JayB

Hey - Thanks for the suggestions!. I'm at the Public Library in Cody right now, and will head into the South Fork to check things out in a few minutes. I was planning to do that yesterday, but the fly-fishing was just too good.

...and anyone else that's been to Cody in Spring. I'm heading out to Cody tomorrow morning and will be there for the next week. Most of the south facing stuff should be toast by the time I get there but the folks at www.coldfear.com have been saying that the north facing stuff has grown as fat as they've ever seen it for the past couple of weeks. So - I need some recommendations. Looking for north facing 3's with a reasonable approach for the days when the g/f gets off of work at the hospital early (like noon) and for north facing 3s and 4s for when the homey from CO joins me up there from Friday-Sunday. Bozos Revenge and Mean Green are looking good at the moment but I'm open to suggestions as I have zero prior experience in the area. Thanks in advance for the help - will likely be crashing solo in the Cody, WY Walmart's parking lot due to some unforseen complications for with the housing situation, but am pondering Bunkhouse Willy's for lodging when the said homey rolls in later in the week, but would be grateful for any other suggestions as far as lodging in the area is concerned. Cheers, -Jay

What price are you looking for for years83-86?

Killer TR.

Thanks for the offer homes but I'm doing okay on that front. Evil One: The gist of your argument seems to be that if the governments in the Middle East were left to fend for themselves, they'd be unable to oppress any of their citizens, democracy would flower overnight, even the most petulant young men would search in vain for grievances to take their rulers to task for, and millitant Islamists would forget all about their perceived quarrel with the West. This is an entirely credible argument, given the precedent set by Iran. The first thing that the events which unfolded in Iran 25 years ago did was demonstrate the validity of your contention that no amount of popular unrest can unseat an authoritarian ruler who has the US's backing. The second thing this that this episode proved was that once the cruel yoke of Western-backed authoritarianism was thrown off, all barbarity and political oppression would cease instantaneously and a humane democracy would immediately spring forth from the ashes of the fallen order. - because that is exactly what happened in Iran. Iran's case also established the truism that no government which does not maintain an alliance with the United States could ever preside over its population in a manner that would instill any sense of grievance whatsoever in the said population. The youth of Iran - happy as pie and not a grievance in sight. And thank goodness that within days of the revolution we never heard anything more from the clerics who had previously stated their antipathy for the West and its citizens. I think most of them turned their devotion and fervor to needlepoint and stamp collecting. No western support = no oppresion = no terror. Simple as that. One could also apply this tidy little nostrum to Afghanistan. No oppression there once the Western backed rulers were out of the picture, and nary a terrorist ever lashed out from beyond their borders either. The pattern of terrorist actions in Iraq also lends credence to your thesis that the terrorists are really just a bunch of frustrated young democrats who would pretty much hang up there Kalashnikovs and go bury their Semtex somewhere if someone would just give them the chance to vote once in a while. Again - no mention of fulfilling their heavenly mandate to slaughter the Infidels, no public denunciations about combating the sinfulness and decadence of the West with bullets and dynamite - they're just aching for a parliament to call their own. The aim of the operations which have targeted the UN, peaceful gatherings of Shiites, and the Kurdish Political class is clearly to foster an accountable democratic government that will be responsible to the aspirations of the Iraqi people - not foment a catastrophic civil war that will leave the nation rife with discord, carnage, and ethnic feuding. That is especially true of the young men who have obviously concluded that the best way to bring about democratic reform in their own countries is to slaughter a procession of their fellow Muslims in the midst of their religious observances, and to assasinate the head of the UN's reconstruction efforts with an ambulance full of explosives. Thanks for the heads up.

I don't quite understand your position above; most such attempts have been met with the most brutal oppression, be it in Saudi Arabia (our "ally"), or in Iraq (also our "ally", once upon a time). My point is that "popular movements" within such rigid police-states are incredibly difficult; that's part of the reason why bin Laden is looked upon favorably by 66% of pakistanis, and enjoys widespread popularity in many other (most?) "Islamic" countries. well, you know, "clear thinkers" like JayB can't afford to be held down by such trifling realities. Evil One - you are slipping. Note the use of capital letters. What will the masses think. And SC - your are correct in your restatement of the obvious - that initiating and sustaining democratic reform is difficult in most states governed by an authoritarian regime, and impossible when the government is brutal and totalitarian enough, as was the case in Iraq. However, there's a continuum of oppression out there, and there are many examples of situations where the populace has succeeded in securing democratic reforms by political means rather than terrorism. They have also generally voiced the concerns and aspirations of the public that they purport to represent. They have also shown an ability to gauge what issues to push, in what manner, and at what time. The ruling class in Saudi Arabia, for example, would very likely hunt down and execute members of a political movement whose members targeted them for assasination, blew-up critical components of the economic infrastructure, and repeatedly stated their belief that they would like to see all of the idolatrous, infidel princes sodomized in hell by the devil for all of eternity. This same ruling class would arguably listen to members of a political movement whose stated goal was to further enhance the Kingdom's stability and prosperity by working with the royal family to promote a political environment that more effectively harnesses the talents and ambitions of their fellow countrymen, and enhances the public's investment in the prevailing political system via judicious democratic reform. One might expect reformers to know as much and conduct themselves accordingly. But I digress. The point is that if what really motivated the terrorists was a sincere desire to redress things like poverty, inequality, and the like their methods and their messages would be quite different. A cursory glance at their materials - widely available on the internet - will demonstrate that such things, are - ahem - not quite at the top of the list of their priorities, and providing adequate day care and hot school lunches for toddlers - while certainly causes that can best be championed by disembowling western tourists with car bombs - falls just a bit below "Slaying the Infidels Wherever They Exist" on most Islamic terrorists's to do lists. Despite the prevailing belief amongst members of the hard Left to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that these folks do not - actually - have many political goals in common with Jimmy Carter.

For those seeking to reimpose Baathist party rule, this may indeed be true. However, there is an abundance of public opinion polls, editorial pieces penned by Iraqis, Iraqi webloggers, and the conduct of the average Iraqis itself to consider, the sum of which paint a very different picture, which in turn suggests that your statement may be in need of a good bit of qualification, at the very least.

For Klenke: FWIW, I have it on good authority that a renegade band of capitalists in my evil homonym's ancestral homeland achieved a monopoly on capital letters through a combination of cunning, bribery, and underhanded tactics and henceforth artificially restricted the supply available to their less fortunate compatriots. In the years that followed only the wealthy amongst his countrymen were able to afford upper case letters, and would often compose letters to one another written entirely in capitals, which they subsequently took to laminating and displaying publically in a decadent display of weath which would have left even Thorstein Veblen reeling in an uncomprehending stupor. At the same time that the Capital Cartel was engaged in rigging the market to their own advantage, my Evil Homonym quitely amassed a great deal of wealth after attaining ironclad intellectual property rights to the vast majority of the world's discredited ideologies and selling or leasing them to the great swarming hordes of pampered activists native to college campuses there, all of whom had become physically addicted to the rush brought on by participating in utterly gratuitous and innefectual protest movements. Most, if not all of the ideas and ideologies he secured the rights to were going for a song, having long since been abandoned if not actively cursed by the all of the populations that had spawned them, but he was the first to recognize the effects that both nostalgia and the impossibility of ever having to confront their effects in person would have on his target demographics' perception of their value, and made a killing. However, in a touching show of solidarity with the less fortunate members of his society, he has nobly abstained from the use of upper case letters in his own writing despite having the wealth necessary to sprinkle them liberally througout every sentence he might ever need to write. His sacrifice has in turn inspired legions of his fellow countrymen, most of whom happen to post on the internet, by his example. So Klenke, goad not this man for his breathtaking parsimony with respect to this precious lexical commodity, but stand in quiet reverence as you gaze upon the evidence of his principled frugality. So there you have it - j_b's antipathy towards both capitalism and the use of upper case letters explained. The mystery is over. Three cheers and a raised glass to my Evil Homonym.

If percieved inequalities were the prime motivators behind political terror, we'd see quite a few more bombers targeting Westerners coming out of the Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Brazil, and other pockets of extreme poverty. Instead, the perpetrators of most large scale slaughters of Western civilians have come from relatively affluent societies, and were themselves posessed of advanced degrees. The notion that they were desperate people who were driven to violence by want, privation, and despair is entirely inconsistent with the truth. Moreover, if eradicating poverty and hopelessness were their primary goals, they would be conducting themselves in a decidedly different manner - as last time I checked there was relatively little money to be had in suicide bombings, and no examples of any nation achieving long-term prosperity by periodically slaughtering civilians in other countries with backpacks full of explosives. Prosperity results from increasing the quantity of goods and services that each person in a given society is capable of producing and purchasing, and it is quite clear at this stage in history that the best way to bring about such a condition is by securing the personal freedoms of the average citizen, which is in turn favored by a democratically accountable, transparent political system. No one is stupid enough to believe that slaughtering shoppers at a mall or teenagers at a disco is the best way to bring about such changes, except perhaps the terrorists and their apologists in the West. If they really wanted to redress economic inequalities and eliminate unfair policies in their own countries, they would have a much better chance of doing so by initiating mass movements in their own countries which harnessed the demands and ambitions of their fellow countrymen, most of whom are more concerned with rather prosaic mattters like securing a better life for their children and who have no interest in participating in political violence themselves. There are in fact examples like Korea and Spain, where the populations eventually succeeded in building a democratic state from a political system with authoritarian foundations. The fact of the matter is that the folks detonating these bombs are not furthering the development of a society that most of their fellow citizens wish to participate in, and they know it. In fact, many of their aims are far too wildly irrational and destructive to warrant serious consideration by anyone but the most delusional zealots. Isolating the entire Middle East from the rest of the world and imposing a retrograde Islamism on the population is not a popular goal, nor is converting the rest of the world to Islam by force a strategic objective worthy of serious contemplation. Terror, then, is what these people revert to when they cannot bridge the void between their ambitions and what the people they claim to represent actually want. Yet that never seems to stop people like you from legitimizing their slaughters by claiming that they are appropriate manifestations of the popular will.

Timm@y should add that hat to the cc.com apparel at that online shop. A must have if I have ever seen one.

I think the Seattle Public Libraries have most of the AAJ's in there collection..

I have a niece and a nephew that I'd be into taking to this thing, but I agree that Smith is a long way aways for such an event - at for those of us in Washington. My vote would be for something in the Icicle.

Sweet.

Wow. Just got the 73-01 set. Thanks for posting this Thinker.

Christ. That's terrible news. Sorry you had to see that Ralph, but kudos to you and Fleb for doing what you could to help. Sometimes that makes all the difference, but unfortunately there may have been nothing anyone could have done to save this climber after a fall of that magnitude. Anyone close to the deceased has my sympathies.

BTW - I have no problem with the idea in principle but given the enduring popularity of the "New Female Climber" troll and other zany hijinks that.just.never.seem.to.get.old in the sausage zone I think it would be mighty tough to get going....

I found a Luna Bar in my Jacket while skiing on Friday and noticed that the flavor was "Nutz over Chocolate"..... Can't help but wonder if there's a subversive voice at work at Cliff Bar Inc who's mocking the "Women's Empowerment through Marketing" schtick they've got going on there. I am personally waiting for the next phase of this movement to manifest itself in even more bizarre and incongruous ways. "Finally - An acetylene torch made for a woman's unique needs." "When I'm arc welding, nothing nurtures my soul like the Femweld 4000's sensuous curves..." "They told you you'd have to use plumber's tape made for men forever. Well Athenatape has just proven THEM wrong...." Add the soft focus shots, a few floral scenes, Natalie Merchant tracks in the background and plenty of shots depicting the soulful, fully-harmonized, and utterly empowered state of bliss that using the AhtenaTape Plumber's Tape for Women © will surely inspire and you're in business.

So who is down for 13th-14th. Vantage is tempting as it's closer but if those guys who jumped through the Ring of Fire in their bikini briefs will be there...

This of course explains the existence of tens of millions of non-union workers that are paid considerably more than minimum wage. Without unions, the law of supply and demand would cease to exist, and employers would not compete for workers with the skills they need to produced the goods or services that they sell for a profit. In point of fact, the closest the scenario that you described ever came to existing was/is in Communist countries. Pretty well sums up the situation in North Korea, provided you substitue "food" for cars. Anyhow - how did the Nobel Committee overlook an economic mastermind like you? You've been robbed, kemosabe.

This particular situation has more to do with human nature than the scruples of the average union member charged with selecting an administrator for the union's retirement plan assets. Put 1000 people from any background in a situation where someone has a powerful incentive to bribe them and a certain percentage will succumb to that temptation and accept the bribe. Where unions may be unique is that they may on the whole have worse-than-average safeguards and controls against this sort of thing. Obviously there are a fair number of corporations that had very poor governance as well, but I would bet that on the whole union's finances and the manner that they are administered are quite a bit less transparent than the average public corporation's.

Originally posted by Gary Y. "Anyway, sorry if the instructions seem complicated, but because we have limited seating (126 people) and we want to give preference to AAC and UWCC folk, we're asking that everyone email climb@u.washington.edu to claim a seat. We'll give AAC and UWCC folk first priority and then take care of everyone else. Likely everyone who wants to see it will get a spot, but this was the easiest way we could figure out how to pull it off. "

No doubt it has - but less scrupulous persons than yourself have succumbed to the temptation apparently. Any union with considerable assets to invest and half a clue should have measures written into their bylaws to prevent this sort of corruption in order to protect the interests of their members.

Yep. I actually was the one who put together our 401(k) plan. What's your point/question/issue? This is how I did ours: did some research, made some decisions, discussed it with the membership, signed the paper. Our decision was based on a number of factors. Now why on earth would I be interested in verifying/proving your claim for you? If you're going to trash unions, try to do it based on factual information. The potential for kickbacks and corruption should be absolutely clear to anyone who has "put together" a 401(k) plan. Investment companies make their money by charging fees to administer the plans, and/or by withdrawing a fixed percentage of the assets invested in the funds within the plan from the funds every year to cover expenses and make a profit. The more assets they manage or administer, the more money they make. These companies will compete aggressively to get their hands on any significant pool of assets - and if the person or persons responsible for determining who gets to manage the money hints that they would bring their business to the said investment company in exchange for a bribe.....

That's why it's all about Sharpton in 04. I think I have seen better lists elsewhere though. Some of the stuff on this one is just a tad limp. -Presided over the most prolonged shortage of soft-serve ice-cream of any president in history. -During my term, ChemLawn lawncare services failed to rejuvenate more moss-laden, weed-infested lawns than at any time in history. - I am the first sitting president who failed to honor National Pipe Fitter's Appreciation Day with a State Ceremony. -etc, etc, etc, etc.....