willstrickland

Those are $103. Campmor has the same ones for $79, and the ones with compass for $99. Just FYI

What routes do you have in mind, both for El Cap and for push?

More drama: John O'Neill -- Mr. uber-Swift, he wrote the book, etc. -- has been going on all the shows for weeks saying that John Kerry never could have been in Cambodia on a black mission. It was impossible because there were all sorts of precautions in place to prevent any border crossings and that he would have been "court-martialed" had he done so (see this column for excerpts from his book and his appearance on ABC's This Week program last Sunday.) Now CNN has come up with tapes of O'Neill telling Richard Nixon in 1971 that he himself had been on missions inside Cambodia. From last night's Aaron Brown show ... O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon. O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water. NIXON: In a swift boat? O'NEILL: Yes, sir. (END VIDEOTAPE) JOHNS: Now, O'Neill may have an explanation for this but he has not returned CNN's calls. What does seem clear is that a top member of the swift boat group is now being held to the same standard of literal accuracy they've tried to impose on John Kerry -- Aaron. It really seems like O'Neill has been going on all these shows lying right through his teeth. Not misremembering some date, not having a conflicting recollection of some battle action, but telling everyone that none of the Swift Boats crossed into Cambodia when, in fact, he himself appears to have done so routinely. Source: talkingpointsmemo.com And even more drama: The Kerry campaign is sending Max Cleland and Jim Rassman down to the president's 'ranch' to hand deliver a letter signed by seven veterans serving in the United States Senate asking Bush to "recognize this blatant attempt at character assassination, and publicly condemn it."

Read the thread doods, THIS IS FOR AUGUST 31, not today.

http://www.wildwilderness.org/docs/omnibus.htm

Double post

I wouldn't say that Left has shied away from those tactics at all. Break the current tactic down and what you have is: Casting Doubt. The allegations or insinuations don't have to be true, but if they are repeated often enough, they at the very least cast doubt. You're seeing that with the Swift Boat Vets. You also have seen that though the "Bush was AWOL" , Saudi Royals-Bush Family connections, Halliburton/oil war, and others. Moore's film was full of this sort of thing. To me, the right wing is just alot better at this sort of thing than the left. They both do it. The right is also more blatant and conniving about it IMO, but that's what makes them better at it. Pope, that next to last sentence is a masterpiece

He's not the only one prediciting or even witnessing the beginnings of a rift within/battle for the Republican Party but within the neocon circle itself. If you follow this sort of thing, you know who Fukuyama is. Steve Clemons has a great article on his foreign policy blog site The Washington Note. Steve is a very astute and connected commentator. You may not agree with his particular opinions, but they are insighful nevertheless. Steve is the exec VP of the New America Foundation think tank. He has another fascinating look at Who Are the Real NeoCons? Good stuff.

I don't disagree with you Alex. As it stands now, they don't have enough in the budgets for these items. But my point is that if you simply got rid of the timber sales and their associated costs to the agency, you could still cut the overall agency budget while increasing funding for resource mgmt to the point that these trailhead type fees could be abolished. To the public, I see that as positive all around, to the timber industry...which has plenty of money to lobby your congressional "representatives", it would obviously be a negative. And the FS employees who got cut would be screwed.

The issue that I hear alot of people raise, climbers in particular, is that the FS will not leave well enough alone if they see a fee opportunity. An example: A dirt pullout and unmaintained trail that lead to a backcountry climb. There is no current expense of upkeep, because there is nothing there to keep up. The users of said area don't want or need any "facilities" added, especially if it is going to require a fee. The agency who regulates the area will eventually sense a revenue possibility and add a kiosk/sign, perhaps a pit toilet or trash can, and start charging. They will argue that "too many people were using the area, we had to control the human waste". I'll give you 50/50 odds that if there is a pit toilet placed there, it will either be out of paper or locked over half the time. People rebel because the agencies will disingenously exploit revenue opportunities under the guise of providing you with a service, and they will continue to do this until there is no opportunity to recreate on public lands by means of low impact activities for free (I consider photography, day hiking, most types of climbing, low impact). I would be interested to see what the budget numbers of the FS would look like if you didn't have timber sales. My sense (and this could be completely off base) is that by the time the FS has a timber sale and does all the prep work such as bidding/contracting/environmental assesments, appeals, road subsidizing....they LOOSE a ton of money. Timber from USFS lands makes up a relatively small part of the timber industry anyway. Get rid of all logging on USFS lands, cut all the staff related to timber sales. Then go ahead and get rid of the rec fees and enforcement that goes along with it. I imagine there would be plenty of money to actually manage the forests and keep the roads in decent repair. I could be wrong. I know there is one cc.com person who work for the USFS, maybe he will weigh in (I won't name him because I don't think he's ever stated it publicly).

Thanks to you both. Very helpful

Number one cultivated crop in the United States: Lawn grass.

Mandatory artificial turf on golf courses in SoCal, Arizona, So Utah, and Nevada. Never needs water, never needs cutting, perfect lie everytime, no divots. What's not to like? you golfers.

I'll be in Seattle soon, and I want to pick up a new pair of face shoes while in town. Can anyone recommend a shop that carries both Anasazi lace-ups, AND Sportiva Miuras? Wanna do a little A/B comparison on fit. I don't care if they have 100 other shoes, just that they have both of these. TIA

Mil spending as a percent of GDP is around 4%. As a percent of the total budget is around 15%. As a percent of the discretionary spending (which does not include social security and govt debt service...huge chunks of the total budget, among other things) it is around 50%. On the solider's pay issue: A good look at military compensation, from the CBO. http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4978&sequence=0 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that in 2002 (the most recent year for which comprehensive data are available), the average active-duty service member received a compensation package worth about $99,000. Wirlwind, this is obvious advice but I'll say it anyway: wait until after the election if you are seriously considering enlisting, the outcome might change your mind ya know.

I understand your point wirlwind, but keep in mind that the military economy does far more than simply provide defense (or offense in the case of pre-emptive strikes). I collect a DOD paycheck. My job is in environmental protection, specifically of wetlands and waterbodies. My agency (Army Corp of Engineers) also does quite a bit of public infrastructure work such as canals, flood control projects, harbor and channel dredging, etc. DOD also funds technology and medical research. Your GPS runs off military developed tech and satellites. I own stock in a Portland based biotech firm that recently received some DOD grant money to continue their clinical trials and development of a West Nile treatment among others. My point is, it's not as simple as some numbers on a page. We do spend a shitload on defense. Our defense spending is typically put at somewhere between 35%-45% of the total global defense spending, depending on which source you look at. I'm on a military base 5-6 days a week. The soldiers are not poor. They are not living below the poverty line by any stretch of the imagination. A freshly minted PFC makes $16,880 base salary. Add in up to $50k for college costs, subsidized housing, healthcare, food, clothing, entertainment, recreation, PX priviledges, retirement benefits, etc and their income is alot closer to $30k if they choose to attend college after their committment, and at least $20k if they don't. Thats for a new E3. $20k is not alot of money, and they do work under alot of bullshit rules and hard conditions. Try standing outside at -25F pulling gate duty if you have any doubts, and that's not even taking combat or the possibility of combat into account. Nevertheless, show me another employer that will give a job with similar perks to virtually any young person to walk into their office. We need to find ways to cut military spending and get more for the money, but by streamlining the bureacracy, not having fewer troops, paying them less, or cutting their benefits. Imagine growing up poor in a small rural town. WTF are you going to do if you can't afford to go to college or are just not cut out for college, and there is no industry in your area. This is a common situation, and one reason the lower classes always bear more of the burden in fighting wars. Having the military as an option is important. They provide character building, discipline, teach skills, and give opportunity to young people who would otherwise be mired in a situation with no future. This is not directed at anyone in particular, but: I find it ironic that the same lefty liberals who are ready to give entitlement handouts to all the "disadvantaged" are the same who push to cut troop size and defense spending. Personally, I'd rather give someone a meaningful job that teaches the practical, technical, and life skills while providing a service to our country, than to give them a handout for doing nothing.

Looks like another hole in the Swift Boat Vets smear campaign. This will run in tomorrows Chicago Tribune: The commander of a Navy swift boat who served alongside Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the Vietnam War stepped forward Saturday to dispute attacks challenging Kerry's integrity and war record. William Rood, an editor on the Chicago Tribune's metropolitan desk, said he broke 35 years of silence about the Feb. 28, 1969, mission that resulted in Kerry's receiving a Silver Star because recent portrayals of Kerry's actions published in the best-selling book "Unfit for Command" are wrong and smear the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry. Rood, who commanded one of three swift boats during that 1969 mission, said Kerry came under rocket and automatic weapons fire from Viet Cong forces and that Kerry devised an aggressive attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. He called allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were "overblown" untrue. "The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in Sunday's Tribune. Rood's recollection of what happened on that day at the southern tip of South Vietnam was backed by key military documents, including his citation for a Bronze Star he earned in the battle and a glowing after-action report written by the Navy captain who commanded his and Kerry's task force, who is now a critic of the Democratic candidate. Rood's previously untold story and the documents shed new light on a key historical event that has taken center stage in an extraordinary political and media firestorm generated by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That is the lead story, here is part of the account that Rood gave, also in the Tribune as a separate story: There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago—three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969. One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other. For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions. Many of us wanted to put it all behind us—the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service—even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work. But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there. Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts. I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it. I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star. But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats—including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43—that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area. The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret. Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception. Instructions from Kerry The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush. We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan. The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there. The first time we took fire—the usual rockets and automatic weapons—Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes. Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site. It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes. We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch—a thatched hut—maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ. With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby. Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation. John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore. The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker. Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay. Congratulatory message Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers." Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault. Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers. It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream. Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several. Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers. The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged. What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders. Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us. Error in citation My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard." There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago—not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there. But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye. Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank. Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy. The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now. Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his back yard. Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army. With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Enough with the strawman and red herrings. It is clear that you don't have the intellectual capacity to distinguish regressive tax policies from redistribution of wealth.

Fairweather, what is your take on this article from Reuters? http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5761856 Headline is "Bush's Military Records Fail to Dispel AWOL Charges" An excerpt: July 23, 2004 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave. His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush's Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran. The Pentagon, which had announced two weeks ago that the payroll records had been accidentally destroyed, blamed a clerical error for previous failure to find them. In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they have no recollection of ever seeing him there. Bush was the son of a U.S. congressman at a time when National Guard service was seen as a way for the privileged to avoid being drafted for Vietnam War duty. Questions over his record resurfaced this year as Bush sought, in the midst of the Iraq war, to cast himself as a "war president" in his drive to win reelection on Nov. 2. The documents released on Friday by the Pentagon included two faded computerized payroll sheets showing Bush was not paid during the latter part of 1972 and offer no evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972. Still, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said: "They show the president served in the military and completed his service, which is why he received an honorable discharge."

Seems like an obvious place to look, dontcha think? I have no idea why he wouldn't release them all, maybe he had to get medical treatment for hemerroids or some embarssing shit like that. I think you could ask a similar question about Bush...why is there so much info blacked out in his records and were all of them also released? I don't know. I think the reports were pretty clear on the reason. SBVFT is a 527, which by law is not supposed to be directly affiliated with a campaign. The Kerry side seems to believe that they can prove collaboration or coordination between the SBVFT and the Bush/Cheney campaign and/or the GOP. Given Rove's relationship with one of the financiers of the group, and both main fiancier's extensive history of GOP involvement, I'm inclined to think they may have a case. Seems almost impossible to prove though. Careful there Fairweather, slander assumes that the statements made were untrue. Bush has not been able to disprove the accusations, to the best of my knowledge. In this little pissing match over military service, I do notice one thing: There are quite a few men who testify to Kerry's service and there are several official military records that cite his proficiency. I have not seen any fellow guardsmen step-up and testify about Bush either with regard to the AWOL claims, or his general ability. Maybe it is out there, but I have not seen it. To me, it's ancient history either way. What I personally focus on (and this is almost certainly biased by my background of growing up as struggling lower middle class) is that Bush's rich/powerful daddy pulled strings to vault him over a long waiting list to ensure he got in the guard...a fairly safe haven, whereas Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam. That contrast in actions tells me everything I need to know. I still think we're screwed either way, they are both special interest whores. I am still voting Libertarian for Pres, Dem Senate, GOP House, GOP State Senate.

http://www.johnkerry.com/about/john_kerry/military_records.html

Why? It's not on the loop road, you're not going to get ticketed up there.

This dude agrees with szipperheadcowski:

Damn dude, there ain't nothin small about those numbers. Even 8 in a class is really pushin' it. I hope I never run into a class of 24 at one crag, that's completely ridiculous.