• Why Aaron Rodgers makes the money he makes

    October 13, 2014
    Packers

    SB Nation chronicles Sunday’s next-to-last Packer play …

    … followed, with five seconds left …

    … by the game-winning touchdown.

    As a friend (who inexplicably is a Dolphins fan) said, a real quarterback makes all the difference.

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  • Excess pre-election optimism

    October 13, 2014
    Uncategorized

    Timothy P. Carney must see something in the Wisconsin electoral scene that Wisconsinites don’t:

    Republican Gov. Scott Walker is under investigation, and he is reviled by the largest political force in his state. But you’d never guess that by watching him amble through the stalls at a central Wisconsin dairy farm. …

    You wouldn’t guess from his demeanor how hated he is. County prosecutors are still investigating him. And the government employee unions — which failed to block his legislation, failed to recall him, and failed to take back the state legislature — still have it in for him.

    “Walker speaks with a forked tongue,” Fernando Stokes tells me. Stokes was a state prison guard for 32 years and is now retired. Waiting for his takeout order at Milwaukee’s Water Street Brewery, Stokes couldn’t even name Walker’s opponent. That she was running against Walker was enough for him.

    Ron, a bartender at Buck Bradley’s in Milwaukee for more than 20 years, is backing Walker again. He understands the unions’ anger: “If someone yanked away your gravy train, would you be happy?” Ron asks with a laugh.

    One state employee, a female parole officer, denied that the free health care and generous pension was a gravy train — state workers had taken lower pay in the past in exchange for those benefits. The benefits drew her into the state workforce when she was in her 40s. “I saw the health care was free, and I thought that was a pretty sweet deal,” the woman tells me at the Capital Tap Haus in Madison. “I had been in the private sector and I felt like half my paycheck was going to insurance.”

    That’s exactly what grates on many Wisconsin voters, and it’s why Walker’s support has remained strong in a state that has backed Democrats for U.S. Senate and president in 15 of 16 races going back to 1988.

    “They don’t like their safety blanket being taken away,” Chuck Hounsell says of the state employees. Hounsell drives a truck, delivering diesel to farms — including Ruedinger — in the Fond du Lac area. “It’s a safety blanket the rest of us don’t have. We’re out there slogging it out on our own.”

    While the anger of the state employees’ union isn’t fading, Walker’s worries are. The two recent polls that have shown Burke leading the race come from the least reliable firms polling the state. We Ask America showed Burke leading 48 percent to 44 percent a month ago, but that was an automated poll, which significantly reduces its reliability. Burke also led 50 to 45 in a Gravis Marketing poll released Sept. 30. That poll hit 908 voters, but it didn’t screen for likely voters — it was a poll of registered voters. Polls of registered voters are less predictive, and they generally tilt toward Democrats.

    Weed out the weaker polls, and here’s the picture: Mary Burke had a tiny lead, within the margin of error, in late August. Since the campaign season began in earnest, she has hovered around 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has steadily climbed, hitting the crucial 50 percent mark in the latest Marquette University poll of 585 likely voters conducted Sept. 25 through 28.

    Marquette’s poll has become the gold standard of Wisconsin polling, outperforming others in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Follow the trend of the Marquette poll and it points to a Walker win. In Marquette’s five polls of registered voters, Burke climbed from 45 percent to 49 percent in late August but she dropped in each of the last two polls and now she’s back down to 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has climbed steadily from 46 percent in mid-July to 50 percent in late September.

    Here’s another trend to follow: Walker’s ballot box successes keep growing. Walker won the 2010 election by 5.8 points. In the 2012 recall, he won by 6.8 points. In the 2012 state legislative races, Walker’s party took back the state Senate and expanded its majority in the state House of Representatives.

    Walker’s people downplay his big recall win, pointing out that many people who weren’t necessarily Walker fans voted for him in 2012 because they were put off by the impetuousness of a midterm recall effort.

    But the trend lines point in one direction: Barring a serious misstep, Walker won’t merely win in November, he will win bigger than he has won before.

    I’m still predicting Walker will win with 53 percent of the vote. That is a win, not a landslide, and it probably will make people question whether someone who doesn’t win landslides in his own state can credibly run for president.

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  • Presty the DJ for Oct. 13

    October 13, 2014
    Music

    The number one British album today in 1973 was the Rolling Stones’ “Goats Head Soup,” despite (or perhaps because of) the BBC’s ban of one of its songs, “Star Star”:

    Who shares a birthday with my brother (who celebrated his sixth birthday, on a Friday the 13th, by getting chicken pox from me)? Start with Paul Simon:

    Robert Lamm plays keyboards — or more accurately, the keytar — for Chicago:

    Sammy Hagar:

    Craig McGregor of Foghat:

    John Ford Coley, formerly a duet with England Dan Seals:

    Rob Marche played guitar for the Jo Boxers, who …

    One death of note: Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night CBS-TV show showed off rock and roll (plus Topo Gigio and Senor Wences) to millions, died today in 1974:

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  • Presty the DJ for Oct. 12

    October 12, 2014
    Music

    We begin with an entry from the It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Dept.: Today in 1956, Chrysler Corp. launched its 1957 car lineup with a new option: a record player. The record player didn’t play albums or 45s, however; it played only seven-inch discs at 16⅔ rpm. Chrysler sold them until 1961.

    Today in 1957, Little Richard was on an Australian tour when he publicly renounced rock and roll and embraced religion and announced he was going to record Gospel music from now on. The conversion was the result of his praying during a flight when one of the plane’s engines caught fire.

    Little Richard returned to rock and roll five years later.

    The number one song today in 1963:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Oct. 11

    October 11, 2014
    Music

    Britain’s number one song today in 1961:

    The number one song today in 1975 (and I remember when it was number one) was credited to Neil Sedaka, with a big assist to Elton John:

    The number one album today in 1980 was the Police’s “Zenyattà Mondatta”:

    (more…)

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  • The Cleveland/L.A./St. Louis/L.A. Rams

    October 10, 2014
    Sports

    As part of the yearly rotation of non-division opponents, the Packers will host the Rams next season.

    The Los Angeles Rams, that is, if this passed-on report from the Epoch Times is correct:

    The St. Louis Rams have already made the decision to relocate to Los Angeles, and will make the official announcement after the Super Bowl, according to a new report.

    “There’s a strong belief, people that are in–that I believe are in the know–multiple people, have told me that the decision has already been made and that the team is moving,” one of the hosts of 101 ESPN said in a recent show.

    “Somebody told you that, really?” sharply questioned another.

    “Yes.”

    Jason La Confora of CBS Sports said recently that Rams owner Stan Kroenke is expected to make the announcement on February 15, 2015.

    Kroenke stoked speculation in January by buying a 60-acre tract of land in Inglewood, California.

    “The land is located between the recently renovated Forum and the Hollywood Park racetrack, which was shut down in December, and could potentially serve as the home of a future NFL stadium,” ESPN said.

    “Since the Raiders and Rams left Southern California after the 1994 season, Los Angeles has been subjected to enough meaningless artist renderings to fill a museum and more empty promises to encompass two decades worth of failed campaign speeches. There is, however, a big difference if Kroenke truly does have an interest in moving the Rams out of St. Louis and back to Los Angeles. He owns the Rams and now owns enough land in Los Angeles to build a stadium.”

    “Every indication that you get, or everything that is not said by Stan Kroenke would lead you to believe that he wants to build a stadium and have a team there,” one of the ESPN Radio hosts said this week.

    “This is a guy that lives in L.A., and tried to buy the Dodgers.”

    Pro Football Talk started this by reporting earlier this week:

    As the 20th anniversary of the NFL’s departure from Los Angeles, the NFL seems closer than ever to returning. Per a league source, the current plan is that the NFL will send one or two teams back to Los Angeles within the next 12 to 24 months.

    The timeline would include a team announcing its intention to move in the 2015 or 2016 offseason, with arrangements to play at the Rose Bowl or the L.A. Coliseum pending the construction of a new stadium. Possible sites for a venue in L.A. include the AEG project at L.A. Live in downtown, the land purchased recently by Rams owner Stan Kroenke at Hollywood Park, Chavez Ravine, and a couple of locations that have not yet been publicly disclosed.  Ed Roski’s shovel-ready site at City of Industry is not regarded as a viable destination.

    Currently, the universe of teams that may relocate consists of three:  the Rams, Raiders, and Chargers. The Raiders’ current lease expires after the 2014 season.  The Rams can exit without penalty after each season.  The Chargers can leave by paying a relocation fee that shrinks every year.

    The Rams, who most people don’t know actually started in Cleveland …

    … moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles in 1946, playing at the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum …

    … before moving to Anaheim Stadium in 1980 …

    … and then St. Louis in 1995:

    The Raiders started in Oakland …

    … moved to Los Angeles (the Coliseum) in 1982 …

    … then moved back to Oakland in 1995:

    The Chargers played their first season in Los Angeles before moving down Interstate 5 to San Diego.

    Ever since the Rams and Raiders departed L.A. after the 1994 season, NFL-back-to-L.A. rumors have been as prevalent as car magazines’ stories about the next new Chevy Corvette. It is rather ironic that the rumors about the Rams’ and/or Raiders’ and/or Chargers’ moving (back) to L.A. involves two franchises that both moved to and from L.A. It’s also a bit ironic that two of the most recent teams to have moved (the last was the Houston Oilers, which became the Tennessee Titans in 1997, preceded one year earlier by the first Cleveland Browns, which became the Baltimore Ravens) are looking to move back.

    Usually, teams that move move because of a combination of on-the-field lack of success and bad stadium situations, with one often affecting the other. (Which is kind of like being excited about buying a car that is a lemon.) The Rams play in the Edward Jones Dome, which opened in 1995. By 2012, the stadium was ranked the seventh worst U.S. sports stadium by Time magazine.

    The Raiders are 0–4 and just fired their coach, and the Rams are 1–3 and in last place in the NFC West. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, the Chargers are 4–1. Another team often mentioned in moving discussions, the Jacksonville Jaguars, are 0–4, but their stadium, the former Gator Bowl, just had $63 million in renovation work. The Buffalo Bills were recently sold to the owners of the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres, so they’re probably not going anywhere. (And the Bills are also 3–2 and tied for first in the AFC East.)

    Both the Raiders and Chargers are supposedly working on stadium deals where they are now. That makes the Rams’ moving back to L.A. more logical, given the additional fact that since the Rams are in the NFC West, they could move back to L.A. without reconfiguring divisions. The Raiders’ situation is also intertwined with the Oakland Athletics, who share the former Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum with the Raiders in the only remaining baseball/football stadium. (The A’s want out too.)

    As for the Chargers, U~T San Diego is worried:

    For much of the 12 years the Chargers have been posturing and pestering for a new stadium in San Diego, they were the only team in the NFL with the ability to get out of their current lease with minimal or no penalty. Not so any more.

    The St. Louis Rams recently won their freedom and can leave any time, and the Raiders are free to abandon Oakland after this season. Both teams, as do the Chargers, maintain their current stadium situations are unsustainable.

    This is not the good news you might think it is. It doesn’t push the Chargers out of the L.A. scene.

    What it might actually do is force the Chargers to make a decision — because they can’t let another team (or teams) beat them to Los Angeles.

    The Chargers can’t have another NFL team in Southern California – not without getting a new stadium in San Diego.

    The team says that 30 percent of its revenue is generated from Los Angeles and Orange County. To have a team in that region siphon that business would, Chargers officials have said several times, have a momentously adverse affect on their bottom line.

    (A little refresher: The Chargers are one of a handful of NFL teams whose primary local revenue source is ticket sales. A new stadium would provide a lucrative naming rights deal, which the Chargers do not have now, as well as enhanced signage, among other revenue-generating features.)

    If progress toward a new stadium remains stalled – the mayor’s dinner with Chargers President Dean Spanos and lunch with U-T columnist Nick Canepa and a few perfunctory meetings between advisers aside – the Chargers will be cornered if the Rams and Raiders appear headed back to Southern California.

    Their two choices will be staking their claim to the region in the form of litigation trying to block any teams from moving to L.A. or moving to L.A. themselves.

    So whatever anyone thinks about how L.A. will embrace an NFL team after 20 years or its decades-long inability to get a stadium built, those in the league know there will one day, sooner than later, be at least one team in the nation’s second-largest market.

    After reading this, you are bound to ask: Well, if L.A. is such a great market, why isn’t a team there now? The Rams and the Raiders left the same season for similar reasons — the Rams got a sweetheart stadium deal in St. Louis, and the Raiders got a deal to move out of the L.A. Coliseum, which was old, in a bad neighborhood, and lacking in 1990s stadium amenities. Twenty years later, the L.A. Coliseum remains old, in a bad neighborhood, and lacking in 2010s stadium amenities, but the O.co Coliseum is similarly old and lacking in amenities. (Unless you consider sewer backups to be a stadium amenity.)

    You can also gue$$ what el$e i$ motivating the new $tadium pu$h, both from the NFL’s perspective and the perspective of owners of teams that might move to L.A. The NFL would love to have Super Bowls back in the SouthLAnd, but that is unlikely without a team and without a better stadium than the Coliseum (which hosted Super Bowls I and VII) or the Rose Bowl.

    This is also potentially tied to the NFL’s TV blackout policy. Because of (the importance varies) the cavernous size of the Coliseum, the lack of quality of the Raiders and Rams, and the fact there are so many other things to do, L.A. team games have often been blacked out in L.A. because the stadiums haven’t been sold out. (The situation didn’t change back in Oakland either; the Raiders last season reduced their stadium capacity to avoid blackouts. That might have to do with the fact that through 2011, the Raiders had had more blackouts than locally broadcast games.)

    No one is likely to announce a move during the season, because that would result in ugly situations in their soon-to-be-vacated home stadiums, at least until after the teams’ last home games. Watch what happens, though, after Dec. 21, because, interestingly, the Rams’, Raiders’ and Chargers’ last games of this season are on the road. The Chargers’ last two games are on the road, in fact, which could give them a one-week jump start, though whether they would use it might depend on whether or not they remain in playoff contention.

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  • “Hey, hey! What’s this I see? I thought this was a party! LET’S DANCE!”

    October 10, 2014
    Culture

    The prudes in Neenah have banned dancing.

    Specifically, Mayor Dean Kaufert, reported WLUK-TV earlier this week:

    You can see the signs all over Neenah: on lawns, at gas stations, local businesses…they say “Neenah Bans Dancing.”

    “I don’t know what it’s all about. They’ve been there for about a week and I didn’t know what it was!” exclaimed Neenah resident Wayne Malchow.

    “Neenah bans dancing?! No, Neenah’s pretty progressive, right?” asked resident Seamus Wedge.

    “I have no idea what’s going on. I heard it’s coming from the mayor?” asked Neenah High School senior Lexie Zehner.

    Indeed it is.

    “We know the evils and the hazards of young people and dancing!” said Neenah Mayor Dean Kaufert.

    Kaufert told FOX 11 he plans to issue a proclamation Wednesday banning all dancing in Neenah. …

    “I don’t think it’s fair to make us not be able to express ourselves in this art form,” said Zehner.

    Wait! There’s more!

    “One of the parents came up with the idea to try and create a buzz,” said Kaufert, revealing the signs and the proclamation are a cheeky way of marketing Footloose for the high school.

    “If this creates a buzz and creates interest in it and puts more people in the seats, it’s gonna be well worth it,” Kaufert explained.

    And not to fear, Kaufert told us if enough people attend the play, “we will consider lifting the ban and allowing dancing back in Neenah,” he said, laughing.

    Uproxx reports:

    Enough dumb stuff happens on a daily basis, especially in politics, that it’s not unreasonable to believe that a small town’s mayor could be a big enough A-hole to propose a ban on dancing. After all, the uptight adults of the movie Footloose had things going pretty well in Bomont until that no-good Ren McCormack showed up and got all of the girls pregnant with his big city dance moves. So when Dean Kaufert, the new mayor of Neenah, Wisconsin, started making news yesterday over his proposal to ban dancing in that town that I’ve never heard of, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could have been yet another seriously insane old doofus trying to ruin the fun for everyone.

    Instead, it turns out that he’s a pretty cool dude just trying to rile up some viral support for the teens of Neenah High School. …

    Sure, it’s all fun and laughs right now, but wait until the school’s successful performance turns the whole town into one big episode of Glee. Be careful with what you wish for, Mayor Kaufert.

    Rev. Shaw Moore was unavailable for comment.

     

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  • Presty the DJ for Oct. 10

    October 10, 2014
    Music

    Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number one song today in 1960:

    The number two single today in 1970 was originally written for a bank commercial:

    Britain’s number one album today in 1970 was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”:

    (more…)

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  • T-minus four weeks minus one day

    October 9, 2014
    Wisconsin politics

    The gubernatorial election is four weeks from yesterday.

    It’s obvious what voters are voting for if they vote for Scott Walker. It’s also obvious what voters are voting for if they vote for Mary Burke — the not-Scott Walker.

    And that’s about all you can say about Burke, the Club for Growth claims:

    Among the more effective weapons available to any shifty office-seeker is the widespread perception that the political arts are steeped in arcane knowledge incomprehensible to voters.  Conversely, a shifty office-seeker’s nightmare is widespread realization that he (or she) is really playing a fairly simple game. We resist believing the latter: If we’re going to be fleeced, we naturally hope it will be by someone who knows more than we do.
    But sometimes the only choice is to face facts and admit the office-seeker is plying a dreary and pedestrian trade, and perhaps not even proficiently. There’s no other explanation for the incredible lifespan—now nearing three weeks—of the Mary Burke plagiarism scandal.

    We like our initial interpretation better all the time. The serial plagiarism is revealing far beyond Burke’s willingness to lift economic development ideas; it suggests we are at risk of being governed by a nonentity.

    Appearing Sunday on Madison television, she struggled to identify a single component of her jobs plan that was a certifiable Burke original, then picked one that promptly tuned out to have been plagiarized.

    And recall, she immediately fired the consultant responsible for the plan when the plagiarism story broke, but retains the plan and produced a defiant television ad saying so. If she received a contribution from someone who later turned out to be a bank robber, would she keep the money?

    We argued a week ago that Burke seems strangely indifferent to the realities of her campaign, begging the question whether she’s really interested in governing. Come the debates, someone should ask whether she actually wants to be governor.

    It would be interesting to hear if they ever reach the follow-up question: “Why?”

    “Why” is obvious — she’s not Scott Walker.

    But what would happen in Wisconsin if Burke were elected?

    There is no way Republicans will not retain the state Assembly after the Nov. 4 election. It looks decreasingly likely that Democrats will even be able to take the state Senate, in which Republicans have a 17-15 majority, with one vacancy.

    The word that comes to mind, of course, is “gridlock.” Mike Nichols examines the potential Gov. Burke:

    The elephant in the room is the elephants in the room — the big room with the white columns, stuffed eagle and oak desks that is known as the Assembly Chamber.

    There are 60 Republicans in the Assembly and only 39 Democrats. Robin Vos, the Republican Assembly speaker, thinks Republicans, if anything, might actually pick up a few seats this November. And even if they don’t, they will retain an enormous majority.

    The GOP also currently controls the Senate, though by a much slimmer 17-15 margin with one vacancy — the southeastern Wisconsin seat Neal Kedzie resigned in June to take over the Motor Carrier’s Association. Democrats will not pick up Kedzie’s solidly Republican seat, and they on are track to lose the redistricted seat currently held by Democratic State Sen. John Lehman, the one-time Racine teacher who could end up as Burke’s lieutenant governor. That means Democrats will need to pick up a total of three other seats to take over the 33-seat chamber.

    It’s not altogether impossible. Democrats hope to capture seats held by outgoing Sens. Mike Ellis, Dale Schultz and Joe Leibham. But it’s extremely unlikely, and even if Burke does win and Democrats prevail in the senate, the fact is she will still have to deal with a very conservative Assembly.Mary Burke’s hopes won’t rest with allies in the Legislature. They will, at least initially, rest with her veto pen. …

    “I think we are unique in the scope of the governor’s authority,” says Fred Wade, a Madison attorney who has long criticized the way Wisconsin governors can use the partial-veto to “create legislation that the Legislature did not approve.”

    Like other governors, Wisconsin’s chief executive has the ability to veto legislation in toto. But he — or she — also has the ability to partially veto appropriations.

    Governors dating to Pat Lucey in the 1970s have used and abused this so-called “partial veto.” Jim Doyle, for instance, transferred more than $400 million from the transportation fund to schools by almost comically crossing out words and stitching together parts of different sentences.

    That’s no longer possible. Voters altered the state constitution and eliminated the so-called “Vanna White” and “Frankenstein” vetoes that once allowed governors to delete letters in words or crudely stitch together parts of different sentences. But, Wade says, governors can still cross words, digits, whole sentences and commas out of appropriations bills in ways that can entirely defy legislators’ intent.

    “For Mary Burke the temptation will be to do what Jim Doyle did,” says Wade. “Because he was stymied in the legislature, he used the power extensively to write legislation the Legislature did not approve but that reflected his priorities.”

    Republican legislators could limit Burke’s ability to do the same by excluding purely policy matters from the budget bill. And, Vos points out, governors are not able to “veto an appropriation higher.” But, he concedes, Burke, if so inclined, would be able to stop Republicans “from cutting taxes or cutting waste.”

    In the end, it would be virtually impossible to fireproof the budget bill to prevent the new governor from creatively tweaking it to suit her agenda. But chances are that any conflicts with Republicans in the budget would be over the power of the purse. …

    Burke has made it clear that she would try to repeal provisions of Act 10 that “crippled the political power of public-sector unions.” She has called Act 10’s implementation of annual union elections and ban on automatic dues collections “nothing more than heavy-handed attempts to punish labor unions” and has said she would work to repeal those provisions.

    Vos says he can’t see how she would accomplish that without control of the Legislature.
    “I believe that she does not have the ability to do very much on Act 10,” he says.

    Retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Cullen essentially agrees, telling Wisconsin Interest it is “highly unlikely” she could roll back Act 10.

    Joe Zepecki, communications director for the Burke campaign, says, “There is no silver-bullet strategy” on the issue.

    “It’s bringing people together and getting that done.” She would, he says, “turn down the volume a little in terms of the political back-and-forth.”

    Overall, Cullen thinks Burke would “govern somewhere near the middle.” Vos, for his part, says that if she wins, “she gets to reshape state government in a way that is much more liberal.” …

    What’s clear is that while Burke would have virtually no ability to push major policy initiatives without the acquiescence of Republican legislators, she could also stand in the way of Vos and fellow Republicans pursuing their own conservative agenda.

    Zepecki says Burke has no doubt that she can work with people like Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Should she win, there will certainly be much talk of bipartisanship.

    In the end, though, there wouldn’t just be a struggle for power between two political parties. There would be a broader struggle between branches of government. There are conservatives who feel too much power has already migrated from the legislative to the executive branch — and there will be an attempt to reclaim some ground.
    “We will end up having a Republican legislature that will pass all kinds of bills that Mary Burke will veto,” predicts Vos. He suggests it will become much harder to reform entitlements, for instance, or keep a lid on taxes and spending and regulation.

    Cullen lacks credibility on being “somewhere near the middle” given his role in the Fleeing Fourteen. Nothing Zepecki says should be believed, period.

    Gridlock is the most optimistic view of Burke as governor. At no point has Burke ever during this campaign uttered one word about her own party’s faults — that they totally screwed up state finances in the late 2000s, for instance. Burke has demonstrated zero ability to translate her supposed business experience to legislation and policy. When you advocate the loss of 120,000 jobs, your credibility on the economy will rightly be in question.

    You can certainly kiss tax cuts goodbye. Burke is apparently claiming that the Walker tax cuts were only $11 per month. How arrogant to claim that state government can spend your $132 better than you can, or, for a family of four, your $528. But hey, when you take two years off work and your daddy gets you a job in the family business, maybe money’s not a big deal for you.

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  • The deluded 20 percent

    October 9, 2014
    US politics

    Personal Liberty reports:

    New polling data suggest that anger at President Barack Obama and a growing distrust of big government could spell trouble for Democratic lawmakers heading into the 2014 midterm elections.

    A new Gallup poll reports that 32 percent of likely voters will head to the polls this fall to send a message of opposition to the president and his Democratic colleagues. Just 20 percent say that they will go to the polls to signal support.

    Opposition to the president is at a 16-year high. For comparison, opposition to the commander in chief is 13 points higher than during Bill Clinton’s sex scandal and 2 points higher than George Bush’s final year.

    Gallup reports:

    A majority of Republican registered voters, 58 percent, say they will be sending a message of opposition to Obama with their vote this fall. In contrast, 38 percent of Democratic voters say they will support the president. Rather than supporting Obama, most Democrats, 53 percent, say they will not be sending a message with their vote.

    Democrats are a bit less likely now (38 percent) than in 2010 (45 percent) to say they will be sending a message of support to Obama, while Republican opposition to the president is the same.

    Meanwhile, numbers from The Associated Press show that more than half of Americans feel that the government is too incompetent to handle economic and other problems facing the nation.

    Just 2 percent of respondents reported that they are “extremely confident” that Washington can fix the economy.

    When it comes to protecting Americans from terror threats, people on both sides of the political divide said they are losing faith.

    “Democrats tend to express more faith in the government’s ability to protect them than do Republicans,” the AP reported. “Yet even among Democrats, just 27 percent are confident the government can keep them safe from terrorist attacks. Fewer than 1 in 5 say so on each of the other issues, including climate change.”

    I saw this on Facebook with this added comment:

    Anger is something of an understatement. And it’s not reserved for 0bama; if you voted for him, I hope you end up unemployed, homeless, and on a 12 month 0bamunistCare waiting list with 6 months to live. No, I’m not wishing you ill, I’m wishing you what you voted for. The fact that the two are indistinguishable is far more a testament to your stupidity, ignorance, and irresponsibility at the polls than any malice on my part.

     

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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

The thoughts of a journalist/libertarian–conservative/Christian husband, father, Eagle Scout and aficionado of obscure rock music. Thoughts herein are only the author’s and not necessarily the opinions of his family, friends, neighbors, church members or past, present or future employers.

  • Steve
    • About, or, Who is this man?
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Adventures in ruralu0026nbsp;inkBack in June 2009, I was driving somewhere through a rural area. And for some reason, I had a flashback to two experiences in my career about that time of year many years ago. In 1988, eight days after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, I started work at the Grant County Herald Independent in Lancaster as a — well, the — reporter. Four years after that, on my 27th birthday, I purchased, with a business partner, the Tri-County Press in Cuba City, my first business venture. Both were experiences about which Wisconsin author Michael Perry might write. I thought about all this after reading a novel, The Deadline, written by a former newspaper editor and publisher. (Now who would write a novel about a weekly newspaper?) As a former newspaper owner, I picked at some of it — why finance a newspaper purchase through the bank if the seller is willing to finance it? Because the mean bank lender is a plot point! — and it is much more interesting than reality, but it is very well written, with a nicely twisting plot, and quite entertaining, again more so than reality. There is something about that first job out of college that makes you remember it perhaps more…
    • Adventures in radioI’ve been in the full-time work world half my life. For that same amount of time I’ve been broadcasting sports as a side interest, something I had wanted to since I started listening to games on radio and watching on TV, and then actually attending games. If you ask someone who’s worked in radio for some time about the late ’70s TV series “WKRP in Cincinnati,” most of them will tell you that, if anything, the series understated how wacky working in radio can be. Perhaps the funniest episode in the history of TV is the “WKRP” episode, based on a true story, about the fictional radio station’s Thanksgiving promotion — throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter under the mistaken belief that, in the words of WKRP owner Arthur Carlson, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST01bZJPuE0] I’ve never been involved in anything like that. I have announced games from the roofs of press boxes (once on a nice day, and once in 50-mph winds), from a Mississippi River bluff (more on that later), and from the front row of the second balcony of the University of Wisconsin Fieldhouse (great view, but not a place to go if…
    • “Good morning/afternoon/evening, ________ fans …”
    • My biggest storyEarlier this week, while looking for something else, I came upon some of my own work. (I’m going to write a blog someday called “Things I Found While Looking for Something Else.” This is not that blog.) The Grant County Sheriff’s Department, in the county where I used to live, has a tribute page to the two officers in county history who died in the line of duty. One is William Loud, a deputy marshal in Cassville, shot to death by two bank robbers in 1912. The other is Tom Reuter, a Grant County deputy sheriff who was shot to death at the end of his 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift March 18, 1990. Gregory Coulthard, then a 19-year-old farmhand, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and is serving a life sentence, with his first eligibility for parole on March 18, 2015, just 3½ years from now. I’ve written a lot over the years. I think this, from my first two years in the full-time journalism world, will go down as the story I remember the most. For journalists, big stories contain a paradox, which was pointed out in CBS-TV’s interview of Andy Rooney on his last “60 Minutes” Sunday. Morley Safer said something along the line…
  • Food and drink
    • The Roesch/Prestegard familyu0026nbsp;cookbookFrom the family cookbook(s) All the families I’m associated with love to eat, so it’s a good thing we enjoy cooking. The first out-of-my-house food memory I have is of my grandmother’s cooking for Christmas or other family occasions. According to my mother, my grandmother had a baked beans recipe that she would make for my mother. Unfortunately, the recipe seems to have  disappeared. Also unfortunately, my early days as a picky, though voluminous, eater meant I missed a lot of those recipes made from such wholesome ingredients as lard and meat fat. I particularly remember a couple of meals that involve my family. The day of Super Bowl XXXI, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and a group of their friends got together to share lots of food and cheer on the Packers to their first NFL title in 29 years. (After which Jannan and I drove to Lambeau Field in the snow,  but that’s another story.) Then, on Dec. 31, 1999, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and Jannan and I (along with Michael in utero) had a one-course-per-hour meal to appropriately end years beginning with the number 1. Unfortunately I can’t remember what we…
    • SkålI was the editor of Marketplace Magazine for 10 years. If I had to point to one thing that demonstrates improved quality of life since I came to Northeast Wisconsin in 1994, it would be … … the growth of breweries and  wineries in Northeast Wisconsin. The former of those two facts makes sense, given our heritage as a brewing state. The latter is less self-evident, since no one thinks of Wisconsin as having a good grape-growing climate. Some snobs claim that apple or cherry wines aren’t really wines at all. But one of the great facets of free enterprise is the opportunity to make your own choice of what food and drink to drink. (At least for now, though some wish to restrict our food and drink choices.) Wisconsin’s historically predominant ethnic group (and our family’s) is German. Our German ancestors did unfortunately bring large government and high taxes with them, but they also brought beer. Europeans brought wine with them, since they came from countries with poor-quality drinking water. Within 50 years of a wave of mid-19th-century German immigration, brewing had become the fifth largest industry in the U.S., according to Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. Beer and wine have…
  • Wheels
    • America’s sports carMy birthday in June dawned without a Chevrolet Corvette in front of my house. (The Corvette at the top of the page was featured at the 2007 Greater Milwaukee Auto Show. The copilot is my oldest son, Michael.) Which isn’t surprising. I have three young children, and I have a house with a one-car garage. (Then again, this would be more practical, though a blatant pluck-your-eyes-out violation of the Corvette ethos. Of course, so was this.) The reality is that I’m likely to be able to own a Corvette only if I get a visit from the Corvette Fairy, whose office is next door to the Easter Bunny. (I hope this isn’t foreshadowing: When I interviewed Dave Richter of Valley Corvette for a car enthusiast story in the late great Marketplace Magazine, he said that the most popular Corvette in most fans’ minds was a Corvette built during their days in high school. This would be a problem for me in that I graduated from high school in 1983, when no Corvette was built.) The Corvette is one of those cars whose existence may be difficult to understand within General Motors Corp. The Corvette is what is known as a “halo car,” a car that drives people into showrooms, even if…
    • Barges on fouru0026nbsp;wheelsI originally wrote this in September 2008.  At the Fox Cities Business Expo Tuesday, a Smart car was displayed at the United Way Fox Cities booth. I reported that I once owned a car into which trunk, I believe, the Smart could be placed, with the trunk lid shut. This is said car — a 1975 Chevrolet Caprice coupe (ours was dark red), whose doors are, I believe, longer than the entire Smart. The Caprice, built down Interstate 90 from us Madisonians in Janesville (a neighbor of ours who worked at the plant probably helped put it together) was the flagship of Chevy’s full-size fleet (which included the stripper Bel Air and middle-of-the-road Impala), featuring popular-for-the-time vinyl roofs, better sound insulation, an upgraded cloth interior, rear fender skirts and fancy Caprice badges. The Caprice was 18 feet 1 inch long and weighed 4,300 pounds. For comparison: The midsize Chevrolet of the ear was the Malibu, which was the same approximate size as the Caprice after its 1977 downsizing. The compact Chevrolet of the era was the Nova, which was 200 inches long — four inches longer than a current Cadillac STS. Wikipedia’s entry on the Caprice has this amusing sentence: “As fuel economy became a bigger priority among Americans…
    • Behind the wheel
    • Collecting only dust or rust
    • Coooooooooooupe!
    • Corvettes on the screen
    • The garage of misfit cars
    • 100 years (and one day) of our Chevrolets
    • They built Excitement, sort of, once in a while
    • A wagon by any otheru0026nbsp;nameFirst written in 2008. You will see more don’t-call-them-station-wagons as you drive today. Readers around my age have probably had some experience with a vehicle increasingly rare on the road — the station wagon. If you were a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, or were a member of some kind of youth athletic team, or had a large dog, or had relatives approximately your age, or had friends who needed to be transported somewhere, or had parents who occasionally had to haul (either in the back or in a trailer) more than what could be fit inside a car trunk, you (or, actually, your parents) were the target demographic for the station wagon. “Station wagons came to be like covered wagons — so much family activity happened in those cars,” said Tim Cleary, president of the American Station Wagon Owners Association, in Country Living magazine. Wagons “were used for everything from daily runs to the grocery store to long summer driving trips, and while many men and women might have wanted a fancier or sportier car, a station wagon was something they knew they needed for the family.” The “station wagon” originally was a vehicle with a covered seating area to take people between train stations…
    • Wheels on theu0026nbsp;screenBetween my former and current blogs, I wrote a lot about automobiles and TV and movies. Think of this post as killing two birds (Thunderbirds? Firebirds? Skylarks?) with one stone. Most movies and TV series view cars the same way most people view cars — as A-to-B transportation. (That’s not counting the movies or series where the car is the plot, like the haunted “Christine” or “Knight Rider” or the “Back to the Future” movies.) The philosophy here, of course, is that cars are not merely A-to-B transportation. Which disqualifies most police shows from what you’re about to read, even though I’ve watched more police video than anything else, because police cars are plain Jane vehicles. The highlight in a sense is in the beginning: The car chase in my favorite movie, “Bullitt,” featuring Steve McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang against the bad guys’ 1968 Dodge Charger: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc2RdFuOxIu0026amp;fmt=18] One year before that (but I didn’t see this until we got Telemundo on cable a couple of years ago) was a movie called “Operación 67,” featuring (I kid you not) a masked professional wrestler, his unmasked sidekick, and some sort of secret agent plot. (Since I don’t know Spanish and it’s not…
    • While riding in my Cadillac …
  • Entertainments
    • Brass rocksThose who read my former blog last year at this time, or have read this blog over the past months, know that I am a big fan of the rock group Chicago. (Back when they were a rock group and not a singer of sappy ballads, that is.) Since rock music began from elements of country music, jazz and the blues, brass rock would seem a natural subgenre of rock music. A lot of ’50s musical acts had saxophone players, and some played with full orchestras … [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CPS-WuUKUE] … but it wasn’t until the more-or-less simultaneous appearances of Chicago and Blood Sweat u0026amp; Tears on the musical scene (both groups formed in 1967, both had their first charting singles in 1969, and they had the same producer) that the usual guitar/bass/keyboard/drum grouping was augmented by one or more trumpets, a sax player and a trombone player. While Chicago is my favorite group (but you knew that already), the first brass rock song I remember hearing was BSu0026amp;T’s “Spinning Wheel” — not in its original form, but on “Sesame Street,” accompanied by, yes, a giant spinning wheel. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxWSOuNsN20] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9U34uPjz-g] I remember liking Chicago’s “Just You ‘n Me” when it was released as a single, and…
    • Drive and Eat au0026nbsp;RockThe first UW home football game of each season also is the opener for the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, the world’s finest college marching band. (How the UW Band has not gotten the Sudler Trophy, which is to honor the country’s premier college marching bands, is beyond my comprehension.) I know this because I am an alumnus of the UW Band. I played five years (in the last rank of the band, Rank 25, motto: “Where Men Are Tall and Run-On Is Short”), marching in 39 football games at Camp Randall Stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois (worst artificial turf I had ever seen), the University of Nevada–Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, the former Dyche Stadium at Northwestern University, five high school fields and, in my one bowl game, Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., site of the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl. The UW Band was, without question, the most memorable experience of my college days, and one of the most meaningful experiences of my lifetime. It was the most physical experience of my lifetime, to be sure. Fifteen minutes into my first Registration…
    • Keep on rockin’ in the freeu0026nbsp;worldOne of my first ambitions in communications was to be a radio disc jockey, and to possibly reach the level of the greats I used to listen to from WLS radio in Chicago, which used to be one of the great 50,000-watt AM rock stations of the country, back when they still existed. (Those who are aficionados of that time in music and radio history enjoyed a trip to that wayback machine when WLS a Memorial Day Big 89 Rewind, excerpts of which can be found on their Web site.) My vision was to be WLS’ afternoon DJ, playing the best in rock music between 2 and 6, which meant I wouldn’t have to get up before the crack of dawn to do the morning show, yet have my nights free to do whatever glamorous things big-city DJs did. Then I learned about the realities of radio — low pay, long hours, zero job security — and though I have dabbled in radio sports, I’ve pretty much cured myself of the idea of working in radio, even if, to quote WAPL’s Len Nelson, “You come to work every day just like everybody else does, but we’re playing rock ’n’ roll songs, we’re cuttin’ up.…
    • Monday on the flight line, not Saturday in the park
    • Music to drive by
    • The rock ofu0026nbsp;WisconsinWikipedia begins its item “Music of Wisconsin” thusly: Wisconsin was settled largely by European immigrants in the late 19th century. This immigration led to the popularization of galops, schottisches, waltzes, and, especially, polkas. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl7wCczgNUc] So when I first sought to write a blog piece about rock musicians from Wisconsin, that seemed like a forlorn venture. Turned out it wasn’t, because when I first wrote about rock musicians from Wisconsin, so many of them that I hadn’t mentioned came up in the first few days that I had to write a second blog entry fixing the omissions of the first. This list is about rock music, so it will not include, for instance, Milwaukee native and Ripon College graduate Al Jarreau, who in addition to having recorded a boatload of music for the jazz and adult contemporary/easy listening fan, also recorded the theme music for the ’80s TV series “Moonlighting.” Nor will it include Milwaukee native Eric Benet, who was for a while known more for his former wife, Halle Berry, than for his music, which includes four number one singles on the Ru0026amp;B charts, “Spend My Life with You” with Tamia, “Hurricane,” “Pretty Baby” and “You’re the Only One.” Nor will it include Wisconsin’s sizable contributions to big…
    • Steve TV: All Steve, All the Time
    • “Super Steve, Man of Action!”
    • Too much TV
    • The worst music of allu0026nbsp;timeThe rock group Jefferson Airplane titled its first greatest-hits compilation “The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.” Rolling Stone magazine was not being ironic when it polled its readers to decide the 10 worst songs of the 1990s. I’m not sure I agree with all of Rolling Stone’s list, but that shouldn’t be surprising; such lists are meant for debate, after all. To determine the “worst,” songs appropriate for the “Vinyl from Hell” segment that used to be on a Madison FM rock station, requires some criteria, which does not include mere overexposure (for instance, “Macarena,” the video of which I find amusing since it looks like two bankers are singing it). Before we go on: Blog posts like this one require multimedia, so if you find a song you hate on this blog, I apologize. These are also songs that I almost never listen to because my sound system has a zero-tolerance policy — if I’m listening to the radio or a CD and I hear a song I don’t like, it’s, to quote Bad Company, gone gone gone. My blonde wife won’t be happy to read that one of her favorite ’90s songs, 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” starts the list. (However,…
    • “You have the right to remain silent …”
  • Madison
    • Blasts from the Madison media past
    • Blasts from my Madison past
    • Blasts from our Madison past
    • What’s the matter with Madison?
    • Wisconsin – Madison = ?
  • Sports
    • Athletic aesthetics, or “cardinal” vs. “Big Red”
    • Choose your own announcer
    • La Follette state 1982 (u0022It was 30 years ago todayu0022)
    • The North Dakota–Wisconsin Hockey Fight of 1982
    • Packers vs. Brewers
  • Hall of Fame
    • The case(s) against teacher unions
    • The Class of 1983
    • A hairy subject, or face the face
    • It’s worse than you think
    • It’s worse than you think, 2010–11 edition
    • My favorite interview subject of all time
    • Oh look! Rural people!
    • Prestegard for president!
    • Unions vs. the facts, or Hiding in plain sight
    • When rhetoric goes too far
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