had seen a particularly nice uniform on a colonel from the Crimean Dragoons. Naturally, he wanted one, and asked the colonel who his tailor was. He then had the tailor taken from his home without explanation by a military officer and, terrified, brought to the capital, where he spent four days making the uniform while his family wondered if he was alive or dead, before being well rewarded and returned to the Crimea. So amusing.

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Today -100: March 2, 1913: Of starving militants, amnesties, nickels, and square eggs

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, president of the non-militant British suffragists (the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), tells the NYT, “If the militants want to starve themselves in prison let them do so.” She doesn’t want hunger-striking prisoners released, because “the law must be vindicated at all costs,” but she opposes forcible feeding as “essentially cruel”. Militancy, she says, is harming the suffrage cause, both by alienating the general public and by giving “the Government opportunity for an exhibition of moral cowardice by allowing it to point to these outrages as a reason for refusing to carry out its pledges.” But militancy is “one of those hysterical outbursts which is eventually bound to consume itself”.

She adds that American suffragists kind of suck in comparison to British ones.

Headline of the Day -100: “Peace Is Near, But Nations Arm.”

Russia plans to issue an amnesty for prisoners, including (some) political prisoners, as part of the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty.

The new buffalo/Indian head nickel is out, replacing the Liberty Head nickel, and the NYT is not impressed. The lettering is too small, the art is uninteresting, the buffalo too deeply indented, and the Indian is “uncommonly unprepossessing”.

A special dispatch to the LA Times reports that a farmer in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, says his hen lays square eggs.

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Barack Obama and the not-at-all-fictitious caucus of common sense

Today Obama spoke to the press about the sequester.

WASTEFUL LOOPHOLES: “They’ve [Republicans] allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.” What he’s done here is to take a Republican adjective – wasteful – and attach it inappropriately to the word loophole – itself a euphemism for a deduction that goes to people who vote for the party opposite to that of the speaker.

WELL, AS LONG AS HE’S ASKING POLITELY. “I do believe that we can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody”. By asking, he of course means taking.

A CAUCUS OF WHAT NOW? “I do know that there are Republicans in Congress who privately, at least, say that they would rather close tax loopholes than let these cuts go through. I know that there are Democrats who’d rather do smart entitlement reform than let these cuts go through. So there is a caucus of common sense up on Capitol Hill.” Of course there is. Wouldn’t you like to live in the pleasant alternative reality he lives in, the Obamaverse, if you will, where Jedi and Vulcans mind-meld all the live-long day?

Also, what is a smart entitlement reform when it’s at home?

WHO’S EVERYBODY? “Everybody says we need to cut $4 trillion”. I didn’t say we need to cut $4 trillion. Did you say we need to cut $4 trillion, readers?

CAN WE VIOLENTLY DISAGREE WITHOUT BEING VIOLENTLY DISAGREEABLE? “There are members of my party who violently disagree with the notion that we should do anything on Medicare.” How unreasonable of them to disagree with the notion that we should do anything; I mean all he’s asking for is anything. See, what he’s doing here is painting people who are against specific horrible proposals (chained CPI, raising the Medicare eligibility age etc) as being stubbornly opposed to change of any kind.

HE HAS A LOT OF CONFIDENCE: “The question is can the American people help persuade their members of Congress to do the right thing, and I have a lot of confidence that over time, if the American people express their displeasure about how something is working, that eventually Congress responds.”

ODDLY ENOUGH, BILL CLINTON DID KNOW HOW TO DO A JEDI MIND-MELD, BUT HE MOSTLY USED IT FOR... WELL, YOU KNOW: “most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right. ... And this idea that somehow there’s a secret formula or secret sauce to get Speaker Boehner or Mitch McConnell to say, you know what, Mr. President, you’re right”. Again, Bill Clinton did have a secret sauce, but he mostly used it for... well, you know.

“I think if there was a secret way to do that, I would have tried it. I would have done it.” So there are some secret powers he doesn’t claim to have. Good to know.

Asked about his administration’s brief before the Supreme Court in the Prop 8 case, he was good on gay marriage (although he seems to be going out of his way to avoid the word gay – is that new? – it’s always same-sex), but all over the place on his rationale. First he talked about his “long period of reflection” and his “evolution” on the issue, and that is was “important for us to articulate what I believe and what this administration stands for,” as if the fundamental rights of people in this country should be derived from what he personally feels comfortable with at any given moment. But then he says “if the Supreme Court asks me or my Attorney General or Solicitor General, do we think that [denial of gay marriage] meets constitutional muster, I felt it was important for us to answer that question honestly -- and the answer is no.” So what is the basis for supporting gay marriage, the “evolution” of social mores or equal rights under the 14th Amendment? Because the latter requires an end to unequal marriage everywhere in the country, regardless of whether there has been sufficient evolution on this issue in the parts of the country that don’t, you know, believe in evolution, and I don’t see Obama making any effort along those lines.

I wrote all that before continuing with the transcript, where the LA Times reporter asked a follow-up asking about that very thing. He flails a bit, saying that the Court asked specifically about Prop 8 and heightened scrutiny and what he would do if he were on the Court but he isn’t, none of which amounts to an answer about what he’s doing to remove this unconstitutional deprivation of rights.

OR IT COULD BE A DUMB APOCALYPSE: The sequester “is not going to be a apocalypse, I think as some people have said. It’s just dumb.”

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Today -100: March 1, 1913: Of imported alcohol, warships, and nerveless and feeble governments

Pres. Taft vetoes the Webb-Kenyon Bill to ban the importation of booze into dry states, arguing that it allowed the states to determine the legality of inter-state commerce, a power reserved by the Constitution to Congress. The Senate overrides his veto almost immediately (the House will do so tomorrow), with R’s & D’s voting on both sides. And while Taft’s argument makes sense to me, the Supreme Court in 1917 upheld the Act 7-2.

NY Gov. Bill Sulzer is investigating corrupt practices in the prison service, whose secretary was just overheard saying “the governor can go to hell,” but claims that he said it only in his personal capacity.

A while back, Pres. Taft sent some warships to Vera Cruz just to, you know, chill. So they’ve been doing target practice, and they clearly need it because stray shots just killed one local and wounded three fishermen (on fishing boats? on land? the Times doesn’t say). This sort of thing is not helping dampen growing anti-American feeling; “One form taken by that sentiment was the refusal of young society men of Vera Cruz to play tennis with the junior officers of the Georgia.”

In military spending news, the US Senate votes to build two new warships this year, and the French Socialists (SFIO) will oppose the huge military spending increase the government is asking for, saying it should be spent on schools instead.

The NYT accuses the British government of being “nerveless and feeble in the face of the suffragist outbreaks” and praises members of the general public who “have taken the matter in [their] own hands with vigor” by assaulting suffragists.

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Today -100: February 28, 1913: Of veeps, divinely appointed punishment of unjust rulers, and joyful dead brides

Hilarious Headline of the Day -100: “MARSHALL TO HELP GOVERN THE COUNTRY; For First Time in Many Years Vice President Will Not Be a Figurehead.” That’s a great joke we get to hear once every four years or so, and it never gets less funny.

Marshall plans to live at the Shoreham Hotel. There was no official residence for VPs until 1974.

Marshall’s wife Lois says women should take care of dress reform and settle the domestic problem (meaning the servant problem, I think) before bothering about trying to get the vote.

Christabel Pankhurst writes in The Suffragette that hunger-striking prisoners will force the British government to choose either votes for women of death for women. She says that “revolutions are the divinely appointed punishment of unjust rulers,” which I guess makes suffragettes avenging angels or something. Christabel, whose sister Sylvia is currently being forcibly fed in prison and whose mother is out on bail, is still living in Paris.

Arthur Conan Doyle suggests that politicians refuse to deal with the suffrage issue until two years after the cessation of militancy.

Headline of the Day -100: “Joy Kills Bride Aged 105.” Marcellina Leon of Los Angeles fought her family in court to establish her competency to marry, dies five days marrying.

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Today -100: February 27, 1913: Of labor, downgrading Jews, and treaties

Congress creates the Department of Labor (splitting up the Dept of Commerce and Labor) that Woodrow Wilson wants, after a Senate filibuster is abandoned. Taft thought 9 cabinet members was plenty, but gives in because he doesn’t want to be misinterpreted, he says.

Bulgarian Jews protest against the possibility of any Bulgarian territory being ceded to Romania, as Jews in the annexed area would have their rights reduced to those of Romanian Jews (i.e., none).

Taft asks the Senate to ratify a treaty with Nicaragua, giving the US exclusive rights in perpetuity to build a canal across it, in exchange for $3 million. Senators are somewhat miffed that they didn’t even know this treaty was being negotiated. Of course there are no actual plans to build another canal competing with the Panama Canal, so this seems to be just another version of the treaty the Senate rejected last May, putting control of Nicaraguan finances in American hands. Why Taft is springing this treaty on a lame-duck Senate four days from its adjournment, I don’t understand.

Wilson hasn’t met with Thomas Marshall, the vice-president-elect, since last July? Can that be true?

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Today -100: February 26, 1913: Of spanking, governments NOT of retaliation or revenge, loud noises that strike fear and terror into the hearts of all present, despicable scoundrels, and dog livers

A letter to the NYT suggests the solution to British suffragette militancy: spanking. “Convert the Pankhurst movement into the spankhurst and it is strangled forever.”

Mexican coup leader Victoriano Huerta says that his will not be a government of retaliation or revenge. So that’s okay then. Amnesties have been issued for some of the regime’s opponents who it hasn’t already assassinated.

Zapata’s men are still out there, happily raiding and looting. They’re negotiating to join the regular army; they all want to keep the ranks they’ve granted themselves.

Rumor has it that another of murdered Mexican Pres. Madero’s brothers, Emilio, a general, has been killed. The NYT says this is based on “reliable information.” Man, their track record on getting events in Mexico right is abysmal. In fact, Emilio Madero would die in 1962 (after spending a bit of time in exile, he returned to Mexico and the army, retiring at 80).

Pres. Madero’s widow and mother go into exile in Cuba, as was the custom.

Huerta orders all the portraits of former dictator-for-life Porfirio Díaz, which Madero had had removed from public buildings, put back.

6,000 silk workers in Paterson, NJ go out on a strike called by the IWW, protesting new machinery. The police break up meetings (which they admit were not disorderly and therefore not illegal), prevent strikers parading from factory to factory to call workers out on strike, and arrest IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn for “attend[ing] a meeting of tumultuous persons and did make loud noises that struck fear and terror into the hearts of all present against the peace and dignity of the State of New Jersey.” The police ride other IWW activists out of town on a rail, as was the custom.

Lord Alfred Douglas calls his father-in-law a “despicable scoundrel” on a postcard and two telegrams; father-in-law sues. They’re in a custody fight for Bosie’s son.

Another Antarctic expedition is not going well. Two members of Dr. Douglas Mawson’s expedition died. One fell through the ice, the other from illness brought on by eating dog liver, which is evidently not a good idea. Mawson himself missed his rescue ship by a matter of hours, so he’ll be stuck there until December.

In England, the master of a fox hunt takes out insurance against the hunt losing subscriptions because of a general European war.

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Today -100: February 25, 1913: They dare not let us die, because they are too cowardly

The US ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, issues a statement: “In the absence of other reliable information I am disposed to accept the Government’s version of the manner in which the ex-President and ex-Vice President lost their lives. Certainly the violent deaths of these persons were without Government approval... Mexican public opinion has accepted this view of the affair, and it is not at all excited. The present Government appears to be revealing marked evidence of activity, firmness, and prudence”. The State Dept will say that Amb. Wilson made this statement entirely on his own. Others... all right, me... will say that of course he exonerated the people with whom he conspired of cold-blooded murder.

Texas Gov. Oscar Colquitt is sending four companies of the Texas National Guard to the Mexican border. The federal government is afraid he intends to send them into Mexico, supposedly to protect American citizens in Matamoras, so the War Dept orders federal troops on the border to prevent them crossing. More federal troops are also being sent to the border in readiness for whatever, bringing the total up to 10,000.

The new Mexican regime is busily executing troops that don’t fall into line behind it.

British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested for supposedly ordering the attempt to burn down Lloyd George’s country house.

The NYT editorializes that this is an opportunity to suppress suffragist militancy once and for all, if only the authorities don’t release Mrs. Pankhurst when she hunger strikes (or, as they put it, if “the jail officers are not permitted to lose their wits when she pretends to prefer self-imposed starvation to obeying the law”). What the NYT is calling for is a game of hunger-strike chicken, based on a low estimate of the suffragettes’ dedication (or female willpower generally). The Women’s Social and Political Union also sees this as a game of chicken. Annie Kenney, the Pankhursts’ lieutenant, is quoted in the London Times: “We say, ‘Let us die.’ We are prepared to die. They dare not let us die, because they are too cowardly.” If women are allowed to die in prison, Kenney says, even non-militant suffragists will turn militant.

The US Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the White Slave Act under the Interstate Commerce Clause. In other words, prostitutes are not human beings, who have the right to move between states, whether induced to do so or not, but products; the Act regulating their movement is thus akin to legislative control over inter-state trade in impure food or lottery tickets or pornography.

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Today -100: February 24, 1913: Of Mexican traditions

Deposed Mexican President Madero and Vice President Suarez are murdered. The Huerta Junta is claiming this occurred when Maderistas attacked the escort taking Madero and Suarez to prison, and they were shot attempting to escape or in the cross-fire or something (no one else was hit). Nobody believes this.

Well, except the NYT, which thinks we shouldn’t jump to incredibly likely conclusions. After all, “Sentiment against [Madero] has been growing, and it is in accord with Mexican traditions to satisfy hatred by killing.”

Huerta is replacing all the governors with generals.

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Priorities

A few days ago (I just found the note I wrote on a scrap of newspaper), McNeil-Lehrer had on Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to talk about what sequestration means to our war machine. He reassured us that “we’re going to protect the wars in Afghanistan.”

Phew.

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Today -100: February 23, 1913: Of repressed women, sent-down students, warts jubilees, and standing presidents-elect

Headline of the Day -100: “Repress the Women, Clamors England.” The women being suffragettes, of course.

The NYT passes along a ridiculous rumor that the anonymous person paying the fines of some of the suffragettes, much against their will, is none other than Lloyd George.

Cambridge University (and town) authorities are not happy about the mock funerals sometimes held for students who have been expelled. The authorities’ idea of tradition is only college fellows being allowed to walk on the grass. The students’ idea of tradition sounds more fun: in one case a mile-long procession complete with coffin and weeping widow, with every hurdy-gurdy that could be found, thousands of mouth organs, and the former student accompanied by friends in pajamas, wearing Chinese mustaches and opera hats.

German actors are appealing against the provision of the new national insurance law where they have to give their ages.

A Catholic priest in the German town of Schnittweiler insulted a woman from the pulpit and ordered her to leave the church because he didn’t like her clothes (too modern), saying “This is no comedy theater.” She sued for being insulted and was awarded 50 marks.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100: “KAISER DESIRES NO GIFT.; Warts Jubilee Funds to be Devoted to Charitable Purposes.”

President-elect Woodrow Wilson rode a train from NYC to Princeton; this is front-page news at the New York Times. He had to stand part of the way (the New Jersey part). Fellow passengers knew who he was, but no one gave up their seat to him. Later he got one, but quickly gave it up to a lady, as was evidently not the custom, because he was the only one to do so.

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Instrumental rape for everybody!

Indiana is moving towards requiring women who want the RU-486 pill to have not one but two transvaginal ultrasounds, before and after. The second one is to check that the pregnancy was indeed terminated, but peeing on a stick would of course be easier, cheaper and less invasive, so this is purely punitive. Fortunately, Indiana isn’t planning (yet) to send cops to physically drag women into clinics to force the second probe into her, so the provision requiring the second instrumental rape isn’t a mandate so much as an aspirational expression of what the legislators would like to see happen to sluts.

Another bill passed committee requires that the illustrations accompanying the “informed consent” forms be in color rather than black and white. I’m picturing a doctor handing her patient a consent form and some 3-D glasses.

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Today -100: February 22, 1913: Crimes excusable only in primitive people

Huerta reassures the US that he’s definitely, absolutely not going to have Francisco Madero killed. So that’s okay then.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the major non-militant women’s suffrage group in Britain, gives a speech highly critical of the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union’s escalation of militant tactics: “They had induced women, who ought to be symbols of refinement and civilization, to commit crimes that were excusable only in primitive people – in savages or in children. It was a very serious menace to our civilization.” However, she also castigates the government for force-feeding suffragette prisoners. (The next issue of the WSPU’s The Suffragette will fire back that Fawcett supported the Boer War and the use therein of concentration camps and farm-burning.)

Suffragettes may or may not have tried to burn down the grand stand of the Kempton Park Race Course. Starting at about this point in time, it will become a little hard to affix responsibility for fires, since The Suffragette will pointedly report on any fire anywhere in Britain, whether started by suffragettes or not. It’s going to be a great time to be an arsonist in Britain. Cabinet ministers are adding guards for fear they’ll be kidnapped or something.

Headline of the Day -100: “Wouldn’t Stamp Czar’s Face.” Russia withdraws postage stamps issued for the tricentenary of the Romanov dynasty, because patriotic postal employees are unwilling to stamp them.

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Today -100: February 21, 1913: Of fugitive laws and donkeys

The Huerta junta in Mexican (I know it’s more of a dictatorship than a junta, I just like the phrase Huerta Junta) is putting out a story that Gustavo Madero, the former finance minister, the real power behind the throne of his brother the ousted president, was shot attempting to escape. Thing is, the NYT said yesterday -100 that he was told to run and then shot multiple times in the back, as was the custom in Mexico (they call it the “fugitive law”). Madero’s clothes and the stones he bled to death on were taken (by soldiers, onlookers? not made clear) as souvenirs; a shard of his glasses has already resold for $25.

Pres. Francisco Madero and Vice President José Pino Suarez, who were going to be sent into exile, are arrested instead.

There will be no donkeys in the inaugural parade. Repeat: NO DONKEYS! That is all.

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Today -100: February 20, 1913: To wake him up

A secret (and no doubt very scared) session of the Mexican Congress elects Gen. Victoriano Huerta provisional president.

Gen. Félix Díaz cables the NYT that yesterday’s coup was “the beginning of peace and progress for the republic.”

In one example of the this peace and progress, Díaz has Pres. Madero’s brother Gustavo, who was arrested yesterday, murdered. Why did Díaz have custody of the Madero brothers? Because Gen. Huerta, who just two days ago was supposed to be fighting Díaz, handed them over to him. The two signed an agreement ending that fighting in the American Embassy, where Amb. Henry Wilson and the coup leader “chatted for some time and mutually felicitated each other on the end of the fighting.” Wilson isn’t even trying to hide his complicity in the coup.

The irony of this is that when Díaz was captured a couple of weeks ago, Pres. Madero decided to exercise mercy and not execute him.

The House fails to override Taft’s veto of the immigration bill.

Romania is threatening to go to war with Bulgaria, because why not.

Remember those suffragists marching from New York to DC for the inauguration? In Delaware a couple of Southerners asked whether they supported negro women voting. Ru-roh. “General” Rosalie Jones replied that it was up to “certain states” to “solve their own problems.”

In Britain, where suffragists are less wimpy, the country house of British Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George is blown up. Mrs. Pankhurst gives a speech taking responsibility. Someone in the audience asks “Why did you blow him up?” “To wake him up,” she replied. Just to clarify, Mrs. P. didn’t personally blow anything up, and no one was in the house, which wasn’t actually Lloyd George’s house, but a house he planned to rent.

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You want pictures of the president playing golf? We got pictures of the president playing golf.

The press is bitching about being excluded from Obama’s golfing weekend extravaganza.

Fortunately, we can always go into the archives.















You’re welcome.

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Today -100: February 19, 1913: The people should embrace one another and live in peace

Just what Mexico needed: a coup. Troops loyal to Gen. Victoriano Huerta seize Pres. Madero and the vice president and all but one member of the Cabinet and Madero’s brother Gustavo, who was actually eating lunch at a restaurant with Huerta when Huerta had him taken into custody. They force Pres. Madero to resign and proclaim Huerta provisional president as reward for his complete inability to defeat Díaz’s forces. Díaz says he and his followers will declare allegiance to the Huerta dictatorship. The Times notes that “The peace was brought about through the intermediation of the American Ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson and other diplomats.” If by “intermediation” you mean conspiring to overthrow the elected leader of a sovereign nation (Amb. Wilson left Taft more or less in the dark about what he was up to).

Huerta makes a speech from the balcony of the National Palace: “The killing of brother by brother is over. The people should embrace one another and live in peace.” Sweet.

Stupid Headline of the Day -100: “Huerta Has Been a Loyal Soldier.”

Headline of the Day -100 (which I have slightly improved by the addition of three words): “Taft is Relieved By Madero’s Fall and Forthcoming Murder.” The article says that the Taft administration’s preference for Huerta over Madero is entirely based on the belief that the former will keep Americans resident in Mexico safer than the latter.

The Senate votes 72-18 to override Taft’s veto of the immigration bill, with its literacy requirement.

Lloyd’s of London is offering a special rate to insure golf greens against having “Votes for Women” inscribed on them with vitriol.

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So when Pope Benny has to clean out his desk

at the end of the month, do you think one of these guys



will hold his cardboard box for him while the others watch to make sure he doesn’t steal any office supplies?

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