title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: Zombie first rose to fame as a founding member of the heavy metal band White Zombie. The band independently released two studio albums, which failed to have commercial success but caught the attention of artists such as Kurt Cobain and Iggy Pop. The group signed with Geffen Records to release their third studio album; the project was a commercial success, selling over two million copies worldwide. Their fourth studio album had a similar success, with sales exceeding two million copies in the United States. Zombie began directing the band's music videos after the release of "More Human than Human" (1995). Zombie released his first solo recording in 1996, a collaboration with Alice Cooper titled "Hands of Death (Burn Baby Burn)". The song, recorded for "", went on to receive a Grammy award nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards. The following year, he contributed the original song "The Great American Nightmare" with Howard Stern to the soundtrack for the film "Private Parts" (1997).


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: White Zombie announced in 1998 that the band had officially broken up, and it was confirmed that Rob had begun working on a solo debut album. Though acting as a solo artist, Zombie worked to find a band to record and tour with; Mike Riggs was selected to play guitar, Blasko played bass guitar, and John Tempesta played the drums. Tempesta had been a member of White Zombie, while Rob was introduced to Riggs through a mutual friend. On finding the guitar player, Zombie claimed "Danny [Lohner] was just like, 'I know the perfect guy.' He gave me Riggs' phone number and I called him out of nowhere. I trusted Danny, so that was it. Riggs came out and he was great. We didn't have a bass player yet. Riggs and I hung out and talked and I told him everything I wanted to do." Work on the album began in August 1997, prior to the announcement of White Zombie's separation. The album took an estimated ten months to complete. The majority of the album was recorded at The Chop Shop in Hollywood, California. Zombie described the finished product as a "full-blown evil raging beast - a total Zombie extravaganza" and claimed that the album was "no small, self-indulgent album filled with whining about deep feelings."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: Zombie was responsible for writing all of the album's songs, while he initially worked with Nine Inch Nails member Charlie Clouser to produce the album. Zombie and Clouser opted for a more "electronic" sound for the record, using various music software while working on the project. Clouser claimed "It was me and him with a computer, trying to figure out a direction we wanted to go in. We had a pretty good idea of the kind of elements that would be included and an overall concept of the segues between songs and the musical interludes. We even started coming up with the core riffs for the album." Early into the process of recording the album, Clouser became unable to work on the album due to other obligations; however, he recommended that Zombie work with Scott Humphrey for the remainder of the album. Humphrey had previously worked with artists such as Metallica prior to producing the album. Due to his departure, the only song on the album produced by Clouser is "Superbeast". Zombie stated that making the album was "weird", and he didn't believe it would do well, as "most debut solo records don't."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe fame played drums on "Meet the Creeper" and "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe and Rosa Whore". Due to various personal and legal struggles, Lee was living in the studio for a time during the recording of the album. Humphrey was a good friend of Lee's, and had previously worked with his band prior to the production of "Hellbilly Deluxe". Zombie later asked Lee to appear on the album, with Lee agreeing to do so. On the collaboration, Lee stated "I went to his house after I got out of jail to stay for a while, and I think I was there about a day or two and they were working on the record downstairs and Scott and Rob were like, 'Dude, Tommy's upstairs, we should ask him to play.' And they asked me to play and I was like, 'I would love to play right now. I could really use ... you know, just kind of check out, really do some music' and I ended up playing like four tracks or so on the record." Lee is credited as the drummer for "Meet the Creeper" and "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe and Rosa Whore". "Meet the Creeper" was originally referred to as "Creature Core" prior to the release of the album. Danny Lohner provided additional guitar recordings for "Meet the Creeper". Zombie recorded a song titled "Wish It Away" for the album, though it was not included on the final product.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The project was compared to releases from White Zombie by AllMusic, who wrote that the album was "complete with thunderous industrial rhythms, drilling metal guitars, and B-movie obsessions." "Entertainment Weekly" noted the common usage or horror elements in the lyrics, stating Zombie had "concocted a veritable blood feast of hair-raising guitars, spine-tingling drum loops, and a cast of ghoulish characters who could be refugees from an old William Castle horror flick." Tower Records said that "Hellbilly Deluxe" "continue[d] to explore Zombie's fascination with psychotic noise, pummeling grooves, campy samples, and all things horrific." "Legends Magazine" stated that all of the songs on the album "follow the same formula of anger, sex, death, monster, demon, zombie, satanic, drug abuse kinda raw drive a tractor over your neighbor's skull kinda hate the world so I'll burn it all down music."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The album opens with "Call of the Zombie", a short introduction that features Sheri Moon Zombie reading a nursery rhyme of sorts that speaks of children hiding under their beds "for fear that the devil would chop off their heads." The ending features sound clips from the film "Madhouse" (1974). The introduction leads into "Superbeast". "Dragula" is the third song on the album, and is named after the vehicle DRAG-U-LA from the television series "The Munsters" (1964–66). The song lyrically speaks of "a Sunday drive with the Devil", according to "USgamer". The song's opening line, "superstition, fear, and jealousy", is taken from the British horror film "The City of the Dead" (1960). It is mostly a mid-tempo song that features elements of industrial metal and alternative metal music. "Living Dead Girl" is named after the French film "La Morte Vivante" (1982), which roughly translates to "the living dead girl." The song opens with a musical intro taken from a trailer for the exploitation-horror film "The Last House on the Left" (1972). The songs intro features the line "Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?", sampled from the Italian horror film "Lady Frankenstein" (1971). "Living Dead Girl" has been interpreted as lyrically speaking about necrophilia. It features elements of industrial metal and has been described as "seductive and mesmerizing."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The album continues with the instrumental track "Perversion 99", a "creepy" interlude that features an "eerie exotic theme." "Demonoid Phenomenon" has been described as the "heaviest" song on the record, and makes much use of the electronic elements used for the project. The track features the lines "Don't lie to yourself, it gave you pleasure" and "You enjoyed that dead girl's body" from the horror film "Daughters of Darkness" (1971). "Spookshow Baby" features Zombie almost whispering the song's verses, before screaming the chorus lyrics "She's a killah! / She's a thrillah! / Spookshow baby!" The chorus to the song has been described as a "metal blitzkrieg". The song leads into "How to Make a Monster", another interlude featured on the album. The song has an "intentionally low volume and lo-fi" production, and is laced with sounds of monsters and creatures. Following "How to Make a Monster" is the song "Meet the Creeper". The track was described as a "freight train going out of control with the muted string/dropped d sound combined with more of the industrial beats." The line "The devil is in all of you!" is taken from the film "Mark of the Devil" (1970), while "There are more maniacs loose than one thinks" is from "Daughters of Darkness" (1971).


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe and Rosa Whore" has been described as "experimental", featuring elements of techno music along with metal. "What Lurks on Channel X?" is yet another interlude, which much like the previous track makes use of techno elements; the song's samples have been described as the "forefront" of the track. The line "thirteen acres of hell" is taken from "The Last House on the Left" (1972). "Ladies and gentleman, I would like to make the following statement", along with the lines "the young generation, that sick generation" and "impressionable young people, brutal honesty will be shown on this screen" are all taken from "The Undertaker and His Pals" (1966). "Return of the Phantom Stranger" was described as "more atmospheric than most, building up tension and a sense of foreboding." Zombie's vocals on the song were compared to those of Marilyn Manson. "Return of the Phantom Stranger" features the quote "she lays there, waiting for the sacrifice" from the film "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1973). "Hellbilly Deluxe" closes with the final song, "The Beginning of the End". The song is an instrumental track, described as "spastic" and is said to "suggest even more bizarre things are yet to come." The track features the sound of industrial machine factory like noise layered over the music.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: Zombie first announced the album's August 25 release date in July 1998. Prior to the release of the album, numerous songs were performed by Zombie during tours throughout North America. He signed with Geffen Records to release the album; the label had previously released White Zombie's final two studio albums. The album's title is derived from Dwight Yoakam's country music album "Hillbilly Deluxe" (1987). The album featured a Parental Advisory label, affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to identify explicit content. The album's cover art features an image of Zombie with an "x" engraved on his forehead, as well as skulls and crossbones on the side and a pentagram. Basil Gogos painted the album's artwork after being approached by Zombie. On the painting, Gogos said "Rob sent me a photograph and he described himself to me visually. He suggested some colors I could use, which was unusual for me; I like to pick my own colors. But it was helpful." "Hellbilly Deluxe" was officially released on compact disc (CD), LP record, Compact Cassette, and for digital download on August 25, 1998.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The album's booklet is twenty-four pages long, consisting of song lyrics and comics drawn by Zombie. Gene Colan and Dan Brereton, of Marvel Comics, contributed numerous drawings for the booklet. The booklet contains numerous images of ghosts, goblins, monsters, and other creatures. Numerous references to Lucifer and Satan are made throughout the pages, along with images of Sheri Moon and other near-nude women. Zombie had a replica of the robot from the film "The Phantom Creeps" (1939) created for the booklet. The replica was created by Wayne Toth, and stood ten feet tall. The creation is featured on the back of the album, as well as the single cover for "Dragula". Zombie would continue to use it for numerous live performances and appearances, including the music video for his single "Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown" (2013). Zombie said of the booklet, "It's a welcome relief from the less-is-more school of thought [...] I grew up in the heyday of cool record packaging. I would stare at the record for hours. Now, you open a record and you get nothing. I always feel cheated." The disc itself is either white or yellow depending on the version, and features images of various monsters and ghouls also designed by Zombie.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The album was met with controversy upon its release when retail chain Walmart refused to carry the album unless an edited version was made. Though initially hesitant, Zombie complied with the request as "for some of these kids, it was the only place they can buy records. At the end of the day, it's these kids who are getting fucked." The edited version of the album removes the skull and crossbones, pentagram, and "x" from the album artwork; multiple pages are removed from the booklet, as are the album's lyrics. The title of "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe and Rosa Whore" was shortened to simply "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe". Seven years after the release of the album, Zombie released a deluxe edition of "Hellbilly Deluxe" featuring a bonus DVD. The DVD included a music video for all thirteen of the album's songs, with Zombie being credited as the director for all of them. The project was officially released on November 22, 2005.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: "Hellbilly Deluxe" received a generally positive reception from music critics upon its initial release. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave the album four out of five stars, writing "For most listeners, it doesn't matter if "Hellbilly Deluxe" is technically a White Zombie or Rob Zombie album, since it delivers the goods, arguably even better than "". To outsiders, the entire schlock enterprise may seem ridiculous or sound monotonous, but even the weak cuts here hit hard and give fans exactly what they want." "Billboard" described the album as having a "horror carnival" theme, adding "A hard rock marathon with industrial, techno, and Gothic influences, "Hellbilly Deluxe" is also a showcase for visual artists." They closed the review by calling the album a "lo-tech, high-impact multimedia experience." The "Los Angeles Times" positively compared "Hellbilly Deluxe" to the works of White Zombie, claiming that "the overall sound is leaner, and the tracks are infused with the campiest elements of Zombie's B-movie obsessions." "Rolling Stone" praised the album, commenting "The music on "Hellbilly", as usual with Zombie, is a force to be reckoned with – pulverizing hard-rock riffs propelled by drums and electronic percussion, a sonic assault that, under all the bombast, is as meticulously arranged as any Whitney Houston track."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: "Entertainment Weekly" gave the album a mixed review, writing "It's all a little creepy, to be sure, but Zombie's cartoonish antics are too over-the-top to really get under your skin." "Legends Magazine" gave the album an overall positive review, though criticized Zombie's apparent lack of originality, stating "Rob is one of those performers with absolutely zero musical originality. Everything he produces sounds more or less like someone else." The reviewer went on to praise songs such as "Superbeast" and "Dragula", while citing "What Lurks on Channel X" and "Return of the Phantom Stranger" as "disappointments". Yahoo! Music wrote that the release was "an excessively heavy (the best kind), meticulously produced piece of parodic gore-flick metal. The kind of stuff that would be proud to call itself crap with a capital C."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: "The A.V. Club" called the album a "guilty pleasure" in their mixed review, adding "When you get down to it, the samples and interludes on Zombie's solo debut, "Hellbilly Deluxe", are merely window dressing for compact, overdriven, anthemic money shots like 'Superbeast', 'Demonoid Phenomenon', and 'Living Dead Girl'." In their 2010 review of the album, Bloody Disgusting wrote "Putting aside the futuristic sounds and crisp production, everything about the album screamed out vintage horror. I imagined creepy black and white laboratories where glass vials and tubes bubbled with menacing liquids. I pictured a dark night where clouds slowly moved past a full moon. I envisioned foggy forests where tree branches looked like skeleton arms. With that kind of atmosphere, the album already felt like a fine wine: aged and more enjoyable for it." They later criticized the length of the album, and claimed that some songs felt like "filler" tracks. PopStops also praised the album, writing "This is an album that rarely ever gets out of overdrive. Zombie growls his lyrics over a bed of car crash crunching guitars and pounding industrial rhythms. No surf music here."


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: On the week dated September 12, "Hellbilly Deluxe" debuted at number five on the "Billboard" 200 chart in the United States. The album sold an estimated 121,000 copies during its first week of release. The project's first week sales were noted as the highest of Zombie's career at the time, outselling the first week sales of all four White Zombie studio albums. The album fell to number twelve on the chart the following week, and to number sixteen the week after. "Hellbilly Deluxe" had shipped over 500,000 copies by September 29, earning it a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was certified platinum for sales and shipments exceeding one million copies on November 4, and earned a multi-platinum award the following April. "Hellbilly Deluxe" went on to spend over sixty-six weeks on the "Billboard" 200 album chart, making it Zombie's longest charting effort to date. The album was certified triple platinum on January 11, 2000, for shipments of three million albums. Since its release, "Hellbilly Deluxe" has become Zombie's most commercially successful album to date.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: The album had similar chart success in Canada, where it debuted at number two on the albums chart. It spent the following nine weeks in the top ten of the albums chart, and a total of twelve weeks on the weekly chart. "Hellbilly Deluxe" went on to sell over 160,000 copies in the country, earning it a multi-platinum certification from Music Canada. The album debuted at number forty-eight on the ARIA Charts, before rising to a new peak of thirty-seven. It remained on the country's chart for a total of four weeks. The album spent one week on the Ö3 Austria Top 40, where it entered at number forty-two. "Hellbilly Deluxe" made its debut at number forty-eight on the Official New Zealand Music Chart. The album spent a total of fourteen weeks on the chart, rising to a new peak of number nineteen. The project debuted at number forty-five on the Swedish Hitlistan chart. In its second week, the project fell to number fifty-seven, before falling off the chart entirely the week after. In the United Kingdom, the album debuted and peaked at number thirty-seven on the official albums chart. "Hellbilly Deluxe" fell to number sixty in its second week, and ninety-eight in its third and final week on the chart. The album received a silver certification in the country on May 23, 2014, denoting sales of 60,000 copies.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: With the release of "Hellbilly Deluxe", Zombie established himself as a successful solo artist outside of his prior band. The album itself went on to sell over three million copies worldwide, and spawned three singles that each achieved commercial success. The album's lead single, "Dragula", went on to become Zombie's most successful single to date in terms of sales and radio airplay. "Living Dead Girl" was the second single to be released from the album. Both singles became top ten hits on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The album's third and final single, "Superbeast", went on to receive a nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards. "Loudwire" listed "Meet the Creeper", "Superbeast", "Living Dead Girl", and "Dragula" on their list of Zombie's ten best songs. The same post claimed that "Dragula" "introduced the world to Rob Zombie's unique sound as a solo artist and is one of his most recognizable songs." The album was listed at number nineteen on "Loudwire"s list of best debut hard rock albums. The production techniques used for "Helbilly Deluxe" were praised by critics, with "Premier Guitar" writing in 2010 that "Humphrey had pushed the boundaries of primitive DAW and was instrumental in the development of Pro Tools features like Beat Detective and batch cross fade processing. So that same inventive mentality went into "Hellbilly"s' production." "Hellbilly Deluxe" was ranked among the top two-hundred selling albums in the United States in both 1998 and 1999.


title: Hellbilly Deluxe

text: Due in part to the success of "Hellbilly Deluxe", Zombie released "American Made Music to Strip By" in October 1999. The album was composed solely of remixes of songs featured on "Hellbilly Deluxe", featuring contributions from Charlie Clouser and Rammstein, among others. The album was a commercial success in the United States, entering the top forty of the "Billboard" 200. In 2010, Zombie announced that his fourth studio album would be titled "Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls and the Systematic Dehumanization of Cool" (2010). When asked about the album's title, Zombie was quoted as stating "Well, it was around the ten-year anniversary of the first record, and the idea just popped into my head. It really wasn't this big master plan by any means, I just knew I wanted to return to the old ways of doing things, and I thought that that would be a good starting point." Songs taken from "Hellbilly Deluxe" were featured in Zombie's retrospective album "Past, Present & Future" (2003). The album featured songs from both Zombie's work with White Zombie as well as his solo career, along with some new material. Songs from "Hellbilly Deluxe" would later appear in Zombie's greatest hits collections "The Best of Rob Zombie: 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection" (2006) and "Icon" (2010). Zombie has included songs taken from the album on all of his subsequent tours, including his Hellbilly Deluxe 2 World Tour (2009–12). The music found on the album has been used extensively in the media, including films, video games, and television. "Dragula" and "Superbeast" have been covered by acts such as Motionless in White and Suicide Silence, respectively. The songs "Superbeast", "Dragula", "Living Dead Girl", "Meet the Creeper", "How to Make a Monster", and "Demonoid Phenomenon" were all covered on the tribute album "The Electro-Industrial Tribute to Rob Zombie" (2002).


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: Tonight's the Night is the sixth studio album by Canadian / American songwriter Neil Young. It was recorded in August–September 1973, mostly on August 26, but its release was delayed until June 1975. It peaked at No. 25 on the "Billboard" 200. In 2003, the album was ranked number 331 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, moving up to number 330 in the list's 2012 edition and climbing further to number 302 in the 2020 update. The album is the third and final of the so-called "Ditch Trilogy" of albums that Young released following the major success of 1972's "Harvest", whereupon the scope of his success and acclaim became so difficult for Young to handle that he subsequently experienced alienation from his music and career.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: "Tonight's the Night" is a direct expression of grief. Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and Young's friend and roadie Bruce Berry had both died of drug overdoses in the months before the songs were written. The title track mentions Berry by name, while Whitten's guitar and vocal work highlight "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown"; the latter was recorded live in 1970. The song would later appear, unedited, on a live album from the same concerts, "Live at the Fillmore East", with Whitten credited as the sole author.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: Fans have long speculated that an alternate version of "Tonight's the Night" exists. Neil Young's father, Scott Young, wrote of it in his memoir, "Neil and Me":


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: Ten years after the original recording, David Briggs and I talked about "Tonight's the Night", on which he had shared the producer credit with Neil. At home a couple of weeks earlier he had come across the original tape, the one that wasn't put out. "I want to tell you, it is a handful. It is unrelenting. There is no relief in it at all. It does not release you for one second. It's like some guy having you by the throat from the first note, and all the way to the end." After all the real smooth stuff Neil had been doing, David felt most critics and others simply failed to read what they should have into "Tonight's the Night" – that it was an artist making a giant growth step. Neil came in during this conversation, which was in his living room. When David stopped Neil said, "You've got that original? I thought it was lost. I've never been able to find it. We'll bring it out someday, that original."The band assembled for the album was known as The Santa Monica Flyers. It consisted of Young, Ben Keith, Nils Lofgren, and the Crazy Horse rhythm section of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. One track as stated above was taken from recordings of an earlier tour with Crazy Horse, and another from an earlier session with his band for "Harvest", The Stray Gators.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: Included with the early original vinyl releases of "Tonight's the Night" is a cryptic message written by Young: "I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you."


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: On the front of the insert is a letter to a character called "Waterface"; scratched into the run-out grooves on side one is the message "Hello Waterface" while the run-out grooves on side two read "Goodbye Waterface". No explanation is given to this person's identity. In Jimmy McDonough's "Shakey", Young says that "Waterface is the person writing the letter. When I read the letter, I'm Waterface. It's just a stupid thing—a suicide note without the suicide." The picture of Roy Orbison in the insert is taken from a bootleg tape Young came across and, feeling bad that Orbison most likely did not know the bootleg existed, printed it in the insert for him to see.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: The back of the insert has some text superimposed over the credits to Young's "On the Beach" album, released a year earlier. This text is reportedly the lyrics to a "Homegrown"-era unreleased song titled "Florida", characterized by McDonough as "a cockamamie spoken-word dream, set to the shrieking accompaniment of either Young or [Ben] Keith drawing a wet finger around the rim of a glass."


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: When unfolded, a whole side of the insert features a lengthy article printed entirely in Dutch. It is a review of a "Tonight's the Night" live show by Dutch journalist Constant Meijers for the Dutch rock music magazine "Muziekkrant OOR". In 1976 Young said he chose to print it "Because I didn't understand any of it myself, and when someone is so sickened and fucked up as I was then, everything's in Dutch anyway." Meijers later spent a week at Young's ranch in California: during this visit, Young explained that he chose the article after some Dutch girls who were visiting him translated the story and made him aware of the fact "that someone on the other end of the world exactly understood what he was trying to say."


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: The Reprise Records label on the vinyl copy was printed in black and white rather than the standard orange color, a process Young undertook again on the CD label art for 1994's "Sleeps with Angels". Early editions of the sleeve were made on blotter paper.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: In "Shakey", Young maintains that along with the inserts there was a small package of glitter inside the sleeve that was meant to fall out ("our Bowie statement"), spilling when the listener took the record out. However, neither McDonough nor Young archivist Joel Bernstein have yet found a copy of "Tonight's the Night" featuring the glitter package.


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: In a follow-up review published in the 1983 edition of "The New Rolling Stone Record Guide", Marsh writes:


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: Chris Fallon of "PopMatters" said, ""Tonight's the Night" is that one rare record I will never tire of."


title: Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

text: In 2018, Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift covered "Mellow My Mind" on a split 7-inch single with Pony Boy (the recording pseudonym of Los Angeles singer-songwriter Marchelle Bradanini), on which both musicians covered Neil Young songs.


title: Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution

text: A convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, also referred to as an Article V Convention or amendatory convention; is one of two methods authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed: two thirds of the State legislatures (that is, 34 of the 50) may call a convention to propose amendments, which become law only after ratification by three-fourths of the states (38 of the 50). The Article V convention method has never been used; but 33 amendments have been proposed by the other method, a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress; and 27 of these have been ratified by three-fourths of the States. Although there has never been a federal constitutional convention since the original one, at the state level more than 230 constitutional conventions have assembled in the United States.


text: While there have been calls for an Article V Convention based on a single issue such as the balanced budget amendment, it is not clear whether a convention summoned in this way would be legally bound to limit discussion to a single issue; law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen has suggested that such a convention would have the "power to propose anything it sees fit", whereas law professor Michael Rappaport and attorney-at-law Robert Kelly believe that a limited convention is possible.


text: In recent years, some have argued that state governments should call for such a convention. They include Michael Farris, Lawrence Lessig, Sanford Levinson, Larry Sabato, Jonathan Turley, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and Greg Abbott. In 2015, Citizens for Self-Governance launched a nationwide effort to require Congress to call an Article V Convention, through a project called Convention of the States, in a bid to "rein in the federal government". , CSG's resolution has passed in 19 states. Similarly, the group Wolf-PAC chose this method to promote its cause, which is to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v. FEC". Their resolution has passed in five states.


text: Organizations opposed to an Article V convention include the John Birch Society, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Eagle Forum, Common Cause, Cato Institute, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, while the Heritage Foundation has also cautioned against a convention.


text: At the time the 1787 Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia, eight state constitutions included an amendment mechanism. Amendment-making power rested with the legislature in three of the states and in the other five it was given to specially elected conventions. The Articles of Confederation provided that amendments were to be proposed by Congress and ratified by the unanimous vote of all thirteen state legislatures. This was seen by the Federalists as a major flaw in the Articles, as it created a nearly insurmountable obstacle to constitutional reform. The amendment process crafted during the Constitutional Convention, James Madison later wrote in The Federalist No. 43, was designed to establish a balance between pliancy and rigidity:


text: One of the main reasons for the 1787 Convention was that the Articles of Confederation required the unanimous consent of all 13 states for the national government to take action. This system had proved unworkable, and the newly written Constitution sought to address this problem.


text: The first proposal for a method of amending the Constitution offered in the Constitutional Convention, contained in the Virginia Plan, sought to circumvent the national legislature, stating that "the assent of the National Legislature ought not to be required." This was subsequently modified by the Committee of Detail to include a process whereby Congress would call for a constitutional convention on the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures.


text: During the debate on the Committee of Detail's report, James Madison expressed concern about the lack of detail in the article regarding how the convention amendment process would work, stating that "difficulties might arise as to the form" a convention would take. He later proposed removing reference to the convention amendment process, thus giving the national legislature sole authority to propose amendments whenever it thought necessary or when two-thirds of the states applied to the national legislature. Several delegates voiced opposition to the idea of the national legislature retaining sole power to propose constitutional amendments. George Mason argued from the floor of the Convention that it "would be improper to require the consent of the National Legislature, because they may abuse their power, and refuse their consent on that very account." Mason added that, "no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive." In response to these concerns, the Convention unanimously voted to add the language allowing states to apply to Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.


text: A frequent question is whether applications from the states can omit to mention subject matter, and instead request an unlimited convention. Practice suggests that separate unlimited applications submitted to Congress at different times are not allowed. Article V itself calls for "the application of the legislatures" instead of calling for plural "applications".


text: States have requested that Congress convene an Article V convention to propose amendments on a variety of subjects. According to the National Archives, Congress has, however, never officially tabulated the applications, nor separated them by subject matter. On at least one occasion though, the "Congressional Record" has included such a tabulation, which indicated that, as of September 22, 1981, thirty states had made a request for a balanced budget amendment. In 1993, professor Michael Paulsen and his research staff assembled a listing of all state applications to date, but neither Paulsen's list, nor any other, can be safely characterized as "complete" since there may very well be state applications that have been overlooked and/or forgotten.


text: In two law review articles in 1993 and again in 2011, Paulsen argued that state applications for an Article V convention limited to a particular subject matter are invalid and that only applications that include a call for an unrestricted convention are valid. If Paulsen's criteria that state applications must not be limited to particular subject matter and that a rescission by states are valid, then forty-five applications from states were active as of 1993. Paulsen argues that Congress has had ample direction to call a convention on these grounds.


text: There has been no definitive determination by the Supreme Court regarding the state convention amendment method, though it has handled several cases and an array of arguments on the scope which Amendments can ultimately affect. The 1939 case Coleman v. Miller, which questioned whether a state legislature could relinquish endorsement of an Amendment pertaining to child labor, decided in part, "the question whether a reasonable time had elapsed since submission of the proposal was a nonjusticiable political question, the kinds of considerations entering into deciding being fit for Congress to evaluate, and the question of the effect of a previous rejection upon a ratification was similarly nonjusticiable, because the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment precedent of congressional determination 'has been accepted.'" The case is seen to stand as authority for the proposition that at least some decisions with respect to the proposal and ratifications of constitutional amendments are exclusively within the purview of Congress, either because they are textually committed to Congress or because the courts lack adequate criteria of determination to pass on them.


text: Because no Article V convention has ever been convened, there are various questions about how such a convention would function in practice. One major question is whether the scope of the convention's subject matter could be limited.


text: The language of Article V leaves no discretion to Congress, merely stating that Congress "shall" call a convention when the proper number of state applications have been received. Comments made at the time the Constitution was adopted indicate that it was understood when the Constitution was drafted that Congress would have no discretion. In "The Federalist", Alexander Hamilton stated that when the proper number of applications had been received, Congress was "obliged" to call a convention and that "nothing is left to the discretion of Congress." James Madison also affirmed Hamilton's contention that Congress was obligated to call a convention when the requisite number of states requested it.


text: In the North Carolina debates about ratifying the Constitution, James Iredell, who subsequently became one of the founding members of the Supreme Court, stated that when two-thirds of states have applied to Congress for a convention, Congress is "under the necessity of convening one" and that they have "no option."


text: By citing the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause, Congress has tried to enact a statute to regulate how an Article V convention would function. Sponsored by the late Senator Sam Ervin, such a bill passed the U.S. Senate unanimously in 1971 and again in 1973, but the proposed legislation remained bottled up in the Committee on the Judiciary in the U.S. House of Representatives and died both times. Senator Orrin Hatch made a similar proposal several times in the late 1980s culminating in 1991 with no more success. Opponents to congressional regulation of an Article V convention's operations argue that neither Article I nor Article V of the Constitution grants Congress this power, and that the Founders intended that Congress "have no option." There has been no opportunity for federal courts to decide whether Congress has such authority because such legislation has never been adopted by Congress.


text: Some scholars believe that states have the power to limit the scope of an Article V convention: Larry Sabato is one scholar who advanced that view. Some feel that Congress's duty to call a convention when requested by the states means that it must call the convention that the states requested. If the states, therefore, request a convention limited to a certain subject matter, then the convention that is called would likely need to be limited in the way the states requested.


text: If states have the power to limit an Article V convention to a particular subject matter, and Congress only has power to call a convention but no further power to control or regulate it, then a potential concern becomes whether an Article V convention could become a "runaway convention" that attempts to exceed its scope. If a convention did attempt to exceed its scope, none of the amendments it proposed would become part of the constitution until three-fourths of the states ratified them, which is more states than are required to call a convention in the first place. Some proponents of a convention express doubt that an Article V convention would exceed its scope, in light of the United States' experience with state constitutional conventions; over 600 state constitutional conventions have been held to amend state constitutions, with little evidence that any of them have exceeded their scope. This is reinforced by the fact that prior to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, there were many other conventions of the states (some called by Congress, but most called by the states themselves) where the delegates operated within the scope of their commissions.


text: Further, at many Conventions, States have directly controlled their delegates. In the New Hampshire Convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution, delegates were sent with instructions to vote against the Constitution: when they were convinced that the voters had been mistaken, the delegates later returned to their constituents to convince them and request new instructions, allowing the convention to represent the true voice of the people.


text: Similarly, in the 1787 Convention, problems arose after two of New York's delegates walked out in protest, as the New York State Legislature had created a rule that required two delegates to agree to cast a vote on behalf of the state. As the legislature opted not to send new delegates, Alexander Hamilton accepted the authority of the state and was unable to cast a vote for the remainder of the convention. This is the fundamental difference between a Delegate to a Convention, there to do the bidding of their constituents, and a Representative to a Legislature, there to stand in place of their constituents and make decisions based on their own deliberation.


text: The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention did disregard Congress's recommendation to "solely amend the Articles" but as Madison noted in Federalist No. 40, the resolution Congress passed in February 1787 endorsing the convention was only a recommendation. Regardless, the delegates sent nothing to the States at all, sending their new Constitution to Congress, as was their mandate. Congress debated the matter before voting to send it on to the States for ratification with no recommendation for or against.


text: The legislatures of some states have adopted rescissions of their prior applications. It is not clear from the language of Article V whether a subsequent vote to rescind an application is permissible. As discussed above, however, if the purpose of Article V is to give state legislatures power over a recalcitrant Congress—and if state lawmakers may indeed limit their applications by specific subject matter—it is possible that federal courts would hold that rescissions of previous applications are likewise valid, in order to give more meaningful effect to the power which Article V confers upon state legislators.


text: If it is ultimately adjudicated that a state may "not" rescind a prior application, then Ohio's 2013 application for a balanced budget amendment convention would be the 33rd and Michigan's 2014 application would be the 34th (out of the necessary 34) on that topic, rather than the 20th and 22nd, respectively. The balanced budget amendment applications by Ohio and Michigan were new, first-time convention applications, whereas the renewed applications from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, South Dakota, and Utah simply reprised applications made by those states during the 1970s but which had been rescinded during the period between 1988 and 2010.


text: Those claiming that rescission is impossible often also argue that different topics can be combined during a convention's deliberations. Congress has more than enough applications on a single issue to call a convention—if rescission is not valid—and more than enough applications on multiple topics regardless of rescissions. Consequently, if a State believes that combining topics could be done by Congress, even if a State feels that doing so would be contrary to the intent of the Constitution, then that State would also have to conclude that Congress can ignore rescission.


text: Since 2016, nine state legislatures (Delaware in 2016; New Mexico, Maryland, Nevada and Texas all in 2017; South Dakota in 2019; Colorado and New Jersey in 2021, and Illinois in 2022) have rescinded previous applications to call for such a convention.


text: While the Supreme Court has never definitively interpreted the meaning of Article V, it has, on four occasions, referred to the Article V convention process:


text: "Dodge v. Woolsey", 59 U.S. 331 (1855): "[The people] have directed that amendments should be made representatively for them, by the Congress ...; or where the legislatures of two thirds of the several States shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the constitution, when ratified ..."


text: "Hawke v. Smith", : V] makes provision for the proposal of amendments either by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or on application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, thus securing deliberation and consideration before any change can be proposed. The proposed change can only become effective by the ratification of the legislatures of three-fourths of the states or by conventions in a like number of states. The method of ratification is left to the choice of Congress."


text: "Dillon v. Gloss" : In a ruling upholding Congress's authority to place a deadline on a particular Constitutional amendment's ratification, the Court reaffirmed that "A further mode of proposal—as yet never invoked—is provided, which is that, on the application of two-thirds of the states, Congress shall call a convention for the purpose."


text: "United States v. Sprague", 282 U.S. 716 (1931): "[A]rticle 5 is clear in statement and in meaning, contains no ambiguity and calls for no resort to rules of construction. ... It provides two methods for proposing amendments. Congress may propose them by a vote of two-thirds of both houses, or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the States, must call a convention to propose them."


text: Because of the political question doctrine and the Court's ruling in the 1939 case of "Coleman v. Miller" (307 U.S. 433), it remains an open question whether federal courts could assert jurisdiction over a legal challenge to Congress, if Congress were to refuse to call a convention.


text: Every state except Hawaii has applied for an Article V Convention at one time or another. The majority of such applications were made in the 20th century. Before any official count had been taken, one private count puts the total number of applications at over 700. This is widely considered an overestimate. The United States House of Representatives is in the process of building its own official count which currently stands at over 120 with 35 states having current live calls that have not been rescinded. This is an underestimate as it so far does not include anything before the 1960s and there are many known Convention calls subsequent to 1960 which are not yet included in the House's 1960 to 2019 tally. Both Wolf-PAC and the Convention of the States estimate, based on spot checking, that the real figure is in the range of 400 calls.


text: Even though the Article V Convention process has never been used to amend the Constitution, the number of states applying for a convention has nearly reached the required threshold several times. Congress has proposed amendments to the Constitution on some occasions, at least in part, because of the threat of an Article V Convention. Rather than risk such a convention taking control of the amendment process away from it, Congress acted pre-emptively to propose the amendments instead. The Bill of Rights, which includes the first ten amendments, as well as the Twenty-seventh Amendment, were proposed in part because of a Convention application by the New York and Virginia legislatures at the suggestion of a letter from the New York State Convention to ratify the Constitution. The convention would have been limited to those changes discussed at the various State ratifying Conventions. At least four other amendments (the Seventeenth, Twenty-First, Twenty-Second, and Twenty-Fifth Amendments) have been identified as being proposed by Congress at least partly in response to the threat of an Article V convention, bringing the total to 15 out of 27, a majority of the Amendments.


text: In the late 1890s, the House of Representatives passed multiple resolutions for a constitutional amendment providing for direct election of senators. The Senate refused to consider those resolutions. In 1893, Nebraska filed the first Article V application for direct election of senators. By 1911, 29 states had Article V convention applications on file for an amendment providing for direct election of senators, just two short of the 31-state threshold. As new states were being added the threshold increased, however those States had already passed resolutions supporting such a Convention. The final count is somewhat uncertain, but when either one or two further states were required the Senate finally conceded and passed its version of an amendment in May 1911, which was then approved by the House in 1912 and submitted to the states.


text: In 1949, six states — California, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, New Jersey, and North Carolina — applied for a convention to propose an amendment "to enable the participation of the United States in a world federal government." Multiple other state legislatures introduced or debated the same proposal. These resolutions were part of an effort at the time to integrate the United States into a potential world government.


text: There have been two nearly successful attempts to amend the Constitution via an Article V Convention since the late 1960s. The first try was an attempt to propose an amendment that would overturn two Supreme Court decisions, "Wesberry v. Sanders" and "Reynolds v. Sims", decisions that required states to adhere to the one man, one vote principle in drawing electoral districts for state and federal elections. The attempt fell only one state short of reaching the 34 needed to force Congress to call a convention in 1969, but ended by the death of its main promoter Senator Everett Dirksen. After this peak, several states (whose legislatures by this point had been re-engineered in the wake of the rulings) rescinded their applications, and interest in the proposed amendment subsided.


text: In response to increasing federal deficits, a movement in the 1970s by the states to impose fiscal discipline on the federal government began. Between 1975 and 1979, thirty states petitioned Congress for a convention to write a balanced budget amendment. By 1983, the number of applications had reached 32, only two states short of the 34 needed to force such a convention. In addition, at least four states (California, Illinois, Kentucky, and Montana) had adopted resolutions requesting that Congress propose a deficit spending amendment. California and Montana were set to hold ballot initiatives that would have forced their legislatures to file convention applications, but state courts ruled the two ballot initiatives unconstitutional, and the effort stalled. Enthusiasm for the amendment subsided in response to fears that an Article V Convention could not be limited to a single subject and because Congress passed the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act in 1985 (the act was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1986 but Congress enacted a reworked version of the law in 1987). By 1988, two states (Alabama and Florida) had rescinded their applications on the topic of a federal balanced budget amendment. Similar rescissions were approved in Louisiana (1990), Oregon (1999), Idaho (2000), Utah, (2001), North Dakota (2001) Wyoming (2001), Arizona (2003) and Georgia (2004).


text: Recently the movement has seen a revival. On November 20, 2013, the Ohio General Assembly applied to Congress for a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. This effort made Ohio the 21st state to join a push for a national convention of states. On March 26, 2014, the Michigan Legislature applied to Congress for a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment, making Michigan the 22nd to participate in the national effort. On April 27, 2016, the Oklahoma Senate approved an Article V convention on a balanced budget amendment, making Oklahoma the 29th state to participate in the national effort. On November 7, 2017, the Wisconsin Legislature approved an Article V convention resolution for a balanced budget amendment.


text: A political action committee called Wolf-PAC emerged from New York's Occupy Wall Street movement in October 2011. Wolf-PAC calls for a convention of states in order to propose a constitutional amendment that addresses the issue of campaign finance. The resolution reads ""Corporations are not people. They have none of the Constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.""


text: , Wolf-PAC's application had been adopted in three states: California and Vermont in 2014; and Rhode Island in 2016. New Jersey and Illinois previously adopted the application in 2014, but rescinded it in 2021 and 2022, respectively.


text: The conservative group Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG) is engaged in an ongoing effort to call an Article V Convention. Through its "Convention of States Project", CSG is seeking "to urge and empower state legislators to call a convention of states." CSG states that it initiated the Convention of States project "for the purpose of stopping the runaway power of the federal government." Mark Levin has supported CSG's efforts to a call a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments to the constitution.


text: In December 2013, nearly 100 legislators from 32 states met at Mount Vernon to talk about how to call a convention of states. According to "Slate", "The meeting lasted four hours, ending when legislators agreed to meet again in the spring of 2014. That’s the most progress anyone’s made in decades toward a states-first constitutional amendment campaign."


text: In February 2014, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced that after his retirement from Congress, he would focus on promoting the Convention of States to state legislatures. In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG's efforts to a call an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government. In June 2017, former U.S. Senator and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint announced his role as a senior adviser for the Convention of States project.


text: In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. An assembly of 137 delegates representing every state gathered to conduct a simulated convention. The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, restricting the scope of the Commerce Clause, limiting the power of federal regulations, requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment, and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.


text: A Super PAC called Single Subject Amendment registered with the Federal Election Commission on March 1, 2013. It is actively engaged in an effort to call an Article V Convention for the limited purpose of proposing an amendment to provide every law enacted by Congress shall embrace only one subject which shall be clearly expressed in the bill's title. Forty-one state constitutions have a single subject provision but this provision is not in the United States Constitution. In April 2014, Florida became the first state to make an application for an Article V Convention to constitutionally prohibit unrelated riders in Congress.


text: Some Article V convention proponents have proposed aggregating unrelated applications, including aggregating plenary convention and BBA applications, to reach the 34-state threshold necessary to call a convention. In 2021–2022, resolutions advocating for such an approach were introduced in Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah. Additionally, legislation was introduced in the 117th Congress to convene a convention by aggregating state applications.


text: An alternative proposal is to amend the constitution to allow the states to ratify amendments asynchronously, of their own initiative.


title: China League One

text: The Chinese Football Association China League (), also known as China League One or Chinese Jia League (中甲联赛), is the second level of professional football in China. Above League One is the Chinese Super League.


title: China League One

text: Prior to the formation of the Chinese Super League, Jia League was known as "Jia B League". The then top two levels of Chinese football league were known as "Jia A League" and "Jia B League" respectively. "Jia A" was rebranded as CSL and "Jia B" was rebranded as the current Jia League in 2004. Below the Jia League is the Yi League, following the Chinese Heavenly Stems naming convention of numbers.


title: China League One

text: It is currently made up of 18 teams, playing each other home and away once. At the end of each season, the top two teams are promoted to the CSL and the two lowest placed teams from the CSL are relegated to China League Two. The top two teams from China League Two are promoted and replace the two lowest placed teams from China League One.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Charles Booker (born October 20, 1984) is an American politician from the commonwealth of Kentucky. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing the 43rd district from 2019 to 2021. During his term, he was Kentucky's youngest Black state lawmaker.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker was a candidate in the Democratic Party's primary for the 2020 U.S. Senate race in Kentucky, drawing national attention before ultimately losing a close race to former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath. In April 2021, Booker formed an exploratory committee for the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Kentucky, and formally announced that he was running on July 1, 2021. He won the primary on May 17, but lost to incumbent Republican Rand Paul in the general election. Booker is the first African American to be a major party nominee for U.S. Senate in Kentucky.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 20, 1984, to parents who both dropped out of high school to tend to siblings. Booker graduated from Louisville Male High School. He earned a Bachelor of Science in political science and Juris Doctor from the University of Louisville.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker worked for the Legislative Research Commission until 2014, when he was fired for violating a staff policy against partisan political activity after appearing in a campaign video of Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate in the 2014 United States Senate election in Kentucky. He then worked for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and West Louisville FoodPort. In 2016, he ran against Gerald Neal in the Democratic Party primary election for the 33rd district of the Kentucky Senate. Booker finished in third place with 20 percent of the vote, behind Neal, who received 48 percent, and Joan Stringer, who received 32 percent.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Following Darryl Owens' retirement from representing the 43rd district in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2018, Booker ran to succeed him. In a field of seven candidates, Booker won the Democratic nomination with 29.5 percent of the vote, and defeated Republican Everett Corley in the general election by 56 percent.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: As part of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Booker served on the economic development and workforce, judiciary, and natural resources and energy committees.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: On January 5, 2020, Booker formally entered the 2020 U.S. Senate race in Kentucky. Booker's platform included universal health care, a Green New Deal to tackle climate change, systemic criminal justice reform and universal basic income. During an interview with CNN on June 6, 2020, Booker stated, "we're building a grassroots campaign that has folks working from every part of a commonwealth," and "we've raised over a million dollars from regular folks because they know how important this moment is." As a progressive Democrat, Booker supported the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker received endorsements from nearly half of the Democrats in the Kentucky House of Representatives, celebrities, unions and organizations. He was endorsed by U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders; U.S. representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley; Tom Steyer; former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, Julian Castro; Kentucky state senator Gerald Neal; former Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes; actress Susan Sarandon; the Working Families Party; and the Sunrise Movement. The editorial boards of the "Lexington Herald-Leader" and "The Courier Journal", Kentucky's two largest newspapers, also endorsed Booker.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: The campaign drew national attention in its closing weeks, as Booker swiftly closed a polling gap with McGrath, and because the winner would challenge the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. His surge came after his participation in protests over the death of Breonna Taylor. However, Booker ultimately lost to Amy McGrath, receiving 42.7% of the vote compared to McGrath’s 45.4%. Upon conceding, Booker released a statement, reading in part:


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: On July 1, 2021, Booker announced he would run in the Democratic primary for Kentucky's other Senate seat. In his first fundraising quarter (Q3 2021), he raised $1.7 million from 55,000 individual donations. He stated that "98% of our dollars are from grassroots small donors", and asserted his campaign is therefore funded by everyday people.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: On May 17, Booker won the Democratic primary, and lost to incumbent Republican senator Rand Paul in the general election. Becoming the first African American to be a major party nominee for statewide office in Kentucky.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker is a progressive who supports reparations for slavery, Medicare for All, criminal justice reform, universal basic income, and a Green New Deal. He supports actively building infrastructure which would rely on clean renewable sources.


title: Charles Booker (American politician)

text: Booker and his wife, Tanesha, have three daughters. Booker has type 1 diabetes and has said that he had to ration his insulin when he was younger due to the cost. Booker is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, an historically black college fraternity.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Bonny Lee Bakley (June 7, 1956 – May 4, 2001) was the second wife of actor Robert Blake, who was her tenth husband. Bakley was fatally shot while sitting in Blake's parked car outside a Los Angeles-area restaurant in May 2001.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: In 2002, Blake was charged with Bakley's murder, solicitation of murder, conspiracy and special circumstance of lying in wait. In March 2005, a jury found Blake not guilty of the crimes. Seven months later, Blake was found liable in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against him by Bakley's children. Officially, Bakley's murder remains unsolved.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Bonny Lee Bakley was born in Morristown, New Jersey, to arborist Edward J. Bakley and his wife, Marjorie Lois Bakley. Bakley had three siblings: Margerry Lisa Bakley, Joe Bakley, and her half-brother Peter Carlyon from her mother's second marriage. She was raised by and lived with her grandmother in Glen Gardner, New Jersey, while her mother operated an antique business at 6 Kossuth Street in Wharton, New Jersey.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Bakley dropped out of high school at age 16 and decided to go to New York City to pursue a career in modeling and acting at the Barbizon School of Modeling. There she met an immigrant named Evangelos Paulakis, who needed to get married in order to stay in the United States. Bakley agreed to marry him for a price, but then almost immediately ended the marriage; Paulakis was deported. At age 21, Bakley married her first cousin Paul Gawron. At roughly five years, this would prove to be the longest of her ten marriages, and they had two children together, Glenn and Holly. The couple divorced in 1982.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: In an effort to support herself, Bakley began a mail-order business sending nude pictures of women, including herself, to men. She also ran "lonely hearts" ads in magazines advertising for a "male companion". After communicating with the men who answered her ads, she would ask for money for rent or travel expenses. Bakley's business and scams eventually afforded her enough money to buy several houses in Memphis, Tennessee, and one house outside Los Angeles. She pursued a Hollywood career as a singer and actor under the stage name Lee Bonney, but was unsuccessful.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Due to the nature of Bakley's mail-order business and other dealings, she was arrested several times. In 1989, she was arrested in Memphis for drug possession and fined $300. In 1995, she was arrested for attempting to pass two bad checks from an account of a Memphis record company; she was fined $1,000 and sentenced to work on a penal farm on weekends after she plea bargained down to lesser charges. In 1998, she was arrested in Little Rock, Arkansas, for possessing five driver's licenses and seven Social Security cards with different names. Bakley used the IDs to open various post-office boxes in order to run her "lonely hearts" scam.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Bakley had a history of pursuing celebrities, with her friends and relatives describing her as "celebrity-obsessed." Tapes of Bakley's phone conversations reveal that she was starstruck and determined to marry someone famous. "Being around celebrities," she once said, "it makes you feel better than other people."


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: In 1990, Bakley began pursuing singer Jerry Lee Lewis. Bakley eventually did meet Lewis and even became close friends with Lewis' sister, Linda Gail Lewis. In 1993, she claimed that the daughter she gave birth to, Jeri Lee, was Lewis' child. However, DNA tests later disproved her claim. After Jeri Lee's birth, Bakley decided to relocate to California. She left Jeri Lee with her ex-husband Paul to raise, but continued to financially support the child.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: In California, Bakley pursued other celebrities, including Dean Martin, Frankie Valli (Bakley claimed they dated when she was a teenager; Valli denied the claim), and Gary Busey. In 1991 she became interested in Christian Brando, the eldest son of Academy Award-winning actor Marlon Brando and former actress Anna Kashfi, who had become a media fixture when he was tried for the murder of his half sister's boyfriend, Dag Drollet. Brando pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison. While he was in prison, Bakley began writing him and sending photos. After his release in 1996, Brando and Bakley began a romantic relationship. In 1999, Bakley discovered she was pregnant and initially thought that Brando was the child's father. In June 2000, she gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter she named Christian Shannon Brando.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: While Bakley was involved with Christian Brando, she dated actor Robert Blake, whom she met at a jazz club in 1999. After the birth of daughter Christian Shannon Brando, Bakley told Blake that she was unsure of the child's paternity and that he might be the father of the child. Blake insisted on a paternity test which later determined that he, not Brando, was the father of Bakley's youngest child. After paternity was established, the child's name was legally changed to Rose Lenore Sophia Blake.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Blake agreed to marry Bakley under the condition that she sign a temporary custody agreement. Under the agreement, Bakley agreed to monitored visits with Rose and to get written permission for her friends and family to visit Blake's property. The agreement also stipulated that if either spouse decided to end the marriage, the other spouse would retain custody of Rose. Bakley's attorney advised her not to sign the document because he thought it was "lopsided". Eager to marry Blake, she ignored her attorney's advice and signed the agreement on October 4, 2000. Bakley and Blake were married in November 2000.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Although they were married, the couple never lived together. Bakley and Rose lived in a small guest house beside Blake's residence in Studio City, California. The relationship was reportedly rocky; Blake was distrustful of Bakley and hired a private investigator to find more information about her. Blake later found out that Bakley had continued to operate her "lonely hearts" scam during the marriage.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Before her marriage to Blake, Bakley was married nine times (many of the marriages were short-lived with one lasting a single day). Her eighth husband was Glynn Wolfe, famous for holding the record for the largest number of monogamous marriages.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Bakley had four children: a son named Glenn and a daughter named Holly with her second husband Paul Gawron; a daughter named Jeri Lee Lewis (born July 28, 1993) with an unspecified man, after DNA tests disproved her claim that the child was fathered by Jerry Lee Lewis; and daughter Rose Lenore Sophia Blake (born in June 2000 and initially named Christian Shannon Brando) with actor Robert Blake.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: On May 4, 2001, Blake took Bakley to dinner at Vitello's Restaurant on Tujunga Avenue in Studio City, Los Angeles. Afterward, Bakley was killed by a gunshot wound to the head while sitting in the passenger seat of Blake's black 1991 Dodge Stealth, which was parked on a side street around the corner from the restaurant. Blake claimed that he had returned to the restaurant to collect a gun which he had left there, and was not present when the shooting occurred. The gun that Blake claimed he had left in the restaurant was later determined not to have fired the shots that killed Bakley.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: On March 16, 2005, Blake was found not guilty of the murder of Bakley, and of one of the two counts of soliciting a former stuntman to murder her. The other count of solicitation was dropped after it was revealed that the jury was deadlocked 11–1 in favor of an acquittal. Blake's defense, led by M. Gerald Schwartzbach, attacked the credibility of associates who alleged Blake had wanted to hire them to kill Bakley, and also raised the possibility the victim was murdered by one of the men she had conned out of money in the past. Law professor Laurie Levenson stated the prosecution established a possible motive for murder (Blake's vitriol towards Bakley due to his belief she'd tricked him into fathering a child to access his wealth) but had failed beyond that to prove Blake directly or indirectly was responsible for killing her. CBS News legal analyst David Hancock wrote "there was no single part of their case that was strong enough to overcome the many weak links."


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, commenting on this ruling, called Blake a "miserable human being" and the jurors "incredibly stupid." Blake's defense team and members of the jury responded by stating that the prosecution had failed to prove its case. During the trial, the defense alleged that Bakley was a drug addict who used her oldest daughter, Holly, for prostitution.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: On November 18, 2005, Blake was found liable for the wrongful death of his wife in a civil trial. Bakley's three eldest children had sued him, asserting that he was responsible for their mother's death. The trial included a famous Perry Mason moment when Eric Dubin, the attorney for Bakley's family, called the girlfriend of Blake's longtime bodyguard and co-defendant Earle Caldwell to the stand and asked if she believed they were involved in the crime, something no one had asked her before. "Dead silence filled the court," Dubin recalled. "Tears filled her eyes as she paused for what seemed like a decade, then leaned into the microphone and said that yes, she did believe that they were involved." The jury ordered Blake to pay $30 million.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: In 2006, Blake filed for bankruptcy, with debts of $3 million for unpaid legal fees as well as state and federal taxes. On April 9, 2010, the state of California filed a tax lien against Blake for $1,110,878 in unpaid back taxes.


title: Bonny Lee Bakley

text: On April 26, 2008, an appeals court upheld the civil case verdict, but cut Blake's penalty assessment in half, to $15 million. Blake's attorneys had protested that jurors improperly discussed the Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson verdicts during deliberations of his case, but the appeals judge ruled that such discussions were not improper.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Romania is a secular state, and it has no state religion. Romania is one of the most religious of European countries and the majority of the country's citizens are Orthodox Christians. The Romanian state officially recognizes 18 religions and denominations. 81.04% of the country's stable population identified as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 2011 census (see also: History of Christianity in Romania). Other Christian denominations include the Catholic Church (both Latin Catholicism (4.33%) and Greek Catholicism (0.75%–3.3%), Calvinism (2.99%), and Pentecostal denominations (1.80%). This amounts to approximately 92% of the population identifying as Christian. Romania also has a small but historically significant Muslim minority, concentrated in Northern Dobruja, who are mostly of Crimean Tatar and Turkish ethnicity and number around 44,000 people. According to the 2011 census data, there are also approximately 3,500 Jews, around 21,000 atheists and about 19,000 people not identifying with any religion. The 2011 census numbers are based on a stable population of 20,121,641 people and exclude a portion of about 6% due to unavailable data.


title: Religion in Romania

text: The Eastern Orthodox Church is the largest religious denomination in Romania, numbering 16,307,004 according to the 2011 census, or 81.04% of the population. The rate of church attendance is, however, significantly lower. According to a poll conducted by INSCOP in July 2015, 37.8% of Romanians who declare themselves to be religious go to church only on major holidays, 25.4% once a week (especially on Sunday), 18.9% once a month, 10.2% once a year or less, 3.4% say they do not go to church, 2.7% a few times a week, and only 0.9% say they go to church daily.


title: Religion in Romania

text: According to the 2011 census, there are 870,774 Catholics belonging to the Latin Church in Romania, making up 4.33% of the population. The largest ethnic groups are Hungarians (500,444, including Székelys; 41% of the Hungarians), Romanians (297,246 or 1.8%), Germans (21,324 or 59%), and Roma (20,821 or 3.3%), as well as a majority of the country's Slovaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Italians, Czechs, Poles, and Csangos (27,296 in all).


title: Religion in Romania

text: According to the 2011 census, there are 150,593 Greek Catholics in Romania, making up 0.75% of the population. The majority of Greek Catholics live in the northern part of Transylvania. Most are Romanians (124,563), with the remainder mostly Hungarians or Roma.


title: Religion in Romania

text: On the other hand, according to data published in the 2012 "Annuario Pontificio", the Romanian Greek Catholic Church had 663,807 members (3.3% of the total population), 8 bishops, 1,250 parishes, some 791 diocesan priests and 235 seminarians of its own rite at the end of 2012. The dispute over the figure is included in the United States Department of State report on religious freedom in Romania. The Romanian Orthodox Church continues to claim many of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church's properties.


title: Religion in Romania

text: According to the 2011 census, Protestants make up 6.2% of the total population. They have been historically been made up of Lutherans, Calvinists and Unitarians, although in recent years Evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals and newer Protestant groups spread and are holding a greater share. In 1930, prior to World War II, they constituted approximately 8.8% of the Romanian population. The largest denominations included in this figure (6.2%) are the Reformed (2.99%) and the Pentecostals (1.8%). Others also included are Baptists (0.56%), Seventh-day Adventists (0.4%), Unitarians (0.29%), Plymouth Brethren (0.16%) and three Lutheran churches (0.13%), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Romania (0.1%), the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession in Romania (0.03%) and The Confessional Lutheran Church in Romania (a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod foreign mission). Of these various Protestant groups, Hungarians account for most of the Reformed, Unitarians, and Evangelical Lutherans; Romanians are the majority of the Pentecostals, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists and Evangelical Christians; while Germans account for most of the Augustan Confession Evangelicals (i.e. Lutherans historically subscribing to the Augsburg Confession). The majority of Calvinist (Reformed Church) and Unitarians have their services in Hungarian.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Not to be confused with any of the above, the Evangelical Church of Romania (0.08%), is an indigenous Eastern Protestant denomination unrelated with the other protestant traditions.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Jehovah's Witnesses were banned and persecuted in some occasions in Romania from 1948 to 1989. In 1989, after the Romanian ban was lifted, members and representatives of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses were able to gather thousands of Romanian Jehovah's Witnesses that had been separated for a long time, but some of them still rejected certain doctrinal changes and preferred their autonomy, forming The True Faith Association of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1992.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Nowadays, Romania is the only country in the world to have 2 different Jehovah's Witnesses organizations.


title: Religion in Romania

text: As for the main group, in 2020, the number of Jehovah's Witnesses was 39,328 active publishers, united in 535 congregations; 74,363 people attended annual celebration of Lord's Evening Meal in 2020.


title: Religion in Romania

text: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had some presence in the country from 1899–1913. Most of these early members emigrated to the west. The LDS Church was reintroduced in 1990 and a small branch was formed in Bucharest in 1991. In 2019, the LDS Church claimed 3,064 members in 15 congregations in Romania.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Although the number of adherents of Islam is relatively small, Islam enjoys a 700-year tradition in Romania particularly in Northern Dobruja, a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca. 1420–1878). According to the 2011 census, 64,337 people, approx. 0.3% of the total population, indicated that their religion was Islam. The majority of the Romanian Muslims belong to the Sunni Islam.


title: Religion in Romania

text: 97% of the Romanian Muslims are residents of the two counties forming Northern Dobruja: eighty-five percent live in Constanța County, and twelve percent in Tulcea County. The remaining Muslims live in cities like Bucharest, Brăila, Călărași, Galați, Giurgiu, Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Ethnically, most of them are Tatars, followed by Turks, Albanians, Muslim Roma, and immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, although there are a few ethnic Romanian converts to Islam who even established a mosque in 2014. Since 2007, there are Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers coming to Romania, who are mostly Muslims.


title: Religion in Romania

text: In Romania there are about 80 mosques. One of the largest is the Grand Mosque of Constanța, originally known as the Carol I Mosque. It was built between 1910 and 1913, on the order of Carol I, in appreciation for the Muslim community in Constanța. According to the legal status of the Muslim denomination, the Romanian Muslim community is officially represented by a "mufti", while the Muftiat is the denominational and cultural representative institution of the Muslim community, with a status similar with that of the other denominations officially recognized by the Romanian state. Likewise, Muslims in Constanța, which comprise approx. 6% of the population of this county, are represented in the Parliament by the Democratic Union of Turkish-Muslim Tatars of Romania, founded on 29 December 1989.


title: Religion in Romania

text: In 1930, more than 700,000 people in the Kingdom of Romania (including Bessarabia) practiced Judaism. By 2011, that number had dropped to 3,271. A legacy of the country's once numerous Jewish congregations is the large number of synagogues throughout Romania. Today, between 200,000 and 400,000 descendants of Romanian Jews are living in Israel.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Other denominations not listed above but recognised as official religions by the Romanian state are listed here. The Jehovah's Witnesses number around 50,000 adherents (0.25% of the stable population). Old Believers make up about 0.16% of the population with 30,000 adherents, who are mainly ethnic Russians living in the Danube Delta region. Serbian Orthodox believers are present in the areas which border Serbia and number about 14,000 people. Once fairly well represented in Romania, Judaism has fallen to around 3,500 adherents in 2011, which is about 0.02% of the population. Less still is the Armenian Christian minority, numbering about 400 people in total. The Association of Religion Data Archives reports roughly 1,900 followers of the Baháʼí Faith in the country as of 2010. Lastly, the number of people who have identified with other religions than the ones explicitly mentioned in the 2011 census comes to a total of about 30,000 people.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Neopagan groups have emerged in Romania over the latest decade, virtually all of them being ethno-pagan as in the other countries of European Union, although still small in comparison to other movements such as "Ősmagyar Vallás" in Hungary.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Thracian mythological sources, with prominence given to the figure of god Zalmoxis. One of the most prominent Zalmoxian groups is the Gebeleizis Association ().


title: Religion in Romania

text: In the same time, in Romania there is a recognized pagan organization: THE NEW PAGAN DAWN Association, which attempts to defend the rights of the pagan community in Romania and to represent its voice.


title: Religion in Romania

text: Approximately 40,000 people have identified as nonreligious in Romania in the 2011 census, of which 21,000 declared atheists and 19,000 agnostics. Most of them are concentrated in major cities such as Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca. Irreligion is much lower in Romania than in most other European countries; one of the lowest in Europe.


title: Religion in Romania

text: In 2008, 19% of Romanians placed "Faith" among maximum four answers to the question "Among the following values, which one is most important in relation to your idea of happiness?". It is the third highest number, after Armenia (27%), and Georgia (26%), at equality with Turkey (19%) and Cyprus (19%). The mean in EU-27 was 9%. According to a study by the Soros Foundation, over three quarters of Romanians consider themselves religious people, in a greater amount from rural areas, from women, from elders and from those with low income. Romanians believe in religious dogmas and the church, without absolutizing this belief, showing tolerance towards those who do not fully comply with scripture, towards other religions and even towards some scientific truths.


title: Religion in Romania

text: In 2011, 49% of Bucharesters declared that they only go to church on social occasions (weddings, Easter, etc.) or not at all. Only 26% told the same in the other parts of the country. According to preliminary data from the national 2011 census, 98.4% of the population declared themselves adherents of a religious denomination. This figure was contested, suggesting that the number of believers in disproportionately large. The final data for the 2011 national census shows a reduction of this figure to about 93.5% but includes a much larger portion of the population where religion-related data is missing (6.26%).


title: Religion in Romania

text: According to a survey conducted in July 2015, 96.5% of Romanians believe in God, 84.4% believe in saints, 69.6% believe in the existence of heaven, 57.5% in that of hell, and 54.4% in afterlife. 83% of Romanians say they observe Sundays and religious holidays, 74.6% worship when they pass by a church, 65.6% say they pray regularly, 60.2% state they sanctify their belongings, house, car, and 53.6% of Romanians donate regularly to the church.


title: Religion in Romania

text: The laws of Romania establish the freedom of religion as well as outlawing religious discrimination, and provide a registration framework for religious organizations to receive government recognition and funding (this is not a prerequisite for being able to practice in the country). The government also has programs for compensating religious organizations for property confiscated during World War II and during the rule of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Representatives of minority groups have complained that the government favors the Romanian Orthodox Church over other religious groups, and there have been several incidences of local government and police failing to enforce anti-discrimination laws reliably.


title: Religion in Romania

text: During the existence of the Kingdom of Romania in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the government of Romania systematically favored the Orthodox and Romanian Greek Catholic Churches. Non-Christians were denied citizenship until the late 19th century, and even then faced obstacles and limited rights. Antisemitism was a prominent feature of Liberal political currents in the 19th century, before being abandoned by Liberal parties and adopted by left-wing peasant and later fascist groups in the early 20th century. During World War II, several hundred thousand Jews were killed by Romanian or German forces in Romania. Although Jews living in territories belonging to Romania prior to the beginning of the war largely avoided this fate, they nevertheless faced harsh antisemitic laws passed by the Antonescu government. During the Socialist era following World War II, the Romanian government exerted significant control over the Orthodox Church and closely monitored religious activity, as well as promoting atheism among the population. Dissident priests were censured, arrested, deported, and/or defrocked, but the Orthodox Church as a whole acquiesced to the government's demands and received support from it.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: A Bigger Bang is the 22nd British and 24th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released through Virgin Records on 6 September 2005. It is their most recent studio album of original compositions to date, though a follow-up has been long promised. It is also their last album of original material recorded with Charlie Watts on drums before his death in 2021.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: Unlike their prior effort eight years before, the sprawling and eclectic "Bridges to Babylon", which had a bewildering array of producers, musical styles, and guest musicians, the Stones set out to make a basic, hard rock album that hearkened back to their 1970s heyday. A single producer, Don Was, was brought in to co-produce the album alongside the band's principal songwriting and production team of vocalist Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Joining the two were band members Ronnie Wood on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums, contract players Darryl Jones on bass and Chuck Leavell on keyboards, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Clifford. Most of the basic tracks were recorded as a simple trio of Jagger, Richards, and Watts, with overdubs added later by other players.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: The back-to-basics method of recording the album paid off for the Stones, who saw the album reach number three in the US, number two in the UK, and number one in eleven countries around the world. The lead single, "Streets of Love", failed to chart in the US, but was otherwise successful around the world, reaching number 15 in the UK and top-40 in over a dozen other countries. Two other singles were released to moderate worldwide sales. Reviews of the album were generally favourable; while critics noted that the album was not up to the standards of the Stones classic period, it nonetheless was among the best reviewed of their later albums. The follow-up tour, which lasted two years, would become the highest-grossing tour of all time by its completion. A Martin Scorsese-directed concert film titled "Shine a Light" documented the tour.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: The album used a stripped-down style reminiscent of "Some Girls" (1978), but with a harder, more contemporary edge. Although initial reports stated that the Stones had "returned to their roots" with the record, the minimal instrumentation, rough mix, tough blues and "garage" rock hybrid bear certain similarities to the style of contemporary artists like the White Stripes and the Black Keys.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: Many songs were recorded with just the core band of Jagger, Richards and Watts. Ronnie Wood was absent from many sessions, playing on only ten of the sixteen tracks, with only occasional contributions from outside musicians comprising the recording of the album. This is also the first album where Jagger plays bass guitar on some tracks.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: The Stones said in a statement that the album's title reflects "their fascination with the scientific theory about the origin of the universe."


title: A Bigger Bang

text: "A Bigger Bang" was written in June 2004 by Jagger and Richards at Jagger's chateau in Pocé-sur-Cisse, France. At the château, they learned of Charlie Watts' throat cancer diagnosis and debated about postponing the writing, but ultimately went ahead after determining that Watts wasn't required to be present until later. As a result of this, Jagger played the drums during early guide track recordings; all but one of these was later rerecorded by Watts, but Jagger's beat remained. Jagger and Richards shared bass and guitar parts between them. The album was produced by Don Was and the sound engineering was done by Krish Sharma. Mixing for the album was performed by Jack Joseph Puig and Dave Sardy.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: The first single, "Streets of Love"/"Rough Justice", reached No. 15 in the UK singles chart, while "A Bigger Bang" peaked at No. 2 on the UK charts. Another song, "Sweet Neo Con", was critical of the conservative Christian movement in American politics.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: In August 2005, the Rolling Stones embarked on the 90-show A Bigger Bang Tour in support of the album. It was met with sold-out tickets at every destination, usually within minutes of going on sale. The tour was extended into 2007 because Richards got hurt falling out of a tree in Fiji and required surgery in New Zealand. The tour concluded in August 2007 at the O2 Arena in London.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: Critical reaction was mostly positive. The aggregate score of the album by Metacritic was rated 73 out of 100, categorizing the reviews as "generally favourable". "A Bigger Bang" was touted as the best Rolling Stones album in years. Nevertheless, all of the Stones albums since 1989's "Steel Wheels" had been similarly lauded, and many critics and fans felt that the Stones had yet to record a late-period album truly up to their high standards. It was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005, and ranked the second-best album of the year by "Rolling Stone" magazine, behind rapper Kanye West's "Late Registration". A review by the Associated Press referred to the album as "a winner" that "hammers home the fact that The Rolling Stones still have 'it'".


title: A Bigger Bang

text: "A Bigger Bang" went platinum in the US and Germany, and gold in Japan. According to Nielsen SoundScan it sold 546,000 copies in the US, and as of 31 March 2006, 2.4 million copies worldwide according to EMI.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: In 2009, "A Bigger Bang" was reissued by Universal Music Group. The US re-release was handled by Interscope Records, while Polydor Records handled all other territories.


title: A Bigger Bang

text: Songs from "A Bigger Bang" have seen commercial use in television, including multiple appearances in "Days of Our Lives".


title: Cher filmography

text: Throughout her acting career, Cher has mainly starred in comedy, drama, and romance films. She has appeared in eighteen films, including two as a cameo. She has also appeared in one starring theater role, one video game role, numerous television commercials and directed a piece of the motion picture "If These Walls Could Talk" in 1996 and some of her music videos of the Geffen-era in late 1980s and in early 1990s. Cher has starred in various international television commercials, as well as high-profile print advertising for Lori Davis (1992). Before she started her film career, she had a couple of hits in the 1960s, as a solo artist, and with her ex-husband Sonny Bono as the couple Sonny & Cher.


title: Cher filmography

text: Her first appearance as an actress was in 1967 in the American television series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." as the model Ramona. That same year, she started her film career with Sonny Bono in the poorly received-film "Good Times" and later as a solo actress in the low budget feature "Chastity". Since then she has starred in numerous independent and Hollywood motion pictures. She made her Broadway debut in Robert Altman's "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" in 1982. The play was a critical and commercial success and Cher received strong reviews for her stage work (even Frank Rich called her "ingratiating") and paved the way for her to be cast in the film version the next year, that garnered her a Golden Globe nomination. She was next cast alongside Meryl Streep and Kurt Russell in the critically hailed drama "Silkwood" (1983) directed by Mike Nichols, inspired by the true-life story of Karen Silkwood, in which her character was a lesbian who worked in at the Kerr-McGee plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma. It was a commercial success and grossed $35 million in the United States alone. Cher then appeared in the drama "Mask" (1985) directed by Peter Bogdanovich and with Eric Stoltz, Sam Elliott and Laura Dern. The film is based on the life and early death of Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, a boy who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia. The film was considered her first critical and commercial success as a leading actress and firmly established her as an actress. For her role as a mother of a severely disfigured boy, Cher won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival.


title: Cher filmography

text: In 1987, she starred in three films: the thriller "Suspect", with Dennis Quaid and Liam Neeson; the film has been credited for the high quality of acting despite the severe loopholes of the story. In particular, Cher, in the lead role, has received positive reviews. The fantasy film "The Witches of Eastwick", with Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer; and the romantic comedy "Moonstruck" with Nicolas Cage and Olympia Dukakis. "Moonstruck" is also her most commercial success to date, grossing over $80 million in the United States alone. During 1989–1991, Cher refused many roles, like "The War of the Roses", "Thelma & Louise" and "The Addams Family" for starring in Richard Benjamin's "Mermaids" with Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder, and a then 9-year-old Christina Ricci. The film was a modest success drawing only $35 million in tickets in the U.S. Cher made cameo appearances in the Robert Altman films "The Player" (1992) and "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994). She starred in the poorly received film "Faithful" (1996) with Ryan O'Neal and Chazz Palminteri, in the role of the betrayed wife. Then, in 1999, Cher co-starred in the well-received Franco Zeffirelli film "Tea With Mussolini" with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Lily Tomlin. Cher had a minor appearance in the Farrelly Brothers comedy "Stuck on You" (2003) with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, in which she plays herself and Honey, a character of a TV series. She also spoofed her own image, appearing in bed with a high school boyfriend (Frankie Muniz). In 2010, Cher appeared alongside pop singer Christina Aguilera in the Steven Antin directed musical film "Burlesque", her last major starring movie role to date.


title: Cher filmography

text: Cher has also contributed music to films, like "Alfie", "After All" "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me". Cher has received many awards and nominations for her work in films. She was nominated six times for the Golden Globe Awards, winning it three times; in 1974 for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy, in 1983 for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role in "Silkwood" and in 1987 for Best Actress in a Comedy for her role in "Moonstruck". She was also nominated twice for the Academy Award, in 1984 for her role in "Silkwood", and in 1987, when she won the Best Actress award for her role in "Moonstruck".