FlaSoxxJim

the interesting follow-up on the robocall fiasco that I saw coming out of NH yesterday, is that most or all of the people being called were on the federal do-not-call-me list. That means that each of the calls is subject to a possible $1,000 fine, meaning that as of yesterday might the NRCC may have racked up as much as $10 million worth of unauthorized calls. Multiply that by the 6 or 8 places where this is happening the most and it could break the NRCC bank -- IF it were ever pursued and successfully prosecuted.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 6, 2006 -> 05:46 PM) must. hold. back. joke. Control, Grasshopper. . . always control.

A lot of the perceived tightening is simply what everybody knows is going to happen with a disillusioned party base come election day. Lots of them can spend the months running up to the election complaining that the party has lost its way and threatening to take their vote away. But when election day comes, many of these voters can't bring themselves to vote for the alternativve and they, as the cliche' goes, "hold their noses and pull the handle" for the party candidates despite their better judgement. None of that is to say the narrowing gap isn't a bit unsettling, because it is. It's just expected that the bluster from disillusioned on-the-fence voters is going to diminish by election day.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Nov 6, 2006 -> 01:53 PM) At least to my eyes...not entering a place of worship and not entering one of those mega-churches can be 2 different things. Agreed. Dominionist Jesus Camp mega-churches with indoctrination tactics that are every bit as psychologically damaging as those used by the Church of Scientology will do more harm than good in the long-run as far as organized Christianity winning and retaining hearts and minds.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 6, 2006 -> 11:08 AM) One year later. Where's the pink Sox cap?!! She continues to be adorable.

I did a Saturday shift at a local moveon.org "Rock the House" phone party, and I'm going to brave the lines and the malfunctions tomorrow and vote and end up getting into work pretty late I'm sure.

At the same time you have to admit it's hard to try to look past E-ticket hypocrisy like this. And the conversation could very quickly be derailed with this tangent, but I'd very much like to see an increase in the numbers and in the voices of the branches of Christianity that better reflect a 'radical inclusiveness' of the sort the J-Man used to espouse back in the day. Now, that's the sort of Christianity an atheist can almost regret not being a part of.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 5, 2006 -> 02:43 PM) I just love the fact that they captured, convicted, and sentenced the guy and all of the news shows were talking about this being purposefully arranged as a Republician plot to fall right before the election... Yup, that's the conservative media at work all right. Tony Snow conceded that the timing of the announcement had some political timing to it, but I agree this is a culmination to a logical progression of events. Doesn't particularly bother me. What does bother me, apart from the rise in sectarian violence that will probably occer with te hanging, is that Saddam's execution over the 1982 Dujail revenge killings will ultimately leave him unprosecuted for the larger Kurdish civilian massacre. If this is about bringing him to justice for all of his crimes then I'd like to see the other trial be brought to conclusion as well, rather than see the court ina position where it is legally prohibited from posthumous conviction.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 5, 2006 -> 02:28 PM) This is the edited version of what I wanted to really say. Dear LCR and GCH, You are two of the saddest people i've ever not known. Good luck with laughing at other people's mistakes and failings. The view must be beautiful from up there. Sincerely, The human race. I appreciate your sentiments. And I appreciate theirs. Life is brutally hard, yes, and deriving pleasure from the suffering of others is generally not a passtime that should be regularly engaged in. But as a dominionist Evangelical leader with a huge following, Ted Haggard's ministry made the lives of countless gay people more difficult and added to that misery. We can only speculate as to whether or not it was self-loathing that made him lash out at what he hated most about himself. But if Haggard's public fall from grace prompt people to question the rabidly anti-gay agendas of the churches they may belong to, that is a good thing.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 5, 2006 -> 09:40 AM) SHHHHHHH! Shut up with the facts...it ruins a good story. The "facts" are that the Gannett Military Times papers are targeted precisely to a core readership of active-duty military. If they did not feel that this editorial would resonate with a growing number of active duty miliary who remain quietly disgruntled over the deterioriating situation in Iraq and their blind civilian leadership then they would NEVER run it. It would be suicide for their circulation numbers. The fact that they are running the editorial speaks to the story that really matters – that more and more officers who have kept their counsel private, in loyal subordination to civilian authority, nonetheless believe Rumsfield's war policy has been doomed to fail from the start.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 4, 2006 -> 03:05 PM) When it comes to actual ceremonies, I think churches should stay away from the issue either way. Unity goes out the window when you mess with such things. Romans 14 comes to mind. Romans 14 does indeed cover my feelings on the subject as well. I'm thinking the verses about not judging one another or putting up stumbling blocks for each other, and letting each person give account of himself to his God. Or the parts about following after things that make for peace and that build one another up. Maybe especially the part where Paul tells his Christian audiances to keep their faith between themselvs and their God. Every once in a while Paul gets it right.

Not bad for a guy who came to America with only his "suitcase, clothing and a jar of Gypsy tears to protect me from AIDS."

QUOTE(bmags @ Nov 4, 2006 -> 12:19 PM) that just sounds like a bad idea to me. He may have decided the same thing, from a commercial standpoint, but the tracks are really good. Most of the Beefheart and Mascara Snake sax and bass clarinet lines are done by taylor on guitar, and a lot of the coolZoot Horn Rollow guitar work – the crunchy stuff and the slide stuff – is also done nicely by him on these tracks. The cool thing about them is that Taylor sings the songs in his own voice and often with his own phrasing variations, so he's not trying to growl out a Beefheart imitation. Anyway, if it's really true that Lewis Taylor actually retired from music this year (pretty much just as I'm discovering him), the 13 finished Replica tracks are going to likely become more important as raruty fan favorites than they would have if an album was actually released.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 4, 2006 -> 11:22 AM) I hope he gets the help he needs. And hopefully he tries to find it somewhere other than rentboy.com next time.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 06:50 PM) Speaking of which, apparently the US government apparently accidentally put up a basic guide to building a nuclear bomb in Arabic recently. This was to make public an archive of seized documents from the Saddam Hussein era. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/mi...artner=homepage This is utterly amazing, and I've become almost too jaded to be surprised by any act of complete incompetence performed by or at the behest of the administration.

Strong sentiments. I don't anticipate the White House will respond.

Holy Cr@p, Lewis Taylor is amazing!! I'd heard snippets here and there, and seen where Bowie, Elton John, Jools Holand, etc., give him high praise, but now that I'm actually seeking the stuff out I can see what all the noise is about.. And then just when I think I've got a handle on his stuff, Irun across this psychedelic Sheriff Jack stuff from the 80s and it turns out that's him too! And to top it off, i just found a handful of unreleased Trout Mask Replica covers from a project he'll apparently never get around to finishing and they are also cool as hell. How did this guy never catch on in the states?!??

Why do they even bother to make anything other than Levis 505s?? Those are the only jeans necessary.

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 03:36 PM) They don't sell those overpriced crap jeans there. Gap jeans at the Gap = Levis jeans at Kohls. Yeah, I just went with the gHayest brand I could come up with.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 02:56 PM) I use "Kleenex" when I have to blow my nose, but I look at comperable items with similar quality and superior quantity. I'm not impressed with the Kleenex brand simply because it revolutionized the tissue paper industry. You know way more about the tissue paper industry than would be considered healthy. Hopefully marriage will mean you're not going through the Kleenex so rapidly that you need to go generic in order to save money.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 02:59 PM) Gap jeans are extremely comfortable and if you shop correctly, just as affordable as department store brand....and they look much cooler. There you go. PA is a self-affirmed met'ro and fiercely proud of it. Nothing comes between him and his Calvins.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 11:50 AM) Nobody gets an automatic vote from me. Really? I heard Bea Arthur is thinking about a Presidential run for 2008.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 3, 2006 -> 07:09 AM) That's the fun thing about big and technical words... who the hell will know if they are spelled wrong in the first place??? Yeah, I happened to mis-spell big technical words like "different" and "cool" in that post. You'd think my fingers were fat sausages the way I type.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 2, 2006 -> 11:04 PM) Could somebody translate? Forget the translation, damn I need the new Firefox with the built in spellcheck!

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Nov 2, 2006 -> 10:11 PM) I guess I don't understand the hang-up that Who fans have with Kenny. I mean, Keith Moon was DEAD for crying out loud. THe band chose to go on, and they chose probably the closest living thing to the intensity that Moon had. Anybody questioning Jones need only listen to the stuff he did with Faces. The guy was/is a monster on the kit. Hell, the three biggest pounders from the era were probably Moon, Bonham and Jones. The vote is still out on Baker, as he only hit hard but wasn't anything special otherwise. Oh hell, neither was Bonham really. Sorry. But Jones was a logical replacement. I think he was absolutely a logical replacement. But at the time I did question whether they should have continued on or packed it in like Zeppelin did when Bonham died. I alluded earlier to the fact that Face Dances really grew on me in time, but it's pretty uneven and wey too heavy on keyboards and too light on Pete's guitar. Kenny's drumming on that is fine, but the band as a whole didn't really warm to most of the songs as far as i can hear. As good a drummer as kenny was, he was so much the antithesis of Moon personality-wise I think that was difficult for some fans too. he woulddn't have been a fit for a who replacement gig, but I'd include Mitch Mitchell in your group of top tier Brit drummers who could pound 'em pratty darn good.