JayB

I wear all of my Fox News logo items to the ropeup and I still get mistaken for this guy. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!

Another vote for Ramuta's. 2-3 day turnaround, super-high quality. Have to give DP a based on my final visit to his shop.

A second vote for using clove hitches to keep the nuts in opposition....

Thread Drift: My boy can crank. Anyone getting on 12c's after climbing for all of 13 months gets props from me.

Didn't Alistair Crowly put up some lines on the chalk cliffs around the turn of the century?

Actually a number of politicians and candidates have admitted that they inhaled - Swarzenegger being the most recent example - and there was relatively little controversy. The only time it becomes a story is when a politician vehemently denies using drugs, cheating on his wife, or some other such transgression and evidence surfaces that suggests that the said politician lied about his conduct. It's generally not the behavior that causes the scandal - its the fact that the person lied about it, which raises questions about their trustworthiness, and naturally makes people wonder what else that they have lied about. If pretending otherwise helps Canadians cope then far be it for me to shatter these illusions though....

bush did not let congress and the commission see the intelligence reports for august about bin laden (daily brief reports). i tend to not believe in a conspiracy to let it happen, but the evidence seems to point to, at least, a serious lack in judgement. Uh-oh. j_b and I agree on something. I sense a conspiracy.....

There's also the fact that virtually everyone assumed that the first collision was an accident, and it wasn't until the second hit that it was clear to anyone that an attack was underway. Also, consider for a moment, the sheer number of airliners in the sky just after the first (and even the second) attack - all in close proximity to major urban centers. Good luck shooting down the right plane.

Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11 - By the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Real explanations generally lack the simple, compelling narrative found in the average conspiracy theory, and such is the case with the real report – hence their limited appeal relative to such tracts. The culprits are much more prosaic – bureaucratic turf protection and bungling, critical failures of inter-agency communication, data overload, etc – in sum, a classic intelligence failure. To make the leap from the very obvious and evident failure of American intelligence agencies to detect and thwart the attack beforehand to a sitting President and his cabinet engaging in a conspiracy to permit such an attack in the hopes of advancing their nefarious plot to achieve global domination is, to put it mildly - reaching just a bit - and certainly represents an abdication of one’s responsibility to ground one’s beliefs upon factual information. At least read the abridged findings on page 27-33 of the actual report.

This is where you lose me. Got any links to articles/info? One of Many Punch "Israel 9-11," or "Mossad Responsible 9-11," or "Zionist Conspiracy 911," or "Jews Responsible 9-11" into Google and have a look.

The absence of any conclusive evidence to suggest that this theory has any validity whatsoever is probably the main obstacle at this point. There's also the sources. Contrary to popular opinion - one should always take the source of any rumor or speculation into consideration, and ponder what interest they have in believing and circulating such theories. None of the figures involved in promoting this theory - which in its original incarnation claimed that the Mossad was behind the attacks so that the US would give Israel cart blanche to attack the Palestinians - should be given any special credence as any claim that they have to objectivity is utterly compromised by their all too obvious biases and unconcealed hostility towards the putative "culprits" in this disaster, be they the Mossad, Israel, the US, or the present administration. Was there not a committee that investigated every facet of the intelligence communities efforts and shortcomings for at least 18 months? Did they not report their findings to Congress? It would be miraculous indeed if they found anything that even hinted at such a conspiracy and the Democrats, NGO's, the media et al just decided to let it slip - not much of a story there, I'll admit - but you'd think it would at least make it onto page three. Clinton can't get blown in his office, Nixon can't rob an appartment, and if the story turns out to be true - a whitehouse aid can't leak the name of a CIA operative to a reporter - without the truth coming to light but a conspiracy of this magnitude can be perpetrated without a shred of factual evidence implicating the actors coming to light despite two years of the most intense scrutiny of any event in our history? Seems just a tad far-fetched to me. When serious people and/or publications with reputations for integrity and impartiality come forward with factual evidence to support such a claim - then I'll give the theory its due. Every rational person should do the same IMO.

The latter notion is quite offensive and ranks right up there with the theory that the Air Force is holding the cryopreserved bodies of aliens that crashed in Roswell at area 51, the notion that there is a Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) attempting to soften up the US for an invasion by the UN, and various other conspiracy theories in both its logic and the weight of the evidence behind it. Such beliefs reveal very little about the world as it is, or the events that they purport to explain, and a great deal about the and ideological predispositions and analytical capabilities of those that believe them. If you believe that the current administartion knew in advance that Al-Queda intended to use commercial airliners to destroy the Pentagon, the Twin Towers, and possibly either Capitol Building or The White house but allowed it to happen so that they could use the incident as a pretext to conquer the world - you are in rare company indeed.

Probably arriving after midnight on Friday....

What ye sow....

Question: “What Color is the sky” Answer: “Blue.” j_b’s answer: “yu cant anser the question without first considering the manner in which the wests epistemic colonialism subjugatd and devalued the diverse and heterodox notions of color in the indigenous peoples who had their own distinct notions of the physical world and the phenomena they observed within ti. the very question assumes a normative uniformity in visual perception that shows how the subtle bias of the dominant cultural hegemons has crept into the standard discourse concerning even the most elemental phenomena. legitimizing such a question in the absence of a preliminary discourse concerning responsibility for the cognitive holocaust which the west inflicted upon the subjugated peoples and their pre-colonical standards of optical norms would represent a wholesale capitulation before and abasement to the interest of the pigmento-industrial complex which chomsky has so deftly indicted in his works outlining their efforts to manufacture a false, consumerist consensus regarding the normative standards that underlie the conventional notions and definitions of what constitutes 'Color' "etc, etc, etc....

What points? All you said was "In a world run by me this never would have happened" That's not an argument - it's a self-indulgent fantasy. The actual historical facts are that Hussein was in power in 2002, and for the previous decade the US and its allies used an economic embargo to contain the regime. What would you have done if you were given both the responsibility for formulating policy in this arena and the power to implement it in 2002 and had to confront the situation as it existed at that time? Any policy would of necessity be centered on either continuing the embargo, discontinuing the embargo, removing Hussein by force, or some variation thereof. Which would you choose and why? Either answer the question or decline but spare me the Kumbayah inspired visions of a past that never was.

The question was not "How would you invent your own retroactive reality in order to avoid outlining the specific manner in which you would deal with Saddam Hussein and his regime?" Your evasion is answer enough. Thanks.

'people of my ilk' would never have helped him get to power, or armed him because he was beating up on iran, or ignored his treatment of the kurds because the turks were/are doing the same, or provided him with chemicals and helicopters to use against ethnic minorities, or encouraged people to rebel against his rule then let them be butchered, or let him strengthen his grip on the country to imprecedented level via the embargo. and 'people of my ilk' would for sure not repeat the same doomed policies of supporting anti-democratic regimes over and over again all over the globe. it's easy to create/condone the problem in the first place, then say that we have again to move in to supposedly fix it. That's nice - very moving - but what is your answer to the original question?

How would you and your ilk dealt with Saddam? Potlucks? Candlelight vigils? By playing head-in-the-sand games and pretending that he wouldn't rebuild his arsenals once the pressure for ending the embargo reached a crescendo and the pressure on his regime abated? Mind you, these are rhetorical questions as the answer is an unequivocal yes on all three.

Like who? Skipping clips on 11's wearing flip-flops deserves photographic documentation like the old Sherman 40oz photo! And when are you going to start putting that V6 strength to use on some cracks homie? You should be tearing that shite up!

Large audience = advertising dollars. Are there any popular conservative commentators who rely on corporate donations to stay on the air? Seems like most of them built up a grassroots following that they subsequently capilalized on for $$$.

Where is the "Challenge Thread?" Someone should post some of photos of unclimbed winter lines in the Cascades and see who throws down this season... And I think that Polish Bob is right on. Say what you want but he walks the talk.

Dru and Polish Bob could probably name the routes (I can't), but I think that a number of guys that have been accused or engaging in little more than roadside antics have put up some wicked new mixed routes in the mountains, sans bolts - and relied upon the strength and technique that they developed on bolted routes to do so. If I am not mistaken there is even an article on this phenomenon in this year's AAJ.

Thanks for the suggestions. Keep them coming!

Could someone define the precise manner in which the Patriot Act is undermining our freedoms? I have heard the hyperbole, but haven't seen much evidence to back it up. If it is in fact degrading the freedoms outlined in the Constitution then it is by definition unconstitutional and will be overturned in the courts eventually if it is not taken out with legislative action first. This is not without precedent, as there are a number of laws enacted in WWI and WWII (and earlier, e.g. the Alien and Sedition Acts) that gave the government power to stifle dissent that Congress ultimately revoked or allowed to expire. I'm not for complacency in these matters - but is the target here really the threats represented by this legislation or the Bush administration?