A Sad Story: A Librarian Killed

This is a story that has hit pretty close to home, not just in my county but in my library cooperative where I work. Per WFLA, a sad tale about a librarian taken from us in a brutal act against her family:

...According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Elijah Stansell, 18, intentionally ran Suzette Penton over outside her Polk City home last month. She died on Nov. 25 leaving behind her four children and several grandchildren.

“Every kid in town loved Suzette because she’s just that type of person. She was flamboyant. She was just an outgoing, wonderful person,” said Ann Blethen (Suzette's friend).

“Suzette Penton helped make it a wonderful community,” said Sheriff Grady Judd. “She was known and loved by the people of Polk City.”

Penton's place in Polk City was at the community library, where she served the public and helped with children's events and literacy efforts.

What happened to make Stansell kill Penton?

On Nov. 9, Stansell, joined by Raven Sutton, 16, Kimberly Stone, 16 (who was 15 at the time of incident) and Hannah Eubank, 14, drove to Penton’s home.

There was an ongoing romance-related dispute between the group. They were there, officials said, to beat up Penton’s teenage son.

After a physical altercation between the teenage boys, Penton arrived home. She went outside to take photographs of the teens’ getaway vehicle, Stansell’s van. That’s when, authorities believe, Stansell intentionally ran her over, leaving tire tracks on her body.

“He didn’t clip her. He didn’t try to turn away from her and accidentally hit her and fell down. She was squared up and he ran over her,” said Sheriff Judd.

The van belonged to Westwood Missionary Baptist Church where Stansell’s father is a pastor, according to the sheriff...

Stansell may have been a young adult but he was answering to the rage of the Angry Guy mentality. It's that toxic bullshit mindset that pushed him to go out of his way to pick a fight with his girlfriend's ex, and it was in that rising rage that escalated the violence straight into murdering a woman trying to protect her son.

And now an entire community is reeling from the loss of a woman who served the public good, who helped families, who gave children smiles and books to read.

I may have met her, but briefly maybe once or twice, in the years since I've worked at Bartow Public Library. We're part of a county-wide Cooperative of shared library resources, but not a full county system. As such, most libraries are run by their cities and we have little interaction between our libraries. But we've been holding annual training sessions for staffers to try and get as many librarians together, make the cooperative more cohesive and understanding. Penton may have been at one of those Staff Days, I may have shared a table with her, working on team building projects or sharing stories of lurid library lore.

But that's all I can tell you, that's all I can share. Just a brief glimpse into possibility, into a life snuffed out. There are so many others - her children, her friends, the people of Polk City who visited the Library as a safe place almost like a home for them - who can tell more about her and what she meant to their lives.

All of that gone now, all because of an Angry Guy who went out of his way to express that rage without a care to the consequence. Until it was too late, until there was blood in the street.

All those stories lost now.

This Dark Memorial In Some Discarded Corner of America

(Update: Infidel753 was kind enough to include this in his weekly blog roundup this Sunday!)

It's something that pops up on Twitter every so often, ever since November 2016, essentially this one question most of the people I follow end up asking aloud: "Does this Shitgibbon donald trump actually get a Presidential Library?"

It will be a disaster, less a library or research facility and more a messy gift shop with merch. I can't imagine enough reputable librarians would want to work there.

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) November 29, 2020

As a professional librarian this is a question that interests me and compels me to answer. Well, the simple honest answer is "Yes" the Shitgibbon will be granted the ability to form his own Presidential Library. The situation is a little more complicated than that.

We need to note what a Presidential Library actually is, what purpose it serves. If we go by the laws - like the Presidential Libraries Act of 1986 - set up by Congress, the primary purpose of the library is to serve as a depository for the National Archives and Records Administration (the agency responsible for storing, indexing, and sharing official documents so the government can keep track of what the hell it's doing and so historians will have something to argue over 100 years from now).

Every administration, especially trump's as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), will have a stockpile of papers, memos, agendas, agreements, Executive Orders, and other tidbits required by law to remained stored and made available for future reference. Personal notes and papers - diaries and private correspondences - are also considered for collections to add context (this is optional, some Presidential private papers remain with family or were destroyed after death). 

As the powers and responsibilities of the Executive branch grew, the need to store and archive grew with it. Sharing these responsibilities out to a library dedicated to that particular President (mutter grumble trump shouldn't fcking count but he does mutter mutter) is a way to keep things organized by era (and to keep it from being kept in one oversized warehouse constantly expanding to keep up with the storage. Look at your own closet, how stuffed is it with 10-20 years worth of books, utility bills, and winter holiday cards?).

To that end, the Presidential Library serves as an academic research facility, with study areas, meeting rooms, and workstations to allow visiting students/researchers to access the materials for their needs. This part will be most like a small college library with clerks, assistants, and full-time professional librarians overseeing access to the collection.

But in practice a Presidential Library is more akin to a museum (close cousin to the library). The facility will be open for tours, displaying memorabilia, artwork, and promoting themes and iconography prominently associated to that administration. A mock-up of the Oval Office will be built (it would likely be where the carpeting and furniture from that tenure ends up). Presentation halls for large gatherings to one side, gift shops on the other.

A perfect example is the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It's best known as a popular tourist attraction where every four years the Republicans would host a primary debate (so that the candidates can suck up to the ghost of Saint Ronnie to appeal to their party voters as Reagan's Heir to the Throne) in California.

The thing is, while NARA provides some funding, that funding is very limited. Every Presidential Library - and there are several NOT supported by the National Archives, usually the ones before FDR when the agency started managing presidential papers - has to fund itself in some form or another (hence the paid tours and gift shops).

Many a Presidential Library started through private funding and the setup of a non-profit organization to manage/oversee that library/museum. The non-profit is responsible for finding the land, planning the architecture, paying the construction, and hiring most staff at which point NARA signs off on the deal and shuffles the collected papers to that library's storage shelves. (Some libraries, serving more as memorials/museums, are overseen by National Parks instead. There's still a non-profit overseeing each of those)

This is where it gets tricky for trump himself. his track record with non-profits is... um... colorful at best, criminal (at the New York state level) at the least. trump's ability - or even the ability of his family and business associates - to start such a non-profit has been crippled at the moment (that and he's too busy grifting over the "fake votes" argument to set up emails begging for library funds). I haven't seen a foundation/non-profit set up for a Presidential Library for him, have you? (seriously if you did and it's a legit one not a parody site, add the link to the comment section please and thank you)

Another thing to consider is the overall mess trump's administration has been. Archivists, historians, and other observers have been complaining about the lack of effective record-keeping in his offices. A combination of understaffing and unqualified hires contributed to a disorganized management system. When you consider the possibility of half the things trump and his cohorts did in the White House - the way they broke the immigration policies and committed potential human rights abuses towards children, for God's sake - we're facing the possibility that half the documentation for trump's would-be library will be missing, destroyed, or redacted into solid pages of black lines.

It's not going to be much of a Presidential Library if the President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) shredded the entire paper trail.

Another big question about a trump Library will be "where the hell are they gonna put that thing?"

Insert flaming dumpster GIF here.

Others have already planned out a trump Presidential Library... as being a long hallway of Twitter posts and nothing more. Another one has plans for a fake border wall and COVID memorial pool.

Okay, all joking aside, this is a serious question. Most Presidential Libraries place themselves in areas of most importance to the President it honors (usually birthplaces, colleges they attended, or their primary residence when they became President). Gerald Ford is unique among NARA-supported facilities by having a Library where he went to college (Ann Arbor) and a separate Museum where he grew up (Grand Rapids). U.S. Grant's Library is at Mississippi State University (!) rather than Illinois or other places he resided. Obama is setting up his Center (it won't be a library for some reason, more a museum and advocacy office) where he came to political power (Chicago) instead of birthplace (HAWAII, YOU BASTARDS) or college (Columbia or Harvard). 

trump's Library placement situation has already been discussed, among the more serious punditry, although it's still a guessing game at this point. It seems unlikely trump will get an opportunity to use his college - UPenn and its Wharton College of Business have not bragged about their connection to trump since 2016 - and his unpopularity in New York (city and state) makes it unlikely he'll find a place in his birth-town of Queens.

One thing trump has advantage of is he already owns properties across the states - his trump Towers, his trump Resorts - that he could arguably turn into tax write-offs um non-profit center(s) to build his Library. Mar-A-Lago has oft been cited as a likely spot: It's where he relocated his residency status in 2019 and more likely where he'll go into hiding from arrest warrants after January 20 until he can sneak a ride out to a nation that won't extradite him. Property laws in Florida are relatively protective for owners: Lawsuits that might otherwise wipe out every other source of revenue trump could have won't be able to touch his Florida properties. It is unlikely that NARA will approve it as an archives location, however: Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach is right between the Atlantic Ocean and Intercoastal Waterway, extremely vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding. It would never be a library in any sense.

As a Presidential Museum, of course, it would make perfect sense. The museum won't need to answer to the demands of history or accuracy: the trump Museum would be a grand display of trump's narcissism. Every nook, room, and hallway filled with garish, gaudy tributes to trump's "greatness". A performance hall with a stage dedicated to any speaker offering praise and holiest-of-thous to a con artist, an assembly dedicated to the greed and graft of a corrupt overlord.

It's why I don't see a future trump Library as being anything more than an oversized gift store: Balanced between a Far Right bookstore selling trump ghost-written hagiographies at 100 bucks a cover, and a South Florida tourist trap shilling MAGA beach towels and trump-signed golf clubs.

Any honest, reputable librarian with a Masters degree in Information Sciences is going to steer clear of the place. I doubt there will be a need for a librarian at all: Only hucksters need apply.

trump Keeps Banging That War Drum in the Middle East, November 2020 Edition

It's like these fuckers WANT to start a war they know Biden would have to resolve on his own. Reported just today via The Week:

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist who has been suspected of leading Iran's nuclear weapons program, was shot and killed Friday while traveling in a vehicle east of Tehran, Iranian state media said. He was apparently taken to the hospital for treatment, but doctors were unable to save him. Fakhrizadeh has long been a top target of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif believes Jerusalem was behind the assassination, but a spokesperson for the Israeli military refused to comment. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation against the perpetrators. Not much is known about Fakrizadeh, believed to be 59, but a 2007 CIA assessment said his role as a physics professor was likely a cover story, and it later became clear he was in charge of Iran's warhead development, The New York Times reports.

Refer back to what happened at the very start of this year, when trump and his administration ordered a public strike in Iraq killing a top Iranian military official. What I said then:

This isn't like the strike Obama called on Bin Laden back in 2011. Bin Laden by then was a pariah figure among most Muslim power brokers and nations with few allies to defend or mourn him. The backlash against his death was meager (and in some ways welcomed) across the Middle East. This is different. Soleimani was a high-ranking figure within the Iranian government itself, a major player with ally Syria, and someone well-connected among the Shi'a militia forces threatening much of Iraq and Kurdish areas not yet flattened by Turkey/Russia.

This is like Iran calling an airstrike on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The kind of thing that would trigger a major political and military response from us. The kind of thing where a declaration of war would be a rational response.

And yet it wouldn't surprise me if trump and his remaining foreign policy/military advisors would welcome this move. trump thinks war is a game and probably thinks this is the kind of thing that will win him more support and silence his Democratic critics.

But war for political gain is no longer a smart move. War for conquest and resources ends up squandering both...

It's telling that the cooler heads prevailing from that mess were the Iranians, who know damn well getting into a straight-up fight with the United States will hurt them as much as it would hurt us. Most evidence seems to point to Iran doing their best to survive trump's bullying until Biden enters the Presidency and resumes diplomatic efforts that would benefit them.

Today's attack - suggested to be an Israeli strike but with U.S. and Saudi backing, considering the reports coming out that Netanyahu and his head of Mossad (intelligence agency) secretly met with U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo and the crown prince Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia about four days ago - is another attempt to goad Iran into war, something that would fulfill trump's self-promotion as a military genius who knows better than the generals as well as start a quagmire he wouldn't have to worry about after January 20, 2021.

This is serious shit. Again.

Referring to Cheryl Rofer at Balloon-Juice, who has a background in foreign policy and nuclear proliferation, this is not good news:

Israel, and the Trump administration, have been trying to break the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) so that it cannot be revived. The JCPOA froze and even pushed back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, putting it under greater international scrutiny than any nuclear program in the world.

But war with Iran is what Mike Pompeo and other Trump advisors have wanted. It is also what Netanyahu wants, as long as the losses are primarily America’s.

On top of the devastation of the Iraq War, a war with Iran would tear the Middle East apart. Those desiring war imagine that it would destroy Iran without extreme damage to themselves...

I'm not an expert on these matters the way Rofer is, but I'd wager she would agree with every point I've made about why a war with Iran is a bad idea.

How much of this is trump thinking a declaration of war against Iran - if he can provoke them into making a massive attack against U.S. forces in the area - would allow him to suspend the election transition is pure speculation. It wouldn't work because the election is hard-wired into the Constitution and he can't stop what's coming this January 20th. 

We should consider this is trump's way of getting his mobs to cheer him on as a war hawk, while leaving the bills to get paid by Biden as a vindictive Fuck-You parting gift.

The year that is 2020 isn't done with us yet...

Turkey Sacrifice Day 2020: The Big Question

I mean, seriously, YouTube's been around for more than a decade, and yet we can't get a clean copy of the most epic punchline in television history?!

This is like someone videotaped the television. It's a copy of a copy, blurry and out of alignment.

WE DESERVE A CLEAN COPY OF TURKEYS AWAY, AMERICA!!!

Also, say a prayer to the New York Jets in honor of the Butt Fumble. I have spoken.

Here Come The Pardons: The Beginning of the End for trump

(Update: Thanks this weekend to Tengrain for including this article in Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Have some pardoned turkey while you're here...)

And no, this is NOT the annual pardoning of the turkey I'm talking about. Per Ryan Lucas at NPR:

President Trump has pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who spent years enmeshed in an often bizarre legal war with the government that sprang from the Russia investigation.

Trump announced the news Wednesday on Twitter as Americans prepared to observe the Thanksgiving holiday this week.

So, yeah, he just... tweeted it out. Again. Back to Lucas:

Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and then cooperated extensively with prosecutors. But he ultimately reversed course and accused the government of trying to frame him.

Flynn went so far as to withdraw his first plea of guilty and substitute a second plea of not guilty, even though he'd acknowledged the underlying conduct that was against the law and been close to receiving a sentence...

The Justice Department was not consulted about the Flynn pardon in the way it often takes part in the preparation of presidential pardons, a department official said on Wednesday. The official described the situation on the condition the person not be identified.

The Justice Department did get a "heads-up" on Wednesday, the official said, and the person said "this is obviously an appropriate use of the president's pardon power."

Justice Department leaders would have preferred, however, for Flynn's case to have been resolved in court, where federal Judge Emmet Sullivan still had not ruled on the government's request to abandon its prosecution...

It's that ongoing matter that may still be an ongoing matter even with this pardon. It all depends on the exact wording that will end up in the paperwork. For more, let's head over to Emptywheel who's been covering the Michael Flynn case for the past few years and (catches Emptywheel finishing off a once-full bottle of scotch) uh let's give it a minute, okay here we go:

None of the outlets reviewed how complex successfully pardoning Flynn will be, without making Trump’s — or Flynn’s son’s — fate worse. That’s true because the posture of the Flynn case before Judge Emmet Sullivan is such that Sullivan has multiple possible options for holding Flynn accountable, depending on when Sullivan moves and when Trump does.

If Trump pardoned Flynn for the crimes to which Flynn pled guilty, false statements, today, a Foreign Agent of Turkey pardoned right alongside a Thanksgiving turkey — then DOJ’s motion to dismiss the prosecution for Flynn’s false statements charges would likely be mooted. But there’s still a pending motion to withdraw Flynn’s plea before Judge Sullivan, which by itself mooted DOJ’s promises not to prosecute Flynn for hiding that he was working for the government of Turkey rather than just a foreign business in a FARA filing in March 2017. Plus, when Flynn pled, it was understood that would end the investigation, but given that he reneged on his plea, there’s nothing stopping DOJ from investigating Mike Jr for his involvement with Turkey, if Flynn were pardoned.

But that’s still not adequate. Flynn made multiple materially conflicting statements before Judge Sullivan and the grand jury. When directing amicus John Gleeson on what he should consider, Sullivan asked whether he should hold Flynn in contempt. Gleeson said that, instead, he should consider those additional lies when sentencing him on the charged crimes. DOJ argued that Sullivan should, instead, refer the charges to DOJ. Even if Sullivan referred those charges today and Bill Barr declined prosecution (as DOJ made clear in hearings they would), Biden’s DOJ could reopen the case. So to get Flynn out of trouble for his efforts to blow up his own prosecution, Trump would have to pardon those crimes as well. But if Trump pardoned Flynn today, Sullivan could wait and ultimately hold Flynn in contempt; while Trump succeeded in freeing Joe Arpaio of criminal contempt with a pardon, it’s not clear whether that could work preemptively.

Assuming Trump does pardon Flynn for some or all of these crimes, it would add several overt actions to obstruction charges against himself. So unless he’s sure that Mike Pence would give him a last minute pardon (or certain that his own self-pardon would withstand legal review), then pardoning all Flynn’s crimes would pile up his own exposure.

Then, if Trump does pardon Flynn, it will surely become a matter for a hearing before one or the other of the Judiciary Committees into Trump’s abuse of the pardon power. Flynn will have no Fifth Amendment privilege and Biden’s DOJ will have the ability to enforce contempt motions from Congress. As I have noted, in the process of attempting to blow up Flynn’s prosecution, Ric Grenell and Sidney Powell and DOJ have released documents that will make it far harder for Mike Flynn to sustain his claim not to remember what Trump’s involvement in the “collusion” with Russia was. Public testimony (or even depositions run by staffers) might elicit evidence that would subject Trump himself to conspiracy charges or might result in new false statements charges...

Not that any of this matters to trump. What's happening here, since there's little Flynn can do for trump personally anymore, is that trump is starting to clean up as much evidence of his criminal misdeeds that he can. For all of trump's bullshit about the 2020 election results - that Biden "stole" the win from him - he can't avoid the facts that Biden honestly won the Popular and Electoral votes and that no matter what Biden is getting sworn into office January 20, 2021. trump has a deadline now, and even he knows it.

This pardon is one in a long line of expected moves involving many of trump's handlers - Manafort, Stone, etc. - designed to "pay off" or confirm the loyalty of these corrupt people to the corrupt lord for whom they've done the dirty work. Even with the arguments about the Fifth Amendment and what these crooks may face in future criminal investigations, this is trump's way of making sure they remember they are all in the same boat and that they'll need to keep their damn mouth shut, any investigations and legal systems be damned.

This is all for show, political kabuki, trump giving these men a "clean bill" that they can then use to crow to trump's base. You can see it already with other Republicans hailing Flynn as a "victim" of wanton librul witch-hunting. This is trump playing to the cameras, not to the legal system or the history books. 

But like everything else trump does, as Emptywheel is pointing out, it's being done in a haphazard way, without much thought or care into the process. Meaning that, despite all of trump's hopes, his pardon power doesn't have the reach he thinks it has. Flynn is still vulnerable to jail time. Prosecutors are bringing up their arguments that Manafort should face his state charges - which had been dismissed earlier - because the federal ones he's been convicted for are about to get washed away.

And has been noted before, any pardons trump thinks he can make for himself isn't going to save him from New York's legal system: Rumors abound that both the criminal and civil investigations into possible tax evasion and fraud are set to go out the second trump is no longer in office.

trump's faithful can yell and scream all they want. The media punditry chiding Biden into offering trump a pardon so "we can put this behind ourselves for the good of the nation" need to recognize that JUSTICE should matter more than their fantasies of bipartisanship (THAT ship sailed the minute Mitch decided to obstruct Obama 24/7 back in 2009). trump's caused too much damage to our political norms, trump has committed too many crimes in office and beforehand to be so easily forgiven.

trump is at the end of his last big con. This is all just him flailing about as he falls into the deep pit he deserves. It's now a question of how many deluded souls fall in with him.

The Five Reasons trump Refuses To Concede (w/Update)

(Update: Thanks as always to Batocchio for adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe out there, readers, wear the damn masks and watch out for coup attempts)

We're about two weeks into the reality that Pennsylvania called for Biden, clinching the Electoral count he needs. We're two days out from Georgia finishing their recount efforts – they have rules to recount if a result is too close, and it was looking that way for both the Presidential ticket and one of the Senate races – and confirming that Biden won that state (arguably the first real crack in the GOP Southern Strategy we've ever seen, more on that another time) pretty much putting Biden at 306 Electoral Votes to trump's 232 (in a great irony, this is the mirror result of 2016 where trump had 306 to Hillary's 232, except this time Biden also has the Popular Vote locked in).

And here's trump still, denying the results, screaming about fraud, and sending mixed messages and different lawyer teams into (and out of) various states trying something, ANYTHING, to get the courts to flip the majority will of Americans so HE can outright steal a second term and stay in power.

It's both horrifying – trump is no longer hiding his obsession to rule as a dictator – and hilarious – his efforts are so pathetic even wimp fights are more brutal.

So just to pass the time – until the moment when trump decides to go full coup d'etat and call out his Proud Boys supremacist militias to overthrow the state governments, or he succeeds in convincing three state legislatures (Michigan's, Pennsylvania's, and Georgia's) to ignore the votes and illegally seat their own pro-trump Electors – here's my five cents on why trump is behaving this way.

Reason One: trump's narcissism.

We've known going into this nightmare that trump is pure Id, even more than his Ego. Operating on impulse and on the bare minimum of self-awareness let alone awareness of others.

Trump has made it clear he views the world in the simplest of terms: That people are divided into Winners and Suckers, and that HE (champion and most excellent of the former group) shall never be lumped in with the latter.

So just on this mindset alone, trump cannot admit – not to others, not to himself – that he lost. Granted, he's lost before: His many bankruptcies should be viewed as admissions of failure, except that thanks to his lawyers and through the mercies of bankruptcy laws trump was able to wiggle his way out of responsibility and still claim himself a successful businessman who “gamed the system.” His failure with the USFL vs. NFL antitrust lawsuit should be a glaring example – if you ever read the jury findings, you'll see how the jurors recoiled from trump's bullshit and saw him as the instigator and not the victim – except that trump still blames everyone else for that folly. The Trump University scam that was haunting him during the 2016 campaign itself should be viewed as a loss, except again he worked out a plea deal that guaranteed the settlement would cast no blame nor lingered on the open fraud he and his cronies committed.

In one respect, trump lost in 2016: The Popular vote clearly went for Hillary. But due to the broken and anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College, trump squeaked into winning three battleground states with literally mere hundreds of votes that gave him their Electoral Votes instead. It should be noted that trump promptly crowed – against all evidence – that he had won a LANDSLIDE, not just the College but also the Popular vote, and claimed it was the greatest victory in history (ignoring the Electoral and Popular vote blowouts of 1984 and 1932 (we don't count Nixon's 1972 blowout because the cheating exposed by the Watergate scandal negates that)).

Trump can't crow like that this time. The illusion of the Electoral College can't grant him that excuse. So he has to settle on denial. Constant, whining denial that he's the victim of voter fraud and to get us to pity him back into office.

Reason Two: Republican Denial of Democratic Party legitimacy

In this, trump is not acting alone. One of the reasons why trump's attempts to subvert the election results is ongoing is because the rest of the Republican Party has no choice but to agree with him.

Just as trump has to deny Biden his victory, the Republicans have to deny the Democratic Party theirs. The whole point of GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts is to reduce the majority advantages the Dems hold across most of the large-population (and most battleground) states. Remember, Republicans are currently in power as a minority (political, not ethnic) party.  If the Democrats hold at least two parts of the federal government – the Executive, and part of the Legislature with the U.S. House – that reduces the strength they have on the national stage, and makes them vulnerable – through investigation and oversight by a Dem-controlled Justice Department – at the state level as well.

The more trump screams that Biden cheated and stole the election from him, the easier it becomes part of the Far Right Narrative that the Republican party can shill on Fox Not-News and other wingnut outlets. The Narrative will repeat the story they sold to the world when Obama was in office: The Democratic leadership is illegitimate and must be obstructed for the greater good. Where the GOP sold that by accusing Obama of being a Fake American (dirty Mooslim Kenyan Usurper Socialist), they will repackage by accusing Biden of being a Fake President (demented anti-Catholic Usurper Socialist).

We're seeing the ramifications of that right now. A little-known agency in the Executive branch (GSA) that oversees the Transition period is refusing to recognize Biden, cutting off Biden's team from coordinating with the government to ensure a smooth entry in January. Considering this can hamper Biden's ability to manage an out-of-control pandemic as well as handle any foreign disruptions, this singular act of spite can get people killed...

Reason Three: Making Money.

One of the greatest sins of the Citizens United court ruling has been to let the political campaign system turn into a financial free-for-all with little oversight and too much cash getting wasted on Gods-know-what.

We've already seen glimpses of this with the growing scandal revolving around trump's banished campaign manager Brad Parscale. We're seeing more of it right now in the past two weeks where trump's campaign – and other Republican PACs – have been spamming email requests (more like demands) to their voting faithful to help pay for the legal fees of trump's ongoing lawsuits to nullify thousands of mail-in ballots he doesn't like.

Thing is, you need to read the fine print in these fundraising emails: A number of them state that depending on the amount donated the first amount – say, the first $5,000 of a donation – won't go to the legal effort. That money would go instead to pay off debts in trump's campaign instead (and maybe even to trump himself).

It's another grift. Trump is trying to squeeze out every last penny from his sucker fanbase. Always the dollars, always the fucking dollars.

Reason Four: There is nowhere else for trump to go after all this, except to jail.

I keep harping on this fact: trump's whole life has been a series of escalating con games, moving up from property ownership and renting, to land speculation, to casinos, to golf courses, to team sports ownership, to marketing books, to marketing junk, to marketing himself as a celebrity, to marketing himself as God-Emperor. Every step a con, scheming his way into a fantasy life of permanent wealth he can never attain because he's borrowing too much and spending too much. Every business move collapsing onto itself due to his own mismanagement and abuse, setting himself up just enough so he can jettison the failure and move on to the next big deal.

This is pretty much how he gambled his way through life, and how he scammed his way – through bullying the Republicans into accepting him as a candidate, through bullshitting his way through every primary, through overwhelming the national media to give him free airtime 24/7 to shill his campaign – into a White House he really didn't earn or deserve.

Once in the White House, trump behaved the only way he knew how: Grabbing everything he could in fits of greed, cutting corners by ignoring rules and practices set in stone to ensure legal norms were upheld, and letting his underlings waste time and resources to pander to his whims. Trump violated the Emoluments Clause from Day One, for God's sake. Aided and abetted by a Republican-controlled Congress until 2019, trump ran rampant allowing his agencies to fleece the taxpayers at will, promoting cronyist behavior at every turn. 

The Hatch Act – separating the needs of election campaigning from the powers of the Presidency – was broken so many times by his handlers and then by trump himself that the law itself currently isn't fit on paper for use as toilet paper.

And all of this – thanks to trump firing agency-level Inspector Generals and abusing the Justice Department as his own law firm defending every corrupt act in trump's administration – happened with little oversight and legal accountability, right up to his getting impeached for using foreign policy to compel another country to interfere with our own elections. With a Republican-controlled Senate covering his ass, trump never had to worry about the consequences of every sin he's ever committed.

Until now.

With all the things he's done – before and during his tenure – trump was protected by a questionably legal standing order that sitting Presidents are immune from criminal investigations and charges (civil matters is a different matter per Jones v Clinton). Once trump is officially done as President – the second Biden swears his Oath of Office on January 20 2021 – trump is criminally liable for every potential criminal act, especially the Emoluments violations as well as any national security violations he may have done. Granted, there are statutes of limitations, from what I've heard they last five years so any law he broke in 2017 has to be reviewed and charged by 2022.

The other thing the Presidential status protected trump from were the criminal and civil matters he broke before he ran for office, such as the sexual assaults that have been documented and especially the one (maybe more) awaiting his DNA sample in civil court. Trump had mastered – thanks to his army of lawyers, the only ones he ever really pays well – the tactics of delay delay delay to force his legal opponents into giving up and dealing out. However: he's used that trick too many times, he can't use being in office as an excuse after January, and he's now at the end of the number of other tricks he can keep pulling off before the judge(s) simply decide to hold him in contempt.

Piling on top of that are the reports that trump – for all his stealing and thievery in office – is broke, millions of dollars in debt, and some of the largest debts are due within the next four months. If he were still President past January 2021, he could delay those debts even further (or pay them off abusing his access to funds, further criminalizing his actions while in office). Alas, he won't be able to do that with Biden winning...

And the most obvious thing of all, the Sword of Damocles dangling over trump's head, are the criminal charges awaiting him with the State of New York. Following on the investigations into trump's bribing of mistresses and illegal use of funds from his now-defunct charity, these are legal matters that even as President trump cannot stop or delay. 

Oh, trump could force his owned Department of Justice to intervene, maybe even arrest state-level officials, maybe even steal off evidence and destroy it all in the Attorney General's office, but it would be such a violation of federalism (separation of Federal and State powers) that it would trigger straight-up Civil War. Trump could try pardoning himself, but Presidential pardons only cover federal crimes, not state. Hilariously enough, New York's District Attorneys could hit trump with criminal charges even if trump had won this election cycle, creating the unique sight of the Commander-in-Chief Loser of the Popular Vote wearing an orange jumpsuit while in handcuffs.

New York's legal system - spearheaded by DA Letitia James - has trump by the short hairs, and he knows it. The only real escape from that was staying in the White House under siege for four years until he got the gardeners to dig him an escape tunnel to Bermuda.

Anyone genuinely dreaming of trump running for the Presidency again in 2024 has to wake up to the reality that by 2024 trump can well be sitting in a safe-watch wing of an upstate New York prison waiting out a 5-year sentence after a jury finds him guilty of at least one count of fraud. Anyone – trump included – thinking he can start up his own media empire to rival Fox Not-News is ignoring this reality as well.

Let me repeat: This is it for him. Trump has nowhere else to go, other than prison on fraud charges, or exile to a country that doesn't extradite to the United States.

Reason Five: Straight-up Delusion

trump has yet to play out every trick he can pull to steal away Biden's Electoral win. Of great concern is the reported effort by the state legislatures in key battlegrounds – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and now Georgia – to ignore the majority votes in their own states, nullify those votes in fact, and directly select their state's own Electors.

This is where the vague wiggle room of laws hurt us. The Constitution itself doesn't spell out how the states select their Electors: it was assumed that every able-bodied citizen under the law (propertied white men first, then all white men, then all men regardless of race, then all women also regardless of race, then all Americans 18 and older) would vote and the states write in laws to accept that, and for the most part it's gone that way. Only rarely – I know of one instance, South Carolina in 1860 had their legislature pick the winner because they feared even a Pro-Union Pro-Slavery Southerner could win – had a state overridden the voting process. Only once since then – the 1876 election where two states could not agree on certifying which Electors to send – had this been an issue (and the solution for that was undemocratic as hell and the results allowed Jim Crow to flourish). 

The expectation is that the state legislators will respect the rights and the views of their state's majorities and choose Biden's roster of Electors to complete the process. The situation won't put trump's ass on the line, it'll be the legislators who would have to deal with angry voters – not just Democrats but even Republican voters who still (yes there are many) respect the right of voting – within minutes of breaking tradition (and even their own state's election laws).

And... it's looking like the states in question - even Arizona - are refusing trump's call to subvert the election results. So this is pretty much a moot point.

After this, trump's only remaining move to stay in power is an outright coup d'etat.

This isn't over yet.

trumpian Denial of COVID-19 Is Dooming, Will Doom Us

I saw this on Twitter this morning.

I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

Going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that “stuff” because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens. And

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

This is not only happening in South Dakota but also North Dakota, and Montana, and Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Illinois, and Ohio, and Florida, and...

It's happening in every state, at some level, where there's enough trump-worshipping denialists who've been told by their media overlords that COVID-19 is a Chinese-backed Socialist plot, that it's a hoax pushed by libruls to take our freedoms, that oh heavens if they do get it there's a miracle cure that trump himself took that's readily available at some rural underfunded clinic instead of a high-tech military hospital.

It doesn't occur to the trumpian "true believers" that trump intentionally refuses to take an active effort to control the pandemic's spread, they don't hear you when you point out how trump himself openly declared "I'm not taking any responsibility at all" to mandate nationwide health guides and public safety rules.

And because of trump's failures at leadership - his active avoidance of it - we are now facing a massive upward spike of COVID positive infections across the entire nation, here have John Cole at Balloon Juice share a few words ("What the Fuck Is WRONG With People") on this (complete with links to charts):

We’re gonna blast past 200k (cases daily) before we even get to Thanksgiving. If I were God emperor, I would lock everyone down, issue mask mandates, and mount speakers every 100 yards playing this nonstop until people didn’t want to leave the fucking house...

I laugh-cried at the “if people don’t learn” part. The most American thing in the world is NEVER FUCKING LEARNING ANYTHING EVER.

The worst thing about this is that Trump’s followers are literally a cult. Anything he says or does they mindlessly repeat and replicate. If that motherfucker would just have asked his followers to wear a fucking mask we wouldn’t be in half the mess we are in right now.

We're well past the point of hospitals being overwhelmed. Our health care workers - nurses especially - are threatening national strikes to force the government to do SOMETHING to put the nation back on lockdown like we did in March-April. But we're running into the seasonal holidays - when people want to gather families for Thanksgiving, when they feel the need to go Christmas shopping in-person because GODDAMMIT that's what Black Fridays are for - the most God-awful worst time to try and impose any lockdown at all.

trump meanwhile is sulking and throwing hissy fits about Biden's popular vote and Electoral College win, still screaming about it being stolen even as his lawyers keep failing to prove ANY kind of voter fraud happened at all. trump will refuse to do anything to help a nation he's likely viewing as having betrayed him. The Pandemic Response team that's supposed to be run by VP Pence hasn't even done anything in two weeks.

We are literally facing a winter of chaos and calamity, and while we may have a calmer future promised to us with Biden entering the Presidency in January, between then and now we are doomed to suffer at trump's whims.

Gods help us.

This is 2020 Friday the 13th Edition

Just throwing this out there.

After 87,000 turkeys exploded in fire, Greenberg shuts down for holiday season (via Dallas Morning News)

The newly-elected Senator for Alabama, former football coach from Auburn Tommy Tuberville, doesn't know who the United States fought against in the Second World War (via Political Wire). Yeah, Tuberville is pretty much going to be the DUMBEST Senator in toady's Congress (and in a field containing Marco Rubio, that takes some effort).

trump is threatening to start his own trump-flavored Far Right media empire (via Bloomberg). Considering how every other trump-promoted endeavor has turned to ash, Fox News shouldn't worry...

Oh, and we're seeing massive spikes in COVID-19 infections meaning an equivalent spike in the number of deaths within the next week.

GODDAMMIT WHERE IS OUR LEADERSHIP?

The Truth About Republican Obsession With Voter Fraud That DOES NOT EXIST.

In short:

It's not that the Republicans are eager to lie about mass fake voting they can't even prove in the courts.

It's that the Republicans are eager to believe that massive numbers of voters - Blacks, Women, Youth, Non-Christian, essentially anybody registered Democratic Party - are Fake Americans, and will deny those "Fake Americans" their rights so that Republicans can stay in corrupt minority rule.

Every chance that trump's lawyers have had to prove in court that there's any coordinated nationwide effort to commit voter fraud, they've failed to prove that. They're following in the footsteps of Kris Kobach, whose constant court battles over the narrative that there's a conspiracy of fake voters ended in resounded defeats on the simple reality Kobach could never prove a word of it.

And yet, the Republicans will insist on that argument that the election results favoring Biden or ANY Democrat for that matter is fraudulent.

Because they are at the point they can never accept anyone else outside of their tribe as true Americans.

This is how dangerous the current Far Right Narrative has gotten.

It's All Over Except for the trumpian Lawsuits

They called it in Pennsylvania. Biden and Harris won the Electoral College.

There are reports of fireworks across the globe.

Who could have guessed there were so many Biden supporters on Southmead!
Fireworks haven't stopped since the announcement.

— เจ็ฟ เบิร์นศ (@NukwakonX) November 7, 2020

I'm sure the fireworks going off outside my house is simply because it's the weekend after the 5th, and not for any other reason..... not sure how to explain the cheering, though.....

— Phillip M Jackson (@Jolly_Jack) November 7, 2020

The bells are ringing in Paris! pic.twitter.com/dEm3AbjaSH

— Ben Lee (@benleemusic) November 7, 2020

With all the partisan strife across the United States, at least 75 million of us voted for Biden to help us recover from the disasters - and yes there have been many - of the trump regime.

It's only a partial victory, though. And trump is not going to take this sitting down. Lawsuits are already getting flung across half the states in a vain attempt to nullify the actual votes counted. There remains the small possibility that trump can get his puppets on the Supreme Court to throw out the results altogether in a legal mind screw that would disenfranchise much of the nation. But if trump is expecting another Bush v Gore, it's not the same situation: Where that was a decision forcing the Florida recount to end, trump is asking the courts to not let ANY counts (negatively affecting HIM) happen at all. It'll be a legal step too far...

It's not over yet, America. There's still the Georgia Senate elections to runoff, and a chance at a 50-50 control to negate McConnell's power. They'll need your help (via ActBlue), get to it.

More on this later. For now, America, WE DANCE (And Philly fans punching a police horse as expected).

The Post-Election 2020 Super Conniption Blues

(Update: Many thanks to Infidel753 adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning! I'm a little busy working on NaNo today so... good luck writers!)

While the Presidential election is still getting counted out in the final states, with everything literally on the line for 270 Electoral Votes, there are a few things I wanna get off my chest tonight.

Ahem.

WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MOST OF YOU?

I'm not even yelling at the trump voters from 2016 who voted again for the WORST SHITGIBBON ON THE PLANET, because they have been lost to us since even before 2016 2010 2000 1992. They're gleefully showing up for a man who will infect them with the Coronavirus at rallies and still vote as though he's their Personal Jesus Reagan.

No, I'm talking to a number of you Independent or centrist voters who didn't care to vote or voted differently in 2016, only to show up this election cycle to vote for a man in trump who spent the last four years objectively being the WORST POSSIBLE PERSON TO EVER SERVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THIS IS GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO JOHN ADAMS FOR GOD'S SAKE AND EVEN ADAMS HAD FCKING INTEGRITY, HELL EVEN GRANT AND HARDING WERE NEVER THIS BAD, ONLY JOHN TYLER AND ANDREW JOHNSON WOULD GIVE THIS SHITGIBBON A RUN FOR HIS MONEY SO WHY THE HELL DID YOU VOTE trump THIS TIME?!?!

Ahem.

Here, I tweeted this earlier today:

trump has 66 million voters so far. short of Biden's 68 million but an improvement on the 63 million he got in 2016.
WHERE THE FCK DID trump FIND 3 MILLION MORE VOTERS WHEN HE WAS BEING SO FCKING DIVISIVE???

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) November 4, 2020

I'd been noting for four years how trump never moved to the center of the political spectrum, never made himself more appealing to moderate voters to broaden his base, that he kept pandering to the 42-44 percent of the population that would have never guaranteed a popular vote win.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

This was after constant and well-documented violations of the Emoluments Clause, revelations about bribing mistresses and porn actresses, case after case after case of him sexually assaulting women as proof of the vulgarity he revealed before the 2016 election. This was after trump's taxes went public this year, highlighting tax dodges and questionable claims that demonstrated trump wasn't just a failed businessman but arguably a tax fraud.

It was as though a massive plurality of Americans, maybe not a majority of us, just didn't give a fuck about ethical and honest leadership after all.

This was after a near year-long failure of leadership by trump and his administration in combatting and managing a global pandemic that was manageable if someone competent and caring set federal mandates for public safety (masks and social distancing) and fought hard to get Congress to fund for state aid and expanded benefits for the citizenry. trump refused to lead, even mocked the COVID-19 pandemic even as it spiraled out of control, even after he contracted the damn thing himself he never acknowledged the severity of it all. trump has a goddamn body count of 230,000 preventable deaths (and growing by the day) far worse than most wars other Presidents had overseen, and at least those leaders held themselves to account in some form or another. trump's failure on this matter made the United States one of the worst nations to handle the pandemic, likely prolonging it far longer in ways to make our recovery longer and more painful than what our counterpart Western European nations will do once we can get a safe vaccine going.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

And the most obvious problem of all: How this openly race-baiting, rage-inducing tinpot encouraged the very worst in America, through appeals to violence, through the insults and denigration of Blacks, Latinos, Women. trump never appealed to the better angels, he always took the opportunity to summon the worst demons and historic wrongs that haunts our nation to this day. It's the one thing constant about trump that his fanbase will always fall for, always love him for. Allowing them to be as vulgar and hateful as he is.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

I know we are living in a nation where there are far too many people being assholes than we had realized until 2016. I know. I can't understand it, but I know - like Rude Pundit in 2014 and Ed at Gin and Tacos in 2018 both pointed out - that the partisan divide in the United States created by the Far Right exists and can never be fixed. What I'm railing about now is how somehow, with all the bad shit trump served us for the last four years, even more Americans decided - against the availability of a reasonable, relatively normal political figure in Biden - to go with the SOB.

I may live in Florida, I may be half-mad myself. But Jesus Christ, even I know where the line shouldn't be crossed. trump shouldn't have even gotten 63 million voters this year, he didn't do anything to deserve getting 50 million voters this year. 

And the ETERNAL SHITGIBBON THAT IS trump is still one bad state turnout against Biden away from stealing off with another goddamned Electoral College theft.

This is unforgivable shit here, America. What the hell.

This ain't the end of my ranting. I am still royally pissed and will add more thoughts about all this.

Election Night 2020: I'M PERFECTLY CALM

JUST LOOK AT HOW STEADY MY HANDS ARE.

I AM TOTALLY CALM HERE.

I know it's going to be a long night and there's obviously going to be a few bad steps here and there and some states may not vote the way I'm praying to God they should vote but you know it's a free country and and and and um JESUS FCKING CHRIST AMERICA STOP VOTING FOR THAT SHITGIBBON! 

VOTE BIDEN! VOTE BLUE! VOTE FOR A BLUE SENATE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU BE SANE FOR LIKE ONE ELECTION DAY FOR THE SAKE OF ALL HUMANITY!

Okay, I'm eating ice cream now and will try to avoid watching the poll results - the skewed, too-early-to-call-it poll results that the media loves to shove down our throats until we're begging them to stop.

I'll update when I can.

HOPE YOU VOTED. HOPE YOU VOTED FOR BIDEN AND SANITY.

Update 8:47 PM. Fuck. They already called Florida?FUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

Update 10:35 PM. I will never understand it. I mean, I *know* we are surrounded by an army of assholes, but you would think that after trump's epic failures of leadership - letting Puerto Rico fall apart, his tariff war follies, the evil of his family separations at the border, the financial corruption, and this year alone allowing a pandemic to rampage across our country... we still have too many Americans buying trump's bullshit and voting for him. His pandering to their most sadistic hates and their most ill-informed fears, and he's still... God. This is insane...

trump's supposed to be losing the suburbs what the hell is happening...?

Waiting on the Edge of 2020

This is the last night of uncertainty before an entire week of chaos. After four years of despair.

Pippin : It's so quiet.

Gandalf : It's the deep breath before the plunge.

Pippin : I don't want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse.

This election cycle has been a war of sorts, with actual blood spilled and conflicts dotted across the landscape. We had trumpsters in their coal roller trucks attempt a Mad Max attack on the Biden campaign bus. We've had the wingnuts parade through Black neighborhoods - with police escort! - in blatant intimidation efforts to scare voters off from tomorrow.

Election Day will be more chaotic. Expect trump's "Observers" showing up in police or militia uniforms with loaded firearms strapped to every limb as the intimidating thugs they are. Expect last-minute tweets and text messages aimed at registered Democrats warning them to avoid their precincts when things are actually safe. Expect interference and blockades of precincts as the hour gets late, before the polls officially close, in order to stop late-arriving voters from getting in line. Hell, I'm expecting Russia to attack our power grid in battleground states to fuck up the electronic voting machines throughout the day.

Election night is going to be worse. Television, having spent decades turning the evening into high-drama events watching maps change colors, are going to be tempted - or pushed by trump - into declaring victories where ballots haven't even begun getting counted. But the old ways of covering the results doesn't work anymore: the reality that it takes days if not weeks to fully account for every submitted ballot means we shouldn't declare anything until it's all done. The problem with that is, trump wants his excuse to claim victory and to hell with the rights of the voters, so the intense "gaming of the refs" is going to create noise and anxiety for all Americans - and the world - that we shouldn't have to endure.

For myself, living in the middle of Florida where every third pickup truck is flying a 14-foot flag of trump's head photoshopped atop Rambo's body, the stress tomorrow - RIGHT NOW in fact - is going to be the worst I've felt even than 2012 during the runup and worse than 2016 when the dread of trump's Electoral College chicanery became all too real. Part of me hears the polling saying that Florida is 4 points in favor of Biden and Harris, but I know what the local Republicans are going to do to fuck up the turnout and I worry that I'm going to bed tomorrow night with my home state making the same damn mistake they made in 2016 (and 2010 and 2014 and 2018 with the Governor and Senate elections, we got screwed with Rick "No Ethics" Scott and Ron "No Masks" DeSantis thanks a lot).

And I worry - and hope - about North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin being real for Biden and for the Democratic Party. And I worry about the Senate races - we NEED to ship McConnell to the pit of Hell he richly deserves - that the Democrats need to win alongside winning the Presidency with Biden. And I hope, oh Lord I do hope, that the signs of Blue Waves happening in Georgia and Texas and Iowa and Arizona are true, especially my birth state of Georgia.

I want to see some hope of sanity after all of this madness. I know the viciousness of the trumpshirt followers won't go away, nor the calculated sadism of the Republican Party leadership, but we need to see a fighting chance to push back against their cruelty, rage, and greed.

I will see you on the other side of the storm.

Vote Tuesday if you haven't already. Vote Blue across the board, America.

Stay safe. This isn't over even when the ballots are all counted. 

Praying to a Just And Loving Unitarian Goddess for a Sane November 2020 General Election

I can mess around with 270towin maps all day long...

I can stare at the polling maps by the professionals showing good numbers for Joe Biden...

what FiveThirtyEight is projecting this Halloween night, 3 nights out

I can craft 100 different maps of what I hope to see Wednesday morning with a big contented smile on my face:

I'm hoping for a NC/GA/FL/TX flip to help break the Southern Strategy forever...

But I can't rely or wait on hope and neither should you. The Early Voting turnout so far gives me great hope that a large Blue Wave vote is coming... But there's an entire Republican Party from trump down to his hand-picked Far Right judges down to the county-level supervisors and questionable law enforcement looking to get in the way of a clean vote by the American people.

Get the vote out, Democrats. To every Independent Voter out there, this is the year - we need it, to escape the damage trump's mismanagement is inflicting on us right now - you NEED to vote Blue across the board. To every Republican Voter... for the love of God wake up and stop supporting those crooks. Please.

DAMN YOU 2020 (RIP Sean Connery)

Just saw this morning reports that actor Sean Connery passed away.

The Scottish actor was best known for his portrayal of James Bond, being the first to bring the role to the big screen and appearing in seven of the spy thrillers.

Sir Sean died peacefully in his sleep in the Bahamas, having been "unwell for some time", his son said.

His acting career spanned five decades and he won an Oscar in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables.

Sir Sean's other films included The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Rock.

DAMN YOU 2016 2020 for taking my childhood celebrities from us!

I first remember seeing Sean Connery here and there in snippets of any of the Bond films playing on rerun on the evening television matinees, but I really saw him first in a theater in the movie Time Bandits, playing Agamemnon as a king with surprising depth and humanity:

And charm. That quickly became the thing I noticed watching the films he made. There was a level of self-confident whimsy to himself that seeped into most of his performances, not just as a not-so-secret British agent but also as Robin Hood, or a Chicago beat cop, or a professor of archaeology.

Connery came to stardom in the early 1960s, working in bit roles in the late 1950s before getting lead roles in stuff like Darby O'Gill and the Little People (no really) in which he caught the eye of movie producers looking to cast the first James Bond in Dr. No (no, REALLY).

Trying to explain how Connery not only filled the role of Britain's greatest fictional spy but defined the style and charm of fictional Cold War spies across the genre would take books to spell out. He portrayed Bond as a man who wouldn't be out of place at a tuxedo gala nor a Jamaican beach bar, able to flirt and bully his way into any office, any dining room, any bedroom. Someone with an upper class sense of judgment - look at his snobbery over wine and fine cuisine - but a middle class determination to get his hands dirty and get the job done.

His personality didn't fit the literary appearance of Bond, but writer Ian Fleming acknowledged the influence Connery had by changing Bond's biography to fit Connery's own (giving Bond a Scottish background, for example).

Connery achieved an effect few other actors get to make: creating from his own cloth the cultural and memetic traits of a character - "Bond, James Bond" - who achieves legendary status. Nimoy did with Spock, Basil Rathbone almost did it with Sherlock Holmes (although Jeremy Brett in the 1980s took that title away and kept it for good). Every other actor who followed Connery in the role - George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig - faced stiff comparison to how Connery did it. While Moore, Brosnan, and Craig were able to achieve their own takes, they still had to match up to the overall panache that Connery brought to the role.

Post-Bond, Connery struggled a bit in the 1970s with meaty roles in more dramatic films - The Man Who Would Be King so-starring his best friend Michael Caine, for example - but didn't hit box office success until the 1980s and 1990s during the action movie craze as a man in his fifties and sixties fighting battles more suited to men in their thirties... and yet pulling it off because of that charming self-confidence that underlined every role.

Not to mention sticking to a Scottish accent in his dialog even when playing a Russian submarine captain:

People still bought it because SEAN FREAKING CONNERY.

It did get ridiculous towards the late 1990s when he was still getting cast in roles of an action hero with romantic interests played by actresses in their thirties or even twenties, a case of age bias that questioned how Hollywood would keep casting older men with younger women. His real-life womanizing and open talk about slapping women also revealed a man with a "macho" sense of personal honor that went too far into justifying violence towards women in the worst ways.

But Connery was a brilliant actor, not necessarily someone trained for Shakespeare but capable of impressing and enticing audiences to root for him. Someone who did on-screen present male role models of determination and skill, and in some moments genuine emotion and gravitas.

These were some of his best moments:

(Note: I will go to my grave arguing that Connery should have won the Best Supporting Oscar for Last Crusade over Untouchables)

Also, the man pretty much brought Scottish kilts back to sexy.

Summon the pipers! We have a Scotsman down!

All British flags to remain at half-staff until 11/007 presumably.

The Dread This Halloween 2020

The dread and anxiety that are stalking the land this autumn have nothing to do with ghosts and goblins. It may have something to do with that creepy Silver Shamrock CEO selling off all these weird masks for Halloween, but I doubt it.

We are, across the United States, rushing towards a Presidential election cycle of 2020 that has driven the stress levels for a majority of Americans to levels greater than the emotional turmoil we endured after 9/11. It's where the reality of most Americans panicking that for all their efforts to turn out the vote for their side of Center-Left issues and leadership, the political minority dominated by Far Right leaders who refuse to serve the public good will still find a way to rig the results and stay in power against every democratic norm our country is supposed to follow.

There's been some notice in the media outlets about this anxiety and most of them - like this one in Slate by William Saletan - are trying to lower the despairing doom by pointing out the flaws of the 2016 results that left America truly leaderless aren't going to affect 2020:

The 2020 election is coming down to the wire, and millions of Americans are freaking out. They’re afraid President Donald Trump will surge at the end and win, as he did in 2016. But there are good reasons to think that won’t happen, based on measurable differences between the two elections. Joe Biden is in a much better position than Hillary Clinton was.

Biden already has more than 200 electoral votes—probably around 230—in the bag. To reach the 270 necessary to win, he just needs three states Clinton narrowly lost: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Let’s call these the core states. If Biden loses one of them, he could still get to 270 by taking Arizona, Florida, Georgia, or North Carolina. Let’s call these the bonus states...

Biden isn’t just leading in more states. Across the board, his vote share is higher than Clinton’s was. On the Friday before the election, Clinton was averaging 48.8 percent in the core states and 46.3 percent in the bonus states. Biden is averaging 51.2 percent in the core states and 48.8 percent in the bonus states. To beat Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all Trump had to do was pick up undecided voters. That wouldn’t suffice against Biden, since he’s above 50 in each of those states...

Thing is, we're already seeing trump and his Republican lackeys meddle in all of those battleground states. We've been getting stories about attacks on the ballot counting in Pennsylvania. Minnesota and Wisconsin are on notice from the trump-allied federal courts about the potential cutting off of late-receiving ballots. The fears that the Postal Service - hog-tied by trump's buddy DeJoy - aren't delivering ballots in time are proving true in Miami-Dade, forcing a belated state intervention that shows little sign of getting the votes in on time.

Granted, the Early Vote turnout is an encouraging ray of hope. Texas alone in 2020 has exceeded already the total voter turnout of 2016. Given how lower turnout in elections tends to hurt Democrats, this is a good sign that turnout enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket is in play and Texas could flip (still, no guarantees unless EVERY Tex Dem gets the damn vote to the ballot box!).

This election year is getting down to the wire, in some places literally, with the ongoing concern of voter intimidation on Election Day itself as well as any last-minute assaults on our rights to vote.

The last time I felt this stressed out was 2012, when it seemed like a tight race between Obama against Romney with a national media dancing to Tea Party propaganda noise and ignoring all the blatant obstruction the Congressional Republicans committed to hamper the nation's recovery from the 2007 Recession. It didn't have to be that close, I thought, and at the time it felt lucky that Obama won 52-to-47 percent with a healthy Electoral margin.

How naïve I seemed back in 2012 when in 2016 the worst-case scenario happened anyway, and with a far more incompetent and inhuman nightmare with trump.

This weekend, I'm fucking praying that a 52-to-47 Biden-over-trump win is enough to get that Electoral win as well. Given the voter suppression/ballot-tossing the GOP is openly willing to do, it feels like Biden is going to need 60 percent to even eke out the Electoral Presidential victory his supportive majority needs.

I'm not the only one feeling out of sorts, on edge, nervous as hell. Half the gamers I know on City of Heroes are freaking out. My professional and personal circle of friends and allies among librarians are twitchy. Several of my fellow writers in the local critique groups are having trouble even sleeping normal the last two-three months.

This isn't your normal Halloween, after all. COVID-19 stalks this land. There's a nationwide spike of infections overwhelming our hospitals RIGHT NOW. We've got a real-life scary monster rampaging the countryside, and nobody in a position to fight it - trump, Mitch, most Republican officials - even wants to talk about the problem.

The rest of us are stuck hiding behind the sofa, watching the scary movie play out while covering our eyes with trembling fingers, only it's no movie and the only way we can survive this nightmare is to wake up and vote, vote trump out before the shambling zombie wreck that is the GOP gets us all.

The foulest stench is in the air/

The funk of 4 trump-led years/

And grisly ghouls from Putin's plot/

Are closing in to steal your ballot

And though you vote to stay alive/

Your nation gets pulled to ribbons/

For no election cycle can resist/

The evil of... the Shitgibbon!

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

(seriously, get the damn vote out for Biden/Harris and for every Democratic Senate candidate and every Democratic state office. It will be the wooden stake through the heart of a corrupt and lethal Republican monster.)

Hark! A Ranking of Van Halen Albums

With the passing of Eddie Van Halen earlier this month, I felt the need to look back at the band's efforts and impact on the music scene to the albums made over a long career and troubled path.

The band itself revolved mostly around the virtuoso skill of the lead guitar and band namesake himself. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, Eddie represented a new generation of metal / hard rock guitar play that worked it fast AND worked it loud(er). Not with the harshness of more hardcore metal sounds, but with a semblance of melody.

One thing sometimes overlooked in the talk about Van Halen's legacy was the work of Eddie's brother Alex Van Halen (the OTHER namesake) who worked on the drums the way Eddie worked the guitar: fast and hard. Historic irony: when they both got into forming a rock band, Eddie was on drums and Alex on guitar. It's just that Alex found more time to practice while Eddie worked a paper route, and after learning to play “Wipe Out” (THE epic drum song of all time) they realized Alex was better as a drummer. There are certain songs – “Everybody Wants Some!” and “Hot For Teacher” in particular – that simply would not exist without the opening overpowering sound of Alex's drum riffs. Ranked somewhere below Neil Peart and definitely below John Bonham, Alex's work defined a lot of hair metal/hard rock drum sound of an entire decade (1980s).

Mixed into that was front man singer David Lee Roth, for whom the word “hyperactive” was not enough to explain him. Where other lead singers of the day had their outsized images, Roth was pure energy, bouncing from one activity to the next and writing lyrics that reflected that half-crazed mindset, providing jestering and snark in half the recorded songs they made.

Filling out the lineup was Michael Anthony on bass, who had gone to that instrument as his other friends in the scene had gone to lead guitars. Following in the steady but impressive paths of John Paul Jones and Jack Bruce, Anthony provided a bass-riff style that complemented the faster speeds of the Van Halen brothers but rarely showed off himself. One of the sadder elements of the rise and fall of Van Halen has been how Anthony got cast aside/kicked out as the band spiraled apart in the late 1990s, as part of the overall tragedy of a musical talent that should have put the band in the Top Five instead of the Top Twenty of all time.

The best way I can describe Van Halen to later generations is that they were the Party band for a generation of white suburbanite youth, from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. Cruising music for guys in muscle cars they bought used off their uncle's front yard, where the sound system with the subwoofer got more money than the fuel injectors. Even when Roth got booted from the group, his replacement Sammy Hagar filled the vacancy with a lyrical style that could play well on a Saturday night rolling the street scene across many a suburban town. Until Grunge came along and washed that all into the Pacific Ocean.

But that is another story for another time...

In the meanwhile, here's my take on the band's efforts. Much like my review of U2's work, I rank this from weakest album – the ones you can live without – to epic albums of historic importance and majesty.

“One break... COMING UP!”

Ranking Van Halen Albums - Weak to Epic

Title: Balance

Reasons: Released in the middle of the post-metal Grunge era, focused on more ballad tunes than on straight-up rockers, Balance was a wrong album at a wrong time. There's no other way to describe it.
This was personally an album I had bought from the store, listened once, and wondered why it sounded slower than the other CDs I owned. For a week I worried my player was finally dying. It wasn't until I played the disc on a new player and realized it was the album that was slow that I recoiled. None of the songs appealed to me at that time – future listening warmed me up to only a handful – and I traded the damn thing in to the used book/music store on U.S. 1 in Ft. Lauderdale as soon as I could.

This wasn't the Van Halen I grew up to. It wasn't a good way to end the Van Hagar era, and it foretold the folly that the next lineup would endure...

Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): Aftershock, Feelin'
Good Song(s): Don't Tell Me, Not Enough, Doin' Time, Baluchitherium

Title: Van Halen III

Reasons: The third lineup with a third front man singer, third time was not a charm. With Hagar's unceremonious departure after Balance, Eddie tried going younger and East Coast with Bostonian Gary Cherone (plucked from then-rising band Extreme) who happened to sing in a similar fashion to Hagar. Cherone's arrival however did not bring with him any input to make Halen relevant to the 90s sound, leaving the band stuck in some early 80s power ballad purgatory. Adding to the chaos was the diminished role Anthony had at bass (only three songs with Eddie pulling triple-duty for the rest of the album) before he got kicked from the roster (by this point, the animosity Eddie had towards Anthony seemed worse than the vitriol he had spat at Roth during THAT split). As Anthony commented later, this album had turned into an Eddie Van Halen solo project, complete with Eddie's first (and only) attempt at lead vocals on “How Many Say I.”

By the time this album came out, I had already soured on the band due to Balance, and I was not impressed with Cherone's hiring as the new singer (I didn't blame him, I blamed what seemed to me a mercurial Eddie). In fact, the late 90s was a void of music for me, I wasn't buying anything, the output of my favorite artists (Springsteen, U2, others) in that period had been middling at best.

I hadn't even bought this album. It was only Eddie's recent death and my need to review all the albums that made me listen to it off Hoopla Digital. In the end, I didn't find any problems with Cherone's performance – he performed as expected – I found issues with the overall direction of the music – plodding, long – to be the deal-breaker. Half of these songs are too long, attempts at opera rather than attempts at rocking out (which had been Van Halen's strength).

Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): Without You, Fire in the Hole
Good Song(s): From Afar, Once, Year to the Day, Primary

Title: Fair Warning

Reasons: This is in my view the darkest, moodiest work of the Van Halen discography covering all three lineups. From what I've read elsewhere, this is when the tensions between Eddie and David flared up, where Eddie wanted to go into more complex moodier themes while David wanted to stick to what was working (fast upbeat tunes with a fun cover tune or two). The resulting mix contains few truly good songs, but it does include arguably a live show fave and one of the bigger hits in the band's history in “Unchained.” Of the Roth-era albums, this is the weakest one and an album most fans can skip.

Epic Song(s): Unchained, Mean Street
Great Song(s): So This is Love?
Good Songs(s): Sinners Swing, Hear About It Later

Title: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge

Reasons: An unusual album for me even when it came out, something that seemed and sounded a bit juvenile (yes, the album's acronym was a clue) just as I was finishing up college, as though the band was regressing and I hadn't. It may have to do with the band rehiring their producer from the Roth era – Ted Templeman – perhaps in an attempt to regain the Roth fans that hadn't returned to the fold after the first two Van Hagar era albums.

The resulting album, released mere months before Nirvana's Nevermind – which blew the doors off hard rock forever with its Grunge sound – seemed a return to the party noise, car cruising ways of old... except it still didn't have the soul and snark of David Lee at his best. Sammy's voice just doesn't carry that vocal tone well. What we got was an album with some genuinely good pop metal tunes and little else... except for the one song that threw everything in the Van Halen universe off-kilter.

“Right Now” was a piano-driven power ballad tune that in all honesty was a genuinely epic song. It was a song that lyric-wise Roth couldn't pull off but Hagar could (Hagar's lyrics here are also him at his best). It didn't roll up the hit charts – it came out as a single towards the end of the album's life-span – but was on constant radio and video play. In fact, it got overexposed as a song, and in hindsight you could see how the impact of “Right Now” led to the disaster that was the Balance album which came after it.

Epic Song(s): Right Now
Great Song(s): Poundcake, Judgment Day, Runaround, Top of the World, 316
Good Song(s): The Dream is Over

Title: A Different Kind of Truth

Reasons: You want the truth? This was an album that should have come out in 2002 not 2012. This was an attempt to regain some chemistry between David Lee and Eddie that had allowed them to pull off reunion tours between 2006 through 2008, much in the vein of the 70s and 80s bands (hi, Fleetwood Mac) that found moderate success appealing to their nostalgic fanbases.

The end result was a more Blues-driven sound that was less than the familiar styling of the 70s and 80s with Roth and more to do with both David Lee too strained on vocals to reach his yelps of lore, and Eddie getting too old and too injured – he had hand surgery in 2009 to combat arthritis – to attempt the high-speed finger-picking that had been his signature style. The album itself was pretty good, but did not carry on it any songs like “Unchained” or “Everybody Wants Some!” to encourage long-term airplay. If this be the last album of Eddie Van Halen's life, it's a good note to exit on... just not a great one.

Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): She's the Woman, You And Your Blues, Stay Frosty, Beats Workin'
Good Song(s): China Town, Blood and Fire, Outta Space

Title: OU812

Reasons: This was the second of the Van Hagar albums and where the first one (5150) seemed more risk-adverse and poppy, this one revved it up a little more and ran with a faster, edgier sound. As a result, the songs on this album that clicked for me did so in a big way that the great songs on 5150 didn't. When I would go back to relisten to the Hagar-era albums, this was the one I reached for first.

Epic Song(s): Mine All Mine
Great Song(s): When It's Love, AFU (Naturally Wired), Cabo Wabo, Black and Blue
Good Song(s): Feels So Good, Finish What You Started

Title: 5150

Whose side did you take in 1985? You asked that question and every rock n roller knew the answer had to be either Halen or Roth. But the big question that needed answering was “What would Sammy Hagar's input be to whatever new sound Van Halen was going to bring to the world?”

Where David Lee Roth's vocal range worked in the yelping high pitched enthusiasm and low-growl seduction of a teenager eager to get to work (on refurbishing a car, dating that girl in art class, what have you), Hagar's vocal styling was more earnest than enthused meaning a clearly different way the lyrics were coming at us (as well as different lyrics altogether). At a time when Eddie was focusing more on the use of synths to imitate the finger-pick work on his guitar, this led to an album that could rightly be viewed in hindsight as the most pop album the rock band ever produced.

In terms of longevity, this is an album more fans will hear from, thanks to the ongoing airplay the big songs “Dreams,” “Best of Both Worlds,” and “Love Walks In” keep getting. There are decent songs to be had on here, just not ones that would shake the pillars of heaven, man.

Epic Song(s): Dreams, Best of Both Worlds
Great Song(s): Summer Nights, 5150
Good Song(s): Why Can't This Be Love, Get Up, Love Walks In

Title: Diver Down

Reasons: After the darkness of Fair Warning came this little thing, almost a quickie of an album that the critics didn't seem to like but arguably has some of the better performances on record the band ever committed.

The story is that David Lee wanted to do a single release cover of “Dancing in the Street” that Eddie couldn't get his head around, while Eddie wanted to do a cover of “(Oh) Pretty Woman” that Eddie COULD play. When they went in to do both, the studio argued to go ahead and record a full album anyway, so they did. Rather than come out with a rushed, panicked effort however, it's an album that actually sounds relaxed as though the band had a fun time recording it (in truth, Eddie hated the experience and it drove a wedge even more between him and David Lee). While Eddie's version of Roy Orbison's classic had its unique, hard-guitar tinge to it, what Eddie did revamping “Dancing in the Street” was arguably a better job, using a echoing riff to it that rose and fell like ocean waves.

This is one I view as the Party album of the era, something you could put on the spinner or the tape deck in a house while your school friends were gathered on a Saturday night, and play it all the way through without anyone complaining. This is IMHO an album with no throwaways, almost every song ranked at least Good and better. It's almost like the Sgt. Peppers of the Van Halen discography. The fans loved it even though Eddie (and the critics) didn't...

Epic Song(s): Dancing in the Streets, Little Guitars (intro)
Great Song(s): Where Have All the Good Times Gone, Hang Em High, Intruder, (Oh) Pretty Woman, Little Guitars, Happy Trails (shut up, it's fun)
Good Song(s): Cathedral, Secrets

Title: Van Halen II

Reasons: I wrote before – both reviewing U2 as well as the Beatles – the second album from a band usually isn't as great as the first due to various factors: It's made up of lesser songs from that first album, a rushed nature of recording to match that first album, the expectations to follow up with something both similar yet refreshing, etc. Van Halen's second album is no exception, usually for all those reasons I mentioned. In this case, however, the band still excelled with an album that is actually easier and accessible, comes across as more polished and focused rather than rushed.

It could be my own ears and my own judgment call here. It can well be that I found the songs on the second album more enjoyable, that the lyrics and melodies spoke to me differently than the harder noise of the debut album. I certainly found the songs like “Beautiful Girls” and “Dance the Night Away” as greater accomplishments than “Running With the Devil” and “You Really Got Me.” Thing is, if you released this together with the first as a double album, it would all blend in as one epic album and nobody would complain about it.

Epic Song(s): Dance the Night Away, Bottoms Up, Beautiful Girls
Great Song(s): Somebody Get Me A Doctor, Spanish Fly
Good Song(s): Light Up the Sky, DOA. Women in Love

Title: 1984

Reasons: What I remembered when this came out, there was a lot of publicity and anticipation. Some of it had to do with the when and how – unleashing the first single “Jump” on New Year's Eve heading into 1984 itself – as well as this mood across the music landscape that rock bands had to step up to challenge this one album from 1982 called Thriller by Michael Jackson that had basically steamrolled the globe (still two years on!). There was a lot of pressure on Van Halen the band because Eddie Van Halen was a part of that Thriller juggernaut having played an epic guitar solo in the hit song “Beat It.” There was also the need to rebound from the negative critical reactions they got from Diver Down, as well as pressure from the company (always always in the music biz) of getting a Number One song into the books.

The result was an album that reflected the synthetic manufactured ambience of the 1980s, especially with Eddie leaning into the use of synth keyboard to replicate his finger-picking style on guitar. Very noticeable on “Jump,” that Number One song that placated the studio, where the fast-tempo of the keyboards mimicking how the guitar would play but giving it a different sound than a guitar would.

The album would represent that schizoid style between Eddie's musical instincts and David's hard rock focus. The result was an album with sure hits and power rock songs, not necessarily meshing well but definitely the big hit of the decade that any band would live for. We should be talking a lot more about "Panama," a car-cruising ode that deserves more love from rock critics and historians as the perfect blend of all four band members' strengths as musicians. About half this album gets airplay to this day, especially the controversial “Hot for Teacher.”

What happened afterward in response to the frictions between Van Halen and Roth, obviously, shook the rock n roll scene ever since.

Epic Song(s): Jump, Panama, Hot For Teacher
Great Song(s): Top Jimmy, Girl Gone Bad, House of Pain
Good Song(s): 1984, I'll Wait

Title: Women and Children First

Reasons: I got this album after I had gotten into Van Halen's 1984, as part of my effort to keep up with the cool kids on the block. It surprised me that other than “Everybody Wants Some!” this was an album that was woefully underplayed on the radio (even "And the Cradle..." wasn't as often-played), and not as talked about as a great album in its own right.

Where the first two albums eclipsed this third one, this is where the band expanded their sound just enough to make it grittier yet more polished. A hint of blues coming through songs like “Fools” and “Take Your Whiskey Home.” This is probably where my love for Doors music seeped into my love for this album (which compares in some respects to Morrison Hotel, only better).

Every time my brother Phil asks me what the best Van Halen album is, I always point to this one.

“Everybody Wants Some!” which anchors this album and powered by Alex's epic drumbeats is arguably the best cruising-the-street song of my generation if not all time. The rest of the album keeps up with that power. It's a personal decision ranking this here, and I understand that by not ranking it top overall (because the top one has its history and place within the rock n roll pantheon that I can't ignore). But if anyone ever tells me which Halen album to listen to first to get an understanding of why they were one of the greatest bands ever, THIS is the one I'll point to because it covers everything the band does best.

Epic Song(s): And the Cradle Will Rock, Everybody Wants Some!, Take Your Whiskey Home
Great Song(s): Fools, Tora Tora!, In a Simple Rhyme
Good Song(s): Romeo's Delight, Could This Be Magic

Title: Van Halen

Reasons: Personally this is not my favorite Van Halen album (see the previous entry above), but I respect its place in rock n roll history by putting it here. This is the album based off of a demo tape recorded by Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) they shopped around the music industry, backed by a series of well-received live shows in the L.A. Scene. It's packed with hard rock goodness and blistering guitar noises that spurred hundreds of suburban white boys and girls to learn “Eruption” in their parents' garages.

It's that song – an instrumental by Eddie – that anchors the whole album: if you broke it down, it's basically a finger-picking (or more precisely string-tapping) exercise made up of classical music snippets, but Van Halen's genius with using both hands to finger-tap it revolutionized the metal guitar solo and made this the go-to song to learn how to do that.

What happened with this album release was that it caught much of the music scene off-guard: it came at a time when Punk was the Next Big Thing (which never took because guess what, Punk was too raw even for Rock), as Led Zeppelin and other hard rock acts were retreating from the stage (either to fatigue, fallout, or other woes). Critics blasted it but fans ate it up: It's one of the biggest-selling debut albums in music history (eventually certified Diamond status years later).

To be honest, there's really not much here other than the standard metal sounds of the day... just done at Ramones-like speed, Led Zep-like power, and hyped by David Lee Roth's yelps of joy. This doesn't have the party-like flavor of the other great Van Halen albums, but it has the hook of “You should pay attention to what we're about to do next because your kids and grandkids will be learning it for the next 100 years.”

Epic Song(s): Running with the Devil, Eruption, Ain't Talking Bout Love
Great Song(s): You Really Got Me, I'm the One, Atomic Punk, Ice Cream Man
Good Song(s): Jamie's Cryin', Feel Your Love Tonight

* * *

I could look at reviewing the official live album(s) and the greatest hits album that included new Van Hagar songs, but they're not necessary to understand the overall impact the band had. I could include the David Lee Roth solo albums, but that's not entirely part of the Van Halen history... oh what the hell, here's an album cover!

From here, I am considering a review of Bruce Springsteen, or else a review of Led Zeppelin, whichever makes more sense to ye. PLEASE leave a comment so I may make sure.