7 Days

[Nash]

The Republican party, the unbearable truth, the stoic denial, and the passionate defense.

A perfect example is lazs' clinging to his "Democrats Mean Big Government" meme, while just this month the Republicans broke the all-time spending record, which was set just the month before. And it doesn't matter how you look at it. Go ahead and take Iraq and the DHS out of the equation - the government has ballooned under this administration, showing no signs of letting up.

Now I realize that lazs hates helmets and seatbelts. Fine. But how could such gross incompetency along with policies which are at the very opposite of what he seems to value, be overlooked for such small gains? And what are the gains? The last time I checked, the Republican Executive branch, the Republican Senate and the Republican Congress (along with the Republican dominated Judicial branch) have done exactly nothing about these oppressive seatbelt and helmet laws.

For this (nothing), lazs trades in the looting of the Treasury, a wish-upon-a-star foreign policy that shames a nation, the unnacceptable abridgement of the personal freedoms and rights once protected by the Constitution and valued by the citizens (and the myriad of applicable laws), untold numbers of dead and wounded for the folly of a war of choice & deceit, a cancerous k-street corruption scandal - the fallout of which hasn't even begun to get started, and.... boy, I'm just warming up...

.....for seatbelts and helmets.

The big question is... why does this happen?

Why do people like lazs trade in seatbelt and helmet laws (which Republicans don't touch), for all of the above? It's a fool's bet, and it deeply resembles battered wives syndrome. There are probably as many reasons for this phenomenon as there are hollow excuses for it.

A strange thing happens when recording and mixing music.

The number of tracks you are able to lay down these days is basically limitless. So what you tend to do is to jam the tape so full of tracks that you're guaranteed to have a lot of options come the final mix down. That means 27 vocal takes, 13 different guitar leads, 5 pads, 8 horn parts, 1 glockenspiel, 1 cowbell, 1 gong.

So it's all printed to tape now, and you've got everything that you need to work with. Now for the final mix. Apart from making the instruments sound good together, this involves stripping away all those excess tracks, and keeping only those that make the song come together as envisioned. A funny thing happens, though.

During the mixing process, you have to play back the song literally hundreds and thousands of times. And all those excess tracks? Well, they may be gone, but they're not forgotten. In fact, they leave an imprint on your brain. So while you might have made a decision to cut the glockenspiel many stages ago, you still hear it when you play the song back. In fact, you make many mixing decisions based on the things you hear in a song that have long since been removed from the song, resulting in a final mix that may sound complete to you, but incomplete to someone who wasn't involved in the process.

Ear fatigue is a problem. Because you have to listen to a song so many times during the mixing process, your ears get worn out. Your ability to hear the high and low frequencies gets shot, and you overcompensate on the EQ. So while something may sound deep and full to you on the night you mixed it, the next morning it sounds like an army of kittens trying desperately to cling onto a blackboard.

Ghost notes are a couple of things. They can be sounds less heard than they are felt, as in the soft hitting of the snare in-between the typical 2 and 4, or can be the artificial harmonics that occur when different notes are played together.

The popularity of the song produced by this White House is confounding to me. It's a train wreck of a song. Yes, it's true that only 3~ people in 10 still call up their stations requesting it. But those 3 still cause me an enormous amount of confusion.

It defies typical run-of-the-mill logic. In a way, I think they've invested themselves too much into the production of the song now, that a separation and objective second listen is near impossible. They've internalized it. They're hearing things that aren't there only because they've heard them repeatedly during the rough mix. The high and low frequencies are so shaved off, through repeated listens, that a thud to them sounds like a hiss to everyone else.

[Hangtime]

Good lord Nash... what in hell is in the water up there?

[DiabloTX]

Actually Hang, it's a quite valid metaphor.  Basically what he's saying in a one-party way is, "How can you guys keep listening to the same old crappy song AND admit you like it?"  That's kind of what I got out of it and I can see, errr, hear his point.

[Hangtime]

oh.

ok.

so, I wonder what the **** they put in the water down here?

[DiabloTX]

Fluoride mostly.  It's an idea that has yet find it's way to the UK.

[Toad]

'Tis lovely but doesn't invalidate Laz's opinion that things would be much worse if the Democrats were writing the song.

[lazs2]

toad stringer skuzzy... you are right... things won't change voting the same old way... but they could change for the worse.   Look at all the new gun laws and the new prgrams started by klinton.

Look at how the EPA has grown.. most of the government growth of the Republicans this time is mandated growth of agencies that were set in motion by democrats... you can't pass environmental laws and then not grow the government to enforce em... that is what nash is not copping to here.... Ask him which government agencies grew and why.

Also... taxes rise during democrat regeims...

nash is asking you to vote for democrats not for independants and it is a fools bet.   they will drag us down with social programs and immigration.

The republicans voted to punish employers and the democrats against it.

The democrats feel that it takes away opportunity for poor "undocumented immigrants"..... so do I... and that is exactly what has to be done.

Who goes after your guns and cars and won't allow vouchers and takes away your land and appoints commie supreme court justices.... It's the party nash says is your friend..

What "issue" will you vote for that is important enough that you will give up your second amendment rights (which nash hates anyway) and have more and more regulation in your life (to be paid by whatever adminestration is in power)

voteing independant if a democrat can get into power because of it is a total suckers play.... the guy you vote in will laugh his butt off (in private or with other democrats) and then vote right down party lines.

What do democrats have that anyone could want?

lazs

[lazs2]

"The federal government spent nearly $826 billion in fiscal 2003, an increase of $91.5 billion over 2002, said G. William Hoagland, a senior budget and economic aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Military spending shot up nearly 17 percent, to $407.3 billion, but nonmilitary discretionary spending also far outpaced Bush's limit, rising 8.7 percent, to $418.6 billion.

Much of the increase was driven by war in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as homeland security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But spending has risen on domestic programs such as transportation and agriculture, as well. Total federal spending -- including non-discretionary entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- reached $2.16 trillion in 2003, a 7.3 percent boost, according to the Congressional Budget Office. "

They left out the EPA who's budget has risen more than 100% due to mandated programs... but.... what are you gonna do about the democat mandated entitlement programs that are driving the cost..

nash's boys made up the entitlements and then said... "go ahead and cut em... I dare ya."

and now nash is blaming the repubicans for not cutting democrat made entitlements?

who is gonna cut your taxes?   democrats?  LOL...

Nope... I hope we just cut taxes and let the programs fall apart.

The only problem I have with Bush is him not vetoeing any spending.

lazs

[john9001]

seatbelt and helmet laws are up to the states, the fed govt says cars must have seatbelts, the states say you must use them, two states that i know of have changed their helmet laws, Pennsylvania and Florida say that if you carry accident medical insurance you do not have to wear a helmet.

[bj229r]

Originally posted by Sandman
Newt Gingrich... there's a blast from the past.

Saw him in an interview a month or so ago. I can remember when he seemed like the radical right. Nowadays, he sounds like a moderate. I'm not certain it was Gingrich that changed or the party that moved.

It's a shame he won't run for president. I think I'd vote for him.

Gingrich was never as radical as he was portrayed to be, but he kept supplying sound bytes to that end that Hollywood screen writers would have been hard-pressed to come up with. What he IS, is an incredibly intelligent guy with a PHD in history,--interesting speaker, if ya ever listen to him.

[Nash]

"nash is asking you to vote for democrats not for independents and it is a fools bet." - lazs

Is that right? Where did I say that? (Take your time, I'm in no rush.)

Lets get this straight, buddy. I never said to not vote for an Independent, but you accuse me of doing it. That must mean that it's a bad thing.

Yet, when the conversation first turned to Independent candidates, you replied:

I just don't see any way out. This generation is scared to death of the government and the only way we can vote is to vote for a republican... sure... we can protest vote some worthless third party guy who doesn't stand a chance but.... All that does is allow a liberal socialist democrat in.... no republican can be as bad as all that.

So to sum up, you - not me - discouraged voting for Independents, and then all of a sudden started blaming me for discouraging it. Heh, rolley-eyes.

Oh - you also said, still in this very thread:

The only political party worse than the republicans at this point is the democrats...
One has no choice but to vote for republicans or a democrat might get in.

.... followed by:

"we can protest vote some worthless third party guy who doesn't stand a chance but....  All that does is allow a liberal socialist democrat in."

In point of fact, most of the stuff you've posted to this thread is rabid nonsensical gobblygook. You would have done better to employ your battered trembling fingers in the service of typing "Mee ho mah bok chung feng," it is that incomprehensible.

I know it pains you to focus on anything other your own selfish little whims, but the world involves much bigger things than some fictional bogeyman bent on taking your precious toys away. I could give a toss about seatbelts. Guns? Trust me lazs, guns are gonna be around long after your great grandchildren have shed this mortal coil.

The telling thing, however, is that while lazs will never have his guns taken from him, that fear will continue to motivate him - and he would sacrifice his country and countrymen before ever letting go of something that will never be asked of him.

The spider monkey lives in the trees of the tropical jungles of South America, have hook-like, narrow and thumbless hands and tiny brains.

In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut which is particularly attractive to the monkeys.

Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the container is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

This is the level of lazs' sophistication (excuse the pun) in a nutshell. All wrapped up nice and pretty with a ribbon on top and everything.

Lol... "you will give up your second amendment rights (which nash hates anyway)" - what a joke.

I think .0003% of gun owners may be a little bit.... cuckoo... but the other 99.9997% of them are alright in my books. You're making stuff up so fast and loose at this point that you're a blur of nonsense. It's what you've always done, granted, and it's usually pretty funny, but now it's reaching unintended comedic heights.

Toad said:

'Tis lovely but doesn't invalidate Laz's opinion that things would be much worse if the Democrats were writing the song.

"Invalidate" it? How in the world would one go about invalidating an "opinion." I have no idea. But, lazs certainly has the right to one, absolutely. That sure as hell does not mean that everyone else can't have a laugh about it.

His opinion is: "things would be much worse if the Democrats were writing the song." - which is tantamount to having the "opinion" that Man was created 6 thousand years ago, or the "opinion" that Hussein must have WMD. Hell - you want an infallible opinion? Mayonnaise beats the tar out of Mustard. How do ya like them apples? Go ahead Toad - invalidate my opinion.

Can't do it? Then what was your post trying to accomplish, other than to buck up a pal?

But, I guess when the actual, you know, facts, start to sting, opinions such as lazs' are the next best thing.

[Urchin]

The next politician who runs on a platform of writing a 1 term limit into the Constitution gets my vote.  

I don't care if the rest of his platform is grilling babies and playing football with severed heads.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
Go ahead Toad - invalidate my opinion.

Can't do it? Then what was your post trying to accomplish, other than to buck up a pal?

No need. I see you got the point. You post  a lot of opinion.

Which has about the same value as everyone or anyone else's opinion.

You just have a habit of posting yours as if it were fact.  

[Nash]

You may be right, in that my opinion is that somewhere inside of those who still cling to the Republican party resides a frightenned little girl or a beaten wife...

... and that kind of thing.

.... which would of course be an opinion. And naturally, caveat emptor.

[Nash]

WOW!

It's so easy to be coaxed into taking a long walk down some disjointed path around here.

My post was a listing of facts. 36 dead in Iraq in the last 12 days (over forty now, in the last two weeks). And Powell saying that he didn't need Wilson to tell him that there wasn't a Niger connection... etc.

That's all it was. Merely a listing of facts, unmolested, that appeared within the last seven days. That's it.

The "opinion" was the response.

Next thing ya know? I'm playing 'dueling opinions.'

I should have known that "opinion" was the only defense possible. And I take the bait.

Nevermind. My stuff still stands. Refute or justify those facts, or get off of the field..