lost highway

How? There's no "Illegal Immigrant relief fund". Many illegals pay social security even though they'll never get it. I mean come on, do we need to go through the tired debate that inevitably concludes with the fact that economists have proven that there is a net economic benefit from immigrants in the U.S.?

I'm starting to think my wealthy comment was unneeded. How much did they all get paid, and manage to save/invest from touring in the last 5 years? How much did they get for VW commercials? What do royalties, and various downloads/streaming payments look like every month? I suspect that adds up to some number that's either pretty nice, or impressively substantial, but also is probably not my business. But I guess that gets into the criticisms people raised about the existence of the article- it leads you to ask questions you normally wouldn't ask (i.e. "How much does Mikael pull in after

Who is "funding" illegal immigrants? They get here hidden in the back of trucks, and by crossing the desert on their own two feet.

How can you blow off a few thousand people but get militant about .001% fraud? That's just weird. Are you willing to acknowledge that most of the pushing for voting laws is coming from candidates who think that it will eliminate unwanted competition? The whole conversation has been so hilariously disingenuous that you'd have to be a rube to think that we've got a serious voter fraud problem that big politicians are doing their darndest to fight.

As more divisive threads have proven, you and I define wealthy differently. More to my point, Wilco has used dignity, ethics, business-sense and most importantly artistic depth to make a living that surpasses the greater majority of most musicians. That's damn respectable.

I like the new tune... kind of a lot. I could appreciate the urgency they were going for on "Be the Void" but there was a weird hypercolor dance spin they put on some of it that was kind of annoying. I'm already feeling like a new entry from them is good, even though it's been less than a year.

I devoured this on a long plane ride home from Ecuador. I think it's one of the cooler books I've read in quite a while. It operates perfectly on two levels (like so many great books) you can take the narrative, plain and simple and it is a complete and entertaining story. Or you can take what it's eluding to- pretty much as an allegory of what's wrong with America. The character works as a sympathetic metaphor for America's failure.

Wow! Paul Simon, they're one of my favorite indie rock groups, but I think they're songs sound a little like the first Vampire Weekend album.

** In other news, Elizabeth Warren is fighting to keep the government from raising interest on student loans: http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/the-whole-system-stinks It seems odd and disconcerting to have the government profiting like a bank off of usury.

These dudes are wealthy. Good for them, there's a shortage of well paid musicians in the world, and many of them are awful. Good to see some people with artistic merit profit off of their creativity.

There is a pretty clear partisan line, but you have to look at it upside down and sideways to claim that it has worked for Ireland, Italy, the UK, or France. Then there's Iceland. They turned things around remarkably fast by ponying up some cash and helping people who were struggling. Their first investment was not in giant banks. They dropped their deficit as GDP from13.5 in 2009 to a surplus of 1.5 percent this year. All the aforementioned countries who have put belt-tightening in place have higher deficit as GDP than they did in 2010.

I read an article yesterday from an economist stating that after the recent depression you have a pretty great laboratory in which to study various countries reactions and recoveries. Apparently the data from this supports the theory that austerity measures don't work.

That's not hard for me to acknowledge since my point was that you can't generalize a prison population. And weirdly from: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/20137221126181914.html We hear there are only 260 at large, and that some guards helped them escape. Other guards were killed. Yep, cut and dry....

So were the prisoners killed in the break "good guys", "bad guys", or just "guys"? If Al-Qaida says that it freed 500 holy warriors does that make it a fact? That prison site was full of injustice under Sadaam, and under Bush, you'll have to forgive me if it seems dubious under Nouri al-Maliki. You'll notice I didn't claim that the place was full of angels either, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's a hell of a lot easier to be so flippant about exactly who's in prison over there with the convenience of an American distance.

And thereby raised its legitimacy, upgrading it from a U.S. prison to an Iraqi prison?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/world/the-reach-of-war-abu-ghraib-scant-evidence-cited-in-long-detention-of-iraqis.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm I don't really know what to say in the face of willful ignorance. It's weird how the libertarian streak in some people dies down the second the military stomps around somewhere. Somewhere somebody forgot about a decade of foreign policy blunders.

Have you every freaking read about Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo Bay even are? Do you seriously think that you can generalize their populations. That's the most intellectually lazy, Orwellian brainwash crap ever. Bad guys. There are people in prison without trial for standing on the wrong corner when something blew up. The military is trained to think like that because they wont be an efficient instrument of war if their members can actually fathom the horrid moral ambiguity of their situations, an informed voter on the other hand should aspire to more.

Bad guys. Your world is childlike.

I'm digging this. My only criticism is it's really long for how dense the theme is. It will take some endurance to actually absorb the album and feel like I know it.

Cause it's funny.

Zimmerman ran a truck off the road only after following the suspicious vehicle, and felt it was a threat to him. The truck had every chance, but blew it.

Zing!

Well to be fair, I have pretty much damned Zimmerman. I have said that he's a piece of garbage, and that his vigilante tendencies put himself stupidly in a situation where he got an "ass whooping" and he responded by shooting someone and killing him. He fucking sucks. But that's not a legal judgement. I'm not saying the case is closed. What I have said is that if a court of law can't find sufficient evidence that they don't punish someone for something they can't sufficiently prove. That's a good model for the justice system. I still think he's guilty of manslaughter, but I'm not runni

This thread got downright satirical. I think it's working nicely.

I saw the pictures of Zimmerman's head. I wouldn't call it life threatening. I'd call it a good old fashioned ass whooping. I've only been in a couple fights in my life, but I know you have to be dealing with someone who's dead drunk, or tiny to be able to slam their head against something with great force. It's pretty hard to do. You also leave that person's arms free to do lots of things to you. Zimmerman sucks at fighting crime, he apparently sucks at fighting, but he's good at shooting people who are unarmed.