Passed on by a reader.
No comments on From a Madison or Milwaukee low-information voter
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Today in 1917, the first jazz record was recorded:
The number one British single today in 1959:
The number one single today in 1961 was the first number one for a girl group:
Today in 1969, the Beatles held their last concert, on the roof of their Apple Records building:
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The prevailing attitude among Wisconsin Republicans seems to be against a recall of Gov. Tony Evers on the grounds that Gov. Scott Walker shouldn’t have been recalled.
Republicans might want to rethink that as the toxic mix of incompetence and antipathy to anything but the most extreme left-wing positions (i.e. higher taxes and gun control) continues to fester in Madison.
On Friday, Evers spoke to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention, saying that spending more money on schools was more important than lowering property taxes. (To be precise, he said, “What’s a higher property tax if little Billy can get ahead?”) Evers obviously believes, as do teacher unions and government-employee unions, that the role of the taxpayer is to (1) pay taxes and (2) shut up.
Evers created a “nonpartisan” (which is not a synonym for “nonideological,” by the way) redistricting commission. Perhaps Evers can create whatever he wants, but Article IV, section 3 of the state Constitution says:
At its first session after each enumeration made by the authority of the United States, the legislature shall apportion and district anew the members of the senate and assembly, according to the number of inhabitants.
Evers is apparently too lazy to do the work of creating a constitutional amendment and getting that through two sessions of the Legislature before a statewide referendum.
Evers also is violating state law, specifically the Open Records Law, with the added feature of threatening reporters. M.D. Kittle reports:
Gov. Tony Evers’ assault on the First Amendment and open government continues, with one of his agencies threatening an NBC journalist with criminal charges for doing his job.
National investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh exposed the unchecked power of child welfare agencies — with the assistance of physicians — to take children away from their parents. His special report was met with silence and silencing orders from the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office and the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
“Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story,” Hixenbaugh tweeted Monday. “First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges.”
Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story. First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges.
Proud of @NBCNews for publishing it anyway. https://t.co/Gd2QoK54wS
— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) January 27, 2020
In his story, the journalist noted Evers’ DCF cited a state law that prevents the agency from disclosing details about child welfare investigations. When NBC News followed up with “specific questions” about the case, the agency warned Hixenbaugh that he could be charged for “publishing information obtained in a child abuse investigation file,” the story states.
Twitter followers of the story expressed their disgust with the agency — and an administration that has earned a reputation for keeping secrets.
“This is unbelievable. This continues a disturbing trend of secrecy among some in the Evers administration,” Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna) wrote. “The @WisDCF must answer to why they are utilizing intimidation tactics to cover this up and more importantly why they continue to persecute this family.”
Steineke called for an investigation into DCF, and that the results should be made public.
The investigative report features a couple whose adopted baby was removed from the home on allegations that her new father, a doctor, abused her, despite the fact that multiple physicians concluded the child was not intentionally injured. Child Protective Services took the girl from the home and placed her in foster care. Eight months later, she remains separated from her family and her father faces felony charges and possibly six years in prison, if convicted.
Eric Bott, director of Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, likened the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office gag order to its use of John Doe secrecy orders in Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation. The politically-motivated probes into dozens of conservative groups silenced subjects and witnesses on penalty of jail time and costly fines.
After the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the investigations unconstitutional, the Republican-led Legislature reformed the state’s John Doe laws.
“I thought WI sent a message to DAs that unconstitutional gag orders wouldn’t be tolerated when it passed John Doe reform,” Bott tweeted. “Perhaps it’s time to revisit these laws.” He then tweeted this question to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Molly Beck: “now that reporters are targeted do you understand the importance of John Doe reform?”
A Milwaukee County judge on Tuesday issued an order prohibiting all parties involved in the case from discussing it publicly, according to NBC Milwaukee affiliate WTMJ.
The DCF case is just the latest example of the Evers administration’s trouble with transparency.
Last month, Fox6 News sued the governor for failing to turn over even one day of Evers’ emails sought through an open records request. He eventually told the reporter that such emails would be “pretty boring,” and that if he sent out one email a day, “that’s an extraordinary day.”
Earlier this year, the MacIver Institute sued Evers in federal court for barring the conservative news agency from a budget briefing with fellow Capitol reporters. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has also sued the state Department of Public Instruction and the agency’s handpicked successor of the governor, who previously served as DPI superintendent. That lawsuit, too, involves transparency problems. Empower Wisconsin’s executive director is a plaintiff in that lawsuit.
It’s not clear if the Evers administration will seek to enforce its cease-and-desist order against the NBC reporter. A spokeswoman for the governor did not return Empower Wisconsin’s request for comment. Hixenbaugh was still reporting on the story as of Tuesday afternoon.
In a tweet, Hixenbaugh alluded to the challenges he faced in reporting his investigative piece.
“This was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever worked on, and not just because it’s emotional,” the NBC reporter wrote.
Evers is also a weasel. Kittle again:
By golly, folks, turns out Gov. Tony Evers is a political coward.
The Democrat apparently was so busy Tuesday he didn’t have time to welcome Vice President Mike Pence to the Statehouse. Evers and his spokespeople originally wouldn’t say what kept the governor away. But golly gee, wouldn’t you know it, after taking some heat the Evers’ team came up with an excuse Tuesday, insisting he had “meetings outside the building.”
The governor’s spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, claims the vice president, who appeared at the Capitol for a school choice event, hadn’t reached out to Evers and that the governor’s office learned about the visit from state Capitol police.
Really?
That sounds odd. But even it that was the case, isn’t it kind of customary for the governor to at least acknowledge a vice president when he comes to the Capitol — a special occasion that hasn’t occurred in more than 60 years?
Evers apparently couldn’t move his schedule around to accommodate the vice president. Instead, the governor asked the media to do his bidding for him.
On Monday, he told reporters he hoped someone would ask the vice president if he agrees with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who suggested smaller dairy farms will have to adapt and compete on an economy of scale in order to survive. Democrats, particularly Evers, have pushed a faulty narrative that President Trump doesn’t care about the plight of small farmers and the troubled dairy industry.
Sounds like the governor thinks that’s an important question, though. Just not important enough for him to personally ask Pence.
The truth of the matter is, school choice-hating Evers didn’t want anything to do with Tuesday’s rally. He has worked to undo Wisconsin’s successful voucher program since his days as state superintendent. He sought to freeze statewide enrollment in his last budget proposal.
Instead, Evers’ liberal activists turned out to shout “Shame! Shame!” at the vice president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a staunch proponent of school choice. And his lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, injected racially charged comments into Pence’s stop.
“In case this hasn’t been mentioned, the rally in the Capitol today was the most interaction many of those adults will ever have with black and brown children,” Barnes tweeted.
In case this hasn’t been mentioned, the rally in the Capitol today was the most interaction many of those adults will ever have with black and brown children.
— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) January 28, 2020
That’s not only wrong-headed, it’s wrong. Many of the adults who attended the Capitol rally are in education, daily striving to make better the lives of children of color and all students hungering for a better education — a way out of poverty and the public schools that have failed them.
The governor could take his lieutenant governor to task for such offensive sentiments,but he won’t. That would take courage. And that’s not an attribute you’ll find in a political coward.
In contrast, notice former Gov. Scott Walker presenting …
… Barack Obama with Packers …
… and Brewers jerseys upon the former president’s visits to Wisconsin.
Speaking of Barnes, Kittle writes:
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes believes we must “stymie capitalism” if we want to save the world from the threats of climate change.
That’s what the Democrat told a gathering of fellow doom-and-gloomers last month during a panel discussion at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid.
Barnes was joined on stage by a bevy of North American bureaucrats, including Canada’s “Climate Ambassador” and Mexico’s “Climate Change Director.”
The “side event,” as it was described on the conference agenda, was on “subnational strategies in North America for meeting Paris Commitments.” It was oozing with liberal politics. The session’s smug host, blasting President Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement, wondered aloud how the administration could fail to recognize the climate crisis facing the world. “How stupid can humanity be?”
“Why do we fail to act in the face of such obvious danger when the stakes are so high?” he asked.
It’s not a question of stupidity, Barnes answered. It’s a matter of greed. American capitalistic greed.
“The reason why we’re in this mess is the pursuit of greed, it’s capitalism run amok,” the lieutenant governor said. “That’s the same reason gun violence is so rampant in America, the same reason why we deal with all these other issues that have common-sense solutions but don’t have a common-sense approach.”
What’s the solution? First, get money out of politics, said the liberal who became the youngest lieutenant governor in Wisconsin history thanks to money in politics.
“The second answer is stymie capitalism, the way it is in America,” Barnes told the audience.
To do that, communities have to organize, he declared. But only left-wing communities that buy into radical, redistributionist ideas, like climate change hysteria. Barnes boasted about his time as a community organizer, and blamed “larger corporations” for many of the world’s ills.
“Until money is less of an issue, we’re going to continue on this path of destruction,” he warned.
But money really is the issue. The U.N. Climate Change Conference called for more drastic measures in the left’s war on fossil fuels. Democrats in congress and on the campaign trail are calling for trillions of dollars for a Green New Deal, on top of the trillions of dollars taxpayers and businesses have already spent on the climate change cash cow. Barnes heads up Gov. Tony Evers’ task force on climate change with a very expensive — and unrealistic — goal of making the Badger State carbon-free by 2050.
Craig Rucker, co-founder of the Washington,D.C.-based Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was at the Madrid conference and reported on the panel discussion.
“We’ve truly entered a new era in American governance when a top state elected official finds it worthwhile to travel to an international diplomatic event to proclaim what this world needs is to ‘stymie capitalism,’” wrote Rucker, whose organization has spent the better part of the past 35 years trying to bring some balance and common sense to an issue long ago hijacked by radical environmentalists.
He confronted Barnes after the session. He found the lieutenant governor pleasant but his rhetoric shocking.
“Just making that comment is absolutely preposterous,” Rucker told Empower Wisconsin. “He’s enjoying the free market, and all of the attendees were enjoying their Christmas shopping in Madrid, which is a lovely town to shop in. And they’re all flying on jet planes, thanks to capitalism.”
The political calculus may well be that not enough Wisconsinites want Evers booted out of office. One has to wonder, though, at what point enough will be enough with a governor who makes former Gov. Tony Earl look competent and former Gov. James Doyle look like a nice guy.
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Today in 1942 premiered what now is the second longest running program in the history of radio — the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs”:
What’s the longest running program in the history of radio? The Grand Ole Opry.
Today in 1968, the Doors appeared at the Pussy Cat a Go Go in Las Vegas. After the show, Jim Morrison pretended to light up a marijuana cigarette outside. The resulting fight with a security guard concluded with Morrison’s arrest for vagancy, public drunkenness, and failure to possess identification.
The number one British single today in 1969 was its only British number one:
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South Texas College of Law Prof. Josh Blackman:
The way things look, President Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office. The precedents set by the articles of impeachment, however, will endure far longer. And regrettably, the House of Representatives has transformed presidential impeachment from a constitutional parachute — an emergency measure to save the Republic in free-fall — into a parliamentary vote of “no confidence.”
The House seeks to expel Mr. Trump because he acted “for his personal political benefit rather than for a legitimate policy purpose.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded, “elected officials almost always consider the effect that their conduct might have on the next election.” The president’s lawyers are right. And that behavior does not amount to an abuse of power.
Politicians pursue public policy, as they see it, coupled with a concern about their own political future. Otherwise legal conduct, even when plainly politically motivated — but without moving beyond a threshold of personal political gain — does not amount to an impeachable “abuse of power.” The House’s shortsighted standard will fail to knock out Mr. Trump but, if taken seriously, threatens to put virtually every elected official in peril. The voters, and not Congress, should decide whether to reward or punish this self-serving feature of our political order.
The first article of impeachment turns on President Trump’s request that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announce an investigation of Hunter Biden’s role with the energy company Burisma. Mr. Trump wanted to learn about potential financial corruption concerning Hunter, realizing that such an investigation would, perhaps, yield greater scrutiny of Joe Biden. The House argues that this request to potentially harm Mr. Trump’s political rival was an “abuse of power.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers respond that the call was “perfectly normal.” Yes, that phrase actually appears in the brief. Regrettably, parts of the brief are written in a far-too-political tone. But the president’s lawyers have raised an important threshold issue.
“In a representative democracy,” they write, “elected officials almost always consider the effect that their conduct might have on the next election.”
President Trump did not stand to receive any money or property from the Ukrainian president. (The House wisely chose not to charge Mr. Trump with bribery.) As a policy matter, I disagree with Mr. Trump’s decision to ask for an investigation of the Bidens. Even if warranted, it should have been avoided at all reasonable costs. The Republic would have been fine if we never learned more about Burisma. But receiving a “personal political benefit” does not transform an otherwise legal action — requesting an investigation — into impeachable conduct.
Mr. Trump is not the first president to consider his political future while executing the office. In 1864, during the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln encouraged Gen. William Sherman to allow soldiers in the field to return to Indiana to vote. What was Lincoln’s primary motivation? He wanted to make sure that the government of Indiana remained in the hands of Republican loyalists who would continue the war until victory. Lincoln’s request risked undercutting the military effort by depleting the ranks. Moreover, during this time, soldiers from the remaining states faced greater risks than did the returning Hoosiers.
Lincoln had dueling motives. Privately, he sought to secure a victory for his party. But the president, as a party leader and commander in chief, made a decision with life-or-death consequences. Lincoln’s personal interests should not impugn his public motive: win the war and secure the nation.
Consider a more recent example. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to put Thurgood Marshall, the prominent civil rights advocate, on the Supreme Court. But there were no vacancies. Not a problem for Johnson, who nominated as attorney general Ramsey Clark, the son of Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark. Johnson knew that this move would, as Wil Haygood wrote in “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America,” raise questions “about a perceived conflict of interest because [Ramsey] Clark’s father sat on the high court.” Indeed, Johnson hoped that Justice Clark would retire to avoid having to recuse from cases in which Attorney General Clark was a party.
The stratagem worked. Justice Clark soon retired, and Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to fill the vacancy. Here, Johnson engineered a move that would have created conflicts that would keep a sitting Supreme Court justice from deciding countless appeals, where the primary purpose was to create a vacancy on the court. (Imagine if President Trump selected Chief Justice Roberts’s wife as attorney general!) Ultimately, Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968, but appointing the first African-American justice could have improved his popularity, and perhaps his party’s electoral standing.
Politicians routinely promote their understanding of the general welfare, while, in the back of their minds, considering how those actions will affect their popularity. Often, the two concepts overlap: What’s good for the country is good for the official’s re-election. All politicians understand this dynamic, even — or perhaps especially — Mr. Trump. And there is nothing corrupt about acting based on such competing and overlapping concerns. Politicians can, and do, check the polls before casting a difficult vote. Yet the impeachment trial threatens to transform this well-understood aspect of politics into an impeachable offense.
What separates an unconstitutional “abuse of power” from the valorized actions of Lincoln and Johnson? Not the president’s motives. In each case, a president acted with an eye toward “personal political benefit.” Rather, Congress’s judgment about what is a “legitimate policy purpose” separates the acclaimed from the criticized. Preserving a unified nation during the Civil War? Check. Creating a vacancy so the first African-American can be appointed to the Supreme Court? Check. But asking a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption? Impeach.
An impeachable offense need not be criminal. But our Constitution does not allow Congress to take a vote of “no confidence” for a president who pursues legal policies that members of the opposition party deem insufficiently publicly spirited. Presidents who take such actions with an eye toward the ballot box should be judged by the voters at the ballot box.
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Today in 1956, Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance on, of all places, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s “Stage Show” on CBS.
The number one album on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1978 was Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”:
The number one single today in 1984 was banned by the BBC, which probably helped it stay on the charts for 48 weeks:
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David Blaska:
Over at Isthmus, Dylan Brogan has committed some excellent journalism on Madison’s public schools. We’ve linked to his piece on the chaos at Jefferson middle school, where parents and public wonder why a 13-year-old student who shot another student with a BB gun remained in school after 25 previous, serious disciplinary incidents. We know about that sorry history only because a whistle blower released the disciplinary file to Channel 3000.
His news story is headlined “A rotten semester.” It is the No. #1 trender at Isthmus on-line and has attracted considerable comment, including this brilliant insight from Blaska:
Behavior education plan
The late Milt McPike is revered as an educator because for 23 years as principal (and 5 years as vice principal before that) he ran a tight ship at East high school. The man was known to frog march a miscreant student outside to the waiting squad car. The WI State Journal reports a revolving door of principals at 9 of MMSD’s 12 middle schools in the last 3½ years.
Not coincidentally, that followed the bureaucratic behavior education plan that Jennifer Cheatham imposed on the district, removing control of the classroom from teachers and schools from principals. Cheatham was supported by a school board invested in “white privilege” and “implicit bias” to excuse the chaos in the schools.
This trenchant observation drew a response from one Stan Endiliver, who (contrary to his intention) betrays why virtue-signaling progressives like himself are piping at-risk kids to disaster by playing the victim dirge on the blame-someone-else fife of victimhood. (Whew!)
MMSD teacher here; relax
1. If you are a parent of a student in MMSD, you have nothing to fear.[Blaska: as long as you stay out of the line of fire.] There are many caring teachers and principals that are doing great things. Our district is not perfect, but we are doing our best to serve all kids …
3. If you are looking to Blaska as a saviour, just move. [Blaska: Which is why Sun Prairie is building a second high school] He has no idea what he is talking about. I am in a MMSD school every day, and have been for 15 years, and his vision of us is ludicrous. Leading kids out of school to squad cars is exactly why we are in the position we are in. We have a lot of kids dealing with real trauma and there are a lot of problems that are rooted in mental health issues. Give the district more resources to heal, and that would be a great place to start.
5. It all comes to back to race. Have you done your homework on Madison? The zoning? The fact that our schools were only fully integrated in 1983? The days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that.
I hear teachers say things like “when I was in school, you would never…” well guess what, when we were in school we were being socialized into a white supremacist system. That system is coming down, and this worries a lot of people, whether they consider themselves woke or not. — Stan Endiliver
That system is coming down
Yes, Mr. Endiliver, the days of blindly complying with your teacher are, indeed, over. Now we have 15 to 20 middle school students trashing Lakeview branch library and taunting the first responders, “We don’t have to listen to the police” and “You can’t touch us.”
Progressives like Endiliver might call that progress. We do not. At some point, these kids will have to blindly listen to someone, some place: if not the teachers or the librarians, if not the police — then whom? Certainly not an employer or a customer. At what point are they — and you, Endiliver — going to quit blaming the past for the present? These kids’ parents were out of school by 1983! And do not tell me that Madison 1983 resembled in any way Selma, Alabama 20 years earlier.
I do not know where you were schooled, Endiliver. But my schools in Sun Prairie, public and Catholic, did not socialize anyone “into a white supremacist system.” To the contrary, it reinforced our responsibility to family, community, and our God. But you are correct on one point, MMSD teacher, that system is, indeed, coming down.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: This quote attributed to America’s unofficial poet laureate, Bob Dylan: “A hero is someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
But wait, there’s more!
As if proving MMSD teacher Endiliver’s pont about the system coming down:
NBC TV-15 reports: Five school-aged teenagers were arrested Tuesday afternoon (01-21-2020) following a high-speed pursuit that wound through several Dane Co. cities before the suspects abandoned the vehicle on the Beltline.
Three of them, Ashanti Freeman (age 17), Toneice Horne (17), and Reginald Sexton (18), were booked into the Dane Co. jail on multiple counts, while the other two teens, ages 15 and 16, were taken to the Juvenile Reception Center. The 16 year old had seven active arrest warrants.
According to the Monona Police Department, all five were piled into a GMC Acadia as it raced away from a Dane Co. deputy around 1 p.m. January 14 along the Beltline. Town of Madison officers laid stop sticks along the road, near Rimrock Rd., that punctured its tires, but the suspects kept going.
Monona Police say its officers joined the pursuit near South Towne/West Broadway and followed the SUV until it stopped near Monona Drive.
About that kid nabbed with a gun at West high
From Madison police blotter: South District detectives have developed probable cause to arrest a teen, arrested earlier this week at West High for having a gun at school, for armed robbery and disorderly conduct after connecting him to a drug-related holdup.
Tyrese T. Williams, age 18, Madison, is accused of pointing a handgun at two other teens, both acquaintances, after the victims picked him up under the premise that Williams was going to purchase a small amount of marijuana from one of them. The trio drove to the 1900 block of Post Rd. where the crime was committed around 2 p.m. Saturday.
Instead of providing cash, Williams pulled out the gun and ended up fleeing on foot with one victim’s backpack.
Blaska’s second Bottom Line: Yes, teacher Endiliver, the days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that. Blaska is one of them.
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Historian Niall Ferguson has slammed Greta Thunberg’s climate change hypocrisy at Davos, asking why “I don’t see her in Beijing or Delhi.”
Teenage environmentalist Thunberg gave another hysterical speech at the global confab yesterday in which she claimed, “Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.”
“We don’t want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021,” Thunberg said. “We want this done now.”
Ferguson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, questioned why Thunberg isn’t directing her message to the biggest polluters on the planet.
“60% of CO2 emissions since Greta Thunberg was born is attributable to China… but nobody talks about that. They talk as if its somehow Europeans and Americans who are going to fix this problem… which is frustrating because it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter,” said Ferguson.
“If you’re serious about slowing CO2 emissions and temperatures rising it has to be China and India you constrain,” he added, noting that while Greta travels to New York and Davos, “I don’t see her in Beijing or Delhi.”
Ferguson is right. Take the UK for example.
“Britain’s CO2 emissions peaked in 1973 and are now at their lowest level since Victorian times,” reports the Spectator. “Air pollution has plummeted since then, with sulphur dioxide levels down 95 per cent. Britain’s population is rising but our energy consumption peaked in 2001 and has since fallen by 19 per cent.”
This global pollution map published by the WHO perfectly illustrates Ferguson’s point.
Even if you believe wholeheartedly in the decidedly shaky science behind man-made global warming, the west is more than doing its part. But we’re the ones being lectured to not travel, not eat meat and not have children despite already being in massive demographic decline.
Meanwhile, Africa, India and China continue to wantonly pollute and none of Greta Thunberg’s fury or the attention of the media is ever directed their way.
On top of this, Greta continues to have her message amplified by the likes of Prince ‘4 private jet trips in 11 days’ Harry and Arnold ‘garage full of tanks and muscle cars’ Schwarzenegger.
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The number one single today in 1962:
The number one single today in 1973:
The number one British single today in 1979 does not make one think of Pat Benatar:
Today in 1984, Michael Jackson recorded a commercial for the new flaming hair flavor of Pepsi:
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The number one single in Great Britain today in 1961 included a Shakespearean reference:
Eight years later came the live version …
… which included, instead of “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there,” Presley’s impromptu “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair.” Which prompted a front-row concertgoer to remove his toupee and start swaying to the music.
Then backup singer Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney and aunt of Dionne Warwick, cracked up Presley further with singing what she was supposed to sing. Afterward Presley said, “Fourteen years down the drain right there.”
Five years after Presley’s death, the live version reached Britain’s top 30.
The number one single today in 1965 included Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin, on guitar:
Today in 1970, John Lennon wrote, recorded and mixed a song all in one day, which may have made it an instant song:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 