The return of the spurtle

I don’t know how it’s come to this, but for the third year in a row I am blogging about the winner of the “highly-coveted Golden Spurtle.” But then, I’m informed that Anna Batchelor, who long-time readers will no doubt recall having won the specialty porridge category two years ago, has 1,400 followers on Twitter, so clearly I’ve been wasting my time covering politics. I can report that last year’s winner celebrated with a tattoo – of what, we are not informed, but presumably a bowl of porridge – and will now be getting a second one to celebrate his win in the specialty category.

Today is both World Porridge Day and Indigenous People’s Day (Berkeley only). Celebrate accordingly.

Today -100: October 10, 1911: Of bliss, retaliation, and crucifixes

Name of the Day -100: McKinley’s secretary of the Interior Cornelius Bliss, who has died from heart disease “due in great measure to extreme age.” If you’re wondering what counted as extreme age in 1911, Bliss was 78.

Turkey is threatening to expel all Italians and impose a 100% surtax on Italian goods.

Headline of the Day -100: “Priests Lead Rebels With Crucifixes.” The failed royalist revolt in Portugal.

Today -100: October 9, 1911: Of slavery, souls, and straw hats

Italians capture Tobruk. The Turks are really crap at this whole war thing.

Italy issues a proclamation abolishing slavery in Libya.

Evangelist Billy Sunday calculates the cost of soul-saving in Boston at $450 per. Local ministers disagree, putting the cost at anywhere from $3.12 (Methodist) to $70 (Baptist) to $143 (Congregationalist).

Headline of the Day -100: “Killed in Straw Hat Row.” Well, it was out of season.

Today -100: October 8, 1911: Of messing with Texas, wars, and Cubists

The Mexican consul at San Antonio has been recalled for the high crime of saying that “Texas is hell” after the lynching of a 14-year-old Mexican.

The Italian-Ottoman war continues to spread. Some sort of naval engagement (two different stories in today’s paper give very different accounts) leads to Italian destroyers firing on the Albanian town of St. Juan de Medua.

The NYT Sunday magazine section has an article on Cubism, the first mention of the movement listed in the NYT index (and the second to mention Picasso, “wildest of wild men”). It explains that Cubists “believe that the right way to paint persons and things is to paint them in cubes, squares, and lozenges.” “Is this art or madness? Who knows?” The article continues not knowing for several hundred words.

Today -100: October 7, 1911: Of crosses, lynchings, dead Chinese, and angels

Italy has appointed Admiral Borea d’Olmo as the new governor of Libya. And the “cross of Christianity has been raised” over the land for the first time since 1551. So I guess Libya is Christian now.

A second trial of one of the Coatesville, PA lynch mob which burned Zack Walker, this one a 16-year-old, results in acquittal.

Something like 10,000 have been killed in the Chinese uprising. This time it gets 99 words in the NYT, which is an improvement.

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “Auto Strikes Angel.” Someone named Lewis Angel.

Obama press conference: The American people are very frustrated

Obama held a not-very-interesting press conference today.

CLEAR! “Our economy really needs a jolt right now.”

BUT YOU’LL TELL US WHEN IT IS THE TIME FOR THE USUAL POLITICAL GRIDLOCK, RIGHT? “This is not a game; this is not the time for the usual political gridlock.”


RICH PEOPLE AREN’T ASKING FOR TAX CUTS? RICH PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS ASKING FOR TAX CUTS. “We can fight to protect tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them, or we can cut taxes for virtually every worker and small business in America.”

THAT’S A RHETORICAL QUESTION, RIGHT? “historically, Republicans haven’t been opposed to rebuilding roads and bridges. Why would you be opposed now?”

WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FOR A LONG TIME: “The American people are very frustrated. They’ve been frustrated for a long time.”

Have you heard about this Occupy Wall Street thing? “Obviously I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen it on television.” No word on whether he’s keeping up on the economic plight of ordinary Americans by watching “Two Broke Girls.” “So, yes, I think people are frustrated”. And evidently they’re mostly frustrated by Republicans who want to roll back Dodd-Frank. And bankers and the financial system and whatnot. If they’re frustrated by Obama and the Democrats in any way at all, Obama must not have seen evidence of it on television.

Jake Tapper asks if they aren’t frustrated that no one on Wall Street has been prosecuted. Obama says that’s because all those corrupt practices were actually legal and shouldn’t be. Way to undercut future prosecutions.


Re “Fast and Furious” (selling guns that went to Mexico so we could track them, without the actual tracking them part), he has “complete confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder, who has “indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious,” which you’d think would undercut that complete confidence just a little bit, but evidently not. “And I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America.” So that’s okay then.

IRONY! “The irony is the same folks that the Republicans claim to be protecting, the well off -- the millionaires and the billionaires -- they’d be doing better, they’d be making more money if ordinary Americans had some money in their pockets and were out there feeling more confident about the economy. That’s been the lesson of our history -- when folks in the middle and at the bottom are doing well, the folks at the top do even better.” Heads, the rich win, tails the rich still win.

Oh, and that is not at all the lesson of our history.



GIVE ME WHAT I WANT, OR I’LL GO MAKE SOME MORE SPEECHES: “I would love nothing more than to not have to be out there campaigning because we were seeing constructive action here in Congress. ... And I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can’t campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress.” The R’s must really be trembling in fear right now.

Today -100: October 6, 1911: Of empires and potatoes

“It is reported to be the ambition of King Victor Emmanuel to extend his African possessions and attract there Italian emigration so as to make a vast Italian empire and resurrect for his house the title of the ancient Roman Emperors.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Mayor Buys More Potatoes.”

Today -100: October 5, 1911: Of bombardments and bells

Italy is bombarding Tripoli.

Dr. Joseph Bell, Arthur Conan Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes, dies.

LA Times, “Concerning Woman Suffrage”: “Voting is not, as is often loudly asserted, ‘a right.’ If it is a right, why is it refused to men who are only 20 years and 364 days old? Why is it refused to men over 21 who have been in the State only 364 days? Why is it refused to men because their skins are yellow? Why is it withheld from Alaskans, and Porto Ricans, and Fillipinos?” All good questions.

Today -100: October 4, 1911: Of dizzy and precarious platforms

British Home Secretary Winston Churchill gives a speech in which he alludes to the increasing number of war scares in Europe lately, but reassures his Dundee constituents that “States and Governments to-day find themselves bound together, interlaced and interwoven one with another, by the tenacious network of trade interests, of commercial transactions, of intercommunication, of reciprocal insurance, and of friendly connection. They find themselves standing upon the dizzy and precarious platform of international credit and complex artificial industry, a platform which, were it to collapse or be violently overturned, would produce consequences which no man and no monarch can foretell.” He adds that the strongest nations – Britain, Germany and France – are those with the most to lose and the furthest to fall in the event of war, so they’ll try to prevent one. So that’s okay then.

Turkey may respond to the Italian attack on Libya by occupying the coast of the Italian colony of Eritrea.

Today -100: October 3, 1911: Of wars

Austria threatens Italy over the seeming expansion of its operations against Turkey into the vicinity of Albania, and will send some warships there, just to make its point clear.

Today -100: October 2, 1911: Of getting in your retaliation first

Italy is pretending to believe that Turkey had plans to use its vast navy to attack the Italian coast and merchant ships. So Italy was justified in pre-emptively defending itself.

More monarchist uprisings in Portugal. Easily put down.

Headline of the Day -100: “Commodities Little Excited by the War.”

You should never have to look over your shoulder

Obama spoke this evening at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner. I assume he dined on the flesh of his enemies. The Human Rights Campaign is a gay group, so he started off with a joke about how he had held “productive bilateral talks with your leader, Lady Gaga.” Stop trying to make jokes, Barry. Just stop.

Fox News begs to differ.

INSERT, ER, INTERJECT YOUR OWN DOUBLE ENTENDRE HERE: “you should never have to look over your shoulder -- to be gay in the United States of America.”

INTERJECT YOUR OWN DOUBLE ENTENDRE HERE: “it took two years to get the [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] repeal through Congress. (Applause.) We had to hold a coalition together. We had to keep up the pressure. We took some flak along the way.” Adding, “No one has to live a lie to serve the country they love.” I was contemplating some joke about him being a Kenyan or something when it occurred to me that somewhere along the line the phrase “serve their country” has come to mean military service exclusively.


He does keep inching closer and closer to supporting gay marriage, without ever quite doing so. Zeno’s Gay Marriage Paradox. He warned today against those trying to turn back the clock, “who, as we speak, are looking to enshrine discrimination into state laws and constitutions,” which can only mean bans on gay marriage, but I guess he wants credit for supporting marriage equality without saying words that would be used in attack ads. Sigh.

He castigates the candidates at the last debate for not criticizing the audience members who booed the gay soldier dude. “You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it’s not politically convenient.” Kind of a weird sentence, that.


Evidently progress in America “happens when a father realizes he doesn’t just love his daughter, but also her wife.” But not in a creepy way.

That said, any time Obama refers to someone in a gay marriage as a husband or wife – I believe I’ve noticed him doing so once before – it counts as a win.

“It [progress, that is] happens when a soldier tells his unit that he’s gay, and they tell him they knew it all along and they didn’t care, because he was the toughest guy in the unit.” Heh, he said “toughest guy in the unit.” Note that to be accepted, gay soldiers evidently have to be “tougher” than straight soldiers.

Today -100: October 1, 1911: Of bombardments, dam failures, and women-hating railroad bosses

The Italian fleet is bombarding Tripoli.

Almost 1,000 people, one-fourth the population of Austin, Pennsylvania, are killed by flood and fire when the new, badly built dam bursts (the fire was the result of flood waters rupturing natural gas pipes). (Update: or maybe just 78 people died, according to Wikipedia.) The nearby small town of Costello is wiped out, “not a building standing on its foundation,” but a man in an automobile raced to give the town warning of the flood, arriving 3 minutes ahead of the waters, which gave most of the population time to flee into the hills.

Evidently the Southern Pacific Railroad has come out against women’s suffrage in California (referendum coming up in a couple of weeks).

Women’s suffrage in Saudi Arabia

Maybe someone can confirm (or refute) something I read somewhere or other, that the Saudi king’s magnanimous grant to women of the right to vote in elections in 2015 for the minority of members of mostly powerless municipal councils is subject to those women’s male owners relatives’ giving them written permission to vote?

Today -100: September 30, 1911: Of dying nations and living nations

Italy declares war on Turkey, which looks like it plans to roll over and not resist the occupation of Libya. Italian troops have landed, and Italian cruisers fired on Turkish transports.

The rest of Europe is mostly concerned with keeping the fighting localized, which may be difficult as other Ottoman provinces, including Albania and Crete, are showing signs of unrest.

The NYT notes that no one believes Italy’s pretext of disorder in Libya and danger to Italian subjects and businesses there, and says that Italy is without justification, but “The dying nations must yield as the living nations press forward, just as savage tribes in all history have been forced back or annihilated by the advance of civilization. ... If any race could set up a claim to be the Tripolitans by indigenous right it would be the Arabs” but “There is nothing national about Tripoli. She is and has been a possession, and, like a negotiable instrument, passes from hand to hand.”

In Mexico’s presidential elections tomorrow -100, men can vote at 18 if married and 21 if unmarried. Madero is for all intents and purposes unopposed.

Headline of the Day -100: “Taft in Circus Tent Ends Tour of Iowa.” Sometimes he just liked to feel pretty.

Today -100: September 29, 1911: Of encyclopedias

The American Federation of Catholic Societies comes out against the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Evidently, all the articles on religion weren’t written by Catholics.

It’s very hard to separate liberty from some economic reforms

Obama answered some questions from Hispanics. Asked about Cuba, he more or less said that he would lift sanctions if it released political prisoners and had human rights. What, asked one of the hosts, they could still have a socialist economy? Obama, realizing his mistake, quickly backtracked: “Well, it’s very hard to separate liberty from some economic reforms.” Everyone would have to have a right to start their own business, for example. “So some elements of freedom are included in how an economic system works.” So it’s official: Obama thinks “freedom” must include capitalism.

Not addressed: the program under which the Border Patrol now transports Mexicans caught crossing the border illegally to some other random part of the border thousands of miles away before pushing them back over the border, just to be dicks.

Today -100: September 28, 1911: Of ultimata

40,000 Italian troops are off the coast of Libya. Italy has sent an ultimatum to the Turks that unless they agree to an Italian occupation of Tripoli, Italy will occupy Tripoli.

I read David Brooks so you don’t have to

Hah! Just kidding; I’m not gonna read David Brooks.

Today -100: September 27, 1911: Of monopolies

US Steel says that it’s not an illegal monopoly and won’t dissolve itself “either voluntarily or at the demand of the Government.”