lost highway

Gold is shiny metal. It's only inherent use is as an electrical conductant and as a way to make poor people slave away in dangerous conditions. Most of the ways we extract gold are damaging by either causing excessive erosion, and in some cases putting cyanide in the water supply. It is a limited resource in a modern economy that is inherently elastic. People on TV like to sell gold to old people who feel more satisfied with a hunk of metal in their closet than an abstract number, which psychologically makes total sense. If the U.S. switched back to an archaic gold backed dollar in a mat

Paul Ryan favors a budget that would cut medicaid so severely as to leave millions of Americans without insurance. He also would like to cut grants for college students so that more of our motivated youth would have to work through school while acquiring exorbitant student loan debt. This approach to policy will effect you little if you're wealthy. It can ruin your world if you're poor.

There is an amazing Roots song that samples Newsom's hook from "The Book of Right On", in fact I think the Roots song is called "Right On". It also rules. The thing that wins me over about Newsom is her compositional ambition and sophistication. She has these incredible narrative many operas that don't really match any genre I can think of. Ys is a masterpiece.

No significant difference? I see a difference of over 1.5 million dollars in favor of Romney, with the exception of UBS AG with greater contributions towards Obama. The problem with graphics like these is they contain no intelligent analysis. What is missing is paragraphs contextualizing what this means. I fail to see how these two candidates are exactly the same, Sparky. You point out the diversion of medicaid funds in the Affordable Care Act, but miss that Romney/ Ryan's budget would slash medicaid significantly. In an earlier post you suggested that both candidates have the same mi

I learned that one of Romney's proposed policies would be to remove carbon restrictions from the clean air act. I can only suppose he is one of the remaining global warming skeptics. Paul Ryan might still have a right wing buzz going for his over-hyped budget proposal last year. This might be a tactical way to get republicans on board who have a sense that Romney has limited intelligence and no conviction. Kind of like how the Biden pick gave Obama's bid a bit more of a working class appeal.

I think everyone on here can agree on that. What kinds of policy measures do you think the President could have utilized to make a bigger difference?

The overall trend for unemployment in the last three years has been a decrease.

I believe the Obama administration has been helpful in emerging from the economic crisis, just not helpful enough to brag. Everyone knows that he didn't quantitatively succeed in his goals for the economy. I can think of a couple reasons: Obama brought us "Keynes lite". His administration operated under the theory championed by FDR that the government can employ people to make the country more productive and get the economy moving. The administration limited their reach for fear of reproach from the right. Even though the auto bailout, financing "shovel ready" projects, and cash for cl

Joanna Newsom is absolutely amazing. Hopefully the crowd doesn't shit on her.

That's a reasonable question. All the reasonable answers I could try are: We'll have to try for a while to really find out. Less cautious measures have worked well for other nations. We could not in any decency continue with what was the norm for American health care. It has been an embarrassment for a long time.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-august-8-2012/wizards-of-i-d-?xrs=share_copy Here is the Daily Show's take on the voter id controversy.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/Romney-Persona-Non-Grata-in-Italy-for-Bain-s-3765066.php

Romney is getting more heat because Bain sold an Italian communications company while sweeping it through Luxembourg, to duck some Italian and American taxes. He made a fortune. The prime minister of Italy has called him "Persona non grata".

me three!

The internet; a voice for the insane, the stupid, the brilliant, the decent, and the grotesque. 1st Amendment rights..... game on.

I was there for night two at Red Rocks and was blown away. Most surprising was a cameo by John Oates (of Hall and Oates) on a Curtis Mayfield cover.

I'm not sure everyone is used to reading TWL as The Whole Love, and they're seeing it as WTA. I'd say the Whole Love is a more consistent effort in songwriting, a more engaging listen in arrangement and production, and all around a better album. There are a few highs on SBS that could challenge many songs on TWL (You Are My Face, Impossible Germany), but all around TWL takes the cake for me because: I'd rather hear Standing O than Walken Rising Red Lung over Leave Me Like You Found Me Born Alone over Shake It Off One Sunday Morning over On and On and On Black Moon over Please Be Patient W

Sparky, thank you for giving some really honest, detailed posts. I share a lot of your fears and I think it's important to have some other voices in our conversation (if not in our system) to break up the perspective between the old GOP vs DEM conversations. I also agree that unchecked bank gambling has left our dollar a lot less sound. How do you feel about the green light on auditing the federal reserve? There must be some satisfaction in that, right?

It's interesting. I could not disagree more with your first statement, and I couldn't agree more with your second. I see too many corporate/lobbyist influences between the two, but very different potential for the country. To say that they are the same, would be the same as saying Obama is just like Bush. You could talk about how many people died from drone strikes, and you'd be right (too many). But that does not make Obama's military approach anything like Bush's. We already know Obama is interested in moderating the pentagon budget, in order to balance the budget. We already know Ro

I'm not sure if the moderators will tolerate another foray into the inflammatory world of contemporary American politics, but I enjoyed many of the exchanges in the last one. I for one find debating with someone with a different perspective to be challenging, invigorating and often informative. I for one can get a bit carried away and respond in a way that is too flippant to advance the conversation, so I would like to promote a forum where we can challenge each other to moderate our feelings with logic and share our perspectives as election season draws closer. Maybe we can start with a l

Nice! Mikael seems like such a cool guy, he has such a unique musical voice. It's cool to get to see it presented stronger (like in Pronto) and then go back to Wilco recordings and be able to feel out his influence.

That's totally true about the Clinton years going into the Bush years. Many people say the real estate crisis was already being brewed back in the Clinton days. The budget however, looked great under Clinton. Then Bush took us on two failed wars, one of which was based on a lie, the other he had no conviction for. While him and Cheney were sending us on some wild misadventures they were also cutting taxes. Barney Frank was on TV talking about how the power of our military was necessary in WWII to keep an outside force from literally being capable of taking over our country. The cold wa

Not yet. There it is. Mitt Romney made a point of acknowledging the cultural superiority of a country that is highly successful, while it is the 4th highest recipient for USAID (that's non-military funding, nestled right between such dissimilar countries as Haiti and Kenya) and has a budget surplus. We worry about our deficit, yet were donating to a wealthy country with a surplus. All that aside, you have taken a cautious and well measured stance to moderate what could be unfair accusations against Gov Romney. What are your motivations? Are you looking for something redeemable eno

Yet Israel was given this opportunity.. That is exactly what Israel represents in modern history: the kind of opportunities other countries can give. Yes, they have used the opportunity brilliantly, but you don't hear as many people celebrating the tyrannical power of Saudi Arabia, but by these measures they are also a smashing success. You were quick to generalize about the evils of "Arab culture", yet no one seems to consider the thread of intolerance and religious extremism in Israeli culture. This is a wide detour, but to bring it home to the conversation at hand; the explanations fo

Perhaps because they receive billions of dollars a year from the U.S., more than any other country for a period of a half a century. They've been given the opportunity to industrialize while neighboring countries merely produce raw goods. Those are two reasons. As you mentioned, one needs several books to describe them all. I don't think Mittens read the book before he visited.