mattp

Good stuff! "Alliance" must be the word that the focus groups all like these days. There is the "outdoor alliance" that is a national consortium of non-motorized recreation groups that exists for similar purposes, though not specific to winter recreation.

Any more thoughts on this? My sense of things is that we are steadily losing recreational access as more and more roads are gaited and enforcement aimed toward pedestrians on the road is stepped up. I think this is happening due to a variety of causes including safety concerns, lack of funding for maintenance or increasing development of homes and vacation property on former open forest lands or concerns for police problems or trash dumping, or just administrative ease like what waterboy is describing. The snowmobile clubs are organized to keep the snowparks open, but backcountry skiers, boarders, and snowshoers don't seem to have much of a voice - something in common with rock climbers - so in some ways it should come as no surprise that the DOT, the Sheriff - and even to some extent the Forest Service - don't consider our concerns as much as we'd like them to. Regardless of who is "to blame" here, letters and phone calls to various public agencies are probably in order.

Interesting. The vendor that I dealt with argued that he was an expert on shoe sizing and that any problem with with the fit was my fault. Either he "forgot" to mention this fact or was unaware of it. I'm not out to bad mouth the company (I'm not going to name them here), and in the end we got it straightened out. But my experience reinforced what everybody has always known about shoes: don't buy them without trying them on. Even having tried them on in a store you are taking a chance ordering them elsewhere unless you are very confident you will be able to try them on and return them.

I'm better than all of you ignorant losers who can’t make a coherent argument, much less show an ounce of decency. Because of you guys, cc.com is the home of morons and assholes. ( just kidding. Carry on .)

By the way: I'll argue that it is not "cherry picking" to talk about what the article actually said. Fairweather asserted, repeatedly, that he had read the article carefully and that it did not indicate a full and fair recount would have given the election to Gore - yet that is in fact what the article DID say - more than once.

Clearly, if you read the above-noted discussion, you can't argue with that conclusion. My point was that that article, and indeed the broader coverage of the Florida election or the one four years later in Ohio that tipped things for Bush, un-disputably show that our elections are subject to manipulation. In Florida, despite greater issues of voter suppression not mentioned in the article, a full and fair recount would have awarded the win to Gore. Fairweather was focussed on the Supreme Court intervention, and the article did support his premise that the Dems had already lost because, as I had already pointed out, they did not request a full and fair recount. As Fairweather pointed out with his reference to ACORN, however, it is not just one party that will try to do this. While I believe it is clear that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were manipulated by those favoring Bush, I'm not arguing that the Dem's would never try something similar if they had the same kind of power. Just to be snide, though, I'll say they aren't quite the crooks that the Republicans have shown themselves to be in recent years. All of us should seek to make sure our elections are fair and are perceived as fair. Without serious effort here, the whole process will continue to deteriorate. A belief that the process is rigged only supports continued withdrawal from political discussion by Americans already prone to ignoring their responsibility to pay attention, keep themselves informed, and at least vote if not get more actively involved in the affairs of the day.

After my experience with a mail order purchase last year, I'd be hesitant to buy rock shoes by mail again. I bought some FiveTen shoes locally, and I had intended to buy shoes that would be comfortable for all-day wear. They were just a tad tight for that purpose and they were lined so I didn't expect them to stretch out. I then bought the next size up, on-line, and they were from a different production run or something because they were actually SMALLER. Its a long story but I had a tough time getting the vendor to allow a return. In hindsight I would gladly have paid even 50% more to have the opportunity to try them on. Sizing can be not only relative to the model, but relative to the individual pair or perhaps the production run.

Does anybody know the status of discussions about using DIEBOLD equipment in King County this year? Seatle Times Article

Riverdweller raises some valid complaints here, but in my mind they are slightly one-sided. Certainly the whims of somebody heading out to the mountains to play should not override concerns for safety or the ability of local residents to come and go from their homes, but really I'm not sure from that post that either one was really all that compromised. The snow plow operator as well as County officials who decided where to close the road bear some responsibility here as well for setting up a situation where this was really a set-up for trouble. History on this and any other mountain road in Western Washington shows that recreational pressures are great and that people are going to drive right on by if you don't install a gate or at least a sawhorse (and some will ignore the sawhorse). They are idiots and irresponsible ones at that if they thought a "road closed" sign with an obviously plowed road continuing right on by was going to succeed in having recreational users park at the ranger station. Was there any other sign, barrier, warning? I don't know the reality of stopping plowing at some location where they could have plowed the shoulder for parking, but might this have been an option?

If people who are passionate about politics should not be allowed near a polling center as an observer, should their company be chosen as the provider of voting machines (unsecured and unverifiable) for counting the vote?

I don't understand the idea that there could have been a head on collision as a result of parked cars taking up one lane. Wasn't the whole point here that this was the end of the plowed portion of the road - and that is why there was question as to whether the snowplow could turn around? Assuming that somebody with a 4x4 was headed outbound from further up the road, just how fast do you think they might be traveling as they emerge from the snowbound portion of the road and drive on a single lane past a line of cars parked on a curve, or how fast might the inbound driver be going there? How many of us would not proceed quite cautiously in such a location? A head on collision is probably a lot more likely on the plowed portion of the road that did not have one lane blocked, where people might be driving fast enough that a bump or a bit of ice could send them into the other lane.

I agree dmuja, yet sadly not even the Democrats who were cheated have been willing to say much about it. I can see why those who support the Republican party wouldn't be so concerned about it, because at least for now it seems to be serving them, but I'm not sure exactly what the Democrats' problem is. It seems they do political calculations and decide, over and over again, that they can't afford to stand for anything or they might not get elected. We all know our electoral system has real problems, yet there are scarcely even any fringe politicians who seem able to speak about it. Whether it is voter suppression, voter fraud, or programmable voting machines, you can't defend it. Our elections are not fair and Diebold voting machines are one part of that package that would be relatively easy to fix. Whether you believe that the owner of the company did what he more or less said he would do (fix the vote) or not, you can't credibly argue that these machines should not be secure or that they should not produce a receipt.

Whatever, Fairweather. The article that you referred me to clearly states that there IS an unbiased standard - indeed just about ANY unbiased standard would have done so - whereby Gore would have won. The article provides the "data." You either cannot read, refuse to think about what you read, or simply don't want to converse. Under any of these three scenarios, this discussion will not come out any different no matter how many times we rehash. Intelliglent discussion is the clear loser on cc.com.

Fairweather: slow down. Read. Think. Try again.

Nope, Mr. Fairweather, you lose. I did not argue that Gore would have won if the Supreme COurt had not stepped in. Scroll up through the thread to verify if you like. I argued that a full and fair recount would have made Gore the winner and I stated that the recount requested by the stupid Democrats would not have done so. As you say: reading comprehension can be a tricky thing sometimes.

Read it again, Fairweather. It says that See top of page two. Lower down on page two, it spends time analizing different ways of counting "dimpled ballots" and incompete marks on optical scanned ballots. It states It then goes over some different standards for couting dimples, and in two of three scenarios, Gore wins. It then concludes: After this discussion, the author then discounts these results because nobody in the days immediately after the election requested a full and consistent recount: --- Your ball.

Did you read the article you cite here? If you actually read what it says, rather than just the headline, it is pretty ambiguous. The bottom line: a full and fair recount applying consistent standards would have yielded Gore thet winner.

Now that's the most ignorant thing you've posted in a long time. Between the two, Gore is the moron and not Bush?

I don't approve of ACORN or anybody else engaging in voter fraud.

He might come up with something for Ohio, though I don't think his assertion that the margins were so large in Ohio as to defeat any concerns about fairness is going to hold up. In Florida, however, everything I've read has indicated that any fair recount would have put Gore over the top - but the idiot Democrats requested an odd recouting scheme that would actually not have done so. As we've seen in the bias thread, though, KK may suddenly find he has no time to talk about this when we ask for facts or examples to back up his broad statements. I'm still wondering if he thought there was voter fraud in the Washingotn recount.

Agreed here too. Let's just all feel good about this thing and agree all the way around. We'll have foreign election observers, they'll review the voter registration process as well as the elections themselves, and they'll conduct exit polls for a statistical check for obvious "anomalies." There is no reason we cannot have elections that are counted fairly, even if those crooks in Washington will do what they're going to do anyway.

Porter, you made a typo in your post above, so it said you couldn't think of a reason NOT to use them. I agree, though: there would seem to be no reason to argue that we SHOULD use them at this point -- unless you like the result they produce. KK wants to complain the completely legal recount in Washington was unfair yet discount any complaint about obvious problems in Florida and Ohio.

I'm with you as far as enforcing the law, KJK, but I don't think keeping the felons out of the voter registration rolls is as high a priority as making sure the damn election count is fair and providing enough voting machines in poor urban neighborhoods to prevent the obvious discouragement of participation there. Now, about the question of bias: do you care to state any coherent position or cogent facts or are you simply relying on some black helicopter theories of your own?

Observers were, if I recall correctly, KEPT AWAY from many of the questionnable precincts in the Ohio election in 2004.

Typo. I'm pretty sure you knew what I meant: 2000 and 2004. As to 2006, was there any report of any manipulation of the voting tallies, systematic disenfranchisement of Eastern Washington, or anything else or just some whiner radio shock jocks complaining that the recount in the Washington governor's race was completed according to the law? (That is what you are complaining about, isn't it-that the recount was undertaken and completed according to the law?). I'll gladly support the elimination of any use of electronic voting machines or any other device that doesn't produce a paper receipt or paper ballot -- here in Washington -- to prevent you from fearing that the Decmocratic machine is going to deny you a fair vote, though. Think about it: Diebold said they cannot make voting machines that produce a paper receipt or are secure. The manufacturer of most if not all of the bank machines we use every day. Hmmm.