JosephH

Well, damned if that ain't one of those 'coming from you...' sorta deals. Do you have anything of substance to say about the topic or are you still too bitter about the results for glib and insightful commentary?

Sigh, just can't drown those fucking Puritans. He shouldn't have resigned.

And so it begins... Yep, gonna be a boat load of compromisin' going on - not. It's going to be a real Bambi vs. Godzilla before it's over. I'd personally be thinking more Wes Craven than Walt Disney if I were a republican. Man, can't wait for the 2016 republican primaries - gonna be a hoot and make the WWE look like a bunch of PeeWee Hermans.

Given the age demographics in Iran I think it's mostly a matter of keeping a lid on the place long enough for younger folks to prevail. Kids in Iran want the same things as every other kid: an iPhone, a Honda or Fiat, and a girlfriend.

Well, at least they didn't just hijack and fly it to an Iranian airbase like the last one.

No offense, but what is specific about Portland? In my experience experienced climbers are worldwide and small cams also work worldwide. Listen to advice here regardless of where they are from. Some of these guys do a lot of aid climbing so end up doing a lot of small placements.

Yeah, cams are shizzle for splitters, but if on normal mixed terrain you're always reaching for a cams before nuts you've definitely got it ass backwards.

Ho man, dude...

Oh, so you're for the Bambi scenario - ok, let's wait three months and see who the jerk is.

The latter: political cannibalism, factional tribal war, young eating the old, witch hunts, persecutions, inquisitions, radio lynch mobs, WMDs (Weapons of Media Destruction), internecine trench warfare, and in the end a party way more fractured and divided than the country as a whole. Expect their media apparatus to turn inward on itself and get downright ugly. That, or you believe they're all going to change their stripes, methods, and machine overnight in a family-friendly, Disney-kumbaya, compromise-hugging scenario. If the latter I have a bridge over I-5 to sell you.

pat has a second chair he can lend you if you want Dude, that chair has been empty for sixteen years.

That's right and integrity and sincerity with it - but then once again, I'm not the one who brought the subject up now am I.

Except none of that is going to happen. The republican strategy of the past forty years has been based on racism, homophobia, sexism, and xenophobia with a heavy dose of fiscal fantasy and war. And, if you look at the 2010 redistricting map on the county level, that strategy has been largely successful for them until Tuesday, but that strategy is now officially dead at the national level. And so they aren't going to turn things around on a dime. There is simply no credible way to swing from a forty year campaign of sewing hate, division, and lies to one of an honest and sincere interest in change and compromise as anything but a charade and that's what they just got called on - a political charade. And they got called on it precisely because the all-too-clear gap between the messaging of their primary that suddenly chameleon-morphed into the entirely different messaging of the final Romney push. - Forty years of racism and xenophobia won't allow them to sincerely and honestly embrace latinos. - Forty years of sexism and chauvinism won't allow them to embrace women (nor are women now going to forget what republicans really think). - Forty years of homophobia won't allow them to embrace gays or same sex marriage. - Forty years of lying about the benefits of cutting taxes for corporations and the rich won't allow them to support fair and honest levels of government revenue. Instead they're going to conduct an extended civil war, try to sell more insincere charades, and will far more likely move further right and less open to compromise and that's because their racially redrawn 2010 redistricting maps aren't going to let them do much of anything else at the state and local level. And yeah, that's the exact same problem the core Beacon crew has: trying to believably turn around a sixteen year campaign of fantasy, lies, and them vs. us shit-talking of the rangers and land managers to one of an honest and sincere working relationships overnight when they still actually don't believe a word of the noise they put out on their paper, blog, and facebook they hope the world wants to hear - in other words a charade no different then Romney just attempted. Maybe they'll have better luck than him, but they will not be any more sincere.

Oh, I've known and talked at length with no small number of libertarians of all stripes from mormons, Skousenians, survivalists to disaffected republicans and a veritable rainbow of tea colors in between. It's definitely a me-myself-and-mine culture marked with a decidedly superior pseudo-randian attitude, an all-too-convenient survival-of-the-fittest philosophy, and a remarkably narrow definition of 'our own'. The libertarian platform is even more unrealistic, extreme, and delusional than the republican 2012 platform with regard to any and all aspects of what it takes to run a country. It's just another form of radical fundamentalism and kneejerk symptom of a basic failure to cope with the inherent complexity of reality. The ideal world where the libertarian platform could successfully manage a government of any size only exists in libertarian fantasies. If they could build walls around our ghettos and pull the plug on them they'd be the first in line to do the deed because that in effect is precisely what their policies and platform would do. Their's is a Utopian vision which skirts just this side of a nightmarish Mad Max world for anyone less fortunate then themselves (and usually less white). And I'm the bigot? Libertarians and the tea partiers live in insular and self-reinforcing bubbles similar to the one the neocons operated within or the one the 'we're-not-W-neocons' republican party just had dissolve on-screen before their disbelieving eyes. Throw in the conspiracy element most libertarians harbor to one degree or another and it's pretty hard to establish a productive, reality-based conversation with any but a very, very small number of them. And try to "find common ground" or establish a political compromise with them writ large as party? Yeah, that would be great if yesterday they hadn't started running further, faster, and "purer" in exactly the opposite direction. About the only good thing I can say about libertarians is they will continue playing a not insignificant role in keeping the Whitehouse in democratic hands for a generation to come at this rate.

That might be the case, but I'm sure not interested in testing the current performance of their claims department.

Libertarians are basically a crew of people who dream they, as first class passengers, have manned the the only available lifeboats on a sinking ship through great foresight, skill, and manly self-reliance. Only later it comes to light they actually manned those lifeboats with all the provisions after scuttling the ship thirty minutes prior while all the other passengers were sleeping. In the investigation that followed the libertarians claimed the steerage passengers were sinking the boat by their sheer numbers and they only did what was necessary for the strong to survive. Empathy is definitely NOT part of the party platform.

I don't know, don't most smaller communities rely more heavily on state and federal funds than larger ones. Personally I'm slowly coming to a conclusion quite the opposite of libertarian themes - that we should instead abolish the states as an unnecessary anachronism from our past which now serves more as a clear and abiding hindrance to infrastructure improvements, suck at education, impede addressing national priorities and goals, drag on our comparative advantage, and simply foster paralysis and division.

Not by his own county of residence, they voted to throw him out.

His own county voted democratic.

Exactly - Reagan math, you just can't kill it, though Romney did a stellar job proving you can't sell the idea that 4 - 2 = 6 no matter how many times you repeat it. Maybe we're finally past all the 'trickle down' crap now once and for all.

My gear got heisted out from under the floor boards of my car out in front of my now wife's house. I had USAA auto and renters and they just asked me for a replacement cost and mailed a check under the rental policy with no documentation of any kind or questions asked. Must be some difference between the renters and HO policies from the sound of it or times have just changed.

Bolts were already failing in droves when I was in Krabi in '93 - it's got to be a total crapshoot now if they haven't been doing titanium replacements for the past decade at the very least.

As I understand the history the tunnels were cut, the slopes were clearcut up to the rock from the tracks (seen in photos), and the fourth tunnel blown all with an eye for riprap for work downriver along the Columbia and in Portland. Back then Portland flooded with some regularity and the rock was to be used somehow in relationship with those flooding events and roadwork.

That was W and Cheney. Obama is the guy who's been climbing back out of the ditch those clowns drove us into. Reagan could have been president for the past four years and guess what would have been different with the economy? Nada, nothing, zip and that's because it's going to take a decade to dig out from under two unnecessary preemptive wars that were put on the national credit card.

Any of the above are good though I would tend to shy away from the C3s.