mattp

Jim wrote: These guys have no shame: More than 50,000 acres of old mining claims in Washington -- including some inside Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks -- could be converted to private land under legislation expected to pass the U.S. House next week. The proposal also would open up millions of acres in Washington's national forests -- and more than 350 million acres across the West -- to be newly privatized under a revision of the 1872 Mining Law tucked into a 184-page budget bill. Critics who have dissected the language of the bill say it would make it easy to use a law passed 133 years ago to speed development of ski resorts, golf courses and the like in the backcountry today. Seattle PI Article

No kidding! Ptarmigan (and Mt. Rainier in general) is exactly the kind of climb where skis would be vastly better than snowshoes. If you were to "carry over," the extra length of the skis extending above your pack would be little or no problem on the route and ski boots would be perfectly adequate for the climb. (I'm not so sure I'd carry over, though.)

In deep snow, the skier may well win your race. That is not difficult terrain to navigate on skis unless the trail is all hammered out by snowshoers. Also, I think you should consider the trip back out again -- hopefully, your trip "into" the North Ridge of Stuart is not just a one-way trip. More practical sometimes. "Necessary evil?" Generally not.

Around camp, anyway, it is pretty easy to line a 5 gallon bucket with a garbage bag and put a toilet seat on top of it. Is that all they are asking?

Let me know if you ever want real discussion. Two minutes research and you could have found ample argument for the opposite view of that interviewor the next two. I threw you a softball, Pete.

(Ah, but Peter: perhaps you have forgotten our other thread where you declined to answer "yes" or "no" to my question: were Bush and his team misleading about the reasons they wanted to invade Iraq when they did? The dishonest debate took place in 2002 and 2003 and you - echoing the Republican party playbook -- refuse to acknowledge that point. I would agree with him if he were saying only that Hilary Clinton or John Kerry were self-serving to vote for the war powers then and attack the president on credibility now without acknowledging that they too were wrong, lying, or spineless then; but he is suggesting that - with the possible exception of Kennedy who he derisively notes voted against war powers and against the 87 billion - all who now suggest that Bush and Co. distorted or misrepresented their reasons for war are the real liars in this area and that is something quite different.) Meanwhile, read the transcript I linked and see if you can argue how it was scripted for or by the "liberal press."

We’ve seen several of our esteemed colleagues on this site argue ad nauseam that there is a liberal bias to NPR and other leftist powerhouses of the “mainstream media.” However, I watched PBS Newshour tonight and in the Republican v. Democrat debate, Lowry v. Shields, moderator Jim Leher seemed to repeatedly give the Repubican guy Lowry cover, or ask softball questions of him. For example, when Shields comes out of the gate saying that 60% of Americans say they believe Bush has misled American on the reasons for the war in Iraq, Leher turns to Lowry and asks “Why the outcry now? It was a long time ago and haven’t we held elections since then?” At least twice in the conversation Lowry was able to say – more or less unchallenged – that we tolerate or even invite political dissent in this great nation but it is irresponsible or wrong for those who voted to authorize the war to engage in a debate based on false premises or “rewriting history” now. The real coup was when, toward the end of this segment, Lowry says “Bush didn’t lie – the CIA told him the WMD threat case was a “slam dunk” Lehrer then quickly changed the topic, so Shields didn’t get a chance to reply “CIA actually told him there was no effort to purchase Uranium in Niger.” The transcript is available here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/july-dec05/sl_11-11.html So much for the liberal press. (To make matters worse, in the following segment, Rick Steeves misidentified the Eiger in his segment on the Berner Oberland. I think our right wing brothers are right: the liberal press is the worst thing to happen to this country since Benedict Arnold.)

PP: Are you saying that they didn't put forth a vivid picture of Iraq as a real and current threat? Are you saying that Bush, Rumsfeld, et all made it clear to the Nation that there was no imminent threat to the U.S? Did they say we could safely wait longer before invading Iraq? I thought not. Did they lie at any level? [ ]yes or [ ]no Even a "lie of omission?" You may be pleased with yourself over all your hair splitting and smokescreen, but it is BS.

Peter- You continue to - what was KK's phrase about confusing and obfiscating? In all of your vast research, have you found any indication that Bush and Rumsfeld and their boys EVER told us that we could calm down and wait a little longer because the threat wasn't imminent? No. Their entire effort was to portray the situation as "urgent" and requiring a sooner rather than later invasion. They clearly said, over and over again, that we couldn't wait. They could have said "hey folks, he is a bad guy but we've got him surrounded, and he can't fly in either the north or the south, and we have time to see if something other than military invasion RIGHT NOW will work but we are going to have to go in sooner or later so it might as well be RIGHT NOW. They didn't say that. They said his threat, including the threat of a nuclear attack against our home state, was so urgent that they couldn't wait. You can slice and dice their speeches and find how Bush at one point said it might take a year for Saddam to build a weapon, but that was not at all the picture they painted. Your duck is getting old here.

Here's why I voted the way I did:

PP: You are right, I couldn’t predict with certainty this morning that you would not follow up with any real discussion this time. However, youir past record is consistent: post a link or excerpt from some right wing blog, and then follow up with a few jabs here and there without putting any real effort into a real response. I am challenging you to try something new: researching your points and putting together a cogent argument. It took me about a half hour to read and draft my immediate impression of that Podheretz article. It is really not that hard. By the way, this reply took me ten minutes. I gotta get some work done today, though, so you have plenty of time to reply on your own terms as I may not be ready to quickly reply to your next reply so you can reply to mine... As to your question about the mushroom cloud: Do you have Google on your computer? Type “mushroom” and “Iraq.” You will quickly find this: I believe I could do some further research and find where others echoed these words. But a quick “hit” I got listed the following: Read them and then argue how anybody could draw the impression from these statements, in context or not, that there was no immediacy to the threat? "The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations." • President Bush, 3/16/03 "This is about imminent threat." • White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03 Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies." • Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03 Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." • Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03 Iraq "threatens the United States of America." • Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03 Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03 "Well, of course he is.” • White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03 "Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03 "The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat." • President Bush, 1/3/03 "The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands." • President Bush, 11/23/02 "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02 "Saddam Hussein is a threat to America." • President Bush, 11/3/02 "I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq." • President Bush, 11/1/02 "There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein." • President Bush, 10/28/02 "The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace." • President Bush, 10/16/02 "There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." • President Bush, 10/7/02 "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." • President Bush, 10/2/02 "There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is." • President Bush, 10/2/02 "This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." • President Bush, 9/26/02 "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02 "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02 web page

I gotta say, Podhoretz is a brilliant writer, PP. That essay is likely to be effective propaganda for those who haven’t been paying attention or who desperately want to believe that their President hasn’t lied to them or that there is a good reason we are involved in Iraq. First of all, the facts. He does a good job of trying to say the President told the truth because he believed his lies, but the fact is Bush and his advisors definitely knew they were delivering the message that there was an imminent threat even if they carefully worded things in a way that they could mostly deny that fact later, but I have to say “mostly.” Condoleeza Rice cannot deny that she claimed we might see a mushroom cloud over Manhattan and Scott Ridder said, just before the war, that they could be weeks away from having three nuclear weapons if they got the material. When the press reported an imminent threat, at no time did Rumsfeld or somebody call a press conference and clear up any confusion – quite to the contrary. Podhoretz also tries to deny that they had reason to question their own statements about the existence of WMD’s. He does a good job of cherry-picking a few examples of where some Clinton analyst or even a French one agreed there was a worry, but BushCo definitely knew their intelligence about the existence of weapons of mass destruction was shaky at best and largely relied upon CHaliabi and a couple of his buddies. That is why they engaged in the Bushco-Judith Miller-talk show shell game whereby they would send Miller information to be published in the New York Times and then they'd have people talking to the press to say "see: even the liberal leaning New York Times believes he poses this serious threat." Podhortez is playing this same shell game over again, when he spends a quarter of his essay quoting legislators and others who got their information from the Administration, or from Judith Miller's newspaper articles. Im afraid his smear agains Wilson is disingenuous, too: others have tried to argue that Joseph Wilson has lied about what he concluded after going to Africa, but there is nobody in any position of vulnerability on this point who is standing up to do so. And where is the comprehensive Congressional investigation into the intelligence failures leading up to the war? We haven’t seen it because the majority party doesn’t want us to see it. He also effectively confuses things when he argues that our European allies believed Saddam had WMD’s. While they had no way to dispute our intelligence and may have sought to be diplomatic or may even have believed that Saddam could have had a biological weapons program, the fact is that the Europeans were nearly united in arguing that we could wait while the U.N. inspectors continued their work. Bush and Rumsfeld didn’t want to wait, because they feared a final U.N. report would undermine their rush to war. Remember: it was NOT Saddam who pulled the inspectors out; it was the U.S. And then let’s turn to the conclusion. Podhoretz tells us that the war was good policy because what we really went there in order to establish a beach-head for democracy in the Middle East and to make the world a safer place for America as a result. He concludes we are winning. The first point, if true, belies the whole thesis of his essay: if we went in there to establish a democracy while our President told us he was going in because Iraq posed a threat that required fast action, he lied about why we were going to war. As to the success of our effort? I don’t know what newspapers Podheurtz has been reading but they are not the same ones I read. We shall see if this Iraq venture ends up successful or not.

So much for that idea. I would have gone to the K&K for an Aussie pie and a catbeer, but I was away from the computer all day and at 8:00 pm when I looked on here it was not at all clear there was any gathering anywhere.

A rare event, I believe, but Wear your beacons, and practice the recovery, but don't count on 'em.

Doesn't the Stampede Pass road take you to Lester, where the road is gaited and you are not allowed to enter the watershed? It might provide an alternate pass for someone with some special clearance, but I don't think regular citizens are allowed to pass.

If it is raining, your goretex doesn't breath anyway (wet cloth does not breather because the water itself is an impermeable membrane). For snow and wind and light rain, goretex is good. For real rain, when you won't be able to get out of it, take the real thing.

I doubt anybody who actually works outside relies on goretex. I actually wonder why so many climbers do. Uniroyal used to make some kickin rain gear that was a little lighter than Helly Hansen but tough as hell.

PP: Yes, they lied. That HAS become the party line, and it is about time in my opinion. The American public should have been more clearly informed of this BEFORE the last election but it is never too late to reassess things when your government is run by crooks. Those who have been paying attention have known what a pack of liars the entire Bush government was since before he even made that State of the Union speech. I started calling Bush a liar right after 9/11 and, in a February 2003 thread I pointed out the lies with the Uranium purchase, aluminum tubes, etc. on this board and it is my story and I'm sticking to it as long as somebody like you tries to argue otherwise. Do you actually contend they were not lying? Yes or no? Not "well, if only you would consider my semantic pedanty, obfuscation, and misdirection...."* *apologies to KK.

PP: I don't really care whether there was some arguable difference beteween immminent and gathering - get it? The plain fact is, they said that we might see a mushroom cloud over Manhattan before any U.N. inspectors could do their work. They said we had to attack Iraq right away and couldn't wait, and their justifications for this assertion were lies. Stir the mud and inflate all the smokescreen all you want, but it boils down to LIES. They KNEW their own intelligence was telling them they were lying but they didn't want to believe it so they rejected anything that didn't support their arguments for war (and that is being generous -- more likely they out-and-out lied rather than fooled themselves into lying). How many agents or analysts have come out and said "I told them there were weapons?" None. How many have said "I told them there were not?" Several. And virtually all the published or reported information from the time, except for the claims of a very small number of Iraqui "ex pats" on the U.S. payroll, said that any claims that they posed a threat, and any actual threat, were at best, weak. It is really very difficult to see how you might still believe they legitimately believed what they were saying. Your talk of a "canard" is just a dodge (I still wonder if this is some kind of duck?).

In some cases, tariffs and other restrictions on foreign trade are intended to address these kinds of regulatory issues. Other reasons include a desire to shore up a home-grown industrty for any number of purposes including "preserving the traditional way of life," or pork, as I noted already, but also to maintain a viable industry that is deemed necessary for military or public defense purposes, or to encourage/discourage certain allocations of resources that have been determined desireable for any number of reasons good and bad.

Jay, take the example of air-quality. No company has ever cleaned up their act due to market forces or consumer demand in any substantial way, as far as I can recall (I'm sure you could find an example or two, but these would be exceptions that prove the rule), and I wouldn’t think it a step in the right direction simply to have all refineries, smelters, etc. move off-shore to some country where there is little or no environmental regulation. I am for government intervention, and even international regulation here. Take another area: antitrust law. There is a reason we try to limit the growth and power of monopolies in this country. Critics of the modern law appear to me to have forgotten their history lessons. Or another example: public safety. As I understand it, market forces would not have resulted in the standardization of even seat belts in American cars because, from the manufacturers' standpoint, the cost of installing them did not yield sufficient profit. I suppose you could say that if the African consumer doesn’t want to be subject to our modern safety standards, we shouldn't force them, but I think this would be wrong. How about workers' safety? OSHA is a joke, but without it we'd have miners dying of black lung, industrial accidents would be much more common, and public health would be substantially less. And I believe it is wrong, too, to the extent that through advocating free trade we encourage laborers in distant lands to be subject to unsafe working conditions. Again, I am for government intervention and at least some measure of international regulation when it comes to public safety - for both consumers and workers. I believe you are right that the free market is often good at encouraging efficiency, but there are many important costs and benefits that do not get taken into account in any marketplace. I agree that some subsidies or tariffs may be ill advised and many may involve some nationalistic or romantic affection for an outdated or inefficient way of life, while others may simply be a special brand of pork, but I think it is both naive and ignores history to suggest that we should discontinue the entire concept.

Darin - have you been up Mt. Pugh? That looks like a very worthy neighbor of Whitechuck.

I can't dispute the idea that Toyota and Honda have effectively competed with GM and Ford, Jay, and indeed there may have been an increase in the economic prosperity or civil rights enjoyed by the common Chinese or Indian citizen as a result(do you have any actual information on this or did you simply make that up? ) but I remain skeptical that "reduced government intervention" is really the goal here so much as increased freedom for business. You bristle at my mention of a suspicion for “corporate power,” and I have to admit I throw the term about rather lightly without really even knowing exactly what it is that I am suspicious of, but your unbridled support for George W. Bush’s economic policies and Adam Smith’s invisible hand smacks of an equally naïve world view.

KK: Please list all the mobile biological weapons labs they found. How 'bout nuclear weapons labs or a nuclear weopons program at all? Terrorist training camps? Actual connections between Saddam and al queda? Yes, they were trying to build some intermediate range missiles, but "not" and "none" are a pretty descriptive of the reality that our guys did not find what our president said was there. To say there was in fact "not enough," "insufficient" or "less than" what was broadcast would be an out and out lie. And you complain that those damn lefties like to distort or confuse things?

I'm not sure that the "free trade" agenda is at the root of it about reducing government intervention so much as it is about increasing corporate power. We shall see. Certainly, the Repubs have sought to relax environmental regulations over the last several years and they tout this as "decreasing government intervention," but in other areas like tort reform or birth control they actually want to impose MORE intervention. Here again, I'm not sure that reducing government intervention is much more than a campaign slogan swallowed by those who want to believe or, as KK says, have partaken of the koolaid. Those who say they are for it would cry socialism if some damn liberals made significant moves toward reducing corporate welfare.