Dr_Flash_Amazing

Fear-mongering from the left? This from a supporter of the party that leveraged fear to the maximum to justify a war? Orange alert! Orange alert! Come on, troller ...

A good point, although even if it wasn't Bush's idea, he's still complicit and, ultimately, the one acting as leader and facilitating the nefarious desires of his cabinet and advisers.

Re-read what you just wrote. You appear to be acknowledging that Bush did lie, and that it is OK that he did so, in order to gain popular support. So is popular support for a bad decision more important than honest discourse and the possible rejection of such a decision? That strikes DFA as a dangerously complacent line of reasoning.

DFA never said anything about the war going on so Bush could get rich. At issue was Bush lying to justify going to war. Stay with it, Scott. Now that we're back on topic, ask yourself: If Bush had such good reasons for a war on Iraq, why didn't he use those reasons in the first place; why fabricate nonexistent reasons? And since he did have to lie, what, then, was the real reason behind the war? Are you so nonchalant about war that this does not seem like a serious issue to you?

What? Can we stay serious, here? What "partisan propaganda"?

No, it was the one where we rebuilt our relations with the international community and attempted to reconstruct a cooperative approach to international policy. Where we apologize for what should have been our former leader's misguided invasion and hamfisted alienation of our historic allies, and try to move on, be constructive, and work together to right a bad situation. Or did you not read enough into what was being said? Forest for the trees, etc.

What, you mean like reading between the lines, thinking critically, etc?

Maybe this is really why they want to ban abortion and birth control?

When did he ever do this? Every presidential debate, where he accused Kerry's attacks on the rationale for going to war of sending a bad message to the troops and our allies?* * Apparently foreign allies are important when we have them, but unimportant when we actually do insult and alienate them ("old Europe"?).

Is anyone else waiting to find out that key elections nationwide were massively rigged? It's just baffling. Where does the support for this inept liar come from? How do people make a choice like this? Doesn't seem possible ...

Good point. Unfortunately, the candidate with an actual plan for doing so has conceded the election to the incumbent. Will Bush come up with a plan, and what impact will that eventual plan have on our relationship with the Mid-East and the Islamic world?

It's funny, Republicans will raise hell over a thousand dollars' waste in areas like welfare, school funding, job training programs, etc., i.e. programs that help people, but will pour billions into the bottomless pit of defense spending without batting an eye. A friend of the Doctor's who works in computer security recounted a tale of visiting a defense contractor to do some consulting for them and seeing a ca. $10k computer just sitting out of its crate, covered in dust, on a loading dock, unused. Can you imagine how far $10k would go toward, say, new textbooks for a struggling school? Makes your head spin ...

But your acceptance of the false rationale just throws another equally important baby out with some decidedly dirty bathwater, which is the issue of the President lying to bolster support for the initiation of the war. If any Democrat had stooped to such tactics on any issue (imagine the fallout if it had been a Dem lying to boost school funding), he would have been crucified post haste. It seems black and white, but Bush and Company just changes the story as necessary, and, with a pocketful of plausible other reasons for war, none of which were given when it mattered, sidesteps what should have been a major backlash.

Puzzling how the Christian morality pulls up short when it comes to war, but turns on full force for a social issue that the Bible condemns no more than any number of other things, not the least of which is turning your back on the poor, loving your neighbor, etc. Maybe people just forget that Jesus wasn't an American nationalist. Kurt Vonnegut had a really good point along these lines, referring to the conservative Christian desire to see the Ten Commandments in schools, wondering why none of these people wants to see the Beatitudes or any of a number of more Christian messages propagated, the kind of message that calls for helping and caring for one another. They'd rather stick with authoritarian, fear-based Old Testament takes on God. Sad.

Four more years?! God help us.

Definitely.

Der ... you're talking about using prussik backups. The good Doctor didn't realize that the prussik backup was a recent innovation. The point is that the GriGri obviates the need for such antiquated contrivances.

Thank you, thank you; this is (mostly) all good info!

Nice work, Texas!

Word. Ripping the tunes at 192k/48kHz doesn't hurt, either.

You've never been up the Monkey?! Who would've thought?

Homework 'til midnight on Friday, then SmithPark action on Saturday with a small posse. Highlights included K__'s onsight of Liquid Jade, N____'s send of Blue Light. Good day, and good job, team! Finished up with some tasty Mex grub in Madras; mmm-mmm-mmm! Homework and errands and chilling for Sunday, but a good weekend overall.

These previous two posts are kind of funny. Duh, obviously Junior needs to learn to pay attention when belaying, but is it better to have him find out the hard way what happens when you don't pay attention, i.e. by having someone crater, or is it better to have the added safety of an auto-locking device there in case something does go amiss? Frankly, there is, as far as DFA is concerned, zero good argument against the Gri-Gri. There are hypothetical issues with it, but there are just as many concrete potential problems with your standard tube- or slot-style devices. It seems somewhat stubborn to insist on the use of old-school methods when the Gri-Gri has proven itself to be highly reliable, very safe, convenient, and effective, not to mention widely used. But whatever; they're your rugrats. Just don't let 'em drop each other on DFA's head.

"It's audio quality is only average." So's your use of punctuation, but we'll leave that alone for now. Top-notch audio is acheived at home via spinning discs; maximumportablerockandroll is what the 'Pod is for. And for the record, the li'l white 'n' chrome sounds pretty good, in DFA's humble opinion; certainly better than the minidisc player it replaced, and better than the portable CD-spinner that preceded that. (Stereophile Magazine seemed to think so, too.)

1. Futility Bill 2. Smith Rock 3. Other fun stuff