FlaSoxxJim

I love Coop!

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 17, 2006 -> 01:14 AM) no bass? rock music sucks Hey, it worked for the Doors. . .

Section 1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Beatles vs. Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix vs. Baba O'Reilly - The Who Section 2. Street Fighting Man - The Rolling Stones vs. A Day in the Life - The Beatles

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 17, 2006 -> 04:05 AM) Classless. Wordplay. I don't know what amazes me more, the ability of BushCo loyalists to defend absolutely anything done by the administration or their capacity for manufactured outrage.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 05:36 PM) This It's almost as if they don't buy their own B.S. explanations. Yeah, "almost." :headshake

QUOTE(Mplssoxfan @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 10:31 PM) Come on. Even my 78 year old father uses email. Reading between the lines, I'm sure it's not that they don't know how to use email. It's that they apparently don't know how to save their emails.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 09:37 PM) The shotgun he was using was relatively small guage (26 or something odd). .28 I read. Still, being blasted with a couple hundred BBs from 30 feet away doesn't sound like a whole lotta fun. [/Mr. Obvious]

Great to see this. I better pick my week for a trip in soon and get some damn tix.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 11:03 AM) these guys can all go f*** themselves. ^^^^^ Apple has bent over backwards to make piracy pretty tough. This is the digital equivalent of the $1.00 "blank tape tax" the RIAA pushed for in the 80s. If you own a CD and rip it for your own use, you are well within your rights, and the RIAA is not going to change that.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 02:24 PM) They'd literally filet Cheny if that was an option. :headshake As oposed to the wingnuts who fellate Cheney at every opportunity.

Sure, I got the joke. Good old Ki-rok was a favorite of mine as well. "When I see a solar eclipse, like the one I went to last year in Hawaii, I think 'Oh no! Is the moon eating the sun?' I don't know, I'm a caveman - that's the way I think." But, after waiting a day and a half I figured the joke was all that was coming, so I responded with a "rebuttal" along the lines of where I thought the discussion was going. Moving forward. Let me set up the next question by bridging from your last response. Certainly I see tragedy of the commons issues as crossing party lines and existing long before the current administration, indeed, long before our nation existed. But you and I are of highly divergent opinions if you don't think the current administration doesn't deserve special mention for their irresponsible stewardship of our public lands. A quick comparison of some of the actions of the last two administrations: The Clinton Administration revised the public lands hardrock mining regulations, effective January 2001. The changes would have made mine operators more responsible for reclaiming mined land and also allowed BLM to deny permits to operations that would cause "substantial irreparable harm" to public resources that couldn't be mitigated. This seems to fit your criterion of "adequate regulation by a moral and uncorrupt government." But, barely two months into office, the Bush Administration began the process of setting aside the new rules and reinstating the previous loose restrictions. The Clinton Administration also recognized that hardrock mining operations on public lands paid NO federal rents or royalties was a huge, unfair private industry subsidy at taxpayer expense, and tried to get it changed but left office without success. The Bush Administration has allowed the miners' free ride to continue. The Bush Administration's side-stepping, ignoring, and eventual setting aside of the Clinton-era Roadless Rules gutted an important and sweeping land preservation rule that would have protected 60 million acres of national forests. Clinton's Secretary of the Interior – Bruce Babbit, who was a key architect in the Clinton-era federal land use changes and who tried to give the Endangered Species Act a badly needed overhaul based on sound science. Bush's Secretary of the Interior – Gale Norton, a self-proclaimed oxymoron (i.e., a "free market environmentalist") who had previously written on the "right to pollute" of certain industries. You have taken exception to my suggestion that the current administration should be singled out as particularly hostile to conservation aspects of public lands stewardship. My question to you is simply, who ya' crappin'?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 16, 2006 -> 09:54 AM) Not dialing up Peter Jennings on your cell phone after you just pumped a round of birdshot into someones face, doesn't mean you are "hiding" something. Yeah, but if you really wanted to come clean you might try dialing up a reporter who is actually alive.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 10:33 PM) I do believe you're the communist, mister eater of communist candy. Haribo was founded in 1920 in Germany, sounds pretty damn communist to me. The German socialist revolution was put down by March of 1919. So maybe Haribo Gummis are the most democratic of all Gummis. . .

Happy Happy! Make it a good one.

Ah, okaay. . . And now my, er. . . rebuttal? The lawmakers and regulators charged with ensuring the wise use of our public lands have done little to earn our trust. They continue to enable private interests to game the system for their own profit. At the heart of the problem is the fact that the rights to stake mineral and oil extraction claims on or lease public lands still derive from laws passed in 1872 (The General Mining Law) and 1920 (the Mineral Leasing Act). It has not escaped the attention of a number of lawmakers over the years that the laws regarding public lands claims rights are archaic and inadequate – essentially a giveaway of public resources in the federal trust. But every time an attempt is made to rectify the laws it gets derailed by big industry and their lobbiests. Fast forward to 1977 when lawmakers beholden to special interests made a bad situation worse. Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that allowed the commencement of mountaintop removal strip mining. Prior to this time there were, as you suggested, laws that ostensibly mandated that mine operators restore mined land to its original contours. But mountaintop removal operations are given a pass as long as they can state the flattened mountaintops will be developed for commercial or industrial use once the coal seams are removed. Invariably, such assurances have been smoke and mirrors. Mine operators can say they will prepare the areas for livestock grazing, forestry, etc., and get their permits even if they never intend anything more than a token follow-through. The laws supposedly prohibit mountaintop blasting that will dump rubble into steams, but it hasn't stopped the operations from dropping millions of tons of rubble into streams. A federal judge ruled in 1999 that the operations that bury streams under tons of debris do o in violation of both the Clean Water Act and federal coal law, but that hasn't stopped the operations. So where are the regulators in whom we entrust stewardship of our public lands? Well, when your "stewards" are people like Interior Secretary Gale Norton, J. Stephen Griles (Deputy Secretary of the Interior until 2005) and Mark Rey, (BushCo Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the Environment), you begin to realize the depth of the collusion between industry and government regulators. Before his BushCo Interior stint, Griles was a principal lobbyist for the National Mining Association, Arch Coal, Devon Energy Corporation, and Yates Petroleum Corporation. In his position within Itnerior, Griles proved to be a very well placed friend of oil, gas, coal, and hardrock mining special interests. Rey was a top timber industry lobbyist before he got the administration nod to game the system from the inside as Ag Undersecretary. Then there's the Gale Norton Nightmare. Her willingness to give free reign to mining and drilling interests, and her refusal to share scientific findings within her own agencies make abominable Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt look good.

QUOTE(RibbieRubarb @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 06:14 PM) I'm taking it you were alone alot of the time on Valentine's Day? Who me?? Hell no! I had lots of girls. But you wouldn't know them. One up in Canada, yeah that's it, Canada. And one from Band Camp. . .

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 06:17 PM) I appreciate the words though Yoda. Thanks! Huh? What did he say. . . ??

What is (We) Love (Katamari)?

QUOTE(knightni @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 03:37 AM) There are many Green Lanterns. (Hal Jordan was the original I believe) Nope, Alan Scott was the original "Golden Age" Green Lantern, later the "Earth II" Green Lantern after Gardner Fox complicated the DC Universe with the whole parallel Earth's concept. Of course, he was not the first Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814 (the sector containing Earth). Yalan Gur was the earliest Sector 2814 GL to be referenced, and he predates Alan Scott by 2,000 years. Of course, Alan Scott was not part of the GL Corps per se, but his power does derive in part from GL Corps power. None other than Yalan Gur himself died in a free-fall earth reentry, and a 3.5 billion yeear old mystical orb called the Starheart felt his pain and bound to him, forming a meteor-like object that was carved by the lampmaker Chang into the green lantern that would eventually be found by Alan Scott. Got all that?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 01:17 PM) Who controls what stories the people hear? The White House when they can, for one.

QUOTE(Jeckle2000 @ Feb 15, 2006 -> 12:54 AM) I find it more amusing they have a KFC at all... Not anymore they don't. . . I'm kind of blah about this story. But if it had been a Popeye's on the other hand I'd be screaming for blood!!! Love That Chicken From Popeyes.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 14, 2006 -> 02:01 PM) Hmmm ... circumstances don't change? Indeed they do. If the situation begins to look grave I'm quite sure everyone – including the veep - will stop making such light of it all.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 14, 2006 -> 01:51 PM) What? No more joke quotes? :headshake And no more lipservice from a mouthpiece for the Vice President about how the guy he shot in the face is just "doing fine and in good spirits"? :headshake

I like Hackett a lot. Very straight-up guy, as seen in simple statements like, "Gay marriage, who the hell cares?" I'm not so sure I like Rahm Emanuel personality-wise, but I understand this move. There's not much sense in Dems spending millions of dollars on a campaign where two good candidates can beat each other up and in the end split the vot and let a GOP incumbent win the election. Brown looks to have the better chance of beating Senator DeWine. I'd like to see Hackett enter the Rep. race against Jean Schmidt who he only narrowly lost to before she comitted political suicide by taking potshots at John Murtha.