Monday, October 5, 2026
Thursday, October 5, 1911. More anarchists.
Anarchist Nikolaus Njegus fired four shots at the ministerial benches of the Austrian Reichsrat in an attempt to assassinate Austrian Minister of Justice, Viktor von Hochenburge without hitting anyone. He had an accomplice. Their mission failed.
The The 1911 Sonora hurricane, which had resulted in around 300 deaths in Mexico, dissipated.
Today In Wyoming's History: October 5: 1911 President William H. Taft addressed an audience at Rock Springs.
He'd been in Salt Lake the day prior.
All in all, in terms of global events, the news was grime.
Fort Rock Oregon, October 5, 1911.
San Benito, Texas. October 5, 1911. Note the "land and water company" sign.
Last edition:
Tuesday, October 3, 1911. Shelling Tripoli.
Saturday, October 5, 1901. Concern for Presidential Safety.
It was a Saturday, and the recent assassination of President McKinley was much in mind.
President Cleveland gave his views on the safety of the President. Given the recent murder of McKinley, it probably truly was inadequate, as opposed to today, when it's absurdly overdone.
At the time, there was an implicit concern that the President should not be separated from the people, and indeed, the people should have access to the President. Nothing reflected that more than the New Year's Day custom of the President greeting the public at the steps of the White House to shake people's hands. It's a far distance from today's imperial Presidency, and not in a good way.
Harpers picked up on the them of it being a radical immigrant.
Radicalism was strongly present in some immigrant communities in the US at the time, particularly those that hailed from Eastern Europe where people strained to be freed of imperial dominance. The same populations, however, also featured people of very deep conservative views. Immigrant populations tend to be grossly stereotyped.
Hartford Connecticut became the first city in the United States to have a steam powered electrical supply.
Steam turbines generate a large volume of electricity today, whether by coal, natural gas, or nuclear powered power plants.
Last edition:
Thursday, October 3, 1901. Victorolas and the Episcopal Church.
Labels: 1900s, 1901, Blog Mirror, Christianity, Music, Oxford Movement, Protestant, religion, technology
King Donald's War, Part 14. The Houthi Edition.
Emblem of Yemen.
September 20, 2026
The Houthis hit the Saudi capital of Riyadh with drones.
September 25, 2026
The Senate voted against a resolution demanding an end to the war or Congressional authorization 50 to 49. Four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted in favor. Spinless wimp John Barrasso of course voted against.
October 5, 2026
The US withdrew its strategic bombers from the United Kingdom in reaction to some sort of attempted attack on a US installation.
Frankly, at this point, it's impossible to know what's a legitimate US. action vs. Trump drama.
Last edition:
King Donald's War, Part 13. A Second Rate Military lead by a Third Rate Clown College with a Secretary of War who should be impeached.
Sunday, October 4, 2026
25th Amendment Watch, 25th Edition and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 161st Edition. The Time is Running Out Edition.
In looking for a photo to caption this, I found this fascinating World War Two (apparently) vintage Heuer advertisement featuring Swiss soldiers all synchronizing their watches. Heuer is a Swiss company but was not part of the "Dirty Dozen" that sort of ignored Swiss neutrality laws in order to export watches to the British Army. Fascinating advertisement. Posted under the Fair Use exception.
October 4, 2026
Running out of time.
We're starting a new edition of this for several reasons.
To start off with, King Donald has been in rare form the last few days. Whether these qualify as 25th Amendment events or not is another matter. They probably don't. But they do show the titanic weirdness of the man.
The first was a long rambling post about trying to enact Permanent Daylight Savings Time.
Personally, I hate Daylight Savings Time and I always have. It was a stupid idea when it came into being, and it still is. I'd like to see it go. But King Donald and some Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well, would like for it to be adopted year around.
This is dumb, and yes that's spelled with a "b".
The reason it's dumb is that the sun rises and sets when it does with no regard to the opinions and musings of man. In real terms, there's a real high noon, and a real midnight. The clock should be based on that.
The stupidity of Daylight Savings Time somehow accepts the concept that by moving the arms of the clock, it somehow changes that. What Daylight Savings Time is, in real terms, is Go To Work An Hour Earlier. Apparently we're dim enough, however, to accept that if we pretend to move the arms of the clock, we're still going to work at 8:00 a.m. in the summer, rather than 7:00 a.m.
We're not.
Anyhow, Donalds wants the bill to pass. If it does, at least it looks like the 119th Congress did something. Here's his long screed:
As can be seen, Trump is personally blaming this on Tom Cotton, which isn't fair. What this means is there aren't enough votes in the Senate to take it up and pass it, even if a majority in the Senate are in favor of it.
Cotton's reasons:
Cotton has been a pretty consistent back of Trump's all along, so this is really ironic. He's getting stabbed in the back by the guy he supported, which isn't surprising. Everything Trump touches gets destroyed.
Cotton's reasons here are solid. Everything he's stated here is correct. I can personally recall the 1974 experiment with this.
Sunday, January 6, 1974. Messing with the time.
In a bizarre response to the ongoing oil crisis, the U.S. began a trial of year around daylight savings time.
I recall it well, as when I walked to grade school in the morning, it was pretty dark. We still walked, however.
What I noted there has been noted by supporters of King Donald's proposal. Kids don't walk to school as much as the culture's addiction to laziness and automotive transportation actually increased since 1974.
Anyhow, what are the reasons for this absurdity?
Golfing and tennis. Oh, and "farmers want it".
On that last item, farmers don't care one whit about this. They're going to work when they are going to work. DST doesn't change that at all.
Indeed, I've always heard the justification for DST being the one that Trump is giving. You can go out and play sports when you get home from work as you'll have more daylight.
M'eh.
The reason, anyhow, this appears here is that Trump posted, and therefore wrecked, Cotton's cell phone number. That's really mean. Only a self centered asshole would do a thing like that. Trump's been asked to justify it in a press interview and just repeats his reasons that he wants the vote.
Personally, and I have no way of really knowing this, I think he wants it as the Republican 119th Congress has done nothing and now we're headed into a general election with inflation ramping up, an illegal war going on, and none of the list of usual suspects excuses working anymore.
Also for the same reason, Trump's been running around giving campaign rallies to the true believers. I haven't tracked where he's been going, but I've read that it tends to be in places where there's a lot of MAGA. Quietly some candidates in battleground states are trying to distance themselves from him. Anyhow, at one such rally Trump, who didn't graduate from Wharton with honors and never appeared on the Dean's list, stated:
I am a person with very high intelligence—one of the highest IQs in the world.
Okay, this is at the really weird level.
Generally really intelligent people don't run around saying "I'm high IQ". Trump says it all the time, which suggests that he's really insecure about his intelligence.
Frankly, at this point, if anyone believes he's super intelligent, they're probably either stupid or incredibly gullible. MAGA by now is the bottom of the bell curve in intelligence and ignorance.
What's going on with the 25th?
It's rather clear at this point that my prediction that the 25th Amendment would be applied after the first 18 months of Trump's illegal occupation of the Oval Office were off the mark. This probably should be regarded as a failed prediction.
Having said that, I saw somebody hinting at the possibility that their similar thought might not be.
I think it's a long shot right now, but there's still a chance, and a not insubstantial one, that a backroom plot, basically, remains in place. The same basic parameters would be in operation, replacing Trump with J.D. Vance before the 2028 election.
My thought was that it would occur before the 2026 election in order that the GOP had a chance to save itself before that election. Clearly that was wrong. But that in and of itself might be part of what's going on. The various factions in the Trump backrooms that supported his campaign and which boost their pet theories on everything may very well have realized that the results would be unpopular. Economic radicals behind the tariffs, for instance, likely were aware that they'd be hugely disruptive. They may have given up the 2026 midterms from the onset. They likely didn't appreciate that Trump would start a war with Iran, but most of the rest of the stuff Trump has done has backers within the administration. All of those people also know that they're in the minority in terms of American culture so Trump is their best chance of making this stuff happen.
But, if I'm correct, at some point Trump has to go and take the stench out with him. There will come a day, and it's probably in November, when Trump will be personally blamed for what's occurred. The Republicans are going to lose both houses of Congress in a month. A Fall Guy will be necessary, and Trump has made himself that person. He's even asked for people to imagine him on the ballot.
A lot of people will.
After November 3 being a Trumpite in most places will have lost its value. A lot of the Republican politicians who have supported him all along will grow silent, or more silent than they already are. Harriet Hageman will likely not be heard to mention his name. John Barrasso won't either. Poor Chuck Gray, who has campaigned more than anyone else in Wyoming on being a deep lover of all things Trump, will be lost, but even he will rally to claim that "true conservative values" need to be defended.
Anyhow, the point is Republicans are already dog trotting away from Trump. Trump is, at the same time, stabbing some of them in the back. Chip Roy got it, and now Cotton is getting it. After the vote in November, there will be very little reason to be a Trump backer in the GOP, save for being in a district of diehard MAGAs, which is a declining population.
The National Conservatives and Christian Nationalist still need Trump, however. Nobody else is going to help them get in their worldview. They can sort of home that Vance will, but Vance is too savvy to adopt anything fully that's going to wipe out his hopes of being President.
And hence the gamble.
Right now, it may well be the case that NatCons and Christian Nationalist are seeing how far they can have Trump carry on as a sort of dictator until it's too late, and Vance's chances in 2028 are destroyed. That may have already occured. Letting that occur might be one reason that Marco Rubio hasn't acted. But my guess is that they're riding along and just don't quite know where that point is.
It might be coming very soon. If Trump makes an effort to steal the 2026 midterms, and he will, that might present the opportunity. If it isn't taken then, it has to be taken some time in 2027. 2028 will probably be too late.
Related threads:
Daylight Savings Time, Dangers, and Crabbiness.
Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, children, Daylight Savings Time, Economics, Growing up in the 1970s, Harriet Hageman, nature, Wyoming
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 160th Edition. On being a worthless sycophant
Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Cynthia Lummis, Donald Trump, Republican Party, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming, Zeitgeist
25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.
The Agrarian's Lament: To be ignorant is shameful.
The Agrarian's Lament: To be ignorant is shameful.: Anti intellectualism has always been a feature of American culture, but now it's fully in control. If nothing else, this should be an e...
To be ignorant is shameful.
Anti intellectualism has always been a feature of American culture, but now it's fully in control. If nothing else, this should be an era whose end result is the complete and absolute shaming of the ignorant. The ignorant need to be called out, and shamed.
Friday, October 4, 1946. Truman's announcement on the eve of Yom Kippur.
President Truman announced that he had telegraphed Prime Minister Clement Attlee to endorse the immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine. Attlee was furious at the public disclosure which made an already difficult situation worse.
Speculation was that Truman may have done this to court Jewish votes in the election.
The Gnostic Nag Hammadi library, discovered in 1945, was accepted into the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Robert A. Taft publicly criticized the results of the Nuremberg trials as unjust, citing the impossibility of the victor trying the vanquished fairly.
Last edition:
Thursday, October 3, 1946. Game two of the 1946 National League Playoffs.
Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 World Series, Aircraft, baseball, Disaster, Labrador, Sports, Transportation
Monday, October 4, 1926. Cristero War in Guanajuato, Phar Lap, Radio recipes.
Gen. Rodolfo Gallegos led an uprising in Guanajuato, Mexico, bringing the region into the Cristero War.
Islamic courts were closed in Turkey, Turkey having completely supplanted Islamic Law with secular civil law.
Great New Zealand born racehorse Phar Lap was foaled.
Like Seabiscuit, he provided much needed hope during the Great Depression.
The horse died at age 5 in California under still debated circumstances.
Running in its original version until 1934, the show was influential. For instance, it helped improve Chinese American food by expounding on traditional Chinese cooking methods.
Last edition:
Sunday, October 3, 1926. First postseason no hitter.
Labels: 1920s, 1926, 1926 Colored World Series, 1926 World Series, 1960s, 1967, baseball, Catholic, Michigan (Detroit), Personalities, Radio, religion, Sports
The Best Posts of the week of September 27, 2026 and the Feral Week.
The best posts of the week of September 27, 2026.
Question. What would a typical breakfast have looked like for Mexicans of Northern Mexico in the first part of the 20th Century?
Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 8. Donald Trump, China's (and Russia's) greatest ally edition.
The feral week:
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Monday, September 28, 2026
Last edition:
Best posts of the week of September 20, 2026 and the feral and agrarian weeks.
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Thursday, October 3, 1946. Game two of the 1946 National League Playoffs.
St. Louis Cardinals beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 8–4 to win the second game of a best-of-3 series in the first National League playoffs ever held. They advanced to the 1946 World Series to face the Boston Red Sox.
The worst civilian air disaster up to that time occurred with a DC-4 airliner crashed in Newfoundland. The plane was on its way to Berlin.
Last edition:
Tuesday, October 1, 1946. Crime, Punishment, and World War Two.
Sunday, October 3, 1926. First postseason no hitter.
The first post season no hitter was pitched by Red Grier of the Bacharach Giants in Game 3 of the Colored World Series, against the Chicago American Giants.
St. Louis won game two of the World Series.
Fr. Charles Coughlin began his broadcast of his weekly sermons on radio station WJR of Detroit.
Last edition
Saturday, October 2, 1926. Game 1 of the 1911 World Series.
Tuesday, October 3, 1876. Colorado elects its first State Governor and State Assembly.
Territorial Governor John Long Routt was narrowly elected the first State Governor of Colorado in a contest against Democrat Bela M. Hughes.
Routt had been in politics for awhile in Colorado, starting of as the Mayor of Denver. He was a carpenter by trade.
In contrast to the Governor's race, the State Assembly, the first of which was also chosen on this day, was heavily Republican, something that would become a factor in the upcoming Presidential race.
Last edition:
Monday, October 4, 1876. Registration starts at Texas A&M
Friday, October 2, 2026
Saturday, October 2, 1926. Game 1 of the 1911 World Series.
Cardinals 1, Yankees 2.
It was a Saturday.
Saturday, September 25, 1926. A five day work week.
Labels: 1920s, 1926, Art, Diplomacy, Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford, J. C. Leyendecker, League of Nations, Slavery, Work
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)