Today in 1982, Paul McCartney released “Take It Away”:
Birthdays today start with the great Lalo Schifrin:
Ray Davies of the Kinks:
Chris Britton of the Troggs:
Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer:
Kip Winger of, well, Winger:
First, Jonah Goldberg:
In a normal country during normal times, the jihadi terrorist shooting in Orlando in which 49 people were murdered in cold blood — and more than 50 injured — would be a cause for a serious debate about national security. Instead, it has been taken as an opportunity to light a bonfire of the inanities.
Let’s start at the top. President Obama once famously said (more than once, actually), “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.”
Fast-forward to this [past] week, when in a tantrum of biblical proportions, the furious president said . . . words don’t matter. Responding to complaints from Donald Trump and others that he won’t say the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” Obama huffed, “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.”
Never mind that Obama’s passion refuted his own argument. Perhaps he’s right that “there is no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam,’” but if that’s the case, why the years of stubborn refusal to say it? It’s almost like Obama still thinks “words matter” — he just wants to mock anyone who thinks the “wrong” words matter.
But let’s discuss this “political distraction” business. Before the blood had been mopped up in Orlando, the president and the woman seeking to replace him immediately tried to make the second-worst Islamic terror attack on American soil into anything other than Islamic terrorism.
Over and over again, news outlets uncritically reported on the “common-sense” effort to implement more stringent background checks and get rid of automatic weapons, AR-15s, and other “assault” weapons. Well, automatic weapons — i.e., machine guns — are already essentially banned for civilians. And the weapon used in Orlando wasn’t an assault weapon or an AR-15. As for background checks, they already exist. Moreover, the FBI conducted two extensive investigations into the shooter — a background check far more exhaustive than any proposed checks.
The terror-watch-list ban on gun purchases that Democrats now desire is a constitutional horror show if you believe, as the ACLU does, that the federal government shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally draw up secret lists to deny people their civil rights.
Of course, Democrats insist they’re just being pragmatic, which is why Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) thinks the constitutional requirement for due process is “killing us.” What he didn’t mention is that the Democrats’ proposal is opposed by the head of the FBI because it would make tracking terrorists more difficult. Apparently, “common sense” requires trampling the Constitution to make the FBI’s job harder.
“A ban on Muslims would not have stopped this attack. Neither would a wall. I don’t know how one builds a wall to keep the Internet out,” Hillary Clinton said to guffaws from the crowd at a campaign event in Virginia. “Not one of Donald Trump’s reckless ideas would have saved a single life in Orlando.”
OK, but her proposals wouldn’t have saved any lives either. Moreover, this is the woman who insisted her illegal private e-mail server was secure because it was guarded by armed Secret Service agents. Ironically, their guns do save lives, but they’re no more effective than a wall at combating the Internet.
Still, for all its stupidity, the gun conversation looks like a debate at the Algonquin Round Table compared with the effort to make the Orlando shooting all about homophobia and gay marriage.
“While the precise motivation for the rampage remains unclear,” the New York Times editorialized, “it is evident that Mr. Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians.”
“Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum,” added the Gray Lady (I’m referring to the Times, not Clinton). “They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians who see prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish.”
The killer was a registered Democrat. The source of his hatred was not the Christian Coalition but radical Islamism. He stated this motivation clearly during the shooting and for months prior. He reportedly also considered attacking that notorious gay hangout Disney World. Would we be hearing about the pernicious, right-wing, anti-cartoon-character climate if he’d opted for that target?
Maybe we would, because all that really matters to the people who hate saying “radical Islamic terrorism” is that we cling to the right political distractions.
Next, Sean Davis:
It happens like clock work: as soon as there’s a mere whisper of a terrorist attack or a mass shooting, the usual suspects kick in to high gear. Their destination is always the same: a faraway land where a so-called assault weapons ban magically eliminates not only guns but also prevents guns from walking of their own volition, without need of human agency, into crowded places and killing people.
The reaction after the terrorist attack in Orlando, in which a radical Islamist who pledged allegiance to ISIS murdered at least 49 people in a packed night club, was as predictable as it was pathetic.
Set aside for the moment the fact that no automatic weapons were used in the Orlando terrorist attack (an automatic weapon is one for which a single trigger pull will fire multiple bullets), and that it is literally impossible for a semi-automatic weapon to fire 700 rounds per minute. Nor, to my knowledge, have automatic weapons ever been used in a mass shooting in the modern era.
When silly people like Seth MacFarlane and Susan Sarandon say they want to ban “automatic weapons,” what they mean is that they want to ban guns that look scary. They don’t understand that you can’t walk into a gun store and walk out with a military-style assault weapon (one that can fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull). That’s because 1) most gun dealers don’t carry the military version of the scary looking gun, 2) you have to jump through an obscene number of hoops with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to even obtain a tax stamp that says you may purchase such a weapon (a process that takes months, if not years), and 3) the actual versions of rifles used by the military are really expensive and unaffordable for the vast majority of prospective gun owners.
Set aside for the moment the fact that no automatic weapons were used in the Orlando terrorist attack (an automatic weapon is one for which a single trigger pull will fire multiple bullets), and that it is literally impossible for a semi-automatic weapon to fire 700 rounds per minute. Nor, to my knowledge, have automatic weapons ever been used in a mass shooting in the modern era.
When silly people like Seth MacFarlane and Susan Sarandon say they want to ban “automatic weapons,” what they mean is that they want to ban guns that look scary. They don’t understand that you can’t walk into a gun store and walk out with a military-style assault weapon (one that can fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull). That’s because 1) most gun dealers don’t carry the military version of the scary looking gun, 2) you have to jump through an obscene number of hoops with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to even obtain a tax stamp that says you may purchase such a weapon (a process that takes months, if not years), and 3) the actual versions of rifles used by the military are really expensive and unaffordable for the vast majority of prospective gun owners.
But before we dive into whether the assault weapons ban was merely dumb, or if it was monumentally stupid and counterproductive, it’s important to define what the previous federal ban covered and how it defined an “assault weapon.” The 1994 assault weapons law banned semi-automatic rifles only if they had any two of the following five features in addition to a detachable magazine: a collapsible stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher.
That’s it. Not one of those cosmetic features has anything whatsoever to do with how or what a gun fires. Note that under the 1994 law, the mere existence of a bayonet lug, not even the bayonet itself, somehow turned a garden-variety rifle into a bloodthirsty killing machine. Guns with fixed stocks? Very safe. But guns where a stock has more than one position? Obviously they’re murder factories. A rifle with both a bayonet lugand a collapsible stock? Perish the thought.
A collapsible stock does not make a rifle more deadly. Nor does a pistol grip. Nor does a bayonet mount. Nor does a flash suppressor. And for heaven’s sake, good luck finding, let alone purchasing, 40mm explosive grenades for your rifle-mounted grenade launcher (and remember: the grenade launcher itself is fine, just as long as you don’t put the ultra-deadly bayonet lug anywhere near it).
The complete unfamiliarity with guns and how they work that led to the inept definitions in the 1994 law was on full display in a now-infamous television interview with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York congresswoman who backed the so-called assault weapons ban. In the interview, Tucker Carlson asked McCarthy to define “barrel shroud,” a firearm feature regulated by the law. Here’s how she answered:
CARLSON: I read the legislation and it said that it would regulate “barrel shrouds.” What’s a barrel shroud and why should we regulate that?
MCCARTHY:The guns that were chosen back in those days were basically the guns that most gangs and criminals were using to kill our police officers. I’m not saying it was the best bill, but that was they could get out at that particular time.
CARLSON: Ok. Do you know what a barrel shroud is?
MCCARTHY: I actually don’t know what a barrel shroud is. I think it’s the shoulder thing that goes up.”
“The shoulder thing that goes up.” It’s not the “shoulder thing that goes up.” There is no “shoulder thing that goes up.” The “barrel shroud” (a term nobody uses) is simply a hand guard that goes around a barrel. That embarrassing spectacle happened over seven years ago, and yet over that period of time, McCarthy’s fellow gun banners still haven’t seen fit to learn the slightest thing about the objects they wish to regulate.
If the cosmetic features used to define an “assault weapon” in the 1994 law strike you as really stupid ways to define an “assault weapon,” it’s because the 1994 law was a stupid law with stupid definitions written by stupid people. And not only was it a stupid law, it was a stupid law that didn’t even accomplish its stated goal. How do we know? Because today, more than a decade after the law’s expiration, the number of people murdered by rifles is 36 percent lower than it was during the last full year the assault weapons ban was in effect.
The law expired in September of 2004, making 2003 the last full calendar year in which the law was in effect. According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime statistics, 390 people were murdered with rifles in 2003, making rifles the weapon of choice in 2.7 percent of murders that year. But in 2014, more than a decade after these vile weapons of war flooded American streets, the number of rifle murders surely skyrocketed, right?
Not so much. Quite the opposite. In 2014, the most recent year for which detailed FBI data are available, rifles were used in 248 murders. And not only are rifles used in far fewer murders over a decade following the expiration of the 1994 gun ban, they’re also used in a smaller percentage of homicides. In 2003, when the gun ban was in full effect, rifles were used in nearly 3 percent of murders. In 2014, they were used in barely 2 percent.
That’s the exact opposite of what gun banners said should happen. After the assault weapons ban, guns were supposed to flood the streets and just start killing people. Crime was supposed to skyrocket. But that’s not what happened. Yes, Americans bought a ton of rifles after the law expired, but rather than going up, the number of homicides in which rifles were used drastically fell. There were way more guns, but way less crime.
Are you ready for a mind-blowing statistic? In 2014, you were six times more likely to be murdered with a knife than you were with a rifle. Knives were the weapon of choice in 1,567 murders in 2014, according to the FBI. It gets crazier. You were also nearly three times more likely to be killed by someone’s fists or feet than you were to be murdered with a rifle. In 2014, 660 people were murdered with what the FBI calls “personal weapons”–hands, fists, feet–compared to 248 with rifles.
In the United States, knives are more deadly than rifles. So are fists. And feet. This is not my opinion. It is an incontrovertible fact. And it’s a fact that highlights a point that far too many people refuse to acknowledge: the human desire to kill is far more deadly than any weapon. Weapons do not of their own volition and agency decide to kill people. That requires human intervention. Humans hell-bent on death and destruction will get their hands on whatever tools they need to wreak their desired havoc. Restricting the use of those tools by innocent people who only want to protect themselves and their families is delusional madness.
Yet here we are. Rather than blaming individuals and ideologies, the leading lights of American society have decided to demonize inanimate objects. Despite the fact that the terrorist in Orlando was a radical jihadi who pledged allegiance to ISIS, progressives have decided to blame the NRA for what happened. Even though the terrorist wasregistered to vote as a Democrat, his fellow Democrats have decided that Republicans are the true culprits.
This is apparently how 2016 is going to go. If a boy tells you he’s a girl, then he’s a girl. If an Islamic terrorist who pledges allegiance to ISIS tells you he’s killing for Allah, then he’s probably a Republican with a lifetime NRA membership. After all, Islamic terrorists don’t kill people; peaceful, law-abiding citizens who believe the Second Amendment means what it says kill people.
Collective leftist denial about the existential, radical Islamic threat facing America is not going to prevent Islamic terrorism. Gun bans that ban guns based on nothing more than scary-looking cosmetic features are not going to prevent radical jihadis from murdering innocent people. Pretending that Republicans and the NRA are the real villains is not going to prevent ISIS from killing more Americans. Ignoring the fact that these attacks seem to only happen in gun-free zones won’t prevent violent psychopaths from waltzing into those gun-free zones and gunning down the unarmed civilians who congregate there.
There are Episcopal churches that this past weekend read a litany from the church’s bishop of Maine. It would have been perfect had the word “gun” been omitted, because isn’t violence that doesn’t use guns (say, from my recent career, fire and beatings) as bad as violence that does use guns? Twenty Saudi Arabians and Timothy McVeigh proved you don’t need guns to kill a lot of people.
The group Bishops United Against Gun Violence also advocated calling U.S. senators today to favor whatever it is the Senate will be considering today. Of course, no one can say which law(s) would have prevented the Orlando massacre. The bishops apparently won’t mention that gun violence has been dropping, not increasing, even as gun ownership is increasing, or that murder rates are now where they were in the 1950s. But don’t believe me; ask …
… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s an additional bit of inconvenient truth Paul Sperry reports:
America has now averaged one serious Islamic terrorist attack a year on President Obama’s watch, yet he still insists the threat from radical Islam is overblown and that he’s successfully protecting the nation.
If only hubris could be weaponized!
In the wake of Omar Mateen’s Orlando massacre, Obama whined about growing criticism of his terror-fighting strategy. But boy, does he deserve it. His record on terrorism is terrible, and Hillary Clinton should have a tough time defending it. …
Obama said Orlando “marks the most deadly shooting in American history.” Actually, it was the second-worst act of Islamic terrorism in American history, replacing in six short months the San Bernardino massacre as the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11.
Here are the previous seven:
December 2015: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married Pakistani couple, stormed a San Bernardino County government building with combat gear and rifles and opened fire on about 80 employees enjoying an office Christmas party. They killed 14 after pledging loyalty to ISIS. A third Muslim was charged with helping buy weapons.
July 2015: Mohammad Abdulazeez opened fire on a military recruiting center and US Navy Reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he shot to death four Marines and a sailor. Obama refused to call it terrorism.May 2015: ISIS-directed Muslims Nadir Soofi and Elton Simpson opened fire on the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, shooting a security guard before police took them down.
April 2013: Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Muslim brothers from Chechnya, exploded a pair of pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding more than 260. At least 17 people lost limbs from the shrapnel.September 2012: Terrorists with al Qaeda in the Maghreb attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the US ambassador, a US Foreign Service officer and two CIA contractors. Obama and then-Secretary of State Clinton misled the American people, blaming the attack on an anti-Muslim video.
November 2009: Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13. Obama ruled it “workplace violence,” even though Hasan was in contact with an al Qaeda leader before the strikes and praised Allah as he mowed down troops.
June 2009: Al Qaeda-trained Abdulhakim Muhammad opened fire on an Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark., killing Pvt. William Long and wounding Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula.So there you have it — an average of one serious terror strike against the United States every year on Obama’s watch. And we’re not even counting the underwear bomber, Times Square bomber, Fed Ex bombs and other near-misses.
History will not be kind to this president’s record.
Over 100 people have been killed or maimed at a gay dance club in Orlando by Omar Mateen, a Muslim terrorist. How many more innocent gays need to die before we admit that America, and the world, has an Islam problem?
I don’t mean a “radical Islam” problem or an “extremist Islam problem.” Violence is not the extreme in Islam any more: it’s the norm. …
Obama’s response to the tragedy [June 12] was similarly limp-wristed. He made no mention of Islam or Muslims, instead condemning “hate and terror” and taking a brazen swipe at gun rights activists by noting “how easy it is to let people get their hands on a weapon.”
He didn’t even address the uniquely homophobic character of the attack. What a good liberal!
There’s no more room for equivocating. The Orlando shooting isn’t just the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. shores since 9/11. It is also, by far, the worst act of violent homophobia in the nation’s history and the deadliest mass shooting in America ever.
According to the murderer’s father, his son became angry after he saw two men kissing in the street. “This had nothing to do with religion,” said the father, Seddique Mateen. “He saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry” — as if that was some kind of excuse.
That same father is on record defending the Taliban.
What sort of a man gets so angry by displays of affection, joy, and love that he chooses to gun down innocent people in a nightclub? A Muslim man. And if this one isn’t particularly religious, imagine how much worse the faithful must be.
America has to make a choice. Does it want gay rights, women’s emancipation, and tolerance for people of all nonviolent faiths — or does it want Islam? …
Omar Mateen wasn’t just a homophobe, by the way. He was also a misogynist – a real one, not someone who offends feminists on Twitter – who repeatedly beat his ex-wife while they were married. Of course, as we saw in Cologne six months ago, this sort of behaviour is also the norm in Muslim cultures.
Needless to say, the Left is silent on the subject. …
It’s not just gay people under threat. Atheist satirists in the west now live in fear of being executed because they drew the wrong cartoon. Women face the terrifying prospect of being attacked at night for wearing a short skirt.
The barbaric cultures of Raqqa, Riyadh, and Kabul now prowl the streets of Cologne, Paris, and Orlando, Florida.
Atheists, previously wedded to the political left, have started to grow sick of the constant Islam apologia. Left-leaning atheists like talk show host Dave Rubin and cult YouTuber Carl Benjamin have realised that the right is a greater ally against this barbaric, dark-age ideology than the left ever will be.
The LGBT “community” needs to confront the same problem and make its choice. If it continues to be a part of the left’s Neville Chaimberlain-esque attitude towards Islam, it will effectively be committing suicide.
It’s not just gay people under threat. Atheist satirists in the west now live in fear of being executed because they drew the wrong cartoon. Women face the terrifying prospect of being attacked at night for wearing a short skirt.
The barbaric cultures of Raqqa, Riyadh, and Kabul now prowl the streets of Cologne, Paris, and Orlando, Florida.
Atheists, previously wedded to the political left, have started to grow sick of the constant Islam apologia. Left-leaning atheists like talk show host Dave Rubin and cult YouTuber Carl Benjamin have realised that the right is a greater ally against this barbaric, dark-age ideology than the left ever will be.
The LGBT “community” needs to confront the same problem and make its choice. If it continues to be a part of the left’s Neville Chaimberlain-esque attitude towards Islam, it will effectively be committing suicide.
Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything. They can shut down and intimidate prominent ex-Muslims. They’re allowed to engage in the most brazen anti-semitism, even as they run for office in European left-wing political parties.
And, of course, politicians and the media routinely turn a blind eye to the kind of sexism and homophobia that would instantly end the career of a non-Muslim conservative — and perhaps get the latter arrested for hate speech when he dared to object.
We are now living with the consequences of that tolerance. Gays executed in nightclubs. Cartoonists lying in pools of blood. Women abused en masse.
Once again, this isn’t about “radical” Islam. This isn’t a tiny fringe. In Britain, a 2009 Gallup survey found that not one Muslim believed that homosexual acts were acceptable.Not one! And another poll this year revealed that over half of British Muslims believe gay sex should be illegal.
96 per cent of Palestinians believe that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle choice, according to Pew Global data — making “Queers for Palestine” perhaps the dumbest movement since Semites for National Socialism.
So, most Muslims think I’m unacceptable. Fine. I also think their religion is unacceptable. And not just “radicals” and “extremists” — their entire, barbaric, backwards ideology. 100 million people live in Muslim countries where homosexuality is punishable by death.
We can’t go on like this. We can’t live in an America where gays fear going to night clubs, where satirists fear execution for their speech, where cartoonists consider whether their next drawing might get them killed.
Today’s killings prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we need to give particular scrutiny to certain faiths. Gays, apostates, and women are tired of being abused, harassed, and murdered by followers of the “religion of peace.”
And politicians have to stop lying about the link between Islam and these horrific acts.
Today in 1967 was the Monterey International Pop Festival:
Happy birthday first to Paul McCartney:
Most Madisonians know Dave Zweifel as the former editor of The Capital Times, Madison’s former afternoon afternoon newspaper.
Zweifel and I have a different frame of reference, though I haven’t spoken to him since leaving Madison for good in 1988. Dave’s son, Dan, was a student–athlete at Monona Grove High School, so the Monona Community Herald covered Dan’s Monona Grove teams and the Cottage Grove American Legion baseball team. In the latter setting Dave gave me a beer on a hot night when I was covering his team.
So Dave, I think, deserves a hearing on his Capital Times column:
As former UW Athletic Director Pat Richter well knows, I wrote about the demise of the men’s varsity baseball team until I was blue in the face.
Richter had the dubious honor of ending Wisconsin’s varsity baseball program 25 years ago this spring in order to get the UW’s athletic program in compliance with Title IX. The university was under scrutiny because it had substantially more male athletes on athletic scholarships than female. Richter solved the problem by dropping five sports, including baseball.
Now, 25 years later, the UW remains the only Big Ten school without a baseball program — this in a state that has long had a love affair with the sport and is also home to a Major League baseball team.
I was appalled at the demise of baseball, as were hundreds of others in the Madison area who had supported the Badgers’ team just as basketball and football boosters have backed their teams over the years. But the decision had been made and there was no way to change it.
There have been rumbles over the past 25 years — a letter to the editor here, a talk at a service club luncheon there — but nothing managed to get legs. The big impediment now, of course, is that there simply isn’t enough money to equip a team, pay for scholarships, perhaps build or rent a diamond, and cover travel expenses.
A “club” program was formed on the Madison campus in the meantime, giving aspiring baseball players at the university a place to play even if it wasn’t Big Ten Division 1 caliber.
So it was of interest recently when Jeff Block, the coach of those two club baseball teams, put together a 14-page proposal he hopes will show the Athletic Department that restoring Big Ten baseball at the UW is financially feasible.
Block told former Cap Times sports writer Dennis Punzel, who now covers sports for the State Journal, that Big Ten baseball programs average $1.4 million a year in expenses, but Madison could do it for less by using the city of Madison’s Warner Park as its home field. Plus, Block insists, there are a number of longtime baseball supporters in the area who would be interested in funding a new campus ballpark should it come to that.
Block also pointed out that there shouldn’t be any more Title IX worries because since baseball was dropped in 1991, the Athletic Department has added three women’s sports to its mix of 23 varsity sports.
The Athletic Department’s Justin Doherty didn’t exactly give Block’s suggestions a positive response, pointing out that costs already are a concern in today’s athletic environment and the department is concentrating on the competitiveness of the sports it already has.
Nevertheless, Athletic Director Barry Alvarez has dropped hints in the past that he’d be open to at least considering a return to baseball.
The bottom line is that it still is an embarrassment that the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus is the only Big Ten school without a baseball team.
Well, yes, it is an embarrassment because of the circumstances that led to the death of UW baseball. I don’t disagree that UW had Title IX issues, but the bigger issue was the embarrassment that was former UW football coach Don Mor(t)on, whose ineptitude and resulting plunge in football attendance and revenue nearly torpedoed the entire Athletic Department, along with the department’s poor management under Richter’s predecessors running the Athletic Department.
(To prove that the world is an unjust place: After Mor(t)on was fired one year later than he should have been — ignoring briefly the fact he should never have been hired in the first place — Mor(t)on went back to North Dakota and worked for Great Plains Software, which was purchased by Microsoft, giving Mor(t)on wheelbarrows full of money, no doubt. Mor(t)on should pay all the costs for the reinstitution of UW baseball by himself.)
Block’s and Zweifel’s claim that UW doesn’t have Title IX issues anymore doesn’t mean those issues wouldn’t return if UW brought back baseball. Lacrosse, a sport growing at the high school level in this state, would be a more logical addition than sand volleyball given what passes for spring in this state.
And that brings to mind one major problem with this proposal — what passes for spring in this state. The Division I baseball season starts in February (far south of here, for obvious reasons) and runs until the weekend before Memorial Day weekend; the Big Ten tournament, the winner of which advances to the NCAA tournament, is Memorial Day weekend. Anyone who has lived in southern Wisconsin more than one year knows what “spring” in southern Wisconsin is like — any weather from winter to summer is possible. (For similar reasons summer high school baseball, played by a diminishing number of teams, is vastly preferable to spring baseball, where thanks to Mother Nature you might go a week without games and then have to jam seven games into five days.)
Certainly the fact that Miller Park is an hour or so to the east would help. (The University of Minnesota baseball team played some games at the Metrodome, but there is no more Metrodome.) But the Badgers can’t play all their games in Milwaukee, for what $hould be obviou$ rea$on$.
Money in a general sense is less of an issue at UW these days, with the huge Under Armour contract beginning July 1 and a possible new Big Ten TV contract that would dwarf the previous deal. But even if revenue is coming in like the Mississippi River in the spring after a snowy winter, UW can’t afford to ignore finances. (Given Title IX the costs of baseball would have to include the cost of whatever women’s sport is added to offset baseball.) And as we know from Don Mor(t)on and his Veer from Victory Badgers, success (or lack thereof) leads to attendance (or lack thereof) and revenue (or lack thereof).
According to Wikipedia’s UW baseball page, from the first team in 1896 until the last team in 1991, the Badgers won about 46 percent of their games. The Badgers’ last winning season was 1988, 15–13. The Badgers got to the College World Series once, 1950. From 1965, the first year of the Major League Baseball amateur draft, 38 Badgers were drafted, including two in the first round, outfielder Mark Doran by California (then Anaheim, now Los Angeles) in 1983 and pitcher Tom Fischer by Boston. Neither played a single game in the major leagues.
According to Baseball Reference, 110 former Badgers played professional baseball, and 15 position players and 15 pitchers, including Hall of Fame pitcher Addie Joss, played in the majors. The most notable Badger baseball players probably were Joss, who had 160 wins and a 1.89 ERA in the early 1900s; Harvey Kuenn, a .303 lifetime hitter who later managed the only Brewers World Series team; Paul Quantrill; who pitched for 14 seasons; Lance Painter, who pitched for 10 seasons (including with the 2001 Brewers) despite a career ERA of 5.24; pitcher Jim O’Toole, who pitched for 10 seasons, going 19–9 for the 1961 National League champion Reds; outfielder Rick Reichardt, who played for 11 seasons, three with the White Sox, with a .261 career batting average and 116 home runs; and pitcher Rodney Myers, who pitched for the 1998 wild-card Cubs.
There weren’t enough ex-Badgers in Major League Baseball to even create much of an all-Badgers MLB team in the 116 years of UW baseball:
Starting pitchers: Joss, Quantrill, Painter, O’Toole.
Relief pitchers: Myers, Tom “The Klaw” Klawitter (better known as the long-time Janesville Parker girls’ basketball coach).
Catcher: Robert “Red” Wilson, who played in the 1950s.
First base: Frank “Pop” Dillon, who played around the turn of the previous century.
Second base: Clay Perry (played one season in Detroit, 1908).
Shortstop: Kuenn.
Third base: John Sullivan, who played in the 1940s.
Outfield: Reichardt, John DeMerit (who was on the 1957 world champion Milwaukee Braves), Milt Bocek (two seasons with the 1930s White Sox).
One feature of the UW baseball team from what I remember as a student was players from other sports, including football players Doran (a kicker) and Scott Cepicky (a punter) and Scott Sabo (a hockey player). I believe some football players run, or ran, track as well. I don’t know if football coach Paul Chryst, men’s basketball coach Greg Gard or men’s hockey coach Tony Granato would allow their players to play baseball now.
Not surprisingly given the preceding list, baseball wasn’t that popular at UW. For what it’s worth, in five years as a student I never went to a game. The sport was not promoted on campus, the team wasn’t broadcast on radio, and the only way I knew about the team was from newspaper and TV coverage of games. I don’t even recall the Daily Cardinal and Badger Herald covering the team, though they must have.
The stadium, Guy Lowman Field (to be precise, its second site), is now the site of Goodman Diamond, where the Badger softball team plays. Lowman wasn’t much of a field when UW was playing there …
… but Warner Park, which hosted the minor-league Muskies and Black Wolf and now independent-league Mallards, is in much better shape, though it is no closer to campus than it was when the Badgers and Muskies played occasional exhibition games. (Warner Park is considerably farther from campus than the Dane County Coliseum, the previous hockey home.)
In a more perfect world, a minor league team (and I’ve argued here before that greater Madison is large enough to support a Class AAA franchise) and UW would share a baseball stadium close to, but not on, campus. (Because beer.) As it is, the Badgers’ season would end before the Mallards’ season begins, so unless the Badgers hosted NCAA tournament games (see previous paragraph about their last College World Series experience), there would be no scheduling conflicts. I have serious questions about how viable UW baseball would be so far off campus at Warner Park. And there remain questions about how successful baseball would be at Wisconsin, given its previous lack of success and previous lack of fan interest.
Bucky’s Fifth Quarter reports:
Wisconsin fans will get their first opportunity to preview and purchase Badgers Under Armour merchandise on June 30 when UW hosts “Night of the New Red Threads,” it announced Monday.
Athletics director Barry Alvarez, football coach Paul Chryst, men’s basketball coach Greg Gard and men’s hockey coach Tony Granato—among other notable people in the program, the Badgers say—will be on hand at the event, which begins at 10 p.m. at Camp Randall Stadium. In addition to seeing and having the chance to purchase Wisconsin’s new Under Armour gear, fans will also get “exclusive access” to UW’s training facility.
Wisconsin and Under Armour announced a 10-year partnership in October, replacing UW’s previous 15-year deal with Adidas. The new deal begins July 1 at midnight.
“We’re thrilled to partner with an energetic, hardworking brand whose story mirrors our own,” Alvarez said at the press conference to announce the deal on Oct. 9. “I’ve followed the Under Armour story for many years. I’ve been impressed with their creativity, technological advances and their presence of mind in the market.”
At that Oct. 9 announcement event, the Badgers unveiled a number of prototypes of Wisconsin on-field apparel designed by Under Armour. While the official designs remain unknown, they provided a glimpse into what Badgers fans might be able to expect.
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Or not, given the likelihood of pre-unveiling subterfuge to hype the new supplier, not to mention how often prototypes don’t become the finished product. (Research the number of Corvette prototypes over the years, including those with engines mounted between the seats and rear axle, and with gullwing doors.) One could conclude the basketball uniforms are warmups and not game uniforms given how the uniforms looked under former coach Bo Ryan.
I am amused, given Ryan’s reputation as a coach for whom you will play exactly his way or not play at all, that either he didn’t care about his team’s on-floor look (although he did interrupt a timeout once to tell a player to get a haircut), or that he appreciated uniform variety so much that his teams changed their look every season (if you count the postseason).
The football uniform depicted here looks hardly different from the current design (which itself changed little when UW went to Adidas). The only detail I can tell is the smaller numbers possibly moving from the shoulder blade closer to the neck, so-called “TV numbers.” If this is the new design, it also does not incorporate the Badger number font (which looks suspiciously like Aachen) found on the basketball jerseys.
The number one question for those concerned about sports uniform aesthetics is whether the new Badger look will use the same UW color instead of the correct “cardinal,” which is darker than the scarlet now used by UW and, in the Big Ten, Nebraska, Ohio State and Rutgers. Cardinal should be darker than scarlet, though not as dark as crimson (Indiana), and not as purple as maroon (Minnesota).
The related question is how much black and gray will be added because colleges are trying to appeal to high school students who apparently now think no colors other than black or gray exist. (You will notice the words “black” and “gray” appear nowhere in the words “cardinal” and “white.” I oppose adding colors except in the case of bad original colors, such as Northwestern’s purple, to which football coach Gary Barnett had black added, or Wyoming’s brown.) This is a trend UW has resisted at least in revenue sports, except for …
… a couple of basketball instances. (Black number outlines aren’t objectionable; black stripes are when your team colors do not include black.)
Readers know I’m not a fan of the Badger football uniform look, largely because of the tacked-on semi-stripes on the arms and the haphazard placement of the side numbers, which Barry Alvarez’s uniform designers failed to see as problems. The uniforms, whose basic design (minus font changes, adding names on the back, and the occasional appearance of red pants) goes back to 1991, appear to have been designed separately from the rest of the UW uniforms, which does happen. (Michigan’s blue football jerseys, not counting their occasional special looks, haven’t materially changed in decades, but the road uniforms have had yellow — oops, “maize” — and white pants, and side numbers in different places.)
It is always a debatable point as to how much influence sports coaches have on the uniform designs of their teams in this era of bazillion-dollar uniform deals. I believe Paul Chryst’s Pitt teams wore the same uniform design as the teams of his predecessor, Dave Wannstedt — metallic gold helmets and pants and either dark blue or white jerseys — which, for those who care, was quite different from the mustard gold of the Tony Dorsett and Dan Marino days. Recall that Vince Lombardi settled the blue-vs.-green argument for the Packers by declaring that he was the coach of the Green Bay Packers. Time was when with rare cases, a uniform design change accompanied a new coach, perhaps to eliminate a previously failed coach’s influence. (One could predict the women’s basketball uniforms will change for that reason.) Alvarez got the motion W instituted (essentially to replace a Bucky Badger superimposed on an outline W), and I predict the motion W is not going away.
On the other hand, we probably have seen the end of the innovation that went nowhere, Gary Andersen’s red helmet, because we didn’t see it last year with Chryst. At least UW won some games with them, as opposed to when red helmets were last used, in the late 1960s during UW’s 23-game losing streak. I’m not necessarily opposed to red helmets except that tradition has UW wearing white helmets at home (though they did wear red helmets on the road on occasion in the 1950s, presumably when they were much less expensive than now).
Another point of possible interest is whether the UW men’s basketball jerseys change less often than they’ve been changing under Ryan (every season or two, not counting last year’s 1976 throwbacks and the postseason uniforms). The other question is the absence of names on the back, which Ryan’s uniforms never had. (Ryan’s non-interim predecessor, Dick Bennett, didn’t have NOBs at UW–Green Bay until his son, Tony, hectored him about it; conversely Bennett’s Badger teams always had NOBs). Some coaches think NOBs create egos, even though they help fans identify who is who and players generally don’t run down the floor looking at the back of their own uniforms. (Alvarez didn’t have NOBs except for bowl games until the late 1990s, when he declared the no-NOB look had achieved its purpose.)
The Badger hockey team has used the same basic design, except for occasional font changes, ever since Badger Bob Johnson came to Madison from Colorado College …
… very similar to the Detroit Red Wings:
The Badger women have a different look …
… so it’ll be interesting to see if anything changes, or maybe the motion W makes it onto the men’s jersey, or the women’s jersey is redesigned to look like the men’s.
It is entirely possible there will be no noticeable changes at all other than such details as number fonts, particularly in football and men’s hockey, since they’ve had their current looks for decades. I don’t know if Gard spends any time at all pondering uniform aesthetics, but as Ryan’s top assistant for decades, perhaps he’s fine with the every-other-year new look too.
The number five song today in 1967 …
… was 27 spots higher than this song reached in 1978:
Birthdays start with Jerry Fielding, who composed the theme music to …
According to Google Translate, the headline is Latin for “Out of many, more than one,” in contrast to what is supposed to be our national motto, “E pluribus unum.”
About that, Mike Gonzalez says:
Despite signs everywhere that the Orlando massacre has failed to bring the country together, there seems to be a growing consensus on at least one point—considering a return to E Pluribus Unum.
This is a national debate that conservatives have long demanded and should relish having.
Sure, some are recalling the motto only to rebuke Donald Trump’s call for a suspension of immigration from Muslim nations. But that shouldn’t matter to conservatives, who should concentrate now on forcing the reopening of this discussion.
So, when Hillary Clinton says, “E Pluribus Unum, One—Out of Many, One—has seen us through the darkest chapters of our history,” as she did at her first major speech after Orlando, conservatives should say, “Bring it on.”
Yes, let’s by all means return to that goal. Why did we ever abandon it in the first place?
Let’s debate how an American like Omar Mateen, born in Queens, New York, and raised in Fort Pierce, Florida, can turn into a terrorist bent on executing his compatriots. How does he grow up cheering the 9/11 attack in high school, thinking that women ought not to drive, and swearing allegiance to the Islamic State?
Everybody, but especially young men, needs to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, a sense that we’re all in this together. If we as a society fail to give citizens national pride, we can be sure that some outside force will come along and do it.
The founders knew that the constitutional republic they were crafting required a single nation with one national identity smelted out of different ethnicities. Right away, in 1776 in fact, they came up with the concept of E Pluribus Unum.
To instill the new creed into the immigrants already flocking to America, they set an educational system that would create a nation with one national identity.
Starting in the early 1800s with the Common Schools and continuing later through the Ellis Island period, American schools Americanized new comers. As historian Mark Edward DeForrest put it, the Common Schools had,
a large role in assimilating and educating the offspring of the immigrants then moving into the United States from Europe. The schools did not simply educate students in the basics of the English language or the Three Rs. Rather, the schools were actively involved in promoting the values and beliefs that were considered part and parcel of the American experience.
Schools taught that being an American required a belief in individual liberty and that rights are granted to us by virtue of our existence, not through government action. These principles united all people who came to this country in deeply rooted patriotism.
For the past three decades, for reasons that will also require analysis (though at a later date), we have been doing exactly the opposite. The new model, exemplified by the bestselling historian Howard Zinn, is to present America as a spectacular experiment in oppression.
Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States set the stage for the grievance mongering that passes for history classes today, and is still widely used. It has sold over 2 million copies since it was first published in 1980 and continues to sell over 100,000 copies a year because it is required reading at many of our high schools and colleges. That’s a lot of young minds.
This is how Zinn described the founding:
Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.
And our educational authorities are doubling down today—even in the face of danger. The College Board’s leftist curriculum framework for Advanced Placement U.S. History—the courses that our best students take in high school—denigrates the founders’ assimilationist ethos and presses students “to think beyond national histories” and patriotic attachments.
The just released A.P. European History curriculum is no better. It presents religion only as an instrument of power, minimizes the evil of communism, and omits the importance of liberty.
As for the K-12 curriculum on the verge of being approved in the largest state in the Union, California, it is a blue print for redrawing America further still along multicultural lines. The assimilation required to attain E Pluribus Unum is “questionable by today’s standards that generally embrace having a plurality of experiences in the country.”
Assimilation, it adds, was the product of a mixture of “Social Darwinism, laissez-faire economics, as well as the religious reformism associated with the ideal of the Social Gospel.”
This is what is being taught to students, like Mateen once was, every day in our schools. So, yes, by all means, let’s have a discussion on why we should indoctrinate young minds in a way no society has ever done, why we should teach our young to “unlike” America.
Is this the approach we want to have, especially at a time when a force like the Islamic State will only be too glad to fill the patriotic vacuum, or should we teach again that America is an exceptionally free and prosperous nation that requires love and affection and constant attention?
The author Sebastian Junger, speaking at The Heritage Foundation this week about his new book, Tribe, reminded his audience that as bad as the Nazi Blitz on London was, its survivors missed afterward the sense of national pride they had felt while pitching in together.
The fact that the Orlando massacre has failed miserably to be a bond for national unity, but has only exposed our fissures, should be a mighty sign of how divided we are. This debate is well overdue.
Of course, “divisive” is an epithet hurled at politicians today who don’t do what the epithet-hurler wants done. I don’t oppose Barack Obama for being divisive; I oppose Obama because he is wrong, and because he and his toadies and apparatchiks actively hate people like me and, I suspect, most readers of this blog. There is no “unum” in politics today, and there hasn’t been in a long time.
Mateen reportedly said he decided to shoot up the Orlando nightclub to get the U.S. to stop bombing “my country” … Afghanistan, not the U.S. That’s despite the fact that Mateen is as Afghan as my grandfather, born in Minnesota, was Norwegian. (Grandpa’s parents immigrated here from Norway.) If you’re born in the U.S., you’re supposed to be an American, not from wherever your ancestors came from.
This may explain why conservatives are not impressed with the arguments for more money for schools and colleges, because they do not see American values being taught in American schools. This also may explain much of the support of Donald Trump, whether or not Trump can be trusted to do what he says (as of that particular moment) he will do.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 