Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number one song today in 1960:
The number two single today in 1970 was originally written for a bank commercial:
Britain’s number one album today in 1970 was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”:
I went into this weekend thinking that, as was the case throughout too much of the ’70s and ’80s, the Badgers and Packers could go 0 for the weekend.
To quote Howard Cosell while narrating NFL highlights during ABC’s Monday Night Football, “But no!”
The weekend began with Saturday night’s 38–17 steamrolling of Nebraska. (Well before Nebraska joined the Big Ten, UW Band members would sing, for reasons unknown, “When It’s Hog-Calling Time in Nebraska.”)
The Lincoln Journal Star’s Steven M. Sipple harkens back to the days of the Big Eight Conference’s Nebraska–Oklahoma rivalry:
You surely remember that thing folks used to call “Sooner Magic.”
It used to ruin Nebraska football seasons.
Well, how about that “Wiscy magic?”
Wisconsin pulled off quite a trick Saturday night before 89,860 spectators at Memorial Stadium.
With a 38-17 triumph, the UW program continues to pull away from Nebraska’s. The Badgers are 6-1 against the Huskers since 2011, the year NU started playing in the Big Ten.
Paul Chryst’s crew eked out wins against Nebraska each of the previous two seasons. But it brought the hammer in this game, showing in a forceful manner why folks regard Wisconsin (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) as the clear-cut favorite in the West Division.
Nebraska (3-3, 2-1) looks destined to go a fifth straight season without a division championship, and 18th without a conference title.
Yes, Wisconsin’s program continues to pull away from Nebraska’s.
So, what’s the trick here?
The Badgers pull away while simultaneously pounding away like a battering ram. At least that was the case on this night. Yeah, wonderful timing. Just wonderful. Nebraska honored its 1997 national championship team in a rousing pregame ceremony. That would be the Husker team that averaged 392.7 rushing yards to lead the nation. That would be the team that would dare you to stop the run because it knew you couldn’t do it.
That was Wisconsin on this gorgeous Saturday night.
The ninth-ranked Badgers rushed for 353 yards, their most in a road game since 2012.
Wisconsin simply did what Wisconsin does. It patiently imposed its will with its ground attack and hit an occasional big play through the air. Nebraska hung tough through most of three quarters, but soon the effects of UW’s body blows began to show.
In the fourth quarter, the Badgers rushed 22 times for 125 yards — and never attempted a pass.
The whole stadium knew a run play was coming, and it didn’t much matter.
The Nebraska run defense that held down Northern Illinois, Rutgers and Illinois was overmatched.
Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, a former Husker linebacker, had to be sitting back with a wide grin. This is his blueprint. It’s recruit big and ornery linemen from Wisconsin or regions nearby and go to work. You can imagine the rugged nature of the Badgers’ practices. Facing a downhill running game every day will make a defense leather-tough.
Wisconsin’s ground attack is persistent and powerful, said Nebraska coach Mike Riley, whose record at NU dropped to 18-14.
He had his team ready for the game. Give him that. At times, Nebraska looked ready to win, particularly when junior safety Aaron Williams’ pick-six tied it at 17 with 10:43 remaining in the third quarter. The stadium was up for grabs. What a scene.
“(The Badgers’) response to that was pretty interesting,” Riley said. “And it was very physical.”
Wisconsin responded like a championship program — except for one thing. The Badgers were sloppy most of the night. On the kickoff following Williams’ touchdown, UW was flagged for two penalties, and thus began the possession at its 7-yard line.
No problem. Wisconsin bulldozed a 10-play, 93-yard touchdown drive, using eight runs, including six by true freshman Jonathan Taylor. On the night, the 5-foot-11, 215-pounder carried 25 times for a season-high 249 yards and two touchdowns.
Forgive Nebraska fans if they were a tad envious.
And forgive them if they’re frustrated with the direction of Riley’s program.
He realizes what he’s going to hear in the days ahead. It will go something like this: Look at Wisconsin, winning big the way Nebraska used to win big.
Come to think of it, there’s nothing magic about a big offensive line pulverizing you. …
Nebraska always talks about recruiting. Nebraska wins the offseason with a formidable hype machine, with media playing a leading role.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin just keeps winning the West.
Consider this: Bret Bielema left Wisconsin for Arkansas, replaced by Gary Andersen, who left after two seasons for Oregon State to replace Mike Riley, who left for Nebraska. The results:
Meanwhile, the Badgers are undefeated and ranked seventh.
The following afternoon, the Packers inexplicably missed two extra points and thus trailed Dallas 21–12 at the half.
The Dallas Morning News’ Jon Machota skips ahead to the finish:
You’ve already seen it, but Aaron Rodgers did it again. He ripped the Cowboys’ hearts out in the final seconds Sunday afternoon at AT&T Stadium.
Here are my thoughts on the Cowboys blowing another halftime lead, this time falling to the Packers 35-31:
1. Well, that was exactly what the Cowboys didn’t need heading into the bye week, another blown impressive start. These are the types of games the Cowboys were winning at this time last year. The defense had some success getting pressure on Rodgers early, but then he just toyed with them in the second half. …
2. The third quarter was another disaster for the Cowboys. After going into halftime with a 21-12 lead, Dallas was held scoreless in the third quarter for the fourth time in five games. Not sure what’s going on at halftime, but the Cowboys continue to need at least 15 minutes to get things going again. Maybe just keep the guys on the sideline at halftime. Mix it up. The Cowboys only had the ball one time in the third quarter. Dak Prescott completed a short third-down pass to Dez Bryant, but that drive quickly stalled. Green Bay dominated the time of possession [11:20 to 3:32] and scored early in the fourth quarter to take its first lead, 22-21.
Machota’s colleague Kate Hairopoulos adds:
Dak Prescott faked the handoff to running back Ezekiel Elliott, found himself with a clear path to the end zone, and took it. The Cowboys quarterback charged 11 yards for the touchdown and celebrated with a scream and a spike of the ball.
But the elation in AT&T Stadium belied the unease on the Dallas sideline.
1:13 remained.
For Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, that’s an eternity.
And it was ultimately too much time, as Green Bay marched down the field, down three, and scored the winning touchdown. The Packers even had 11 seconds to spare when they went up 35-31.
“The minute that we got it, I immediately went to ‘Oh hell, he’s got a minute, 10 seconds,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of Prescott’s touchdown and the ball going back to Rodgers. “On the other hand, – Dak Prescott faked the handoff to running back Ezekiel Elliott, found himself with a clear path to the end zone, and took it. The Cowboys quarterback charged 11 yards for the touchdown and celebrated with a scream and a spike of the ball.
But the elation in AT&T Stadium belied the unease on the Dallas sideline.
1:13 remained.
For Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, that’s an eternity.
And it was ultimately too much time, as Green Bay marched down the field, down three, and scored the winning touchdown. The Packers even had 11 seconds to spare when they went up 35-31.
“The minute that we got it, I immediately went to ‘Oh hell, he’s got a minute, 10 seconds,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of Prescott’s touchdown and the ball going back to Rodgers. “On the other hand, before [Prescott] got it, I thought, ‘Just go ahead and get this score. OK!
“…You can second guess every little aspect of it, and certainly we’d have liked to give him the ball back with 10 seconds on the clock, no timeouts. But the only way to have really gotten that done is to know for sure we were going to get that touchdown. That’s the height of revisiting.”
And it’s impossible not to do, considering Rodgers is making a habit of crushing Cowboys’ souls when given any opening.
The Cowboys and offensive coordinator Scott Linehan milked the clock on the scoring drive, well aware of what Rodgers is capable of. He needed only 35 seconds left to lead the Packers to the winning field goal in January’s playoff game on this field last season.The Cowboys ticked through 17 plays to go 79 yards, taking up 8:43, culminating in Prescott’s touchdown run.
But Linehan and head coach Jason Garrett will be fairly criticized for not consuming more clock.
Elliott and the offensive line had, finally, started to roll on the ground, yet:
On 1st and 10 from the Green Bay 29, Prescott threw a pass intended for running back Alfred Morris, but it was incomplete, stopping the clock.
Later, after a dramatic fourth-and-1 conversion by Elliott, Elliott ran for eight yards on first down to set up a second and 2 from the Packers 11. Prescott passed incomplete, unable to connect with receiver Dez Bryant in the back of the end zone, stopping the clock again.
Prescott scored on the next play. Should he have considered sliding at the 1 to take up more time?
“In theory, he could do that yes,” Garrett said. “I just think you have to be careful about trying to be perfect. It’s hard to score points in this league. It’s hard to score touchdowns. It’s a four-point game at that time. There’s no guarantee you’re going to score a touchdown there, so I think, in that particular case, he did the right thing.”
Said Prescott: “You’re playing with fire doing that. Those guys get paid on defense too. If you’re running down and you’re trying to get to third down, you’re wasting the time. It’s a slippery slope. For us, it’s important to get in the end zone and put the pressure on them. I’m going to trust my defense.”
But Jones did allow that the discussion it’s impossible not to have is whether the Cowboys should’ve bet on their strength — their offense — instead of ultimately put the game back in the hands of the defense that couldn’t stop Rodgers and Co. most of the day.
Jones said he believed Rodgers could lead the Packers to a field goal to tie the score, but thought the defense would keep them from a winning touchdown.
“We are all going to second guess on what happened at the end of the game and keeping the ball away from them a little bit more,” Jones said. “Everything speaks for itself here. You give Rodgers a minute, and you’re more than likely going to get a score in a critical moment.
“…All we wanted to do was keep the ball away from [Rodgers] but we needed to score a touchdown. We’ll be second guessing those last two calls for a long time.”
The News’ Samantha Pell describes the last play:
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was going to call another play.
Instead of the game-winning back-shoulder touchdown throw to receiver Davante Adams with 16 seconds left in the game, he was going to look another way.
If he did, the outcome of the game — a 35-31 Packers win over the Cowboys — could have been a lot different. But Adams, who had had the ball knocked away on the exact same call on the previous play, wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I came back and let him know,” said Adams, who scored two touchdowns Sunday afternoon after getting knocked out of the Packers’ game last week against Chicago. “I said, ‘Do it again. Let’s go back to it.’ He gave me a look. I said, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
And as Rodgers tossed a “perfect ball” into the outstretched arms of Adams in the end zone, the Cowboys faithful saw flashbacks to the team’s 34-31 playoff loss to Green Bay in January — when Packers kicker Mason Crosby nailed a 51-yard field goal as time expired.
“We’ve been through that before,” Adams said. “We’ve been through that before in this building. When you’ve got ’12’ (Rodgers) back there, it allowed you to be a little more calm.”
Trailing 31-28 with 1:13 to play, Rodgers needed a field goal to tie, not win the game as he did last season. But regardless, Rodgers said afterward he was thinking of a touchdown the entire time.
“We had time,” a nonchalant Rodgers said of driving his offense 75 yards down the field in just over a minute.
Cowboys rookie cornerback Jourdan Lewis, who was defending Adams on the game-winning touchdown catch, praised Rodgers’ play.
“He’s a great quarterback, has great weapons around,” Lewis said. “We have to stop him. I didn’t.”
In Rodgers’ execution of the offense downfield in the waning minute, he also had a crucial third-down scramble — in classic Rodgers fashion.
Facing third and 8 on the Dallas 30-yard line with 29 seconds to go, Rodgers said he had a good play called for the situation, but bad leverage on the backside forced him to scramble.
He found daylight on the left side of the field, running for 18 yards before stepping out of bounds at the 12-yard line. The next play was the incomplete pass to Adams in the end zone. The one after? The game-winner.
“Once I was able to get loose, it was about getting the first down and getting out of bounds,” Rodgers said. “My eyes got kind of big there for a second, as I tried to get back inside, but going out of bounds was a smart play, and it gave us a chance to get a shot in the end zone.”
Of course, postgame social media was almost as entertaining as the game:
Shannon Sharpe tweeted:
Can someone check on @RealSkipBayless for me? Want to make sure he’s ok
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D–Georgia) made an inane statement about the Second Amendment last week.
(I’ll pause while you recover from the shock.)
Lewis apparently needs to review his own history. Damon Root does that:
“I’m alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms,” declared John R. Salter Jr., the civil rights leader who helped to organize the famous sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi. “Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine,” Salter recalled. “The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay.”
Salter knew perfectly well many state and local officials were either indifferent to his well-being or were themselves affiliated with the domestic terror groups that wanted to harm him. By exercising his Second Amendment rights, Salter was able to safeguard his life and liberty in face of government malfeasance and criminality.
The same thing can be said of Mississippi civil rights activist T.RM. Howard. In 1955, Howard correctly recognized that state officials had zero interest in conducting a thorough investigation into the lynching and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. So Howard, a successful doctor and entrepreneur, launched his own private investigation. He located, interviewed, and kept safe a number of important witnesses, stashing them in his own house.
One of those witnesses was Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley. Her testimony was crucial because it contradicted that of Tallahatchie County Sheriff Henry Clarence Strider, who insisted that the body pulled from the river was not that of Till, but was instead that of someone else “as white as I am.” The sheriff, a well-known racist, was lying in the hopes of bolstering the defense’s claim that outside “agitators” had faked the crime in order to stir up trouble.
Before Bradley and the other witnesses could participate in the trial, they had to get there unscathed. That’s where the Second Amendment came in. To use a modern expression, Howard was a “gun nut.” He slept with a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed and walked around with a pistol at his waist. To keep Bradley and the others safe from hostile racist attacks—including attacks by those who wore government uniforms and wielded government power—Howard led an armed caravan to and from the courthouse.
The examples of John Salter and T.R.M. Howard are not unusual. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a conceal-carry permit (denied by the government) and declared, “the principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.” According to civil rights hero Fannie Lou Hammer, “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom.” Rosa Parks once described her dinner table “covered with guns” while activists met in her home to plot strategy.
And, of course, the idea of the Second Amendment guarding personal liberty against racist government encroachment goes back even further than the era of Jim Crow. As the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass liked to say, “the true remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill” is a “good revolver.”
James Freeman provides this humor to start your week:
Leftist Jonathan Chait reports in New York magazine that he’s under rhetorical attack from other leftists. It seems that Mr. Chait has made some of his ideological comrades angry by admitting that the evidence does not exist to call President Trump a white supremacist.
Mr. Chait is being lampooned as some kind of squishy moderate. This has sparked a larger debate about how radical the Democratic Party should be and whether it has already moved well to the left of Barack Obama. Unlike Mr. Chait, many readers of this column probably don’t consider the nation’s 44th President to be a man of the “center-left.” But as Democratic Party leaders continue to lurch toward Bernie Sanders’ brand of Marxism, they are clearly making Mr. Obama appear more moderate.
The question is whether Democratic voters as well as independents who tend to vote Democratic are all coming along for the ride leftward. According to Mr. Chait:
Political activists and writers can get the impression that the Democratic Party is riven by conflict between leftists and liberals. But social media is deeply unrepresentative. On Twitter, which is swarming with communists and Nazis, every day feels like the 1932 German federal elections. The massively elevated concentration of political extremists of all varieties creates a deeply misleading portrait of the public. (This is why libertarians have managed to portray themselves as a significant proportion of the electorate, when practically speaking, they don’t exist.)
The actual Democratic Party is not divided between liberals and leftists. It’s divided between liberals and … moderates and conservatives.
Mr. Chait then marshals a variety of polling data to show that most of the party’s voters don’t consider themselves leftist or even liberal. For example, he notes Pew Research data showing that in 2016, a full 36% of Democratic voters described themselves as moderate, and another 15% called themselves conservative.
Of course such survey results can be misleading because political or philosophical labels mean different things to different people. For example, observing so many potential candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination endorsing Mr. Sanders’ single-payer health plan, Mr. Obama might also be calling himself a moderate.
But it is striking, given that Mr. Sanders won 22 states and nearly 1900 delegates in the 2016 Democratic primary campaign, that even among Democratic voters almost nobody will cop to being “far left” and just 16% call themselves “very liberal.”
So why did so many voters in 2016 want to “feel the Bern”? Here’s Mr. Chait’s theory:
The best explanation for Sanders’s ability to garner a large minority of the vote is that he benefited from a news environment that portrayed Hillary Clinton as scandal-plagued. Sanders capitalized on a long-standing progressive good-government sentiment, which has attached itself over many decades to otherwise disparate figures, like Adlai Stevenson, Gene McCarthy, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Brown, Howard Dean, and of course, Barack Obama.
It’s sweet of Mr. Chait to say that Mrs. Clinton was merely portrayed as scandal-plagued. But this column thinks he has helped to answer the big question. What happened to the Democratic Party in 2016 was that many primary voters were so unwilling to trust Mrs. Clinton and so eager for a vehicle to express their feelings that they may not have ever gotten around to the question of whether they actually wanted to live under a Sandernista regime. Yet Democrats are acting as if Mr. Sanders received a policy mandate in 2016 even while losing in the semifinals.
According to Mr. Chait:
The hard left views Obama as a neoliberal sellout. (Sanders himself has had more restrained criticisms of Obama, whom he has depicted as largely a disappointment, and now mostly avoids discussing him.) But Obama’s popularity makes him an inconvenient figure for left-wing triumphalism to reckon with. It is common to read Sandernistas describing the Democratic electorate as if Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were the only two choices available. They may discover, in 2020 and beyond, that the 44th president and his public philosophy remain very much alive.
This column thinks that the Obama era absolutely counts as a left-wing triumph, but also that Mr. Chait is on to something here. When Democrats try to understand what happened after the 2020 elections, they may conclude that they overestimated the political appeal of socialism.
My favorite Ray Charles song was number one today in 1961:
Today in 1969, the BBC’s “Top of the Pops” refused for the first time to play that week’s number one song because of what singers Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin were supposedly doing while recording “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus”:
According to a classmate of mine, Madison radio stations play Britain’s number one single today in 1971 too often:
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The number one single today in 1976, which makes wonder if, to paraphrase Chuck Berry, Beethoven would have been rolling over at this:
Birthdays begin with John Lennon:
John Entwistle of the Who:
Jackson Browne:
Terry Balsamo played guitar for Limp Bizkit and Evanescence:
The number one song today in 1955:
The number one British song (which is not from Britain) today in 1964:
Today in 1971, John Lennon released his “Imagine” album:
Today in 1975, one of the stranger episodes in rock music history ended when John Lennon got permanent resident status, his “green card.” The federal government, at the direction of Richard Nixon, tried to deport Lennon because of his 1968 British arrest for possession of marijuana.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that trying to deport Lennon on the basis of an arrest was “contrary to U.S. ideas of due process and was invalid as a means of banishing the former Beatle from America.”
The number one British single today in 1978 came from that day’s number one album:
The number one album today in 1989 was Tears for Fears’ “Seeds of Love”:
Rob Myers wrote this two years ago, but it still unfortunately applies, starting with his prediction:
You’re not going to like it because it’s going to require you to do something personally, as opposed to shouting for the government, or anyone to “do something!”
You ready? Here it is:
“Notice those around you who seem isolated, and engage them.”
If every one of us did this we’d have a culture that was deeply committed to ensuring no one was left lonely. And make no mistake, as I’ve written before loneliness is what causes these shooters to lash out. People with solid connections to other people don’t indiscriminately fire guns at strangers.
I know what you’re thinking. That’s never going to work because no one is going to make the effort to connect with the strange kid sitting by himself at lunch each day. No one is going to reach out to the gawky, awkward guy at work and ask him about his weekend.
You’re probably right and that’s an absolute shame.
Because I can tell you the things that aren’t going to work in this country when it comes to stopping these heinous acts. But they seem to be all anyone says, when inevitably, another person comes forward to inflict their tortured pain on innocent people.View Post
- Ban All Guns! – Due to the reading of the 2nd amendment and the precedents established by recent Supreme Court cases, this isn’t going anywhere. You’d need an amendment to the Constitution and there will NEVER be 30+ states willing to overturn it. Never mind the multitude of good reasons for its existence, no amount of outrage will overturn it so let’s just stop.
- Ban All Guns! (pt. 2) – Assuming you actually could overturn the 2nd and outlaw every firearm in the country, then you’d have to go out and get them. Famously, there are more guns than people in the U.S. You couldn’t come close to collecting them all. Further, if Prohibition and the War on Drugs have taught us anything it’s that those intent on breaking the law are going to do just that. Laws be damned.
- Ban Scary Guns Like the AR-15! – Fully auto weapons are already banned*. Most of these shootings occur with a handgun, plain and simple, and these aren’t going anywhere. Murder is illegal, and that doesn’t seem to stop these individuals from performing these atrocious acts. Do you think if there was a ban on shotguns that would stop them?
- Keep Them Out of the Hands of Bad People! – Felons are prohibited from owing a firearm already. But let’s not forget, the overwhelming majority of these mass shootings aren’t done by criminals and their guns were obtained legally. How can you know who is going to do something like this? You can’t.
- Do Something About Mental Health! – Cool. Yeah. So, like, free psychologists visits for everyone? Even if you could, the people that have done this haven’t been mentally ill, by and large. And, let’s not forget that medical records are private. Would you endorse mandatory psych screening for everyone and those records being sent to the government? Maybe just those who wish to own a gun? Remember, not every person who has engaged in a mass shooting has owned the gun they performed the act with. This is a complete non-starter of an issue with an insane price tag that does nothing to actually keep a person committed to violence from putting their hands on a gun.
- Do… SOMETHING! – Gotcha. What do you want to do? “SOMETHING!” Ok, what do you have in mind? “I DON’T KNOW! BUT SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING!” Sure. Agreed. But what? Even Obama has had to say in his latest speech how routine it’s become.
If you can’t tell by this point in the list, there is NOTHING the government or any other organization can do to prevent these events.
You can’t effectively keep drugs out of the hands of those intent on doing drugs. You can’t keep beer out of the hands of high schoolers intent on getting beer. You have a HUGE supply of weapons everywhere and concrete federal law protecting those weapons. You’d have as much luck passing regulation against tornadoes. It would be equally as effective.
So there it is. The god’s honest truth. No entity can do anything meaningful (more than is presently being done) to thwart a disaffected person hell-bent on committing such an act.
But you can.
You can talk to your co-worker for a few minutes. You can talk to the kid in your Physics class that appears to be all alone. You can teach your children to do the same, to make sure no one is left to feel totally isolated. Because that’s the breeding ground. That’s where the seeds are planted.
Community is easy to take for granted. Most of us have strong family connections and healthy friendships. Most feel as though they’re part of a group, be it community, religious, or work related. But it’s increasingly easy for people on the edges to withdraw and it’s easy for us to forget them.
No, it’s comfortable to forget them. It’s preferred to forget them. It’s highly desired to forget them. And we have to change that.
Holding a sign isn’t going to do anything. And writing your congressman will do even less. But you can do something today, this week, this month. The people you engage may not become life-long friends, and they don’t need to be, but it could be enough to keep someone away from the darkness and isolation needed to eventually think lashing out is an effective strategy for dealing with their pain.
If you’re conflicted at all about the subject, I can’t encourage you enough to read this post by Sam Harris on the subject immediately following Newtown, CT, that I’ve written about before.
According to one of those Facebook apps, these are the words I use the most on Facebook:
I can’t even begin to put together a sentence from that.
The dead weren’t even finished dying in Las Vegas before the left swooped down to feed on gun control politics.
So rather than allow even one day to reflect and mourn, rather than allow us to consider the heroism of the survivors and first responders in that Las Vegas nightmare, politics saw an opportunity and took it immediately.
But the murderous retired accountant Stephen Paddock, 64, the lone gunman, wasn’t all that impulsive.
Paddock took days to plan. He was meticulous, arranging a 23-gun arsenal — some guns fully and illegally automatic — in his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
He worked out his fields of fire, even set up cameras to alert him to police. He stocked up on thousands of rounds, and authorities said he also had components used to make bombs in his home and his car.
And then, when he was ready, he unleashed hell, shooting down on thousands of innocents at that Sunday night country music concert across the way.
At least 59 are dead now, more than 500 injured.
As of this writing — days after his killing spree —authorities could not offer a motive. This is especially odd, because in such cases motives are usually released within hours; the shooter was a madman, or he had political associations and resentments forming the latticework of motive.
But not with this one, not with Paddock.
Yet even when the preliminary count of the dead was still in the 20s, as loved ones desperately tried to find the missing, listening to the terrible sound of cellphones ringing with no answer, the politicians made their moves.
Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, pundits by the deplorable basketful and others seized the moment to press for advantage.
This includes you, Mark Pocan, scumbag.
The universal and hateful hot take came from Hayley Geftman-Gold, CBS vice president and legal counsel, on Facebook.
At least she was honest in her tribalism, upfront about it, using “Repugs” for Republicans and blaming them for not supporting blanket gun-control legislation.
What’s not legitimate was her lack of sympathy for the dead.
“I’m actually not even sympathetic bc [because] country music fans often are Republican gun toters,” Geftman-Gold wrote. Later, she was fired.
And in the morning following the massacre, even as victims lay dying in hospitals, Clinton was busy virtue-signaling on Twitter.
“The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots,” tweeted Hillary Clinton, still seeking relevancy. “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRAwants to make it easier to get.”
She must have been thinking of a Jason Bourne movie, of silencers whispering death, a sound just a bit louder than the munching of popcorn.
But Hollywood isn’t reality. Jason Bourne movies are not proper foundation for policy.
There is Republican-backed legislation to make suppressors for long guns easier to obtain — still requiring governmental approval and fees.
A suppressor doesn’t make a gun silent like the weapon of a Hollywood assassin. The Washington Post reported a suppressor would reduce the sound of an AR-15 round to that of “a gunshot or jackhammer.” There’s nothing silent about a jackhammer.
Should we have more debate? Certainly. Let’s have it. There are more guns and more gun crimes in America than any other place in the world.
But let’s not forget that most killings aren’t committed by some lone sniper without apparent motive. The killings happen on the streets of big cities like Chicago, a city of strict gun control, where street gangs continue their slaughter and City Hall is powerless to stop them.
And America is numb to what happens in Chicago.
There are guns in the suburbs and in rural areas, and yet the suburbs aren’t killing fields. So if we’re going to have another gun debate, can’t we at least discuss culture, too?
And, can’t we wonder about what pathology drives so many mass shootings in the past few years?
Blaming the NRA is good politics for the left. It helps with fundraising, stokes outrage and helps herd voters into tribal camps. But is it possible that it’s incomplete, like blaming airplanes for the 9-11 terrorist attacks?
There may be something in our culture that is wrong and sick and festering. And recent mass shootings may be a symptom of larger cultural illness.
We know that we’re become increasingly nihilistic, and isolated from one another on our electronic devices. We know we’re divided into politically warring tribes, as the political center crumbles, as the Washington establishment holds desperately to power.
We know that attendance continues to drop at traditional centers of worship. And even so, the political/cultural elites who frame our gun and other debates often mock the remaining faithful as “religious fanatics.”
As America abandons religion for entertainment, we consume unprecedented amounts of pharmaceuticals, from opioids to mood altering drugs, to mask our emotional and mental pain.
Aren’t you curious as to how this impacts culture?
Even so, when the shooting began in the Mandalay Bay massacre, as the country music crowd stampeded in fear, as people died, Americans selflessly helped each other, comforted each other, risking and giving their own lives to save each other.
If only we’d been allowed a day or two to mourn, to reflect on the goodness even in the midst of the horror, before the politics swooped in.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 