4 posts from March 2008

Like a distant Canadian cousin of Blitzen Trapper, this three-piece spins shaggy songs into expansive, genre-bending symphonies. And though last year's too-brief With/Avec EP hinted at Plants and Animals' expansiveness, it didn't fully prepare listeners for Parc Avenue, a sprawling collection of rootsy melodies, majestic arrangements, and classic rock riffs that owes as much to jam-band psychedelia and it does to delicately orchestrated chamber-folk. -- Pitchfork, March 13, 2008.

The muse struck yesterday morning in the kitchen and I whipped up a very fine egg sandwich. The ingredients are simple -- Chorizo sausage, one egg, beer cheese* and toast -- but in combination are divine.

I formed the Chorizo into a patty and pan fried it. Then I fried an egg, over easy. I spread beer cheese on both slices of toast and assembled.

Enjoy at your own risk.

*Beer Cheese for those of you who don't know is cold pack cheddar with beer and spices added so that it becomes more of a spread. I never encountered it until we moved to Kentucky.

Looking forward, Barack can win both Wyoming and Mississippi this week. Then he has a four week battle to take it to Clinton, Inc. in Pennsylvania. He has to prove to his supporters that he can throw a punch just as much as he can take Hillary’s below the belt hits. We’re not voting for Gandhi here.--Jon Taplin, March 3, 2008.

Had Bush not waged a nasty smear campaign against McCain in South Carolina, McCain would have gotten my vote for President in 2000. Back then Al Gore seemed boring to me, and sadly that was as deep as my political knowledge went. I didn't know who George W. Bush was, but I had heard a lot about McCain. He was a Republican but seemed moderate enough for my liking.

Now however I know a lot more about John McCain. He sides on the Democratic side of many points. He is a moderate conservative by most measures and his party is afraid of him because of it. But don't be fooled. McCain is not a Democrat in hiding. When it comes to war he may be even crazier than the rest of his party.

Bombing Soviet ships, of course, would probably have started World War III, but McCain's vision, then and now, encompasses war as a way of life. There is significant evidence that McCain believes war is something righteous and necessary, a tonic for the national soul, intrinsically "noble" irrespective of context (he is still one of the only politicians to apply that word to the Iraq conflict). That is why it's no joke when McCain says casually, "There's gonna be other wars," or when he sings, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." We have to assume that he will jump at the chance to expand this conflict and hit those politically sensitive targets his "complete idiot" civilian commanders once barred him from going after in Vietnam.--(emphasis mine) Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.

Onward to Victory is a key element of the McCain platform. He refused to back down on the idea that the surge was working for so long, that for a moment McCain seemed like he'd been right all along. This is not the case. The "surge" has failed.

On the surface Iraq is calm. (The lyric "Calm like a bomb" comes to mind.) The way the United States has achieved this calmness is very much like lighting a slow-burning fuse to a massive powder keg and hoping someone else comes along and extinguishes the flame before everything is blown to bits.

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening." -- Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.

By continuing to insist that the "surge," of which buying the loyalty of former enemies is a large part, is working McCain is showing is true conservative side.

If you're planning on voting for Hilary, but not Obama. Or Obama but not Hilary, please consider the alternative.