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Dave_Schuldt

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Posts posted by Dave_Schuldt

    Seattle Free Ski Skins

    in The Yard Sale

    Posted

    One really old pair, needs glue job may be good for old school light tele gear.

    No tail hooks.

     

    One pair about 180 cm for skis w/ side cut. Glue in good shape. No tail hooks.

    Rubber tip connection w/ spare pair.

     

    PM for number.

    [TR] Blewitt Pass - Diamond Head and Little Diamond head 2/6/2010

    in the *freshiezone*

    Posted

    Was up there on Sunday XC style. This is the first time I've seen lots of other tracks up high. Had some good snow over there. Things got wet and heavy in the afternoon. Tired legs from contra dance and trail work plus icing up made it not one of my best days. My friends used skins but all I had was grip wax which worked most of the time. The Daytona 500 will keep the snowmos to a minimum, I think it's next weekend.

    Slide show.

    http://gallery.me.com/dave.schuldt#100077

    Red Mountain 2/21 (Salmon La Sac)

    in the *freshiezone*

    Posted

    MarkL and I skied this last year on 4/20 and there was way more snow. We found some nice pow on north facing slope at the top but the trip back down the road and lower clear cut sucked. This tour would have been more fun with more snow. We were the only ones there. Runs aren't very long but there's many aspects to choose from and some great steep trees.

    Slideshow

    http://s230.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/DaveSchult/?action=view&current=a691aac2.pbw

     

    The Republicans are doomed!!

    in Spray

    Posted

    From the Economist via my Republican dad.

     

     

    SHIP OF FOOLS

    Nov 13th 2008

     

     

    Political parties die from the head down

     

    JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the

    stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated

    high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era.

    As Lexington sees it, the title of the "stupid party" now belongs to

    the Tories' transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

     

    There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party's defeat on

    November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the

    battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a

    group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters

    with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a

    household income of more than $200,000--many of whom will get thumped

    by his tax increases--by six points. John McCain did best among

    uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

     

    The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than

    they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election

    armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill.

    Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums

    home. Torture and Guantanamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be

    water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten

    Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

     

    The Republican Party's divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while

    in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his

    "heart" rather than his "head". He also filled the government with

    incompetent toadies like Michael "heck-of-a-job" Brown, who bungled the

    response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes'

    favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the

    financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains.

    And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed

    Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree

    in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most

    rudimentary facts about international politics.

     

    Republicanism's anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future.

    The party's electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its

    ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not

    only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class

    Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order,

    and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy

    agenda. The party's loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a

    compelling agenda.

     

    This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming

    more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university

    degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year,

    up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69%

    call themselves "professionals". McKinsey, a management consultancy,

    argues that the number of jobs requiring "tacit" intellectual skills

    has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The

    Republican Party's current "redneck strategy" will leave it appealing

    to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

     

    Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost

    patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many

    conservatives--particularly lower-income ones--are consumed with

    elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders.

    They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh

    and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin's

    apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

     

    Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia

    itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do

    battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer

    fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed

    world. The movement has little to say about today's pressing problems,

    such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of

    its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

     

    Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of

    what Julian Benda dubbed LA TRAHISON DES CLERCS, the treason of the

    learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of "real

    Americans", with their "volkish" wisdom and charming habit of dropping

    their "g"s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by

    Beltway journalists from the WEEKLY STANDARD and the NATIONAL REVIEW

    who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then

    noisily championed her cause.

     

    TIME FOR REFLECTION

    How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses?

    There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party

    has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are

    becoming the party of "white-trash pride". Anonymous McCain aides

    complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying "whack job". One of

    the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship

    of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who

    has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New

    Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).

     

    But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many

    conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not

    conservative or populist enough--Mr McCain, after all, was an

    amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama's

    associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders

    of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled "Ideas have

    Consequences"; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing

    to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

    --------

     

    Now go back into your caves and leave us alone while we try to get things going

    again.

     

     

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