Today -100: December 2, 1916: Germany will not be deprived of the sharp weapon

The US attorney general orders an inquiry into whether recent food price increases are the result of illegal combinations. The government is trying to head off calls in Congress to ban food exports.

Germany will ignore Norway’s ban on armed submarines. Says the German ambassador, “Germany will not be deprived of the sharp weapon she possessed in the submarine.”

Supposedly, Villa gave a speech in Chihuahua City saying he intended to kill all foreigners and take their land.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Morning Post (London) claims Germany offered peace in exchange for a free hand in Latin America. Minister of War Lord Cecil denies having heard of such a proposal.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 1, 1916: Of disarmed armies, martial law, chihuahuas, and turkeys

King Constantine rejects the Allied demand that the Greek army turn over all its artillery and most of its weapons and ammunition.

The US declares martial law in the Dominican Republic.

Pancho Villa’s followers drive Carranza’s forces from Chihuahua City, possibly because the latter ran out of ammunition.

Headline of the Day -100:

Yes it does, yes it does.

After a long delay, the Wipers Times, now called the B.E.F. Times, has a new issue. Here’s a poem from it, entitled “The War Lord and the Chancellor (With apologies to the late Lewis Carrol),” the “war lord” being Kaiser Wilhelm and the chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg)

The War Lord and the Chancellor
 Were walking hand in hand;
They laughed like anything to see
 The devastated land;
“If this belonged to us,” they said,
 “It really would be grand.”

“If fifty Huns with fifty guns,
 Swept it for half a year;
Do you suppose,” the War Lord said,
 “That vict’ry would be near?”
“I doubt it,” said the Chancellor,
  And shed a bitter tear.

“You always were a pessimist,”
 The frowning War Lord said;
“Oh! Highest One it is because
 I always look ahead;
Before this War is finished you
 And I will both be dead.”

“Don’t talk like that I do beseech,”
 The War Lord wailed aloud;
“To win this War by any means,
 You know that I have vowed;
With Zeppelins and submarines,
 And waves of poison cloud.”

“Oh! chuck it Bill,” the Chancellor
 Said with a rueful air,
“You know quite well with ‘frightfulness’
 We’ve tried them everywhere.
And got it back with interest.”
 Bill glared and tore his hair.

He danced with rage, he howled and swore,
 And vowed that he would see
That Army so contemptible
 Would very quickly be
By every kind of “frightfulness”
 Sent to eternity.

The Chancellor spoke loud and long,
 With rhetoric inspired;
He spoke of love, and peace, and food,
 He spoke till he was tired;
And when he paused he turned around –
 The War Lord had expired!

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 30, 1916: Of coal and tanks

The British government settles a labor dispute in the South Wales coal mines by taking over the mines. The colliers wanted a pay rise but the owners wouldn’t agree to an investigation to determine whether they could afford a pay rise or were, in fact, blatantly war-profiteering (as was the custom).

Headline of the Day -100:

Kinky.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 29, 1916: Mush isn’t eaten enough

Facing the imminent capture of Bucharest, the Romanian government flees to Jassy (Iaşi).

Speaker of the House Champ Clark (D-Missouri) says families can cope with the increased cost of living (an egg boycott is being organized to protest price increases) by raising hens. And eating more corn. “Mush is highly nutritious, and it isn’t eaten enough,” says the Speaker, through a mouthful of mush no doubt.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 28, 1916: Of dejected lawyers, ambassadors, and beer

Charles Evans Hughes is going back to his old law firm, Rounds, Schurman & Dwight. His son CEH Jr will join him.

Britain refuses to give safe passage to the newly appointed Austrian ambassador to the United States. The last one, Konstantin Dumba, was expelled over a year ago for running sabotage operations in the US, which is Britain’s excuse for not allowing a new one.

August Busch of Anhauser-Busch joins Gustave Pabst in supporting regulation of drinking in order to ward off total prohibition, as the brewers attempt to separate themselves from the liquor interests. Busch supports abolishing bars in saloons so patrons are only served at tables, banning treating, and for allowing saloons to to sell only beer, light wine and non-alcoholic drinks as in Germany.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 27, 1916: Of southern Slavs, the reasonable use of beer, and being all undressed and nowhere to go

The London Times says Austria plans to create a puppet Southern Slav state along the lines of the Polish one in order to legalize conscripting Serbs in the parts of Serbia it’s occupying.

Gustave Pabst, the beer tycoon, says brewers are in favor of “true temperance.” After all, “thoughtful men and women are not opposed to the reasonable use of beer”.

Movie of the Day:

The first million-dollar movie evidently. The film is lost, because of course it is. And it’s got nudity! “There are long passages when Miss Kellermann wanders disconsolately through the film all undressed and nowhere to go.” They say that like it’s a bad thing.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 26, 1916: How long must women wait for liberty?

Inez Milholland Boissevain, lawyer and poster girl of the women’s suffrage movement, often found on horseback leading a parade, dies in Los Angeles at age 30 of pernicious anemia, brought on by her hectic schedule campaigning across the country for Charles Evans Hughes in the interests of suffrage. Her last public words were, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?”

I’ve been a little surprised by the Times’s obsessive coverage of her health over the last month: “MRS. BOISSEVAIN VERY ILL.; Throat Seriously Affected from Constant Speaking on Campaign Tour,” “Mrs. Boissevain Is Operated On,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN VERY ILL.; Two Transfusions of Blood Made In Effort to Save Her,” “Mrs. Inez M. Boissevain Near Death,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN IS LOW,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN BETTER,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN SINKING,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN BETTER,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN VERY LOW,” “Mrs. Boissevain Slightly Better,” “MRS. BOISSEVAIN IS BETTER.; Attending Physician Reports Her Condition "Somewhat Improved,” “Mrs. Boissevain Is Recovering,” “MRS. INEZ BOISSEVAIN DIES IN LOS ANGELES.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Also, too, marmalade. 

Venizelos’s self-proclaimed Provisional Government of Greece declares war on Germany and Bulgaria. Meanwhile, the Entente is demanding that the army (the king’s, not venizelos’s) turn over military supplies.

In Britain the National Transport Workers’ Federation protests government plans to introduce non-white workers on the docks.

The Sunday NYT Magazine section has an article by Arthur Conan Doyle on how ghosts are totally real.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 25, 1916: The world wants a new Mexico

Headline of the Day -100:

Russian Prime Minister Boris Stürmer is forced out by the Duma and is replaced by Transport Minister Alexander Fyodorovitch Trepov, who will also continue in that post. He is “progressive” in comparison to Stürmer and the czar and Rasputin (who he will try to bribe to stop interfering in policy), which is rather a low bar. It isn’t especially reassuring that his brother Dmitri was in charge of suppressing the 1905 Revolution and his father was also a reactionary general.

The US-Mexican Commission come to an agreement that would see US troops withdrawn from Mexico 40 days after it’s signed by Wilson and Carranza – if conditions in northern Mexico are sufficiently stable. Since that’s a subjective standard, it sounds to me like an agreement that the US will continue to do whatever it damn well wants. And after they withdraw, US troops can continue to enter Mexico to attack “marauders.” The Americans say there’s no reason Mexico should have any problem with that because the marauders are their common enemy. There is of course no reciprocal right for Mexican forces. Interior Secretary Franklin Lane, head of the US delegation, says “this is only a beginning to a policy which will make a Mexico that we can live with. ... We will help her to get into good shape if she can understand that we mean to be her friend.”

Someone cut down Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite sassafras tree. He offers a reward for the malefactor’s capture.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 24, 1916: There’s nothing like a democratic emperor

The new Austrian Emperor Karl I says that yeah, Austria is totally gonna stay in the war. It seems like, with all the false rumors of peace proposals going round, any time someone takes office now (new emperors, Russian prime ministers, whatever) they have to commit to staying in until the bitter end.

Headline of the Day -100:

He is also “a good shot, a sportsman, and an expert dancer”.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The city, not a small, bug-eyed dog.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The author, not the city.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 23, 1916: Of britannics, zitas, concessions, Londons, and diets

The Britannic, a White Star liner commandeered for use as a military hospital ship, sinks near Greece. The British are saying it was torpedoed, but it actually hit a mine. The Britannic was the largest British ship of any type, sister ship to the Titanic. 30 dead, 1,035 survivors. There were no patients onboard.

The new emperor of Austria-Hungary is Franz Joseph’s grand-nephew, 29, or as he’s now known, Karl I of Austria and Karl IV of Hungary. Two of the brothers of the new Empress Zita – Xavier and Sixtus – are fighting in the Belgian Army, which will make for an awkward Austrian Thanksgiving. Zita died in 1989 at 96, by the way, 67 years after Karl.

Charles Evans Hughes concedes.

Jack London dies. He was 40.

12 employees of the Chicago Health Department are taking part in an experiment to prove that you can eat perfectly adequately for 40¢ a day. They started with a breakfast of liver, bacon, an egg, muffins & butter, apples and coffee. That’s one meal, you understand, 13¢ worth.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 22, 1916: So suck it, Victoria

Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I dies. He was 86 and had been on the throne since he was 18, a longer reign than Queen Victoria’s.

Here’s the London Daily Mail obit: “Emperor Francis Joseph had been politically defunct for two years. In the present war he played a very insignificant part and it is exceedingly doubtful whether had he been in vigorous health he would ever have consented to become the passive agent of a German plot.” Etc.

The Habsburg family tree in general and the line of succession in particular have been... subject to revision... over FJ’s lifetime. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, of course, but also FJ’s only son Crown Prince Rudolf’s suicide pact with his mistress at Mayerling in 1889, the execution of his brother Maximilian in Mexico, his wife’s assassination by an anarchist, one of his nephews lost at sea. Also his granddaughter Elisabeth Marie (Rudolf’s daughter) shot her husband’s actress mistress to death

If Germany does not intend to give up its Polish territory to the puppet Polish buffer state it and Austria announced, the German state of Prussia really doesn’t intend to give up anything. That land is “sacred and inviolable,” says Prussian Interior Minister Count Friedrich von Loebell. The Prussian Diet votes for no portion of Prussian Poland to be given to, um, the Poles. Though to head this off, Prussia might even give Poles some rights. 

Norway, which is not participating in the war (it has a note from its mum), will have to institute food rationing. And Britain orders a potato census.

The New York State Woman’s Suffrage Party plans to push for another women’s suffrage referendum in 1917, even though the 1915 referendum failed. This time it promises “No more pink teas, no more parlor meetings and abstract lectures for the suffrage cause.”

For the first time, the Philippines’ Senate has a full-blooded Moro, Hadji Butu. There are also two Moro – or, as the NYT puts it, “reclaimed savages” – in the lower house.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

APEC dress-up fail

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was held in Peru this year, and the traditional Make All the Leaders Dress Funny portion was just lame.



So lame.

Times past:

Ponchopallooza ‘04 in Chile:



Bar Girls in Hanoi, 2006:



Whatever the fuck this was supposed to be in Australia 2007:



Ponchopalooza ‘08 in Mexico:



Chinese Restaurant Waiters in Singapore 2009:




Here’s my post from the 2006 summit:

It’s so awkward when everyone shows up at work wearing the same thing.

Wow, that totally flatters his ass.


I am totally freeballing it under this thing.


Man, I coulda gone commando too.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 21, 1916: Follow your Bliss

Eleftherios Venizelos says that he and his movement aren’t against the Greek crown, just the “system of despotism” around it. He says that after the war he’ll make sure there will be no more “forcing on the people against their will policies calculated to drive the country to national suicide.”

The Republicans are trying to figure out when to concede the presidential election. But the important news: the RNC’s treasurer is named Cornelius Newton Bliss, Jr. Cornelius Newton Bliss, Senior was McKinley’s secretary of the interior.

The American Federation of Labor recommends ignoring any injunction against strikes based on the dictum that labor is property. I don’t follow that, but the labor-is-property thing is central to an anti-union ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court earlier this year (see p. 181 here).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 20, 1916: Hallmark does NOT make a card for that

The elections demonstrated that William Jennings Bryan’s influence over the Democratic Party in his home state of Nebraska is gone. So he seems to be leaving the state, moving his things to his other homes in Florida and North Carolina, and leaving the Democratic Party for the Prohibition Party.

At the beginning of the month, the Germans lobbed their one-thousandth shell at Rheims Cathedral. I’m picturing a monk sighing and then painstakingly illuminating a new hash mark on a manuscript.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 19, 1916: Of civilian fighters, energetic mouths, and Manx cats

The Entente objects to the Central Powers’ declaration of a Polish state on Russian Polish territory, saying that military occupation during war does not give the occupier the legal right to dispose of territory.

Romania denies German claims that its civilians are fighting the German invading army. Don’t know if it’s true, but it does sound like Germany is pre-justifying any massacres of civilians, using the same excuse no one believed in Belgium.

Germany denies that its plans to conscript people into civilian war work will include housemaids. You have to draw the line somewhere.

The NYT Sunday Magazine has an article about Jeanette Rankin. You can tell it’s written by a university professor and not a Times reporter by the fact that it doesn’t mention her hair color and “energetic mouth” until the 5th paragraph.

Rankin’s Democratic opponent Harry Mitchell says he won’t challenge Rankin’s election (some are threatening to do so on the grounds that women can’t be members of Congress) and he will refuse to take the seat if her election is overturned.

Headline of the Day -100:

A Mr. Wilberforce Wiggins, a merchant in Liverpool, was late to lunch with some friends. As a joke he explained that he had received an order from the Indian Government for 1,000 Manx cats at £5 each, to be used as presents for native princes, as wasn’t the custom. He was overheard by hotel staff who immediately got into the Manx cat business and before you know it there were 1,200 cats at the docks, many of whom escaped, and Wiggins felt it expedient to leave the country for New York. And I don’t believe a word of it.

“Wilberforce Wiggins,” indeed.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Oh bother

Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel? That's the wackiest idea I've heard all day, and I've heard about plans for a Winnie the Pooh live-action movie. But then again, it's Trump we're talking about, so it could wind up that Winnie the Pooh gets named ambassador and Huckabee will get his head stuck in a honey pot.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

What Alabama has wrought

Looking back over posts from 2000, I’m reminded that Trump has many more options for government positions than Bush did in 2000 before the Republican Hegemony. For example, with the balance in the Senate close then as now, Republican senators from states with Democratic governors were unavailable, so, to quote myself, “no Dick Lugar in DOD, no Richard Shelby at CIA and, thank God, no Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as Attorney General.”

Does anyone know who called Sessions a white-supremacist Keebler’s elf? Because I’m planning to steal that.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Pryor convictions

Well, the nice thing about having an old blog is that if Republican shits are going to keep resurfacing, I can just reprint old posts.

William Pryor, 11th Circuit judge, recess-appointed by GeeDubya, is showing up as a contender for the Supreme Court. Here’s what I wrote about him in 2003:

Bush’s judicial appointees are getting wackier. For example, William Pryor, Alabama’s attorney general, nominated to the 11th Circuit. Pryor thinks Roe v Wade is "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." He indicted Barnes & Noble for selling art books (which he considered child pornography). He says he became a lawyer so he could fight the ACLU. He is against the separation of church & state, supports prayer in public schools and has said “God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts.” He supported Ala.’s ban on sex toys and practice of tying prisoners to “hitching posts,” supports executing the retarded, endorsed a bill to let anti-abortion lawyers represent the state against minors trying to get judicial overrides of parental notification.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 18, 1916: Of co-regents, legions, silver, and munitions of life

Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph will name his heir apparent, Archduke Karl, as co-regent next month on the 68th anniversary of his reign, if Frank Joey lives that long, which he won’t.

Huh, it seems there’s a little catch to the Teutonic promise to create a new Polish state on Russian territory: there have to be sufficient volunteers for the Polish Legion (who have to swear allegiance to Kaiser Wilhelm and Emperor Franz Joseph). If there aren’t enough volunteers, there will be conscription. If there is resistance to conscription, or the soldiers prove “unsatisfactory,” the promise of independence will be null and void.

Headline of the Day -100:

Belgium is in a panic over German orders for all men over 17 to report for inspection. They suspect that hundreds of thousands will be deported to Germany. The city officials of Tournai refuse to give the Germans a list of male inhabitants and the city is fined, and will be fined every day until they comply.

The Dutch parliament votes to allow women to be elected to it.

Carranza orders that taxes be paid in silver, so the state will get some of the silver that people have been hoarding, and everybody else will be stuck with crappy Mexican paper money.

Winston Churchill predicts that before the war is over, the British government will take over all shipping, conscript everyone for universal service, and ration food while setting prices. “We need a great organization for producing munitions of life just as we do for munitions of death.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 17, 1916: Of Cubist patriotism

Germany gives legal recognition to Judaism in Poland.

Headline of the Day -100:

Pres. Wilson orders 6,000 national guards withdrawn from the Mexican border.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.