The number one single today in 1973:
The number one British single today in 1979 was the last number one British single of the 1970s:
The number one British single today in 1984:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Dec. 15
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James Taranto:
“Top Republicans must reject the ridiculous notion that a national election can be ‘rigged,’ ” the New York Times demanded in an Oct. 18 editorial. That was then, this is now: “[President-elect] Trump should be leading the call for a thorough investigation, since it would be the only way to remove this darkening cloud from his presidency. Failing to resolve the questions about Russia would feed suspicion among millions of Americans that a dominant theme of his candidacy turned out to be true: The election was indeed rigged.”
What occasioned the turnabout was the report Friday, first in the Washington Post and then in the Times, that, as the Post puts it, “the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.”
The claim that Russia was behind the hacking of email accounts belonging to the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, isn’t new. It was well-aired during the campaign. On Oct. 19 a CNN.com report sought to reassure a public “understandably concerned about the integrity of next month’s election”: “Election officials and cyber experts say it’s virtually impossible for Moscow or some other outside group to influence the election outcome.”
Like the Times, CNN seems to have experienced a dramatic change of attitude. Yesterday on “Reliable Sources,” during a discussion of the Russia news, host Brian Stelter posed this question to Politico’s Julia Ioffe: “Julia, we’re talking about a candidate who has lost in a historic way in terms of the popular vote but clearly won in the Electoral College. Is this something of a national emergency? And are journalists afraid to say so because they’re going to sound partisan?” (The Media Research Center’s Brian Baker has video.)
Ioffe answered that “it does feel like we’re on the verge of something potentially awful,” what with the “chaos sower in chief undermining the validity of intelligence reports, undermining the work of the press, of various government institutions, democratic institutions.” She noted that “we’ve been reporting on this all along . . . but A, people aren’t listening and, B, [they] don’t believe us.”
Could there be a good reason for that? When Mrs. Clinton’s victory seemed certain, media organizations were demanding that Americans accept the election’s legitimacy. Now that Trump has won, those same media organizations are actively trying to undermine it. The inconsistency is glaring, but so is the consistency: Many in the media not only sound partisan, as Stelter suggested in framing his (partisan) question; they manifestly are partisan.
As for the Friday reports, they are confusing and inconsistent. The Post is unequivocal in attributing to the CIA the view that the Russians were trying to help the GOP nominee; it quotes an unnamed “senior U.S. official”: “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected. That’s the consensus view.”
But according to the Times, it is “far from clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and many intelligence officials—and former officials in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign—believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote.
The Times also reports that intelligence agencies reached with “high confidence” the conclusion “that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.” But RNC officials “have consistently said that their networks were not compromised, asserting that only the accounts of individual Republicans were attacked.”
It may just be that the Democrats’ emails were juicier. The Times reports that a site called DCLeaks posted “a collection of more than 200 emails of Republican officials and activists,” but they “have drawn little attention because most are routine business emails.” One of the GOP hacking victims, Chicago venture capitalist Peter W. Smith, told the Times: “I try in my communications, quite frankly, not to say anything that would be embarrassing if made public.” Podesta and some of the other Democrats were not as careful.
Another Post report notes that the FBI isn’t “on the same page” with the CIA. In a closed-door Capitol Hill briefing last week, the FBI was “fuzzy” and “ambiguous,” according to one unnamed official in attendance, whereas the CIA was “direct and bald and unqualified” in asserting the Russians were plumping for Trump. Part of the explanation:
The competing messages, according to officials in attendance, . . . reflect cultural differences between the FBI and the CIA. The bureau, true to its law enforcement roots, wants facts and tangible evidence to prove something beyond all reasonable doubt. The CIA is more comfortable drawing inferences from behavior.
“The FBI briefers think in terms of criminal standards—can we prove this in court,” one of the officials said. “The CIA briefers weigh the preponderance of intelligence and then make judgment calls to help policymakers make informed decisions. High confidence for them means ‘we’re pretty damn sure.’ It doesn’t mean they can prove it in court.”
This columnist does not have sufficient intelligence to form a firm opinion as to whether the FBI is too cautious in its conclusions or the CIA is reckless in its. We would observe, however, that broadly speaking, those who side with the CIA approach here are the same people who favor the FBI method when it comes to foreign terrorists—i.e., treating them as criminal suspects entitled to due-process protections, including the benefit of any reasonable doubt.
Two additional points. First, the Post describes the CIA’s report as “secret.” So how is it that everyone knows about it? The answer, obviously, is that officials who were privy to the secrets improperly provided them to the press. (Here we should note that we do not fault the Post or the Times for having published the information they received, and that we would have done the same.)
Second, according to the Times report, even if the Russians were trying to help Trump, they didn’t expect to be successful:
The Russians were as surprised as everyone else at Mr. Trump’s victory, intelligence officials said. Had Mrs. Clinton won, they believe, emails stolen from the Democratic committee and from senior members of her campaign could have been used to undercut her legitimacy.
So American officials made secret information public with the effect—and, one may surmise, the intent—of raising questions about the legitimacy of President-elect Trump. That’s exactly what they accuse the Russians of having planned to do to Mrs. Clinton.
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It figures that after yesterday’s marathon musical compendium, today’s is much shorter.
The number one album today in 1959 was the Kingston Trio’s “Here We Go Again!”
The number one single today in 1968:
Today in 1977, the movie “Saturday Night Fever,” based on a magazine article that turned out to be a hoax, premiered in New York:
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Kyle Peterson notes the Nov. 8 election results:
In the war of ideas, a think tank is like a munitions factory, churning out the matériel to push the trench line a few miles forward. As luck would have it, Republican state lawmakers will be well equipped next year when they begin one of the largest conservative offensives in recent memory. Come January the GOP will hold “trifectas”—total control of both legislative chambers and the governorship—in 25 states, up from 10 in 2009.
If lawmakers have any questions about where to begin, one place with answers is the State Policy Network, a federation of 65 free-market think tanks ranging from Anchorage, Alaska, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. “At the end of the day, people want jobs. They want security. That’s our bread and butter,” says Tracie Sharp, the group’s president. “We feel like for such a time as this, we’ve built up this network. We need to really run. This is a state moment.”
She seems to mean that in two ways. The first is the obvious: What can conservatives get done in capitals nationwide, and how can her think tanks help? Ms. Sharp says that lawmakers, especially in small states, are hungry for economic analysis: “If I raise taxes, what, really, does it do? Does it create jobs or does it drive jobs out?”
That doesn’t necessarily mean producing dusty policy reports. “In the early days, there was a lot of ivory tower, highfalutin, white paper stuff,” Ms. Sharp says. “That is one way I think the network has really evolved in the last 10 years is to be able to communicate and message the ideas to the average American.”
Take Tennessee, where earlier this year the network’s Beacon Center led what its president called an “all-out siege” on the state’s Hall Tax, a 6% levy on investment income. Beacon made a football-themed video ad arguing that the tax hurt seniors and drove jobs to Florida. The think tank then used what’s called “geo-fencing” to serve the ad to cellphones only within a certain set of coordinates—the capitol building.
It did the trick. In May the governor signed legislation that will phase out the Hall Tax by 2022. When the network’s think tanks gathered in October to compare notes—what’s working in one place that could be adapted to another?—the Beacon Center presented an hour-long case study. “This Hall Tax,” Ms. Sharp says, “has got people inspired now.”
The second opportunity is that states could help untangle some of the legislative knots in Washington, D.C. As the new Congress contemplates repealing ObamaCare, perhaps the biggest challenge is how to avoid pulling the rug out from under Americans relying on it. “Whoever’s going to drive this has to give a very clear answer for that,” Ms. Sharp says. “You’re dealing with needy, chronically ill people that no one wants to see tossed out without insurance. They have to be taken care of.”
Here’s the kicker: “I think it can be best done locally, or state and locally.” The gist is that if Congress wants to send Medicaid back to the states through block grants, an idea floated in Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda, Republican governors and legislatures will be ready. Ms. Sharp expresses similar sentiments about Donald Trump’s promised $1 trillion spending on roads, bridges and airports: “There are better ways to build infrastructure: Devolve.”
State think tanks are still relatively new, founded in earnest beginning in the late 1980s. But the network has sprawled since then, from 26 groups in 1991, to 54 in 2008, to 65 today with four more in the works. Combined revenues hit $80 million two years ago, and total staff has nearly doubled in the past six years to 525. “We have groups that are 20, 25, 30 years old, because we’ve built a durable infrastructure,” Ms. Sharp says.
“I think that is perhaps confounding to the left,” she adds. “They have been trying to launch state-based efforts over time. They usually are centrally controlled from a D.C. hub—this is my experience. They tend to have one or two donors. And then the tide changes, the donor changes their mind, and then it just doesn’t take root.”
Anyone wondering whether an advantage in the states truly matters should look at this year’s Electoral College map. In Wisconsin, union membership is down 133,000 since 2010, the year before Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 overhaul passed. Donald Trump’s margin of victory there? Less than 30,000. In Michigan, public-union membership is down 34,000 since 2012, the year before Gov. Rick Snyder’s right-to-work law kicked in. Mr. Trump’s margin? Only 11,000.
Ms. Sharp says she had always felt these two states were only “thinly blue,” and that the GOP has been put on better footing by the unions’ slide. “When you chip away at one of the power sources that also does a lot of get-out-the-vote,” she says, “I think that helps—for sure.”
So what can Republicans realistically accomplish in the next few years? A quick survey of think tankers in states where the GOP gained on Nov. 8 suggests that the mood averages somewhere between bullish and giddy. Visions of tax cuts and tort reforms are dancing in their heads.
• Kentucky: “Republicans now control the Kentucky House of Representatives for the first time since 1921,” says Jim Waters, the president of the Bluegrass Institute. The GOP flipped 17 of the chamber’s 100 seats and defeated the sitting Democratic speaker. With all the levers of power in Republican hands, right-to-work legislation looks like a shoo-in.
Also likely, he thinks, is a law establishing charter schools. Kentucky is one of only a handful of states without charters. “The Republicans need to grab this opportunity,” Mr. Waters says. “Our biggest concern is that the Republican leadership will be too timid.” Somehow that seems unlikely: Gov. Matt Bevin has already suggested calling a special session in 2017 to revamp the tax code—and maybe even eliminate the income tax.
• Missouri: A new Republican governor, Eric Greitens, will replace term-limited Democrat Jay Nixon. “I think that we’re going to see bills that have been vetoed in the past, like right to work, go through quickly,” says Brenda Talent, the CEO of the Show-Me Institute. Last year the Republican House tried to override Gov. Nixon’s right-to-work veto but fell short by 13 votes.
Expanding charter schools, Ms. Talent predicts, will be an “easy lift,” and tackling corporate welfare is a possibility. “To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem,” she says, “you could eliminate the corporate income tax in the state simply by eliminating economic development tax credits.”
• New Hampshire: With the election of the first GOP governor in 12 years, add this to the pile of potential right-to-work states. “The odds certainly are better than they’ve ever been,” says J. Scott Moody, the CEO of the Granite Institute. In 2011 the Democratic governor vetoed a right-to-work bill, and the House could not muster the votes to override.
• Iowa: Republicans retook the Senate, defeated the incumbent Democratic majority leader, and regained full control for the first time since 1998. Don Racheter of the Public Interest Institute says flatter tax rates are likely, as is a goal long-sought by social conservatives: defunding Planned Parenthood. In April the Republican House passed a bill to block Medicaid dollars from flowing to groups that provide abortions, but the language was stripped out by the Democratic Senate two days later. “Now,” says Mr. Racheter, “I think that’ll happen.”
• Pennsylvania: In October the GOP House fell three votes short on a bill to move newly hired public workers away from traditional pensions. As it happens, on Nov. 8 Republicans picked up three additional seats. “Every indication we have,” says Charles Mitchell,president of the Commonwealth Foundation, “is pension reform is coming back and it’s coming back soon.” The legislature may also put on the Democratic governor’s desk a “paycheck protection” bill, which would bar the government from collecting union political funds. “The dynamic has shifted considerably,” Mr. Mitchell says. “A lot of these issues were laughed out of the room, even under the last Republican governor.”
• Minnesota: A gain of six seats in the Senate put the legislature under total GOP control. “We’ve got about a $1.4 billion budget surplus,” says John Hinderaker, president of the Center of the American Experiment. “I think our Republican legislators understand that if they don’t provide some tax relief people are going to say ‘Well, why the hell do we bother voting for Republicans?’ ”
The best targets for repeal, he suggests, are the state’s taxes on commercial property and on Social Security benefits. There’s also MNsure, the ObamaCare exchange. When open enrollment began Nov. 1, Minnesotans saw rate increases up to 67%. “Something is going to be done. Something’s got to be done,” Mr. Hinderaker says. “This is why the Republicans won the election, in large part.”
• Illinois: Democrats kept the House but lost their supermajority, which will give Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s vetoes a bit more bite. It may also strengthen his hand in negotiations to end the 18-month budget stalemate. “You’re starting to get the liberal chattering class in Illinois saying ‘Come on Democrats, why don’t you just agree to one thing that he wants to do,’ ” says Diana Rickert, vice president of communications at the Illinois Policy Institute.
She adds that there is more grumbling than ever—even from fellow Democrats—about Michael Madigan, the powerful House speaker who has held that office, excluding a two-year hiatus, since 1983. “We’re trying to dismantle a political machine that’s been in place for 40 years,” Ms. Rickert says. “It takes time. But we are making a lot of progress.”
None of these victories is assured. “I want to be clear: Sure, a lot of Republicans got elected,” Ms. Sharp says. “That’s no guarantee that they’ll do the right thing. That’s where our work is so important.”
What imperils those efforts is Democratic zeal to force nonprofits like the network’s think tanks to turn over the names of their donors. “We expect no fewer than 20 states in this next cycle to put forth some sort of disclosure bill,” she says. This is pitched as transparency, but Ms. Sharp says few people realize how much harassment conservative groups receive.
In 2011, during a dispute over a subsidy for an NHL hockey team, the president of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona had her home vandalized. “Someone gutted a rabbit and smeared the entrails across her front steps,” Ms. Sharp says. A year later the network’s headquarters in Arlington, Va., were broken into and ransacked.
The political left—or at least the segment of it that wields power—hasn’t been very sympathetic. But if anything can convince liberals of the unwisdom of forced donor disclosure, perhaps it’s President Donald Trump. Consider this recent phone call: “An ACLU chapter in a state,” Ms. Sharp says, “called the state think tank and said, ‘Hey, things have changed—we really want to talk about donor privacy.’ ”
Notice that Wisconsin is not one of the states listed in potential policy innovations. That is a mistake, because this state needs to (1) figure out a way to fix the state’s roads without raising overall taxes, and (2) eliminate the minimum-markup law, which hurts consumers. Also, government is still too large, and government continues to spend too much and tax too much.
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David Blaska formerly wrote for Isthmus before Isthmus decided it didn’t want him anymore.
Blaska then wrote for InBusiness before InBusiness (for which I used to write) decided it didn’t want a couple of his columns anymore.
So Blaska decided to do it himself:
Welcome to Stately Blaska Manor. Over the Thanksgiving week and in the dead of night, likely Trump supporters and other insurgents moved the Stately Manor, its Policy Werkes (and Tanning Salon) and the indentured servants (fast asleep) from InBusiness to higher ground. Easier to defend. Free to be and say what needs to be said. In other words, No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Please tell your friends to bookmark me! Now, on with the show!
Blaska started with …
What happens when a campus organization invites a speaker to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to talk about free speech?
Young totalitarians who disagree with the speech — making the usual claims of victimhood — try to shut it down, of course! It happened November 16 when Young Americans for Freedom invited Ben Shapiro, editor of the DailyWire, to speak on the infantilization of our great universities.
As if to prove his point, 20 Black Lives Matter vigilantes disrupted his talk. At one point, the young brownshirts marched to the stage while police permitted the heckler’s veto. Demonstrators interrupted Shapiro several times, barely allowing him to utter a few sentences at a time, WKOW-TV reports.
“So you get to interrupt lectures if you’re the right gender, or the right sexual orientation. You get to do these things without punishment because after all, that’s in the nature of social justice, group justice,” Shapiro said as he looked towards the protesters.
In the lobby of the Social Studies Building, WIBA-AM’s Vicki McKenna was trying to report the story when several of the protestors seemed to menace her. White man with ring in his lips tells her the disruption “needed to happen” because the mere “presence of this event is violence.” The future of America, right there!
University police pushed the diminutive woman away as the protestors sprayed the MF word at her. (That video here.)
Police made no attempt to protect her right to be present in a university building or the invited speaker’s right to be heard.
“If we have any police officers here, this is now absolutely a disruption,” Shapiro pleaded, to no avail. (Source here.)
But remember, there’s no such thing as reverse discrimination. (There’s no such thing, there’s no such thing, there’s no such thing.)
The Policy Werkes demands — a statement from Chancellor Rebecca Blank affirming the right of free speech at the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus. That includes the right to be heard over the heckler’s veto. The Board of Regents should investigate. Expel students who deprive the rights of free speech — a civil rights issue if ever there was. The State Legislature should convene hearings of top administrators to determine if they have not created a climate of fear and repression on campus by labeling as “hate speech” all political speech. And how about course work on the Constitution of the U.S. be required for graduation for all students — especially sociology majors.
To no one’s surprise, UW–Madison is not the only Madison institution that stifles free speech:
Not to be outdone by UW-Madison, the Sturm und Drang stirred up by the hateful election of Donald Trump has reached the formerly placid shores of bucolic little Lake Wingra here in Madison.
Someone left a hateful Post-it® sticky note on a hallway office window at Edgewood College — surely “an act of cowardly hatred,” as officials there are describing it. And the damn thing is bright fuschia, to boot!
Students at the small liberal arts college were traumatized by the results of November 8 (a date that will live … in INFAMY!). The private Catholic school set up a table in the food commons for students to express their hurt feelings via heartfelt little sticky notes.
“In an act of intimidation and cowardice,” explains Edgewood’s vice president for student development, someone posted a sticky note inside the window of the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion. (Scholars, take note: consider a career in Inclusion.)
“A great deal of fear, sadness, and anger among students, faculty and staff resulted,” relates college veep Tony Chambers. “The message was hateful and harmful toward members of our community.”
The term “micro-agression” does not begin to describe this assault on all that is decent and holy. Edgewood College responded by convening an emergency meeting. At the table: campus security, the dean of students, human resources, Title IX enforcement, and the diversity and inclusion crowd.
(One pictures the White House situation room as the Navy Seals took down Osama bin Laden.)
“The group determined that the message constituted a hate crime.”
The incident of the hateful sticky note has been reported to Madison police (Mike Koval, chief head cracker). No doubt, the sticky note, a particularly offensive shade of pink, will be introduced as States’ Evidence No. #1. Hand writing analysts will be sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Various victims, selected according to race, creed, and gender identification, will commit their personal suffering to the court transcript.
The college is asking anyone with knowledge of the perp contact Campus Security at 608-663-3285. As the proud parent of an Edgewood alumnus, The Squire takes this merde seriously. (I can vouch for Number #1 Son; we were instilling fear and hate on another campus that day.)
Vice president Chambers vows an Old Testament smiting of the pink sticky noter. (Or is it the stinky pink noter?) “Any attempt to discriminate, instill fear in or intimidate our students, faculty or staff will result in serious and stiff consequences!”
Serious is bad enough, but need we go “stiff”?
Did the note bear a swastika? No, it did not. A burning cross? Negativo!
This should be fun reading as Madison college students continue to cowardly burrow into their safe spaces. Wait until these delicate little flowers enter the real world.
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Today in 1961, this was the first country song to sell more than $1 million:
The number one single today in 1962:
The number one single today in 1970 (which sounded like it had been recorded using 1770 technology):
The number one album today in 1975 was “Chicago IX,” which was actually “Chicago’s Greatest Hits”:
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The UW–Madison Daily Communist — I mean, Daily Cardinal — reports:
Republican congressman Sean Duffy is facing criticism for describing Madison as a “communist community” when he attacked the ongoing presidential recount in Wisconsin Wednesday.
In a Fox News interview, Duffy, who represents northwestern Wisconsin, criticized Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s request for a recount of the state’s general election race.
“It’s a sad state of affairs for these Democrats who don’t believe in democracy and freedom and free elections,” Duffy said.
Duffy alleged that election officials in Dane County were stalling in order to miss the Dec. 13 deadline for certifying the vote, even though the county is on track to complete the recount on time.
Duffy’s comments drew a rebuke from numerous Wisconsin politicians.
On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., called for an apology from Duffy. Pocan represents Wisconsin’s second congressional district, including Dane County.
“His insinuation that my constituents are somehow un-American for exercising their political views is extremely alarming,” Pocan said in a release.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin also voiced his disapproval over Duffy’s comments, initially calling him a “moron.”
“I apologize to Congressman Duffy for referring to him as a moron. I should have said he is a liar and a charlatan,” Soglin said Thursday.
Duffy defended himself on Twitter, tweeting “The PC crowd is humorless. For those offended by my ‘communist’ comment, I’ll send a therapy dog to your ‘safe place’ of choice in Madison,” and questioned whether Pocan would “accept the results of the election and denounce the frivolous recount.”
In response, Pocan tweeted “Humorless is better than being senseless about Dane County providing 73% of new jobs in WI. Perhaps a $175K salary distorts your views.”
Interesting comment from Pocan, given that his salary is the same as Duffy’s.
I also fail to understand why Comrade Pocan believes economic growth is a good thing, given that Pocan and his ilk believe the only purpose of making money is to give it to Pocan and his ilk.
I’m not sure why a UW–Stevens Point professor felt the need to chime in, but, Wisconsin Public Radio reports …
U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy’s comments that involved calling the Madison “communist” during a Fox News interview earlier this week are “simply irresponsible,” a UW-Stevens Point political science professor said.
“I mean, Duffy, besides being a member of Congress, is also part of the transition team and so, you just don’t say that,” professor Ed Miller said.
Duffy, who represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, made the comment during an interview about the state’s presidential recount on Tucker Carlson Tonight. …
Duffy went on to say that people working for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are taking as much time as possible to contest ballots and “slow-walking” so that votes can’t get certified.
“If that doesn’t happen, to think of the state of Wisconsin who voted for Trump, the first time for a Republican since 1984, that our 10 electors would be disenfranchised for our state, is a sad state of affairs for these Democrats who don’t believe in Democracy and freedom and free elections,” Duffy also said. “They want to use politics to undermine the will of the voter.”
Miller said Duffy is essentially separating people by calling the Madison-area Communist. Miller added that Duffy’s comment is factually inaccurate, Dane County is not the only county hand counting the ballots.
“There’s a number of counties that are hand counting their ballots in Wisconsin,” Miller said. …
“His insinuation that my constituents are somehow un-American for exercising their political views is extremely alarming,” Pocan said in a statement. “At a time when our country stands divided, Congressman Duffy’s ‘Trumpizing’ of Wisconsin is the wrong direction for our state.”
Pocan also said he hopes the Wisconsin delegation will condemn Duffy’s comments.
Other responses to Duffy’s characterization of Wisconsin’s capitol included its mayor, Paul Soglin, who said, “For years I’ve been listening to morons like Representative Duffy, who are resentful of the fact that Madison is Wisconsin’s economic engine,” according to WSAU-TV.
The mayor released a statement Thursday addressing his earlier comments on Duffy.
“I apologize to Congressman Duffy for referring to him as a moron. I should have said he is a liar and a charlatan,” Soglin said.
And that’s a rich comment from Soglin given his being a buddy of the now-room-temperature Fidel Castro.
The Wisconsin State Journal unsurprisingly felt the need to chime in:
Have you no sense of decency, U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy?
Madison is not a “progressive, liberal, communist community,” as you claimed on Fox Newsthe other night.
We’re a progressive, liberal, capitalist community. And our strong free-market economy is creating more private-sector jobs than any other part of the state.
That’s why Madison Mayor Paul Soglin took such offense this week to your commie dig, though most people understood it to be hyperbole (as was the first sentence in this editorial). …
Wisconsin has long struggled with an urban-rural divide. And that unfortunate rift has grown worse in the wake of last month’s election. Rural voters in Wisconsin and elsewhere played a big role in handing the presidency to a bombastic Donald Trump, which shocked many city dwellers.
But the election is now over, and even the big-talking Republican president-elect has toned down his rhetoric.
Sort of.
We all should be on the same side in Wisconsin when it comes to helping each other succeed across regions of the state. When southern Wisconsin does well, that’s good for northern Wisconsin, and vice versa. The insults don’t help.
I don’t know that the State Journal’s last claim is really the case. Certain parts of this state are emptying out as people move east, to, among other places, Madison. What does Southwest Wisconsin, for instance, get when someone from there moves to Madison?
There’s also this bit of historical revisionism:
Soglin gave Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a symbolic key to Madison four decades ago. But the mayor also has worked in the financial industry and at Epic Systems, one of the state’s fastest growing private companies.
Epic Systems is in Verona, not Madison. Soglin and Madison’s intransigence is why Epic is in Verona, not Madison. And Soglin’s private sector experience comes as an attorney who was hired by people to try to navigate the regulatory morass he created in his previous term as mayor.
Is Madison Communist like Cuba or China? Not economically, though perhaps in its lockstep ideology where non-liberal thoughts are not allowed to be expressed, let alone become law. Clearly Duffy was using a pejorative to describe my hometown and the left-wing jerks who live in it, two of which took Duffy’s bait. (Apparently Soglin doesn’t have enough things to do.) And the over-the-top reaction is certainly revealing, isn’t it? It’s like communism is a bad thing or something.
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George Mason University Prof. David Bernstein:
The presidential election was so close that many factors were “but-for” causes of Donald Trump’s victory. One that’s been mostly overlooked is Trump’s surprising success with religious voters. According to exit polls, Trump received 81 percent of the white evangelical Christian vote, and Hillary Clinton only 16 percent. Trump did significantly better than the overtly religious Mitt Romney and the overtly evangelical George W. Bush. He likely over-performed among other theologically conservative voters, such as traditionalist Catholics, as well. Not bad for a thrice-married adulterer of no discernible faith.
To what can we attribute Trump’s success? The most logical answer is that religious traditionalists felt that their religious liberty was under assault from liberals, and they therefore had to hold their noses and vote for Trump. As Sean Trende of RealClear Politics noted, since 2012:
Democrats and liberals have: booed the inclusion of God in their platform at the 2012 convention (this is disputed, but it is the perception); endorsed a regulation that would allow transgendered students to use the bathroom and locker room corresponding to their identity; attempted to force small businesses to cover drugs they believe induce abortions; attempted to force nuns to provide contraceptive coverage; forced Brendan Eich to step down as chief executive officer of Mozilla due to his opposition to marriage equality; fined a small Christian bakery over $140,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding; vigorously opposed a law in Indiana that would provide protections against similar regulations – despite having overwhelmingly supported similar laws when they protected Native American religious rights – and then scoured the Indiana countryside trying to find a business that would be affected by the law before settling upon a small pizza place in the middle of nowhere and harassing the owners. In 2015, the United States solicitor general suggested that churches might lose their tax exempt status if they refused to perform same-sex marriages. In 2016, the Democratic nominee endorsed repealing the Hyde Amendment, thereby endorsing federal funding for elective abortions.
Megan McArdle of Bloomberg similarly pointed out, “Over the last few years, as controversies have erupted over the rights of cake bakers and pizza places to refuse to cater gay weddings, the rights of nuns to refuse to provide insurance that covers birth control, the rights of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, and the rights of Christian schools to teach (and require students and teachers to practice) traditional Christian morality, some Christians have begun to feel that their communities are under existential threat.”
Let’s focus on one of these incidents, the time the solicitor general of the United States acknowledged that religious institutions that oppose as a matter of internal policy same-sex marriage may lose their tax exemptions. At oral argument in the Obergefell same-sex marriage case, there was the following colloquy:
Justice Samuel Alito: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to taxexempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same sex marriage?
Soliticitor General Verrilli: You know, I , I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.
With the mainstream media busy celebrating the Supreme Court’s ultimate recognition of a right to same-sex marriage, this didn’t get that much attention in mainstream news outlets. But in the course of researching my book, “Lawless,” I noticed that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.’s answer was big news in both the conservative blogosphere and in publications catering to religiously traditionalist audiences. The idea that Regent University or Brigham Young University or the local Catholic university or the many hundreds of other religious schools — and potentially other religious organizations — could be put at a severe competitive disadvantage if they refused on theological grounds to extend the same recognition to same-sex couples as to opposite-sex couples struck many as a direct and serious assault on religious liberty.
In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.
UPDATE: As co-blogger Todd Zywicki wrote to me on Facebook, “When you find yourself in the Supreme Court adverse to the Little Sisters of the Poor you might consider whether maybe you have pushed a little too far.”
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Imagine having tickets to this concert at the National Guard Armory in Amory, Miss., today in 1955: Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley:
Today in 1957, while Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13-year-old second cousin (while he was still married — three taboos in one!), Al Priddy, a DJ on KEX in Portland, was fired for playing Presley’s version of “White Christmas,” on the ground that “it’s not in the spirit we associate with Christmas.”
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The number one album today in 1961 was Elvis Presley’s “Blue Hawaii” …
… while the number one single was a request:
Today in 1968, filming began for the Rolling Stones movie “Rock and Roll Circus,” featuring, in addition to the group, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, The Who, Eric Clapton and Jethro Tull, plus clowns and acrobats.
The film was released in 1996. (That is not a typo.)
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 