The number one song today in 1965 was this pleasant-sounding, upbeat ditty:
That was on the same day that ABC-TV premiered a cartoon, “The Beatles”:
The number one British song today in 1968:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Sept. 25
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When word surfaced in October 2013 that prosecutors were expanding their political John Doe investigation to multiple Wisconsin counties, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Collin Levy began to dig around.
It didn’t take long before Levy and her boss, Paul Gigot, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Journal’s Editorial Page, knew they had a powerful story — a story different from what the groupthink press was peddling.
Thanks to Eric O’Keefe, one of scores of conservative activists targeted by partisan prosecutors and Wisconsin’s political speech cops, the newspaper’s editorial board began piecing together the facts. The “John Doe II” was an assault on basic constitutional rights in which investigators illegally raided homes, spied on citizens, and silenced the left’s political opponents. And it was all driven by a bogus campaign finance law theory.
“Eric O’Keefe was willing to go on the record with us, at considerable risk to himself. That’s when we put into work that first editorial,” Gigot told Empower Wisconsin on this week’s Power Up! podcast. (Full disclosure: Eric O’Keefe is president of the Empower Wisconsin Foundation.)
The first piece was headlined, “Wisconsin’s Political Speech Raid,” and, as Gigot said, it blew the lid off the investigation, and exposed coordination theory prosecutors based their secret probe on. “We also had the subpoenas and, bravely, Eric O’Keefe went on the record, risking contempt of court for violating the gag order.”
O’Keefe and his fellow John Doe targets and witnesses faced jail time and hefty fines if they told anyone about the secret investigation.
Wisconsin’s old John Doe procedure, unlike the standard grand jury, was built on silence.
“(In a grand jury,) (Y)ou can speak to the public about what you told the grand jury if you want. You can have a lawyer. You can talk to a lawyer,” Gigot said. “According to targets of this probe, they were told under no uncertain terms, ‘Don’t talk to a lawyer. Don’t talk to anybody about this. Don’t ask anybody else if they were the subjects of the raids. Don’t talk.’”
The gag order made the story that much more compelling. But the tactics used by the prosecutors to target conservative speech never seemed to concern mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Gigot said. Nor were most news organizations overly concerned that the campaign finance law theories of state regulators and investigators didn’t match with settled court rulings on political speech.
“In fact, they cheered on the John Doe. The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, they were all in lockstep,” Gigot said.
“The media ought to be, you would think, a protector of the First Amendment and the right to speak, but in this case, they were cheerleaders for reducing political speech,” the editor added. “It was just astounding to me that the rest of the press corps did not show any doubt about what the prosecutors were doing.”
In 2015, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with a lower court decision that quashed the subpoenas used in the probe. The court also declared the investigation unconstitutional and ordered iit shut down for good. John Doe Prosecutors tried to take their bogus theory all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost there, too.
“They had this theory that was a violation of First Amendment and the constitution, yet they used the awesome prosecutorial power of the state to eavesdrop for months on people. (The John Doe targets were) fundraisers, not Gambino Crime Family members. Just people who were trying to raise money to participate in the American democratic process. And they were raided at home at dawn, their children left in tears, they were told they can’t talk, their businesses were forced to shut down, in some cases because they couldn’t raise money anymore in politics.”
“It’s just a tremendous abuse of power in my view. That’s why we stayed on it, that’s why we stayed in it. Someone had to speak up about this because it wasn’t right,” Gigot added.
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At some point during serial sex offender Bill Clinton’s eight-year presidency, Slick Willie gave an interview from Air Force One to KMOX radio in St. Louis in which Clinton said, “You cannot love your country and hate your government.”
Bubba was, of course, wrong. J.D. Tuccille expounds on that general topic:
“People actively hate us,” one recently retired U.S. Border Patrol agent complains in a New York Times piece on morale and recruitment problems at the federal agency. In El Paso, an active duty agent admitted he and his colleagues avoid many restaurants because “there’s always the possibility of them spitting in your food.”
What’s remarkable about the piece isn’t the poor treatment directed at many Border Patrol agents; it’s that you could replace “Border Patrol” with the name of any one of several other federal agencies and find a similar news story from recent years. Many arms of government are unpopular with large swathes of the American population, and people are not shy about expressing their contempt.
For those of us who want a smaller, much less intrusive government, that should be viewed as a trend to nurture and encourage. And what a trend it is.
For instance, the tax man can’t catch a break.
“The IRS has long been disliked, but its employees aren’t used to being vilified,” Bloomberg reported in 2015, in language that foreshadowed current reports about the plight of immigration-law enforcers. One retired IRS agent told reporters that “throughout his career, he dealt with antigovernment tax avoiders in Arizona, but once the Tea Party scandal broke, his encounters with otherwise law-abiding ranchers became more hostile.”
Likewise, J. Edgar Hoover’s heirs have become controversial.
“Public support for the FBI has plunged,” Time noted last year after the famed law-enforcement agency’s ongoing series of fumbles and scandals were complicated by questions over its role in the 2016 presidential election. “The FBI’s crisis of credibility appears to have seeped into the jury room. The number of convictions in FBI-led investigations has declined in each of the last five years.”
That’s a lot of hate directed at these federal employees, but it’s not necessarily coming from the same people. Perhaps inevitably in these fractured and polarized times, Americans belonging to one of the dominant political tribes tend to like the federal agencies despised by loyalists of the opposing political tribe, depending on their mutually incompatible views of what government should be doing and who it should be doing it to. Their diverging antipathies fit together into a jigsaw puzzle of misery for government workers caught in the crossfire.
“Americans’ opinions about Immigration and Customs Enforcement are deeply polarized: 72% of Republicans view ICE favorably, while an identical share of Democrats view it unfavorably,” Pew Research Center reported last year on opinions about Border Patrol’s sister agency. With specific regard to Border Patrol, “Among Republican voters, 65% believe the enforcement is too lenient while just 12% say it is too harsh. Democrats are more divided but lean in the opposite direction: 40% say too harsh and 22% too lenient,” according to pollster Scott Rasmussen. The heated debate between the two legacy parties over immigration is reflected in their attitudes toward, and treatment of, government agencies tasked with enforcing immigration laws.
Opinions of the IRS reflect a similar divide. “Democrats (65%) are more likely than Republicans (49%) to view the IRS favorably,” Pew reported in the same 2018 survey. The numbers reflect not just long-time differences in views of taxation, but also Republican suspicion of the IRS after it was caught targeting conservative organizations.
It’s the same for the FBI. “The 23-percentage-point gap in views of the FBI among Republicans and Democrats is among the widest of the 10 agencies and departments asked in the survey,” Pew noted about the beleaguered law enforcement agency. “While 78% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a favorable opinion of the FBI, 55% of Republicans and Republican leaners say the same.”
Americans don’t agree about which federal agencies they hate, but the fact that significant numbers of them do openly despise government workers plays havoc with morale. That, in turn, slams employee retention and recruitment.
Border Patrol is about 1,800 agents short of its hiring targets, IRS workers are heading for the exits, and even the fabled FBI saw a drop in applications, despite a slight uptickthis year in morale.
To be clear, federal agencies don’t need partisan animosity to make their employees unhappy; they’re awfully good at doing it by themselves. Transportation Security Administration workers are so miserable that a blue ribbon panel convened this year to brainstorm schemes for dragging them from the depths of despair. And the entire Department of Homeland Security makes a specialty of managerial incompetence so extreme that politicians seek to raise morale through—literally—an act of Congress (is there nothing beyond the magical power of legislation?).
But red vs. blue infighting creates a no-win situation in which American political factions fundamentally disagree over the role of government, despise those arms of government that serve their enemies’ purposes, and wield the agencies they control as weapons against anybody seen as opponents. It’s at least theoretically possible (if highly improbable) to make a generic federal agency a better place to work. But how do you get Americans to show respect to government workers who they see as engaged in evil?
So, given that those of us who want a smaller and less bothersome state are often deeply opposed to those agencies’ worst efforts, why not help the partisans lay on the hate? After all, the one thing that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on is that government should be bigger and busier—”most either want to increase spending or maintain it at current levels,” pollsters found this year—though, of course, Republicans and Democrats disagree on just where our huge and debt-ridden government should become more involved.
Helping the major political tribes attack each other’s favored agencies won’t formally reduce government the way libertarians like, but it could continue to hobble agencies so that they’re less of a threat to our freedom and rights. At least for now, the most effective means of protecting liberty may lie less in winning political battles than in assisting the major partisan tribes in waging war against each other and the government agencies they currently disfavor.
In Wisconsin, that would include the Department of Natural Resources, famously known as “Damn Near Russia” in the Soviet Union days, and heading back in that direction under, of course, a Democratic governor. -
We begin with an odd moment today in 1962: Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, declined an invitation on Presley’s behalf for an appearance before the Royal Family. Declining wasn’t due to conflicting film schedules (the stated reason) or anti-royalism — it was because Parker was an illegal immigrant to the U.S. from the Netherlands (his real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk), and he was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S.
Number one in Britain today in 1964:
Number one in Britain …
… and in the U.S. today in 1983:
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Julie Kelly writes about Friday’s “Global Climate Strike”:
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It was not shocking that Wisconsin beat Michigan 35–14 at Camp Randall Stadium Sunday.
What was shocking was how thoroughly UW manhandled the Wolverines, by some accounts the Big T1e4n preseason favorite.
Wolverine fans were in an ugly mood, reported by Elaine Sung:
On Saturday, the rumble in Camp Randall Stadium was “Jump Around.” The sounds everywhere else? Screaming, cursing, howling, spitting and shrieking from Michigan football fans.
The No. 10 Wolverines and Jim Harbaugh, who was hired in December 2014 to lead his alma mater to unprecedented greatness, just lost to Wisconsin, 35-14.
The game wasn’t that close. At halftime, the No. 14 Badgers were up 28-0, supremely confident with efficient and steady drives.
Social media got revved up pretty early. Michigan fans expressed outrage, fueled by each incomplete pass. Then it became scorched earth as Wisconsin kept adding the points.
The mocking contingent came out. Khaki pants were not spared. Talk about poking the bear …
DISCLAIMER: If you are offended by foul language, don’t look at the first tweet here.
If you are offended by bad football, we empathize …
You know there was going to be an Ohio State element in here somewhere:
Can you hear the people sing … Urban Meyer in blue and maize?
This is subtle, calm, reasoned and … cold.
This is even colder:
Some fans aren’t even mad now. They’re just sad.
Here we are, weighing in from South Florida:
I think Justin Bieber would be upset by this:
And the khakis, as always, take a hit:
Two weeks and a bye later, the Michigan football team’s offense looks no closer to figuring things out.
And it’s defense, well, they appear to have problems, too.
The 11th-ranked Wolverines were manhandled in their Big Ten opener on Saturday, losing 35-14 to No. 13 Wisconsin while coming up on the wrong end of every major statistical category out there.
Michigan (2-1, 0-1 Big Ten) was out-gained by an extraordinary 487-299 margin, watching as the Badgers opened the game with a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive. And it just got worse from there.
Ben Mason, who converted to the defensive line this season, fumbled the football away on his first carry of the season, on Michigan’s first drive of the game. Then the Wolverines had a long pass play to Ronnie Bell reviewed and called back on their second drive.
Jonathan Taylor, an All-Big Ten running back and Heisman Trophy candidate, gashed the Michigan defense from the very beginning. Taylor (23 carries, 203 yards, 2 TDs) had eight carries for 51 yards on Wisconsin’s first drive, then broke a 72-yard touchdown run late in the first quarter.
By that point, Wisconsin held a 14-0 lead and had momentum on its side. The Wolverines were never able to recover. They totaled just 15 first downs in the game, were 0-for-9 on third down and only possessed the football for a total of 17:45.
Meanwhile, while the Badgers found success on the ground, quarterback Jack Coan (13-16, 128 yards) was able to turn to the pass as well. He completed two passes of more than 20 yards as part of a 15-play, 80-yard second-quarter touchdown drive.
Wisconsin possessed the football for more than 41 minutes in the game, limiting the Wolverines’ opportunities for drives.
Michigan’s quarterback, Shea Patterson, was unable to replicate his big game of a year ago. He finished just 14-of-32 for 219 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. He also fumbled the football, for a third straight game, in the fourth quarter as Michigan tried to draw closer.
Complicating matters, the Wolverines were never able to establish a ground game: rushing for just 40 yards, with starter Zach Charbonnet (2 carries, 6 yards) appearing limited.
After No. 13 Wisconsin throttled No. 11 Michigan 35-14 on Saturday in Madison, the narratives were much different for each team.
The Badgers (3-0) are being regarded as a serious threat in the Big Ten after racking up 359 rushing yards and forcing three turnovers on defense.
Meanwhile, the Wolverines (2-1) continued to be criticized for their inconsistent play through the first three games of the season.
Even former Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson had harsh words for his alma mater on FOX’s postgame show.
“This does not look good,” Woodson said. “Right now, I don’t even know how to talk right now. What I could say wouldn’t be the right thing to say because it would be my emotions. What I am telling you now is kind of what I see on the surface. When I get home, I’m going to say some different things, but right now, I am sick about how Michigan football looks.”
That wasn’t a football game.
That was Waterloo.
Forget national playoffs, forget challenging the elite programs, forget even moving the bar higher than last season. The Michigan Wolverines on Saturday looked as bad as they’ve looked since Jim Harbaugh arrived, not losing as much as surrendering a critical Big Ten game for which they had two weeks to prepare.
There’s no excuse. Worse, there’s no explanation. Where would you begin to explain this 35-14 beatdown by Wisconsin — which wasn’t remotely as close as that score suggests? The offensive line got crushed like walnuts. The defense gave up 143 yards to a running back — in the first quarter! The endless series of mistakes, miscues, missed assignments and missed chances stacked so high, watching it was like squinting into the sun.
I watched it, as many of you did, at home, and was left, as many of you were, stunned. Stunned at the lack of preparation. Stunned at the apparent lack of inspiration. Stunned at the execution, errors and ineffectiveness of the Wolverines in areas they used to be known for, like an offensive line, like a running game, like a defense.
The defense. Oh, Lord. What happened there? The strong suit of the Wolverines with Don Brown directing looked like some weak impostor wearing maize and blue. There were more players out of position than a chessboard overturned by a dog. Wisconsin was all but laughing at the lack of resistance, and went for a fourth down on its own 34-yard line to prove it.
They made it easily.
Jonathan Taylor, the star running back for the Badgers, had such an easy time gaining yards Saturday, he looked like the NFL and the Wolverines like high school. Taylor had 203 yards on just 23 carries — and missed a big chunk of the game with cramps!
As for the Michigan offensive line? Wow. The area once the pride of Bo Schembechler was the shame of the Michigan game film Saturday. It allowed the U-M quarterbacks to be hit or rushed on nearly every play. It opened so few holes, the Wolverines recorded a paltry 40 yards rushing, barely averaging two yards per carry.
And yet for all the terrible performances, the origin of this debacle was, once again, mistakes. As it has been since the season started.
And that, for a program under a coach as accomplished as Harbaugh, is head-shaking.
Let’s just list some of the early mistakes. You’ll see how quickly they add up to disaster.
- On the Wolverines’ first drive, they hit a huge pass-and-run, then promptly fumbled four yards from the goal line on a handoff to a fullback, Ben Mason, who hadn’t taken a handoff all year. That was their ninth fumble of the year.
- On the Badgers’ third drive, the Michigan defenders were out of position, allowing Taylor to race 72 yards for a touchdown.
- On the next drive, U-M drew a pass interference call, but followed it with a foolish unsportsmanlike penalty by Donovan Peoples-Jones. Shea Patterson missed two receivers he could have hit, and the Wolverines wound up punting.
- In the second quarter, on a fourth-and-3, Wisconsin quarterback Jack Coan again found Michigan defenders out of position and hit a 26-yard over-the-shoulder pass to Quintez Cephus.
- On the Wolverines’ next drive, Patterson threw an interception.
All that was in the first 25 minutes. I could fast-forward to the final quarter, when Michigan blew a great punt with an illegal formation penalty, or got called for offensive pass interference, or ended its offensive day — and I do mean offensive — with an interception by the third-string quarterback Joe Milton.
But I’m stopping now, before you break something valuable.
Well, we’re not. John Niyo:
There are big questions and then there are smaller ones.
But for now, for Jim Harbaugh and those toiling inside his football program – and possession is at least nine-tenths of the law in college football, in case you hadn’t noticed – there’s no choice but to focus on the latter.
Everyone else will take care of the former after another nationally-televised debacle for the Wolverines Saturday, a 35-14 thrashing at Wisconsin that was worse than the final score indicated. And bad enough that it left one of Michigan’s all-time greats doing some finger-pointing of his own afterward.
“I’m sick about how Michigan football looks right now,” said Charles Woodson, the Heisman Trophy-winning star of the Wolverines’ 1997 national championship team, making his debut on Fox Sports’ studio show Saturday.
Flanked by none other than Urban Meyer, the former Ohio State coach who retired last winter with an unblemished record against Michigan, Woodson wasn’t done preaching to the choir, either.
“I came here with high expectations for how my team was gonna look, in front of you guys,” he said. “And I’ll be honest with you, man, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed about that.”
He’s far from the only one. As another of his ex-teammates, Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson, tweeted Saturday, “I think I can speak for a lot of former UM players when I say, forget about winning. How about we just compete?”
And while Harbaugh betrayed few, if any, such emotions after another humbling loss Saturday – that has strangely become the norm the last couple years — he has to know that promises made aren’t being kept.
Sure, he’s 40-15 in four-plus seasons as Michigan’s head coach, and like it or not, job security probably won’t be a real issue in Ann Arbor unless fans stop showing up to games or off-field issues pile up. (It’ll certainly take more than a disgruntled fan painting “#FIRE HARBAUGH” on the “The Rock” at the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and Hill Street.) But Harbaugh’s teams are now 1-6 on the road against ranked teams in his tenure, with half of those losses by three touchdowns or more.
And as Meyer noted on that same Fox postgame broadcast, there are myriad problems for Michigan’s coaching staff to dissect before they can even think about changing that narrative.
“You lift up that hood and you’re not gonna like what you see,” Meyer said. “But you better get that fixed fast.”
How, though? And why? That’s what everyone is left wondering, and not just because Michigan was coming off a bye week and facing an opponent that hadn’t really been tested yet in season-opening routs of South Florida and Central Michigan.
As Woodson said, “It looked like they had never watched Wisconsin football before.” Or if they had, they’d simply forgotten what they saw, because the mistakes started piling up immediately after kickoff for Don Brown’s defense.
Michigan has allowed 1,482 yards and 138 points in its last three games against ranked opponents. And it didn’t take long to sense Saturday would fall right into that pattern. When junior defensive end Kwity Paye got caught diving inside late in the first quarter, allowing Wisconsin to turn a counter play into a 72-yard sprint to the end zone for All-America running back Jonathan Taylor, you could see where this was all headed.
Taylor had 143 rushing yards by the end of that quarter. And by halftime, Wisconsin had made it clear it owned the line of scrimmage, piling up 200 yards on the ground and converting three fourth-down situations with ease, the latter a quarterback keeper that saw Jack Coan dive into the end zone almost untouched.
Out-coached, out-prepared, outplayed? Check, check and checkmate.
Because on the other side of the ball, the Wolverines simply look lost. There’s no other way to describe it after three games and these results.
Michigan finished Saturday’s game with just 40 yards rushing on 19 carries, four more turnovers – that’s nine now for the season – and a stunning 0-for-10 on third-down conversions, something the Wolverines haven’t done since at least 1995.
Where to start, though? That’s the most troubling part for Michigan, and perhaps the reason why the players seemed to be at such a loss to explain what had just happened in Madison: Their head coach was, too.
“We were outplayed,” Harbaugh said at his postgame press conference. “Out-prepared, out-coached, outplayed. The whole thing. Both offensively and defensively, it was thorough.”
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The number one song today in 1957:
The number one song today in 1967:
Today in 1969, the Northern Star, the Northern Illinois University student newspaper, passed on the rumor that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and been impersonated in public ever since then. A Detroit radio station picked up the rumor, and then McCartney himself had to appear in public to report that, to quote Mark Twain, rumors of his death had been exaggerated.
(Thirty-five years to the day later, in 2004, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor issued a statement denying his death after a Des Moines radio station announced he had died from a drug overdose, then correcting to say Taylor had died in a car crash.)
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Britain’s number one song today in 1964:
Today in 1967, a few days after their first and last appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show,” the Doors appeared on the Murray the K show on WPIX-TV in New York:
Today in 1969, ABC-TV premiered “Music Scene” against CBS-TV’s “Gunsmoke” and NBC-TV’s “Laugh-In”:
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First, the song of the day:
The number one song today in 1959 was a one-hit wonder …
… as was the number one song today in 1968 …
… as was the number one British song today in 1974 …
… but not over here:
The number one song today in 1985:
Today in 2001, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC and 31 cable channels all carried “America: A Tribute to Heroes,” a 9/11 tribute and telethon:
The first of the three birthdays today is not from rock and roll, but it is familiar to high school bands across the U.S. and beyond:
Don Felder of the Eagles:
Tyler Stewart, drummer of the Barenaked Ladies:
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I have written here before about the requirements for my TV-watching in my younger days — cool detective(s) who drives cool wheels and whose show has a cool theme song, preferably by the great Lalo Schifrin.
That cinematic cornucopia known as YouTube unearthed this …
… described by the Internet Movie Database as …
Tom Selleck is a member of the “Bunco” squad, the squad in charge of nabbing con men, cheats, and swindlers. Most of their time is spent dealing with penny-ante street-corner crooks. But their investigations start to reveal a larger con game in progress…
Odd that IMDB doesn’t mention “Bunco”‘s other star, Robert Urich, who first got attention on the TV series “SWAT” …
… a concept that became a movie …
… and a rebooted TV series …
… each with the same theme music (somewhat in the movie’s case) …
… which was the first 45 I purchased, for $1.03 at Walgreen’s in Madison. But I digress. (I know what you’re thinking. “You certainly do digress.”)
“Bunco” — produced by the producers of “Dallas” and “Knots Landing” — was one of five pilots Selleck did that didn’t get sold to one of the networks.
Selleck was also in the pilot to “Most Wanted,” but wasn’t cast for the series.
A year later, Tanna was cast in “Vega$.”
For those unfamiliar with this one of producer Aaron Spelling’s 17,343 TV series, Urich was cast as Dan Tanna, a Vietnam veteran turned private eye in Las Vegas, where he worked for a somewhat eccentric casino owner, where he lived and from which he got to drive a 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
Two years later, CBS came out with “Magnum P.I.” …
Selleck was cast as Thomas Magnum, a Vietnam veteran turned private eye in Hawaii, where he worked for an eccentric novelist and under the eye of a British World War II veteran. He lived in a house on the novelist’s Hawaii estate, from which he got to drive the novelist’s Ferrari 308GTS.
And people complain about Hollywood’s lack of originality today.
A note about the music: The theme to “Bunco” was written by John Parker, possibly better known for …
The “Vega$” theme was written by Dominic Frontiere, who also did a lot of TV and movie work:
The first “Magnum” theme was written by Ian Fairbairn-Smith. The second, and much better known, theme was written by Mike Post, and his TV work would clog the Internet if I listed it here.
“Vega$” was created by Michael Mann, later better known for …
Tanna lasted four seasons in Vegas … or Vega$.
“Magnum” was created by Donald Bellasario, now known for …
… soon starting its 17th season.
Magnum lasted eight seasons and was a huge hit, one of the quintessential ’80s TV series, and it made Selleck an international star. And as always, Hollywood success will breed attempted imitators, with subtle changes, such as rich businessman-turned-PI …
… or beach bums-turned-PIs:
The imitators include the inevitable reboot:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 