The number one album today in 1973 …
… was the number one selling rock box set until 1986, and remains the best selling four-album set of all time.
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 29
-
-
On Monday, reports The Hill …
Fox News contributor George Will says GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will not release his tax returns because they may show “he is deeply involved in dealing with Russia oligarchs.”
The claim — which Will could not support with any tangible proof — was made to Bret Baier on Fox News’s “Special Report” live from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night. The topic was raised after some Democratic Party officials, including presumptive Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton‘s campaign manager, Robby Mook, attempted to connect the Republican presidential nominee to a leak of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails.
The Friday release by WikiLeaks of those emails, which appear to show an effort by DNC officials to lead a campaign against Clinton’s primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who will step down after the convention.
“Both the campaign chair and anybody you talk to, including Sen. [Chris] Murphy [D-Conn.] would not go down that road once pressed on the connection between Russia and the Trump campaign,” said Baier. “But they have thrown it out there. George?”
“Well, it’s the sort of thing we might learn if we saw the candidate’s tax returns,” Will responded. “Perhaps one more reason why we’re not seeing his tax returns — because he is deeply involved in dealing with Russian oligarchs and others. Whether that’s good, bad or indifferent, it’s probably the reasonable surmise.”
Will was not making an out-of-the-ether statement. Josh Marshall says:
-
Just like last week, I will be on WBEL radio, which calls itself The Big 1380, on Big Mornings with Ted Ehlen Friday at 6:45 a.m. Just like last week, thanks to the Internet, you can listen, if you dare, online here. Just like last week, WBEL is near Domenico’s, delivering excellent Italian food since 1973.
-
My lack of faith in voters getting the Nov. 8 election correct (which would mean voting for neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump) makes me doubt Ben Shapiro‘s first sentence, but the rest is correct:
Hillary Clinton is in serious trouble.
She’s not in trouble because of the massive competence of Donald Trump. She’s in trouble because she is terrible at the game her husband invented: the game of “who cares more about people like you.” In March 1992, Bill Clinton met a member of an AIDS-activism group at an event at a nightclub in New York City. Attacked by the activist for not doing enough for AIDS victims, Clinton famously responded, “I feel your pain, I feel your pain.” Clinton’s false empathy led him from victory to victory; he defeated the out-of-touch George H. W. Bush and crushed the oddly self-referential Bob Dole.
But Bill Clinton’s wife is one of the least empathy-driven candidates in the history of politics. She’s manipulating, cynical, and nasty. She’s instinctively defensive, brutally cutting, and utterly cold.
The polls show it.
This week’s CNN poll demonstrated that 68 percent of Americans consider Hillary dishonest, and 54 percent think she’s running for personal gain. Fifty-five percent view Hillary unfavorably overall; but only 52 percent view Trump unfavorably. Just 47 percent think he’s running for personal gain.
A majority of Americans think Trump is running to help America. They think Hillary is running to help Hillary.
That’s Hillary’s fault.
But more important, it’s Barack Obama’s fault, and the Left’s fault.
Barack Obama has been a highly unsuccessful president by any objective measure. His foreign policy has led to the single most explosive rise in terrorism since the empowerment of al-Qaeda in the late 1990s by Hillary’s husband. His last two years have been plagued by a national increase in violent crime, particularly murder in major cities. The economy has continued to stall under his redistributionist, anti-capitalist watch.
And the Democrats have paid the price. The media that built Obama into a godhead for racial progress couldn’t abandon Obama; instead, they kept happy-talking their way through an increasingly dystopian America. So did Obama’s fellow Democrats. The result: massive Republican gains at the state and local level, and historic elections in 2010 and 2014 in Congressional races.
The media still can’t escape the Obama trap. When Donald Trump rightly pointed out a series of problems facing America at home and abroad, ranging from rising crime and economic malaise to the rise of jihadism, the media and the Obama administration responded by pooh-poohing Trump’s critique. No, they said, Trump’s wrong: Everything’s hunky-dory. He’s just being too “dark.”
Except he isn’t. And Americans know that.
Hillary knows it too, but she’s stuck in a bind.
Obama trapped her. Early in her campaign, Hillary seemed to want to break with Barack Obama’s presidency. She recognized that while Obama was personally popular, his tenure had largely been seen as a failure by a dissatisfied American republic. She therefore pursued twin goals: tying herself to Obama’s “first black president” legacy and big-government growth, and avoiding the consequences of his rotten decision-making.
By first delaying a decision from Vice President Joe Biden about whether Biden would run, the Obama White House forced Hillary into full-scale obeisance to the Obama era. That’s been disastrous for Hillary. Her convention week has completely ignored the serious problems that keep most Americans up at night. There have been five jihadist attacks in Europe in the last eleven months. On the first day of the convention, 61 speakers mentioned ISIS precisely zero times. That same day, ISIS beheaded an 86-year-old priest in Normandy, France. Over the past few weeks, Americans have mourned over a wave of anti-cop massacres. So Hillary is now trotting out the “Mothers of the Movement” — Black Lives Matter activists including the mother of attempted cop-killer Michael Brown — to promulgate myths about police racism.
Hillary doesn’t take Americans’ concerns seriously. She doesn’t feel their pain.
She feels her own pain.
Hillary’s pathetic self-indulgence leads her to moan about her plight even as the media fête her. On Sunday, Hillary complained about her victimhood at the hands of the brutal vast right-wing conspiracy: “I often feel like there’s the Hillary standard, and then there’s the standard for everybody else.” Scott Pelley of CBS News, who was purportedly interviewing her, then followed up by asking, “Why do you put yourself through it?”
Hillary’s answer: “ ’Cause I really believe in this country.”
Nobody believes that for a heartbeat. Not when she’s dismissing the problems of Americans in order to pander to Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood or remind Americans of the importance of transgender bathrooms.
Now, Hillary believes that she can succeed by labeling Trump arrogant and self-centered. But Americans already know he’s arrogant and self-centered. They think he’s out to help blue-collar Americans, that he’s ready to protect them from the vicissitudes of the global economy and the evils of crime. Americans have no idea why Hillary Clinton is running.
This they do know: She doesn’t share their priorities.
But she’s trapped now. Barack Obama is her greatest asset, but he’s also her greatest liability. When Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention to the plaudits of the media, she painted a rosy picture of America. Hillary’s going to have to do the same in order to defend the Obama program. But that program means nothing without Obama at the head of it, as former majority leader Harry Reid and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi have found out.
In the end, that could be Obama’s final revenge on Hillary: not helping to deny her the nomination, but forcing her to go down fighting for his priorities, even as the American people increasingly come to believe she doesn’t care about theirs.
-
We begin with our National Anthem, which officially became our National Anthem today in 1931:
-
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty contributes to the Wall Street Journal:
Five years ago this summer, Wisconsin’s budget-repair law, better known as Act 10, went into effect. The legislation, which significantly curtailed collective-bargaining rights for public employees, was a signature part of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to close the state’s $3.6 billion budget deficit. It sparked chaos in Madison: Tens of thousands of protesters occupied the capital. Fourteen Democratic state senators fled across state lines in an effort to stop the bill from passing. When it became law anyway, opposition culminated in a failed effort to recall Gov. Walker in 2012.
Looking at the law’s results half a decade later, it is safe to say that it was worth the trouble. Wisconsin’s example ought to embolden reformers everywhere: It’s possible to reform spending on public employees without damaging the quality of services.
Act 10 has saved taxpayers $5 billion since June 2011, according to the John K. MacIver Institute, a free-market think tank in Madison. Local school districts, government agencies and municipalities have acquired more affordable health-care plans, allowing them to put money into classrooms and critical services. Even Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Gov. Walker’s opponent in the 2012 recall election, used Act 10 to save his city nearly $20 million.
Because the law’s financial benefits have always been indisputable, Democratic lawmakers and teachers unions instead claim that Act 10 has led to increased class sizes and teacher shortages. A 2011 attack ad from a union-funded group claimed, without evidence, that the law was “so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom.” This earned a “false” rating from an independent fact-checker, but similar arguments too often go unchallenged. The top Democrat in the state senate, Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, claimed only days ago that the “sun is setting on public education.”
A new study from our organization, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, disputes that conventional wisdom. The Institute’s Will Flanders, along with Marty Lueken of the Friedman Foundation, conducted a comprehensive survey of Act 10’s effect on teachers’ age, experience, salary and benefits, as well as classroom size. Using data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the U.S. Education Department, the authors found that dire claims about Act 10 are greatly exaggerated.
For instance, the report shows that the number of students per teacher in Wisconsin has kept pace with surrounding states. Between 2009 and 2013, the ratio in Wisconsin increased by only 0.4 students per teacher, compared with 0.6 in Michigan and Iowa. The average age of Wisconsin teachers dropped 1.7 years between 2011 and 2014, and their average experience declined by three-quarters of one year. Hardly a radical undermining of the Badger State’s public schools.
The average teacher’s base salary did decline by $2,095, or 3.8%, between 2009 and 2014. But Wisconsin teachers’ pay remains above the U.S. average. Besides, thanks to Act 10 school districts have plenty of tools beyond base salary to attract, retain and reward good teachers: signing and retention bonuses, performance-based stipends, and tuition reimbursement for master’s degrees or advanced certifications. When this other compensation is included, Act 10 had no discernible effect on pay when compared to surrounding states.
Opponents of Act 10 have been quick to assert that the law led to a decline in the number of teachers in the state. But Wisconsin was already losing teachers before it was implemented. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of fully licensed teachers in the state shrank by 2.2%. Since 2012 the figure has dropped only 0.1%. Over the years the decline in teachers has roughly tracked the decline in student enrollment caused by an aging population with fewer children.
Public unions will continue to use anecdotes to suggest that Act 10 represented a death knell for Wisconsin schools. But the evidence tells another story. The law’s critics, who blame it for every negative trend in Wisconsin education over the past five years, will have to explain why many of the same changes occurred in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa—neighboring states without similar laws.
The results validate Gov. Scott Walker, his allies in the legislature and the millions of conservatives who rallied to support their cause. Wisconsin’s story should encourage other governors who face increasing budget pressure to reform ballooning pensions and benefits for public employees. Many may have looked to the backlash in Wisconsin and decided the fight wasn’t worth it. But as time passes, it becomes more clear than ever that it was.
-
Joel Pollak read the leaked emails between the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and found out …
After being told for weeks by very concerned liberals and media pundits that Donald J. Trump represents the second coming of Adolf Hitler, it is richly ironic to learn that Hillary Clinton’s Democratic National Committee (DNC) planned to target Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for his faith.
(And it is Hilary Clinton’s DNC: Rep. Debbie Waserman-Schultz (D-FL) resigned on Sunday after Wikileaks revealed emails showing that the DNC and the media conspired to stop Sanders’s insurgent candidacy.)
In one email, Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall allegedly said: “It might may (sic) no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Note that at least part of the senior leadership of the Democratic Party presumed a) that the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia are religious bigots; b) that Southern Baptist voters in those states are bigots, perhaps even more so; c) that these groups might have some problem with voting for a Jew; and d) but they would be even more troubled by voting for an atheist.
Forget Donald Trump and his retweets. This is as close to an honest-to-goodness “dog whistle” as you are going to get. The DNC actually contemplated appealing to the presumed prejudices of their own bitter-clinger voters by planting questions in a public forum.
Valley News Live reported …
On a day when the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee announced she plans to resign over a disturbing email leak, a new email has surfaced appearing to call outreach to hispanics “taco bowl engagement.” It’s unclear if the email chain or “script” referred to in the email was meant as a response to a picture that Donald Trump had tweeted on Cinco De Mayo that depicted him eating a taco salad and proclaiming his appreciation for latinos. Progressives and conservatives called for more firings on Sunday evening because of the email.
… and then got an immediate DNC response:
A representative with the DNC says the comment that some have perceived to be racist in nature was simply referring to a video. DNC staffer Eric Walker emailed VNL on Tuesday morning saying “The phrase “taco bowl engagement” was referring to a video we put out in response to Trump’s taco bowl tweet. Here’s the video we produced: https://www.facebook.com/democrats/videos/10153916682971943/.” We have linked to the email in question on the right side of this page. There you can also find a link to the full Wikileaks email archive from the DNC. Walker said the staffer who was named in the original email release from Wikileaks has been the subject of “incredibly unfair vitriol.”
The DNC demanded in their email to VNL that our original story be changed or taken down as they claimed “it reads as a grotesque misrepresentation of our staffers comments.” Walker also wanted to know how the story was going to be changed.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the DNC immediately jumped on Trump’s taco bowl tweet (which was, you’ll recall, his holding a taco bowl and proclaiming his love of Latinos on Cinco de Mayo) and then denied the DNC’s own racism by attacking the messenger instead of apologizing for its own message.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, because the Democratic Party has always been full of bigots. The party that ended slavery was not the Democratic Party. The party that enacted Jim Crow laws after the Civil War was the Democratic Party. The dirty little secret about the Progressive Era was the racism of such Democratic heroes as Woodrow Wilson, who, as reported by The Atlantic, “as president … oversaw unprecedented segregation in federal offices.” Franklin D. Roosevelt locked up Japanese-Americans during World War II despite no evidence that Japanese-Americans were threats to the nation. And of course there is U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), former Ku Klux Klan leader.
In this state, Democrats except for late Rep. Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee) almost universally opposed school choice because teacher unions were more important to Democrats than education of minority children. Democrats refer to the Tea Party by a term that is offensive to conservatives and homosexuals. This week’s Democratic National Convention demonstrates that Democrats now take the side of criminals and against police. And recall Obama’s line about “clinging to their guns and religion”?
-
Today in 1958, a study by Esso (formerly one of the bazillion Standard Oil companies, now ExxonMobil) reported that drivers drove faster and therefore waste more gas when listening to rock music.
If a driver wastes (however you define that) gas, the oil companies sell more gasoline. It’s unclear to me why the oil companies would consider that to be a bad thing, particularly in the 1950s when cars got all of 12 or so mpg.
Today in 1968, Sly and the Family Stone failed to appear at a free concert in Chicago.
A riot ensued.
Today in 1977, John Lennon did not get instant karma, but he did get a green card to become a permanent resident, five years after the federal government (that is, Richard Nixon) sought to deport him. So can you imagine who played mind games on whom?
-
Ron Fournier watched day one of the Democratic National Convention so you didn’t have to, and chronicles 30 things, four of which were last week, and 10 of which are between later this week and November:
- Hillary Clinton, her advisers, and their allies at the Democratic National Committee watched Donald Trump’s nominating convention in Cleveland with smug satisfaction.
- Team Trump had insulted Ohio’s governor, approved a Melania Trump speech that plagiarized Michelle Obama, lied about the plagiarism, and allowed Ted Cruz to expose party divisions in a prime-time speech.
- “Hey @Reince,” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz tweeted GOP chairman Reince Priebus. “I’m in Cleveland if you need another chair to keep your convention in order.”
- Schultz reflected the Democratic establishment’s false sense of security. Headed to their convention in Philadelphia, Democrats felt more united than Republicans, better organized, and less vulnerable to the long-term disruption of a populist insurgency.
- All hell broke loose.
- WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails stolen from DNC computers, proof of the worst-kept secret in Democratic politics: The party worked against socialist-populist Bernie Sanders to ease Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination. The FBI said it would investigate whether Russia hacked the DNC to influence the U.S. election.
- All hell broke loose.
- “Lock her up!” chanted Democratic activists in the streets of Philadelphia. These Sanders supporters carried signs and wore T-shirts that called for Clinton’s indictment, channeling those GOP delegates in Cleveland who drew rebukes for defying old rules of political decorum.
- Schultz cut a deal with the Clinton team to resign, effective upon the conclusion of the convention. She planned to open and close the gathering with remarks lauding her leadership.
- All hell broke loose.
- Addressing delegates from her home state of Florida, Shultz chastised an unruly crowd carrying signs reading “Division!” and “EMAILS.” She said, “We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive, we know that is not the Florida we know.”
- “Shame! Shame! Shame!” crowd members chanted. Schultz scurried out of the room.
- Sanders himself tried to prevent a show of disunity on the convention floor,pleading with his supporters to back Clinton. Having promised his followers “a revolution,” he now fed them bitter pragmatism. “Brothers and sisters,” Sanders said, “this is the real world that we live in.”
- All hell broke loose.
- While the streets filled with a sweaty mass of angry Sanders supporters—mostly young and white and disconnected from the political system—the Clinton team told Shultz she couldn’t address the convention.
- Sanders sent his supporters a text message, urging them not to protest on the convention floor.
- All hell broke loose.
- As the convention came to order, hundreds of Democrats protested outside. “No, no, DNC—we won’t vote for Hillary!”
- Inside, Cynthia Hale mentioned Clinton’s name during the opening prayer. Some delegates booed, others chanted for Sanders.
- There would be more protests.
- Eventually, Clinton likely will regain control of her convention. Like in Cleveland, the desire to defeat a hated enemy will overcome internal differences. The blues will line up against the reds, Wall Street will support both teams, Clinton will win in November, and the status quo will declare victory over change. Populist unrest will broaden and intensify.
- Or Trump will win. He won’t keep his promises, because he never does. He won’t make America any greater than it already is. He might make it worse. The status quo will declare victory over change. Populist unrest will broaden and intensify.
- Whether it’s Clinton or Trump, historians will note how a billionaire celebrity took over the GOP with an anti-trade, anti-immigration nativism, setting fire to the political playbook that guided campaigns for the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.
- Today will be long remembered, too. Sanders couldn’t calm the churning of his supporters and, as in a mutiny aboard a pirate ship, the deckhands have seized control from the captain.
- This could be the start of something big inside the Democratic Party. What if, for instance, Sanders’s coalition banded together with Black Lives Matters to create Tea Party-like takeover of the Democratic Party?
- The American public has lost trust in virtually every social institution—schools, churches, businesses, charities, police, courts, and the media—because those entities have been slow to adapt to sweeping economic, demographic, and technological changes.
- People have witnessed disruption in the retail, entertainment, and financial industries—in virtually every institution except for government and politics. In an era of choice and technological efficiency, the American voter is given a binary choice and gridlocked government.
- Most Americans want something better than what the Democratic-Republican duopoly crams down their throats.
- They’re mad as hell and, as evidenced in Cleveland and Philadelphia, they’re just starting to realize how powerful they are. They don’t need to take it anymore.
- All hell is going to break loose.
-
Charles Koch is concerned about where business in this country is going, with good reason given one regulation-happy presidential candidate and one anti-free-trade presidential candidate:
I was born in the midst of the Great Depression, when no one could imagine the revolutionary technological advances that we now take for granted. Innovations in countless fields have transformed society and radically improved individual well-being, especially for the least fortunate. Every American’s life is now immeasurably better than it was 80 years ago.
What made these dramatic improvements possible was America’s uniquely free and open society, which has brought the country to the cusp of another explosion of life-changing innovation. But there are dangerous signs that the U.S. is turning its back on the principles that foster such advances, particularly in education, business and government. Which path will the country take?
When I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, I quickly came to appreciate that scientific and technological progress requires the free and open exchange of ideas. The same holds true for moral and social progress. I have spent more than a half-century trying to apply this lesson in business and my personal life.
It was once widely accepted that progress depends on people challenging and testing each other’s hypotheses. This leads to the creation of knowledge that, when shared, inspires others and spurs the innovation that moves society forward and improves lives. It is a spontaneous process that is deeply collaborative and dependent on the contributions of others. Recall Sir Isaac Newton’s statement that he achieved so much by “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Scientific progress in seemingly disparate fields creates opportunities for fusion, which is where the greatest innovations often occur. The British writer Matt Ridley has brilliantly described this process as “ideas having sex.” Today, this creation-from-coupling is evident in, for example, the development of driverless cars, which combine advances in transportation and artificial intelligence. When seen through this prism, the opportunities for life-altering innovation are limitless.
Despite our enormous potential for further progress, a clear majority of Americans see a darker future. Some 56% believe their children’s lives will be worse off than their own, according to a January CNN poll. A Rasmussen poll released the following month found that 46% believe America’s best days are behind it. Little more than a third believe better days lie ahead.
I empathize with this fear. The U.S. is already far down the path to becoming a less open and free society, and the current cultural and political atmosphere threatens to make the situation worse: Growing attacks on free speech and free association, hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, fear that global trade impoverishes rather than enriches, demands that innovators in cutting-edge industries first seek government permission.
This trajectory takes the U.S. further away from the brighter future that is otherwise within reach. Resisting calls to exclude, divide or restrict—and promoting a free and open society—ought to be the great moral cause of these times. The most urgent tasks involve the key institutions of education, business and government.
Education in America, and particularly higher education, has become increasingly hostile to the free exchange of ideas. On many campuses, a climate of intellectual conformity has replaced open debate and inquiry, stifling discussion on a host of topics ranging from history to science to economics. Dissenters are demonized, ostracized or otherwise treated with scorn and derision. This disrupts the process of discovery and challenge that is at the root of human progress. Holland embraced this philosophy—best expressed by the phrase “Listen even to the other side”—in the 17th century, contributing to it becoming the most prosperous country in the world at the time.
Similarly, in business the proliferation of corporate welfare wastes resources and closes off opportunity for newcomers. It takes many forms—direct subsidies, anticompetitive regulations, mandates, tax credits and carve-outs—all of which tip the scales in favor of established businesses and industries. The losers are invariably the new, disruptive and innovative entrepreneurs who drive progress, along with everyone who stands to benefit from their work. Just ask the citizens of Austin, Texas, who recently lost access to Uber after a campaign backed by its competitors in the taxi industry.
Government, which often has strong incentives to stifle the revolutionary advances that could transform lives, may be the most dangerous. The state often claims to keep its citizens safe, when it is actually inhibiting increased individual well-being. See, for example, the FDA’s astronomically expensive and time-consuming drug-approval process, which University of Chicago professor Sam Peltzman argues has caused “more sickness and death than it prevented.” These kinds of harmful barriers to life-enhancing advances exist at every level of government.
Unleashing innovation, no matter what form it takes, is the essential component of truly helping people improve their lives. The material and social transformations in my own days have been nothing short of astonishing, with a marked improvement in well-being for all Americans. If the country can unite around a vision for a tolerant, free and open society, it can achieve even greater advances, and a brighter future for everyone, in the years ahead.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 