ivan

'tis a motley rack - wouldn't matter if'n i had marks anyhow as it's all dirtier than keith moon's drawers on a sunday morning

if i see you climbing at ozone, am i allowed to taunt you? the climbing was great at da zone y-day - was thinking of you while howling my st paddy's day warmup list at max volume for the hundreds of crag-bunnies in attendance

i never mark my gear - everyone else marks theres, so why worry? plus, you can claim anyone else's non-marked shit b/c, hey, that's my mark!

maybe she wants to climb with a dude dammit pink, why couldnt' you have said "maybe she wants to climb w/ a man" so i coulda responded w/ the killer - "well, that explains why she didn't pm you either!"

more like, "why do you hate grammar?"

assuming the weather's good - reid, sandy or n face (haven't seen any tr's on the later this year, anyone set foot on it during all this recent good weather?) anyone interested?

this isn't even factoring in the price-tag for the eventual glitzy memorial that will be required to salute all the boys n' girls who died to keep china british either

what he said, and oh-by-the-way-coulior, can you get a new hot avatar pic? the current one kinda looks like a guy in a banana-hammock and i'm not certain if what i'm feeling is appropriate

beacon has a whole constellation of fixed, ancient and funky pins on the slab pitch of the se corner (to name just one route there sporting such history) - my fav was the one i resorted to using in the pouring rain last december - the eye ring has been so hammered in you can just barely thread a skinny runner through it

i already fought the urge to spray on this when it was in the partners forum

anyone repeating my stories generations from now will likely be passing down a big steaming pile of bullshit guess that's kinda the fun of it though.... "then he had this one summer, at band camp..."

i entered into this conversation being pretty nuetral - i think chris' pts are strongest so far - having the current level of access to the n side preserved/maintained and making it so the rest will stay as is forever w/ no more development seems to me a no-shit good idea.

odd that the god of wealth should be confused on such matters

the watts guide is my fav guide book simple b/c he uses such happy verbs as "scamper" and "frolic" in the route descriptions

i'm not an avian prognosticator every ww2 vet i've talked to said they were certain we would win, and that we would emerge as strong and as powerful as we did - i don't sense that level of optimism about our current Global War on Everything (for sure, it's not a good sign when the italians bail out on you )

certainly not disputing that, merely pointing out that he was actually competent at doing something before he got the job. and hey, he was capable of sensible elocution too - he wrote autobiography as he was dying of cancer that regained his lost family fortune - can't imagine anyone being so inspired to read whatever gw's ghost-writers might be able to come up with. grant and bush. both alcoholics. both failed businessmen. both waged wars on brown people. both republicans. both total failures as president largely attributed to appointing cronies who ran the country into the ground while they're were doing god knows what. why do you think bush is better than grant?

i don't him or of him either, so sharing those stories here would be interesting...

of course for them too - i just am not very optimistic it'll happen - how much longer can this house of cards we've built go on standing?

you added LBJ - he i think it a far more interesting prez than GW, and more tragic - i think his "great society" was far more sincere and humane than bush's "compassionate conservatism" and it was the republican's crucifixion of the democrats for "losing" china and the korean debacle that helped push him over the line into escalting vietnam

lincoln refused to recognize the confederacy as an independent country Do you really think that GWB's actions are any worse than, say those of Andrew Jackson (Trail of Tears), William McKinley (Spanish American War), Woodrow Wilson (war monger beneath a guise of liberal/pacifist), FDR (attempted dictator), or the administration of Ulysses Grant? i've mentioned several of those guys in past threads as assholes of course, so no need to switch horses now - i'm not terribly worried about comparing the level of asshole - bad is bad. fdr left a better legacy overall for certain than bush. jackson's on the 20$ and i seriously doubt gw will be getting any monetary enshrinement now grant at least could do SOMETHING right before he was president. mckinley had better taste in vice-presidents and at least could WIN the stupid little wars he got us involved in. certianly, GW will be leaving our country in a weaker place at the end of his presidency then all the prez's you mentioned, except maybe grant (who at least had a fine beard, and oh yeah, also managed to make it onto the 50$!)

certianly jaded - but truth picks the person, not the other way around - i don't understand how anyone can see it differently - again, quoting gibbon, who put it so sweetly when he summarized history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." i don't see either political party as having a soul - they've both shown historically their willingness to trade in any of their values in order to get power - i don't really blame them for it either, it's roughly the same thing as lions tearing up zebras in the serengeti - and like lions, i don't want to trust them or have them in any position to hurt me

lincoln refused to recognize the confederacy as an independent country

Refresh my memory: were the draft riots before the so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" or after? And the proclamation was pure political expediency that specifically did not free slaves in border states. Wilson's Sedition act was certainly enforced - I can't remember the famous trial right now...I'll look it up. the EP was made it late '62 (and certainly there was a political calculation that it would prevent england from throwing in w/ the south, given their severe distaste for the peculiar institution), the draft riots occured shortly after g-burg in '63 - lincoln knew he couldn't touch slavery in the north until after the south was dealt w/ b/c otherwise maryland would go into full melt-down and lose him washington d.c. - at any rate, the 13th amendment was passed in '65.

joe's been around a bunch of years and has a sharp mind, so it would be foolish of me to dismiss his well considered opinions offhand regretably, i'm a thoroughly iconoclastic nihilistic twit and would have to admit the whole cycle of history (yes cycle, not linear path from bad to good that you itimated at w/ the "forward" comment) will never cease and the agonies of man will not end until man himself ends - i'm mostly just intersted in trying to make the brief stay i have here, and that of my kids, will be as less-bad as possible, which necesitates opposing war in all but the most astonishingly clear-cut cases of self-defense.

you're also having fun w/ the history, FW - you're attributing the 1000 deaths in the draft riots to lincoln? uh, he sent in troops to bring an end to a violent riot begun by pissed off micks who didn't want to fight for niggers. and while lincoln certainly shit on the constitution, he did at least do it for the purpose of freeing a people it was within his jurisdiction to emancipate. similiarly, adam's alien acts were never really enforced, and repealed by jefferson