lost highway

I get that. I get how you can listen to something that is promoting an attitude, character, or set of values you don't share. The easiest way to understand this dynamic is to hang out with a bunch of bourgeois white folk partying to Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre's landmark album The Chronic, or better still NWA. Kind of like I never get tired of hearing Mavis Staples exalt with a mighty "Hallelujah" although there's hardly a Christian bone in my body.

This hasn't happened yet, I'm just really excited for the evening. Anyone else coming (so I don't have to write down the setlist)?

Sometimes they have the information you need.

Ah, there we have it. I think this captures the reality of our country well, and has a toe tapping country rock beat:

It's a long stretch to enable a hypothetical concern. I'm sure I've got my own glasses, but I just noticed yours. I should call mine the "bias shades" I'll totally get behind that statement. There are democrats that would ethically like to see some positive change for undocumented workers with babies born here, and there are some that would just like to get the votes. I understand the same thing happened in the civil rights movement. Either way, I like the effect. It's like: "Did they put in that wind farm and solar panels cause they believe in it?" "Nah they're just trying to save

Read it again. There's nothing in there that says that immigrants are eligible, or are utilizing the system. It says the USDA (that's the dept of agriculture) is advising undocumented workers to cheat the paper work to access SNAP. They're doing that because they want to provide at risk kids with food and they know that most immigrants wouldn't even try, so they're hoping to encourage them, even though technically it's against the rules. The ID laws are restrictive to several groups of people who don't have ID's. Most states won't do it, or need to. If you can't see how this is a politi

Check the SNAP website (that's the dept that runs food stamps in the U.S.). They're not eligible. But again, are you trying to convince us that illegal immigrants are bad for the U.S. (an argument that inevitably fails), or are we still trying to rationalize new restrictive voter laws to prevent a hypothetical immigrant from illegally voting in an election motivated by hypothetical "funding" a candidate has controversially made to be part of their platfrom (a new and weird, but interesting argument)?

The whole argument goes in a circle until it lands back to: "so what is the real motivation to restrict voting in new ways?". It's kind of an occam's razor thing. Clearly someone is benefiting politically, and they have an explosive red-herring to throw out there to distract us. The same one that was just hashed out: immigration policy. We get to argue until we're red int the face about our understanding of illegal immigrants while some fat cat cleans up in the polls because they've tipped the balance towards wealthy white voters. I have seen that first hand.

That's patently false. An illegal immigrant is not eligible for food stamps. The only kind of health care they get is the kind where you go to the emergency room and when you can't pay the send you bills and eventually to collections. Otherwise many pay out-of-pocket for urgent care.

Me too, to all of the above comments. It's like everyone wants to know, but doesn't want to be nosy. I think the most fair way to excuse us all for speculating is this: Most Americans have a decent sense of what typical jobs can earn. You can probably make a pretty good ballpark on what a teacher, plumber, paralegal, pediatrician makes. What's interesting is that some people have jobs that are very much atypical. What does that sculptor guy make in a year? How much does the owner of 'Funny or Die' make a year (does he/she need to have another job)? How much does a guy in Wilco make?

Ok, so we're worried that illegal immigrants are going to sneak into the voting polls, mainly to vote for candidates who want to "fund" them (i.e. allow public education to continue to exist). This doesn't begin to account for sales and property taxes that immigrants are contributing to, thereby helping "fund" themselves.

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.