As this lockdown drags on, excitement is at a premium. Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” once just a guilty pleasure, has now become a breakfast tradition. Which is another way of saying that a new album to review felt something like Christmas in April. All the more interesting because the Devil Doves are a band I have been writing about for a long time.

Commit to the Bit is something of a sonic departure from the percussive acoustic guitar attack of previous Devil Doves releases. Compared to albums like The Devil Doves and Also Playing, the tracks have a fuller sound with more sonic depth. This is in large part due to the emergence of keyboardist Jeff Straw, whose fingerprints are all over the album. While in the past he at times seemed to be adding Nicky Hopkins-esque gloss to already completed songs, he is now frequently the driving force behind arrangements.

In conjunction with percussionist Kyle Davis’ cajon work and the odd electric guitar, the result is a highly accessible sound that anyone should be able to get into quickly (if not instantly)

Grassroots action’s immense upset victory in Wisconsin shows we can overcome even a rigged election.

In November, you must do it again.   

When Trump tries to steal or cancel the election, our informed non-violence must rise to protect and win it. 

Neither the human race, nor American democracy, nor the US economy will survive more of this. Our further existence as a species depends on you.  

Much of the upcoming election will be through Vote by Mail (VBM).  Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Hawaii already use it with great success.  

VBM is probably (as Winston Churchill said of democracy) the worst election system there is…except for all the other ones. 

Huge problems are virtually certain.  We need to be prepared to deal with them.

 

As people grapple with a planetary pandemic an exciting new movie is premiering just in time to commemorate the 75th anniversary of what marked the end of a much of our last global conflagration. Enemy Lines is available to rent or own on April 24 shortly before the platinum jubilee of Victory in Europe or V-E Day, May 8, 1945, which signified the Allied victory over Hitler and Mussolini. Swedish director Anders Banke’s World War II movie also reminds us of the all but forgotten Mission Alsos, and in doing so provides film and war buffs with a highly entertaining history lesson.

To fully grasp the extraordinary nature of Major Kaminski’s (Ed Westwick) daring operation, imagine if you will if a team of Nazi irregular soldiers had infiltrated New Mexico circa 1943 in order to “extract” nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, chief of the Manhattan Project’s staff, from Los Alamos in order to bring the scientist back to the Fatherland in order to work on Germany’s “heavy water” experiments to create an atomic bomb.

Today, Saturday April 18, we’ll be hosting a special Facebook LIVE Event to preview Palast’s new book, How Trump Stole 2020, which reveals how Trump’s already got the November election in the bag — unless we snatch it back! The event will feature exclusive reports from the scene of the crime — plus interviews with Barbara Arnwine, Lee Camp, Nomi Prins, David Cay Johnston, Dennis Bernstein, Cary Harrison, Josh Fox & more. Presented by Nation of Change, BuzzFlash and 7 Stories Press, and hosted by Thom Hartmann, the action kicks off on our Facebook page at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET. We’ll also embed the feed here for those who want to tune in but don’t have an account.

April 15, 1970 was a nationwide anti-draft action day. Here in Dayton, there was a sit-in at the local draft board of about 35 people. At Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, there was an anti-draft peace rally. At the end of the rally a student speech pronounced that “it was not enough to protest the war, but people had to take action!” At that point, they marched over and occupied the Navy ROTC building. Later the black students who were organizing for a black studies program and an increase in black enrollment joined the occupation. Over 300 students were arrested, making national news and rocking Ohio.

With the announcement of the invasion of Cambodia, protests occurred across the country with major protests at Ohio State and Ohio University. The week before the Kent State killings, over 1,000 students were arrested at Ohio State University protesting the war and black students there were also demanding a black studies program.