Green Day

American idiot, crazy evil genius and the end of compact discs + this day in history w/the New York City blackout of '77 and our song of the day by Metric on your Morning Monarchy for Friday the 13th of July, 2018.

You probably read that Trump told Putin, during a phone call, that his staff-- none of whom were chosen by Hillary or Obama or the "Deep State"-- are "stupid people." He's right... though it was probably stupid of him to tell Putin and go even further by telling him "not to listen to them." That's not the kind of thing you talk to Putin about...

Trump makes a big deal about keeping his campaign promises. And, unfortunately, the ones he wants to keep, he does try to keep. Sometimes the courts and occasionally, even Congress, keeps him from keeping the worst of them. His excuse for torpedoing the bipartisan DACA fix was that it flew in the face of one of his ugly outbursts of bigotry during the campaign.

Tonight-- midnight-- we end the Green Day guitar contest. As we mentioned last weekend, Blue America has a signed Fender Squire Bullet Strat that each member of Green Day autographed for me while I was president of their label. Everyone who contributes here-- any amount-- to Randy Bryce's campaign has an equal chance to win the guitar-- pictured below with Randy holding it. We'll pick one person at random in the next couple of days. If you give $1,000 you get a chance to get the guitar.

As we were entering Politicon a couple months ago, we passed David Frum and I introduced him to Randy Bryce. I didn't have to say anything more than his name before Frum asked if they could get together in Washington to speak and asked if Randy would appear in a movie that was being shot about him. He was excited, very excited; he knows how to read the zeitgeist.

The American Music Awards aren't supposed to be "political," so when Green Day tweaked the words on their new song, "Bang Bang," adding "No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA," it may have caught some viewers by surprise. But not iron worker, union organizer and Wisconsin Green Day fan Randy Bryce. "As usual, Billy Joe Armstrong was just a little ahead of his time," he told us when we talked about the upcoming Blue America Green Day guitar giveaway.

Green Day at Gilman, 1992-- photo by Murray Bowles-by Denise SullivanIn 1988, the peace punks who congregated at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California, had a choice to make: To meet encroaching skinheads with violence or to fight back with the tactics of non-violence.

Shooter drills, broken minds and Cassini's goodbye kiss + this day in history w/the death of President McKinley and our song of the day by The Darts on your Morning Monarchy for September 14, 2017.

Rocks for brains, The Grand Checkers Board and splatter soundtracks + this day in history w/the Pluto flyby and our song of the day by Nine Inch Nails on your Morning Monarchy for July 14, 2017.

This morning Carol Shea-Porter hosted a roundtable discussion at the Strafford Nutrition Program in Somersworth to highlight what her office called "the devastating harm President Trump’s budget blueprint proposal would cause to New Hampshire communities that rely on programs like Meals on Wheels." Despite Mick Mulvaney's lies on Meet the Press yesterday-- namely that the feds' cut to Meals on Wheels only amounts to 3% of their budget-- the truth is that 35% of Meals On Wheels funding comes from the federal government and the proposed cuts in the Trump budget would be catastrophic.