JayB

I've been pretty amazed by the abdication of this turf via the wholesale rejection of anything that has the word "moral' in it. Some kind of "Here's our "moral values" and this is why we support position X, position Y, etc." and a Blair-Clintonesque policy stance would probably be much more effective in terms of generating a coherent agenda that a large portion of the electorate could get behind. I don't think that it's necessarily a case that one side is completely neutral with respect to the manner in which people conduct their private lives. You may feel like gun control, for example, is a completely morally neutral issue - but there are plenty of people who feel as though this is a massive intrusion into their private lives. You may not agree with them on this one, but I think it's easy to assume that because a particular law or policy is in synch with your own viewpoint, it is by default un-intrusive and morally neutral.

Word is the river's been run at 77,000cfs before. Footage, people, footage....

I personally think that it's largely a semantic issue that kind of got reframed by an inapt buzzword. If the analysis had been framed in terms of people voting in a manner that's consistent with their "convictions" rather than "moral values" I think this would have been more accurate. I think that the Left considers most of their policy positions to be as grounded in a set of moral values that they are just as passionate about as the folks on the right, so the notion that ones sense of morals should play a major role in determining how one votes is or should be confined to the realm of crazy-ass backwoods irrationality is mistaken, IMO.

There's some footage of the main rapid on the Sky on Saturday here - at 15,000 CFS which made me want to hurl: http://www.professorpaddle.com/mediaview.asp?mediaid=573&riverid=586 It's currently at 71,700cfs and may peak a bit higher. Anyone out that way that'd care to take some pics? This is a level where it wouldn't be surprising to see double-wides getting recirculated in surreal hydraulics.

I am not sure that this would actually happen. I recall hearing someone interviewed on NPR who did some research after the '04 election and said that the effect of this issue on Republican turnout was dramatically overstated. And - unless the Democrats veer fairly dramatically to the center, much to the consternation of their own fringe base - anyone who is in charge of setting the agenda for the Republicans can essentially say - "Where you gonna go? To the party of 'The Daily Kos' and Al Sharpton?" and essentially take that portion of the vote for granted, or at least in the cheap seats.

Where's, like, the Big Lebowski, man?

I also have a kind of vain hope that this will lead the Republican leadership to rethink or at least substiantially modify the gay fixation and recast their thinking along more libertarian lines on this issue, which I think is both wrongheaded and destined to become an ever greater electoral liability as time goes one. More Von Hayek, less Von Fallwell.

I don't think that you have to be a personal admirer of the guy or his message or believe that it amounts to anything terribly significant relative to his catalog of faults - but in the realm of Evangelical Implosion the precedent has been to divert the blame and responsibility onto Satan, Tammy Faye's eyeliner, or whatever - but at least this guy's apology has the minor merit of confining blame and responsibility to himself. One could hope that a consequence of the fact that he put it all on himself rather than Satan et al would be that it might cause the folks in his congregation to re-examine some of their convictions instead of concluding that they need to barricade themselves further away from the society that they've been pointing fingers at and doing their best to isolate themselves from - but that's probably not terribly likely.

Looks like Haggard's final statement to his church is up. http://www.newlifechurch.org/TedHaggardStatement.pdf Not renouncing his beliefs - which will probably surprise, dissapoint, and outrage most people - but at least he's not blaming anyone or anything else for his actions.

When I was in the fourth grade I can recall being upset that I was too young to cast a vote for Reagan. Casting what may literally be the single vote against Kennedy in my district will provide some small measure of consolation after all of these years.

Yup.

The creation of this software could be the John Henry moment for untold numbers of literary academics. "Nihilism and the semantic paradigm of consensus" "The Consensus of Dialectic: Semantic discourse and rationalism." "The Forgotten Door: The postcapitalist paradigm of discourse in the works of Gibson." "The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator. To generate another essay, follow this Link . If you liked this particular essay and would like to return to it, follow this link for a bookmarkable page."

I think that single pitch-trad climbing on routes that are a challenge for me is just about as good as it gets, which might be why I think that "The Bend" at Tieton might be my all-time favorite place to climb. Love that place. Long moderate routes with a mix of slab and crack climbing, and long ridge routes in the alpine are close seconds, though.

Hahahaha. Definitely wins the "Avatar of the Month" awards, Bill. I'm sure that Pastor Ted would appreciate it if someone send him a complimentary copy of that catalog.

Interesting article, but at times the writing is so overwrought that the author must have had to do some tai chi and reach for his inhaler between paragraphs. Colorado Springs....the poor man's Salt Lake City.

A Harper's article from 2005 that I saw linked elsewhere contains an interesting passage describing the decor inside the Haggart MegaChurch: "After church, I walked across the parking lot to the World Prayer Center, where I watched prayers scroll over two giant flat-screen televisions while a young man played piano. The Prayer Center—a joint effort of several fundamentalist organizations but located at and presided over by New Life—houses a bookstore that when I visited was called the Arsenal (its name has since been changed to Solomon's Porch), as well as “corporate” prayer rooms, personal “prayer closets,” hotel rooms, and the headquarters of Global Harvest, a ministry dedicated to “spiritual warfare.” (The Prayer Center's nickname in the fundamentalist world is “spiritual NORAD.”) The atrium is a soaring foyer adorned with the flags of the nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling, bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel's pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear, a major figure in the evangelical-art world.[2] Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can't handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear's work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion toward Jesus. " Or a meth-fueled cornholeathon, apparently. Harper's Article from 2005

Aha...registered there under the same name, but haven't posted more than once since the exile began. ScottH is a good friend of mine who you may or may not have run into. Snap some photos of BD and post them at pp if you get the chance - I've always wanted to see that thing when it's roaring. I've heard of people running it at 55K, but I don't think I'd want much to do with it unless it was about 11X lower. Word.

Probably this one: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3603/ if the flows hold up overnight. Don't think that you'll have any problem finding water out there. I heard through the grapevine that the Sky is supposed to hit 38K on Sunday. Pretty easy to find a crew to hook up with at www.professorpaddle.com if you are need to scrounge up some folks to paddle with.

50% or thereabouts due to hispanic immigration. Of the hispanics that are eligible voters, 35-40% tend to vote Republican, 60-65% Democrat. This may be the primary political dynamic driving party politics in the 21st century. "Will urban metrosexuals and their barren career women be able to outsource their reproduction effectively enough to counter the Mormon juggernuaght? Stay tuned..."

Same.

I think the birthrate disparity will take care of the youth without much intervention on my part. "According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated, politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given the fact that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections." Maybe this explains why the dude in Colorado was so opposed to Gay Marriage?

Couldn:tagreemore`thanksforthesuggestion;

Ditto for "Moorehead," as anyone who can recall the travails of Bellevue's own Reverend Bob Moorehead in the late '90's.

Sarbanes-Oxley compliance would tide them over for quite a while.

How's that compliance coming in Canada and Euroland? There are quite a few people out there like myself who have accepted the scientific consensus but who's opinions about the optimal policy response may be different than your own, and I think you do a massive disservice to your own cause to pretend otherwise, and wrapping yourself in the cloak of the righteous heretic/crusader bemoaning the ill-motives of everything else will succeed in hitting the auto-gratification button, but won't help winning over the people that you'll need to embrace the cause in some fashion or another. Worked great for Earth First, so I can see why it's such a compelling model, though. Identifying the problem is easy - everyone agrees that AIDS, for example, is a problem - but within that consensus there's always been quite a bit of disagreement about what to do about it. Back in 1981 if a panel of experts had imposed a global AIDS tax to fund a trillion dollars worth of research into a vaccine - the leading candidate for an effective countermeasure at the time - it's not entirely clear that we'd be any closer to a cure than we are today, and a massive amount of resources would have been expended on a strategy that turned out to be impracticable in practice, when other therapeutic approaches in conjunction with low tech strategies like needle exchanges, condom, education, etc turned out to be the best available methods of countering the epidemic.