The Ponys – Turn the Lights Out
by Pete on May 31, 2007
I’ve been listening to this album quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. A Chicago band, the Ponys are frequently lumped into the post-punk revival genre. This classification, while more or less true, is unfortunate. More well known (…)
Norquist tries to explain Christian voters
by Pete on May 31, 2007
In a blog post titled “What Christianists Want,” Andrew Sullivan gives us, without comment, the following Grover Norquist quote (originally from a Rolling Stone interview): What brings social conservatives to the Republican party is not some list of 20 things (…)
Battles – Mirrored
by Pete on May 30, 2007
The first time I listened to this album, I hated it. The second time, I found myself thinking that maybe it was actually pretty good. The third time, I was oscillating back toward (but not quite reaching) my original opinion. (…)
Pay discrimination only lasts 180 days
by Pete on May 30, 2007
Imagine that you are a woman working at a company that employs mostly men. Imagine that you have worked there for close to twenty years, during which time you have been promoted up through the ranks to become a manager. (…)
Dungen – Tio Bitar
by Pete on May 29, 2007
Yeah, I’ve got *no* idea what these guys are singing about. The music is pretty decent, though. Dungen is a Swedish band, which is why I can’t tell you what any of the lyrics are about. Their 2004 album Ta (…)
Obama’s health care plan
by Pete on May 29, 2007
If you missed the news, Barack Obama’s campaign released its proposal today for fixing the U.S. health care system. An overview and details of the plan can be found in PDF form on the campaign’s web site. If you find (…)
Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
by Pete on May 29, 2007
I was never that big a fan of the mid-Nineties Americana sub-genre. Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, Wilco—while praise was heaped upon them by critics and fans alike, they mostly sounded like Seventies-style country rock to me, repackaged with some alternative (…)
The war appropriations bill
by Pete on May 26, 2007
It’s hard to imagine a more depressing outcome to the debate over continued funding of the Iraq war. The actual passage of the no-timelines legislation was never in question. Lacking a veto-proof majority and faced with a President apparently willing (…)
Congress and Food Stamps
by Pete on May 22, 2007
Today’s Washington Post has an article about an experiment by four members of Congress. Representatives Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Tim Ryan (D-OH), and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) attempted to get by on $21 worth of food for a (…)
A Clarification
by Pete on May 17, 2007
In my previous post regarding former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I wrote, “Shortly thereafter, Bush agreed to changes in the program recommended by the DoJ.” That’s not exactly how it went, though. How (…)