Today in 1969, David Bowie launched “Space Oddity” …
… and the Rolling Stones released “Honky Tonk Woman”:
The number one song, alone, today in 1987:
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 11
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It’s interesting to see those who don’t realize that most of Wisconsin is actually rural (that is, those who live in greater Madison or Milwaukee) to observe those who made America’s Dairyland America’s Dairyland.
Isthmus, of the People’s Republic of Madison, reports the observations of a UW professor:
At a forum last week hosted by the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, political science professor Katherine Cramer Walsh made a stark observation, culled from five years of conversations with residents around Wisconsin. “In most communities,” she said, “the public workers are the ones who are rich.”
Not “comfortable” or “middle-class,” but rich.
Walsh’s comments came as she offered suggestions for what people on either side of the political divide need to know about the other in order to start mending fences.
For Barrett supporters, she said, “It’s useful to hear that, especially in smaller communities, public employees are the only ones making decent wages and getting insurance and benefits,” she said. For these residents, she added, “it’s a question of public employees versus private employees, not rich versus poor.”
Walsh claims to be a Wisconsin native and the daughter of two teachers. Her bio doesn’t say where in Wisconsin she grew up. Isthmus recounts the tale of Walsh’s visit to northwest Wisconsin in 2008:
She says that a group of loggers, most of whom were self-employed, believed that while schoolteachers may work hard during the year, they have cushy positions. Among the perks: great benefits, health care, summers off and an annual salary of about $50,000 a year. “Nobody in this town makes anywhere near $50,000,” says Walsh, paraphrasing comments she heard. “At the lumber mill, they’re making $20,000 and losing their fingers!”
Walsh says when she probes further, asking why people see a public employee/private employee divide and not a rich/poor divide, she gets stares of disbelief.
It seems to come down to what is tangible and what can be controlled. Private-sector workers, many of whom are struggling, perceive that a large portion of their taxes are going to pay for the salaries of public workers. A cut to public-employee wages and benefits would, at least in theory, mean lower taxes.
But these same people don’t see themselves as having any control over the salaries and benefit packages of CEOs in the private sector, says Walsh. Moreover, they don’t really see anything wrong with top executives making big bucks.
“There’s very little blame on the private market,” says Walsh. “It always comes back to government.”
Well … a large portion of the taxes of private sector workers are going toward public employee salaries. The biggest part of any unit of government’s budget outside state government is employee compensation. For state government, it’s second largest after shared revenue. And of course you know what funds government employee salaries.
Rural people learned well that the phrase “we’re from the government, and we’re here to help you” is a threat, not a greeting. The phrase “Damn Near Russia” as an alternative name for the Department of Natural Resources did not come from Madison.
Walsh helpfully debunks a claim of an ignorant Democratic legislator (but I repeat myself):
State Rep. Terese Berceau (D-Madison) says that Republicans have cultivated this “politics of resentment.”
She says that when she grew up in Green Bay in the 1960s, things were not always easy, but “we didn’t feel that the next-door neighbor was the enemy — that somebody had a job and we should hate them for it.” …
Walsh says the current GOP leadership in the state might have seized on simmering resentment about public workers, but they did not create it.
“The interesting thing to me, being here in Madison and watching events unfold, is knowing that a lot of the sentiments Gov. Walker and the Republicans tapped into were not manufactured, but were out there well before the governor [took office].”
By the way, if you’re wondering about Walsh’s advice to Walker supporters, it was this: “It would be helpful for them to sit down with public employees — to hear that they are concerned about the future, the financial well-being of their community, and that they also work hard.”
That last sentence is sort of a non sequitur. Walsh’s first two points about concern for the future and “the financial well-being of their community” is belied by the flood of government-employee retirements in the past year. (No private-sector employee jumped into retirement in their 50s over the cost of their benefits.) I never claimed government employees, particularly teachers, don’t work hard. Conservatives do not further their cause by harping about teachers’ summer vacations; looking at the number of hours a teacher works over the entire year is more to the point.
But private-sector workers also work hard, and for less pay and benefits. Small business owners work longer hours than their employees, pay 100 percent of their benefits, and have their entire financial fortunes tied up in their businesses. And you would have to look hard during Recallarama to find anyone with a title at the Wisconsin Education Association Council or AFSCME, or anyone with a D after their name, to acknowledge those facts. (For that matter, I wonder how many Ds from Madison or Milwaukee have ever milked a cow or shoveled manure … other than what comes out their caucus, that is.)
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The Troglopundit is happy that two of his beverage choices have been affirmed by science.
I assume he starts in the morning with …
Oh, fine, it doesn’t cure cancer, but it might help prevent cancer:
Drinking more than two cups of coffee per day, or any other combination of caffeinated beverages, may lower your chances of developing skin cancer, a new reports says. The results included other caffeinated products such as soda, tea and chocolate.
The report in the journal Cancer Research found that caffeine potentially reduced the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer though generally considered less serious than melanoma.
“Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma,” said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.
Just look how long it took them to introduce Dr. Han. It must be true!
… and then finishes his day with …
According to a recent review of more than 18 studies on booze, beer is just as good for your heart as vino. Drinking a little more than a pint of beer a day could make you 30 percent less likely than non-drinkers to suffer from stroke, heart attacks, and heart disease, researchers found. Credit heart benefits to the alcohol itself, and polyphenols (antioxidants) in beer. And make sure to drink that beer with a smile.
I’m not going to get into the beer vs. wine argument. As you know, Benjamin Franklin spoke fondly of wine …
“We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”
… though he and other Founding Fathers clearly enjoyed ale as well, most notably Thomas Jefferson:
“Beer, if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.”
By the end of today, I suspect I will have ingested both.
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Two anniversaries today in 1965: The Beatles’ “Beatles VI” reached number I, where it stayed for VI weeks …
… while the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” was their first number one single:
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The Washington Post reports:
The news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning that the economy added just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate stayed stuck at 8.2 percent suggests that any hope that President Obama will be able to run for reelection bolstered by an improving financial picture is rapidly disappearing. …
This is the third straight month in which the jobs report has underwhelmed. The 80,000 jobs added — well below expectations in the run-up to this morning’s report — comes after the economy added 68,000 and 77,0000 jobs in April and May, respectively. June’s 8.2 percent unemployment rate is the same as it was in May and a slight bump up from the 8.1 percent rate in April. …
And, remember that when it comes to the economy, it’s the trend line that matters. Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984 not because the unemployment rate was at 7.4 percent but because that number represented a precipitous dropoff from where it had been 18 months earlier. Worth noting: No president since World War II has won re-election with the unemployment rate higher than 7.4 percent. …
To simply drop the unemployment rate below 8 percent before election day, the economy will need to add 219,000 jobs in each of the four jobs reports between now and then — a prospect that, given the last three months, seems very unlikely.
This graphic Ken Gardner posted on Facebook is, to quote Gardner, “brutal”:
Victor Davis Hansen is a historian, not a mathematician or a physician, but he has a formula:
After sharp recessions, we usually get more robust than average recoveries, but since June 2009, things have not recovered at all really, and we are in a sort of permanent European-style slowdown — sort of a recession, sort of a weak recovery.If one wanted to ensure permanent 8 percent to 9 percent unemployment, one might try the following:
1. Run up serial $1 trillion deficits
2. Add $5 trillion to the national debt in three and a half years
3. Impose a 2,400-page, trillion-dollar new federal takeover of health care, with layers of new taxation, much of it falling on the middle class and employers, even as favored concerns are given mass exemptions.
4. Scare employers with constant us/them class warfare rhetoric about a demonized one-percenter class and its undeserved profits; constantly talk about raising new taxes and imposing regulations, ensuring uncertainty and convincing employers of unpredictability in regulation and taxes. You cannot convince a country to go into permanent near-recession, but President Obama is doing his best to try.
5. Appoint a bipartisan committee to study the fiscal crisis and then neglect all its recommendations.
6. Subsidize failed green companies, while denigrating successful gas and oil concerns, as well as putting rich oil-and-gas federal leases off limits.
7. Vastly increase unemployment insurance, disability, and food-stamp constituencies, while promising all sorts of mortgage, credit-card, and student-loan bailouts.
8. Borrow hundreds of billions for stimulus programs that are not shovel ready, but are rather aimed to bail out state budgets, pensions, and unions.
9. Federalize elements of non-profitable private companies, while threatening to shut down profitable plants for supposed union or environmental incorrect behavior.
10. Do not address changing the above policies, but rather blame others for such self-induced stagnation.
Do the above and you can pretty much always ensure something like the present slow-down. Both employers and consumers are convinced that these are uncertain times, when money is better hoarded and protected rather than risked, given the uncertainty of administration policy and the certainty that profit-making is looked upon as suspicious.
I am certain that if you vote for Barack Obama, nothing you’ve read before this sentence will improve.
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Today in 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” was played around the clock because it hit number one:
One year later, Dick Clark made his first appearance on ABC-TV’s “American Bandstand”:
Today in 1972, Paul McCartney and Wings began their first tour of France:
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It is generally not considered a good career move to be indicted for drug trafficking, as Jonathan “Chico” and Robert DeBarge were today in 1988:
Birthdays begin with Jaimoe “Johnny” Johanson, drummer for the Allman Brothers:
Greg T. Walker played bass for Blackfoot:
Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode:
Carlos Cavazo of Quiet Riot:
Graham Jones of Haircut 100:
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Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
Trumpet players must recognize the birthday of Carl “Doc” Severinsen, who led the “Tonight” show band and was principal pops conductor for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra:
The aforementioned “All You Need Is Love” was released on the 27th birthday of Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr:
Warren Entner of the Grass Roots …
… was born one year before James Rodford of The Kinks:
Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt of Iron Butterfly:
Lynval Golding was one of the Fun Boy Three:
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Back in the spring, when temperatures were in the double digits, Jalopnik reported:
Michael Ramsey over at the Wall Street Journal tells us that the next-generation Ford Mustang will eschew the authenticity of the retro look for something more suited for connecting with “the youngs.” No, it won’t look like one of them fancy Walkmans with the internets on it. Instead, he claims the “next generation would retain the shark-nosed grille and round headlights, but would look more like the new Ford Fusion than the current Mustang.”
USA Today expanded further:
The next Mustang is expected for the car’s 50th anniversary in 2014 or 2015, depending on how you count it, and the looks could leave diehard Mustang oldsters wondering what happened to their car. …
Remember, Ford played with fire before when it came to switching up the look of Mustang. In the 1970s, it created a disaster called the Mustang II after years of heart-pounding Pony cars. Fans considered the Mustang II a weakling unworthy of the brand’s name.
That met with disapproval from Mustang aficionado Paul Socha:
If Ford takes the Mustang to the Fusion look, they might as well just retire the line completely. What is this world coming to?
To repeat myself, change is inevitable; positive change is not. Exhibit A for purposes of today is the 1974–78 Mustang II, about which more later.
Unlike the Corvette, I have owned a Mustang. It was a red ’65 convertible.
And it went as fast as my legs could propel it on the sidewalk.
The other bit of Mustang affinity, I guess, comes from the fact that I toured a Ford plant on a family vacation in the summer of 1976, where Mustang IIs were being assembled.
The parents of one of my fellow Boy Scouts owned a Mustang II, so I occasionally sat in the back of that, as well as another Scouts’ parents car on which the Mustang II was based, a Pinto.
Then there’s the Mustang’s starring role in the greatest movie car chase of all time, from my favorite movie, “Bullitt”:
I’ve also driven a couple of Mustangs. My oldest son’s first ride in a convertible was in a coworker’s red Mustang. Another coworker let me drive his Mustang, a V-8 and five-speed, and every time I see him he keeps trying to sell it to me.The Mustang is one of the few cars that can be said to have created an entire class of car. The Plymouth Barracuda came out two weeks before the Mustang, but the Mustang significantly outsold the Barracuda. The two were the first of the class known as the “pony car” — a (relatively) small car with a (relatively) powerful available engine and other sporty accouterments. From the Mustang came the original Mercury Cougar. More importantly, though, the Mustang prompted the creation of (in rough chronological order) the Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, AMC Javelin and AMX, and Dodge Challenger (the cousin to the Barracuda).
Unlike most cars of its kind, Ford has never attempted to do anything but sell every last Mustang someone was willing to buy. That and the fact that the Mustang has been built every year since 1964½ (unlike the Camaro, which started in 1967 and wasn’t built between 2003 and 2007), explains why there are more Mustangs still on the road than any other comparable car.
The original Mustang was built with Ford Falcon parts, which meant it had recirculating-ball steering and drum brakes. The genius of the Mustang is that, for most of its life, owners have been able to equip it as anything from mild-mannered (you could get a six-cylinder and automatic in 1965 and now) to snarling beast (the Boss 429 was rated at 375 horsepower but was actually closer to 500 horsepower; today’s Shelby GT 500 is rated at 550 horsepower). The Mustang was raced down the quarter-mile and on road tracks as part of the late great Trans Am series.
The Mustang has had to serve as Ford’s Camaro and Corvette since Ford hasn’t built a car like the Corvette. (The de Tomaso Pantera was sold by Lincoln–Mercury dealers from 1971 to 1975, about 5,000 of them, and the Ford GT was sold in 2005 and 2006, all 4,038 of them. Other than 1997, a partial year of production for the new C5, Chevrolet hasn’t sold that few Corvettes in one year since 1956.) It’s always had more utility than the Corvette with its back seat and either trunk or hatchback in the case of the Mustang II and the Fox-body Mustang of 1979–93.
The way the Mustang served as Ford’s Corvette, to some extent, was thanks to a Texas race car driver who had to retire due to a bad heart, Carroll Shelby. (Who recently passed on to the great racetrack in the sky. He and I once were at the same Road America event.) Between 1965 and 1970, Shelby modified Mustang fastbacks to create the GT350 (with a 289 V-8) and the GT500 (with a police-spec 428 V-8). Shelby Mustangs returned in 2007, so that a 2013 GT500KR, with a 662-horsepower supercharged V-8, can go 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, with a claimed top speed of 202 mph.
I am told that Mustang aficionados argue whether or not a Mustang II deserves to be considered a Mustang. It replaced the 1971–73 Mustang that, like many cars, had grown fat. It would have been interesting to see Ford design the early ’70s Mustangs like its Mustang Milano show car:
Yet the early ’70s Mustangs were immortalized in two films: “Diamonds Are Forever” …
… and the original “Gone in 60 Seconds”:
What some call the “Mustang III,” the 1979–93 iteration, seems to lack respect in some enthusiast quarters too. That era Mustang (and the sister Mercury Capri of that era) are not the most exciting-looking cars, perhaps, and no one will remember ’80s cars fondly anyway. (Cars of the ’80s featured the first generation of computer controls, which Detroit sent out into marketplace without their being fully sorted out.) And yet the Mustang III had some of the most powerful motors of their era, handled well (particularly with the Michelin TRX tire package), and, with the hatchback, actually had some utility. The sedan version had enough speed for police departments, including the Wisconsin State Patrol, to use them (as well as Camaros) as squad cars.After nearly replacing the Mustang with the Probe (which had a turbo four with the worst torque steer I’ve ever experienced, or a V-6), Ford redesigned the Mustang in 1994 with styling cues that harkened back somewhat to the original Mustangs. That worked until 2005, when the next Mustang looked like a modernized version of the 1967–70 Mustangs.
Ford has a contest on its website to create your own Mustang (including colors and options Ford doesn’t offer). I tried to design mine to look as close as I could to the Bullitt Mustang, which lacks chrome trim.
The other one I tried to make look like my old convertible (minus the whitewalls, and I don’t remember the color of the top):
What about the supposed design of the nest Mustang?
Well, if you think a Mustang needs to look like a previous Mustang, this is not your car. I’m less interested in what it looks like than what’s under the hood, and this doesn’t look like a V-8 six-speed to me; it looks more like an EcoBoost 4-powered car with a paddle-shifted automatic. And I would not be interested in that, whether or not I was a big Mustang enthusiast. (When Ford makes an EcoBoost 8, then I’ll pay attention.)
My favorite online car designer, Art and Colour (though I’ve never meet either Art or Colour), has another take you may like better:
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Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
Or perhaps you’d like to celebrate Bill Haley’s birthday around the clock:
Gene Chandler:
Who is Terrence “Jet” Harris? He is credited with popularizing the bass guitar in Britain and helping give Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones (who ended up in Led Zeppelin) their starts:
Rik Elswit of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show:
Madison native John Jorgenson of the Desert Rose Band:
Michael Grant of Musical Youth, which asks you to …
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 