mattp

You are right about the expected rough ride and also about the lack of leadership on the Democrats' part, j_b, but do you REALLY expect Obama to lead a big sweep of Washington? I certainly hope he's going to put a new color on things and I expect we will see some real but modest changes in policy and priorities, but I doubt he's going to take apart the military industrial complex, cut the disparity in income between rich and poor by a huge percentage, or turn America green over night. Howard Zinn is not on the transition team.

Actually, I think he may have been doing it to get you all worked up, j_b. I think it is lame to post disingenuous arguments with the sole aim of riling up the other guy but it seems to pass for entertainment around here. It has been a tradition since the early days of the site and it is not uniqiue to cc.com.

C'mon, Bill. Everybody knows he wears jack boots. He probably hates cats, too.

You may well end up very disappointed, j_b. I don't think he is likely to really shake things up. As to the war? Anybody who read the newspaper very carefully knew Bush and co. were lying. In order to vote for or support the war you either had to believe that it was a good idea anyway or, in the case of an elected official, that you wouldn't be reelected if you came out against it.

I'm afraid I don't have much to add, Pope. Bad faith insurance cases are tough and even if your repair bills are extraordinary there usually isn't enough money involved to make it worthwhile to file suit. I don't think an attorney will take it as a contingency case, so the insurance company knows that it can drag its feet and make the pretrial process expensive and you'll likely run out of war chest - and if you do have a contingency attorney they'll just do it to the attorney. Good on you for sticking with it, though. A lot of times I think the insurance companies say no to close call or even not so close call claims just hoping the consumer will accept it. Years ago, the Insurance Commissioner used to be very helpful on these matters. I know Kriedler is supposed to be fairly consumer friendly and I think he may have to some degree gone against insurance companies on issues related to bad faith. It might be worth a call or threat of a call.

Are these routes that you're putting up with ten bolts and one piece of gear so desperate that there are only a few specific spots you could realistically stop and clip from and spacing the bolts differently would be impossible? I don't know anything about the climb under discussion, Kevbone's "style," or much else that may be relevant to this discussion, but when reading this I do feel compelled to offer a comment: based on my past experiences when bolting pitches and trying to eliminate or minimize bolts, I believe that I have often made mistakes by focusing on a desire to minimize bolts above the more sensible goal to use the obvious or sensible placements. I realize that the quote I am responding to was not proposing "minimize bolt counts" but, rather, "move bolts around to make the trad pro unnecessary." I wonder, though: had Kevbone tried to engineer the pitch in order to make a .75 camelot unneeded he likely would have ended up with something that feels unnatural and may even be needlessly scary - unless he placed the bolt next to the crack. (He tell us that the crack is in just where you want the pro.) If you are developing a pitch for repeat ascents, my choice is to do the best job you can. For a pitch that has ten bolts, I think bolting it so that it is easy to make the clips and so that they protect the difficult moves takes priority over eliminating the .75 camelot placement. I don't necessarily agree with Rudy's maxim here: that a bolted pitch at a sport area should not require trad pro. I was not happy to see somebody add unnecessary bolts to "Son of Jesus" at Little Si because the gear was good. Ten years hence, I am resigned to the fact that this was done and I won't call for chopping those unneeded bolts but I wouldn't suggest that anybody developing a ten bolt plus one camelot pitch move things around to eliminate need for the camelot or else just bite the bullet and bolt the crack. It is OK to carry a .75 camelot on a sport rack. At Ozone, it is probably OK that the guidebook says "bring ten draws and a .75 camelot to use between the 4th and 5th bolt." I agree with Will, though, that it is probably not ethically all that different to just go ahead and add the 11th bolt. But I, personally, probably wouldn't do it.

Maybe so, tomtom, but your own tactics leave at least as much to be desired where you drop your little barbs and then refuse to follow up or defend some broad proclamation. You actually think Obama and Biden smeared McCain as much as McCain and Palin smeared him? Go back to the paradigm thread and explain how it is that YOU haven't been the one who must have been hiding under a rock for the past year. JB is shrill, to be sure, but that isn't why you and Puget don't try to take and defend coherent positions in these threads. Lets see some discussion here!

Yup. We're always fully of happy thoughts following a cc.com bait and bash. I love you guys.

It definitely doesn't work that way around here, bill. I don't personally attack Fairweather or KK, for example, and their employ of insulting rhetoric is 10 to 1 compared to mine, but I certainly draw a lot of their vitriol. I see PP's point, to degree: the name calling is a turn off. But I think the imbalance in the political threads stems much more from the fact that some people don't want to have a real back and forth discussion than it does from perceived slight.

Two factors that may influence your choice of footwear are the rest of your itinerary and your budget. If you are on a year-long-discover-the-world trip you will likely be on a tight budget and you should know that you don't HAVE TO spend money on shoes for the Khumbu hike. I've seen German tourists crossing snowfields at 17,000' with wool socks pulled over their sandals for traction and they made it with all toes intact. Had weather been poor or there was a lot of new snow, these particular trekkers would have been willing to sit it out in a tea house for several days, however. This may not be your plan. If you are going there for this particular destination and if you have some pennies to spare, good shoes will treat you well.

Fair enough. Plenty of folks don't have the taste for the single malt. But don't tell me you're a "Baileys man."

Climbing has largely been a family affair for me. My mother was an avid hiker and birder and first took me on a hike up Mt. Monadnock at age 3 (my father grudgingly accompanied although he would rather have stayed home with the New York Times and our cousins were a no-show). At age eight my uncle drove me and my buddy up to Monadnock and dropped us off to camp overnight unsupervised. It was terrifying when the raccoons came in and raided in the middle of the night but we survived and made a successful summit bid the next day. My older brother took up rock climbing in college and showed me how to set a top-rope when I was 12. With a buddy, I then learned how to climb by reading Freedom of the Hills and going to the nearest crag and trying things. A couple of older guys showed us how not to kill ourselves. My brother took me to the Tetons when I was 15, and at 16 I swung leads in the Bugaboos. My wife and I met sort of over climbing. I've climbed in the Bugaboos with one nephew, and taken another to Mt. Erie for his introductory climbs. Here's my brother, nephew, and high school friend on top of Snowpatch Spire two years ago.

KK and Minx? Two of my favorite sprayers. And here's to Billcoe, Sobo, and PC13, too. MKPorwit and Kevbone? OK by me. Is this to an on-line drink-up only? OK: Cheers.

I don't know about change.com, but it doesn't look to me as if obama.com has changed that much since last week although I suppose it may just LOOK as comprehensive as before but have dropped all the substance. I wonder if the Washington Times is news you can believe in.

And I agree with Bug (big surprise). I think it is not only interesting, but how we perceive this election will affect American politics as we move forward.

We clearly need more of everyone trading slams around here, but do you dispute the premise that McCain ran a disgraceful campaign based in large part on smear and innuendo and that Obama mostly rose above it? Maybe you and TomTom can get together and cite examples of how Obama and Biden were just as lowlife as McCain and Palin? I'd like to see it.

Sobo, I get some of your point about labels but, in Michigan where I grew up (even in the liberal hotbed of Ann Arbor) any mixed race person who looked black at all would have been perceived as black. And in the Seattle neighborhood where I now live there were originally covenants barring blacks, jews, and people of Arab descent. In the 1950's I bet it would have caused a serious reaction had even Obama with his white mother moved in.

I didn't say they DIDN'T do it. But attack was clearly much more central to the McCain platform than it was to Obama's. We didn't hear a lot about the Keating scandal, for example, or McCain's "paling around with" G. Gordon Liddy, or that he crashed three jets. In fact, one could easily have watched TV news for the last year and not known anything about these stories. In addition, Obama almost completely avoided attacking Palin. Wisely, he stepped back and let her trip over herself. Obama certainly took advantage of a poor helpless George Bush, but here again I don't think there were lies told that even come close to the distortion of Obama's relaionship with Ayres, for example, or in the final days the assertion that he had taken a stand dramatically different from McCain on domestic coal.

Will generational change bring new "hot button issues?" If there is a new electorate out there aren't they going to gravitate toward simplistic views of politics and litmus test thinking just out of a practical need to keep it simple?

Good luck with them, Pope. My homeowners renewal is this month and I'm not joking when I say that your post here is causing me to actually undertake more serious consideration whether we should switch insurers (we now have State Farm). My wife thinks PEMPCO is good.

Are you posting about how Obama seemed to posit himself as a "post-racial" candidate? I agree that there are some confusing ideas related to whether this is the first "postracial" President-elect or whether he is the first "African-American" President-elect or both. We'll see how all of this plays out.

Ivan, I try to minimize my participation in these "you are the asshole" vs. "no: you are the asshole" discussions. Once in a while I get dragged into the muck, and I'm usually embarrassed when I do. In the present context, I will tell you that I have not in fact engaged in any behind-the-scenes effort to stir the pot (in fact I've tried to make peace on many occasions with someone who just flamed me). I won't divulge the nature of or senders of private messages I have received which have berated me for posting well stated messages when they didn't have time to reply in kind, or when cc.com poster s have actively threatened me. At this point, it would seem only to inflate things. I know that I annoy some folks with my tenacity, and I know that some folks have found my "tone" condescending but I can't really see how I have come anywhere near close to as offensive as lots of people around here. If someone wants to offer me some pointers, please send a private message. Anyway, I appreciate that some of you have felt the need to defend me in the past week, but I'd rather get back to the issues.

When you are king, maybe your historians will tell you that by tradition we in American have defined multiracial persons, with one black parent, as "black," "African American," or "negro." Seriously. I'm surprised by your post.

Too bad. I actually look forward to discussing these issues with you. I've learned something from all of this debate on cc.com over the years and I value it. I'm not putting you on "ignore," but if you have decided not to converse with me I will genuinely miss you.

I hope you are right about stronger voting for education, Bug, but I didn't see it as a big issue in this election. Yes, leave all the children behind may not be popular right now and I think the general notion that educated people are by definition "out of touch" didn't seem to play well but do you think our overall electorate is going to support increased funding for public education (one of few areas where they often get a vote on taxes) or more funding for research or, say, student loans? Seattle has often voted for public transportation and parks levy's, and the Superintendent race could just as much have to do with dislike for the WASL as anything else, so I'm not sure we can see local results indicative of a trend.