General Motors’ decision to close four U.S. plants and lay off 14,700 workers, 15% of its domestic workforce, is an economic tragedy. And it might have been avoided if GM had listened to the market, rather than the Obama administration.
During and after the financial crisis, GM decided to do the government’s bidding in exchange for billions in subsidies. At one point, the federal government owned more than 60% of its shares, costing it more than $50 billion. By the time it sold the shares in 2013, U.S. taxpayers had an $11.2 billion loss.
How’s that working out for GM now? Not very well.
GM’s CEO Mary Barra, who took over the company in early 2014, reshaped the company’s offerings to please the Obama White House’s leftist auto czars, as did her predecessor. Barra has bet the company’s future on electric cars and other less-popular offerings, instead of what people want.
“The (GM) restructuring reflects changing North American auto markets as manufacturers continue to shift away from towards SUVs and trucks,” Reuters noted. “In October, almost 65% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs. That figure was about 50% cars just five years ago.”
So what was GM making? Well, electric cars, for one. But even with a $7,500 subsidy, they don’t sell fast enough. Why? As the joke goes, the extension cord isn’t long enough. For anyone who has a long commute or wants to take a road trip, an e-car makes no sense. As such, GM’s commitment to electric cars is emblematic of its recent market failures.
Worse, it’s based on a kind of environmental fraud. Electric cars aren’t “zero emission,” as we’re constantly told.
For one, building an electric car produces more CO2 than building a regular car. For another, if the car’s batteries get their charge from electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, that makes an “electric car” really a coal-fired car.
It’s the electric-car industry’s dirty secret, one that undermines GM’s rationale for making such a big bet on electric cars.
As for President Trump, he hasn’t directed his anger at electric cars per se. He has directed it at GM’s layoffs from closing four plants here in the U.S., idling nearly 15,000 people.
“Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland,” but keeping plants in Mexico& China, Trump tweeted Tuesday. “The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get!”
In particular, Trump’s says the corporate tax cuts and sharply lower taxes on repatriated profits from overseas should be going straight to the bottom line of comes like GM. So he’s now promising to look into cutting subsidies on electric cars and imposing tariffs on domestic car imports.
We understand Trump’s ire. But it’s misplaced.
Government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. Period. And that’s exactly what subsidies are: the government substituting its judgment for that of the marketplace. Why do we do it at all?
It never works as expected. It can’t. The government, despite delusions to the contrary, can’t possibly know what people want and need. Yet, a perpetual leftist dream remains an economy run and funded by government “experts.”
We see that in the Obama administration’s decision to subsidize GM during the financial crisis by investing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in its stock and propping up money-losing operations. By ignoring the supply-and-demand signals of the marketplace, it only made GM’s problems worse.
More specifically, it led to GM committing itself to the unprofitable electric car market, one of President Obama’s pet projects. At one point, Obama even vowed to buy a Chevy Volt when he left office. He didn’t.
Not only has GM’s Barra embraced electric cars, but she sees the government as her partner in the enterprise, as she wrote in a recent USA Today op-ed. In it, she noted that her electric car plan “requires collaboration by the private and public sectors, supported by comprehensive federal policies.”
It’s no joke that some today call GM “Government Motors.”
Ironically, one of the victims of GM’s cutbacks will be the hybrid plug-in Chevy Volt. Even so, GM’s commitment to the subsidy-sucking electric-car market remains unshaken, Barra says.
After all, who needs to please actual customers when government can compel people, either by huge subsidies or outright regulation, to buy your product?
And who buys those electric cars, anyway? Mainly those whom the left calls “the rich.”
“Overall, the top 20% of income earners receive about 90% of EV tax credits,” noted The Hill. “Additionally, data from 2014 indicates that over 99% of total EV tax credits went to households with an adjusted gross income above $50,000.”
So we subsidize wealthy consumers at the expense of lower-income consumers, who can’t afford electric cars. That’s economic perversion, “regressive” not “progressive.”
“Barra wants taxpayers to foot the bill for her speculation on what the future will look like,” economics writer and Wall Street analyst John Tamny recently noted. “If Barra were truly certain, she wouldn’t ask for taxpayer support.”
Lest you think we’re being too harsh on GM, it’s not alone. Once-dominant GE’s shares have plunged nearly 60% this year. There’s a common theme here: GE’s long slide from grace began when Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s former CEO, began spending more time at the Obama White House than running his company.
There’s a lesson in this for other companies, summed up in Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’ catchphrase: “Get woke, go broke.” Immelt already learned that bitter lesson; Barra is learning it now.
Sadly, GM is just another once-great American company that went wrong trying please a government master, and not the customer. We can only hope other companies will learn from GM’s error.
-
No comments on Government Motors fails again
-
Brian Mark Weber:
The Left has, over time, perpetuated the idea that the Bill of Rights, whose 10 amendments were designed to protect individual citizens from government tyranny, somehow includes a Second Amendment that empowers the government to determine when and where those citizens can carry weapons. But why would the Founders go to the trouble of ensuring such rights while allowing the government to snatch them away from an undefended population?
Still, in 2008 the Supreme Court held 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment was an individual right, a decision that former Justice John Paul Stevens called the worst of his tenure. The Federalist’s David Harsanyi writes, “Earlier this year, in fact, Stevens implored Americans to do what he couldn’t while on the court, and repeal the Second Amendment.”
The fact that the Heller decision was even necessary reveals just how far we’ve fallen since our founding. The ruling came far too late to push back against decades of leftist propaganda and activism designed to convince millions of Americans that the Second Amendment was far different from the other nine rights — that it was neither individual nor narrowly limited but collective and extremely limited.
Since then, lower courts have had a field day misinterpreting the Constitution and upholding laws making it harder for citizens to acquire guns. For example, in 2016 the infamous Ninth Circuit Court determined in Peruta v. California that one must show “good cause” in order to carry a concealed weapon. Sadly, these kinds of outrageous decisions are free to stand as long as the Supreme Court refuses to hear key cases rather than establishing strong precedents that would put the issue to rest.
As John Yoo and James C. Phillips write at National Review, “Despite the text of the Second Amendment, supporters of a right to bear arms have rooted their arguments in a murky pre-constitutional right to self-defense. As a result, the Supreme Court has shied away from halting the spread of federal and state schemes for gun control, for which the cries will only rise higher after the recent mass shootings. Unless the new conservative majority on the Court, solidified by Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s arrival, places the right to bear arms on a par with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the coming blue wave of gun-control proposals may swamp what the Framers considered a core constitutional right.”
Justice Clarence Thomas made this clear when he recently wrote, “The Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.”
In order to clarify the intent of the framers, Second Amendment proponents cannot merely fall back onto the amendment itself, but must go back farther to understand its history. We must arm ourselves with centuries of natural law and English common law principles in order to smash the collective-right theory of the 1960s. For now, conservatives are losing the public relations battle that works against the Second Amendment every time there’s a new mass shooting.
And we had better act swiftly. Nancy Pelosi and company aren’t about to sit back when they take the reins from House Republicans in January.
Mark Walters writes that, with Democrats in power, “We will see a renewed push for expanded background checks and a ban on so-called high capacity magazines. And I expect we will see some form of ‘assault weapons’ ban as well as a push for federal Extreme Risk Protection Orders and red flag laws. These red flag laws disarm American citizens by violating their due process rights based simply on an allegation that someone may be a danger to themselves or others.”
All this would be of less concern if the Supreme Court and its new, more conservative majority would simply take up more Second Amendment cases and decisively reestablish the self-evident right of American citizens to defend themselves. Indeed, the High Court may be the last best hope for securing this right against a leftist obsession to take it away.
Write a reply…
Write a comment…
-
Imagine being a fly on the wall at Sun Studios in Memphis today in 1956, and listening to the Million Dollar Jam Session with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins.
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one British album today in 1971 was Led Zeppelin’s ”
“, alternatively known as “Four Symbols” or “IV” … -
“This was extremely heart-wrenching for me. I knew I had to say goodbye to a coach who is also a very good friend. I don’t think people really understand what a good person he is. He treats the janitor in the building the same as the quarterback.”
It’s been almost six years since Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said that, on the day he dismissed Andy Reid, his head coach of 14 seasons. And it was that press conference that I remembered when I saw the Packers’ announcement early Sunday night —a stunner only in that it came now, and not in four weeks—that they were firing Mike McCarthy.
No one I’ve talked to about McCarthy over the last few weeks thinks the guy forgot how to coach. Most people still really like him. And as such, lots of Packer-connected people will be rooting for their now ex-coach wherever he lands next.
It was just time.
The reality? When you’ve got a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, the clock’s always ticking. McCarthy’s not blind to it. In fact, he conceded as much when he and I sat down over the summer, and he looked forward to a season in which the Packers’ franchise, the worthy successor to Brett Favre, would celebrate its 100th season.
“I get where he is,” McCarthy said. “There’s an urgency every single season. It’s clear. From my perspective, from my viewpoint, I do everything in my power to improve the program. Clearly, I understand the value of the quarterback. Clearly, I understand the value of Aaron Rodgers. But this is the ultimate team game. We need to be the best team. If this was all based on how the quarterback plays, we may win ‘em all, just being honest.
“It’s the other 52, that’s the part that we always have to make sure that we’re focused on. Yeah, I hope that when we’re sitting here 10 years from now, we’re looking back and that question isn’t asked.”
Indeed, the question of how the Packers will maximize what’s left of Rodgers’ prime years is still front-and-center in Green Bay, and a reason why McCarthy is being shown the door. It’s certainly not all McCarthy’s doing that they haven’t gotten back to the Super Bowl, eight years after he and Rodgers made their only appearance, and won their only NFL championship. The rest of the roster, as McCarthy mentioned, is part of the problem. Rodgers should shoulder some blame, too.
So as was the case with Reid in ‘12, a great run had gone stale. And when it became clear that things weren’t right—that happened well before Sunday’s embarrassing loss to the Cardinals—someone had to pay the price, and now McCarthy’s gone.
Those who were involved and affected on Sunday can only hope they get the type of mutually beneficial aftermath that the Eagles and Reid wound up having.
Of course, it does start with the quarterback-coach relationship, because that’s where it starts for almost every team. And that Rodgers hasn’t been himself for chunks of this year—he was human on a big stage against Tom Brady a month ago (89.2 passer rating), had a messy night against Minnesota last week (94.0), and was worse in the Cardinals game (79.8)—only accentuated the problem.
The friction between McCarthy and Rodgers has been well-documented. As I understand it, it’d had gotten to the point where Rodgers—who has autonomy to adjust as he sees fit—was regularly changing plays, which would make it difficult for McCarthy to find his rhythm as a play-caller. As one coach who knows them both told me, “It’s almost ‘who’s got the better call?’ … Two really smart guys, ultra-competitive guys.”
Exacerbating all of it was the state of the roster, as McCarthy noted in the summer.
He would go to former GM Ted Thompson asking for specific additions to help Rodgers. And as Thompson’s health became an issue, word was McCarthy became increasingly frustrated, with the feeling that his requests were not being heeded. It eventually got to the point where McCarthy didn’t see the value in asking. So he stopped.
Those who know the situation say that McCarthy was doing a lot to try to help Rodgers from that standpoint that others didn’t know about. So when the roster’s construction fell into decline, McCarthy wasn’t redirecting Rodgers’ annoyance, he was taking it on himself.
It’s not hard to see where the failings were. Not a single member of the team’s 2015 draft class is on the Packers’ 53-man roster now. And where most teams would address the problems left in the wake of that on the veteran market, Thompson remained true to his draft-and-develop model, even though others in the organization saw the needs that were left unaddressed.
Thompson wound up retiring after last year, and the man widely believed to be McCarthy’s preference to take over, young exec Brian Gutekunst, got the job. Under its knew GM, the team even showed a little aggression with vets, bringing in Seattle tight end Jimmy Graham and Jets defensive lineman Muhammad Wilkerson. But by then, other issues were arising.
After the 2016 season, assistant head coach Tom Clements left. A year later, quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt was fired. The two served as buffers between McCarthy and Rodgers when anything went off track, and were effective in the role. Which makes it little wonder that Rodgers grew incensed with the changes.
“Well, my quarterbacks coach didn’t get retained,” Rodgers told ESPN Radio’s Mike Golic and Trey Wingo at Super Bowl LII. “I thought that was an interesting change, really without consulting me. There’s a close connection between quarterback and quarterbacks coach, and that was an interesting decision.”
So when things started off-center this year—Rodgers got hurt in a dramatic comeback win on opening night, and Green Bay only won two of its next seven games thereafter—the foundation of the McCarthy/Rodgers relationship wasn’t as strong as it once had been. Which brought everyone to Sunday, where the Packers failed to rebound from a slog of the previous week’s loss to Minnesota against a 2-9 Arizona team.
Truth be told, it was no secret that this conclusion was on the table. Losing to the Cardinals only gave the Packers the opening to ask, Maybe we shouldn’t wait? So team president Mark Murphy, in tandem with Gutekunst, decided to make the move now, to get a head start on the coaching search, and give McCarthy a chance to start preparing for his next job.
And again, despite the public criticism levied against the coach, those in charge at Lambeau Field don’t think McCarthy suddenly lost the ability to do his job. More so, his way had run its course, and sometimes these things aren’t to be blamed on one person or another.
That’s how it was in Philly in 2012. At that point, few in the public saw Reid as an offensive innovator anymore. Then he went to Kansas City, reimagined his offense, first for Alex Smith, then Patrick Mahomes, and today he’s seen as one of the most forward-thinking coaches in football. Meanwhile, the Eagles lived and learned through the Chip Kelly era, and came out of it with a Lombardi Trophy two years later.
Everyone won, in the end. Now, we’ll get to see if that sort of thing could happen again, under circumstances that are pretty similar.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein has some bad news:
If this is what Aaron Rodgers really wanted, a new offense, a fresh look, a change of direction, a chance to win a Super Bowl another way, well, he’s got it.
About three hours after the Green Bay Packers’ 20-17 defeat to the lowly Arizona Cardinals – who were 14-point underdogs and losers of five of their last six – to fall to 4-7-1, team president Mark Murphy announced that he had fired coach Mike McCarthy.
The move ends McCarthy’s 13-year reign as head coach of the Packers and equally long relationship with Rodgers.
And so the rebuild will begin.
Rodgers never said he wanted McCarthy fired or that he was playing to get him fired, but he never stuck up for him, never spoke about how the two are working together to get things fixed and often played with the body language of someone who was fed up with everything.
His play this season reached a new low Sunday. Playing against the No. 19-rated defense, he threw balls high, he threw them low, he threw them too far and he threw them too short. He continued to play with the attacking mindset of a Trent Dilfer, rarely willing to trust his receivers enough to throw it to them when a defender was near.
“We’re just not on the same page consistently,” Rodgers said after the game. “We’re not executing the right way and it’s the same stuff: poor throws, not on the same page with receivers, wrong depth, protection.”
It’s a damning account of what’s happened to a team with high aspirations, but also a commentary on how Rodgers may no longer be able to do what the very best quarterbacks do, which is make the players around him better.
Maybe Rodgers thinks he’s doing that with all the scrambling out of the pocket and playing an unconventional street-yard game. But he’s not. Rookie receivers like Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Equanimeous St. Brown need to be put in positions to succeed, not in positions that satisfy the quarterback’s desire for perfection.
They shouldn’t be immune from criticism, but why does Rodgers have to do it so publicly on the field? If it’s in the name of good leadership, it’s not really working because the two rookies combined for two catches for 19 yards, both by Valdes Scantling. The longest completion to anyone not named Davante Adams was 11 yards.
The way the game went Sunday, you would have taken the offense that played against Seattle or Minnesota over this one. The Packers put up 17 points against a warm-climate team with all kinds of problems with its run defense and not enough corners to cover Northwestern’s receivers.
Now come the repercussions.
Whether Murphy pulled the plug on McCarthy now or four Mondays from now, changes were going to come all around. This season has shown the roster is not nearly good enough to go on a playoff run and general manager Brian Gutekunst has much work to do in his second season.
Rodgers could be playing with a rookie tight end, rookie right tackle, rookie right guard and three second-year receivers next season. His new coach might require a different type of receiver than the tall wideouts McCarthy favored and so the receiver position may have to be rebuilt.
The right side of the offensive line needs an overhaul and so does the tight end position. Gutekunst might solve some of those problems in free agency, but everybody has seen what a crapshoot that has been with Jimmy Graham, Muhammad Wilkerson and Martellus Bennett.
It could be three years before the Packers find their way to an NFC Championship game. Sure, it only took Philadelphia two years with Doug Pederson to win a Super Bowl and two years for the Los Angeles Rams to be a powerhouse under Sean McVay.
But there are many other examples of it taking three, four, five years before the right mix of players are brought together for a Super Bowl run. And sometimes – see Chip Kelly, Hue Jackson – it doesn’t work out at all.
And who’s to say Gutekunst isn’t going to do to Rodgers what Ted Thompson did to Brett Favre? Maybe next year or the year after that, he drafts a quarterback with loads of potential, someone exactly like Rodgers when he was selected in 2005.
Then there’s the new coach and his offensive system. Suppose the new guy doesn’t want to give Rodgers all the freedom to change plays and tell his receivers to run routes differently than McCarthy did.
Those are all legitimate possibilities.
Rodgers is going to want to hit the ground running with a new coach and a new offense, but success might not come as quickly as he thinks it will.
You can criticize McCarthy all day for not adapting his offense to the talent he had, but the bottom line is he didn’t have enough of it to succeed on offense. When you’re playing with rookie receivers and young running backs and your two veteran tight ends are too slow to beat anyone down the field and your offensive line depth doesn’t cut it, you’re not going to go to many Super Bowls.
The point is, Rodgers might think it’s going to be seashells and balloons once someone new is hired to coach the Packers and it might not be. McCarthy might wind up in another Super Bowl before Rodgers does.
Asked what role he might play in the decision on McCarthy or a potential replacement, Rodgers said, “I’m not even thinking about that right now. I’m just thinking about these next four games and realizing how important leadership is in the tough times and trying to get guys to dig deep and play with that pride.
“I know my role is to play quarterback, to the best of my abilities.”
At the same time, he might want to prepare himself to wait. Instant success with a new coach is rare and given some of the holes on the 53-man roster, it’s unlikely Gutekunst can build it strong enough to win a Super Bowl in two offseasons.
For those who think Rodgers’ career is wasting away, you should be prepared to wait also.
By firing McCarthy the Packers have basically thrown away the 2019 season. That’s a historical fact. The Packers have also potentially lost their defensive staff, most notably new defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, since it is unlikely a new head coach will be OK with inheriting the previous coaching staff.
I support McCarthy’s firing merely because, as with Reid and the Eagles, it was time for McCarthy to go. That doesn’t mean there aren’t repercussions.
As for the next coach, Dan Pompei wrote two years ago about a popular candidate:
On the morning of Dec. 6, 2010, a plane touched down at Akron-Canton Airport. Thom McDaniels turned on his phone as the plane slowed, and it rang immediately. It was his son Josh. The day before, Thom had watched Josh’s Broncos lose to the Chiefs in Kansas City. Now, Josh had some news.
“Dad, the Broncos let me go this morning,” Josh said. “I want you to know I’m fine. Laura is fine. Tell Mom for me, would you?”
Not long after, Thom called his son back. Like most good dads, Thom doesn’t hold back when he thinks his son needed to be told something. And when Thom has something to say about coaching, his words are well received by his son.
-
From the Wisconsin Gannett Empire:
The Green Bay Packers relieved coach Mike McCarthy of his duties after a 20-17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals at Lambeau Field dropped the club to 4-7-1 on the season.
McCarthy is the first coach in the history of the franchise to be fired before the end of a full season.
“The 2018 season has not lived up to the expectations and standards of the Green Bay Packers. As a result, I made the difficult decision to relieve Mike McCarthy of his role as head coach, effective immediately,” Packers president and chief executive officer Mark Murphy said in a statement released by the team.
“Mike has been a terrific head coach and leader of the Packers for 13 seasons, during which time we experienced a great deal of success on and off the field. We want to thank Mike, his wife, Jessica, and the rest of the McCarthy family for all that they have done for the Packers and the Green Bay and Wisconsin communities. We will immediately begin the process of selecting the next head coach of the Green Bay Packers.”
Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin was named the interim head coach.
McCarthy is the first Packers coach to not finish out a season since Gene Ronzani resigned with two games left in the 1953 campaign. McCarthy replaced the last Packers coach to be fired in Mike Sherman in 2006.
McCarthy, 55, signed a one-year contract extension through the 2019 season on Jan. 2 of this year.
A Super Bowl champion in 2010, McCarthy is just one of three head coaches in franchise history to win a championship in the Super Bowl era, along with Vince Lombardi and Mike Holmgren. Since taking over in 2006 the Packers have had just two losing seasons under his direction and reached the postseason nine times — including eight straight seasons from 2009-16.
He concludes his Packers career with a record of 125-77-2, which is the second-best win total in franchise history behind Curly Lambeau (209-104-21). McCarthy has the most postseason games (10) and wins (10) in the playoffs of any Packers coach.
McCarthy is No. 27 all-time in the NFL in coaching victories and is the fourth-winningest active coach in the league behind Bill Belichick (258), Andy Reid (192) and Marvin Lewis (130).
Under McCarthy, the Packers did not just win Super Bowl XLV 31-25 on Feb. 6, 2011, but the team also won six NFC North division titles and advanced to four NFC championship games (2007, 2010, 2014, 2016).
The only surprise here, after the Packers’ pathetic performance in their 20-17 loss to Arizona Sunday, management decided to fire McCarthy now instead of waiting until his inevitable firing after the end of the season.
This puts the Packers into limbo for the rest of the season. One assumes the Packers’ next coach will come from one of this year’s playoff teams, including currently popular Saints quarterback coach Joe Lombardi, grandson of Vince. So the Packers can’t hire, say, Lombardi until, say, the Saints are eliminated from the playoffs, which might not be until Super Bowl LIII.
The Packers probably did a big favor for McCarthy, who is strongly rumored to be heading to Cleveland to work for former Packers executive John Dorsey and with quarterback Baker Mayfield. Given how successful the Packers were with McCarthy, regardless of what you thought of his recent work, that’s fair.
What, or who, got McCarthy fired was really former general manager Ted Thompson, whose last drafts are being exposed as being really bad, especially on defense. GM Mike Sherman got coach Mike Sherman fired for the same reason, though Thompson issued the pink slip.
SI.com last week ranked the likely coaching vacancies:
5. Green Bay Packers: Fun for the right coach, but difficult for someone who may not be used to a quarterback that pushes back and likes to run the show. Having Aaron Rodgers for the remainder of his prime is the best part of this job, but also comes with myriad stresses. Dig into Packer teams over the past decade and you’ll find that it takes a brain surgeon type to match wits with the franchise quarterback.
Does “pushes back and likes to run the show” sound like anyone familiar? If you read this blog Friday afternoon, you might have concluded that Rodgers has become Brett Favre II, complete with rocky relationship with coach and increasingly cranky personality. (Favre reportedly became quite a loner in his final season with the Packers.)
The Packers’ history and Rodgers’ presence suggests that the Packers’ next coach will be an offensive assistant (as in Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Lindy Infante, Mike Holmgren, Mike Sherman and McCarthy), not someone from the defensive side of the ball (Phil Bengtson, Ray Rhodes), most likely not a former head coach (Forrest Gregg, Rhodes), and most certainly not a current college coach (Dan Devine).
McCarthy is the third best Packers coach in the last 60 years, behind Lombardi (duh) and Holmgren. Ironically Lombardi and Holmgren were second choices behind Iowa coach Forrest Evashefski (who never coached in the NFL) and Bill Parcells, respectively,. Fans at this point will start to chime in on their favorites, forgetting that there was only one Lombardi, there is only one Bill Belichick (and his assistants have not done well as head coaches, including Josh McDaniels, another popular name), Holmgren grew an ego that led to his departure from Green Bay, etc.
-
We begin with what is not a music anniversary: Today in 1950, Paul Harvey began his national radio broadcast.
-
The number one album today in 1967 was the Monkees’ “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd.,” the group’s fourth million-selling album:
The number one single today in 1978:
Today in 1984, MTV carried the entire 14 minutes of “Thriller” for the first time:
-
The number one single today in 1958:
The number one British single today in 1966:
The number one single today in 1973:
Today in 1987, a Kentucky teacher lost her U.S. Supreme Court appeal over her firing for showing Pink Floyd’s movie “The Wall” to her class over its language and sexual content.
The school board that fired the teacher apparently figured that they don’t need her education.
<!–more–>
Birthdays begin with one-hit wonder Billy Paul:
Lou Rawls:
Drummer Sandy Nelson (who played drums on the aforementioned 1958 single):
Eric Bloom of Blue Öyster Cult …
… was born the same day John Densmore, the Doors drummer:
-
The Packers turned in another up-and-down, ultimately disappointing performance at Minnesota Sunday night, which only intensifies Mike McCarthy’s already hot seat. The 13th-year head coach has become a receptacle for criticism, much of it adhering to the same theme: that his offensive system is stale.
The first problem is this analysis is a few years too late (more on that in a moment). The second—and much bigger—problem is it gives Aaron Rodgers a pass for the highly inconsistent way he executes this offense.
Please understand, you’re not reading an Aaron Rodgers Hot Take. At least, not according to discussions that occur within the NFL. Around the league, Rodgers is regarded as an incredible but imperfect quarterback. Outside the NFL, Rodgers is basically viewed as a god. It has somehow become heretical to say anything critical of him.
-
Presented without comment from Facebook:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 