No comments on Presty the DJ for July 18
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Two Beatles anniversaries of note today: The movie “Yellow Submarine” premiered in London …
… six years before John Lennon was ordered to leave the U.S. within 60 days. (He didn’t.)
The 1970 Summerfest started today with a pretty good lineup:
Birthdays today start with pianist Vince Guaraldi. Who? The creator of the Charlie Brown theme (correct name: “Linus and Lucy”):
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This is a slow day in rock music, save for one particular birthday and one death.
It’s not Tony Jackson of the Searchers …
… or Tom Boggs, drummer for the Box Tops …
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Noah Rothman wrote this July 5:
Your guts feel like they’re about to burst. You’re hungover. Your clothes smell like you’ve survived the battle of the Somme. The ordnance’s still smoldering husks litter the yard, and there’s ketchup in places ketchup should never be. These are the discomforts of July 5, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Those of you who spent the Fourth of July celebrating the 246th anniversary of America’s independence might have overindulged a bit, but with good reason. It’s a time to celebrate the miracle of self-government, the world’s oldest operating Constitution, and the infinitely complex continental republic that covenant preserves. It’s a day to take a break from the labors that accompany the responsibilities of citizenship and the agonies of our country’s imperfections. The Fourth is a day to admire the American experiment with revelry and carefree joy.
If you’re capable of that sort of compartmentalization, you should be grateful. Not everyone is comfortable making a cognitive divorce from the horrors of daily life, even for a few precious moments. Failing to dwell on America’s deficiencies and the distinctions that divide us, some believe, is an abdication of your responsibility to work toward erasing those blemishes. Even holidays—especially those that emphasize the nobility of the American mission—are an abrogation of your duty to be miserable in solidarity with those in misery. The Fourth of July is no exception.
“A lot of people probably don’t want to celebrate our nation right now, and we can’t blame them,” read a July 1 statement published in Orlando’s City News. “When there is so much division, hate, and unrest, why on earth would you want to have a party celebrating any of it?”
Orlando officials subsequently apologized on behalf of the city’s government for the “negative impact” their dismal verdict on the state of the nation might have had on the statement’s recipients. But if you steep yourself in a political culture that lacks the perspective to see past the present news cycle, much less to the 18th century, why wouldn’t you be melancholic? After all, everyone else around you seems to be.
“No fireworks, no parades, no grill, and definitely no blueberry-strawberry-whipped cream flag cake,” Petula Dvorak’s Washington Post op-ed began. “Plenty of American women are taking a knee on July Fourth this year. And who could blame us?” Dvorak cites celebrities who are treating the Fourth as a day of mourning—“wearing black and not celebrating.” Women, particularly those of minority extraction, are plagued by abuses, degradations, and, now, “forced motherhood.” Women, she contends, do most of the labor so that men can enjoy Independence Day. Not this year. “I let them fend for themselves and headed to a neighborhood food pantry for a future column,” Dvorak concludes.
Dvorak is not speaking only for herself. “I want the day to feel as normal as possible when everything around us is absolutely abnormal,” one unnamed woman told Yahoo News of her decision to spend America’s birthday laboring in the pursuit of national penance. There is no virtue in “celebrating a country that sees me as less of a citizen,” she added. The article cites several other activists who promised to engage in great displays of self-deprivation and highlights a campaign aimed at shaming others into voluntarily sacrificing fun. Hashtag “Cancel4thofJuly” advises the observant to avoid “festivities” or frivolous consumption and instead “attend local organized protests.” To judge by the scale of the protests around the country on Monday, a great many took this advice.
Of course, not everyone who is plagued by doubt about our national moral integrity planned to opt entirely out of the day’s celebrations. “It’s not about the cookout; it’s the conversations that need to be had,” Yahoo’s Erin Donnelly added. It’s fine to make an appearance in the neighbor’s backyard, so long as you spend your time lecturing your friends and loved ones and engaging in rituals like “donating or learning more about Indigenous causes” and “naming the land” on which you’re celebrating.
This doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, but that’s the point. What looks like fanaticism to the uninitiated is to its practitioners the empirically observable signs of their seriousness. This self-flagellation may not accomplish much beyond making the flagellants and everyone in their orbits unhappy, but there is personal agency to be found in deliberately making yourself miserable. And if you feel like events are spiraling out of control, there is satisfaction in exercising agency.
And yet, this is not a purely solitary activity; it cannot be but a communal experience, because the community is the problem. You must be drafted into this joyless project. This phenomenon extends well beyond the impulse to ruin holidays. Indeed, you could (and I did) fill a book with examples of how this new political piety is applied to banal activities that cumulatively make life worth living. But the internal torment being imposed on you is not yours, and you are no less a serious person because you have the wisdom to understand that it’s okay to take a day off. America is forever a work in progress. We are all obliged to strive toward making this a more perfect Union. But that work can wait a few hours.
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Jordan Peterson:
Aaron Renn reacts:
A number of people were critical of Peterson here in defining the church’s mission in temporal terms – reminding men of an ark to build, a land to conquer, etc. But I think this is unfair. Yes, there’s no gospel in this. But his take is mostly a restatement of the creation mandate. I find these complaints somewhat amusing given how loudly so many temporal social justice matters are said to be “gospel issues” in the church today. …
At the end of day the joke is on us. Peterson (and other secular influencers) have attracted big audiences of mostly young men where the church failed to do so. While popularity is no guarantee of truth, I’m sad to report that Peterson has often given men more accurate factual information than the church. As just one example, the church has deeply flawed teachings on attraction.
At the end of the day there’s only one valid reason to become a Christian: because it’s true. At the level of basic metaphysical truth, Peterson is wrong and the church is right. That’s a great starting point for us to work from. But we need to be willing to discover where we have gone wrong – in terms of facts, wisdom for living, and engagement with men – and get in the game to outcompete the likes of Peterson in the marketplace for the hearts and minds of young men.
Ultimately, criticisms from outside the house, particularly when delivered in this hectoring manner, are rarely accepted. But perhaps we can choose to take this as a challenge.
Peterson’s punch line:
“You’re churches for God’s sake. Quit fighting for social justice. Quit saving the planet. Attend to some souls. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s your holy duty. Do it now, before it’s too late. The hour is nigh.”
This is a somewhat harsh message for which Peterson has been criticized. But his punch line is absolutely correct if you have actually read the Gospels. Jesus Christ gave the responsibility of Christians — love one another, etc. — to individuals, not the government, not organizations, not even the church as a body filled with flawed humans. Saving souls is the number one priority, not to be popular or fashionable in the secular world.
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Today in 1963, Paul McCartney was fined 17 pounds for speeding. I’d suggest that that may have been the inspiration for his Wings song “Hell on Wheels,” except that the correct title is actually “Helen Wheels,” supposedly a song about his Land Rover:
Imagine having tickets to this concert at the Anaheim Civic Center today in 1967:
Today in 1984, John Lennon released “I’m Stepping Out.” The fact that Lennon stepped out of planet Earth at the hands of assassin Mark David Chapman 3½ years before this song was released was immaterial.
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Tyler Durden around sunrise Wednesday:
The US CPI report will be the main highlight tomorrow, and will also serve as what JPMorgan calls a “market clearing event.” While the BBG median consensus expects +8.8% YoY vs. +8.6% in June, Goldman and JPM expect 8.88% and 8.7% respectively, with whisper numbers at, or above, 9.0% …
So paranoid is the market, and so gullible about “bad news” tomorrow, that none other than the US government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics had to ease traders’ nerves, saying that the “leaked” report was indeed a forgery.
“We are aware of a fake version of the June 2022 Consumer Price Index news release that is being circulated online,” BLS spokesperson Cody Parkinson told Bloomberg said in an emailed statement.
Which of course is not to say that tomorrow’s CPI print won’t be 10.2%, although that would be especially cruel. As a reminder, a on Monday we showed why a case for a sharply higher 9% headline CPI print tomorrow is possible, but that most likely will also be the peak as numbers grind lower afterwards, at least until gasoline prices soar again.
Then, the Wall Street Journal reported:
U.S. consumer inflation accelerated to 9.1% in June, a pace not seen in more than four decades, adding pressure on the Federal Reserve to act more aggressively to slow rapid price increases throughout the economy.
The consumer-price index’s advance for the 12 months ended in June was the fastest pace since November 1981, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. A big jump in gasoline prices—up 11.2% from the previous month and nearly 60% from a year earlier—drove much of the increase, while shelter and food prices were also major contributors.
The June inflation reading exceeded May’s 8.6% rate, prompting investors and analysts to debate whether the Fed would consider a one-percentage-point rate increase, rather than a 0.75-point rise, later this month. Slowing demand is key to the Fed’s goal of restoring price stability in an economy that is still struggling with supply issues, but raising interest rates also elevates the risk of a recession.
Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy components, increased by 5.9% in June from a year earlier, slightly less than May’s 6.0% gain, the Labor Department said.
On a month-to-month basis, core prices rose 0.7% in June, a bit more than their 0.6% increase in May—a sign of inflationary pressures throughout the economy.
There is little that is believable about what the feds report about the economy. They don’t report, for instance, the U6 unemployment rate — those without jobs and those working less than they want — which is 7 percent. Nor have the feds admitted yet that we have been in a recession since the beginning of this year. I bet the actual inflation rate is probably higher than the 10.2 percent, which means the 9.1 percent report is a lie propagated by bureaucrats afraid of losing their jobs.
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About half of Republican voters said they would prefer someone other than former President Donald Trump as the presidential nominee in 2024, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College has found.
In a hypothetical contest against five other possible Republican nominees, just under half — 49 percent — of GOP voters said they’d support Trump’s third presidential nomination. At 25 percent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) otherwise saw the second-most support.
Notably, 64 percent of primary voters under 35 years old said they would vote against Trump in a presidential primary, the poll found. Such results suggest that Trump “would not necessarily enter a primary with an insurmountable advantage over rivals like [DeSantis],” the Times writes.
What’s more, Trump “trailed President Biden, 44 percent to 41 percent, in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 contest,” despite Biden’s plummeting approval ratings, the Times reports.
But it doesn’t look like Americans are hungry for another Biden-Trump ticket anyway. Per a Politico/Morning Consult survey released Tuesday, just 29 percent and 35 percent of Americans believe Biden or Trump, respectively, should run again.
Politico/Morning Consult surveyed 2005 voters betweeen July 8-10, 2022. Results have a margin of error of ± two percentage points. The New York Times and Siena College surveyed 849 voters from July 5-7, 2022. Results have a margin of error of ± four percentage points.
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This being Bastille Day, it seems appropriate to bring you some French rock music. (Despite my 2.5 years of middle school and four years of high school French, I understand none of the words.)
Outside of France, today in 1967, the Who opened the U.S. tour of … Herman’s Hermits.
Today in 1986, Paul McCartney released his “Press” album:
Other than Woody Guthrie, who was not a member of the rock or pop music worlds, the only birthday of today is Jos Zoomer, drummer for Vandenberg:
Today in 1984, Philippe Wynne, former member of the Spinners, died of a heart attack while performing in Oakland:
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With states and voters now free to decide abortion policies, it’s understandable that pro-choice politicians would be rolling out arguments for the broadest possible availability of the procedure. But what’s harder to understand is the recent phenomenon of Biden administration officials arguing not just that abortion access is a right but also that it’s a benefit to the U.S. economy.
Political advisers may already be wisely urging the White House not to address such a consequential personal decision with appeals to macroeconomics. But if Team Biden is determined to make it a math argument, there has hardly been a worse moment to make such a case.
The basic administration argument is that labor-force participation will be higher if people have more ability to end unwanted pregnancies. Given all of the pandemic-related Biden policies that have discouraged labor-force participation, one may question the depth of White House concern on this issue. But the administration’s argument is plausible for the immediate future. It’s also very shortsighted.
If one were to list the greatest economic challenges facing the United States, surely among the top items would be a massively indebted federal government with more than $30 trillion of acknowledged debt— and many trillions more in unfunded retirement entitlement promises—supported by a country that has been creating fewer future workers.
The craptacular Biden economic record should make anyone ignore what they have to say on any economic subject anyway. Add to that the continually declining labor participation rates that provide additional evidence that coast-to-coast legalized abortion wasn’t keeping women in the workforce.
The counterclaim, I suppose, is that women forced to raise children they otherwise would have aborted won’t care for their children before or after birth, making them burdens on society. To believe that you have to believe that a majority of such children (1) would have been born after a full-term pregnancy, (2) would not have been adopted by a family that wanted someone else’s unwanted child, and (3) wouldn’t have been raised the way children should be raised. Those who believe that the end of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey makes women nothing more than baby vessels might actually believe all that.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 