The number one single in Britain …
… and over here on my parents’ wedding day in 1961:
The number one single today in 1977:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Jan. 7
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No, Andrew Klavan is not writing about football:
For American artists, writers, thinkers, moms, dads, coaches, teachers, and other human beings, the work to create a counter-culture to end and replace the poisonous culture of the left continues. As our government and academies and entertainers try to sell us on slave values like Equality, we have to rebuild and promote the concept of Individual Liberty, the central value of free men and women. In place of the whining, manipulative Victim Power of feminists and race-baiters, we have to lift up the idea of Power through Personal Responsibility, the only path to dignity. And in place of the cushioned chains of government-sponsored safety Obama and his corrupt minions try to push on us day after day, we have to teach and defend the fearful glory of Independence.
And so we will have to offend people. A lot of people. A lot of the time.
I mention this because I notice the idea has grown up recently — especially among the young — that offending people is wrong per se. This idea — taught at universities and in entertainments and in the media — is wholly false. Rudeness and unkindness are very often unnecessary — much less necessary than many counter-cultural warriors suppose — but offending people is unavoidable. It is a natural outgrowth of telling the truth.
Speaking generally, people don’t like the truth. It tends to be less flattering than pretty-sounding falsehoods and far more challenging than relativistic blather. Simply to declare the good — liberty, personal responsibility, independence — better than the bad — equality, victimhood, slavish safety — makes people more conscious of their shortcomings and moral failures. That thing that happens where you fearlessly tell the truth and people carry you on their shoulders in thanks and congratulations? That’s a movie scene, not real life. In real life, the aftermath of truth-telling looks a whole lot more like the crucifixion than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
But if we’re going to rebuild American culture… in the arts, in the history books, in schools, at home… the truth is the only place to start. Dramatic truth, comic truth, historical truth, moral truth. None of it goes down easy. And so you’re going to be hearing “I’m offended,” all day long and into the night. It’s not a sin to offend people. It’s not even a problem really. Getting offended is just one of the ways people react to reality — it’s the way American culture has been teaching them to react for the past forty-five years.
I feel strongly that a new American culture is already on the way. I read it in books, see it at the movies, read it online and find it in everyday life more and more. My work — and my love — is the arts, but the new culture won’t just be built there. It will be built in the way we treat our spouses, the way we raise our kids, and the way we tell the stories of our country and our lives. For myself, I plan to do all this as honestly as I can, as morally as I can, and as fearlessly as I can.
If any of what I say or do or make offends you, take a number. And when your number is called, pound sand.
I don’t believe I have ever said “I’m offended” in response to something someone has said to me. When I make dueling pundit appearances and someone says “I’m offended” about something I said, I assume I’ve won that point, because those who take offense take offense instead of making a counterargument.
Part of this is our culture’s stupidity about feelings and self-esteem. In an adult world no one would care about your feelings, because your feelings are something you control, not anyone else. Perhaps the answer to hearing “I’m offended” is something along the line of “Good!” or “Ask me if I care about your feelings.”
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Columbia Journalism Review printed this opinion, which probably should be prefaced with music:
The Interview is a dangerous movie. The first victim was Sony, which had electronic files hacked in an intrusion that revealed shocking details: like the fact that one of its executives wanted to cast a black actor as James Bond, and that many people at Sony can’t spell. But another more serious group of victims haven’t yet been mentioned: journalists who work in dangerous parts of the world.
The film, which was released over the Christmas holiday, depicts two goofy journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and who are recruited by the CIA to kill him. Rogen’s character, the producer of a television interview program, was supposedly educated at my alma mater, Columbia School of Journalism, but seemed to have no qualms about crossing what I recall was one of the most indelibly-inked lines of journalism ethics: don’t do the bidding of the CIA.
Why make a big deal of a movie that’s clearly fiction? Because it plays right into the farcical notions of the world’s tyrannical leaders – that journalists are secretly working for the CIA, an assumption which carries tragic consequences.
Reporter James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS earlier this year, was accused of working for MI-6. Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari was arrested in Iran on suspicion of being a spy. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is still in an Iranian prison, accused of espionage. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was accused of working for the CIA before his execution. The history of kidnapped journalists—from Terry Anderson in Beirut, to Bob Simon in Baghdad, to David Rohde in Serbia—is filled with tragic tales of reporters being mistaken for spies.
It doesn’t help when pop culture reinforces the false image of reporters-turned-special agents. Or agents posing as reporters. The critically acclaimed TV show Homeland this past season had the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Carrie Mathison, pretending to be a reporter in order to convince a young man to reveal information about his terrorist uncle. Mathison is a rogue agent, and the mission is not authorized by Langley, but the perception of spies posing as reporters is there for viewers all over the world to see.
There is good reason for the confusion, since CIA agents did, indeed, use the journalism cover for many years, posing as agents using fake media credentials. And throughout several decades of the Cold War, the agency recruited hundreds of journalists to do their bidding as well. The cleverly-named Operation Mockingbird was run by top agency officials, including Richard Helms, the future CIA director who started his career as a reporter and famously interviewed Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. There’s no doubt that Helms and others at the CIA realized how the work of journalists is similar to that of spies—getting close to important sources and gathering information from them. In the hyper-patriotic post-war era, it was apparently easy to recruit some of of the top news organizations in the US to participate.
The Church Commission hearings in 1976 put an end to these practices, and that year then-CIA director George H.W. Bush announced: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”
That would mean that Rogen and Franco’s characters, with their plot to poison the North Korean leader, would have been subverting the law.
The FBI hasn’t helped matters. In 2007, an agent posed as a reporter with the Associated Press and emailed the teenaged suspect in several bomb threats at a Seattle high school. Appealing to the bomber’s narcissism, the fake reporter asked him to review an article, and by clicking on the link, the high school student revealed his location, leading to his arrest.
In The New York Times, FBI director James Comey wrote a letter to the editor arguing that the tactic was legal and appropriate, since it did not result in any actual work of journalism. But Comey missed the point. By blurring the line, the FBI added fuel to future suspicions that any journalist could be an undercover agent.
It is a sad fact that there will surely be more detentions, kidnappings and executions of journalists in the future, and some will likely be accused of being spies. The blame for those attacks will be squarely on the terrorists, but there is no reason for Hollywood to give them any more reason to be confused about what reporters do abroad—report, not spy.
The list of journalists accused of being spies, including the deceased Foley and Pearl, seems unbelievable. There’s not a single spy skill other than observation that a reporter would seem to possess. A government can use an accusation excuse for whatever ends it feels like, including, in Pearl’s case, executing a Jewish American.
To suggest that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will cause problems for journalists because of a movie portrayal of journalists as assassins (pause while I collect myself after amusement over those last three words) requires belief in Kim’s rationality.
There is, however, the case of Wisconsin’s own Austin Goodrich, as one commenter points out:
Austin Goodrich, an American spy who used credentials as a journalist, including from CBS News, to establish his cover during cold war postings abroad, died on June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.
The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Kristina Goodrich said.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent. Several who did so, along with some top news executives, later said that during the cold war the separation between the news media and the government was considerably more negotiable than it subsequently became. However, it was not until the 1970s, after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the Central Intelligence Agency, that reports by Rolling Stone magazine and The New York Times revealed that journalists from myriad news organizations had served the agency in various capacities, sometimes with the full knowledge of their employers. Mr. Goodrich became one of the first examples of a journalist-spy to be publicly disclosed.
The Times reported that at least 22 American news organizations, including CBS News and Time, Life and Newsweek magazines, as well as The Times itself, “had employed, though sometimes only on a casual basis, American journalists who were also working for the C.I.A.,” and that “in a few instances the organizations were aware of the C.I.A. connection, but most of them appear not to have been.”
That comment was preceded by a comment that half-engaged in paranoia but made one good point:
If journalists don’t want to be identified as stooges for the state, maybe they should stop acting like it. Be more hostile to authority — government, collaborators, bourgeois sensibilities, and last but not least editors — instead of cozying up to them and glorifying them.
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First: The songs of the day:
The number one album today in 1968 was the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”:
The number one single today in 1973 included a person rumored to be the subject of the song on backing vocals:
The number one British single today in 1979 was this group’s only number one:
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If you have any interest in cars, or one of the biggest industries in the U.S., you have to read Peter De Lorenzo’s Autoextremist blog.
A writer like De Lorenzo is important in any field worth studying because it’s important to read someone who’s not impressed by anyone. Cynics are not popular, but they’re at least as often right as they are wrong. And as you read De Lorenzo‘s 2014-in-the-automotive industry tome, the impression you get is that De Lorenzo is impressed by no one:
Welcome to this “thing” called the automobile business. Like a Dead Air Circus twisting in the wind, the automobile business writ large here moves in fits and starts in a two steps forward, three back pirouette of ignominy, one that provides a constant thrum of mediocrity, a sinister Motor City soundtrack of “dark noise” if you will that is always there, looming in the background.
Is it all tedium? Thankfully, no, not by a long shot.
We are enjoying the finest cars and trucks in automotive history, and at every price point too. We’re also bathing in a golden era of performance, one that few thought would sustain itself as we march ever forward to a No Fun culture that pillories the automobile at every turn.
The looming societal storm clouds can’t dampen the inherent goodness and level of technology found in the average cars of today. It’s simply staggering to contemplate the advanced technology, fuel efficiency and general level of excellence available in even the most mainstream of automobiles available. If you had predicted the level of technology and efficiency that would be available in a typical Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Impala or Toyota Camry even as recently as ten years ago most people would have scoffed at the notion.
There are no bad cars anymore because the price of entry in order to compete in this, the most competitive market in automotive history, goes up with each passing quarter. Combine that with the ever-escalating regulatory demands for more safety and more efficiency, and you have a never-ending upward spiral demanding even more overall excellence that consumes this industry’s every waking hour. And all of that is wonderful and a reason to be optimistic about this business.
But, well, there’s always a “but” when it comes to the car business.
Once again we were blessed or haunted (depending on how you look at it) by an assortment of crackpots, a few actual visionaries, hordes of recalcitrant twerps, legions of spineless weasels, the obligatory egomaniacal dictators (with special emphasis on the first syllable), an unfortunately high quotient of unmitigated hacks, and of course the True Believers, because if it weren’t for their diligence, this business would implode on itself all over again.
This was the Year of the Recall, the Year of Sergio, the Year of Horsepower, the Year of Mary and for a lot of reasons, the Year from Hell.
How can that be, you say? Everyone’s making money hand over fist as the national frenzy for crossovers, SUVs and pickup trucks seems to know no bounds. It’s all good, right? Yes, until it isn’t that is.
Don’t let those supercharged sales numbers go to your heads, because in typical Detroit fashion what goes up like a rocket comes down with a resounding thud. It always has and it always will. And just as the executives at the car companies here in the Motor City begin to believe their press clippings and start to think that maybe, just maybe this blissful state of soaring sales is going to stay hot forever, well, things are bound to get weird.
Though I’ve often written about the good things going on in this business, the constant misdeeds and missteps that seem to dog this industry and its players at a relentless cadence consume most of my time. That there are three dumb moves for every two smart ones in this business is a given and has been proven out over time. And to the industry honchos who are absolutely convinced that it won’t happen – or is not happening under their watch – I’ve got news: You can’t really control it; you can only hope to contain it.
De Lorenzo writes about Chrysler, now owned by Fiat …
The name is Sloan. Alfredo Sloan. The all-knowing and all-powerful leader of the Fiat Chrysler enterprise has been anointed The Altruistic Savior of all he surveys by the bootlicking hordes in “the media,” portrayed as the man who pulled the doddering old Chrysler out of the depths of despair while giving its huddling, downtrodden masses who were facing a certain death sentence a reason to live. And it’s all unmitigated bullshit too.
Marchionne is a shrewd, make that brilliant deal maker who happened to be in the right place at the right time and who was able to abscond with the car company formerly known as Chrysler lock, stock and barrel for the staggeringly paltry sum of $6 billion, all in. And in one fell swoop he gave the idle aristocracy who inherited the Fiat “empire” – and had almost run it into the ground once and for all – another lease on life. For that he has been granted career canonization the likes of which has never been seen before in this business, sort of an Alfredo Sloan for our times.
But then again there’s another side to Sergio that isn’t sexy, glamorous or all knowing, which is why it continuously goes unreported.
Marchionne’s brilliance when it comes to putting together big picture deals is unquestioned. Let’s face it, anyone who can walk away with the Jeep brand for the above-mentioned sum and get the rest of Chrysler in the bargain is a frickin’ genius.
But The Other Sergio is a plodding, micro-managing maniac who believes that Fiat Chrysler employees – no matter what the level – should be happy that they’re allowed to be in his presence. And for that, and the occasional opportunity to be bathed in the warmth from the glow as The Great One passes them in the hallway, they get a shockingly head-in-sand management approach – a time-tested legacy of the Fiat “empire” that’s unwanted and unwarranted – yet shoved down the throats of the Auburn Hills faithful with astonishing regularity.
The ingrained backwardness with which the Italians approach everything actually has the denizens in Auburn Hills reeling from having to dumb down the way they do things to appease their Italian handlers on a daily basis. Sergio’s espresso-swilling minions regularly ignore hard-earned and hard-won lessons that have stood the test of time in this business in favor of doing things “their” way, even if it jeopardizes the company’s competitive standing in the market or it costs the company millions in do-overs and start overs.
The arrogance of the Italian overlords running Chrysler now rivals the arrogance displayed by the German overlords back when Daimler had its crack at the keys to the Jeep-Truck kingdom. Combine that with their openly hostile attitude, which states that every supplier who brings an idea or a product to them can, as they often say, “cut your number in half and then we’ll talk.” It’s a wonderful way to build trust in the supplier community and an even better way to ensure that FCA misses out on leading-edge technology and thinking across all disciplines.
And Sergio’s latest management brainstorm is to jettison anyone over 50 (no, you won’t read this anywhere else) because they’ve become liabilities and are not forward thinking enough. Top-notch, seasoned executives are being shown the door in favor of young, inexperienced replacements with the inevitable result: The young hires are being blown out and replaced by similarly young and inexperienced people and guess why? They can’t do the work because they don’t have enough experience. It’s a revolving door of mediocrity that just keeps doubling up on itself. Meanwhile, the senior-level managers, sensing the tide, are gathering in droves at the door clamoring for a way out.
… Government — I mean General — Motors …
Pardon me for thinking that we’d heard the last from Dan Akerson, that loathsome and now legendary carpetbagging tool who held the reins of GM in his hands for three-and-one-half excruciatingly painful years. Forgive me for thinking that the Unctuous Prick would take his leave and quietly retreat to the friendly confines of Washington, D.C., so he could regale his cronies how he survived his near-charitable stint in the hinterlands, trying to impart his wisdom to the poor unfortunates who toiled away in such a pathetically backward business that it’s a wonder it functioned at all before he got there. And please cut me some slack, because I thought that after such an embarrassing run at the top of what was once America’s industrial showpiece, where he was simply reviled and despised at every level of the corporation, that Akerson would keep his mouth shut, especially in the midst of the biggest crisis in the company’s history (other than the bankruptcy, of course).
No such luck, however.
Safely ensconced back hard by the Potomac, the former CEO gets his chance to obfuscate, deny and continue his game of self-entitled outrage at GM’s so-called “culture” laced with his usual cloying air of superiority – his M.O. for three-and-a-half tedious and tiresome years while at the helm of GM – in an interview by David Shephardson in Monday’s The Detroit News. Why Shephardson thought it would be a good thing to let Akerson pontificate once more is questionable but in the end he did us all a great service, because the depth and breadth of Akerson’s gift of self-delusion is there for all to see. I view the interview now as yet another important entry into The Historical Document of Bullshit marking Akerson’s Reign of Terror at General Motors.
Playing his Sergeant Schultzian “I know nothing” defense to perfection, Akerson blamed GM’s culture and didn’t own up to anything, except that he was a genius for promoting Mary Barra. In one particularly telling passage, Akerson railed at Internet chatter calling the suggestion that GM could soften criticism of its mishandling of the recall by promoting the first woman to lead an automaker ridiculous, adding, “fools can say anything… We have four women on the board. You’d have to be so cynical. You’d have to be a terrible person to even (think it).” Akerson called the suggestions “hurtful.”
Well, boo-fricking-hoo, Dan. Do you really want to know what’s hurtful? Having to listen to you bob and weave and pretend you knew nothing. Having to sit there and listen to the relentless stream of unmitigated bullshit that comes out of your mouth, with you operating under the assumption that if you’re saying it, we must believe it to be true, because after all, you’re the great Dan Akerson, and we’re not.
Instead, it’s an outrageous insult to everyone’s intelligence who ever played this game (except to those you favored and promoted, of course).
That’s right, Dan, you, the Unctuous Prick who openly loathed every last inch of this business to its core, and who regularly regaled your buddies on how just backward, unseemly and pathetic the auto business really was.
You, the guy who insulted the hard-working people of GM on a regular basis and in such condescending fashion that the common refrain I heard from seasoned, talented individuals throughout the corporation was that you were an abject embarrassment that they wished would just go away.
You, who had so little respect for the history of this business or the people who came before you that you dismissed it all with a wave of the hand as being inconsequential and irrelevant, that you and your Telecommies had more smarts in your fingernails than anyone in this town or in this business would ever accumulate.
You, who professed your “love” for this city while not once living here, instead parachuting in to the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel when you had to be here while having your Chief PR Bagman, Selim Bingol (aka Unctuous Prick Jr.), try to paste together the story that you were a “car guy” who was just trying to do what was best for the company, because clearly the “little people” laboring there didn’t have a clue.
You, who held such little regard for the complexities of the business that you once bragged to an underling, “You could run product development, hell, I could run product – it’s not that hard.”
You, who followed that up by promoting Bob Ferguson – GM’s Chief lobbyist, of all things – to run the Cadillac Division globally, even though he had not one shred of perspective or qualification to do so, saying in not so subtle fashion that he was a smart guy and he wasn’t one of “them” – meaning one of the poor unfortunates who make up the backbone of this business who were toiling away at the company while you preened and pranced before them spewing insults in their direction.
How did all that work out for you, Dan?
The High-Octane Truth of the matter is that the company survived in spite of you. Those people whom you insulted and treated so condescendingly on a daily basis? Those True Believers are solely responsible for the product hits that GM has in the market today.
It certainly wasn’t you, Dan, not by a long shot. Let’s not forget that you were plucked from boardroom obscurity by the most incompetent board in corporate America because you had the temerity to raise your hand in a board meeting when the subject of running the company came up, and you deluded yourself somehow into thinking that happenstance was a mandate of some sort that simply didn’t exist.
That “Accidental Tourist of a CEO” moniker? You earned it and everyone knew it. You’re just lucky that GM’s board was so singularly incompetent, because if a boardroom coup could have been properly mounted, you would have been toast and you know it. You had only a handful of supporters and even fewer defenders. The rest? You misconstrued those smiles as meaning people actually liked you. No, Dan, they loathed you, and they did what they had to do to get by, which meant marking their desk calendars daily with big a red “X” praying that this would be the day that you would finally leave.
You were a walking-talking embarrassment from the get-go, simply a ridiculous spectacle fueled by a maniacal, runaway ego that knows no bounds, a Captain Queeg for a new age, couching everything in juvenile, bombastic, militaristic banter that had Navy people writing me embarrassed that you were dragging your naval background into the proceedings.
You are the quintessential definition of a carpetbagger. You had no affinity for the business or the people who worked in it whatsoever. You dismissed this industry as a backwater embarrassment and you were just biding your time until you could find something better, hoping there was a huge payday at the end. Instead, you made your escape back to Private Equity before the shit hit the fan. Nicely done.
“Terrible person”? That moniker happens to fits you to a “T”, Akerson.
Now, please do us all a favor and shut up. (“THE UNCTUOUS PRICK RETURNS FOR ONE LAST HURRAH.” – July 30, 2014)
… Ford Motor Co. …
When you live around here, it’s not uncommon to hear people talk about “working at Ford’s.” You’ll never hear that when people discuss working at the other car companies, and that is because “working at Ford’s” means working directly or indirectly for the Ford family, who still retain control and very much a vibrant interest in the family business, which, lest we forget, is one of the most important industrial legacies in America and part of the very fabric of this nation.
In the global automobile business as it is defined today the Ford Motor Company remains a unique operation, a family-owned and run business that stands out among the faceless corporate entities that make up the rest. Yes, there are family legacies at some of the other car companies around the world, but Ford is different and will always be different.
And that is because the Ford family cares. They care about the company’s role in providing for so many families in the community, they care about the family’s historical legacy, and they care that the Ford Motor Company continues to deliver a kaleidoscope of effective transportation choices for people all around the world.
And the fact that the family does care has endeared the Ford Motor Company to people around here in a way that the other car companies in town never will.
The members of the Ford family work in and around the company in various capacities, too, with William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman, the most visible. It is simply extraordinary that the family has remained engaged and involved in the company for 110 years, and that’s due to the fact that they have never slacked off or “phoned it in” but instead have kept the flame and the family legacy alive for generations to come.
The passing of William Clay Ford does mark the end of an era, as he was the last living connection to the very beginnings of the automobile business.
But it’s also a reaffirmation of a most remarkable legacy, one that William Clay Ford Jr. and the other members of the Ford family will now proudly carry on. (“A MOST REMARKABLE LEGACY.” – March 10, 2014)
… the apparently crazy world of automotive PR:
PR brawlers, really? It may be surprising to some who are new to the whole Public Relations game, but the inner workings of big-league PR are usually in direct contrast to the rigidly controlled, politically correct images that PR handlers so carefully craft for their CEO charges.
Behind the scenes it’s a back-alley brawl stopping just short – but not always, I might add – from fisticuffs. Depending on the day, PR handlers in the car biz fight with journalists, editors, TV news show producers, other PR handlers from rival car companies, professional company irritants, pitchfork-wielding anti-car safety advocates and environmental groups, and an assortment of “vermin” – as they see it – who come out of the woodwork to threaten their boss, or the company, or both.
The modern PR handler’s array of weaponry includes scathing email diatribes and verbal threats, political maneuvers and story plants carried out through mainstream and social media platforms, and good old-fashioned finger jabs to the chest delivered in person, just to name a few. (“SHARP TONGUES AND SHARPER ELBOWS, THE ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE WORLD OF MODERN PR LIVE AND IN COLOR.” – October 22, 2014)
… and the industry in general:
There aren’t? You gotta be frickin’ kiddin’ me! I caught a lot of car companies chasing their tails at the New York Auto Show, ignoring the two most enduring tenets of the business, which are:1. It’s about The Product. It always has been and it always will be too.
2. Design is still the Ultimate Initial Product Differentiator. If you don’t have it, you can’t hide it. And if, as a manufacturer, you go all vanilla hoping to offend the fewest people, you’ll probably end up attracting the fewest people as well.
And if there’s a third, it’s this: There are no Magic Beans to be found in this business.
Instead it’s about designing, engineering and building fundamental product goodness and having the focused consistency not to waver from that mission.
It’s about creating products that are emotionally compelling to look at, fun to drive and rewarding to own.
And it’s about adhering to the core competencies of the brand. In other words, whatever you’re good at and whatever your reputation is based upon, you better deliver on that promise. Anything less and you will get lost in the shuffle, or just get lost, period.And of course it’s about not veering into niches or segments that you don’t belong in, no matter how enticing they are.
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Even with renewed demand from a global economic resurgence, energy prices continue to fall. The U.S. has suddenly become the world’s largest combined producer of oil and natural gas.
That fact — along with a desire to weaken hostile Iran and Russia — has prompted the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms to keep pumping oil even as the price falls. In their game of petro-chicken, the desperate sheiks hope that either their poorer enemies will run out of cash or that fracking in the U.S. will become unprofitable and cease.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about “peak oil” — the catchphrase of the new millennium.
The world in general, and the United States in particular, supposedly had already burned more oil than was left under the Earth. Under President Barack Obama, gasoline prices had soared. When he entered office in January 2009, gas prices averaged around $1.60 per gallon. Four years later, by spring of 2013, gas prices had climbed beyond $3.50 a gallon.
The Obama administration never much worried about high energy costs. During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised that “under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Shutting down coal plants and using higher-priced but cleaner natural gas would pave the way for an even pricier mandated wind and solar generation.
In the vice-presidential debates of 2008, Joe Biden mocked Sarah Palin for the supposedly mindless campaign mantra of “Drill, baby, drill.” Biden intoned that “it will take ten years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to be drilled.”
The energy secretary-designate, the professorial Steven Chu, in 2008 had unwisely voiced a widely held but wisely unspoken progressive belief that “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” — or about $9 a gallon.
Just two years ago, when up for reelection, Obama reminded Americans, “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.”
Obama ridiculed the Republican idea of lowering gas to $2 a gallon through new oil-recovery techniques. “They’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas,” Obama mocked. “I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling.”
Such easy rhetoric was backed by action — or lack of it. The Keystone XL pipeline was put on permanent hold. New fracking leases on federal lands were postponed. Huge areas of oil- and gas-rich federal lands were put off limits. Some blue states stopped fracking. Money poured into solar schemes like Solyndra.
Decreased use of expensive energy was deemed desirable. Cash-strapped commuters would be forced to drive less, thereby advancing the noble cause of curbing supposed man-made global warming. Federal subsidies flowed for high-speed rail. Wind, solar, and other alternate energies could at last become competitive. Cap-and-trade legislation looked as if it might sail through Congress.
Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the new age of sky-high oil prices proved an economic disaster. The natural cycle of recovery never quite followed the end of the recession in mid 2009, as U.S. budget and trade deficits soared.
Abroad, all the wrong countries were empowered as never before.
The late Hugo Chávez used his oil windfall in Venezuela to subsidize subversion throughout Latin America. Petrodollar-rich Russian president Vladimir Putin charted a confident anti-American foreign policy.
Iran used its growing riches to step up progress toward producing a nuclear bomb while upping subsidies to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.
Then, finally, oil and gas prices plunged owing to the “drill, baby, drill,” can-do attitude of the private sector. Americans should thank the U.S. oilman — from the drillers in the field to the engineers behind the scenes — who did the impossible. They vastly increased the supply of what was supposedly a permanently declining resource, and thereby helped to crash prices.
Oilmen, not the government, returned hundreds of billions of dollars to American consumers. They, not Ivy League experts and Wall Street grandees, kick-started the economy where federal subsidies had failed to. They, not the policies of the Obama administration or the rhetoric of Secretary of State John Kerry, weakened our enemies.
Almost everything Obama tried for six years in an effort to rev the economy — from near-zero interest rates and $1 trillion annual budget deficits to Obamacare and vast increases in entitlements — has failed. His foreign-policy stances of resets and leading from behind led to chaos and emboldened enemies.
Yet the United States economy is slowly recovering with cheap energy. Consumers have more money. Industries are returning to U.S. soil.
Abroad, spendthrift oil producers such as hostile Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are nearly broke. Friendly rivals such as Japan and the European Union can’t compete with the U.S. energy edge.
What Obama once ridiculed is now saving him from himself — after he had championed policies that nearly destroyed him.
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Today’s first song is posted in honor of the first FM signal heard by the Federal Communications Commission today in 1940:
Today in 1968, Jimi Hendrix was jailed for one day in Stockholm, Sweden, for destroying the contents of his hotel room.
The culprit? Not marijuana or some other controlled substance. Alcohol.
Today in 1973, Bruce Springsteen released his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” It sold all of 25,000 copies in its first year.
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The number one single today in 1959:
Today in 1970, the Who’s Keith Moon was trying to escape from a gang of skinheads when he accidentally hit and killed chauffeur Neil Boland.
The problem was Moon’s attempt at escape. He had never passed his driver’s license test.
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The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1957:
Today in 1964, NBC-TV’s Tonight show showed the first U.S. video of the Beatles:
Today in 1967, Beach Boy Carl Wilson got his draft notice, and declared he was a conscientious objector.
Today in 1969, Jimi Hendrix appeared on BBC’s Lulu show, and demonstrated the perils of live TV:
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Who knew Barry Alvarez had dance moves? (If that’s what those are.)
But who can blame the Badgers for their enthusiasm after their unexpected 34-31 overtime Outback Bowl win over Auburn Thursday? (The dance moves followed Alvarez’s getting the ice-water bath at the end of his ESPN2 postgame interview.)
You’ve read or heard the two phrases “It’s better to be lucky than good” and “people make their own luck.” The Badgers were the beneficiaries of one of those in being able to overcome Joel Stave’s three interceptions and, other than Stave’s win-or-die fourth-down completion on their last drive of regulation, underwhelming play-calling and execution on their last two drives of the game.
One of my Theories of Football is that head coaches who come from the defensive side (that is, former defensive coordinators or defensive position coaches) are more conservative in a football sense than coaches that come from the offensive side. That might explain the Badgers’ try-not-to-lose approach after Stave’s first-down pass and in the overtime, though it seemed to me that the Badgers called too many passes and demonstrated poor clock management at the end of regulation.
Apparently Alvarez doesn’t see it that way, based on Jeff Potrykus‘ reporting:
Three times Alvarez decided to roll the dice on fourth down and all three times the Badgers converted in their 34-31 overtime victory over Auburn on Thursday in the Outback Bowl.
In chronological order:
■Corey Clement gained 2 yards on fourth and 1 from the Auburn 40 in the second quarter with UW trailing, 14-7.
That conversion turned out to be fruitless, however, because quarterback Joel Stave threw his second of three interceptions.
■Melvin Gordon ripped off a 53-yard touchdown run on fourth and 1 from the UW 47 with the Badgers trailing, 17-14, late in the third quarter.
■ With 56 seconds left in regulation, UW faced fourth and 5 from the Auburn 33. With the Badgers trailing, 31-28, Alvarez had the choice of rolling the dice one more time or letting freshman Rafael Gaglianone, who had made his last 13 field-goal attempts, try a 50-yard attempt.
Alvarez, who saw UW convert 11 of 15 fourth-down chances entering Thursday, gambled.
“It was a tough kick,” Alvarez said. “Quite frankly, I wanted to go for the win.
“We’re playing with a guard (Kyle Costigan) who’s got a leg he is dragging for an entire half. I didn’t know how much longer he would go.
“I just didn’t want to take a chance with a kick and go into overtime when we had a chance. If we can get a first down we can go in and have a shot to win and we had a shot.”
Stave hit tight end Sam Arneson for a 7-yard gain to the 26 keep the drive alive.
What was Arneson’s reaction when the decision was made to eschew the field-goal attempt and go for the first down?
“If we don’t get it,” Arneson said smiling “it’s a tough way to go. But it’s the confidence this team had today.”
If you had the steamroller that is UW’s rushing offense, why would you not go for it on fourth and up to 4 yards? Particularly on Thursday, when the number of times Auburn’s rushing defense stopped UW was few.
Regardless of that, UW’s play-calling issues were not as bad as Auburn’s, which proved fatal in the overtime, reports Joel A. Erickson:
A high-flying offense held in check by its own mistakes, a defense unable to slow down an elite opponent and a baffling set of plays in overtime led to Daniel Carlson‘s missed field goal bouncing off the post and handing the Tigers a 34-31 loss at the hands of Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl. …
Marshall’s arm, as it has more than a few times this season, got a struggling Auburn running game untracked — he finished 15-of-22 for 217 yards and two scores — and when Cameron Artis-Payne powered over the goal line for the go-ahead score with 2:55 left, the Tigers had a 31-28 lead.
But a defense already in the middle of transition — a defense that cost coordinator Ellis Johnson his job and gave way to Will Muschamp — couldn’t seal the win, instead making a couple of mistakes that have become all too characteristic for Auburn this season: a 15-yard penalty by Frost on a late hit, and a 7-yard completion from Stave to tight end Sam Arneson on 4th-and-5. …
Auburn chose to put its struggling defense on the field first in overtime.
And the Tigers came up with a stop, forcing another Gaglianone field goal to give Wisconsin a 34-31 lead and Auburn a chance to win the game with a touchdown.
On the sideline, the Tigers’ offense was all thinking the same thing.
“I expected us to score,” Ricardo Louis said. “We just couldn’t finish.”
Auburn’s offense, which had piled up 452 yards to that point and repeatedly dented Wisconsin’s defense with the pass, instead kept it conservative.
A run to Artis-Payne, who finished with 128 yards, went for a 2-yard loss. A tunnel screen to Coates picked up nothing.
And on 3rd-and-12, Malzahn ordered a questionable trick play, a double pass from Uzomah to Marshall that went for a 1-yard loss, setting up Carlson’s missed 45-yard field goal.
“The thought process is, we were thinking we’d possibly get man,” [coach Gus] Malzahn said. “We were trying to win the game, we were setting it up earlier, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”
One thing that can be said today is that the Big Ten has unified the state of Alabama by ending their two teams’ seasons. The one that gets more national notice, of course, is Alabama’s 42-35 national semifinal loss to Ohio State, which Al.com calls “humiliating.”
In fact, if you believe Ohio State coach Urban Meyer and Kevin Scarbinsky, the Outback Bowl win led to the Sugar Bowl win:
How do you convince your players that they can beat Alabama when most analysts and experts have told them they can’t?
You watch a Big Ten team you dominated beat an SEC team that made Alabama sweat.
Urban Meyer said Ohio State’s 42-35 victory over Alabama in the playoff semifinal Thursday night was made possible, in part, by Wisconsin’s 34-31 overtime win over Auburn in the Outback Bowl earlier in the day.
“There’s a perception out there” that Ohio State isn’t as good as Alabama, Meyer said. “I’ll tell you when I think the tide turned a little bit – when Wisconsin beat Auburn. Everybody on our team knew that. I made sure they knew that.”
Meyer said Ohio State was at its pregame meal when Wisconsin finished off Auburn. He said he mentioned it to his players then and again during a highlight video they watched before getting on the buses to head to the Superdome.
Ohio State had beaten Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship Game. Auburn had rolled up a ton of yards and points in a 55-44 loss to Alabama in the Iron Bowl.
If Wisconsin could beat Auburn, why couldn’t Ohio State beat Alabama?
Or, put another way by Facebook:
So the Paul Chryst era begins on a good note. Chryst’s challenge will be to get better quarterback play, whether from Stave, Bart Houston, D.J. Gillins or someone not currently on the roster. Chryst’s previous work with Scott Tolzein and Russell Wilson should make one optimistic. Finding better receivers will be helpful too.
Finally, if you’re near an Outback Steakhouse today, run in and get your free coconut shrimp, courtesy of the Badgers.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 