Today in 1964, the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” hit number one and stayed there for 14 weeks:
Today in 1973, George Harrison got a visit from the taxman, who told him he owed £1 million in taxes on his 1973 Bangladesh album and concert:
Today in 1964, a member of the audience at a Rolling Stones concert in the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England, spat upon guitarist Brian Jones, sparking a riot that injured 30 fans and two police officers.
The Stones were banned from performing in Blackpool until 2008.
Today in 1965, Bob Dylan released “Like a Rolling Stone,” which is not like said Rolling Stones:
Today in 1967, the Beatles and other celebrities took out a full-page ad in the London Times calling for the legalization of …
… marijuana.
Today in 1963, high school student Neil Young and his band, the Squires, recorded in a Winnipeg studio a surf instrumental:
Today in 1965, the Beatles asked for …
The number one single — really — today in 1966:
Today in 1979, Iran’s new ruler, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, banned rock and roll, an event that inspired a British band:
The number of Americans who believe in God has reached an all-time low, according to a Gallup survey that’s been tracking our nation’s “values and beliefs” since 1944.
For a God fearin’ woman such as myself, it’s a disheartening statistic. But we are told never to abandon hope, and recent events — the Supreme Court rulings against abortion and in favor of prayer, a million swing voters switching their registrations to Republican, Keeping Up with the Kardashians finally airing its last season — betoken a more God-centered future.
Birthdays start with the indescribable George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic:
Rick Davies played keyboards for Supertramp:
Estelle Bennett was the older sister of Ronnie Spector, and both were part of the Ronettes:
Don Henley of the Eagles:
USA Today has an ironic editorial that starts with frenetic back-self-patting:
Did you hear about the rape – and subsequent arrest in the case – of a 10-year old Ohio girl?
Did you see the stunning failure of police – who ran away as children were being killed – in the hallway of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas?
What about the harrowing details of Jayland Walker’s death in Akron, Ohio, where officers fired 90 or more rounds at the 25-year-old Black man?
Do you know why you’re aware of these stories?
Local journalists. Men and women who live and work in the communities they cover.
In each of these cases, those journalists are part of the USA TODAY Network, a family of more than 200 newspapers in 45 states committed to covering their communities. They are among scores of journalists in every state, at companies big and small, profit and not-for-profit, covering local news for their communities.
They’re also somewhat of an endangered species.
Nearly half of all U.S. counties have only one newspaper, reports the News Media Alliance, which advocates for the media industry. Since 2005, according to a new report from Northwestern University, “the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025.”
The pandemic, which devastated so much, was not kind to the industry, leading to job losses and the closure of local media outlets, according to Columbia Journalism Review.
The financial struggles of news organizations focused on local and regional coverage, including broadcast as well as newspaper journalism, stem from the sweeping shift of readership, viewers and advertising to online platforms, and a subsequent dramatic reduction in the revenue that has supported local reporting.
Even if – and perhaps especially if – you are skeptical of the news media, this is a devastating trend.
In all regions of the country, Americans need a local free press that produces vigorous and independent journalism for all – and Congress can help. This week, movement is expected on a bipartisan bill called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). It could pave the way for local publishers to reap the revenue they deserve from the content their journalists create.
Also called the JCPA or Safe Harbor Bill, it would provide a four-year antitrust exemption that would allow small and local news organizations to work together to negotiate an agreement with Google and Facebook on fair compensation.
“Strong local news helps us understand those whose experiences and attitudes are different from us, and, in the process, brings us together to solve our most pressing political, economic and social problems,” the Northwestern study says. “It binds our vast nation of 330 million people together, nurturing both democracy and community. Everyone in the country has a stake in the future of local news, in whatever form it is delivered.”
Congress must be prompted to finally act on this bipartisan proposal to help stop the hemorrhage in local newsrooms and provide tools for long-term stability. America’s democracy depends on it.
On the one hand, few Republicans are fans of Big Tech, which is why this bill has so many Republican cosponsors, including Reps. Glenn Grothman (R–West Bend) and Tom Tiffany (R–Ashland) and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R–Kentucky).
However, few Republicans are also fans of Big Media, and no one in Wisconsin should be a fan of Gannett, which puts out horrible daily newspapers. (That is unless you like regurgitated USA Today content and hardly anything that counts as “local” news or sports anymore.) The argument could be made that media owners like Gannett have contributed mightily to the news media’s business problems.
To the majority of media consumers this probably seems like inside baseball anyway. Better arguments need to be made to generate support for this bill.
Today in 1970, after Joe Cocker dropped out due to illness, and unable to get Jimi Hendrix, promoter Bill Graham (possibly at Hendrix’s suggestion) presented Chicago in concert at Tanglewood, a classical music venue in Lenox, Mass.:
I would have loved to go to this concert, but I was 5 years old at the time, and I doubt my parents would have allowed me to go to Massachusetts.
The number one song today in 1973:
The number one R&B song today in 1979:
Today in 1980, AC/DC released “Back in Black,” their first album with new singer Brian Johnson, who replaced the deceased Bon Scott:
Democrats denounced Donald Trump as a dictator for invoking emergency powers to build his border wall after he was blocked in Congress. Well, now they’re demanding that President Biden declare climate change a national emergency to advance their anti-carbon agenda that Congress won’t pass. Apparently dictators are in the eye of the beholder.
Progressives are furious at West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for scuttling a big climate spending bill. “With legislative climate options now closed, it’s now time for executive Beast Mode,” Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tweeted last week. And now the White House is leaking that the President may declare a national climate emergency as soon as this week.
This would be an even greater abuse of power than Mr. Trump’s repurposing of military funds for the border wall. We criticized Mr. Trump at the time and warned that a Democratic President might use the precedent to declare a climate emergency. And here we are.
While a President may sometimes need to act with dispatch during an emergency, climate change isn’t close to such an event. Climate change is neither sudden nor unexpected. The world has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the late 19th century, and the pace of future warming is uncertain and depends on multiple variables.
In any case, nothing progressives want Mr. Biden to do will affect the climate or even reduce global CO2 emissions. China and India will continue to build coal plants that offset all of the West’s climate sacrifices.
But that isn’t stopping progressives from demanding that Mr. Biden roll over the Constitution’s separation of powers. One irony is that Congress passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to limit abuses of executive power. The law requires the President to activate his powers under one of 130 or so statutes that authorize emergency actions.
Here are some of the ways progressives now want Mr. Biden to impose his climate agenda without democratic assent:
• Halt oil exports. A 2015 legislative compromise by Barack Obama and Paul Ryan lifted the decades-old ban on crude exports in return for extending green-energy tax credits. This helped unleash U.S. oil production, especially in the Permian basin.
Progressives want to end shale fracking. But banning U.S. exports would drive up global oil prices, and the U.S. would still have to import refined products and crude to meet demand. In the name of meeting a climate emergency, they’d create a bigger energy emergency.
• Stop oil and gas drilling in the outer continental shelf. Mr. Biden has already imposed a de facto moratorium on new offshore leases, but progressives want him to suspend existing leases. This would reduce U.S. production by about 1.8 million barrels a day—about two to three times as much as Russian output has declined owing to Western sanctions.
Progressives want Mr. Biden to self-sanction the U.S. oil and gas industry while they prod him to lift sanctions on Venezuela and Iran. Canceling active leases would abrogate contracts and presumably require compensation, which would require money from Congress.
• Use the Defense Production Act to build green energy. This Cold War-era law lets the President marshall domestic industry for national security. Mr. Biden has already invoked the DPA to boost manufacturing of solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and heat pumps.
While Mr. Biden could try to command manufacturers to make more green products, logistical snags would abound. Auto makers couldn’t easily convert factories into making solar panels or even electric vehicles. A shortage of critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium would also limit production, and it takes years to develop new mines.
• Repurpose funds as Mr. Trump did.The climate left wants Mr. Biden to use funds for disaster relief or military construction to build green energy systems. Americans whose homes are destroyed in wildfires or hurricanes won’t be happy if Mr. Biden raids disaster funds to build solar plants.
The most serious harm with all this would be to the rule of law. The Supreme Court in its landmark Youngstown Steel (1952) decision blocked Harry Truman’s attempt to nationalize steel mills during the Korean War. Justice Robert Jackson famously explained in his concurrence that a President’s authority is “at its maximum” when he “acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress,” while it’s weaker when acting “in the absence of a congressional grant or denial of authority.”
Declaring a climate emergency would flagrantly circumvent Congress. The President may do it anyway. But thanks to the High Court’s recent West Virginia v. EPA decision, lower courts will be well-equipped to decapitate the executive beast.
Like so much in the through-the-looking-glass world of modern politics, the conversation the Democratic Party is having with President Biden was previewed almost verbatim more than 150 years ago by Lewis Carrol
A year and a half into his term, leading Democrats have suddenly discovered that the man they nominated two years ago, when he was 77, is old. We are solemnly informed by supposedly reputable news organizations that this realization has come as an unwelcome shock.
It’s true that politics can be full of surprises. Adversity is almost always the result of unpredictable events. If you’re in a charitable mood, you might even say that the cascading woes the Democrats have put us through in the past year or more were not all that easily foreseen.
The surge in inflation to a 40-year high certainly wasn’t predicted by everyone, even many so-called experts. Nor could every observer apparently see that the way the administration withdrew from Afghanistan would result in catastrophe. Perhaps someone didn’t realize that more or less opening the southern border would result in a massive influx of illegal immigrants. And some hopeful souls must have expected Vice President Kamala Harris to be an articulate, thoughtful, effective addition to the government rather than the gibbering, deer-in-the-headlights, platitude-generating hogwash machine she turned out to be.
But one thing that shouldn’t come as a surprise is the passage of time. You can predict with 100%, stone-cold certainty that a 77-year-old man will be 81 if he lives four more years. All that propaganda we were sold two years ago about how sharp Mr. Biden was and how he was mentally and physically robust enough for two full terms can’t simply be deemed no longer operative because we have realized he is two years further down the mortal chain.
Democrats aren’t suddenly alarmed by the discovery of unexpected evidence that the president is too old for the job. They are alarmed by the discovery of entirely predictable evidence that he is too inept for the job. It’s not his advanced age that has Democrats worried, it’s his advancing unpopularity. You can guarantee that if Mr. Biden had an approval rating that was closer to his years of age (79) than his months in office (18), we’d be hearing endless stories of his physical fitness and mental acuity.
The unfortunate reality—for the rest of us as well as fo Democrats—is that at nearly 80, Mr. Biden is as fit now to be president as he has ever been. Like the old man in Carroll’s fantasy Mr. Biden hasn’t lost his capacities. He never had them.
His long political career before the presidency was remarkable for its unremarkability. It is a pretty good indicator of the quality of your political judgment when most of the memorable things you did in your career you have subsequently repudiated—pro-life votes in the 1970s and later, the 1991 Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill showdown, the 1994 crime bill, the 1996 welfare reform, support for the Iraq war in 2002.
His previous, abortive presidential campaigns were fittingly forgettable way stations on this long march to mediocrity. First in 1988, in youthful middle age, then in 2008, when he was old enough for Medicare, his party soundly rejected him.
Yet fate gave him one last chance at success, one priceless opportunity to get it all right. In 2020, events conspired in unlikely ways to produce probably the only circumstance in which Mr. Biden might prevail.
After four years of politics on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the country was plunged into a public-health and economic crisis of almost unprecedented severity. Then far-left activists seized an opportunity to bring chaos and disorder to American cities, and the Democratic Party, embracing the moment, swung hard to the left.
Mr. Biden suddenly, for the first time in his career, was the answer to the most important political question of the moment. All he had to do was renounce the extremism of his party and offer a hyperventilating nation a chance to breathe normally.
But he couldn’t do it. He had spent a lifetime following where his party leads, and that wasn’t going to change. Now, like that old man in the poem, there he is, he is standing on his head, the inverse of what he promised to be, of everything the country needs.
Today in 1968, Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vita” reached the charts. It is said to be the first heavy metal song to chart. It charted at number 117.
That was the short version. The long version takes an entire album side:
At the other end of the charts was South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela:
Quite a selection of birthdays today, starting with T.G. Sheppard:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 