Today in 1967, DJM Publishing in London signed two young songwriting talents, Reginald Dwight and Bernie Taupin. You know Dwight better as Elton John.
Today in 1967, DJM Publishing in London signed two young songwriting talents, Reginald Dwight and Bernie Taupin. You know Dwight better as Elton John.
Today in 1814, Adolph Sax was born in Belgium. Sax would fashion from brass and a clarinet reed the saxophone, a major part of early rock and jazz.
We are already winning.
Think about it. No new virus was unleashed to justify new lockdowns and make election cheating easier. China did not invade Taiwan last night. Israel did not attack Iran (or vice-versa). Teams of border-jumping terrorists did not create martial law conditions by attacking in concert yesterday. There was no third assassination attempt (excluding character assassination).
In terms of extreme scenarios, things have been perfectly normal. We are far ahead of where many feared we would be on this propitious morning, damp with historicity and possibility. We should be thankful for that.
I used the word “normal,” of course, cautiously and in a relative sense.
Election Day shares the same acronym with Erectile Dysfunction, an awkward condition that one half of the country will be experiencing this time tomorrow. Early signs suggest it will be the party whose men, according to scientific studies, widely suffer from low testosterone. (Which, in turn, may be related to all that mail-order estrogen they’re taking. But I digress.)
This election cycle has shattered records and made every previous election look like a boring nature docuseries on a streaming channel you never heard of, like “North Ireland Network.” We’ve watched a presidential candidate raided by the FBI, sued, criminally charged, arrested, mugshotted, prosecuted, and convicted. Never happened before.
We’ve watched a presidential candidate shot on live coverage and get up and shake it off. Never happened before. We’ve seen massive Secret Service cockups and diminutive agents unable to reholster their weapons. That was new. We’ve seen Democrats and media unite in calling the Republican candidate “literally Hitler.”
Oh wait, that one happens every time. Sorry. Erase.
Maybe more astonishing, after the catastrophic and depressing 2020 loss, we’ve seen President Trump miraculously rebuild a level of excitement and enthusiasm trumping the last cycle’s record conservative groundswell and completely extinguishing the Never Trump movement.
Things look good. The official story remains that the polls are “neck and neck.” It’s too close to call. I don’t believe it. I’ll give you four good reasons why you should ignore the polls even more so than normal.
First, because the irresponsible media somehow lost all the technology to conduct exit polling. They think they left their exit polling equipment at their friend’s house after a Minecraft party; we’re not sure yet. Media has also developed amnesia about ever having used exit polling before. They never even mention it. Maybe their memory loss occurred after a sudden blow to the head, or possibly a bad mushroom trip.
Second, foreigners don’t seem to be anywhere near as confused about the presidential odds as are the always-lying U.S. media. An Eastern Indian political commentator who regularly writes for FirstPost ran a column yesterday headlined, “Too close to call? No, expect a clear winner in US elections.”
It’s a solid recap article if you’re looking for one this morning. Read the whole thing. In short, I agree with all the author’s reasoning, especially this paragraph:
It’s a tossup which U.S. institution has become least trusted: the media or the expert class. It’s kind of like deciding which couple you’d prefer to babysit your toddler in an emergency: a recently released drug dealer who just did a 2-year stint for aggravated assault along with his girlfriend who runs a successful OnlyFans franchise, or Nancy and Paul Pelosi? See what I mean?
The third factor is PolyMarket. PolyMarket is a worldwide sports betting site with over three billion dollars of private money now invested in the outcome of the U.S. presidential race. By contrast, a media survey, where respondents have no reason to tell pollsters the truth, might include up to 1,200 people sampled. But the PolyMarket presidential market is vastly larger. It includes hundreds of thousands of folks all having personal stakes in the outcome.
With over three billion invested, it would be nearly impossible to manipulate the PolyMarket.
Polymarket reports Trump’s chances at +62%, well above Kamala’s 38%, making a solid +24% advantage for Trump …
Fourth and finally, we have more reliable numbers from Florida, which are admittedly early, from a (newly) solid red state, but are nevertheless very encouraging.
I’m quoting from Florida Politics’ often engaging but decidedly leftwing Sunburn column, this morning’s edition. First, note that the Trump campaign’s internal numbers aren’t merely reassuring, but like the FirstPost columnist, the campaign suspects it might not even be close. It still could be a landslide:
Not only that, but even the “official polls” are frightening corporate media analysts. It may be too big to rig:
Even worse for Democrats, turnout among their two most important constituencies —women and urban voters— is down across all seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In four of those states, the rural vote has surged past 2020 numbers without looking back.
So there are four solid reasons to think it won’t be a drawn-out, weekslong nail-biter like last time. And those are just the best four factors. There are plenty of other hopeful signs around the margins. I’ll give you a couple examples.
Florida’s voting figures also offer some encouragement. For comparison, back in 2020, Florida went for Trump +3%. This time, all signs suggest that Florida will double or triple that lead. (And we’ll have our votes counted before midnight, so.)
Yesterday’s GOP internal memo claimed an R+20 advantage in early vote totals, with over a million more Republicans casting a ballot in-person than Democrats. Dems held a +200K advantage in mail-in ballots but Republicans are still up +900K overall.
So far, early voting has increased +11% over 2020’s healthy levels. And worst of all for Florida Democrats, 800,000 Republican likely voters have yet to cast their ballots versus only 600,000 likely blue voters.
If that enthusiasm gap holds nationwide, it could be a landslide for Trump.
Happy 84/76 Day!
Today is the day we get to choose between a future path to Orwell’s 1984 world or the 1776 world of the Founding Fathers.
Will we choose wisely? I hope so, but many think a vote for Harris and Tampon Timmy is a vote for something they have been told is called “democracy.”
H.L. Mencken said:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
This nation is not a pure democracy, America is a representative, constitutional Republic and it is so for a reason.
The contemporary idea that liberty and democracy exist in equal measures, as democracy increases, so does liberty and vice versa, simply does not hold water because democracy is mob rule, rule by popular opinion, something even our Constitution couldn’t prevent. By and large, the powers we have allowed our post millennium, twenty-first century “democratic” government are those the Americans colonists of 1776 escaped through revolt.
In his 2019 book, Liberty in Peril, Randall Holcombe, American economist, and the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University, challenged that perception, writing:
“The principle of liberty suggests that first and foremost, the government’s role is to protect the rights of individuals. The principle of democracy suggests that collective decisions are made according to the will of the majority…The greater the allowable scope of democracy in government, the greater the threat to liberty…In particular, the ascendency of the concept of democracy threatens the survival of the free market economy, which is an extension of the Founders’ views on liberty.”
Holcombe argues this is reflected in the changing nature of elections.
“At one time, elections might have been viewed as a method of selecting competent people to undertake a job with constitutionally specified limits. With the extension of democracy, elections became referendums on public policy.”
We know that men are created equal, but all policies are not. Some policies reduce the influence of government in our lives, others increase it. The candidate seeking to reduce government influence fits the definition of the competent person fighting to “protect the rights of individuals” and understands “the biggest threat to individual liberty” is the government.
This is America’s perpetual challenge. In Federalist 51, James Madison explained the problem succinctly:
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
The concept of America that Kamala Harris has been told she has is the same as the view of the old Soviet Union – the government should control everything, that not only will the populace be taught 2+2=5, but they will also be forced to believe that it is.
Remember that the USSR had “democratic” elections (spoiler alert, the choices of the Communist Party always won by 95% or better) and a constitution (which never stopped the government from doing what it wanted). She claims to know how to marry the contradictory goals of equity and unity, which can only be joined by force, for to pursue equity means government will choose winners and losers, and you can bet your sweet bippy that the feelings of entitlement of the winners will grow and the losers aren’t going to be happy about that.
It is my hope on this 84/76 day that Spirit of 1776 wins.
If you haven’t already, get out and vote.
Today in 1956, Nat King Cole became the first black man to host a TV show, on NBC:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Elvis Presley performed at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn. To get the fans to leave after repeated encore requests, announcer Al Dvorin announced, “Elvis has left the building.”
Today in 1963, John Lennon showed his ability to generate publicity at the Beatles’ performance at the Royal Variety Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were in attendance, so perhaps they were the target of Lennon’s comment, “In the cheaper seats you clap your hands. The rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.”
Lennon would demonstrate his PR skills a couple of years later when he proclaimed the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1972:
Today in 1990, Melissa Ethridge and her “life partner” Julie Cypher appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine for its cover story on gay parenting.

I bring this up only to point out that Etheridge and Cypher no longer are life partners, Cypher (the ex-wife of actor Lou Diamond Phillips) is now married to another man, and Etheridge became engaged to another woman, but they split before their planned California wedding. And, by the way, Cypher had two children from the “contribution” of David Crosby, and Etheridge’s second woman had children from another man. And, by the way, Newsweek is no longer a weekly magazine.
The number one single today in 1956:
Britain’s number one single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1962:
Today in 1964, a fan at a Rolling Stones concert fell out of the balcony of Public Hall in Cleveland. That prompted Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locker to ban pop music concerts in the city, saying, “Such groups do not add to the community’s culture or entertainment.” Kind of ironic that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ended up in Cleveland.
Wisconsinites know that the first radio station was what now is WHA in Madison. Today in 1920, the nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air.
The number one British single today in 1956 is the only number one song cowritten by a vice president, Charles Dawes:
The number one song today in 1974:
The number one British album today in 1985 was Simple Minds’ “Once Upon a Time” …
Today begins with a non-music anniversary: Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was created, later to become the National Weather Service.
Tomorrow in 1870, the first complaints were made about the Weather Bureau’s being wrong about its forecast.
Today in 1946, two New York radio stations changed call letters. WABC, owned by CBS, became (natch) WCBS, paving the way for WJZ, owned by ABC, to become (natch) WABC seven years later. WEAF changed its call letters to WNBC.
Today in 1963, Ed Sullivan was at Heathrow Airport in London just as the Beatles deplaned to a crowd of screaming fans and a mob of journalists and photographers.
Intrigued, Sullivan decided to investigate getting the Beatles onto his show.
Today in 1964, Ray Charles was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and charged with heroin. Charles was sentenced to one year probation after he kicked the horse.