Over

Mitch McConnell says that Obama’s legislative agenda is “over,” but makes an incredibly generous offer: “to the extent that the president wants to do what we think is right for America, we won’t say ‘no’ simply because there’s an election coming along.”

He isn’t specific, but I’m guessing that Obama’s proposal to let poor people freeze to death is precisely the sort of meeting of the minds on “what we think is right for America” of which Turtle Boy was speaking.

Today -100: February 14, 1911: Of German troubles, and lords

Headline of the Day -100: “German Troubles in Africa.” Evidently there is “the possibility of a renewal of native troubles” in the German colony of South West Africa (Namibia). Poor Germans, always being put to the “trouble” of massacring Herero tribespeople (often described as the first genocide of the twentieth century, 1904-7).

The US issues a warrant for the arrest of Francisco Madero, leader of the Mexican Revolution, for, you know, revolutionary stuff. They think he’s in El Paso.

In Britain, PM Asquith will next week introduce a bill to reduce the current power of the House of Lords to vote down legislation to a mere delaying one (two years) (except for “money bills” relating to taxes, budgets, etc, where they would have no power to reject or amend). Of course since the Veto Bill hasn’t been passed yet, the Tory-dominated House of Lords still has the power to veto the Veto Bill. So Asquith is employing some not-so-subtle blackmail: if they reject it, he will have the king name as many new peers as it takes to change the vote, which would make the lords have to share the red benches with such riffraff as Thomas Hardy, Gilbert Murray, James Barrie and Bertrand Russell (who were on Asquith’s secret list of 249 possible Lord Whositses).

Today -100: February 13, 1911: Of lynchings, head-shaking, and elves

In a letter read out to 3,000 Sunday school classes, President Taft recommends teetotalism.

An 18-year-old black man is lynched in Eufaula, Alabama, for allegedly attacking a white woman.

When the Mexican insurrectos left Mexicali after a brief occupation last month, they said that if the federal government tried to resume collecting customs, they would return and burn down the customs house. It did and they did. American troops looked on from one block away, on the other side of the border.

Elsewhere, though, American soldiers arrested rebel leader Gen. Manuel Casillas as he attempted to cross from the US into Mexico, because he was carrying a rifle.

When asked if he would run for president again in 1912, William Jennings Bryan “sadly shook his head.” Which is not exactly a denial.

China is having a little outbreak of the Plague; Russia closes off border.

NYT Index Typo Alert: It’s not “THIRTY SCHOOL TOPICS.; Questions of Elve Importance Framed for Mothers to Discuss.” It’s “Live Importance.” (Because elves are mostly home-schooled, or sent out to work in Santa’s factories.)

Today -100: February 12, 1911: Of Lincoln, borders, miscegenation, radium, and executions

It is Lincoln’s birthday and, hey, it’s also (nearly) the 50th anniversary of the election of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederacy. The NYT thinks that after all this time “we ought to be willing to leave the civil war to history.” It says that the South is no longer hostile to the North and the “occasional demonstrations of the sectional spirit” are only ginned up in order to pressure the states to keep paying pensions to Confederate veterans. “The new South, full of commercial and industrial energy, will not long pretend to mourn the failure of the Confederacy.” Not long, huh?

At a Lincoln Day speech, Teddy Roosevelt comes out in favor of the direct election of US senators and the president. He also says that “the Republican Party must be not only progressive but sane.” (So how’s that going?)

Congress rejects New Mexico’s demand for a revision of its border with Texas in its favor (the border was set 50 years before, but NM says there was a surveying mistake).

Nevada outlaws marriage between whites and Asians. Any minister or justice of the peace who performs one is henceforth guilty of a misdemeanor.

The Radium Bank in Paris, which I think sends radium out as needed to doctors and hospitals, is using more female porters because of fears that robbers will target the extremely valuable substance, which is after all the elixir of life.

Haiti executes two more rebel generals but promises to stop now after, as the NYT puts it in a sub-head, “Negro Government Informed by Washington That Execution of Prisoners Would Be Improper Act.”

Hosni goes bye bye

Just yesterday Mubarak was telling his “children” that he wouldn’t leave them, and now he’s buggered off to Sharm el-Shaikh for a packet of cigarettes and I don’t think he’s coming back. Bad daddy, bad daddy!

And what of his promise that, like O.J. looking for the real killer, “I will not relent in harshly punishing those responsible [for the violence against protesters]. I will hold those who persecuted our youth accountable with the maximum deterrent sentences.”

Personally, I’m glad he made the speech he did yesterday instead of the one Little Leon Panetta predicted he’d make, because I’d hate to think of Mubarak leaving with any more shreds of dignity than can possibly be removed from him, or which he can remove from himself by his own obtuse stubbornness.

Today -100: February 11, 1911: Of time, men of wisdom and experience, and Finnish fishermen on floes

France moves its clocks up 9 minutes and 21 seconds, bringing it into line with the rest of Europe – well, the Times says with Belgium, Holland, Spain and... England. Whatever.

Sen. Elihu Root denounces the proposed direct election of US senators as an effort of the people to shirk their responsibility to elect good state legislatures. He also worries about Southern states having power over their senatorial elections, for obvious reasons. And that many “men of wisdom and experience” would not be willing to undertake the work and inconvenience of an election campaign.

Evidently those Finnish fishermen did not drown.

Heads in the Sand

A Los Angeles city councilcritter who wants to mandate condom use in pornographic films says “We can’t keep our heads in the sand any longer.” Although if they did, it would be a pretty weird porn film. Just saying.

CONTEST I’M GOING TO TOTALLY REGRET, I JUST KNOW IT: What should the film’s name be?

Today -100: February 10, 1911: Of wet Alabama and prinking

Alabama is about to end prohibition.

Evidently, Wellesley students “lack prinking.”

Pursuing their own agenda

A few days ago, Hillary Clinton said, “There are forces at work in any society, particularly one that is facing these kind of challenges, that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own agenda, which is why I think it’s important to follow the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by vice-president Omar Suleiman.”

Yeah, it would be terrible if anyone tied to derail the democratization process in Egypt to pursue their own agenda, huh Hillary?