billcoe

Haha! No, you're right....so I'm gonna stand back and watch in awe and deep respect as I'm sure that the CC.com brain trust will have this entire issue sorted out and solved within 20 posts. There would be no reason for duplicate posts like those on Supertopo! Link to Supertopo middle eastern stalemate

No question Ivan. In fact, even avoiding the complexities of approaching it like Jayb suggests, it pisses me off that we haven't even tried to take the baby steps which could and would be all but painless. (for CAFE std reasoning classifying SUV's CARS instead of trucks would be an easy example for instance). I think that we could and should immediately hedge our bets on the off chance it's true. The last president to even look at the future this way was Carter, and that's about as far as we got. Heres hope for the future:

very enlightening NOT!

There is a Supertopo thread almost 500 posts long wherein they have not been able to reach consensus either. So, in closing, arguing with people like Fear and Greed is valueless. We each bring in our own opinions and do not have enough personal info to really and truly know how to process it all for a good outcome for all partys involved. My thought is based on that is that you just have to pick a side. The US has done that. My summation of what it's boiled down to on Supertopo may be a reflection of what this thread will turn out to be and what other discourse on this subject is as well: Yes they are.... No..they're not....you are... Yes they are.... No..they're not....you are... Yes they are.... No..they're not....you are... Yes they are.... No..they're not....you are... Yes they are.... Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault asshole No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... FU, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Yes they are.... Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault asshole No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... FU, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault asshole No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... FU, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault asshole No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... FU, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault asshole No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... FU, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault No, your fault No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Your fault... No, your fault Asshole... No you're an asshole...

More on the Honey - Pesticide front: Link "Don't let claims on honey labels dupe you If it's made in America, it's likely not organic By ANDREW SCHNEIDER P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT When it comes to sizing up the purity of the honey you buy, you're pretty much on your own. HONEY LAUNDERING: A special report · Country of origin no guarantee on cheap imports · Antibiotic use could taint honey's reputation as a miracle drug · U.S. honey producers don't have it easy, and some say industry board isn't helping · Experts call for better U.S. standards for honey · Honey isn't all sweetness, experts warn You may be paying more for honey labeled "certified organic" or feel reassured by the "USDA Grade A" seal, but the truth is, there are few federal standards for honey, no government certification and no consequences for making false claims. For American-made honey, the "organic" boast, experts say, is highly suspect. Beekeepers may be doing their part, but honeybees have a foraging range of several miles, exposing them to pesticides, fertilizers and pollutants on their way back to the hive. And while they're required to put the country of origin on the label -- a fact that could help guide wary consumers -- some honey producers don't bother. The head of one major honey company advises caution and warns that in the United States, there's confusion over label terminology and inconsistent enforcement of labeling laws. "There is honey out there that is illegally and purposely mislabeled, an adulterated product that is very difficult to stop," said Dwight Stoller, chief executive of Kansas-based Golden Heritage Foods. "There's probably not a lot, but it's still a real issue, and consumers must be aware of that." Unless shoppers buy honey from a farmers market, where they can talk with the person who raised the bees and bottled the honey, they're relying on what's printed on the label. Major supermarkets offer dozens of different brands, sizes, types and flavors of honey for sale. Consumers might walk away with the finest-tasting, highest-quality honey there is. Or they could end up with an unlabeled blend, adulterated with impossible-to-detect cheap sweeteners or illegal antibiotics. Part of this is because of the government's failure to define what true honey is, but the blame also goes to a handful of sleazy honey packers who buy and sell cut-rate foreign honey, which usually has little problem slipping past overstretched customs inspectors. The Seattle P-I surveyed 60 honey products commonly sold in the Pacific Northwest and found glowing praises of healthfulness, sincere promises of quality and an endless selection of advertising adjectives touting honey as the true elixir. "100% Pure." "U.S. Grade A Pure." "U.S. Grade 1." "America's Best Honey." "U.S. Choice." "Natural and Pure." The list goes on and on, but it's mostly hype, experts say. "If somebody puts 'U.S. Grade A' on there, who's going to say it isn't?" said Harriet Behar, outreach coordinator with the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service. "There's no enforcement, so people can say whatever they want." The government takes a minor role in the grading of honey. It's left entirely up to the industry. Stoller was the only one willing to discuss it openly. His company, with beekeeping roots going back 90 years, is one of the nation's largest suppliers of honey to retail outlets, the food-processing industry and food service and restaurant-supply companies. The government, he said, doesn't have the resources to set and enforce needed standards. And that leads to inaccurate or misleading labeling. "Some packers just slap on whatever they feel like," he said. "Whatever they believe will attract the shopper to their product." 'Meaningless' claims Where things really get sticky is the selling of "organic" honey -- sold in some form by every major chain. Government, academic and industry experts insist that U.S. organic honey is a myth. With rare exceptions, this country is too developed and uses too many agricultural and industrial chemicals to allow for the production of organic honey. "Like other foods from free-roaming, wild creatures, it is difficult -- and in some places impossible -- to assure that honey bees have not come in contact with prohibited substances, like pesticides," said Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist for the Organic Center, a national advocacy group for the research and promotion of organic food. Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture research, he said, shows that the average hive contains traces of five or more pesticide residues. Arthur Harvey of the International Association of Organic Inspectors, who doubles as a Maine beekeeper, said two factors must be considered when attempting to produce organic honey: what the beekeeper puts into the hive, such as chemicals or medication of any kind; and the location of the hive. Can the bee fly to a place that can be a source of potential contamination? Harvey shares the concerns of many that there are no real USDA standards for organic honey. "What USDA has said is that you can certify any product as organic as long as you comply with existing regulation, but there are no regulations for honey," he said. "That means the green USDA organic sticker on honey is meaningless." Across the globe, there are 30 different, wide-ranging certification standards for organic honey, but there's no way for inspectors to detect fraud, according to Harvey. The USDA, he said, has never levied a fine for a violation of organic rules -- for honey or any other product. The Naturally Preferred honey brand, widely distributed by the Kroger supermarket chain, has a USDA seal on the front label. On the back, it boasts, "Certified Organic by the Washington State Department of Agriculture." Not so, say state officials. The Washington State Department of Agriculture doesn't certify honey "because we have no standards for organic honey," said agency spokesman Mike Louisell. "It shouldn't have WSDA on its label," he said, "because we don't do it." Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary section for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said there are no organic standards for honey in the United States because honeybees forage in a 2 to 2 1/2-mile radius of their colonies. "They're flying dust mops and will pick up unbelievable amounts of environmental contaminants," Hayes said. Unlike most states, Florida has 15 full-time inspectors, a lab and other resources dedicated to ensuring honey quality, and the state is poised to do what the federal government hasn't -- pass a law defining what honey is. Consumers stand to benefit, said Dr. Marion Aller, who heads Florida's food safety division. "This will make enforcement of food safety easier," he said. Aller said the honey industry supports the move because it's increasingly concerned that products touted as "pure" actually may be cut with other sugars or syrups. Washington has no apiculture inspectors, largely because there isn't the budget for it. Claudia Coles, food safety manager for the Agriculture Department, said her staff inspects Washington's honey producers for sanitary practices only, as it does with 1,700 other licensed food processors statewide. "But the quality analysis of honey -- determining what's really in the bottle -- isn't something we have funding for," she said. "We struggle first with issues of E. coli, pathogens that make people sick with acute illnesses." Some U.S. producers say they're confident offering certain foreign organic honeys to the public. Mike Ingalls, president of Pure Foods Inc. in Sultan, recently stood beside a stack of brown steel drums in his warehouse. It's all marked "Organic Honey" and "Product of Argentina" -- and each drum carries a sticker with a tracking number. "I can use that number to track the honey back to the supplier in Argentina and the specific beehives in latitude and longitude and degrees, minutes and seconds," he said, "so I can plot precisely where those hives were, and that they were at least six miles away from any cultivated crop." While Canada also produces some authentic organic honey, Ingalls said that product is currently in short supply so he's had to turn to South American imports. As for the domestic variety, he added: "We don't produce any organic honey in the United States." Ultra-filtered honey The industry hopes Florida's proposed honey standard is adopted by other states and the USDA. If so, it may provide law enforcement the tools it needs to stop the flood of adulterated honey products. Honey brokers and scientists say that not only is Chinese honey being laundered in other countries to avoid stiff U.S. tariffs and inspections, but also it's being sold as "malt sweetener," "blended syrup" and "rice syrup." Florida's inspectors say some honey exported from China and India is put through an ultra-filtration process that is meant to remove contaminants. Honey is heavily diluted with water, then repeatedly boiled and filtered until it returns to a more natural consistency. Those who have tested and tasted the filtered brew said the process can completely remove all traces of contaminants, "including the color." But there's a downside. "In the process of taking out the chemicals, they also take out all the good qualities of the honey. What the consumer is left with is a very low-quality, sweet product -- but certainly not honey," said Mark Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association. "If it is cheap and packers can use it to blend into other dark, cheap honey to make it lighter in color and taste a tad better, the ignorant general consumer is none the wiser. Caveat emptor," he warned. A warning consumers should be getting, but often don't, is a disclosure of where their honey came from. Federal law requires that the country of origin be printed on food labels, but many companies offer no clue. Nondisclosing companies range from small producers, such as Haggen Honey, distributed from Bellingham, and Anna's Honey, distributed by Seattle Gourmet Foods, to national distributors such as Target and Wal-Mart. A Target spokeswoman wouldn't disclose where the discount retailer's honey came from. But she said the Market Pantry Grade A honey "meets all USDA and FDA inspection standards." Linda Brown Blakley, a Wal-Mart senior spokeswoman, said it's her "understanding" that "if the honey is produced domestically, country of origin need not be included on the label." However, USDA says honey is considered a "perishable agricultural commodity" and country of origin is required. The label on Heins Organic Trail Honey, packaged by Pure Foods, errs on the side of overdisclosure, listing five countries of origin: U.S., Canada, China, Argentina and Australia. Ingalls, however, said that, too, isn't exactly right: He no longer imports from China and is just using up old labels. 'Tread carefully' Besides its certified organic claims, Kroger's Naturally Preferred honey also carries the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. That puzzles honey experts such as Behar. "I don't know how Good Housekeeping can do this. They don't know anything about honey standards," she said. Good Housekeeping -- a magazine owned by The Hearst Corp., the P-I's parent company -- confirmed that, in 2005, Naturally Preferred honey qualified for the seal, a status that expired last month. A magazine spokesperson said food products considered for the seal of approval are evaluated for nutritional value based on "federal, standard guidelines." The USDA, however, said it doesn't have such standards for honey. Consumer advocates warn shoppers not to put too much stock in seals of approval -- or even claims that the supermarket product with "honey" in the name actually contains any. Pringles' Honey Buttered Wheat Stix, for example, doesn't list honey among its 30-plus ingredients. A company representative said the snack is made in Thailand and contains artificial honey flavoring, not real honey. "We call it 'honey butter' because that's what it tastes like," she said. Honey Graham Crackers do contain honey -- it's on the ingredient list after sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. Ditto for Nabisco's Honey Maid Grahams and 16 other brands of "honey" crackers, snacks and cereals the P-I inspected. Paul van Westendorp, the provincial apiculturist for British Columbia's Ministry of Agriculture, said that in Canada, there are renewed calls to tighten up the regulations of honey labeling. "The erosion of the label 'honey' has been going on for decades and beekeepers have often been frustrated by the big food processors such as General Mills, Kellogg's and many others for using honey in their product-line advertising while the product contains little or no honey," he said. "Is the consumer getting cheated? That depends entirely on what the label says. The difference, of course, is that this type of product is typically sold to the ... uninformed consumer." That practice is commonplace, said Diane Dunaway, who has studied honey marketing and is editor of Bee-scene magazine, produced for Canadian beekeepers in British Columbia and elsewhere. "It's come down to consumers taking the time to read the ingredients list on the product label versus the marketing text," she said. "The folks who make Pringles aren't the first to exploit the health-inspiring word 'honey' for profit. Companies like these and other food processors are relying on the dumbing down of consumer awareness," Dunaway said. As warm and cuddly as the honeybee is to Madison Avenue, she warned food processors to tread carefully. "Hell hath no fury like a soccer mom scorned!" "

Great list LOL!

Good one. Earlier discussion. Ricardo Cassin Interview in May

Great find Hugh! Dudes heading up there in the winter. It sounds like he's siegeing the Harlan Direct line, and sending reports via his I phone! Wow! Pretty bad assed.

If these haven't sold yet, Adam really needs a set and they'll be used. Good Karma for sure.

I have this overwhelming feeling that the Shit is about to hit the fan. Perusing Jaybs chart of ARM rate increases about the hit the US only excaberated this feeling. (note to self, never bet against or with Jayb). I am more prepared than many, yet don't have food stuffs, water and other necessities all stockpiled in my home or in a bug out kit. I see Mountain House #10 cans will last 25-30 years in storage. Looks like a good way to go to bolster the food supply. Here's some interesting links. Has anyone else seen this coming and made any plans? If so , what have you done? ready .gov Survivalistboards.com http://www.republicmagazine.com/ Is this feeling crazy? What's everyone else thinking on this or doing about it?

Huh? One of the things I really like about Jim, is that when he comes to an idea like that (preserving the history), he does it from a position that others (not himself), would and should benefit from it and that's why it's the right thing for all of us to do. See, he's already seen all that old mank, and I suspect he doens't care, for himself, if he continues to see it. But if you would ask him, he'd most likely be thinking that there are pups not yet even climbing that would benefit and personally grow by the presence of seeing and perhaps even useing (with a new 3/8 bolt added to the mix so no-one dies) what use to be the gold std, but is now considered trash. That way, when they get off route in the Mts or in Yos, they have a basis of knowledge and won't freak out when they encounter this stuff. Can't speak for JO on that one although I'd bet he'd agree with it, but for myself, I totally concur with that idea.

Yup, original, factory produced: they made them for a bit.

Their site has this cryptic message: "A sad day indeed (Ended) $0.00 Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! We sure did here in snowy Buffalo. As we are all painfully aware, this country is in some serious financial trouble. The economy has taken a turn for the worse, and there just isn’t much money for hobbies, gizmos, doo-dads, toys or climbing gear. That said, the team here at Daily Climber have lost sleep deciding how to approach 2009. We tried asking for a bailout but they told us to talk to a bank, the bank pointed at GM. Who knows what the future will bring, but at the moment the only answer is to take a step back and concentrate on our core local business. Our team would like to thank you all for being a part of this – it’s been a hell of a ride! Be safe out there! (Even YOU Shawn!) Everything will be shipped out just as soon as our helper monkeys get back from their holiday. I haven’t decided what to do with the domain or code yet – maybe someone out there has an idea? Drop me a line, info at homecrag dot com"

What he said up there goes for me, however the last sentence is still specific bolt dependent (IMO). I mean, if the ideal placement is that old shit 1/4" er and the new one gets shunted off to a less than ideal placement while the old one is left in the way.....(this is the "use your best judgment" riff) Benny, I still have your 2 Metolius cams, I cuddle them at night as if they were my own. I oil them and talk to them so they are not lonely....but at some point I'm sure they will want to go back home, and they haven't forgotten you.

I gave up on them after the Napster thing. I would refer you to the true genius and greatness of Al whats hisname for more info. [video:youtube]Yz-grdpKVqg Or my son said for a long time you could download it for free of from Weird Als site! Link to Weird Al Yankovic "In April 2000, Ulrich became a vocal opponent of Napster and file sharing as Metallica sued the company for copyright infringement and racketeering. In July 2000, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after Metallica's entire catalogue was found to be freely available for download on the service. The case was settled out-of-court, resulting in more than 300,000 Napster users being banned from the service.[3] Due to his high profile role in Napster's legal troubles and subsequent demise, Ulrich faced significant criticism and ridicule from users of the service.[4] Since the Napster ordeal, Ulrich was quoted by LAUNCHcast as having some regrets:[5] “ I wish that I was more...you know, I felt kind of ambushed by the whole thing because I didn't really know enough about what we were getting ourselves into when we jumped. [...] We didn't know enough about the kind of grassroots thing, and what had been going on the last couple of months in the country as this whole new phenomenon was going on. We were just so stuck in our controlling ways of wanting to control everything that had to do with METALLICA. So we were caught off guard and we had a little bit of a rougher landing on that one than on other times than when we just blindly leap. But you know, I'm still proud of the fact that we did leap... and I took a lot of hits and it was difficult. ” One such 'hit' was being featured in an episode of South Park in which the children are taught not to download illegally because multi-millionaires like Ulrich now have to wait a little longer to buy expensive, extravagant things, like the ridiculous "gold-plated shark tank bar beside the pool". The segment is a parody of the Napster case. Ulrich has been target to many verbal attacks after this incident." __________________________________________________________________ Frankie Yankovic, the late Polka King and seller of 30 million records who passed at 83 years old in 1998 (no relation although Al played on one of Frankies albums!) could hit that accordion way hot too!

DOHHH! ... . . . OUCH!

Global warming - todays artical: link UK telegraph "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph. By Christopher Booker Last Updated: 7:40AM GMT 29 Dec 2008 Polar bear Polar bears will be fine after all Photo: AP The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day". Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects. First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century. Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise. Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade). Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions. Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times. Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess. As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world. I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest "metric martyr", the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council's vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce "by the bowl" (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don't understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray. Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original "martyrs" who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column's readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book). Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers' lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith's determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause celebre. May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year." Don't know about this. I had posted that the New Farmers Almanac had called for cooling for the next 80 years.

Of course, if it's a multi-pitch route, if someone fell 9 feet off the belay while trying to clip, it would be an 18' fall - massive fall factor 2 right onto the anchor. Hanging belay would add the weight of the belayer onto the calculation. If there was a ledge, add potential 2 broken ankles to the score. You don't say anything about the route. What is this anyway, Canadian new math?

who cares? lets go after the real criminals--cheney, rumsfeld and, oh yes, friedman.... heh heh! This asshole IS a real criminal. They should all be locked up everytime they get caught! Many of our representatives are honest hard working folks: and jackasses like these give them a bad name and break down our respect for what should be a great system IMO. I'm saddened to see that it appears that Barak appears to be going to let bygones be bygones with the last group of criminals. Cheney recently looks to have owned up to outing Valerie Plame, yet Scooter Libby took that hit. WTF kind of crap was that to just be ignored? WT heck is with Illinois anyway? They already have the last Republican asswipe locked up in stir and now they're adding another asshole?

Yes, horsecock can be serious business to our Canadian brothers PC.

......see what I mean? All opinion all the time. No links or corroborating evidence. If it's anecdotal it's in! must be the theme there. Wheres my Monkeys?

--source: Millions of monkeys So, when a financier produces an exotic instrument whereby someone of lesser means can achieve the unthought-of, then that raises a red flag. It’s ok in a limited sense but when it balloons to the extent where it can produce the effects that we’re seeing, then something’s fucking rotten in the state of Denmark. Here’s a graphic to ponder: http://voltagecreative.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/bailout-pie.png You're a damn breath of fresh air STP. Someone who not only READS the link, but comments on it directly and also airs some interesting personal ideas as well that relate. You contribute a lot to the subject, unlike some (Prole and Jb), who would appear to not be bothered to read the link or the story but just attack the writer without bothering to add links or any extraneous supporting documentation on their weak-asses opinion and blowhard assertions. Somehow they expect us to either take them seriously and/or find their hot air and public flatulence interesting. Although I don't know why. But thank you for those posts and the contributions. ps, Monkeys at $35 seems like a fair price to me. Put me down for 3-4 and I'll have them out typing and out thinking both Prole and JB in the spray thread and save myself some work.

It's only ghey if you get buried for eternity and some archeologist like Raindawg finds you 2,000 years from now. PS, the ice is melting too. Have fun but be safe. God I sound like my mother did 30 years ago.

You'd have to pay me to listen to that for more than 2 min. Painful.

Best just let him finish his business Clark? It's at 1 billion and growing! Talk about fu*king up your Kwanza and Festivis celebrations.