The golf legend was arrested after a rollover crash in Florida, and his mugshot has surfaced. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Month: March 2026
Despite distribution hurdles and an expensive retail price, halibut remains the star of a fish sandwich offered at one particular Utah fast food chain.
Food Republic – Restaurants, Reviews, Recipes, Cooking Tips
GRAPEVINE, TEXAS — Joseph Bolick feels betrayed by President Donald Trump. And it’s because of the war in Iran.
The 30-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran voted for Trump in 2024. But at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference gathering this week he sported a hat emblazoned with “America First” — a slogan Trump championed during his campaign, along with the promise not to start new wars in foreign countries.
“He’s lied about everything,” said Bolick. “If you go into a war where there’s no end game, how is it going to end? There’s no clear objective.”
Bolick is part of a cohort of young MAGA loyalists who are increasingly frustrated with Trump over the war in Iran. While Trump’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran has rallied war hawks and his older supporters, it has alienated many of the young men who swung toward the GOP in 2024. That split is resonating among not only the rank-and-file, but also conservative media influencers and some corners of the White House.
The generational divide was on stark display at CPAC, the annual conservative base-rallying gathering, where some young MAGA loyalists expressed deep frustration and even anger at the Trump administration’s choice to reignite conflict in the Middle East. One month into the war, Trump’s shaky ground with young men threatens to fracture an already-fragile GOP coalition ahead of a hostile midterm in November.
At the conference in north Texas, some attendees carried around Iranian flags, pledging loyalty to the U.S. mission overseas, while others donned America First hats and preached about the need for anti-interventionism.
“Trump and Republicans in general are going to have major issues in the midterms, in 2028, if we can’t wrap this up in a relatively quick amount of time,” said 21-year-old Andrew Belcher, president of the Ohio College Republicans. He added that Trump is doing “relatively poorly” with hyper online young men who are influenced heavily by media figures like Tucker Carlson and other isolationists in the GOP.
A POLITICO poll this month found that Trump voters largely continue to back him. But men who self-identified as “MAGA Republicans” and voted for Trump in 2024 are deeply split by generation over their trust in the president and their view of the war, especially if the number of U.S. casualties rises.
The contrast was striking, even with the larger margins of error that come from the smaller sample sizes: More than 70 percent of those over 35 believe Trump has a plan, compared with 49 percent of those under 35. A 66 percent majority of older MAGA men are willing to sacrifice American lives in order for the U.S. to achieve its goals in Iran, compared with less than half of younger MAGA men who say the same. And the younger men are significantly less likely to say the war is aligned with MAGA principles and in the interests of American people.
Some of the most prominent MAGA voices are opposed to the Iran war, like Carlson and Megyn Kelly, along with influential figures like Joe Rogan, who holds tremendous sway with young men. There’s even growing consternation among younger, more-right wing White House staffers, said one person familiar with the dynamics who was granted anonymity to discuss them.
“They’re very frustrated. They didn’t love the war to start with, and since it began, the constantly contradictory messaging from the president himself, is just brutal, brutal for staff to deal with and making their life really hard,” the person said. “He puts his people in a really tough position, especially people who are public-facing.”
“What matters most to the American people – including young men – is having a Commander-in-Chief who takes decisive action to eliminate threats and keep them safe, which is exactly what President Trump is doing with the ongoing successful Operation Epic Fury,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.
Part of CPAC’s intent, a hallmark grassroots gathering that has been held for more than 50 years, is to hype up conservatives, a particularly important mission for party leaders in critical election years. If Republicans want to prevent Democrats from flipping the House this midterm cycle, they need to ensure they don’t lose any gains they made with key parts of their coalition in 2024, namely young men.
“We need you,” said former RNC chair Michael Whatley, who is running for Senate in North Carolina. “We need every conservative, every Republican, every patriot across this country to focus on two things: get out the vote and protect the ballot.”
Mercedes Schlapp, senior fellow for the CPAC Foundation, opened Thursday’s session by pleading with conservatives to remain united. “We cannot divide from within,” she cautioned attendees.
But interviews with a dozen young men at CPAC revealed broad concern that Trump is imperiling the U.S. economy, which has seen spiking gas and fuel prices caused by the war.
“A lot of the young generation feels that there’s just not a lot of hope for the economy,” said a 30-year old attendee who was granted anonymity to speak freely about party dynamics.
Onstage and in hallway conversations, older attendees celebrated Trump for ending what they called a 47-year conflict in Iran, marked by the death of Iran’s supreme leader.
A panel featuring Iranian women speaking about human rights abuses was met with loud cheers from the audience. Scores of mostly older conservatives milled about wearing shirts with the image of exiled Iran Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who is set to speak at the conference on Saturday.
“I believe President Trump’s shock and awe is what they needed,” said Lawrence Ligas, a 63-year-old conservative Chicago activist who was pardoned by Trump for charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Young MAGA is causing this divide because they’re concerned about being drafted.”
Multiple speakers on stage both directly and indirectly roasted online influencers for their opposition to the war. Conservative political commentator Josh Hammer blasted Carlson and Kelly in particular as “doomsayers.”
In his speech, former Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz told the audience that “dissent and disagreement has to be allowed. Tucker Carlson isn’t going anywhere.” Gaetz, who resigned in 2024 after being briefly nominated by Trump for attorney general, then warned about the risks of military occupation in Iran.
“A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe,” the 43-year-old said. “It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices. And I’m not sure if we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”
Megan Messerly contributed to this report.
Politics
Common has one of the most distinctive voices in hip-hop, and it goes hand in hand with one of the game’s most storied careers. Over the course of three studio albums he had established himself as a lyricist with few challengers, so when it came time to record his fourth studio album, Like Water For Chocolate, he stepped in once again to hit a hard reset on the state of hip-hop.
An artistic transformation
In the wake of influential releases like The Roots’ Things Fall Apart and Mos Def’s Black On Both Sides, Common’s Like Water For Chocolate was part of an ongoing cultural renaissance in hip-hop. A sprawling opus that spans everything from funk to hip-hop, bebop, and cool jazz, the album marks the point where the Chicago MC started transforming into the artist we know today, and finds him taking the chance to honor the black trailblazers that came before him.
Released on March 28, 2000, Like Water For Chocolate is a long but rewarding listen at 78 minutes. This wasn’t uncommon for albums of the era – if there’s room, fill it up, seemed to be the ethos of a lot of artists when they started recording for the CD format. But Common uses the album’s length to his advantage, coming at his subject matter from all angles, often creating characters to do so.
He touches on familiar subject matter, especially for the boom-bap and “conscious” rap of the era: race relations, gender roles, economic disparity, love, and hope. But Common didn’t limit himself to the traditional themes. Even among his peers, he was unique. No one else was out there making seven-minute-long, album-ending songs about Assata Shakur, the Black Panther activist and Tupac’s godmother; a masterwork from MC, it featured CeeLo Green on vocals and would tie Assata’s legacy to Common’s for years.
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Thrilling storytelling
The album’s title, Like Water For Chocolate, is a bit of a Trojan horse. It sounds pleasant, smooth, relaxing, and if you weren’t paying attention to the lyrics, the production can be just comforting. But in reality, the title is a reference to water that has hit its boiling point and then gets used to make hot chocolate: the channeling of something harsh, something potentially destructive, into something sweet and desired. In Common’s case, he turned harsh life experiences turned into rap, into poetry and into spoken word. While Common had earned a reputation as a “conscious rapper,” he wrestled with the dichotomy of “consciousness” and more traditional rapping throughout the album.
Listen to Like Water For Chocolate on Apple Music and Spotify.
Like Water For Chocolate’s most electrifying moment is in its most thrilling storytelling, “Payback Is A Grandmother.” Common’s flow is at both its most playful and its most sinister here, and he’s clearly aware this is one of the more entertaining tracks on the album. The tracks finds him receiving a call from his grandmother: she got robbed while playing cards with her friends on a riverboat, and the thieves went as far as forcing some people to “strip naked.” Like Water For Chocolate is rife with details like this: fleshed-out moments that make the album come alive.
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Throughout the record, Common created a whole world of characters, complete with rich dialogue and vivid vignettes. He has likened “Payback Is A Grandmother” to a Hardy Boys mystery, as he goes around looking for clues and suspects, before tracking them down. The song gets drowned out in gunfire – mission accomplished.
A collective effort
Largely a collective effort by The Soulquarians, Like Water For Chocolate boasts an enviable roster of talent consisting of D’Angelo, Questlove, DJ Premier, James Poyser, frequent Q-Tip collaborator Jay Dee, and, most importantly, J Dilla.
Dilla is credited as a producer on over two-thirds of the album, anchoring the grandiosity of Common’s vision. But the album’s impressive guestlist goes beyond just production. Its first single, “The 6th Sense,” was an instant classic, thanks to DJ Premier’s bumping instrumental, Bilal’s vocal hook, and Common’s tight flow. Elsewhere, MC Lyte and Mos Def team up with Common on the hilarious “A Film Called (Pimp)’ and “The Questions,” respectively, while Slum Village show up on “Nag Champa (Afrodisiac For The World),” as Common takes a stab at his own image.
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Like Water For Chocolate is critical to understanding Common’s growth as an MC. He’s had such a storied career – one that’s now crossed into acting, writing Academy Award-nominated songs, and philanthropy – that it’s actually becoming difficult to trace just how much he’s done.
Many of his fans discovered him long after this era, but, at the start of the 21st century, Common laid the foundation for a new direction in hip-hop.
Listen to Like Water For Chocolate on Apple Music and Spotify.
Browse Common’s music on limited edition vinyl and CDs here.
Discover more about the world’s greatest R&B artists | uDiscover Music
When they released their debut album in 1973, The Pointer Sisters played on the then-current nostalgia for the previous generation. For Anita, Ruth, Bonnie, and June, it made sense: Their tight harmonies were tailor-made for a revamp of 1940s, big-band jazz swing. When critic Vernon Gibbs’ wrote about a performance by the group in the NME, he peppered the review with words like “vintage” and “tradition.” Writer Ellen Willis saw the same show, and said the group’s nostalgia was “fantasy that didn’t risk getting too real.”
For at least a few years more, though, the Pointers found it useful to keep one foot in the 1940s and one in the future. Their self-titled debut mixed laments that “they’ve taken my memory lane and made it a six-lane freeway” and the New Orleans funk of Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can.” Their next album, 1974’s That’s a Plenty, followed the same blueprint, with a selection of harmonized jazz standards (“Black Coffee”), slick R&B (“Love in Them There Hills”), and country (the Grammy-winning “Fairytale”). But what can you be when you’re everything at once?
Listen to The Pointer Sisters’ “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” now.
That was the question that the Pointers attempted to answer with their third album, Steppin’ (1975). As Ruth wrote in her 2016 autobiography, Still So Excited! My Life as a Pointer Sister, “The Pointer Sisters’ nostalgia act was starting to get a little stale.” They wanted to show the public who they were, “our own spirit,” as Ruth put it. And if you’re going to show them, show them.
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That’s just what they did on their first single from the album – “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” – written by Anita, Bonnie, and David Rubinson. This isn’t a song that looks back. This is a unique style, combining all the pieces of funk, R&B, and disco that make those genres great. This is lush strings punctuating funky guitar. This is a beat that builds and builds, waiting to explode. It begs for dance floors and house parties. The signature harmonies that made them famous are there throughout, too. They show up again in the whispered refrain, with Ruth’s deep alto holding down Anita’s lead. The result is powerful, assured. The song would score the Pointers their first (and only) R&B number one.
They’d made something special, and they knew it. “The album was a mother,” Ruth writes. With songs written or co-written by Stevie Wonder (“Sleeping Alone”), Isaac Hayes (“Easy Days”), another Toussaint (“Going Down Slowly”), and appearances by both Wonder and Herbie Hancock, Steppin’ tapped into something new for the Pointers, something that both artist and audience could feel. With the album, “We planted our flag as true song stylists,” Ruth writes. “We felt our days as a gimmick act were coming to a close.”
Listen to The Pointer Sisters’ “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” now.
Discover more about the world’s greatest R&B artists | uDiscover Music
The Duggar family is making their views known.
After Joseph Duggar was arrested March 18 for allegedly molesting a 9-year-old girl in 2020, several of his siblings have spoken out to publicly…
E! Online (US) – Top Stories
Joseph Duggar exchanged words with his wife Kendra Duggar while behind bars.
After the 19 Kids and Counting alum was arrested March 18 in Arkasas for allegedly molesting a 9-year-old girl during a…
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There was more bad blood than met the eye.
As it turns out, Survivor 50 contestant Charlie Davis may have been wrong to assume that fellow castaway Rizo Velovic—who returned to the milestone…
E! Online (US) – Top Stories
Karamo Brown had a rather unconventional path to fatherhood.
After all, the Queer Eye star didn’t even know he had a kid until his son Jason “Rachel” Brown was 9 years old.
As Karamo explained…
E! Online (US) – Top Stories
When he needs a quick bite after a show, Paul McCartney goes for something simple yet satisfying – it’s a filling choice that keeps the legend going strong.
Mashed – Fast Food, Celebrity Chefs, Grocery, Reviews