Britain’s number one single today in 1972:
On the same day, the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was held on Bull Island in the Wabash River between Illinois and Indiana. The festival attracted four times the projected number of fans, three fans drowned in the Wabash River, and the remaining crowd ended the festival by burning down the stage:
First: If you work for a weekly newspaper that prints on Tuesday, or has Labor Day events in its circulation area, then you are working today. In fact, you work on every Monday “holiday,” including the ones that other people have as vacation. So the labor unions can take their we-brought-you-the-weekend self-congratulatory crap and stick it someplace really dark.
(And today should be Capital Day, not Labor Day, anyway.)
People who will be working today include police, including Milwaukee police, because Barack Obama is coming to Milwaukee in support of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. (Though apparently they won’t be in the same place in public, which is strange.) Which brings up irony number two: Neither Obama nor Burke have ever employed union labor. Trek Bicycle is nonunion, and Obama has never had a real job in his entire life.
Obama and Burke are campaigning against Gov. Scott Walker, as if Obama has nothing better to do given the numerous crises about which he is doing nothing. (More on that momentarily.) No one at Goonfest — I mean, Labor Day in Milwaukee — will also acknowledge the blame Wisconsin unions have for the state’s less-than-desired economic performance. For a solid year viewers, including business owners, of TV news watched various union types screaming about their sacred rights to free health care and pensions to which they don’t have to contribute during the Act 10 debate and Recallarama. And if you were a business owner outside Wisconsin and watched that, the logical conclusion you’d reach is that Wisconsin workers are concerned only about their benefits and not about actually performing their jobs. So why would you come to Wisconsin if that’s your first impression of the Wisconsin workforce? Hell no, you won’t go.
The Pittsburgh Post–Gazette reports about workers:
Rutgers researchers found more than a third of workers report their finances have been permanently injured by the recession, with 16 percent of Americans, or 38 million people, reporting they were financially devastated and expect that damage to be permanent.
“The typical American worker lives a precarious and doleful existence — unhappy, poorly paid and fearful about losing his or her job, according to the opinions of fellow Americans who responded to this survey,” the team at Rutgers found.
Seventy percent of respondents described typical American workers as not secure in their jobs and 68 percent said workers were highly stressed. …
Carl Van Horn, one of the authors of the Rutgers study, said the two independently produced reports reinforce each other. “One is the economic reality as portrayed by wages and the other is how people feel,” he said.
While most Americans are satisfied with their own jobs, they are also afraid of what is coming down the pike.
“They’re really afraid they are going to be the next person with a pink slip,” he said.
The reality is “there were lots of problems before the Great Recession and the Great Recession made everything worse,“ Mr. Van Horn said. “The recovery has been slow and uneven, and it has not brought about anything close to prosperity so it did not allay any of the fears people had.”
Well, we already knew the stimulus was a giant steaming pile of failure, the perfect symbol, if you think about it, of the Obama administration, for which a majority of voters voted twice. So has been every economic policy that has followed (allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, for instance), not to mention the ones they’d like to foist on us (i.e. increase unemployment by paying employees more than they’re worth, through increasing the minimum wage). How many times do people have to be told that government does not create jobs?
Either Obama or one of his paid idiots, or one of the union goons that get six-figure salaries, will claim that American companies are making record profits. Their economic illiteracy is demonstrated by such claims, given that, as readers of this blog know, publicly traded companies, about which that claim is made (since publicly traded companies have to report their finances), represent all of 0.1 percent of American businesses. Ask a business owner you know if he or she is making record profits. The answer will be no.
The unionistas won’t tell you this, but part of the problem with the American economy may well be the American worker. Following Mike Rowe, host of cable TV’s “Dirty Jobs,” on Facebook may make you think, from comments to his thoughts, that too many Americans are not interested in hard work anymore, and are certainly not interested in hard work that by their definition is unpleasant or beneath them. (That is probably the natural consequence of taking the bad vocational advice of doing what you (think you) love, instead of doing what you’re good at.) The American workplace has too many clock-watchers and not enough people who work hard and well because we should work hard and well irrespective of how we’re paid or otherwise rewarded. (The craptacular level of service at most fast-food restaurants today should make you choke on your French fries at the thought that those people deserve a pay raise.)
It should be apparent anyway that the only way to make money isn’t to work for someone else, it’s to go into business. That doesn’t mean you will make money going into business, but you will not make money working for someone else. That also means, of course, giving up nights, weekends (like this weekend) and holidays (like today), along with the security, such as it is, of getting paid on a regular basis.
Obama will probably mention climate change sometime today, to change the subject from his failures that are too numerous to count, both domestically and in foreign policy. U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R–Wyoming) lists seven different things that are more important:
• Iraq is a greater challenge than climate change. While the president now likes to pretend that he didn’t force a total withdrawal of U.S. troops, Americans remember his 2008 campaign promise to do exactly that. When the U.S. leaves a vacuum, others will fill it. The barbaric Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is trying to build a base of operations in Iraq and Syria from which to attack the U.S. and its allies. The recent beheading of American journalist James Foley showed how serious ISIS is about “drowning” our nation in blood, as the group said in the video of the murder posted on YouTube.
• Afghanistan. The administration says it still intends to pull out the remaining 30,000 troops by the end of 2016. If it does, the country will quickly become a terrorist haven once again. As with Iraq, the timetable seems to be mostly about the political calendar. The Obama administration seems to have lost the will to win. The terrorists have not.
• Russia. President Obama was so intent on “resetting” U.S. relations with the Kremlin that he telegraphed a lack of resolve. President Vladimir Putin has only become more aggressive. That’s led to Russian troops in Ukraine and Russian-supplied weapons shooting a passenger plane out of the sky.
• An Iranian nuclear weapon. America’s enemies have shown they are content to stall for time, while President Obama gets distracted. That’s what’s happening as the president continues to negotiate indefinitely on Iran’s illicit nuclear program. An Obama administration desperate to strike a deal is likely to strike a bad one. It could leave in place an enrichment program that would be a pathway to a nuclear-armed Iran.
• Syria. It has been more than three years since President Obama said the time had come for President Bashar Assad to step aside. The administration drew a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons, then did nothing when Assad crossed that line last summer. ISIS already has strongholds in Syria, while the Free Syrian Army desperately needs more U.S. assistance.
• North Korea. The North Koreans continue to test nuclear weapons. They have held multiple tests of missile technology designed to reach the continental U.S. President Obama has done nothing at all about this.
The White House has said its foreign policy rule is “don’t do stupid stuff,” but putting climate change ahead of global threats fails that simple test. The United Nations will hold yet another conference on climate change next month, while the world burns.
The greatest threat to Americans “right now” is not climate change. The greatest threat is people with the intent and capacity to do us harm—and the president’s failure to lead the fight against them. [Secretary of State John] Kerry’s fixation on climate change is one reason America’s friends no longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us. The world is growing more dangerous as a result.
Today in 1957, 15-year-old James Marshall Hendrix went to Sicks Stadium in Seattle to watch Elvis Presley.
Seeing Presley inspired Hendrix to learn to play, one note at a time on a junked ukelele with one string, “Hound Dog.”
One year later, Hendrix purchased his first acoustic guitar, for $5, and taught himself to play the theme from the TV series “Peter Gunn.”
(Sicks Stadium, by the way, was the home of the Seattle Pilots, which after going backrupt during their first season became the Milwaukee Brewers.)
The number one song today in 1962:
The number one song today in 1984 announced quite a comeback:
Today in 1955, a London judge fined a man for “creating an abominable noise” — playing this song loud enough to make the neighborhood shake, rattle and roll for 2½ hours:
Today in 1968, Private Eye magazine reported that the album to be released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono would save money by providing no wardrobe for Lennon or Ono:
Today in 1959, Bertolt Brecht‘s “Threepenny Opera” reached the U.S. charts in a way Brecht could not have fathomed:
T0day in 1968, Apple Records released its first single by — surprise! — the Beatles:
Today in 1969, this spent three weeks on top of the British charts, on top of six weeks on top of the U.S. charts, making them perhaps the ultimate one-number-one-hit-wonder:
Packer fans merely need to look at the historic quarterback carousel farther south on Interstate 94 — or, for that matter, last season when Aaron Rodgers was out due to his collarbone — to realize how lucky the Packers have been to have stability under center for most of five decades.
Just in case you need reinforcement, Lombardi Avenue provides it:
Nearly every year from 1957 stretching all the way into 1970, Bart Starr was Green Bay Packers football. The man coined one of the most “infamous” plays in football history with his quarterback sneak for a touchdown in the Ice Bowl. Not to mention bringing multiple championships to the Vince Lombardi era. Starr also led the Packers to wins Super Bowls I and II.
Exit Starr, and the Packers didn’t see much success over the next decade-plus, but lo-and-behold another rock at quarterback developed. Lynn Dickey was a familiar face from 1976 through 1985. Dickey had the Packers’ record for yards in a season (4,458) up until Aaron Rodgers broke it in 2011. During that 1983 season, Dickey also threw for 32 touchdowns which was tops in the NFL. …
Kiln, Miss., native Brett Favre came over in one of Ron Wolf’s greatest instinctive trades of all-time. Falcons coach Jerry Glanville once described the young gunslinger as a train wreck. Favre would go on to rewrite both the Green Bay Packers and the NFL record books.
Favre brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Titletown with a Super Bowl XXXI victory over the New England Patriots.
Though this would be his only championship, his story was far from finished.
The “Gunslinger” would go on to be the all-time NFL record-holder for touchdowns, yards, completions, starts, wins and the one that kept us up at night, interceptions. Brett Favre was the definition of an Iron Man. When Sunday rolled around there was no doubt that #4 would be under center. The man gave his everything to the fan base, and one would hope come 2015 when he gets his place in Packers history, that will be remembered. …
How do you replace Brett Favre? You bring in perhaps the most accurate passer we have seen in history.
Insert Aaron Rodgers who took over play-calling duties in 2008 and still carries it into the 2014 season.
Rodgers took the 2010 Green Bay Packers back to the glory land and brought the Lombardi back home.
Along the way, Rodgers has become one of the most accurate, pin-point passers of all-time. Not only does Rodgers have the highest QB rating of all-time at 104.9 but it is the only current rating over 100.
Starr, who was sort of Joe Montana before Joe Montana was playing football, wins the best-Packer-quarterback title because of their five NFL championships and two Super Bowls under center. The first two titles (and their first Glory Days playoff appearance in 1960) were the Run to Daylight teams of Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung, People forget, though, that Taylor and Hornung were on their way out by the time the Super Bowl era started. The two Super Bowls were accomplished largely on Starr’s underrated arm and play-calling ability, given that the replacements for Hornung (Donny Anderson) and Taylor (Jim Grabowski) were inexperienced and, as it turns out, overrated.
Starr didn’t throw 40 passes a game, but the passes he did throw were thrown to the correct-color jersey. Starr didn’t have Favre’s arm, but the ball got where it was supposed to go. (Starr’s career interception percentage was 4.4 percent. Starr was the number one rated passer in the NFL and the American Football League in 1962, 1964 and 1966, and he was never ranked worse than eighth.)
People also forget that Starr, as nearly all quarterbacks did in those days, called all the plays. That includes his Ice Bowl quarterback sneak, which was actually designed as a fullback run. Starr suggested to Lombardi that, because of the treacherous south-end-zone footing, that he run it in himself (not bothering to tell his teammates, by the way). Given that they had failed on the first two first-and-goal plays and were out of time outs, that was going to be the final play one way or another. And Starr’s suggestion brought the last Glory Days title to the Frozen Tundra.
(This does make you wonder why Starr was not a more successful coach, given that he could clearly call successful plays. There are therefore two reasons: (1) It’s all about talent in the NFL, even in the 1970s, and (2) you cannot be the general manager and the coach and expect to succeed. Starr could have been a good coach or general manager [probably the former rather than the latter], but not both.)
Favre’s and Rodgers’ careers speak for themselves. (Lombardi Avenue could have mentioned that Favre holds a record that will never be approached, for almost-interceptions. Every game would have at least one instance where Favre would force a pass and it would hit a defender in the hands or between the numbers, and, well, the defensive player demonstrated why he played on defense.) Dickey, whose acquisition from Houston was required by general manager/coach Dan Devine’s disastrous John Hadl “Lawrence Welk” trade (five players to get Hadl, two to get rid of him), was under center for two 8–8 seasons and the Packers’ last playoff season before Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren and Favre arrived, 1982. It took several seasons (including one lost to a broken leg) to get to that point, but by the early ’80s the Packers had a quality offense, which they needed because of their porous defense. Their offense was also less than awesome in part because Dickey was about as mobile as the Curly Lambeau statue now in front of Lambeau Field, and the offensive line didn’t always give him the time he needed to throw.
The success of Starr, Dickey, Favre and Rodgers makes the interregnums between them stand out. The Packers’ attempted replacements for Starr included:
Dickey was Starr’s last quarterback and Forrest Gregg’s first Packer quarterback. And then after two 8–8 seasons, Gregg cut Dickey, replacing him with .. Randy Wright, who was a good quarterback at Wisconsin, but who, like everyone on the previous list, was really not capable of being an NFL quarterback. (How do we know this? After the Packers cut Wright following the 1988 season, no one else picked him up, the fate of Hunter, Tagge and Whitehurst. The others were picked up by similarly horribly bad teams, demonstrating that the number one reason bad teams are bad is deficiencies in talent, and by extension the ability, or lack thereof, to evaluate talent.) Gregg could perhaps blame his predecessor, who used his 1981 number one draft pick to get Cal quarterback Rich Campbell, but then again maybe Gregg could have avoided trading his 1986 number one pick to San Diego to get defensive back-turned-sexual-offender Mossy Cade.
Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated’s Monday Morning Quarterback interviews an opposing quarterback hard to root against, New Orleans’ Drew Brees:
On the greatest joy he gets from his job…
There are so many teaching elements; things that I can learn every day from this game that apply to other aspects of life—that apply to fatherhood, that apply to business, that apply to relationships. There are certain things about football that you can’t replace. You can’t replace the locker room. Every former teammate or player who I’ve ever talked to, it’s like, ‘What do you miss the most?’ They’re like, ‘I miss the locker room. I miss the guys.’ That brotherhood. That camaraderie. The atmosphere. Guys digging at one and other. Guys cracking jokes. That blood, sweat, and tears element. You’re out on the field fighting for one another. You build up this trust and confidence. This feeling that I’ve got to do it because I don’t want to let the guy next to me down. At the end of the day, that allows you to accomplish things greater than maybe you ever thought because you feel so invested. I love football. Football can only be played one way—with a certain level of intensity and focus and emotion. So I try to bring that out every time we play. …
On his legacy…
What I want people to say about me is that I was a great football player. That I cared about my teammates. I want people to say, ‘Man, I would have loved to play with that guy.’
Jim Irwin announced Packer games for so long that a lot of Packer fans have no idea who his predecessor was, let alone his predecessor’s predecessor.
For that matter, Ray Scott was so synonymous with the Packers in the ’60s that a lot of Packer fans may think that Scott preceded Irwin.
Scott worked for CBS-TV, and Irwin worked for the Packer radio network, originated on WTMJ radio in Milwaukee since 1929. Before Irwin, who was preceded by Gary Bender, the Packer radio chronicler was Ted Moore, who died last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
Moore, blessed with a radio-friendly baritone, was a constant presence on the airwaves in his prime, calling games for the Packers, football and basketball games for the University of Wisconsin, and one year calling Marquette University basketball. He broadcast UW basketball for 22 years.
Moore spent 48 years in the radio and television broadcasting business. But he was best known for his work with the Packers. At the Ice Bowl, with the Packers trailing the Dallas Cowboys, 17-14, in the NFL Championship Game, Moore peered through a small unfrozen section of the press box window and called quarterback Bart Starr’s sneak into the end zone.
“The Green Bay Packers are going to be world champions, NFL champions for the third straight year,” Moore yelled.
A native of Bristow, Okla., Moore graduated from UW and worked for a number of stations in Madison, Marshfield, Neenah, Menasha, Green Bay and finally, in 1958, at WTMJ radio and television.
In 1960, he began doing Packers broadcasts and had the good fortune of working for the team that dominated the ’60s under legendary coach Vince Lombardi. Moore was on hand for five NFL championships and two Super Bowls.
In 1962, according to a biography prepared by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, Moore was NBC’s play-by-play voice for the Green Bay Packers-New York Giants NFL Championship Game.
After 10 seasons with the Packers, Moore spent the 1970-’71 season calling games for the Baltimore Colts. That happened to be the season the Colts defeated the Cowboys in Super Bowl V on Jan. 17, 1971, earning Moore a Super Bowl ring—Moore also worked for WEMP and WOKY in Milwaukee. He was later inducted into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame. …
Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy said Saturday that “Packers fans lost an iconic voice with the passing of Ted Moore. His play-by-play calls delighted the radio audience during the remarkably successful Lombardi era. Our sincere condolences go out to his family.”
Moore’s impact is actually understated here. The only way Packer fans in the Green Bay and Milwaukee TV markets were able to see the Packers on TV was when they played on the road. All home games, even playoff games, were blacked out.
The other remarkable thing was that Moore worked by himself until Irwin arrived in Green Bay. (He worked for WLUK-TV before moving to Milwaukee.) A Milwaukee Journal sportswriter appeared at the half, but having done a few football games by myself (once by accident of my would-be partner, as you know), I can attest that that is hard work.
Moore also had a voice that isn’t heard anymore — really deep and rich. (There are a lot of distinctive voices you don’t hear anymore because of the decrease in smoking and drinking liquor. Whether or not Moore smoke or drank, that kind of voice is kind of out of style now.)
Moore’s numerous other assignments included Badger football. That was back in the days when any station that wanted to broadcast the Badgers could. In the 1970s and 1980s there were two separate networks — Irwin broadcasted for WTMJ and its network, Moore and Earl Gillespie broadcasted for another network, and WIBA radio in Madison did games too, with its general manager, Fred Gage, at the microphone. (Rank has its privileges.) Two other Madison stations did games for a couple seasons in the ’80s, bringing the Madison-area Badger fan choice to, yes, five.
Moore also did, for a couple of seasons, Badger basketball on TV. On VHS tape someplace I have a copy of the finish of a game he did, the 1978–79 season finale for Wisconsin against Michigan State. The next day’s newspapers reported the spectacular Wes Matthews half-court shot that beat the buzzer and the Spartans, 83–81. That turned out to be the final collegiate loss for MSU center Earvin Johnson, whose team went on to win the 1979 NCAA Final Four. Magic Johnson then turned pro.
Today in 1966, the Beatles played their last concert for which tickets were charged, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
Today in 1970, Edwin Starr was at number one on both sides of the Atlantic:
Britain’s number one album today in 1981:
The number one song today in 1982:
Jonah Goldberg begins writing about ISIS, or ISIL, or Those Who Need to Be Killed, by recalling George W. Bush’s calling the 9/11 perpetrators “evildoers”:
“Perhaps without even realizing it,” Peter Roff, then with UPI, wrote in October 2001, “the president is using language that recalls a simpler time when good and evil seemed more easy to identify — a time when issues, television programs and movies were more black and white, not colored by subtle hues of meaning.”
A few years later, as the memory of 9/11 faded and the animosity toward Bush grew, the criticism became more biting. But the substance was basically the same. Sophisticated people don’t talk about “evil,” save perhaps when it comes to America’s legacy of racism, homophobia, capitalistic greed, and the other usual targets of American self-loathing.
For most of the Obama years, talk of evil was largely banished from mainstream discourse. An attitude of “goodbye to all that” prevailed, as the War on Terror was rhetorically and legally disassembled and the spare parts put toward building a law-enforcement operation. War was euphemized into “overseas contingency operations” and “kinetic military action.” There was still bloodshed, but the language was often bloodless. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a protégé of al-Qaeda guru Anwar al-Awlaki, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he killed his colleagues at Fort Hood. The military called the incident “workplace violence.”
But sanitizing the language only works so long as people aren’t paying too much attention. That’s why the Islamic State is so inconvenient to those who hate the word “evil.” Last week, after the group released a video showing American journalist James Foley getting his head cut off, the administration’s rhetoric changed dramatically. The president called the Islamic State a “cancer” that had to be eradicated. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to it as the “face of . . . evil.”
Although most people across the ideological spectrum see no problem with calling the Islamic State evil, the change in rhetoric elicited a predictable knee-jerk response. Political scientist Michael Boyle hears an “eerie echo” of Bush’s “evildoers” talk. “Indeed,” he wrote in the New York Times, “condemning the black-clad, masked militants as purely ‘evil’ is seductive, for it conveys a moral clarity and separates ourselves and our tactics from the enemy and theirs.”
James Dawes, the director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester College, agreed in a piece for CNN.com. Using the word “evil,” he wrote, “stops us from thinking.”
No, it doesn’t. But perhaps a reflexive and dogmatic fear of the word “evil” hinders thinking?
For instance, Boyle suggests that because the Islamic State controls lots of territory and is “administering social services,” it “operates less like a revolutionary terrorist movement that wants to overturn the entire political order in the Middle East than a successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table.”
Behold the clarity of thought that comes with jettisoning moralistic language! Never mind that the Islamic State says it seeks a global caliphate with its flag over the White House. Who cares that it is administering social services? Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot did, too. That’s what revolutionary groups do when they grab enough territory.
There’s a more fundamental question: Is it true? Is the Islamic State evil?
As a matter of objective moral fact, the answer seems obvious. But also under any more subjective version of multiculturalism, pluralism, or moral relativism shy of nihilism, “evil” seems a pretty accurate description for an organization that is not only intolerant toward gays, Christians, atheists, moderate Muslims, Jews, women, et al. but also stones, beheads, and enslaves them.
I have found it interesting for years that liberals, who are tolerant toward all the groups Goldberg mentioned except Christians and Jews, continue to defend those who seek to kill and enslave “gays, Christians, atheists, moderate Muslims, Jews, women, et al.”
Daniel Mitchell considers the latest feature of evil corporate America, the “inversion” of Walgreens and Burger King, the latter accomplished by purchasing Tim Hortons:
Every study that looks at business taxation reaches the same conclusion, which is that America’s tax system is punitive and anti-competitive.
Simply stated, the combination of a very high tax rate on corporate income along with a very punitive system of worldwide taxation makes it very difficult for an American-domiciled firm to compete overseas.
Yet some politicians say companies are being “unpatriotic” for trying to protect themselves and even suggest that the tax burden on firms should be further increased!
In this CNBC interview, I say that’s akin to “blaming the victim.”
While I think this was a good interview and I assume the viewers of CNBC are an important demographic, I’m even more concerned (at least in the short run) about influencing the opinions of the folks in Washington.
And that’s why the Cato Institute held a forum yesterday for a standing-room-only crowd on Capitol Hill.
Here is a sampling of the information I shared with the congressional staffers.
We’ll start with this chart showing how the United States has fallen behind the rest of the world on corporate tax rates.
Here’s a chart showing the number of nations that have worldwide tax systems. Once again, you can see a clear trend in the right direction, with the United States getting left behind.
Next, this chart shows that American companies already pay a lot of tax on the income they earn abroad.
Last but not least, here’s a chart showing that inversions have almost no effect on corporate tax revenue in America.
The moral of the story is that the internal revenue code is a mess, which is why (as I said in the interview) companies have both a moral and fiduciary obligation to take legal steps to protect the interests of shareholders, consumers, and employees.
The anti-inversion crowd, though, is more interested in maximizing the amount of money going to politicians.
Actually, let me revise that last sentence. If they looked at the Laffer Curve evidence (here and here), they would support a lower corporate tax rate.
So we’re left with the conclusion that they’re really most interested in making the tax code punitive, regardless of what happens to revenue.
Another graphic comes from the Daily Signal:
Burger King is based in Florida. Tim Hortons — named for the National Hockey League player who started the chain and formerly owned by Wendy’s before it went public separately — is based on Oakville, Ont.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 