JayB

If misery loves company, the folks in Norway will be feeling better shortly.

"Food not Orthodoxy" would probably be a serviceable distillation of the sentiments that prevailed in the Ukraine during the 1930s, under the Great Leap Forward, in present-day North Korea, etc.

One of the grander ironies of cultural relativism is that it was never embraced by the populations that it was intended to benefit.

Must have heard the NPR story about the grow-ops in the Puget Sound financed with no-doc loans. Match made in heaven.

That select group in this case is likely to be the occupants and/or owners of dwellings financed with ponzi-credit. Stupid you for locking in at ~4% fixed. If only you had taken out a neg-am, I/O, payment-option ARM with a teaser rate you could have potentially scored a much better rate, underwritten by the German pension fund, CALPERS, or some other bag-holder.

Maybe they can find someone willing to rent it for ~12K/mo until they find a full-price buyer....

People will still buy homes if the loans aren't subsidized and the gains aren't tax free. They'd just have to content themselves with smaller homes secured by smaller loans. The federal subsidy for home ownership can't be defended as either an economic or social policy.

I think that the tax code also provides a considerable bit of encouragement/subsidization of this perspective.

I think most of them either cash-out refi'd or heloc'd all of their equity out of their homes, or the market value of their home has declined since they financed it with their adjustable rate loan, and they wouldn't qualify for a fixed rate loan unless they brought quite a bit of money to the closing table, or perhaps not at all due to the tightening of lending standards. I'm sure that most of the folks facing resets would love to refi into a fixed rate loan. I wonder what percentage of people in distress could service their loans even if they *were* able to refi into a fixed. I'd also like to see the percentage of occupied vs unoccupied properties that are in some stage of foreclosure, what percentage have either refi'd or heloc'd out their equity to pay for something other than medical care, income lost due to disability, etc.

Case for Rate-Freeze: http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/229674

Also, even if they get a rate freeze, I have to wonder how motivated people will be to scrimp and sacrifice, work multiple jobs, etc - to service a mortgage on a property that's waaaaay underwater, and will be for years. If people are struggling to preserve a gain for themselves, they'll behave much more differently than if they feel like they're only working for the bank's benefit. Big psychological difference between servicing debt on an appreciating vs depreciating asset, even though you're forking over the same amount of money each month under both circumstances.

Might as well bundle the folks who got a royal pounding when the stock market bubble collapsed, if we've collectively decided to bail out speculators when their bets go wrong, IMO.

I'm not totally convinced that this will materialize, since I doubt that all of the bondholders will roll/bend over and take the loss, and there's no way that the folks who issued the securities or are servicing the loan can cover the yield-spread between what the bondholders have been promised, and what they'd get under the terms of the rate freeze. Look for people to start clamoring for the government to assume responsibility for the delta between the rate specified by the loan documents and the "frozen" yield. If it does go through, look for: -The availability of credit, and the rates charged for the provision of such to increase massively for everyone in the future, since they'll have to price this kind of uncertainty into the rates they charge those who want to borrow money to buy a home. -Holders of Alt-A and Prime mortgages with adjustable rates to clamor for the same treatment when the Alt-A and Prime adjustable party gets rolling in 2010-2012. I think the total volume of adjustable Alt-A and Prime debt is at least as great, if not greater, than the amount of adjustable subprime-debt. I think that the combination of tighter lending and higher rates that this move will likely result in will do more damage to the housing market than letting all parties take their medicine now. TANSTAAFL, baby. It's just a matter of who pays. IMO until the tax-adjusted cost of renting and "owning" are roughly equal, home prices have nowhere to go but down.

Take a pill, Jay. It wasn't exactly the Watts riots. Where in my post did you see me justifying mob action or taking the law into one's own hands? Yes, Matt. I'm sure that if a group of neo-Nazi's had used the same methods to to prevent relief shipments from departing to Africa, I'm sure you'd be impartially applauding their zesty civic action. Spare me. Another bizarroid flutters to earth from the mythical planet Hypothetica. What if only neo-nazi CHILDREN were preventing relief shipments to Africa? EVEN STICKIER SITUATION, huh? Feel free to address the example of the abortion protesters, anti-integrationists, etc - at your leisure. Not very good examples there, JayBoy. Both of these movements were/are marked by violence and murder...quite unlike the war protests. Had these folks stuck to civil disobedience, it would have been same same. Commit the act, get arrested, bring attention to your cause. Fair enough. The bloodshed these groups perpetrated, however, changes everything. If you're going to evaluate the morality of a specific demonstration in the context of the entire history of everyone ever associated with a particular set of convictions, it makes just as much sense to claim that the actions of "The Weathermen" taint the actions of the protestors in Olympia. Group of private citizens takes it upon themselves to determine what is an is not an acceptable use of the road. Group of private citizens takes it upon themselves to determine who will and will not be permitted to enter an abortion clinic. Same difference. You don't have to equate one to the other, but you do have to recognize that once you applaud groups furthering an agenda for walking down this path, you no longer have any concrete basis for objecting to the actions of groups who take such actions on behalf of an agenda that you reject or despise. There are two components to the moral equation here. The first is private morality, which is no one's business but the person who holds it. The other is a public moral, which holds groups of private citizens, acting outside the government, aren't entitled to limit or define the liberties of others with force. Once you discard this bit of public morality, you've embraced a perspective in which everyone's rights and liberties are subject to definition and limitation by private force. Minorities - be they racial, moral, or of any other category should think carefully about embracing an "activism" of this kind, because while it may work in their favor from time to time, the odds are high that they'll be on the losing end of such "activism" more often than not. On a side note, how our resident non-delusional "historical materialist" could equate stating that it's not the state's business to limit or define private belief, and that conversely, it's not the business of private citizens acting outside the government to impose their morals on others by force with an embrace of relativism is a mystery.

Anyway, to finish it, for what its worth.. JayB Im not so concerned about "maximum" strength gains. The vast majority of people would do well just getting to plain old "strength gains". Of coarse, I have my preferences. As for grip specifics, I do the forearm barbell curl (not just finger curl) as I mentioned @ around 120 lbs (give 'r take) X 4 to 5 sets, X 2-3 days a week. Between those curl sets I do sets of x50 hand grippers. Often, Ill throw my towel around the weight station high bar, grab the towel and do 'bent arm hangs' and pull ups with the towel. And when I do push ups Ill do fingertips for half of the 4 sets X 50 reps. Again, Im trying to not only get stronger here, but feel or rather "wallow in" the lactic burn so that I don't feel it when I climb. Anyway if you really want an answer regarding overall strength training we can do a PM exchange, let me know. D I was just kind of curious because strength is the primary benefit that I'm looking for when I actually lift with a specific purpose in the mind. That's normally for about 3-4 months in the winter, after which time I invariably wind up just doing maintenance type workouts and enjoying my hobbies. Anyhow - when I'm actually trying to accomplish something, I typically do a warmup set at about 12-15 reps@ ~50% of max, 3-4 sets of 4 to 6 reps @ ~65-70% of max, and 1-2 reps at around ~80-90% of max. That was basically the drill for strength training in HS, and I haven't changed much since then. Just kind of curious to see how far off the mark this routine is.

Also depends on how likely it is that the ice you send down will end up on the road and/or the cars zipping by, I imagine.

But let's face it, winter in the PNW is miserable for people who would rather be outside. Rock climbing in 45-degree rain? Mountains that are socked in for weeks? Very mediocre lift skiing in heavy snow and fog? Ice climbing at 32 degrees? There's not much to recommend but coffee and the Vertical World. I would definitely snow-bird my way out of here every winter, if it weren't for my obligations. Thank God for mountain bikes. I took up kayaking to take advantage of those very times. Most of the time the boating is primo when everything else sucks. However, if you don't have that kind of outlet during the times when the temps and the moisture aren't conducive to skiing or climbing, then things can be pretty bleak. I could not possibly disagree more about the skiing, and I've logged a fair number of days on the slopes outside of the Cascades. I love hitting Crystal when it's puking, socked in, and there's hardly anyone else on the lifts, and it only gets better when things clear up a bit.

I think that cops should be professional at all times and have zero emotional response to any attitude/provocation/defiance/etc thrown there way, and there are quite a few policemen out there who live up to that standard - but being human there's quite a few that don't. Is versus ought. My buddy and I pulled into the Sultan Park and Ride at about 1:00AM on a Friday night, and had no sinister motives other than meeting up with a Friend and carpooling to trailhead outside Leavenworth and hitting up Colchuck midwinter. Within about 2-3 minutes of pulling in, a policeman rolled in with the lights on, put the beam on us, and tapped on the window. At this point, the interaction could possibly could have gone downhill in a hurry, since we had done nothing wrong or illegal, and could have made a point of that fact had we chose to. It didn't work out that way, because we engaged him politely, said we understood why he might have reason to view a car with two grow men idling in a pullout after 1:00AM on a Friday as something a bit out of the ordinary. We explained what we were doing there, showed him our climbing gear, and then chatted with him about five minutes and got a few class-A "Tales from Methland" out of the guy before he said goodnight and drove off. Not everyone has this luxury, and sometimes no amount of courtesy or good sense can affect a situation for the better, but I'd be willing to wager that more often than not you can exert quite a bit of control over your interactions with police by treating them the way you'd want to be treated if you were in their shoes, even if they aren't doing the same for you when you first encounter them.

Also - I think that guy Freeclimb9 that used to post here a long time ago lives in or around SLC. Seemed like a cool guy from his posts? What about Thad of Thadsboner/"I Love Mormon Pussy!" Sticker-on-Helmet fame. Isn't he out in SLC? Other ideas are Warren Jeffs and/or Orin Hatch. Also - if you move to SLC you should really, really take up skiing and or boarding in a big way. Living in SLC and not skiing is like living in Hawaii and not surfing.

Might not be the kind of thing that either have the desire or the energy to share after a farewell post, but is this the accumulation of specific things that you can put your finger on, or is it just kind of an instinctive thing? I know you've moved around a bit, but there's a bit of truth to the slogan-on-a-dreamcatcher-themed-kitchen-magnet-esque notion that changing your surroundings doesn't matter as much as changing what's going on inside your head, at least in my experience. A change in your circumstances can potentially catalyze a lot of positive things on its own, but IMO if you just go for a change of scene and leave it at that you're quite a bit more likely to be disappointed by the outcome, and will find yourself dealing with a lot of the same stuff that you left behind. At the very least, if you move away and find yourself drawn back, you'll know that the PNW is where you belong. It was nice to meet you out there. On the few times that we ran into each other, I always thought you were a cool guy to be around, funny as hell, and inspiring with your passion every kind of climbing, and just getting out there. Hopefully that has or will carry over into other dimensions of your life. I also always dug the TR's. Can't quite resist the temptation to end this with... Cheers! Hopefully I'll run into you again at some point.

Since you sound like you know what you are talking about, what kind of set structure do you normally use for maximum strength gains?

http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/ Hopefully one day the public will wake up to public health threat number one - Vaccination - and will rid ourselves of that menace once and for all.

I don't like the sound of the bill, and existing law is probably more than adequate for dealing with homegrown extremists who turn violent, but this bit of text from the link: "With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain." Makes me think that there may be more to the story, and it's worth actually looking at the legislation and a few other bits of analysis before coming to a final conclusion. I hope that this means that the civil libertarians on the left will be equally moved to evaluate potential constraints on free expression that are bundled in with the next round of "hate crime" legislation.

4nRNYG_xM2U

Elections or primaries? Slightly different beasts.