...what, exactly, are you trying to say? And I quote:
The Constitution is only good when there is a government.
OK, fair enough, I guess. There has to be something there to enforce the provisions of the Constitution. Ostensibly, anyway. It seems to me that you don't believe that the government has anything to do with the Constitution, however, to wit:
This is an artifical [sic] idea of ours of rights.
Well, there was that whole "Bill of Rights" thing, which was basically a codification of the stance taken in the Declaration of Independence. Of course, none of this would matter in the government that you claim exists.
But maybe I am just mistaken. Since you claim to be so well versed on the principles of an organized government, perhaps you can enlighten us with a principled discourse on how a government which is enabled by the Constitution can so (allegedly) freely disregard it. Or, if I have misunderstood your argument, perhaps you can clarify it for me. I truly am curious.
Oh, and if you don't mind, spare us the angry "you're a fucking moron" rhetoric and get straight to the point, mmkay?
Jeez, what the hell kind of page are you writing that's over 100K? It must just be static HTML with a *ton* of text content. That's the only thing I can think of that would make a page that big.
Have a URL you can provide to one of these? I'm curious.
Ok, fine, I won't dispute that Iraq switched to the Euro. I don't know it to be true, but neither do I know it to be false. I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that it is true. It still leaves quite a few holes in the following, taken directly from your previous post:
"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq -- or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq -- is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way." (While also hoping to veto any wider OPEC momentum towards the euro, especially from Iran -- the 2nd largest OPEC producer who is actively discussing a switch to euros for its oil exports)."
Where is the hard evidence to back this "real reason" up? I even went back and read the article just to make sure I didn't miss something. There was little in the way of facts, and much in the way of speculation, unwillingness to name sources, and accusation. Not to mention the obvious anti-Bush leftist slant...always good for the ol' credibility.
Of course, the "real story" is "being supressed" by the government and the media, so we have to take W. Clark's word for it. Ahh, the good old "they don't want you to know" tactic. Go over to newsmax.com and you'll see them pulling the same routine. And yes, I'm trying to act in the interest of fairness. Even though I do lean moderately conservative (maybe more libertarian, actually), I do believe that a large portion of what Newsmax puts out is contrived garbage.
That being said, I considered this article, as you suggested, based on the merits of the article, and found those merits to be severely lacking. I'm also unclear as to how being a healthcare manager at a "well-known east coast university" gives W. Clark inside access to the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives.
OK, how about I go dig you up some stuff from FreeRepublic or Newsmax or RushLimbaugh.com or whatever? Are you going to give it the time of day? I wouldn't, if I were you.
I didn't address that point because that's not exactly what you said. But, now that you have, would you care to explain why, if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as any other, we are going to such lengths to free them from the well-documented and oppressive rule of a genocidal megalomaniac? If their lives meant so little, couldn't we just carpet bomb the entire country of Iraq and be done with it?
Oddly enough, that has not happened. In fact, so far, the US military seems to have gone out of their way to prevent needless Iraqi civilian deaths.
OK, so let's go down the Protestors' Checklist once again and see what we've covered so far..."It's all about oil" - refuted, check..."It's all about racism" - refuted, check.
Sure, these things sound racist to me. I don't suppose you'd care to reveal to us exactly who in the executive branch of this country has been saying and doing these things. I don't seem to recall Ari Fleischer or any other Bush spokesperson referring to Iraqi civilians as "towel-wearing sand niggers", as you so eloquently put it, but perhaps I missed that news conference.
Please do enlighten us as to who these racists are.
Honestly, I wish that GWB would have waited a little longer, too. To be precise, I wish that he'd waited until about, oh, 45 minutes or so before the beginning of the Academy Awards ceremony.
As for the possibility of alienating the rest of the world, was it 30 or 40 countries that were with us as of this afternoon? I just glanced at the TV for a second, so I don't remember the number.
The "oil" argument falls flat on its face from every conceivable angle. There is simply no logical reason to take the current course of action over oil. It's just a nice little catch phrase for the protestors to regurgitate into the TV cameras. That, or the "racist" line. That's another beauty. With stuff like this, who needs Comedy Central?
Do you honestly believe that "argument"? Every time I hear the "it's all about oil" mantra, I am amused by its sheer and utter stupidity.
Before you repeat it somewhere else, I suggest you ask yourself this question: if GWB is so "oil-hungry", so to speak, why the *hell* would he risk the life and limb of American soldiers, America's stance internationally, and, yes, his own political popularity, when it would have been *orders of magnitude* easier for him to cut a deal with Saddam for the oh-so-precious oil, way back when, before this all started?
I'm so sure he had this all planned out from the get-go. Just ask Cynthia McKinney, she'll tell you all about it. Wherever she is these days.
If you're against the war, fine. But, jeez, please do yourself a favor and try to come up with a better argument than that tired "it's for oil" BS.
SXSW doesn't really need slashdot to "advertise" for it
Hell no they don't, not when they're charging people $100+ for wristbands to get in the clubs and bands $20 a pop just to apply (except for the handpicked acts who have deals with the major labels, of course). And those bands number in the thousands, to say the very least. Thank you for your 20 bucks, have a nice day.
I've listened to Coast to Coast for years now, and RCH has consistently been my favorite guest. His theories range from the fairly plausible to the ramblings of a complete wack job, but nonetheless, his intensity and passion have always been highly entertaining.
The one thing that keeps me from writing him off completely is the fact that he was a NASA insider for quite some time in the past. Because of that, one has to wonder if he: A) lost his mind, B) has an axe to grind against NASA, or C) knows something that we don't. When he talks about subjects such as water on Mars, and attempts to downplay that by NASA, that's fairly believable, but when he starts spouting forth about "hyperdimensional physics" and a giant secret society within NASA which is devoted to ancient ritualistic behavior, erm...not so much. Entertaining, though. I'll give the guy that much.
I would recommend taking some extra gas just in case.
From San Antonio west to El Paso, stops with gas that I know of for sure are in Kerrville, Junction, Ft. Stockton, and Van Horn. If it's daytime when you ride, you can add Sierra Blanca, Sonora, Ozona, and and Exit 328 (Iraan/Sheffield) to the list.
The main thing is to fill up when you get the opportunity. If you've never been through west Texas before, you are in for an experience.
Well, I can tell you from experience that you might as well just pack up the cell phones, wi-fi, and even the car radio, for that matter, as soon as you leave Austin, and get ready to enjoy a few hundred miles of absolute...nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean *nothing*, until you get close to El Paso.
A bit of friendly advice for anyone driving that stretch of I-10 for the first time: start looking for a gas station as soon as the tank reaches half full. Trust me, unless you are driving a Honda Insight, you will need it.
Everybody in the car. Boat leaves in two minutes... or perhaps you *don't* want to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away!
If you've ever tried using a digital modeler live you know what a headache these things can be!!
I hear ya. My experience has been that it's not so much the room (although that has a big effect, no matter what you're playing) as much as what you plug the modeler into.
My live rig consists of a Rocktron Piranha preamp into a Mesa/Boogie 50/50 into a Boogie 4x12 Halfback cabinet. Sounds great, especially for the crunchy stuff. One day, for shits 'n' grins, I decided to replace the Piranha with my J-Station just to see what it would sound like. Umm, no.
Another time, I took it to a small gig and ran a Strat through it straight into a DI and to the board with a little bit better results, but still far from perfect.
The best sound I've gotten out of it yet is to use it as an effects unit with a small mixer and an acoustic guitar. What I did was ran an aux out of the mixer into a volume pedal, and then from the volume pedal into the J-Station for a homemade "expression pedal" effect, so that you can mix it in and out of the dry signal. It worked pretty well.
You should check out some of Allan Holdsworth's newer stuff. He is undeniably a legend in his own time, and lately he's been using the Yamaha DG-1000s and DG-80s. His tone is as good as it's ever been.
Granted, I am talking about someone who's never really had a "conventional" guitar tone, anyway, but the point is that the means don't matter nearly as much as the end when it comes to getting good guitar tone. Hell, I used a Johnson J-Station for the clean guitar part on this song and it turned out fine.
My sentiments exactly! If you are moderating comments favorably or unfavorably depending on how close they are to your own personal beliefs, you are ABUSING THE SYSTEM. That's not what the moderation system is meant for.
Please do us all a favor and go practice your politically correct hypocrisy elsewhere. Thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
...what, exactly, are you trying to say? And I quote:
The Constitution is only good when there is a government.
OK, fair enough, I guess. There has to be something there to enforce the provisions of the Constitution. Ostensibly, anyway. It seems to me that you don't believe that the government has anything to do with the Constitution, however, to wit:
This is an artifical [sic] idea of ours of rights.
Well, there was that whole "Bill of Rights" thing, which was basically a codification of the stance taken in the Declaration of Independence. Of course, none of this would matter in the government that you claim exists.
But maybe I am just mistaken. Since you claim to be so well versed on the principles of an organized government, perhaps you can enlighten us with a principled discourse on how a government which is enabled by the Constitution can so (allegedly) freely disregard it. Or, if I have misunderstood your argument, perhaps you can clarify it for me. I truly am curious.
Oh, and if you don't mind, spare us the angry "you're a fucking moron" rhetoric and get straight to the point, mmkay?
Thanks.
Jeez, what the hell kind of page are you writing that's over 100K? It must just be static HTML with a *ton* of text content. That's the only thing I can think of that would make a page that big.
Have a URL you can provide to one of these? I'm curious.
I agree. Being subjected to an Everclear song certainly makes me want to kill myself.
What, is that code not "forked" enough already?
Ok, fine, I won't dispute that Iraq switched to the Euro. I don't know it to be true, but neither do I know it to be false. I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that it is true. It still leaves quite a few holes in the following, taken directly from your previous post:
"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq -- or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq -- is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way." (While also hoping to veto any wider OPEC momentum towards the euro, especially from Iran -- the 2nd largest OPEC producer who is actively discussing a switch to euros for its oil exports)."
Where is the hard evidence to back this "real reason" up? I even went back and read the article just to make sure I didn't miss something. There was little in the way of facts, and much in the way of speculation, unwillingness to name sources, and accusation. Not to mention the obvious anti-Bush leftist slant...always good for the ol' credibility.
Of course, the "real story" is "being supressed" by the government and the media, so we have to take W. Clark's word for it. Ahh, the good old "they don't want you to know" tactic. Go over to newsmax.com and you'll see them pulling the same routine. And yes, I'm trying to act in the interest of fairness. Even though I do lean moderately conservative (maybe more libertarian, actually), I do believe that a large portion of what Newsmax puts out is contrived garbage.
That being said, I considered this article, as you suggested, based on the merits of the article, and found those merits to be severely lacking. I'm also unclear as to how being a healthcare manager at a "well-known east coast university" gives W. Clark inside access to the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives.
Perhaps you can enlighten me.
OK, how about I go dig you up some stuff from FreeRepublic or Newsmax or RushLimbaugh.com or whatever? Are you going to give it the time of day? I wouldn't, if I were you.
Yeah, I'm sure we just "bought off" Australia, Britain, Japan, Poland, and Spain.
As for opposing countries, you can start with France, Germany, and Russia, all of which are more concerned about their own interests in Iraq....
Like I had to tell someone else, find a more credible source. Indymedia is no more credible than Znet or Cursor or Newsmax.
Sorry, but you're gonna have to provide a more credible source than Cursor.org if you want me to buy into that argument.
I didn't address that point because that's not exactly what you said. But, now that you have, would you care to explain why, if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as any other, we are going to such lengths to free them from the well-documented and oppressive rule of a genocidal megalomaniac? If their lives meant so little, couldn't we just carpet bomb the entire country of Iraq and be done with it?
Oddly enough, that has not happened. In fact, so far, the US military seems to have gone out of their way to prevent needless Iraqi civilian deaths.
OK, so let's go down the Protestors' Checklist once again and see what we've covered so far..."It's all about oil" - refuted, check..."It's all about racism" - refuted, check.
All right, then, What's next?
Sure, these things sound racist to me. I don't suppose you'd care to reveal to us exactly who in the executive branch of this country has been saying and doing these things. I don't seem to recall Ari Fleischer or any other Bush spokesperson referring to Iraqi civilians as "towel-wearing sand niggers", as you so eloquently put it, but perhaps I missed that news conference.
Please do enlighten us as to who these racists are.
Honestly, I wish that GWB would have waited a little longer, too. To be precise, I wish that he'd waited until about, oh, 45 minutes or so before the beginning of the Academy Awards ceremony.
As for the possibility of alienating the rest of the world, was it 30 or 40 countries that were with us as of this afternoon? I just glanced at the TV for a second, so I don't remember the number.
The "oil" argument falls flat on its face from every conceivable angle. There is simply no logical reason to take the current course of action over oil. It's just a nice little catch phrase for the protestors to regurgitate into the TV cameras. That, or the "racist" line. That's another beauty. With stuff like this, who needs Comedy Central?
Do you honestly believe that "argument"? Every time I hear the "it's all about oil" mantra, I am amused by its sheer and utter stupidity.
Before you repeat it somewhere else, I suggest you ask yourself this question: if GWB is so "oil-hungry", so to speak, why the *hell* would he risk the life and limb of American soldiers, America's stance internationally, and, yes, his own political popularity, when it would have been *orders of magnitude* easier for him to cut a deal with Saddam for the oh-so-precious oil, way back when, before this all started?
I'm so sure he had this all planned out from the get-go. Just ask Cynthia McKinney, she'll tell you all about it. Wherever she is these days.
If you're against the war, fine. But, jeez, please do yourself a favor and try to come up with a better argument than that tired "it's for oil" BS.
SXSW doesn't really need slashdot to "advertise" for it
Hell no they don't, not when they're charging people $100+ for wristbands to get in the clubs and bands $20 a pop just to apply (except for the handpicked acts who have deals with the major labels, of course). And those bands number in the thousands, to say the very least. Thank you for your 20 bucks, have a nice day.
SXSW is a bigger ripoff *every* year.
And yeah, I live in Austin, too.
I've listened to Coast to Coast for years now, and RCH has consistently been my favorite guest. His theories range from the fairly plausible to the ramblings of a complete wack job, but nonetheless, his intensity and passion have always been highly entertaining.
The one thing that keeps me from writing him off completely is the fact that he was a NASA insider for quite some time in the past. Because of that, one has to wonder if he: A) lost his mind, B) has an axe to grind against NASA, or C) knows something that we don't. When he talks about subjects such as water on Mars, and attempts to downplay that by NASA, that's fairly believable, but when he starts spouting forth about "hyperdimensional physics" and a giant secret society within NASA which is devoted to ancient ritualistic behavior, erm...not so much. Entertaining, though. I'll give the guy that much.
I would recommend taking some extra gas just in case.
From San Antonio west to El Paso, stops with gas that I know of for sure are in Kerrville, Junction, Ft. Stockton, and Van Horn. If it's daytime when you ride, you can add Sierra Blanca, Sonora, Ozona, and and Exit 328 (Iraan/Sheffield) to the list.
The main thing is to fill up when you get the opportunity. If you've never been through west Texas before, you are in for an experience.
...Offtopic?!? Jeez, did you even *listen* to the thing?
Or this....
Well, I can tell you from experience that you might as well just pack up the cell phones, wi-fi, and even the car radio, for that matter, as soon as you leave Austin, and get ready to enjoy a few hundred miles of absolute...nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean *nothing*, until you get close to El Paso.
A bit of friendly advice for anyone driving that stretch of I-10 for the first time: start looking for a gas station as soon as the tank reaches half full. Trust me, unless you are driving a Honda Insight, you will need it.
Everybody in the car. Boat leaves in two minutes... or perhaps you *don't* want to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away!
My apologies to Clark W. Griswold....
Hmm...I haven't found the "total ass" preset yet. I'm sure it's in there somewhere.
If you've ever tried using a digital modeler live you know what a headache these things can be!!
I hear ya. My experience has been that it's not so much the room (although that has a big effect, no matter what you're playing) as much as what you plug the modeler into.
My live rig consists of a Rocktron Piranha preamp into a Mesa/Boogie 50/50 into a Boogie 4x12 Halfback cabinet. Sounds great, especially for the crunchy stuff. One day, for shits 'n' grins, I decided to replace the Piranha with my J-Station just to see what it would sound like. Umm, no.
Another time, I took it to a small gig and ran a Strat through it straight into a DI and to the board with a little bit better results, but still far from perfect.
The best sound I've gotten out of it yet is to use it as an effects unit with a small mixer and an acoustic guitar. What I did was ran an aux out of the mixer into a volume pedal, and then from the volume pedal into the J-Station for a homemade "expression pedal" effect, so that you can mix it in and out of the dry signal. It worked pretty well.
You should check out some of Allan Holdsworth's newer stuff. He is undeniably a legend in his own time, and lately he's been using the Yamaha DG-1000s and DG-80s. His tone is as good as it's ever been.
Granted, I am talking about someone who's never really had a "conventional" guitar tone, anyway, but the point is that the means don't matter nearly as much as the end when it comes to getting good guitar tone. Hell, I used a Johnson J-Station for the clean guitar part on this song and it turned out fine.
My sentiments exactly! If you are moderating comments favorably or unfavorably depending on how close they are to your own personal beliefs, you are ABUSING THE SYSTEM. That's not what the moderation system is meant for.
Please do us all a favor and go practice your politically correct hypocrisy elsewhere. Thank you.
Do you think he'll mind if we screen scrape it?