Peter_Puget

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill

I am fond of the Plumpton show myself.

I just think it's amazing how many guidebooks have been produced. 1960's 2 1970's 5 1980's 13 1990's 26 2000's 15

Check out the '69 Crimson!

At last count I owned 61 Washington Rock Climbing guidebooks. I am not counting CAG or the Olympics guide. That's 1.5 guides published per year since 1964.

Naysayer! Be gone!

Willie is hot this spring! Only a few more weeks until the Pub Club at the Safe!

Here are some pics: I think C.A.M. stood for Canadian Alpine Manufacturing: The whole unit: Here it is placed next to a #1 Friend:

Sorry Joseph - Very busy lately and I forgot to post the pic before I left town. I am still busy but will try to remember to do it tonight.

Moments after my last hasty post here I ran off to the airport. Now after catching up on emal I thought I’d revive this slumbering thread. Indirect as always the point of my post was to suggest that an activist court doesn’t lead to a more just system but rather just the imposition of a court’s particular version of justice and personal preferences. I never challenged the legal reasoning of the court with regarding to the Raich case. In fact I said the whole problem was that the 9th court while easily given to activism did not do so in this case. Given this Winter’s questions to me regarding the 9th’s reasoning in this case are off topic. I never suggested that there was a poor legal reasoning in this case. I do claim that it is simply unjust for her not to be able to smoke pot and the fact that the court has in the past been so willing to step over the line for the cause of the day was unwilling to do so in this case just exposes the flaws of judicial activism. Winter does say my criticisms of the 9th are unsupported. True enough I wrote a short inflammatory post in spray. Here is one example of the 9th going off: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=03-932#opinion1 Breyer (Clinton appointee?) wrote the opinion and all the other justices agreed. My takeaways – 1) The Court’s argument is not logical. 2) The court’s argument is unsupported by precedent. 3) Other appeals court’s have all concluded differently 4) The Court erroneously changes the clear meaning of statute into an insurance system I am sure that arguments can be made against any of the points I have made and I have no interest in a deep research project but it seems clear that reasonable people can and do have a different view of the 9th than our friend Winter. I have had about 15 minutes to remember and look up this case -at the time it recieved a lot of publicity. In google I did click on a link in which a USC Law Profw wrote about this case (if interested look for something titled "encourges CEO to continue tellign falsehoods" ) The prof called the Supreme Court's tone "disdainful" towards the 9th Circuit Court.

I do wonder if I am incorrect on the over turn statistic. What is the truth? Is my unsupported assertion right or wrong?

Winter - One of my points was that they have been acticvits judges and I am surprised they aren't now. I am not a lawyer but as a citizen I can read that opinion and call BS on it. I would like to hear other cc.comers opinions on this. No one is arguing that the pot is helping to extend her life or that it is not relieveing her pain. Now it seems to me that if we as citizens cannot offer valid opinions on such things in non-legal language we have a fundamentally flawed democracy. Some things are common sense. Given life,liberty and all. Winter could a decision been made that to not let her smoke pot would be an unconscionable injustice?

Winter - To me it is simply wrong that she cannot smoke pot to extend her life and increase the enjoyment of her last few years. That the 9th Circuit Court chose to make so many decisions based on there poltical "predipositions" and cannot see the injustice in this case is beyond me. I guess you are in agreement with me that they are the leader in opinions overturned. Some of the Supreme Court's opinions have been rather scolding if I recall correctly. I do agree that stupid is not be the best word to use. They certainly are leaders in applying their own predispositions to their judgements and have been more than willing to push political boundries when it was almost certain that they would be overturned yet here they balk. Lame. By brazenly pushing their political motivations they do help to reduce the public's respect for the judicial system - that I think is short sighted and can be considered stupid.

Winter - I believe the quote indicates that the appeals court was evaluating a different argument this time. This specific argument was not ruled on earlier.

If it maintains her appetite it can certainly help keep her alive longer than if she didn’t smoke/eat it.

I believe the 9th holds the record for most decisions overturned by the Supreme Court (at least in recent history. I use to think it was because it was populated by extreme lefties. Now I realize that their leftiness is but an expression of their stupidity.... decision

Corner Pockets (5.10) has some good jams on it. Do a guy a favor and post ratings for some of the routes shown in the pics. This is a general comment about photos. How hard is Disaster?

I thought you were talking about this.

I’ll try to scan one of the cams tonight. I believe the intent was to marry a TCU to an old style forged Friend. The stem was designed to be the middle cam – albeit fixed. Their looks did not inspire confidence, but I used them more than once figuring something is often better than nothing. I bought mine in the parking lot but soon saw ads in several magazines. Almost immediately there were reports of serious quality issues and the company and cams soon disappeared. I think at some point that they might have switched from producing a Friend/TCU hybrid to producing a straight TCU design.

Again you are simply wrong. I wasn't complaining about your flippancy to Jayb. You wrote: I guess your economic theory professor has never told you about the tragedy of the commons. Later I responded:"For grins I just ran a Google search on Tragedy of the Commons and in the first link shown guess what? Coase is mentioned. How odd that you tell Jayb in a smart ass manner to look up Tragedy of the Commons and then ridicule me for bringing up Coase. Pretty lame." Now Matt let's look at GE some more...for example GE has moved much of its manufacturing outside of the US. GE has reduced retirement benefits for its employees. GE is changing from a manufacurer into a finance compnay. Of course the ownership still has a great return on their investment; however, the decline in US workers wages resulting from the loss manufacturing increases the distance between the rich and the non-rich. It looks like the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer! What's the solution? Raise taxes! Force Walmart to pay for health insurance......

Ya Matt it is painful but in this case the meds must be impacting your comprehension. Here is the part of my inital post where I reference NAZI: In your first sentence you come very close to discovering a real truth but then you descend into something close to being a NAZI. I did not say you were a NAZI but that you were getting close. Coase theorem related to externalities in general. The NAZI comment on how you would deal with them. That you cannot see the distinction is a failing on your part not mine. In you last post addressed to Jayb you wrote: I agree that we should be free to do anything that doesn’t injure someone else or infringe on their rights, but I would include indirect but demonstrable harm among the externalities that generally require some kind of disclosure and maybe regulation. How would you determine harm? This is far more complicated than you think. Eventually you would have a increasing body of regulation and administrators to manage the process. The regulations themselve would cause increasing negative externalities. (for example: increasing mandated pollution controls => loss of employment => loss of tax base=> poor eduction funding) Leading to more regulation and attempts to revalue harm. While the commies tried to eradicate capitalism altogether the national socialists tried to tame it via an unholy alliance of corporate institutions mediated by an intellectual/political elite. Oscar Lange once wrote:"The real danger of socialism is that of a bureaucratization of economic life. Unfortunately, we do not see how the same or even greater danger can be averted under monopolistic capitalism." Somebody else once called it the Road to Serfdom.....

(I just wanted to make one post that didn't cause us to disagree ) I hate to break it to you, PP, but I just looked back at the post in question. After all of this discussion, I still can't understand it. Not your first rebuttal paragraph, anyway. In the second I still see that you think I'm a Nazi. I'm left wondering: do you really believe that it is Nazi [facisism] for a group that may not be composed of those most directly affected to study an issue and try to impact public policy with respect that issue? Here is my first post mentioning Coase: I have always thought the Tragedy of the Commons was a very poor example of externalities. For the most part it can be avoided through the proper delineation of property rights. A better example would be how my neighbor maintains his/her property. If they the put a lot of effort and money into their property their work would increase my property value. Of course if they parked old cars and washing machines in their front yard my property’s value would decrease. Land owners have often banded together and created “private rules and regulations” to limit this. For example, an area with Sound views may prohibit large trees. Coase’s Teorem formulated well before the Tragedy of the Commons article was developed out analyzing grazing practices essentially states that the externalities disappear with well define property rights regardless of the initial allocation of resources. (the usual caveats apply) so to the extent government (& attorneys too) increase transaction costs they also can have the perverse effect of increasing externalities. “Externalities are not anything unique to “Free Market” and free markets may tend to minimize their impact. While it is not up to Crux's standards I think with a little thought it makes sense. Ah maybe it is this that confused you: “usual caveats apply” by this I meant the traditional impossible to achieve economic assumptions like perfect information and in this case zero transaction costs. In any event it seems a bit out there to think (like you did) that the point of this paragraph was to rebut the idea that externalities are exclusive to free market economies. We will just have to disagree on this one. Matt you saw straw men where there are none and now you claim that I have said that it is Nazi [facisism] for a group that may not be composed of those most directly affected to study an issue and try to impact public policy with respect that issue? I do not recall saying anything of the sort. What I saw as NAZI like in your position is: 1) The contempt you hold for the little guy and those in business 2) How you seem to be so willing for politicians to ignore the will of the people for the “common good”. 3) Your veneration of a specific elite. A post or two above I summarized what you appeared to be saying. I just now highlighted it in red.

Matt – My point was no less clear at the start. Matt the clear implication of the following: if they are elected representatives DO THEIR JOB and take action based upon a perception of the common good rathern than upon corporate earnings and election contributions. is that based on their (elected officials) determination of the public good actions should be taken even if they were elected by constituents with an opposing viewpoint. How do the elected officials get this new idea of the common good? Anser: Your intellectuals. A good politician follows the common good as necessarily determined by an elite. (Enemy of the People?!?!) Anyway I have said this over and over. If all you are saying is some subjects require a degree of specialization to understand you are saying very little. Safety is a selling point for many cars. Take Volvo for an example. Go to a dealer and they will hit hard on safety. The perception that they are safer cars has resulted in higher sales prices. Given this it does not seem unreasonable that seatbelts would not have become standard equipment w/o government action.