Quick Break July 2024 edition

Just need to take a quick break. I may come back and blog pretty soon, but my head and soul are not in good places right now.

 

Everything Changed Today

So I woke up today to this stuff getting posted in Bluesky Social, but because I haven't figured out how to embed those posts into this blog I went to Twitter (fuck you, Elon, it's not X) to do this:

Aaron Sorkin published an op-ed in NYT this morning that calls on Democrats to nominate a Republican in place of Pres. Biden next month at the convention, specifically Mitt Romney. For real. Don't click on it. Don't read it. I promise you ain't missing anything.

Parody has died. pic.twitter.com/Ricu3sjIJE

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) July 21, 2024

"I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS" times infinity.

It case the tweet goes bad, I screen-captured:

This? This is what you get when you think
quoting the HMS Pinafore all the time makes you smart.

I did read it just to see if it's as bad as Clymer says, and Gods yes it's terrible. Sorkin's idea of a unity candidate is - get this - going for a Republican candidate... Mitt Romney.

MITT FCKING ROMNEY?!

Not only is it offensive to suggest the Democrats have to roll over and take a REPUBLICAN on their ticket, but to go with Romney whose sole objective running - and losing - in 2012 was to get a massive tax cut for the rich. Never mind the reality that Mitt is opposed to most things - unions, abortion rights, immigration reform - that the Democratic voting base supports. It's like these so-called "liberal elites" - the pundits, the "actively engaged" celebrities, who are pulling in six-figure incomes where the rest of us are struggling around $35k a year to survive - don't give a damn about the millions of primary voters who happily re-nominated their incumbent President for a second go.

So here I was for most of the morning, putting this blog article together to tear Sorkin a new one when by 1:00 PM... everything changed.

pic.twitter.com/RMIRvlSOYw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

I had to go off to one side and rant for a couple hours after that bombshell. I've calmed a little, but I'm still at the LIVID stage.

Livid and angry towards the goddamned Beltway media - especially that godforsaken rag the New York Times - that were beating the drums to get Biden to drop out. Angry at the Right-of-Center Democrats like Joe Manchin kneecapping any party unity that was needed for the upcoming convention this August. Well, congratulations you sons of bitches, you got your scalp.

If there is any good news from this announcement, it's that Biden openly supports his Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the campaign for him. Running now on their administration's legacy of job growth, infrastructure investment, debt forgiveness for tens of thousands of Americans, and financial reforms. Harris in particular has been touring the nation campaigning against the Dobbs ruling and the Republicans who are working to deny women their basic rights (not just abortion but their right to divorce, their right to work, their right to get education, their right to live).

But those buzzards are still circling. The likes of David Axelrod are complaining that Harris didn't get "vetted" by the primaries - ignoring that she was part of Biden's ticket at the time, and that she's got years of experience in the Executive branch already - and are demanding "an open convention" where the goddamned special interest factions - backed by billionaires that had been funding this anti-Biden effort - will try their best to return to the "smoke-filled backrooms" of power brokering to force an unpalatable pro-business / anti-tax candidate on the Democratic base.

At a moment when the Democratic Party needs to unite behind a standard bearer - be it Biden or be it Harris - we still have these corrupted factions still looking to sabotage it all and let the likes of trump and his Republican hacks steal their way back into the White House.

Goddamn them.

This is an open call to every Democratic and Independent voter I know. Ignore the haters. Focus on what matters. The Democratic Party is the one thing standing for our American democrat-republic institutions and way of life. We got 81 million people to vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again for Harris and whomever she picks to stand as her Vice President. 

We need to stand for women's rights, we need to stand for the good jobs at good wages Biden and the Democrats have brought to us, we need to stand for a future where the uber-rich oligarchs don't decide our fates, we do.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, do NOT vote for that convicted felon and sex offender donald trump. Do NOT vote for the Republican Party that has surrendered to his greed and his Id.

Elections always matter. Get the vote out for Harris and the Democratic Party across every seat across every county across every state. 

Do not let Joe Biden down, people. He's counting on US to secure his administration's legacy.

Update: What, NOW Sorkin regrets his bullshit?!?! /rage

I've Taken The Crazy Pills, Haven't I: July 2024 Edition

WHAT DID I JUST SAY?

Jesus. Even in the moment of donald trump's self-crowning - with an oversized bandage on his ear and every lapdog at his feet - at an overtly racist and sexist RNC, the Democratic Party cannot get out of their own way.

WaterGirl over at Balloon Juice is feeling the same frustration I am about the Dem party leadership buying into the mainstream media freakout and getting caught in more rumor-mongering to force Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 re-election bid:

I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals.  This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.

So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.

We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done.  So much work, and so little time.

I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike.  But I’m done.  And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing...

This panic - which echoes a lot of the Dem panic from 2004 when they worried Howard Dean was more vulnerable than John Kerry all because Karl Rove made them second-guess themselves - isn't doing them any favors. It's feeding into the Beltway narrative of "Dems In Disarray" and is going to upset / discourage millions of primary voters who already sided with Biden as their choice.

If anybody is thrilled to the idea of an "open convention" this August, please punch yourself in the face. This 2024 primary season didn't present the party with any strong alternatives to Biden, and such a convention between up-and-comers like Governors Newsom or Whitmer or some third person suddenly flush with questionable dark money will turn bloody and divisive, which once again favors the goddamn trumpsters.

Anybody thinking that things will get easier if Biden steps aside for his Vice President Kamala Harris need to remember just how racist the mainstream media let the Republicans play it when it was Obama as the candidate in 2008 and 2012, and will just as easily allow trump and his cohort to attack Harris over the same goddamn racist dog-whistles bullhorns. And Harris is going to face the same kind of sexism that Hillary faced in 2016, by the same mainstream media that cannot overcome their own misogyny when dealing with "ambitious women" as candidates. You know how many reporters are itching to jump on the stories that came out during 2020 about the bad blood within Harris' primary campaign back then, eager to pull that same shit if she becomes the ticket headliner?

We've gotten 81 million voters to side with Biden in 2020 and a supermajority (90 percent or more) of primary voters to stick with Biden against the likes of Dean Phillips (a conservative congresscritter who got talked into undermining party incumbancy), and yet the Democratic party leadership is getting brow-beaten by a hostile Beltway media desperate to keep their horserace and "Dems in Disarray" narratives going until November.

There's a reason why I've got "Democrats Are Cowards" as a blog label, and you're watching it as it happens. Goddamn them.

Man up. Support Biden, here and NOW. Get the vote out. Get those 81 million voters back. Get every man and woman who supports abortion rights. Get every man and woman who opposes even one tidbit of that hideous Project 2025 agenda. Get every American voting for a unified Democratic Party.

For the LOVE OF GOD. Turning on each other now does not help.

Destroying Justice All To Serve trump

Dear America: I am so sorry I jinxed it.

I wrote this back in February:

We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.

The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.

Tick fucking tock, trump.

While the criminal trial regarding hush money and election interference in Manhattan happened and trump answered for that (so far), the other three trials got hit with delays and more delays - trump's favorite legal tactic - to where trump can gamble on lying/cheating/stealing his way into the White House and claim Presidential Immunity (as this corrupt SCOTUS intends it).

And today, trump's run for the Mexican Border for the Presidency got a lot sweeter when his judge Aileen Cannon - there is no other way to describe her - dismissed the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case on the argument that the special counsel overseeing it is unconstitutional (via Carrie Johnson at NPR):

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in an order Monday morning over the manner in which special counsel Jack Smith was appointed.

“The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” wrote Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president.

Special counsel Jack Smith had contested this argument, and other federal courts had upheld the constitutionality of special counsels.

“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment…gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith," Cannon wrote. "Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise...”

Cannon is using a provision offered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his Immunity concurrence, something that no other judge or court agreed with... and will require even more appeals back up to the high court before this mess can ever get straightened out. As it is, Thomas' opinion would negate every special counsel matter currently out there at the federal level... including the matter involving Hunter Biden. But hey, this is a deal for trump, so why bother eh?

Going to Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site for comment:

It’s hilarious.

It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).

It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.

It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.

As for Smith appealing, yes he has. This now depends on how quickly the 11th Circuit handles this... and if the appellate court can remove Cannon for her bias and ineptitude.

And it all depends on the American voters coming out in huge numbers to vote for Biden and deny trump any sanctuary from justice.

trump has defeated justice for now, but he ought to - needs to - answer to the law in spite of the conservatives in the judiciary shredding all of it to protect their hold on power. trump is not running to serve the interests of Americans, he is not running for ideology or purpose, he is not running to uphold the public trust. trump is running to save his own ass from jail, and he will burn everything down to avoid that fate.

America cannot survive a criminal in the White House AGAIN.

To the 81 million of us who voted for Biden in 2020, we have a responsibility to return to the ballot and vote for Joe again. And let us bring about 44 million more with us across all 50 states just to make certain of it.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND JUSTICE, America. Do not vote trump this year. 

The Cycle of Violence This Saturday Night

Christ on a bike:

Donald Trump appeared to be the target of an assassination attempt as he spoke during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, two law enforcement officials said. The former president, his ear covered in blood from what he said was a gunshot, was quickly pulled away by Secret Service agents and his campaign said he was “fine.”

A local prosecutor said the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead. The Secret Service said two spectators were critically injured.

Posting on his Truth Social media site about two and a half hours after the shooting, Trump said a bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said in the post. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

The attack, by a shooter who law enforcement officials say was then killed by the Secret Service, was the first attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It comes amid a deeply polarized political atmosphere, just four months from the presidential elections and days before Trump is to be officially named the Republican nominee at his party’s convention... (via Jill Colvin, Julie Carr Smyth, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Michelle L. Price at AP News)

This is all happening in the moment and it's always too early to speculate even though a number of Far Right agitators on social media are already accusing Biden and "the violent Left" of being behind this shooting.

If there's anything I agree with on social media right now, it's THIS sentiment:

Mom can you come pick me up history is happening and I’m scared

— samuel catlin (@lint_ax) July 13, 2024

Seriously, America. Make this goddamn partisan madness stop.

For all my hatred aimed at donald Shitgibbon trump, the most I want to see done is him facing justice in a jail cell for all the crimes - the tax fraud, business fraud, and sexual assault - he's committed (and the ones he's allegedly done that he still needs to face in trial). Killing trump doesn't solve the reality that a willing and angry MAGA voter base will remain - and become even more angry and violent - and will be eager to turn trump into a martyr. Violence aimed at a group doesn't make that faction change their tone or their minds: It tends to radicalize them further, feeding into a cycle of violence aimed at the ones they blame.

Any form of political violence - street riot, bombing, targeted assassination - becomes self-defeating. I just wrote about what happened at Kent State: because the ROTC building had been fire-bombed, a lot of Americans in the middle class across the political spectrum actually felt the protestors were to blame and deserved to get shot by a panicked National Guard. Violence begets - and excuses - the reactionary violence that follows. 

The idea that a Propaganda of the Deed would rally a silent hidden faithful into a mass movement justifying your planned utopia never happens. Assassinating Lincoln didn't win the Civil War for the South; shooting Garfield actually pushed the federal government into genuine civil service reforms; killing McKinley never sparked a Socialist uprising in America; what happened to JFK didn't end the Cold War or change U.S. policy towards Cuba (whatever the hell it was that motivated Oswald (maybe), we still don't know for certain); and shooting Reagan never impressed Jodie Foster (I'm not being flippant here, that's kind of what Hinckley was trying to do).

All that's going to happen now is a family will have to cope with the tragedy of losing a loved one - whoever it was that died at the rally - and the MAGA faithful are going to stir themselves into a frenzy over which conspiracy theories will make them the angriest and more eager to act out.

The political violence we've been trapped in since 2016 - with trump's demagoguery of immigrants and liberals - and accelerated in 2020 - "Stand Back and Stand By" anyone? - remains a downward spiral this 2024. History - chaotic, fear-driven, violent - is happening, and it's not going to stop until more innocent lives are taken.

The Beltway Freakout

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
-- Duma Key, Stephen King

I had to block Stephen King today.

Biden won the primaries in convincing fashion. An overwhelming majority of Democratic voters support him then AND now. But here you are, listening to a panicked biased media having a meltdown over one bad debate. You're not paying attention. And I'm blocking you for this.

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 8, 2024

What the hell happened?

Well, that CNN debate I didn't want to watch ended up being a down performance for Biden, which unfortunately flared up all the damn "he's too old" takes between the New York Times and every other media outlet.

It's gotten to where the mainstream media - and then slowly a number of backbencher Democratic congresscritters, and then the avalanche of social media names like King and Rob Reiner - kept calling for Biden - who has already secured the 2024 Democratic nomination - to drop out of the Presidential race "for the good of the country."

Which is, of course, a total bullshit move.

This is after Joe Biden's campaign fund-raised far more than what trump's did. This is while Biden's polling regained their numbers - and upticked in several battleground states - after the immediate aftermath of the debate.

I've complained about this rump media - sitting in judgment of the Democratic Party and never focusing on the public sins of the Republicans - before. They get a narrative going in their own circles - such as this "Biden is now too old and will lose to trump" and there's no shaking it. Worse, they start digging for "sources" to reinforce that narrative using anybody they could claim is "inside the room when it happens" such as a "former senior official" who probably was a six-month intern in the West Wing washroom two years ago. And when they get any facts wrong, these pundits refuse to re-evaluate their mistakes and double-down on the scalp hunting.

Remember in the modern journalism era among the Beltway elites, there is no punishment for being wrong. There may be punishments for the low-level elected figures in the Democratic ranks buying into the media-inflicted panic, but that may have to wait until this election cycle is over.

Everything Biden has been doing the last two weeks post-debate has been to stay on-message and campaigning, even as a group of self-appointed "saviors" in the papers, cable shows, and congressional back rooms dreaming of their own fantasies are trying to kneecap him. They're going so far as to convince the upcoming convention delegates to toss aside Biden's primary victories - where Biden won with full support of the Dem voting base - and force an open convention.

Never mind the chaos and destruction that move would inflict on the entire Democratic Party, weakening themselves by alienating an electoral base fully backing Biden. And all of this much to the delight of both the Republican Party as well as the media elites who push the decades-old "Dems In Disarray" narrative.

While the media and the party leadership distract themselves over this noise, the same Beltway talking heads can avoid discussing more relevant and vital matters, such as the fact that the Republican Party's presidential candidate is a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender. Even as the GOP's platform is coming up before their convention next week, with a horrifying "Project 2025" agenda just barely getting on the radar for the voting public to recoil from it.

This shouldn't be a distraction. This shouldn't even be an issue.

Most Democratic voters may have these concerns, but they've overlooked them to focus on the reality that Joe Biden's administration has been mostly a success for the nation. The Dem voters may worry about Biden's age, but they understand there's an existing system in place - the 25th Amendment, and VP Kamala Harris - that will take care of it.

What worries most Democratic voters I know is the fact of donald trump's entire existence, and the real threat he poses should he get anywhere near the White House again. In spite of the polls which we've learned are skewing too rural (and too Republican) - in spite of all the fearmongering that the mainstream media is spewing for their own enjoyment - there is still a fighting mood with the party base to stick with a candidate in Biden they know beat trump in 2020. They're not about to abandon a good incumbent now.

This is - for anyone who lived through 2016 - the same kind of concern-trolling bullshit we got out of the New York Times and the rest of the Beltway when they freaked out over Hillary's private server and fretted over "but her emails." Back then, they begged for her to step aside for - get this - Biden. This is also the same freakout we got out of the mainstream media when Obama suffered a bad debate night against Romney in 2012, and they begged Obama to step aside for someone better like - get this - Hillary.

The Democratic voters - and the indy voters who sided with Biden in 2020 - need to get past this noise and get the damn vote out. The election still matters: OUR VOTES STILL MATTER. We had 81 million people turn out for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again this 2024.

Four for the Fourth 2024: And Farmer George Thought HE Had it Bad on His 4th of July...

This will be a 4th Of July long remembered in Great Britain.

The United Kingdom held their parliamentary elections today, and it turned into a "bloodbath" for the ruling Conservative Party projected to suffer their worst defeat in over two centuries (via Brian Wheeler at BBC News):

Labour is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.

If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair's 1997 total.

The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number ever...

The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.

At the past five general elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats...

If the exit poll is correct it will be a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.

The Conservatives may avoid the wipe-out predicted by some opinion polls but they are still set for the worst result in the party's history, losing 241 MPs - a devastating blow after 14 years in government...

I'm not sure how the Tories are going to convince themselves they know what they're doing after a massive shift in voter support like this. They had picked up a major victory in 2019 gaining an 80-seat majority, and by the next election are losing 170 seats. A comparable situation would be like the House Republicans getting their 6-seat majority in 2022 only to have the Democrats flip it to a 60 seat majority in 2024 (one hopes).

I still have not heard any results for the election most watched this night: the turnout between Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Count Binface (okay, there's a few other party candidates as well). Sunak's polling numbers were low enough that he's facing a historic first: First Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Most of those predecessors tended to be in safe districts, but in this election cycle almost none of the Conservative seats were safe. (Update: Sunak was able to win his seat, alas. Dammit, Richmond and Northallerton! A Raving Looney candidate was right there! You had one job!)

That's how bad the Tories had performed over the past five years to lose so much support.

It'll take some time for the actual ballots to get counted, but even if the projections are off by their statistical norms, Labour has still won a decisive turnout.

Next will be a question of how Labour is going to fix all the damage - the austerity economics getting out of the Great Recession, the various scandals over their tenure, and of course Brexit - this inept, corrupt Tory leadership has done since 2010.

Happy 4th of July, Brits!

Hope you saved some of the fireworks from Bonfire Night.

Here's George III taking it like a champ in Hamilton:

Four For the Fourth: History Matters

As a student of history, I encourage others to learn about history as well.

As such, whenever I come across something that may work as a useful resource of knowledge, I examine the offerings and determine if it's worth sharing.

As such, I introduce you - if you haven't met him already - the History Matters Guy.

Created by a UK history professor as a quick video tutorial for students, he'd expanded from rather detailed and long video clips on large parts of European/American/World history to shorter, more focused videos on specific - and oft-times weird - moments that need a bit of clarity.

And like most things British, there is humor involved. Dry, sarcastic, often deep humor. Like this one.

NARRATOR: You had one job.

There's one I like in particular that explained a rather odd situation with Grenada - and a too-brief involvement of U.S. military there.

Not covered in the video: Because of it's Commonwealth status, the US accidentally went to war with the whole Commonwealth by invading Grenada without getting an OK from our allies first. Thatcher let it slide because communism got thumped.

I liked the bit where the poor Governor-General is tied up and wielded like baseball bats by both sides. The professor draws the best "I don't need this" side-eye in the business.

I wonder if the professor is going to come out with a History Matters regarding tonight's UK Parliamentary elections...

Here's one more American-themed history clip for you. THIS WILL BE ON THE AP AMERICAN EXAM (seriously):

(Thanks to James Bissonette, Kelly Moneymaker, Something-something Wolf, Dr. Howard Dr. Fine Dr. Howard, Three-Spinning-Pl..... ow stop hitting me)

Bit of an Update, What Hey: Wouldn't you know it, the History Matters guy released a video about the post-4th situation between the UK and the US, over whether the Brits tried to reclaim the colonies:

You cheeky bastards. Burning down the White House was the plan all along! ...so what was that bit about New Orleans...?

Hark! A Ranking of Doors Albums!

Is everybody in? Is everybody IN??? The ceremony is about to begin...
-- "Awake," the Doors (Jim Morrison)

Growing up the Tampa Bay area as a suburban white boy meant listening to hard rock n roll. Not "classic rock" which at the time meant the 50s, but "album-oriented rock" that dominated the 60s and 70s.

As such, I was raised on the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Who and Van Halen and Black Sabbath and Cream and Montrose and Creedence and Lynyrd and Hendrix (but also softer sounds like the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and Moody Blues). Into all of that I also got into a band that had a short history but incredible impact on that era: The Doors.

Forming on the Los Angeles music scene in 1965, the Doors revolved around keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison, someone Ray knew from film school at UCLA. Morrison had confided to Manzarek that - as a wannabe poet - he'd been writing lyrical poems, and sang to him the earliest verses of "Moonlight Drive". Manzarek was convinced right then Morrison could be a singer, and brought along one of his brothers, bassist Patty Sullivan, and drummer John Densmore (whom Ray knew from a meditation group) to form this group named after Adolus Huxley's work The Doors Of Perception.

After a few shifts in the lineup - adding guitarist Robby Krieger to form the lineup we know today - the band recorded demos and worked their way through the clubs, earning a coveted spot as house band at the Whisky A Go Go.

Signed to Elektra Studios by 1966, controversy over their firing from the Whisky in August 1966 - when Morrison went explicit with that particular lyric in "The End" - added to the band's allure for their debut album by 1967.

The band's sound was an eclectic mix of electric blues, jazz, and the emerging psychedelic sound dominating the California scene. Guitarist Krieger was noticeably versatile compared to other guitarists of the era. Drummer Densmore employed effective range and included a lot of Latino (bossa nova) influence that gave the band a distinctive sound that felt like Los Angeles itself. Manzarek proved an adept keyboardist with an organ-type playing that sounded like a harpsichord, and allowed him to mimic bass-playing to where their live shows never needed one (the band did employ a slew of session artists to play bass in the studio).

Topping it all, however, was Morrison. Initially shy as a singer, something about being on the stage unleashed a performer few had ever seen in rock music. While there were other lead singers of bands who would strut or pose - Mick Jagger comes to mind - none of them reached the recklessness Morrison achieved (Jagger later went to him for advice on how to do it). He would cover every inch of the stage, act out scenes from the lyrics with his body, improvise poetry to any instrumental music during a jam. He became a shaman of sorts, seducing audiences with a wink and a snarl.

The band quickly hit it big on the charts - they were the first American band to "go gold" with their first seven albums - and even scored top single hits guaranteeing radio play. As a live act, they became must-see tickets. Morrison's reputation as a "bad boy" of rock n roll brought fame... and interest by law enforcement who were put off by the anti-war and counter-culture lyrics that filled the followup albums.

Morrison himself suffered to his demons. He had a history of disturbing behavior when he got drunk, and as the stresses of celebrity got to him the alcoholism - and other drug use - got worse. It affected recording and made him late for live shows during tours. By 1969, it had gotten so bad he pretty much had a breakdown on stage in Miami, threatening to show his cock (eyewitness testimony and insistence from the surviving band was certain he didn't) and then leading a riot of sorts with the crowd. The subsequent trial for incident exposure and other acts led to a guilty verdict in 1970.

While out on appeal, Morrison rejoined the band in L.A. to record one more album (L.A. Woman) before traveling to Paris in 1971 to get himself straightened out. The band noticed he was working to stay sober during the sessions and seemed in good spirits.

And then Morrison died - with a sizable amount of mystery over what actually happened - and was quickly buried in a Paris cemetery famed for its artists and poets.

The surviving trio - Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger - recorded two more albums without replacing Morrison at singer, but the efforts were noticeably lackluster with fans and the Doors broke up. After rejoining in 1979 to record new music to back audio readings from Morrison's poetry, that was pretty much it.

The band's influence remains far reaching. Not only codifying the four-man format of a rock band but affecting the electric blues style that remains a staple of bar bands to this day. Musically, the Doors had a hand in popularizing 60s psychedelic rock as well as help merge the Latino rhythm sound - which would co-mingle with the coming funk scene of the 70s - to the L.A. hard rock scene that would remain dominant until the 80s. In some respects, the dark symbolism and anti-authority stances the band took as its persona influenced the burgeoning punk scene.

Morrison's on-stage antics informed the crazy behavior of future frontmen - David Lee Roth comes to mind - and his lyrical style - more freestyle than rhyming, although he could do both - set the standard for poetry in hard rock songs. There are others in rock history with high skill as poets - Bob Dylan is a freaking Nobel laureate, obviously - and others aspire to reach those heights, but Morrison was one who could arguably be Dylan's peer (alongside John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, several others). Morrison himself became the template for the "rock star as tortured artist" imagery we have to this day.

In terms of ranking the Doors albums, I'm going with - in my opinion - weakest works to their most epic, must-have albums. To be fair to the band as a whole, I've included the post-Morrison albums - which I didn't hear as a kid, they were out-of-print until CD re-issues finally happened in the 2010s - so I can share my experience and response.

The program for this evening is not new
You've seen this entertainment through and through
You've seen your birth your life and death
You might recall all of the rest
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?
-- "The Movie," Jim Morrison

Ranking Doors Albums - Weak to Epic

Title: Other Voices

Reasons: The first album by the surviving trio, and you can immediately sense the loss with the opening song being an almost chirpy, upbeat kind of thing. The hell?

With Manzarek and Krieger taking over at vocals - neither of them able to reach the low seductive growl that Morrison could - the songs just don't have that dark edge to them. The lyrics themselves read like forced attempts at rhyme, rather than the near improvisational flow Morrison could weave.

Coming out at a moment when funk as a sound became popular, you can see the attempt by the band to stay relevant and avoid the harder elements of the electric blues style. But it's the songs on here that stick to that style that impress, and it'd have helped if they stayed that course.

Epics song(s): none
Great song(s): Tightrope Ride, Hang On To Your Life
Good song(s): Variety is the Spice of Life, Wandering Musician

Title: The Soft Parade

Reasons: Generally considered the weakest effort by the band while Morrison was alive, and the album title tells the tale. "Soft" is the first word I think of when re-listening to this. Going more in the popular sound, bringing in a string orchestra as backing music to much of the performances, makes this a more pop-flavored, sickeningly sweet sound. Gone are the rough edges that made the first three albums more appealing to the fanbase.

Notable as the point where Morrison was falling to the bottle, his erratic behavior allowed the other band mates - Krieger in particular - more room to write their own lyrics and decide on the music getting played. The whole album is anchored by the titular track - yet another long song much in the vein of "The End" and "Turn Off the Lights" - that tries to reach again for those poetic highs but ended up garbled and uninteresting. A shortened, tighter-edited "Soft Parade" would have been so much better.

There are songs on here worth saving - and the hit single off this "Touch Me" did was it was supposed to do, sell records - but it's an effort you can skip once you download/stream those handful of songs.

Epic song(s): None
Great song(s): Touch Me, Do It, Wild Child, Wishful Sinful
Good song(s): Running Blue

Title: Full Circle

Reasons: I was dreading the follow-up to Other Voices as sinking lower in terms of non-Morrison input, but this album was actually likable to where I could re-listen to it again as a refresher and remember what I enjoyed.

There was still a 70s funkadelic vibe to much of the work, but they had mixed it in - in my opinion, rather well - with the Latino backbeats to give some of the songs the edge that the other album lacked. Where the songs struggled were - again - the lyrics, which aimed at simplistic rhymes and none of the imagery Morrison could add. The one song on this album that did become a hit at its release - "The Mosquito" - is a good example: the opening lyrics were painful and forgettable, but the music itself that takes up most of the performance is pushed by an uptempo rhythm that made an incredible instrumental piece.

Just saying, if Morrison had lived songs like "Hardwood Floor" and "It Slipped My Mind" would have been darker and rueful and oh so good on the radio.

Epic song(s): none
Great song(s): Good Rockin'
Good song(s): Verdilac, Hardwood Floor, The Mosquito, It Slipped My Mind

Title: American Prayers

Reasons: Essentially an excuse by the surviving bandmates to provide a soundtrack to unearthed poetry readings and interviews that Morrison gave. The good news is that the band is made up of talented musicians who knew what they were doing and created a solid mix of back beats and melodies to fit (most) of what the poems and observations offered.

There isn't anything here - other than snippets from existing songs like "Peace Frog" and "Texas Radio" - that would be considered single or stand-alone hits. Some are not poems, just Jim acting out scenes from lyrics formed elsewhere. You kind of need to listen to the whole album and get through each poem as is, and appreciate if you can how Morrison mixed the innocent with the obscene. Some of this would be considered pornographic - and racist - even for its day, so do be aware this isn't a family-friendly listen.

Epic poem(s): Angels and Sailors, Stoned Immaculate, The Movie, The Hitchhiker
Great poem(s): Awake, Ghost Song, Dawn's Highway, Newborn Awakening
Good poem(s): To Come of Age, Black Polished Chrome, Latino Chrome

Title: Waiting for the Sun

Reasons: This is a rather schizoid album. On the one hand, this contains some of the most critical anti-war songs the band would ever produce. On the other, this contains most of the love songs the band would ever put to one album.

Bouncing between the giddy eagerness of the opening hit "Hello I Love You" and more somber works like "Love Street" and "Wintertime Love" (styled as a moody waltz), along with the utterly dark "Unknown Soldier" (live performances would have Morrison stand and fall as a soldier getting executed) and "Five to One" (an ode to street fighting with memetic lyrics like "No one here gets out alive" and "they got the guns but we got the numbers"), this is not an album to listen through in one sitting.

Accompanying the album was a long-form poem "Celebration of the Lizard" - which makes up the lyrics to a number of songs here - invoking the chaos and violence of the late 1960s, including direct references to JFK's assassination. The poem itself is a rambling mess, which probably explains how the band decided to break it up into more digestible segments.

This is almost on par with the best albums, and I end up ranking this near Morrison Hotel. It's a question which one is better than the other. so...

Epic song(s): Hello I Love You, Unknown Soldier, Five to One
Great song(s): Not to Touch the Earth, Spanish Caravan
Good song(s): Love Street, Wintertime Love, My Wild Love, We Could Be So Good Together

Title: Morrison Hotel

Reasons: Coming after the critical backlash of Soft Parade, and after the disastrous Miami concert that summarily ended their US tour, the band went back to the studio for a stripped-down, back to basics approach. Gone from this album are any poetic aspirations tying everything together, instead focusing on stand-along songs.

The result was obviously a return to form, but also greater improvement in the quality of songs produced. There's no long, eight-minute or ten-minute song on here: Everything is tight, focused, and hard rocking. The opening song "Roadhouse Blues" sets the tone, and in my opinion is the best song the band ever recorded: I would argue it's the best "play this in a bar even though I normally don't hang around bars" song. That song is the reason why I rank this album higher than the previous one.

This tends to be a popular album among fans, myself included. You might notice the phrase "Blood in the streets" in the song "Peace Frog" shows up whenever I blog about gun violence in any of our communities, yeah this is where I get that from.

Epic song(s): Roadhouse Blues, Peace Frog, Queen of the Highway
Great song(s): Waiting for the Sun, Land Ho!, Maggie M'gill
Good song(s): You Make Me Real, Blue Sunday

Title: Strange Days

Reasons: I once noted that second albums from bands tend to not do well. Either suffering from the expectations of the first big hit album, or dealing with leftovers from the first album's recording sessions, or the band making the mistake of going for a New Sound too early.

Strange Days doesn't suffer the sophomore jinx even though it does show some holdover from the first album. What happened was a change in technology - the studio just added an 8-track recording system allowing for more overdubs - that gave the band a chance to experiment. One of the results was the nightmarish "Horse Latitudes," which you can appreciate for the effort but ye gods is a hard listen.

While not a New Sound, this album ended up with tracks that fell well into the psychedelic sound of the late 60s, as a result not as enjoyable or as straight-forward as works like Morrison Hotel. The Doors did create on this album some decent songs still playable today. However, the overt attempts at poetry - such as the overlong "When The Music's Over" - trying to replicate the success of "The End" comes across as forced.

Epic song(s): Love Me Two Times, Moonlight Drive, People Are Strange
Great song(s): Strange Days, You're Lost Little Girl
Good song(s): Horse Latitudes, My Eyes Have Seen You, When the Music's Over

Title: L.A. Woman

Reasons: As Morrison's legal woes piled up, and as his mental condition deteriorated, the band decided to stick to the stripped-down effort of the previous Morrison Hotel. Going with a new producer, and with Morrison doing his best to stay sober, the sessions for this album went smoothly and everything about its release pointed to good things ahead.

The critics and fans raved about it being their best one since the first, the single release of "Love Her Madly" going up the charts, just as word got back from Paris about Morrison's death. As a result, this album carries with it to this day a lot of historic and symbolic weight.

The most noticeable element is how deep and scarred Morrison's voice had gotten by this album: the toll of alcohol and cigarettes and drugs were adding up. This does give the songs a darker, bluesy edge and a more cynical tone on an otherwise upbeat song like "Love Her Madly".

What puts this album at the top of the list are the epic songs here, especially the title track "L.A. Woman," a song close to 8 minutes but shockingly never feels like it's playing that long. The lyrics comparing the city to a woman - no, that the city IS a woman - is arguably one of the greatest odes to L.A. ever recorded, and the band's performance - Krieger's opening guitar growl mimicking a car engine above all - a soundtrack to blast from the car speakers when you find yourself on an open freeway across the city.

Throw in how "The WASP" - a thread of free verse poetry full of mythological imagery - and "Riders on the Storm" are Morrison's lyrics at his quotable best and you have an album that deserves great acclaim.

Epic song(s): Love Her Madly, L.A. Woman, The WASP (Texas Radio & the Big Beat), Riders on the Storm

Great song(s): The Changling, Been Down So Long, Cars Hiss By My Window
Good song(s): L'America

Title: The Doors

Reasons: I have noticed I rank a lot of bands' first album releases as their best, and there's often a good reason (or three) for that. One, it's made up of songs that the band played, practiced, enhanced over and over until they were good enough to win over live audiences and get a recording deal signed. So these songs are well-vetted. Two, these are also the songs that set the band's lyric and tonal styles, playing to the strengths of one of the bandmates - say, a great guitarist or a great drummer - that ends up getting replicated to later albums that don't sound as fresh or inventive. Three, some of the longer-lasting bands will go through an experimental New Sound phase that becomes an ill-advised mess, or they're trying to keep up with trends that shift over the decades to where their later work just can't match up what made them so go in the first place.

That said, the Doors' self-titled debut was one hell of a breakout for a big year - 1967 - in music, which introduced their signature styles - Manzarek's complex organ keyboards, Krieger's fluid guitar work, Densmore's jazz drums, Morrison's then-soft baritone growl - and set the tone for how electric blues should sound in night bars and garages across America. Opening with the energetic "Break on Through" - a fast-moving song that doesn't give listeners a chance to pause - the rest of the album slows down a bit to let the lyrics and beats seduce. The languid, moody "Crystal Ship" is a personal favorite.

Anchored on Side One with the band's biggest hit "Light My Fire," Side Two ends with their darkest and most epic song "The End," a near-operatic nightmare trip through Morrison's Id that would make Freud and Jung run away in fear. Noticeably long (over 11 minutes!) and chaotic, the mixture of shifting lyrical imagery to varying tempos and intensity just seems to work on this song where it didn't in follow-up attempts.

I also want to note as a product of the time, a number of these songs - hell, a lot of songs across the Doors' playlist - describe rather shocking (misogynistic) behavior towards women when heard today. While I list a couple of those songs here, I do want to say I don't agree with the lyrics to them. It's just... they are good songs.

Epic song(s): Break On Through (To the Other Side), The Crystal Ship, Twentieth Century Fox, The End
Great song(s): Soul Kitchen, Light My Fire, Take It As It Comes
Good song(s): Alabama Song (Whisky Bar), Backdoor Man

--

Just to let you know, it was doing a "Hark!" either for the Doors or Led Zeppelin, and because it's the 4th of July I went with the American guys. Led Zep is next, peeps.

I'll tell you this
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn
-- from "The WASP (Texas Radio & The Big Beat)," Jim Morrison

Four for the Fourth 2024: A Lament

A lament.

None of this - the loss of abortion rights, the culture war attacks at gays and trans people, the collapse of functioning government - would be happening if Hillary had won in 2016.

None of this would be happening if enough left-leaning voters - progressives, liberals, moderates - had turned up to vote for Hillary in the battleground states that flipped their Electoral counts to trump.

None of this would be happening if the goddamned Beltway Media looked past their own personal vitriol for Hillary to report more on donald trump's ethical and criminal and sexually offensive actions. "But her emails" on the front page of the New York Times while trump's "grab them by the pussy" bragging goes unreported.

The Supreme Court would definitely look differently - and acting more moderate or at least holding to stare decisis as a foundation - than the one we have thanks to trump and that goddamned Mitch McConnell. While the GOP-controlled Senate in 2016 was promising not to grant a President Hillary any appointments to fill the vacancy left by Scalia's death, odds were sooner or later a deal would be brokered to fill that seat. It wouldn't have been a firebrand liberal but it wouldn't have been the likes of Gorsuch or Kavanaugh or Barrett or any other Federalist Society wingnut.

We wouldn't have a Supreme Court willing to undo decades of federal regulatory practices set by the Chevron ruling, and we wouldn't have a Court that undid Casey or Roe.

And we wouldn't have had a Court that would grant imperial powers to a corrupt Presidency. For two reasons: One, Hillary was never as corrupt as her haters kept imagining and would have never gotten to a point of insisting on immunity for "official acts;" Two, even a liberal-leaning Court favoring Hillary would never betray or undo the Constitution like that.

If Hillary had won in 2016, we'd have never given trump even a chance of claiming such legal immunities for the moment when his crimes would have caught up to him. trump's tax evasions and constant grifting would have finally gotten the attention of state and federal prosecutors, and even his delay tactics wouldn't have gotten him past 2020 before finding himself fleeing the nation to avoid jail time.

A trump loss would have diminished the Far Right wingnut MAGA cult, proving their extremism couldn't get past a national popular vote that still favors Democrats (and the center-left). Given all the grifting that the wingnut leadership indulges, they'd have gone for each other's throats by now to claim the scraps trump would have left behind.

We wouldn't be in this darkest timeline. There'd still be political sniping, and derogatory insults aimed at Hillary (and anyone following in her path) as "communist threats to a Christian America" and there'd still be culture war bullshit at the state level, but not with the official seal of approval that trump's offensive regime created.

And this is all a lament is good for. Regret.

It doesn't help to wallow in the past. What Ifs are only good for fiction, and for awareness of how BAD things CAN get if you let the sons of bitches win.

This 2024 is a chance to let go of all regrets of the past. This 2024 is a chance to do what is truly best for the United States and for a citizenry that begs for sanity to reign instead of King trump. 

This 4th of July, we have a chance to stand with the current President Joe Biden as he runs for a second term, a term focused on bringing back abortion and health care rights to women, bringing back good jobs at good wages, bringing back affordable housing across all communities. A second Biden term will defend our allies abroad and stand firm against the corrupt powers (Putin) trying to undermine Western democracies.

The lament is over. The fight for American virtues and American rights and American democracy begins again today.