Today in 1956, Nat King Cole became the first black man to host a TV show, on NBC:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Elvis Presley performed at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn. To get the fans to leave after repeated encore requests, announcer Al Dvorin announced, “Elvis has left the building.”
The Democrats’ doddering old fool and Fabulist-in-Chief spoke in a part-time train station turned full-time homeless shelter [Wednesday] night to rally progressives. He tried the same approach in Philadelphia on September 1, 2022. Shortly thereafter, Democrats’ polling collapsed, and Republicans retook the lead in the generic ballot. This time, he did it with gusto before a soft blue background and a crowd of partisans instead of with two Marines and red whorehouse lighting.
On Wednesday night, he did not do as he did the day before in Florida, i.e., claiming he went to a historically black college (he did not), or that his son died in Iraq (he did not), or that he met the inventor of insulin (he did not), or that war in Iraq (he meant Ukraine) provoked the current crisis (it did not), or that Putin is to blame for global inflation (he is not), or that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a senator (she is not).
Instead, he claimed democracy itself is under attack. It is not.
He did not talk about inflation, crime, or the economy — the issues voters care about. He gave a speech written by a progressive twenty-something Twitter warrior ready to win tweet of the day, not the election, before fleeing to China’s TikTok to escape the reign of Elon Musk. And Biden half-assed that speech with his caveats and carveouts of “the extreme MAGA element of the Republican Party, which is a minority of that party,” which is a hell of a concession in a speech designed to be about this minority. “There are more than 300 election deniers on the ballot all across America this year,” but he won’t name any of them, including the ones his party funded, nor will he tell you there are over 10,000 races across the country on the ballot this year.
The only thing Biden’s angry speech will do is mobilize anti-Democrat turnout on Election Day, with no added incentive to turn out his own side, which is not turning out at the rate they need. A group of progressives who already think democracy is under attack and still aren’t voting will not suddenly go vote because Grandpa Dementia told them one more time than Joy Reid already had. But a group of independent voters who hate both sides with a passion might now be inspired to give Biden a middle finger for, on his second try at this, still ignoring the baby formula, the gas, the groceries, and the looming recession.
Biden might have cost the Democrats their New Hampshire Senate seat where there is no early voting, an already enthusiastic Republican pool of voters, and even more energy for those voters and fence-sitters.
We know democracy is not under attack because Joe Biden and the Democrats used $46 million to fund the candidates who they claim are attacking democracy. We know democracy is not under attack because the Democrats have made no effort to calm the currents of contretemps rushing through the nation.
Were democracy actually under attack, Democrats would have sought consensus instead of contentiousness. They would not have rushed to force schools to accept boys into girls’ locker rooms. They would have relied on federalism. They would not have rushed a massive spending bill through Congress that provoked inflation. They would have worked with Republicans to narrowly craft a package. They would not have told Americans who cannot afford new cars to buy electric ones and make sure not to plug them in between the hours of 5 and 9 pm in California. They would have worked to expand fossil fuel production domestically. They would not have focused on abortion with no restrictions and January 6th. They would have worked to end the supply shortage of baby formula, which even now remains a problem. They would not have passed an “Inflation Reduction Act” that doesn’t reduce inflation. They would have focused on the economy and not wrecking it.
In August of 2021, President Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistan. Donald Trump wanted the same outcome but was smart enough to listen to his advisors and delay the withdrawal until the winter when the Taliban hunker down in the mountain snows. We now know with certainty that Biden’s advisors told him not to withdraw during the fighting season but to wait for winter. Dogmatically, Biden demanded a withdrawal during the fighting season, and the Taliban swept into Kabul while we were still there, even as Biden said they would not.
Thirteen Americans died, and hundreds of Americans were left behind. For the first time, an American President abandoned American citizens behind enemy lines willfully, knowingly, and expressly against the advice of his advisors. Then he lied, blamed others, and denied it. “My beloved Beau,” was not the apology the families of the fallen and forgotten wanted.
The American people saw a President who lacked the empathy he claimed to have. He had promised a soft-hearted return to normalcy and instead provoked more international drama and domestic economic carnage, just without mean tweets.
Biden’s polling never recovered. Time and time again, when given the opportunity to correct, Biden and the Democrats instead insisted either the American public must side with them or democracy itself is under attack. At every opportunity, instead of empathy for their fellow Americans, Democrats expressed antipathy. After Terry McAuliffe lost the gubernatorial race in Virginia to now Governor Glenn Youngkin, Democrats should have learned two things. First, do not make the 2022 midterms about Trump. Second, work like hell to reverse their policies on schools.
History is not on the side of the incumbent White House party. Losing Virginia reiterated that history was coming for the Democrats. They needed to mitigate that history. On multiple occasions, fate itself offered up opportunities to pivot, but Democrats doubled down on asininity.
Biden went with “Ultra MAGA” Republicans and hugged the teachers unions so close one would have thought Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, was a teenage girl. When the parental backlash began, the Democrats claimed parents were domestic terrorists, like Republicans, but worse. Then they walked it back, pretended it never happened, and lied — claiming they were really the ones who wanted schools reopened. Much like Democrats claim they were always the party of freedom and the Republicans were always the party of slavery, Democrats now claim they were always the party of open, maskless schools, and Republicans were the ones who shut it all down. And can they get an amnesty, please and thank you? “Sorry, we wouldn’t let you hug your grandma before she died. Bygones!”
Nothing has worked. The Supreme Court handed them a gift with the Dobbs decision, ending Roe v Wade. Women started returning to the Democrats. But then Democrats got ghoulish, insisting there could be no limits on abortion ever, a position that polls more extreme than the Republican position. Kids’ educations were at stake; their parents’ 401(K)s looked like Rome after the Visigoths entered; and suburban communities rang out with gunshots while Democrats yelled on television, “Crime? What crime, you scaredy-cat racists?” The women pivoted back to the GOP just in time to see the Democrats, who told them high prices were no big deal, complain about $8.00 monthly for a blue checkmark on Twitter.
So here, at the end of the midterms, Democrats return to screams about democracy. They funded many of the supposed threats to democracy who will beat them. They will learn nothing and forget nothing. After all, it is you, not them, that is the problem. Just ask them. Actually, no need; in less than a week, on MSNBC, they’ll tell you.
Republicans want to take over Congress and come Tuesday they might get their wish. Assuming they win both the House and Senate, they will face enormous challenges: a country still heading into a recession, inflation still high and rising, government deficits and debt as far as the eye can see, regulations strangling the production of energy, and much more. For these reasons, I offer some suggestions of what a victorious GOP should do over the next two years.
It’s no secret that inflation isn’t getting better. The latest numbers show that core inflation continues to rise, closing the door on the prospect of a speedy return to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Meanwhile, workers see the prices of food and rent going up quite dramatically, while their real wages go down. Whether they feel like they created the problem or not, Republicans should make the fight against inflation their top priority.
As we all know, the main tool available to the Fed is to increase interest rates and trim its balance sheet in hopes of lowering the nationwide “aggregate” demand for goods and services. High interest rates raise borrowing costs for both private actors and the government. While there isn’t much Congress and the president can do to ease the inflation-fighting effort’s burden on the private sector (sending checks to people fuels more demand and higher prices!), there is plenty they can do on the budget side.
First, Congress and the White House must trim government spending. With debt at 100 percent of GDP, it’s time to act. Our priority should be the drivers of our future debt: Social Security and Medicare. Republicans need to be the adults in the room making the case that high inflation, with another debt ceiling crisis on the way, requires a commitment to reforming these programs.
Directly relevant to the fight against inflation, other spending cuts are essential to deal with skyrocketing interest payments caused by the higher interest rates on our growing debt. This means that absent significant action, the Treasury Department will have to issue even more debt. Deficits will then further expand, which will further fuel inflation.
Second, when the fiscal bill comes due, and when unemployment rises and the economy slows because of the Fed’s action, Republicans may be tempted to pressure chairman Jerome Powell to stop jacking up rates. Don’t do it. Whether Powell has the backbone to continue fighting inflation in the face of palpable financial or economic hardship—and the corresponding political pressures—is questionable. Unfortunately, if he caves to the pressure and pauses to let the rate hikes work their way to reduced inflation—or, worse, if he agrees to stimulate the flailing economy by lowering rates and reengaging in quantitative easing—he will reignite inflation.
Republicans should follow the lead of President Ronald Reagan who, in the early 1980s, put no pressure on Paul Volcker to stop fighting inflation and let him stay the course. The cost was steep, but the alternative would have been worse. The same is true here.
There is a lesson from these high inflation episodes, which Republicans can turn into a policy goal. It’s becoming obvious that once we have high inflation, containing it is always painful. As such, the only role of the Fed starting today should be price stability. That means demanding that it abandon other ill-fitting objectives like “inclusive growth” and fighting climate change.
Meanwhile, there are a few things Republicans shouldn’t do. For instance, they should stay away from the bloated “family-friendly” programs social conservatives are so fond of. As economic study after economic study show, these programs will backfire and make the lives of families harder. Paid leave programs, for instance, reduce beneficiaries’ employment and opportunities for promotion. Extending child tax credits will create further disincentives to marry and work. Child care subsidies make the supply of child care more, not less, expensive. These programs will also add to the budget deficit at a time when Congress should work especially diligently to reduce the debt. They’re no way to cope with inflation.
Finally, Republicans should govern like adults rather than seeking revenge like ill-trained children. That means abstaining from launching investigations against their Democratic opponents. Going after political adversaries is fun, especially when you’ve been on the receiving end of their own investigations. But “Investigating the Dems” is not on the top of most voters’ concerns this election season. Neither is “Owning the Libs.”
So, Republicans, you want to be in power. Can you handle it?
Today in 1963, John Lennon showed his ability to generate publicity at the Beatles’ performance at the Royal Variety Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were in attendance, so perhaps they were the target of Lennon’s comment, “In the cheaper seats you clap your hands. The rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.”
Lennon would demonstrate his PR skills a couple of years later when he proclaimed the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1972:
Today in 1990, Melissa Ethridge and her “life partner” Julie Cypher appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine for its cover story on gay parenting.
I bring this up only to point out that Etheridge and Cypher no longer are life partners, Cypher (the ex-wife of actor Lou Diamond Phillips) is now married to another man, and Etheridge became engaged to another woman, but they split before their planned California wedding. And, by the way, Cypher had two children from the “contribution” of David Crosby, and Etheridge’s second woman had children from another man. And, by the way, Newsweek is no longer a weekly magazine.
Republicans want to talk about inflation and crime (and so, apparently, does most of the electorate). Democrats want to talk about anything else, and have settled on abortion (which any American who seriously wants one can get), and political violence (as long as the attempted murder of a mostly conservative Supreme Court Justice gets shoved behind the curtain).
But I wonder if something else is lurking out there. My curiosity was piqued this morning when I saw two things floating around the Internet. The first was from Emily Burns, a former neuroscience graduate student at Rockefeller University:
But despite being pro-choice, I have become a single issue voter. My vote this cycle is a vote for vengeance against the party that kept my kids masked for two years; that robbed me of my best friends, and strained every relationship I have; that caused us to move to an entirely different part of the country; that perverted a discipline that I love, and which I use to navigate my life (science); and that then lied about doing it, and called me a terrorist for being upset about it. After this cycle, my vote will always be for the party that represents the most decentralized power structure, and the greatest respect for individual rights and responsibility.
The second item, as if on cue, was this article in The Atlantic, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.” The title gives the gist of it:
I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge [about COVID risks] thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University…..We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.
Some of these choices turned out better than others.
Translation: “Some of those choices were unmitigated disasters, but, well, hey, look, don’t be so judgmental.”
To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming. But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.
Actually, it was well known very early on that COVID posed a serious danger to old people, a moderate danger to middle-aged people, very little danger to young people, and next to no danger to school-aged children.
Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong.
Hey look people, some were right, some were wrong, dada, dada, that’s how life is! (Left unsaid is that some were right because they thought seriously about costs and risks, and some were wrong because lining up with our culture’s manic addiction to risk aversion was the politically correct and far more popular choice).
The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet.
Translation: “It’s time to move on.”
Anyone heard that one before? And am I mistaken in thinking that when the more liberal side of the spectrum gets caught with its pants down, see, e.g., Bill Clinton and Monica, it’s “time to move on;” but that when pro-Trump rioters get caught in their January 6, 2021 violence, it is most certainly not time to move on — no matter how much time has passed?
These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.
Whenever you see words like “moving forward,” or its first cousin, “healing,” you know you’ve entered the same linguistic flim-flam territory that Harvard was arguing in the Supreme Court when it wanted to disguise its anti-white and anti-Asian bias as “holistic”, or the sentencing reform crowd wants to disguise its embrace of criminality as “restorative justice.” Still, as the author says, it’s true that getting something wrong isn’t a moral failing — as long as (1) you made a diligent, sober and honest attempt to get it right, and (2) you pay the costs of getting it wrong, rather than pushing them off on the people you bullied and injured. That would be almost the whole country, but most especially the millions of children whose social and educational development you were so self-righteous in crippling.
It’s well known that predominantly liberal political leaders (e.g., Gov. Whitmer) were the most persistent and belligerent in imposing school lockdowns, while more conservative ones (e.g., Gov. DeSantis) allowed more freedom.
I don’t know that this will be a sleeper issue in the elections next week. But I know it should be — and not just as a sleeper.
Remember that Gov. Tony Evers closed every school through university in the fourth quarter of the 2019–20 school year. And people wonder why public school enrollment is down and private-school enrollment, charter-school enrollment and home-schooling is up.
The number one single today in 1956:
Britain’s number one single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1962:
Today in 1964, a fan at a Rolling Stones concert fell out of the balcony of Public Hall in Cleveland. That prompted Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locker to ban pop music concerts in the city, saying, “Such groups do not add to the community’s culture or entertainment.” Kind of ironic that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ended up in Cleveland.
Wisconsinites know that the first radio station was what now is WHA in Madison. Today in 1920, the nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air.
The number one British single today in 1956 is the only number one song cowritten by a vice president, Charles Dawes:
The number one song today in 1974:
The number one British album today in 1985 was Simple Minds’ “Once Upon a Time” …
Today begins with a non-music anniversary: Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was created, later to become the National Weather Service.
Tomorrow in 1870, the first complaints were made about the Weather Bureau’s being wrong about its forecast.
Today in 1946, two New York radio stations changed call letters. WABC, owned by CBS, became (natch) WCBS, paving the way for WJZ, owned by ABC, to become (natch) WABC seven years later. WEAF changed its call letters to WNBC.
Next week, there’s a good chance that Democrats will face a reckoning for advocating, and in many cases implementing, policies that lead to crime. Naturally, the New York Times, which favors Democrats and their soft-on-crime policies, is not amused. Naturally, it cries “racism” and invokes Willie Horton.
Republicans have shied away from making crime a major issue ever since Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media created the myth that a 1988 ad holding Michael Dukakis accountable for giving a weekend pass to convicted murderer Willie Horton was unfair and racist. The pass enabled Horton to commit rape and assault. As I argued in this post, the pro-Bush ad pointing this out was neither unfair nor racist.
Nonetheless, the Dems succeeded in deterring ads holding them accountable for their soft-on-crime policies. They succeeded in part because of Republican cowardice, but mostly because crime receded dramatically thanks to tough-on-crime policies adopted after Dukakis’ defeat. Now that crime is again rampant — due in large part to the abandonment of tough-on-crime policies — invoking Willie Horton isn’t going to cut it.
Discussion of crime intersects with race because blacks commit a vastly disproportionate amount of crime in America. During election season, the intersection is more pronounced because black politicians tend to be leaders in the movement leniency for criminals movement.
But these realities aren’t the fault of Republicans, and there is no reason why Republicans should be deterred by them from talking candidly about the Democrats’ reckless positions on policing and the punishment of criminals. Nor is it racist for them to do so.
It’s possible, of course, for a given campaign to cross the line. If, for example, Willie Horton had been white, the pro-Bush ad that depicted him as black would be an obvious instance of racism. But Willie Horton was black.
The New York Times is desperate to show that pro-Republican ads have crossed the line this year. Thus, Times reporter Jonathan Weisman scoured the country for examples to use in his article. The examples he came up with fail to support his point.
Here’s Weisman’s lead example:
In Wisconsin, where Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, a National Republican Senatorial Committee ad targeting him ends by juxtaposing his face with those of three Democratic House members, all of them women of color, and the words “different” and “dangerous.”
But Barnes is different and, from a law-and-order perspective, dangerous. He has supported abolishing ICE (he wore a T-shirt with those words), cutting funding for police departments, and ending cash bail.
These are radical policies associated with the BLM movement. They put Barnes in the same camp as members of the radical left-wing House “Squad.”
And it turns out that the pictures of “three women of color” the Times complains about are all of Squad members. It’s not the Republicans’ fault that all four original members of that far-left, soft-on-crime group are ”women of color.” (Jamaal Bowman, a recent addition, is a black man.)
Here’s another example:
In North Carolina, an ad against Cheri Beasley, the Democratic candidate for Senate, who is Black, features the anguished brother of a white state trooper killed a quarter-century ago by a Black man whom Beasley, then a public defender, represented in court. The brother incredulously says that Beasley, pleading for the killer’s life, said “he was actually a good person.”
The Times doesn’t dispute the content of this ad, including the fact that the murdered state trooper was white; that the killer was black; and that Beasley called the killer a good person. Nor is there reason to doubt that the GOP would be attacking Beasley if she had called a white murderer a good man. It’s not the Republicans’ fault that her client, the killer, was black.
In my view, Beasley was just doing her job as public defender. I don’t fault her for it. In that sense, the ad is unfair (though not racist).
However, in an era when the left attacks prominent conservative figures for representing unpopular corporate clients, it’s too late for the Times to object to an attack on a liberal lawyer for praising the character of a murderer.
Here’s an example the Times presents that’s mildly disturbing, until one digs half an inch into the story:
In a mailer sent to several state House districts in New Mexico, the state Republican Party darkened the hands of a barber shown giving a white child a haircut, next to the question, “Do you want a sex offender cutting your child’s hair?”
Note first that we’re talking here about several races for the state legislature in New Mexico. Given the enormous number of election contests occurring throughout America, if this is the best example the Times can come up with of a racist ad, no one should be alarmed.
In fact, however, the ad isn’t racist at all.
The state GOP wanted a visual representation of the danger posed by the New Mexico Democrats’ support for removing “conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude” from a list of reasons to deny or revoke a professional license, including a license to be a barber. It found a stock photo of a barber cutting a child’s hair.
In the stock photo, the barber’s hands are white. Why not use it, unaltered, in the ad?
Because the barber whose hands are in the photo isn’t (as far as anyone knows) a child molester. To use his white hands would have assigned a race to a hypothetical barber who, it is implied, has molested or is likely to molest a child.
Making the barber’s hands black would have done the same thing. But notice that the Times doesn’t say the ad makes the barber’s hands black — only that it “darkened them.”
True. But even darkened, the hands don’t appear to be those of a black man. To me, one of the hands looks like that of someone who is probably white. The other one looks gray. You can examine the picture here and judge for yourself. (Scroll down to the second picture which presents a full view.)
In sum, the ad leaves the race of the barber ambiguous, which was probably the least racialist way to handle it.
The final set of examples does not come from anything the GOP used in a campaign ad. It consists of two comments made by two members of Congress on their own initiative during rallies:
This month, a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, said Democrats favored reparations “for the people that do the crime,” suggesting the movement to compensate the descendants of slavery was about paying criminals. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite immigrants living in the country without legal permission are “replacing” white Americans, saying, “Joe Biden’s 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.”
Tuberville’s comment is idiotic. It’s true that, depending on how reparations legislation is drafted, some criminals could benefit financially. But some criminals benefit financially when taxes are cut.
However, one stray, dumb remark from a Senator doesn’t show that by emphasizing the issue of crime, Republicans are “injecting race” into the midterms.
As for Greene, whatever one thinks about “replacement theory,” in the comment at issue (which the Times truncates), she made no reference to anyone’s race. And her complaint wasn’t about “replacement” in general, but about illegal immigrants taking jobs from Americans, burdening schools, and changing the culture — all of which they do. Blacks are at least as likely as whites to experience the adverse effects of mass illegal immigration.
In any case, the Times cites no other instance of a GOP candidate invoking replacement theory in this cycle. It’s silly to conclude from the most extreme House Republican’s comment about the effect of illegal immigration on employment, schools, and culture that the GOP’s focus on crime in the midterms is racist.
Democrats are all about leniency for criminals. Now, they hope that by playing the race card, they will receive leniency from voters for having relentlessly backed ruinous policies that undermine public safety.
I don’t think they will get it. I think they will get a reckoning, instead.
Today in 1963, Ed Sullivan was at Heathrow Airport in London just as the Beatles deplaned to a crowd of screaming fans and a mob of journalists and photographers.
Intrigued, Sullivan decided to investigate getting the Beatles onto his show.
Today in 1964, Ray Charles was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and charged with heroin. Charles was sentenced to one year probation after he kicked the horse.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 