JayB

The Tawana Brawley fiasco merely being exhibit A.

That sucks. Give Edward's automotive on Aurora a call. Back when drove the last domestic vehicle I will ever own, they were always on the level. If it was an expensive repair they'd tell me how long the car would run without the repair, what the cheapest fix was, what the best fix was, and let me choose whatever option would work for me. Other advice: Once it's fixed, cut your losses. Sell it and get a Toyota.

Well OW, for what it's worth I agree with you on just about everything you said, but I would disagree with anyone who claimed that the color of one's skin is the primary determinant of one's fate in the US. I went to school with quite a few Black kids, some of who are doing pretty well now, some of who are not. Being as they were all Black, and therefore equally likely to be discriminated atgainst by folks who don't like Black people, the only things that can explain their differing fates are the variations in their personal traits, which have a lot to do with the sort of homes that they were raised in. Black kids from good homes that studied hard did well, black kids from bad homes that didn't study and/or work hard did poorly. Blacks who immigrate from the Carribean do pretty well here, black women earn more than their white counterparts with comparable qualifications, East Indians are more prosperous than whites, most Asians seem to be doing pretty well, an any member of an Indian tribe with land close enough to a large population of white people with more money than sense and a license to run a casino probably isn't hurting either, etc, etc, etc, etc. None of these phenomena are consistent with the "All social problems amongst minorities are a direct result of white racism" paradigm. As long as humans are around, those in a minority will have more challenges to contend with than those in the majority, no matter what the laws state or what sort of preferences they are entitled to in certain institutions. It sucks to be non-Japanese in Japan, non-Korean in Korea, a person from Tribe B in an area populated by Tribe A, etc. etc. etc. I'm not advocating complaceny in these matters, but I think its time to recognize that things have changed enough that there are more important things than one's race when it comes to determining how well of one is in this society.

Apparently it sucks a whole lot more to be Black in Africa, as there are literally millions of Africans who would jump at the chance to come over here and endure what passes for racial oppression in the United States these days.

Talk is cheap. If you are an advocate of reparations, then there's nothing to stop you from emptying your bank account, stopping the next black guy you see on the street and handing him everything you own. I am sure that you will find quite a few people who are willing to relieve you of both your guilt and your savings in this manner.

Still there. It was so fixed that Bronco and I used it as an anchor for hauling our supplies and hanging our portaledge.

I guess we shouldn't tell anyone about the perfect crimper and mono-pockets that I chiseled out to make the crux section go at 5.3 either.....

The economic model that Castro & Co implemented could never sustain the populace - that required continuous handouts from the Soviets, and once that ceased to flow they had no choice but to abandon it. The regime is currently sustained by the hard currency generated by the operation of the market within their borders, i.e. capitalism. 100% literacy and a low-infant mortality rate are wonderful things, but these things can be achieved by the citizens of any country that chooses to elevate them to the top of their collective priority list through the operation of their voting rights in a free society. Any country in which the government must forcibly detain the population, whatever its theoretical appeal to those who do not have to endure life within it, is not a model one should hold up for praise or emulation in my opinion. Anyhow, if one is going to discuss things like capitalism and socialism, the terms must have a consistent definition if the conversation is to have any meaning at all. Any definition of socialism which is not centered upon public ownership of all the means of production, and full state regulation of all economic acitivity is not historically accurate, as those are the key tenets that differentiate it from capitalism. Those are also the components that enabled totalitarian regimes to flourish within them, as once the state had enough power to control all aspects of economic life, complete control of political life was never far away. Cuba is a case in point.

this is essentially not true. through the 30's, although the afl leadship (gompers) was indeed anti-'collectivist', the labor movement was not so. then came the 2nd wwar, then mccarthysm. check out 'a people history of the us' by zinn for further reference. Gompers died in 1924. William Green took over thereafter, and George Meany replaced him in 1955. If the members wanted a Socialist at the helm, they would have elected one, no? Meany fought communism, and communists, because he knew full well how the workers had fared under communist regimes. He was protecting American workers by crusading against both. He had sense enough to realize that collective bargaining with corporations in a democratic country is tough, but attempting to do the same with totalitarian regimes is both impossible and deadly.

Bush's buddies at Enron manipulatiing the electricity market had just a bit to do with it. Also, the High Tech Crash was a big blow to California. The state never saved any money during the boom years, and instead developed a spending pattern similar to that of the now-bust dot-commers. California could not have prevented the dot-com bust, but their electrical woes are entirely of their own making. In countries that proceeded with deregulation of electricity in a rational manner, as England did, there have been no such problems. In California, however, they elected to deregulate wholesale prices while keeping a cap on retail rates. The transparent idiocy of this policy should have been evident to anyone able to count to 5, as it crippled the price mechanism necessary to govern supply and demand in an open market. As soon as the wholesale rates that the utilities had to pay for power rose above the maximum rates that they could charge their consumers, they had no choice but to operate at a loss. Eventually some of the major utilities stopped paying the folks who sold them the power, at which point many of them either refused to sell them anymore, or were forced to cease operation for a lack of revenues, further reducing the supply of power available on the market and driving prices ever higher. If they had lifted the cap on retail prices, demand would have declined immediately as consumers reduced their consumption, and producers would have scrambled to bring more capacity online in response to the increased demand in the short term, and built additional generating capacity in the long term. Since they had no assurance that they would be paid for the power they generated in either case, they sensibly declined to do either. The administration in California further compounded their errors by signing long term contracts with power companies that obligate Californians to pay much more than the market rate for years to come. They are currently paying above market prices for quite a bit of electricity that they are not using, and selling it back to the market at a significant loss. They could have secured guaranteed prices for power at a much lower cost by hiring a summer intern from Stanford's MBA program to use sock-puppets and cartoons to explain both the concept and the use of futures contracts to protect oneself from major price swings in critical commodities, but apparently they neglected to do so. The bottom line is that the folks in Sacremento responsible for managing California's electrical market and supplies were utterly inept, and they are attempting to exculpate themselves by chanting the word "Enron" over and over. Apparently it's working on some people.

Beck: My only objection to your post is that there are currently no examples of successful Socialist countries anywhere in the world, unless you consider North Korea a success. Every instance in which the government haas attempted to organize the economy in a manner that is consistent with Socialism in the true historical sense, by nationalizing major industries, abolishing private property, and the like have either aborted the experiment shortly after its inception or suffered decades of want and privation before conceding the point that the operation of the market is necessary for any economy to function. For examples of short lived experiments in true Socialism, take a look at how the British economy faired in the first few years of the Attlee administration, or what happened in the early 80's under Mitterand in France. It took all of a couple of years for both economies to go into a steep nosedive, and for each of these administrations to renounce the Socialist economic model in practice, though they retained the rhetoric. There are indeed quite a number of nations that are rhetorically committed to Socialism, but they are capitalist in practice in that they rely upon the markets to sustain their economies and to generate the tax revenue that funds their social services. Capitalism in which tax revenues are spent on social services is still capitalism, no matter how much lip-service the government or the citizens pay to Socialist ideals.

The critical difference being that whether or not one likes sport-climbing is a matter of personal opinion, while American organized labor's antipathy to collectivist ideologies and the regimes that enforced them is a matter of fact.

Supercilious pedant. Guilty as charged. Now hit that search button on Google and do some reading.

What they saw in Europe was middle class intellectuals taking over the labor movement for their own benefit, and doing relatively little to actually improve the lot of the workers. Most of the socialist intellectual leaders actually opposed or scoffed at legislative measures designed to improve pay and working conditions, arguing that supporting such measures would make the working class too comfortable to rebel. American labor leaders, Gompers in particular, had little interest in serving as canon fodder on behalf people who had never spent a day working with their hands, or being trapped in perpetual servitude to them while living in a totalitarian state supposedly being run for the benefit of the workers. They concluded that if they actually wanted to make things better for the workers, the best way to do so was to focus on small, incremental improvements in working conditions, pay, and the like under the protections that the constitution afforded.

Paraphrase of DFA: I'm a lazy worthless piece of shit. I don't care if other people work harder than I do to raise their families. They all owe me a cut! You should be in the mob DFA. Or better yet, start a union. Fuck are you on about, mate? Beauty of socialism is that everyone works hard, and everyone gets a cut. And what does organized crime have to do with everyone getting their fair share? Organized crime has more in common with your glorious capitalist system wherein the wealthy elite bully and intimidate others into doing their bidding. As for your apparent disdain for the labor union, you must be keen on a seven day, 80-plus hour work week in an unsafe, unhealthy environment, while you watch the meager pittance you're earning get funneled right back to the company to pay for your food (which you're forced to buy at the company store) and housing (i.e. your squalid single room with no plumbing or heat in a company-owned slum). Guess you DO believe in hard work. Have fun licking those corporate boots, hooker. DFA's off to tend the garden and help Ivan and Alexander make some bread for tonight's dinner! Funny thing is that organized labor has been one of the most persistently anticommunist organizations in the US for the duration of the 20th century, from Samuel Gompers to George Meany. Look these guys up on Google and learn why that was.

Give The People what they want Bronco! Write up a TR so that all can hear about the most gratuitous pin placement in history, the records we set for party-inflicted rockfall, and our salvation by Fern (the plant)..........

Liberalism is great. David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Ludvig Von Mises, F. A Von Hayek, etc, etc, etc, etc rule. They were true liberals, and devoted the better part of their lives to advancing the inextricably intertwined causes of free markets and free people. We have a lot to thank them for. They still use the term correctly in Europe, but here in the states the term Liberalism is a misnomer, as it refers to the tepid, lukewarm Socialism that the left in this country clings to despite its multiple staggering failures over the course of this century.

...which is exactly why I SHOULD care, as should the entire world. The United States of America is supposed to stand for and aspire to a set of principles that raised the standard for the entire human race. It's heady, important stuff about the innate equality of persons and the God-given rights of the individual and the need for all of us never to lose sight of those principles, no matter what. The world, including Canada, would be a vastly poorer place without that standard to reach for. But the current administration in Washington seems all too willing to discard some of those basic principles in the name of political expediency. And that's a shame, because we'll all be worse off if we lose them. That's why I care. I am with Murray on this one. Citizens of the US should be free to travel to any country on the face of the Earth that is willing to admit them. Period. Should they ignore the advisories which plainly state the risks of doing so, they should also be left to suffer the consequences of their decisions on their own, without our government expending a whit of energy in extricating them from a predicament of their own making. I also think that criminalizing travel to the said countries grants those who travel to such places the very things that they are seeking. Publicity for their cause, sympathy from their fellow travelers, legitimization of their delusional notions about being the the 21st century's answer to Henry David Thoreau, and gratification their nauseatingly adolescent (Hey! Look at Me! Hey - over here! Look! I AM BREAKING A LAW! Look!) need to elevate and sanctify their utterly trivial agenda through their "suffering." The parlor Marxists and other ideological voyeurs who have made aligned themselves with, and made a spectacle of traveling to, nations run by some of the most despicable regimes ever to disgrace the planet (Soviet Union, China, Vietnam) make me sick, but it is their right to do so, just as it is my right to take pleasure in villifying and denouncing them whenever the whim strikes me. More often than not, is is not even necessary for me to do so as they discredit both themselves and the causes they wish to advance far more effectively than I ever could when they exercise their constitutional right to free speech upon coming home. The very fact that they elect to return to the US rather than emmigrate to join their ideological contemporaries in whatever godforsaken totalitarian hellhole that they are attempting to legitimize speaks volumes in and of itself. I have little patience for ill-informed slander aimed at this country or its inhabitants, but if anyone living outside of our borders actually cares enough to articulate an honest, well-informed critique of our citizenry or our policies (as Murray has done here), I think that they are doing us a tremendous favor, as any policy that can be maintained in the absence of criticism is not worth keeping on the books. If they have the stronger argument, we should thank them for showing us the error of our ways and rectify them as well as possible. If their argument falls short, it can only serve to strengthen a legitimize whatever cause it is that they are opposed to.

Thrutching, swearing, and bleeding.

Too bad you are a bigger lad that I am Cracked, as I'd take-em off your hands if they fit. I've used as stand-alone pants for water-ice, long-alpine routes, BC skiiing/boarding, cycling in cold weather, volcano-slogging, cragging - you name it - in the Cascades and the Rockies. One of the better pieces of gear I've ever bought.

I think the photo in question may have shown Jesse high fivin' Charles Taylor. Homeboy is down with Charles and Foday like A.C. was down with O.J.

It'd be interesting to post this question on one of the national boards like rec.climbing or rockclimbing.com in order to get a sense of when and where the tactic had its origins in each state. I know that in Colorado Albert Ellingwood was responsible for bringing tactics he learned in the English hill district back to the state in the 1920's. I am not sure about this, but I can recall reading something about heading over to Europe and hitting the Alps during his stay. Some people give him credit for single-handedly importing modern (circa 1920) climbing tactics to the state, and it would be interesting to see if this was one of the tricks he brought back with him. As both Colorado and Wyoming have a fair number of moderate rock routes, it'd be interesting to see when simulclimbing caught on out there, and if it came along any earlier or later than it did in the PNW.

I hear you on that 10b. I think it's called "Sub-Aquous Tractor Removal." I was expecting something about as hard as the crux on Online but that sucker was waaaaay harder. The closest thing to pure friction climbing that I've ever lead. Cool route, but a sandbag for sure.

If I have to listen to you and Greg discuss this crap on an approach/drive again, my head may explode. Your secret is out. We know that you live for that stuff, kemosabe....

"Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" By Joseph Muravchik. Unabridged "Wealth of Nations" is next, followed by "King Leopold's Ghost" (History of the Belgian occupation of the Congo), by Adam Hochschild, then whatever the definitive account of France's History in North Africa and its other colonies is, and more history from there so I can continue to effortlessly annihiliate the pseudointellectual cranks that post here at will, and at leisure, while they frantically search Google and try to keep up. Bwahahahahahaahaha.....