Roger's Year in Music 2014: Plain Spoken, by John Mellencamp.

I'm in the company of cowards
I'm in the company store
Bullet holes through the window
We can't keep this company up anymore

A bucket of beer, a bucket of fools
A bucket of dark and broken rules
There's a lot more to this than I ever thought
A bucket of trouble that's what we've bought

Plain Spoken is Mellencamp's 2014 release, continuing a stellar late period run.

His voice sounds ravaged by cigarettes, he doesn't bother rocking at all (although he does play a bit of blues on "Lawless Times," a subdued shuffle that offers a welcome tonal tonic at the close), and he feels battered down by the passage of time. He's mourning the end of his marriage, he's pondering mortality, he's sour at the politicians and the bankers, and he's not so sure he has much to offer anybody else, either. If his bitterness is unavoidable in the lyrics or in his voice, his music softens his bite, turning these tunes into melancholy laments instead of invective, so there winds up being a bit of a needed cushion to Mellencamp's straight talk on Plain Spoken.
-- Stephen Thomas Erlewine at Allmusic

Plain Speaking is an oral biography of President Harry S. Truman, written by Merle Miller. As especially amusing section deals with the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur, as reprised here: Harry Truman Talks About Firing General Douglas MacArthur.