Two Beatles anniversaries today:
1964: The Beatles make their third appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show.”
1969: “Get Back” (with Billy Preston on keyboards) hits number one:
Meanwhile, today in 1968, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful were arrested for drug possession. (Those last five words could apply to an uncountable number of musicians of the ’60s and ’70s.)
Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer applies logic to the choice of two horrid presidential candidates:
Although my personal political philosophy is libertarian, like most people, over the years I have surrendered to the binary choice our two-party system gives us when casting my vote in presidential elections. I almost always find myself settling for a “lesser of two evils,” but the “evil” is not so great as to prevent me from rationalizing what amounts to, by my vote, an endorsement or affirmation of the candidate.
Because at least rhetorically, the Republican party candidate promises a greater commitment to limited, constitutional government, entitlement reform, tackling the national debt, and a belief in the benefits of free trade, I have voted for the Republican candidate for president ever since Ronald Reagan. The Republicans repeatedly disappoint on matters of foreign policy, seeing the US as world policeman. But the Democrats fare little better on foreign policy—sometimes even worse. So foreign policy as a vote-determining factor between the two major parties tended to be a wash for me. I often profoundly disagree with the Republicans on many of the “culture war” and so-called social issues, but I have had confidence that our Constitution and judiciary will defend against any overreach by Republicans in that area.
So as a matter of practicality, I have tended to base my vote on the differences between the two major party candidates on matters of economic liberty and commitment to the principles of federalism and limited government. I recognize the politicians in both political parties have differing promises but similar results: bigger government, greater debt, less individual liberty. But I use the party platforms and the candidates’ rhetoric to help in my rationalization (some would say self-delusion) that I am voting for someone who will, at best, move things in a better direction or, at worst, be a lesser of two evils that I can live with.
Not so this year. The 2016 offerings of both major parties are so flawed, so authoritarian, so inclined to disregard the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and expand executive power, that even “pretzel logic” will not allow me to rationalize a choice between them.
I still wish to participate in the electoral process. Choosing not to vote is always an option. But I prefer to express my opinion in a less passive manner. Not voting certainly provides the satisfaction of knowing that I did not sanction or legitimize the offerings of the two major parties. But that satisfaction is only personal and private. I want to more actively make my views known. Using the following chain of logic, I have found a positive way to express myself through, what I believe, is the most effective allocation of my vote in November:
1) According to Professor Ilya Somin in Democracy and Political Ignorance, my vote has, on average, a roughly 1 in 60 million chance of being the decisive vote in the Presidential election. (It might be a great as 1 in 10 million in my relatively small state of Arizona. It would have a roughly 1 in a billion chance of being decisive if I lived in California.)
2) If I vote for the lesser of evils and hold my nose, my vote is blended in with millions of others—there is no way to register my dissatisfaction with the choices the two major parties have given me. There is no way to separate those who voted for a lesser of two evils from those who voted because they actually LIKED the candidate.
3) If I vote for the Libertarian party candidate, I am directly affecting the vote total of that candidate. Because that candidate will get fewer total votes than the major party candidates, when all votes are totaled up, I will have had a greater effect on raising the total percentage of votes for the Libertarian candidate. If the Libertarian candidate garners say, 5 percent of the vote as opposed to 1 percent, then my vote made a greater impact in making a statement than it would have if it was folded in with the 40 or 50 million voters who voted for a major party candidate.
4) If the Libertarian candidate gets say, 5 percent of the vote, then that clearly means that 5 percent of the voters chose a candidate that they KNEW had absolutely no chance of winning, rather than choosing the lesser of two evils. What’s more, they chose the candidate with the most pro-freedom, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights program. That sends a clear message.
Therefore:
5) By casting my vote for the Libertarian presidential candidate, my vote is actually more meaningful and makes more of a statement.
My conclusion: Voting for the lesser of two evils is statistically and strategically wasting my vote. I will vote Libertarian for president this year. This rationale does not necessarily apply to how I will vote in the down ballot races, where my vote has a greater numerical impact, I have a greater ability to directly communicate my views, and I might have less marked dissatisfaction with many of the candidates.
Robert Eno demonstrates why Donald Trump is not a conservative:
[Tuesday], the New York Times reports that long-time Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone expects Trump to campaign to the “left of Hillary Clinton” on a variety of issues. This of course is not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to CR Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin. Levin has been warning about the progressive roots of populism for months now on his radio and television programs. The Trump camp has gone so far as to say every position Trump has taken up until now is just a “suggestion.”
The Times article entitled, “Donald Trump Borrows From Bernie Sanders’s Playbook to Woo Democrats,” lays out a convincing case about Trump’s progressive bona fides.
On a range of issues, Mr. Trump seems to be taking a page from the Sanders playbook, expressing a willingness to increase the minimum wage, suggesting that the wealthy may pay higher taxes than under his original proposal, attacking Mrs. Clinton from the left on national security and Wall Street, and making clear that his opposition to free trade will be a centerpiece of his general election campaign.
As Mr. Trump lays the groundwork for his likely showdown with Mrs. Clinton, he is staking out a series of populist positions that could help him woo working-class Democrats in November. But in doing so, he is exacerbating the trepidation some Republicans already feel about his candidacy at a moment when the party typically rallies to its nominee.
The populist persona Trump has crafted for himself is in fact progressive. …
A look back at Trump’s 30 plus years of public life shows that he has been a lifelong progressive on many issues. Many of the positions he took this year are not positions he has held for decades. Many were carefully crafted for the primary campaign. Now that that portion of the campaign is over, he and his team are reminding folks that everything he has said are “just suggestions.”
This means all of his campaign promises up to this point are negotiable, and don’t actually reflect what he would try to do in office. That’s not a pundit saying this; those were Trump’s own words.
Trump’s longtime adviser, Stone, made it clear to the Times that Trump would take a punitive tone with banks, highly modeled on the progressive attacks from the left:
Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, said he expected the presumptive Republican nominee to grow aggressive on the banks. ‘Who’s been tougher on bankers than Donald Trump?’ asked Mr. Stone, suggesting Mr. Trump could appeal to some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters. ‘He’s taken them to the cleaners. I think he has a healthy skepticism and deep knowledge of bankers and how they operate. He’s going to be tough on Wall Street.’ Mr. Trump has said that ‘the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.’
Mr. Stone added that Mr. Trump will also have a built-in layer of defense as he appeals to blue-collar voters, because he will be less vulnerable to traditional Democratic attacks over Republican efforts to rein in entitlement programs. ‘Unlike all these establishment Republicans, he’s been adamant about never touching entitlements,’ Mr. Stone said. ‘You can’t run that play on Donald Trump.’
This is not an abandonment of conservative principles by Trump, in that he never had any to begin with. It is a shift, by the voters in the Republican Party, away from limited government to statist nationalism—a move that many in the GOP are lining up behind, with no questions asked. Take for example Newt Gingrich, who stood up for the progressive populist Trump just last week. Here’s what The Hill reported about Gingrich’s response to Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement of Trump.
‘I mean I just think — I don’t know what Ted was thinking of,’ Gingrich said. ‘To me, it’s pretty clear that this is over. Trump is the nominee. That’s why I disagreed with [Speaker] Paul Ryan [R-Wis.]. I thought that the moment to say, “OK, we have the leader of the team, let’s pull the team together, let’s go beat Hillary,” has arrived.‘You’re either for Hillary Clinton or you’re for Donald Trump. If you’re not for Donald Trump, you are functionally helping Hillary Clinton. I think it’s just that straightforward.’
The Republican power players are all telling conservatives that they have to either get behind Donald Trump or be labeled Clinton enablers. This is a trap that assumes there are only two options. It requires conservatives to choose a party over principles. That is something Newt Gingrich used to fight against.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump is an amorphous populist who will adopt any position needed to gain unfettered access to the Oval Office. He has certainly, by his recent actions, proven Levin right. Populism is a building block for progressivism, and populists are ultimately progressives.
Today in 1969, the Who released their rock opera “Tommy” …
… two years before Iron Butterfly disbanded over arguments over what “In a Gadda Da Vita” (which is one-third the length of all of “Tommy”) actually meant:
The number one British album today in 1970 was “McCartney,” named for you know who:
I thoroughly disagree with the number one song today in 1961:
Today in 1965, the Beatles found that “Ticket to Ride” was a ticket to the top of the charts:
The number one album today in 1971 was the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers”:
One strange anniversary in rock music: Today in 1968, Paul McCartney and Jane Asher attended a concert of … Andy Williams:
Eleven years later, not McCartney, but Elton John became the first Western artist to perform in the Soviet Union.
Four years later, David Bowie’s suggestion reached number one:
Writer and American alcoholic beverage expert George Will:
Because advertising is a barometer that often accurately measures America’s psychological atmosphere, attention must be paid to this: From May 23 through the presidential election, Budweiser beer will bear a different name. Eager to do its bit to make America great again, the brewer will replace the name “Budweiser” with “America” on its 12-ounce bottles and cans.
The Financial Times says this is “a bid to capitalize on U.S. election fever.” (Before the Chicago Cubs bestrode the world like a colossus, T-shirts proclaimed “Cubs Fever: Catch it — and die.”) A beer bottle metaphysician at the brewer of soon-to-be America says, “We are embarking on what should be the most patriotic summer that this generation has ever seen.” This refers to the once-in-a-generation, light-the-sparklers opportunity to choose between two presidential candidates roundly disliked by American majorities. It is enough to drive one to drink something stronger than beer.
Budweiser’s name change is part of an advertising campaign featuring the slogan “America is in your hands.” The brewer says this will “remind people . . . to embrace the optimism upon which the country was first built.” So, between now and Nov. 8, whenever you belly up to a bar, do your patriot duty by ordering a foamy mug of America. Nothing says “It’s morning in an America that is back and standing tall” quite like beer cans festooned with Americana by Anheuser-Busch InBev, a firm based in Leuven, Belgium, and run by a Brazilian.
The beer brands most familiar to Americans — Budweiser, Miller, Coors — are foreign-owned. Want to win a round of cold Americans this summer? Wager that no one in the saloon can identify the U.S.-owned brewer with the largest market share and say what that share is. The answer is: D.G. Yuengling & Son with just 1.4 percent of the market, slightly more than Boston Beer Co., which makes the Samuel Adams brand.
Years ago, historian Daniel J. Boorstin said that whereas Europeans go to market to get what they want, Americans go to discover what they want. Nowadays the market comes to customers everywhere via ubiquitous advertising, precious little of which is designed to create desires for new products. Beer commercials are not supposed to make viewers thirsty or to prompt them to buy beer rather than Buicks. Rather, the commercials’ primary purpose is to defend and expand a brand’s market share. They do this by giving particular beers distinctive personalities. By doing so, they stroke consumers’ psyches, drawing beer drinkers into what Boorstin called “consumption communities.” Consumers are moved to covet a product less for its intrinsic qualities than its manufactured meaning. Advertising does this by reducing its information content and increasing its emotional appeal.
Budweiser is the “king of beers” — we know it is because Budweiser says it is — but will not be saying so during this advertising campaign. The slogan will be replaced by “E Pluribus Unum.” This is Latin for “Perhaps a gusher of patriotic kitsch will stanch the leakage of our market share to pestilential craft breweries.”
The United States has more than 4,000 craft breweries. Most American adults — all 235 million of them — live within 10 miles of a local brewery. And more than 40 percent of Americans 21-to-27 have never tasted Budweiser. They prefer craft beers (a craft brewer ships no more than 6 million barrels a year; Budweiser shipped 16 million in 2013, down from 50 million in 1988), which perhaps explains Budweiser’s current weirdly truculent commercials, such as this: “Proudly a macro beer. It’s not brewed to be fussed over. . . . It’s brewed for drinking, not dissecting. . . . Beer brewed the hard way. Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale.” And this: “Not small. Not sipped. Not soft. Not a fruit cup. Not imported.” Not cheerful.
Last year, craft brewers, which are increasing at a rate of almost two a day, won 12.8 percent of the $105.9 billion beer market. And 2015 was the sixth consecutive year, and the 12th time in 15 years, in which beer’s portion of the nation’s alcohol revenue declined as more Americans drank cocktails like the characters on “Mad Men.”
If, however, these aspiring Don Drapers hoist an America, they will have in their hands bottles and cans adorned with snippets of American Scripture — the Pledge of Allegiance, “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful.” The psalmist said that joy cometh in the morning. Fat lot the psalmist knew. Joy cometh in the evening when you crack a cold can of America and anticipate the thrills of the looming “patriotic summer.” Go ahead. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
It’s 5 o’clock here, but I will not crack a cold can of America. I have better taste than Bud, and I avoid drinking beer in cans.
If you were born after 1958, and you are curious about the top five songs on the radio the week you were born, click here.
If you wish to make an argument one way or another about the declining quality of pop music over the years, that’s your site too.
In my case, the top in correct reverse order were …
… none of which are on my personal top five singles list.
What about the week of my high school graduation?
OK, how about my college graduation?
Apparently my life has been surrounded by sappy ballady dreck. Wedding?
Off this list of 20 top-five songs I would choose to listen to five of them … maybe. As I’ve written here before, quality and popularity are not necessarily synonymous.
There is a related website that lists the top rock, instead of pop, songs dating back to the 1980s. So let’s try (the entire year of) 1983 …
… and 1988 …
… and 1992 again:
Better.
Today in 1966, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who decided to replace for the evening the tardy drummer Keith Moon and bass player John Entwistle with the bass player and drummer of the band that played before them at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor, England.
When Moon and Entwistle arrived and found they had been substituted for, a fight broke out. Moon and Entwistle quit … for a week.
The number one single today in 1967:
Facebook Friend Ron Fournier notes yet another similarity between Hillary! and The Donald:
An open government is an honest government, a trusted government, a government directly responsible to people. It says so on the White House website: “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing.” But even while the internet made finding and sharing information easier than ever, government transparency in the 21st century has been a bust.
President George W. Bush’s administration changed the Presidential Records Act to make the White House more opaque. After promising to run the most transparent government in history, President Obama has set records for censoring government files or outright denying access to them. On a range of issues, veteran White House reporters say each successive president has brought less openness, honesty, and accountability to the West Wing.
It’s about to get worse. Judging from their actions, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are to transparency what Kryptonite is to Superman.
While Obama severely restricted the public’s access to information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, his secretary of state effectively gutted the FOIA—at least as it pertained to her. Clinton stored all of her work-related email on a secret server in her home, an unprecedented action that skirted federal policies and put her digital correspondence outside the reach of the general public and congressional overseers.
The FBI is investigating whether the covert email system violated criminal laws involving the protection of U.S. secrets. No investigation is needed to understand that if every government official played by Clinton’s rules, there would be no public access to government email.
A lesser example of her allergy to transparency: The private speeches she gave to Wall Street firms, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars after leaving the State Department. In their Democratic nomination fight, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has pressed Clinton to release transcripts of the speeches to show whether her tough talk against Wall Street today is consistent with the paid remarks.
“I will certainly look into it,” she said in February. More recently, Clinton said she would only release the transcripts if “everybody else” is transparent about their paid speeches. Sanders has complied, which means Clinton won’t do the right thing until every Republican does. No champion of transparency, this one.
Which is what makes Clinton such a lousy advocate against Trump, who among other things has refused to release his tax records.
“So you’ve got to ask yourself, why doesn’t he want to release them?” Clinton asked a Democratic crowd last week. “Yeah, well, we’re going to find out.”
Yeah, well, one might also ask, why did Clinton stash her government email on a homebrewed server? Why won’t she release her speech transcripts?
The shame is that Trump deserves a public shaming. For four decades, presidential candidates have released their tax records. Bill and Hillary Clinton have released annual tax returns since 1977 and she posted eight years of returns on her campaign web site.
Trump refuses. “There’s nothing to learn from them,” he says. That is absolutely untrue. Trump’s tax returns would allow the public to see whether he pays his fair share of taxes, how much he gives to charity, whether his finances are free of conflicts, and whether he’s lying about his wealth.
Before becoming a candidate, Trump repeatedly promised to release his tax returns if he chose to seek the presidency. He now blames a government audit for his reluctance to cough up the documents, but that is a weak excuse.
The only thing stopping Trump from keeping his promise is Trump.
If the metaphor for government transparency is sunshine, Trump is darkness personified. His campaign keeps a “blacklist” of critical reporters. He refuses to say how he would “eradicate” ISIS. He masquerades in telephone calls as his own spokesman. He makes erratic policy shifts while insisting that nothing has changed, such as when his “absolute” ban on Muslim immigrants suddenly became Syria-centric.
What makes Trump the least transparent presidential candidate in modern history is his lack of candor. “There’s never been a presidential candidate like Donald Trump—someone so cavalier about the facts and so unwilling to ever admit error, even in the face of overwhelming evidence,” wrote Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post in a story that aggregated 39 fact-check columns involving Trump, in 69 percent of which he received the worst-possible rating of four Pinocchios.
“Since Trump never takes anything back and often repeats the same false claims,” Kessler wrote, “voters are likely to hear these time and again during the campaign season.”
Lie after lie—read them here and consider how open government would be under President Trump.
I am not drawing an equivalence: When it comes to sleight of hand, there is no equal to Trump. But no matter who wins in November, transparency loses.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 