billcoe

Rock on Chad. But what happened to the hanger Kyle and I dropped off on the tree there?

back then .... ...evidently someone just took it and got a free hanger........

Shit, if we hadn't been typing at the same time, I could have just copied and pasted this. Well said.

Unfortunately, much like the many congressmen who did not actually read the bill, I fall into the same camp. Still without having read the bill I feel confident in saying this: I think the process was flawed and will lead to an abortion. I rarely see any bill come out of those groups that does the good one thinks it should do. Usually, on even relatively simple bills - after years of litigation, all kinds of things get created that were not actually intended. Given the complexity's of this and how many fingers got put into the pie, I suspect that is again the case here. The process should have been a group of experts examining best practices around the world and incorporating the best of them into a completed plan for us. Once the experts plan was in place, then let the politicians vote yes or no. Instead, what we had was a full carcass tossed out into a pit. The politicians all jumped in and ripped it apart here and there while adding things here and there and then the drug company's and insurance companies picked at the bones and added some excrement here and there, does anyone believe that the final product looks anything like what they started with or wanted? Time will tell. Once a thing like this gets in place, even if billions of dollars are getting transferred from our pockets directly to private companies like drug and insurance concerns while we pay twice as much for half of what we should get, it will be difficult, if not impossible to change it. Maybe this is different that everything else they produce, maybe this is a good thing. Sure. You asked. Have a nice day.

OMG that's hilarious jb! Thanks!

Damn man, take it easy. After all, Bill's your biggest fan around here. There's a reason for that. ouch! LOL FW, can you show me where I ever called you ignorant? I don't believe I have ever thought that way, and if I ever did, I must have been drinking and I apologise. It's true that I don't see eye to eye on the last election. I thought that if nothing else, the Presidential candidates showed their colors when they picked their running mates. Given McCains age, I couldn't see Palin as the head cheese. I thought it reflected badly on his thought processes as well. Whereas Obama picked a pretty sharp guy who could step in and do the job if the worst happened to him.

Which ones, Bill? Social Security; sure. But by 1938 six of his eight New Deal programs had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. After this, FDR threatened to "stack" the high court with an additional four justices (of his choosing, of course). FDR remains our closest brush with dictatorship. Is this where you want Obama to go? You're kinda malleable. I totally agree with Norris up there that the size and growth of federal programs is like a hydra that grows for it's own benefit. I have not seen them reduced by anyone yet, and there's been plenty who said they wanted too, and it's a scary thing when the money spending is so unbalanced and out of control. Yet we do have plenty of federal mandates and programs that would seem on the face of it as "unconstitutional" as this that don't seem to be going anywhere. Was not the federal income tax then a similarly Congressionally voted bill?

LOL! Nah, but doesn't it seem worse recently?

Great music choice JH! Now that's probably going to be stuck in my head next time out. LOL

I'm goin' with Homer on this one. LOL! “Homer Simpson: Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact.” yeah! ________________________________________________________________ yeah, damn whippersnappers.

Was the 10th amendment suspended during the FDR years? I could name a long list of federal programs still around from the 30s..... BTW, it seems that around here when people realize they don't have jack shit of an argument, they try to distract the conversation by just attacking the other person personally and just displaying their ignorance and meanness for all to see.

....uhhhh...."They're a lot of fun to ride, but you wouldn't want your friends to see you with one."

Thanks: I googled and got a Chuck Norris version: http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckNorris/2010/03/02/obama_vs_the_10th_amendment?page=full&comments=true By Chuck Norris: "Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms. Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Thomas Jefferson explained the pre-eminence of this amendment in 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." The point is that based on the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health care services have proved to break more national legs than they have to mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed. The government is inept to run America's health care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the gross national product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier? I agree with Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who put it best in their article a few months back, titled "Alternatives to government health takeover." They said this: "We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly. Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing -- especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act ... are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina." Returning the onus of solving health care issues to families, local communities and states would not only return a balance of power to our federal government but also help with America's economic recovery and build up communities at the same time. The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as "an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot." He also said, "The Framers had that same blind spot." In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind Framers," who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document! Our 44th president would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. Imagine Jefferson sitting there at the health care summit, a ripe sage at roughly 80 years of age. After listening to all the clamoring of both Republicans and Democrats, he politely but sternly utters these words, which he also wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson in 1823: "The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They (did not learn from the past), nor (were they) aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market." It couldn't be any clearer or wiser than that. I encourage you to go to TenthAmendmentCenter.com and learn more about your 10th Amendment rights, and then fight for those rights by holding all your representatives accountable to them."

FW, what constitutional provisions do they say are being violated? I did a google search and came up with this. http://www.constitutionforum.us/freedom_tour.html interesting snippet: "In the January 4th, edition of Time Magazine, an article was printed with the headline, "A Vicious Drug War Drags On". According to the article, to date, 14,000 people have been killed in the U.S. supported Mexican war on drugs and no end to the carnage is in sight. In response to this, the U.S. has committed an additional $1.4 billion to Mexico so it can combat this growing menace. However, this amount is minuscule in comparison to the amount being spent for drugs in the United States. We are supposed to be a democracy. If so, why doesn't our government realize that every dollar spent for illegal drugs by citizens is a vote for legalization? Prohibition led to a wholesale breakdown of law an order in this nation and contributed to the establishment of a criminal underworld which still plagues society today. Why hasn't our government learned anything from the lessons of prohibition? The obvious answer to this question is that those who run our war on drugs could care less about us or the carnage being wrought by their ignorance and stupidity. All they care about how much money their drug war puts in their budget. The formula at play here is more drugs = more crime and more crime = bigger budgets. The fallacy behind all this is that bigger budgets do not necessarily reduce the amount of drugs on the street and the beat goes on and on. The bottom line is that the bureaucrats are the only winners in our drug wars because they reap the benefits associated with having bigger budgets."

Showing off his new baby dawg Bosch. It looks altogether too clean. [/raindawg troll]

Teaparty CC.Com style: Looks like he is about to rap off the end of the rope there. Then you'll see some teabagging.... _________________________________________

Heh heh, you may not be aware of this, but grade school was over for the non-window licking short-bus riding folks quite some time ago.

I think Ivan got that #3 to good use Saturday higher up! Glad you didn't crater too bad dude, and hope you get out again soon. Aid falls always seem longer than they should be, in fact most falls seem that way. My 2nd worst fall involved me zooming past my belayer and landing on my ass on a ledge which I thought was not even reachable and the cheek looked like a target had been painted on it in purple and yellow for weeks, much to my wifes amusement. Nice picture sequence - those traversing pieces are a bitch as you can't test them well and have to commit and hope.

No, Trash did say that, however @ 4 posts down I explained my personal, first hand evidence from a friend who is a federal agent. I have told my story to a few of my friends before I read the news article which fully supports the federal agents point, and Pilchucks story is the 3rd bit of substantiating evidence. For myself, I don't have a tinfoil hat, but I believe that this will soon be coming out fully as the roads start being utilized this spring. I mean, who ever thought that the United States would (or could) monitor every phone call made in the country? Every damn one! Now there is no question that is the case. Who ever thought that the United States could have such good underwater listening devices that they could monitor the entire worlds oceans simultaneously and not just determine where every Soviet sub was located in real time anywhere underwater, but tell if another noise was a whale farting on the other side of the globe in the next ocean over? We had this very capability since the 70s as it turns out. 1984 as the book details it may be a bit late, but it's showing up.

Hey Kenny, how about spicing up the Gorge section with a new thread with your recent pictures on it!?

Ahhh-hah! I just spotted the business end of the thing, the actual camera, wow, I didn't see it previously. They have it rigged remotely from the box. I wonder how far? Hard to see and all but invisible. ...anyone else not see it there?

Your buddies story confirms it even more. Thanks Pilchuck. I do find it strange that he got charged for just walking down the road with his mutt though....is there more to that story? Had he driven down the road first so they had his license plate? Surely facial id isn't that far along. Maybe they had multiple cameras along the road. Do you know if it was it a Forest Service violation, county or state thing? Was he charged with "improperly walking a schnauzer"?

LOL! Donnie, I suspect that beyond being real difficult to ferret out: much like a cell phone, they may have location chips in them. Unless marked otherwise (like Gov't property), I suppose that it's much like picking up trash, and that's not illegal to do, while littering, like laying this all over the woods. I suppose that if you walked the first half mile of the edge of any branch road, you'd have a high probability being in the vicinity. Not that you could find one of these with some kind of electronic detection device. I was wondering how they transmit the images. Up to a satellite or over a cell network? A quick search of the PV-700 noted in the story doesn't really get to the technology behind this IMO.

My personal story is this: Just last month (feb), weeks ago, I was up hiking solo with my 2 dawgs into a remote new climbing area to look around and see what winter looked like up there. (Wanted to see if the ice was phat for John Frieh, there was ice alright but it was thin, mostly just wanted to get out there someplace on an otherwise marginal weather day). I came driving out on the single lane dirt road and bumped into an forest service patrol vehical coming my way....something I find new, strange, unneeded and unwelcome. I pulled over to a pullout and waved the hello greeting and it turns out that I did know one of the guys and we rolled out windows down and did the "hail fellow well met" thing, he gets out, Glock on hip and leans in the window.....just talked bullshit and what was up, happy to see each other. He works for another Federal police agency but was doing a "ride along" thinking he might go work for the Forest Service police. I thought it strange they were patrolling on a dirt road so far into the woods, at a time of year that few folks were out there, I figured they were looking for something specifically. Nope: later I heard from the guy that it was just a routine patrol, but that ALL of the Forest Service roads had these hidden cameras installed. All of them. Evidently it's usually close to where they start. He says "Don't bother looking, you'll never find them, LOL". I did a google search and saw nothing about anything like this, and was wondering if I might have been the subject of a joke by my buddy. I couldn't find anything searching for all kinds of different terms: "Forest Service installing surveillance cameras", or spy cameras on dirt roads", or "hidden police cameras in the woods" kind of thing anywhere. Yesterday I got an e-mail from the Western States lands Coalition http://www.westernslopenofee.org/ with the news story dated Mar 12th 2010 that the first camera was just found, also in February. Check out the location! East Coast. Remember that I'm in Oregon on a Forest Service road having this discussion with my buddy. Full link followed by full text: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/mar/16/francis-marion-has-hidden-cameras/ "Hidden cameras - Forest Service says devices used for law enforcement By Tony Bartelme The Post and Courier Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Last month, Herman Jacob took his daughter and her friend camping in the Francis Marion National Forest. While poking around for some firewood, Jacob noticed a wire. He pulled the wire and followed it to a video camera and antenna. The camera didn't have any markings identifying its owner, so Jacob took it home and called law enforcement agencies to find out if it was theirs, all the while wondering why someone would station a video camera in an isolated clearing in the woods. Herman Jacob squats next to a stump and log in the Francis Marion National Forest where he found a video camera buried and pointing toward a camping site (background) where he and his daughter were camping. Jacob was looking for firewood when he across the camera that was put there by the Forest Service. Photo by Brad Nettles Provided/Herman Jacob Herman Jacob found this motion-activated camera in a primitive campsite in the Francis Marion National Forest. He eventually received a call from Mark Heitzman of the U.S. Forest Service. In a stiff voice, Heitzman ordered Jacob to turn it back over to his agency, explaining that it had been set up to monitor "illicit activities." Jacob returned the camera but felt uneasy. Why, he wondered, would the Forest Service have secret cameras in a relatively remote camping area? What do they do with photos of bystanders? How many hidden cameras are they using, and for what purposes? Is this surveillance in the forest an effective law enforcement tool? And what are our expectations of privacy when we camp on public land? Officials with the Forest Service were hardly forthcoming with answers to these and other questions about their surveillance cameras. When contacted about the incident, Heitzman said "no comment" and referred other questions to Forest Service's public affairs, who he said, "won't know anything about it." Heather Frebe, public affairs officer with the Forest Service in Atlanta, told Watchdog that the camera was part of a law enforcement investigation, but she declined to provide any of the investigation's details. Asked how cameras are used in general, how many are routinely deployed throughout the Forest and about the agency's policies, Frebe also declined to discuss specifics. She said that surveillance cameras have been used for "numerous years" to provide for public safety and to protect the natural resources of the forest. Without elaborating, she said images of people who are not targets of an investigation are "not kept." In addition, when asked whether surveillance cameras had led to any arrests, she did not provide an example, saying in an e-mail statement: "Our officers use a variety of techniques to apprehend individuals who break laws on the national forest." Video surveillance, of course, is nothing new, and the courts have addressed the issue numerous times in recent decades. The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, and over time the courts have created a body of law that defines what's reasonable, though this has become more challenging as surveillance cameras became smaller and more advanced. In general, the courts have held that people typically have no reasonable level of privacy in public places, such as banks, streets, open fields in plain view, and on public lands, such as National Parks and National Forests. In various cases, judges ruled that a video camera is effectively an extension of a law enforcement officer's eyes and ears. In other words, if an officer can eyeball a campground in person, it's OK to station a video camera in his or her place. Jacob said he understands that law enforcement officials have a job to do but questioned whether stationing hidden cameras outweighed his and his children's privacy rights. He said the camp site they went to -- off a section of the Palmetto Trail on U.S. Highway 52 north of Moncks Corner -- was primitive and marked only by a metal rod and a small wooden stand for brochures. He didn't recall seeing any signs saying that the area was under surveillance. After he found the camera, he plugged the model number, PV-700, into his Blackberry, and his first hit on Google was a Web site offering a "law enforcement grade" motion-activated video camera for about $500. He called law enforcement agencies in the area, looking for its owner, and later got a call from Heitzman, an agent with the National Forest Service. "He sounded all bent out of shape that I had his camera," Jacob recalled. He asked Heitzman about the camera's purpose. When Heitzman told him that illegal activities were taking place in the area, Jacob said he asked whether it was safe to camp there. He said that Heitzman reassured him that it was. Jacob said he later wondered why the Forest Service would set up a camera in an area they considered safe. "Now, I'm wondering how many campsites they're monitoring?" He phoned Charleston attorney Tim Kulp for advice. Kulp said the Forest Service's failure to explain what they're doing in the forest raises important privacy questions. "What's the goal here?" He said the Forest Service also needs to address what they do with images of people who aren't targets of any investigation, particularly of children. Kulp said people generally are willing to give up their privacy if it means protection from harm but not if law enforcement officials are merely cracking down on petty offenses. He added that people's expectations of privacy in a remote area in the National Forest are different than other public spaces. "You're not going to go to the bathroom in the parking lot of Walmart, but you're not going to think twice in the forest." Both are public spaces, he said, but most people likely would expect to have more privacy in the forest." ____________________________________________________________ That's the end of the news story. For myself, I'm sadly beginning to feel more like it's an "us against them" thing. I served my county and I'm an honorably discharged veteran. I consider myself hardworking honest and patriotic. Yet I have to tell you, my own government utilizing all these resources to be needlessly spying on me and expanding it's powers for no apparent reason is shockingly unsettling and disturbing. Somehow, we don't have the resources to keep murderers, rapists and thieves in jail, but we have the funds to do this expensive monitoring? We can't keep illegals out from Mexico but we can spend millions or perhaps billions of uncharted and secret dollars to monitor all these dead end dirt roads in the middle of nowhere frequented primarily by honest citizens? It's total bullshit and I find it very, very, disturbing.

Heads up. Via a secret program, the Forest Service has instituted security surveillance monitoring via secret hidden cameras of all of the thousands and thousands of national roads controlled by the Forest Service. Moral? The government has way too much money and power and needs to be defunded, meantime, don't be poaching the Kings lines?