** "You know, people who are at odds with the administration's agenda, will not go quietly into that good night..."

MSNBC Host Alex Wagner Checks In - Or Rather Out, of her just cancelled show, among many others right now, at the economically troubled station. And her cross-country investigative Trumpland, starting out actually as a project with her on air mentor, Rachel Maddow - herself downsized from a daily show to just one - negotiating the other four days to Wagner.

And our conversation with Wagner taking place just before her termination, but providing some evidence of what was to come - and what turned instead into a kind of doomed requiem for her show on the air.

** "The good thing for the most part, is that since nobody is watching CNN or MSNBC anyway - if we don't discuss it on your channel, nobody would even know that it happened..."

Pacifica Host Garland Nixon Takes A Seat At The Other Side Of The Table. This time, as a guest of the take no prisoner UK host and politician, George Galloway, in fact a prior host himself on Pacifica - together making sense of the explosive world situation at the moment in progress.

Referencing goons, actors and neo-nazis in Ukraine; the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Munich; divorce at the dinner table, Galloway's 90 year old mother - and the European barking chihuahuas.

** "The hard fought gains of the socialist movement of the 1920's still endure - and Cafe Central, where Trotsky is said to have planned the Russian Revolution..."

Bro On The Global Cultural Beat. AE Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe takes the Arts Express across the continent - with a stopover in an Austria 'rejecting the drive toward war with Russia, meanwhile clinging stubbornly to its neutrality.

Plus, what's up with the musical Wicked. And, Beyonce's breakthrough into country music, with Cowboy Carter. Or is it really nothing new when it comes to black musical influence in America - in other words, 'baby, we are here...' 

** "As soon as I heard his song I thought - who is this guy..."

Music Corner. Rebel youth singer/songwriter Jesse Welles in performance - 'a voice like John Prine, plays guitar like Bob Dylan, and can write a song that's as topical as Phil Ochs, or Tom Paxton, or Woody Guthrie...'

LIQUOR BANK REVIEW: Temptation, Timing, And Tough Love

Formulating the complexities of a short film about alcoholism in the space of fifteen minutes can be as challenging as deciphering the various roots of alcoholism itself. And with writer-director Marcellus Cox's docudrama Liquid Bank, despite alcohol addiction being in some cases merely psychological rather than socio-political, that core revelation would seem to have benefitted from more flesh on its bare bones dramatic core. 

Based on the real life struggle with addiction of young Iraq War Marine ex-combat soldier Eddie Muller and his confrontation with his Alcoholics Anonymous counselor Baker, portrayed by Antwone Barnes and Sean Alexander James respectively, Liquid Bank plays out within the physically and psychologically confining space of Eddie's apartment. As Eddie relapses into drinking on the day he was expected to appear for his one year AA sobriety celebration instead, Baker arrives unannounced to Eddie's annoyance turned rage, as the counselor persists in applying undaunted tough love to the situation.

The scenario is emotionally bracing, but within a backdrop as spare as the apartment setting, and seemingly begging for more. Looming just beyond the proceedings for instance, are the reality of potential issues of race and class. And the protagonist's military background in particular.

Surely he would not have likely been admitted, or remained, in the Marines as an alcoholic - and what about a traumatic war experience and potential PTSD as so many have become afflicted with, including the alarming military suicide rate. Not to diminish the importance of peer pressure as a guiding force within Alcoholics Anonymous, but a related dramatic setting would seem to have been potentially enriched by much more.

Prairie Miller