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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 3, 2012 - 11:38am PT
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The original thread on this subject, a unique blend of climbing and politics, has mysteriously disappeared and links from the many news reports that quoted it no longer work. So, I am putting my posts from the “disappeared” thread here.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Excellent Rick. Let's turn up the heat again.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 11:42am PT
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September 3, 2012
[In response to Donini's comments about fourteener enthusiasts not being real climbers]
Jim-I am not so dismissive of 14er collectors. Sure there is a lot of rubble rambling and choss scrambling involved. But the great thing about it is that they are scattered throughout remote parts of Colorado and you have to visit beautiful little towns and valleys to tick the list, towns and valleys that you would never visit otherwise.
Riley is right. To have climbed forty and not be a resident means that you would have had to devote entire summers to climbing fourteeners, in essence becoming a “lifestyle” hiker/scrambler. I doubt Ryan had the time or dedication to this goal to take time out from his political career. Even if you did four a summer, that would be ten summers devoted to travelling to Colorado for hiking. Even if you live here and can drive to the trailheads, 40 is a huge commitment of time and energy.
Why does it matter that Paul Ryan is a mountain man, at home above timberline on the fourteeners? Because there is no better index of character. It tells of someone's backbone under pressure, resourcefulness in facing adversity, and trustworthiness for power. Conservative or liberal isn't the point. The high peaks simply test your mettle. Declinists and defeatists need not apply. Excuses are for flatlanders.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_21386184/paul-ryan-mountain-man
Why does it matter that Paul Ryan, in all likelihood, is not a “mountain man” and is lying about his fourteener record? Because there is no better index of character. It tells of someone’s desperation to connect to the voters of a swing state, ability to lie without conscience, and ruthless ambition to obtain power through any means. It also is indicative of his contempt for the citizens of Colorado. He apparently believes that Colorado voters are clueless and that the press is a lapdog that has lost any ability to check facts. Dedicated hikers, scramblers, climbers, hunters, fishermen and other aficionados of the Colorado high peaks do not need to exaggerate their visceral connection to the Colorado high country and need not apply to become a faux mountain man, like Paul Ryan.
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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Yup,let's keep this up top.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 11:45am PT
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September 4, 2012
Open Letter To Congressman Paul Ryan:
Produce the spreadsheet! You have one because fourteener enthusiasts invariably have one; you know, the one that records each peak ascended chronologically, and lists companions, weather, notes on circumstances of the climb, elapsed time, and probably a half dozen other columns of detail.
After all, the fourteener quest is essentially one big to do list, and the satisfaction of checking one off after a strenuous day in the high peaks is the major part of the attraction. By definition, a person who aspires to climb all 54 fourteeners is the sort of person who loves and keeps lists. It’s probably close at hand, on your laptop, because that’s just how fourteener people are. They like to refer to the list frequently, often daily or more if the obsession is at an advanced stage.
Just post it here showing 40 peaks bagged, along with the obligatory summit photos of Capitol and Pyramid, and the deep suspicion that you are a Colorado mountaineering poseur will be laid to rest and we can move onto discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of your budget proposals.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Would you trust someone as your veep if they lied about such a matter?
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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The repubs can say we're wasting our time dragging up trivial issues,but obviously someone was concerned enough to have the thread removed.All I have to say is,a liar is a liar.
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hossjulia
Social climber
Eastside (of the Tetons)
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I still want to know how and why the original thread got entirely deleted.
(And apologies to Chris if it was his choice and he's sick of hearing about it.)
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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CMAC, WTF?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!
!!!!
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 11:59am PT
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September 7, 2012
[Note that the Denver Post op-ed quoted below in its original form, has since been "corrected" to revise the number of claimed fourteeners from 40 to 28 in the version on the Post's website now]
Since our banter among climbers here has become part of a national discussion questioning the credibility of Paul Ryan, I want to respond to the question some have raised: who cares about whether Ryan climbed 40 or 28 or zero fourteeners?
It should be noted how the fourteeners issue came about. It did not arise because Paul Ryan is being nitpicked about some minor background facts buried in his Congressional resume. Paul Ryan’s fourteener scrambles in Colorado were deliberately raised as a sword, by the Romney/Ryan campaign, to inflict political injury on Joe Biden and President Obama in Colorado, by equating athletic feats with the ability to lead the country. They asserted that, compared to the manly and uber-athletic Ryan, Joe Biden and President Obama are exercise wimps and therefore untrustworthy.
The Romney/Ryan campaign through its allies, made the claim that Ryan’s ascents of 40 fourteeners was not just important, but was the seminal issue defining Ryan’s flawless character. Here is the Denver Post op-ed which ran on August 26, 2012:
Add to this the hard-charging congressman's love for the Colorado high country (he has climbed 40 of the state's 54 peaks over 14,000 feet) and you have the most potentially transformative VP selection since President William McKinley put Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket in 1900. (Not the genteel Roosevelt, squire of Hyde Park, but his "strenuous life" cousin who ranched in Dakota and hunted bear in Glenwood Springs.)
Why does it matter that Paul Ryan is a mountain man, at home above timberline on the fourteeners? Because there is no better index of character. It tells of someone's backbone under pressure, resourcefulness in facing adversity, and trustworthiness for power. Conservative or liberal isn't the point. The high peaks simply test your mettle. Declinists and defeatists need not apply. Excuses are for flatlanders.
Describing the summit approach for Capitol Peak near Aspen (14,130 feet), the Colorado Mountain Club guidebook says with jaunty understatement: "Scramble around a pinnacle or two, stroll along the knife edge," and you're there. Ryan told me last week that Capitol and nearby Pyramid Peak (14,018 feet) are his favorite climbs so far.
Can you imagine Vice President Joe Biden even wanting, let alone being able, to stroll the Capitol knife edge? Or forging to the top of a "very rough and steep" Pyramid, with its "precariously poised rocks" warned of in the same guidebook?
I can't — and it's not just that Biden always has one foot in his mouth. Nor is it merely differing leisure preferences: golf greens for the presidential incumbent, boulder fields for the would-be veep. Rather the contrast goes to the core of what the men on these two tickets expect of themselves and what they believe free Americans are capable of.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_21386184/paul-ryan-mountain-man
The story of having climbed 40 fourteeners was asserted more than once by the Ryan camp as part of his Colorado campaign. Here is Colorado Republican party chairman Ryan Call, reported on August 11, 2012, in the Denver Post:
Call said he has met Ryan, who told him he has climbed nearly 40 of Colorado's 53 fourteeners, or mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation.
Colorado pundits react to Mitt Romney's choice for running mate - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/nationalpolitics/ci_21291876/colorado-pundits-react-mitt-romneys-choice-running-mate#ixzz25n5qEVTF
So it is important to remember that, contrary to the Romney/Ryan response to James Fallows, Ryan’s purported climbs of 40 fourteeners were promoted directly by the campaign or its surrogates, beginning in early August, in order to belittle their opponents.
And this strategem by the Romney campaign was beginning to have some effect: Democratic congressman Perlmutter was asked by the a reporter-- as a direct result of the Ryan campaign’s promotion of the fourteener theme-- how many fourteeners he had climbed.
Have you climbed as many fourteeners as Paul Ryan?” a reporter asked Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter. The Golden Democrat said he has not.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2012/09/05/climb-mountain-paul-ryan-fourteeners/80482/
That gushing op-ed piece in the Denver Post , overwrought and over-the-top in tone, was ripe for parody as a whole, but what was most laughable was its assertion that climbing some mountains meant that Ryan would make a superior leader. I have been a technical rock and alpine climber for 40 years and climbing has some true heroes, as well as its share of charlatans, mountebanks and frauds. Just because you’ve climbed mountains, does not magically grant you credibility; that is earned by the practice of consistently telling the truth, whether making a speech to a political convention or describing your athletic achievements. It is earned by resisting the urge to exaggerate your accomplishments when you think the facts cannot be readily checked.
One of the attributes real climbers admire most in other climbers is accuracy and honesty in reporting your ascents. This is necessary, because unlike marathons where detailed time records are kept, who made the first ascent of a climbing route (the typical measure of climbing prowess) is largely dependent on an honor system. Usually there is no one around to witness whether you accomplished a first ascent in good style or not. Climber self-reporting of first ascents is usually taken at face value until facts show a climber to be untrustworthy.
When I read the Denver op-ed piece, It rankled that a politician would assert that he would be a better leader of the country because he came to Colorado on vacation and hiked or scrambled up some peaks, and that this also proved he was not a “declinist or a defeatist”, like Obama and Biden.
Real climbers don’t flaunt their climbing achievements to impress those who do not climb. You have never heard Senator Mark Udall, a, truly accomplished mountain climber and ski mountaineer, do that and Paul Ryan is a mountaineering nullity compared to Udall’s impressive climbing resume. Also, Udall has proven his love of the Colorado mountains not by bragging about his climbs, but by working tirelessly, throughout his career, to preserve and protect them.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 12:08pm PT
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September 8, 2012
Did you notice the subtle, but nasty, cheap shot in that August 26 op-ed piece quoted above? The op-ed contrasts the “hard-charging” mountain man, Paul Ryan, with the “genteel…squire of Hyde Park,” Franklin Roosevelt.
Add to this the hard-charging congressman's love for the Colorado high country (he has climbed 40 of the state's 54 peaks over 14,000 feet) and you have the most potentially transformative VP selection since President William McKinley put Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket in 1900. (Not the genteel Roosevelt, squire of Hyde Park, but his "strenuous life" cousin who ranched in Dakota and hunted bear in Glenwood Springs.)
Not very nice to compare the athletic abilities of Ryan and Roosevelt, since Franklin Roosevelt contracted Polio and had to use a wheelchair while he was president.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 12:16pm PT
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September 9, 2012
According to Trip Gabriel’s article in the New York Times Friday, the Ryan campaign is now asserting that we all just misunderstood what he said about his fourteener climbs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/us/politics/paul-ryan-faces-scrutiny-over-marathon-and-mountain-claims.html?_r=0
The Ryan camp claims that this misunderstanding is the result of a miscommunication between Paul Ryan and Ryan Call, chairman of the Colorado Republican party.
In the New York Times article, Gabriel states that he spoke to Ryan Call, chairman of the Colorado Republican party. Call now denies, as reported in the Denver Post, that Ryan told Call a few weeks ago that Ryan had climbed “nearly forty of the 53 peaks over 14,000 feet.” Call now claims that Ryan told him only that he had climbed “a number of peaks.” Call’s story now is that he took that statement and combined it with his knowledge of a 2009 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article where “40 climbs” was mentioned, and then “inferred” the quote that Ryan climbed “nearly forty of the 53 peaks over 14,000 feet.”
In an interview Thursday, Call said Ryan had stated only that he climbed “a number of peaks,” and that he had inferred the total from a 2009 article in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/168696016.html
James Fallows--who quoted my earlier post in his Atlantic Monthly blog --seems to accept this explanation at face value. Fallows even asserts that we climbers also “drew the wrong inference” from Ryan’s comments.
Like, apparently, many other people, I drew the wrong inference from Paul Ryan's comment about making "close to 40" climbs of Colorado's "Fourteeners," the 54 summits at elevations of 14,000 feet and above. I understood him -- as did some journalists, political figures, and climbers in Colorado -- to mean around 40 separate mountains. His spokesman clarified that he meant around 40 climbs, of a smaller number of peaks.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/paul-ryan-mountaineer/261904/
The reference to climbers links to this thread and my earlier post.
Feel free to quote from my posts here, Mr. Fallows, but please don’t put words or even inferences in my mouth. I, and other climbers, did not draw the wrong inference from Ryan’s remarks.
As explained in an earlier post, the only reasonable inference when someone says he climbed “forty fourteeners” is that he has climbed 40 out of the fifty four Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet. No one else-- I repeat--no one else counts Colorado fourteener climbs by including repeated ascents of the same peak: the method the Ryan camp claims is the basis for the alleged misunderstanding. Please see my earlier posts and the analysis below, which document how Ryan’s spokespersons exaggerated his mountaineering claims in a cynical effort to diminish his political opponents, and then asserted this specious explanation when caught. It’s like a climber saying he climbed Mt. Everest and, after it is learned he didn’t really reach the summit, claims he didn’t lie because the correct inference from his earlier statement is that he reached Everest basecamp, not the summit.
Here is why Ryan’s explanation for the incorrect “inference” theory falls off a cliff:
• Why is Call’s original statement of what Ryan said, that he now denies, nearly identical to the statement of what Ryan said according to Jon Andrews, another top Colorado GOP operative, as reported in the op-ed in the Denver Post? After a conversation with Ryan, Andrews asserted that Ryan, “has climbed 40 of the state's 54 peaks over 14,000 feet.” So in separate conversations with Ryan, both GOP operatives Call and Andrews failed to appreciate the “nuance” of what Ryan was telling them and understood him to mean he had “climbed 40 of the 54 peaks over 14,000 feet.” That is a subtle nuance, indeed, when two political allies take the identical wrong inference from two separate conversations. And in the case of Andrew’s conversation with Ryan, the fourteeners were not just a passing topic of conversation. Remember that in Andrew’s conversation with Ryan, Andrews said that Capitol and Pyramid were his favorites and Colorado fourteeners became the theme of the op-ed. Andrews has not “walked -back” his account of his conversation with Ryan, but we can expect that pretty soon (I love that phrase, “walking -back” a statement, I imagine Michael Jackson moonwalking ).
• How do you infer a direct quote? You either quote or misquote. Are both Call and Andrews now claiming that they made the identical misquotation of Ryan from separate conversations?
• How did GOP Colorado chairman Ryan Call remember that obscure 2009 Milwaukee newpaper article and the exact number of fourteeners cited in it? Apparently Andrews must have remembered that very same article and number. Do Andrews and Call have subscriptions to the Milwaukee Journal -Sentinel? Does the paper charge extra for out-of-state delivery?
No spreadsheet produced as of yet, but after counting them up with his brother on the campaign plane, the official statement of Ryan to the Denver Post is :
Your article says he ‘climbed 40 of Colorado’s Fourteeners.’ I’m not sure what the source for that is, but we wanted to add a little nuance. Paul Ryan has made nearly 40 climbs on 28 different peaks. We wanted to clear up any confusion. Thanks!
This clears up nothing and is just another official obfuscation. If you believe the Romney/ Ryan campaign’s explanation that this is all just a matter of you and I (silly us!) not fully appreciating a “little nuance,” I happen to have recently acquired a very nice fourteener, and not one of those loose nightmares in the Elks. It’s called Long’s Peak, its rock is quite solid, and it includes the east face, known as the “Diamond ,” which has the best big wall climbs in the Rockies. I am now offering it for sale, for a limited time only, at a great price. Really! No nuance involved!
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stunewberry
Trad climber
Spokane, WA
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Al Gore JOKED about inventing the internet at a dinner party. It was picked up by the right-wing talking heads (not David Byrne!) and quoted totally out of context.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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In the apparently censored thread was a link to a Slate article that noted Ryan's under-3 marathon lie and also his claim to have 6% body fat, which would be comparable to Olympic 100-meter sprinters.
The legend of Paul Ryan’s physical fitness got even crazier when the boy-wonder V.P. candidate bragged to Hugh Hewitt about his marathon running, claiming he’d run the 26.2-mile race in “under three [hours], high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something. … I was fast when I was younger, yeah.”
Of course, we now know that was a lie. As Runner’s World discovered, Ryan’s time was 4:01:25, and as a Ryan spokesman admitted, it was his one and only marathon. He was 20 when he ran it, and yet he still would have lost to a 40-ish Sarah Palin. Whoops. Diehard runners were ticked off, of course, and the Ryan marathon soon became a punch line.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/09/paul_ryan_claims_he_has_6_to_8_percent_body_fat_.html
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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More from that Slate article:
Left unexamined, however, was another, equally outrageous claim: That Ryan has 6 percent body fat.... Well, guess what: He’s probably lying about the body fat thing, too. Or, at best, wildly exaggerating.
The “6 percent body fat” meme seems to have originated in a 2010 interview with Mike Allen of Politico. Allen asked him about P90X—“a fad, a craze that you’ve created here on Capitol Hill.” Ryan, who says he once worked as a “fitness trainer,” talks about the workout group, which at the time he led with then-Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).... Sounds good. But then he can’t help but brag: “I keep my body fat between 6 and 8 percent,” he tells Allen.
Here’s who else maintains 6 to 8 percent body fat: Olympic 100-meter sprinters, that’s who. Also, world-class boxers, wrestlers, and marathoners, according to this study of elite American athletes. Top collegiate swimmers look pretty fit, right? Well, they average out at a plump 9.5 percent, at least according to another study. Positively porky, compared to Ryan. (For some perspective, the average man has body fat of 17 to 24 percent, and most women a bit more.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/09/paul_ryan_claims_he_has_6_to_8_percent_body_fat_.html
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 12:23pm PT
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September 11, 2012
The Romney/ Ryan campaign’s hasty retreat from the original claim that Ryan climbed 40 fourteeners continues .
As I predicted in an earlier post, former Nixon speechwriter and GOP operative John Andrews did “walk- back” the statement in his Denver Post op-ed that Ryan “ has climbed 40 of the state's 54 peaks over 14,000 feet”.
The Denver Post now has a revised op-ed on its website, and the revised op-ed has Ryan climbing 28, not 40, as the original op-ed claimed. That’s a very nice perk for a newspaper to provide to its op-ed columnists, allowing them to retroactively change what they originally said when challenged. Ah, the wonders of the electronic journalism age!
The revised op-ed does note that it was updated September 10, 2012.
Here is the note regarding the correction:
This article has been corrected in this online archive. In a 2009 interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Ryan addressed the number of individual fourteeners he had summited directly. "I think I've climbed like 28 (peaks), and I've done it 38 times," he said of his Colorado fourteener experiences.
Andrews: Paul Ryan, mountain man - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_21386184/paul-ryan-mountain-man#ixzz26AXQmtOo
The Denver Post also issued this separate correction, but strangely, called it a “clarification.”
CLARIFICATION: An Aug. 11 Denver Post story and an Aug. 26 column by John Andrews relied on comments from state Republican Party chairman Ryan Call that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan has climbed nearly 40 of the state's peaks over 14,000 feet. In a 2009 interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Ryan addressed the number of individual fourteeners he had summited directly. "I think I've climbed like 28 (peaks), and I've done it 38 times," he said of his Colorado fourteener experiences.
Corrections - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/corrections/ci_21486307/corrections#ixzz267owJZcj
Also, there is an expanded version of Andrew’s Denver Post Op-ed of August 26, 2012, which appears on Andrew’s website. It includes this correction:
Corrective Note, Sept. 5 - As originally published at Townhall.com on Aug. 27, and in the Denver Post on Aug. 26, this column misstated in paragraph 5 Ryan's total of peaks climbed at 40 (based on a Denver Post news story to that effect on Aug. 11) and gave the impression in paragraph 7 that I had talked directly with Ryan, whereas his answer was in fact relayed to me by a staffer. I regret the errors.
http://www.ccu.edu/centennial/blog/post/2012/08/30/Mountain-man-Ryan-aims-high.aspx
This blog post contains details not contained in the Denver Post op-ed, including some interesting details about alleged fourteener climbs by Ryan. There is even more of the overheated praise heaped on Ryan for his incredible mountaineering feats in the extended version of the op-ed. Here are excerpts from the extended version, not included in the original Denver Post op-ed.
Self-discipline, surefootedness, stamina, grit, gumption, vision, daring, toughness, prudence, drive, the will to rise, the refusal to quit, team thinking, practical intelligence, joie de vivre, a zest for the difficult and a disdain for the allegedly impossible – these are the mountain-conquering qualities we see literally in Ryan and figuratively in Romney.
“Bring me men to match my mountains,” the opening line of Sam Foss’s 1894 poem “The Coming American,” is a favorite of Romney’s on the stump. In Paul Ryan, he adds to the ticket a man indeed well-matched to the mountainous challenges of our slumping economy and soaring debt – and very likely the coming man for a 2016 Republican recapture of the White House if Democrats prevail in 2012.
***
It was on a climb of Mount Shavano last summer – according to Bill Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary – that Ryan nearly said yes to Bennett’s entreaties for a 2012 presidential candidacy. But the younger man sped on alone to the summit (14,229’) while his onetime boss at Empower America rested a few hundred feet below, and so Bennett (in his words) “lost the argument.”
Speeding to the summit comes naturally to the Wisconsin budgeteer turned mountaineer, it seems. Ryan says his next climbing goal may be the Mount of the Holy Cross west of Vail (14,005’) – and after that, presumably, the hiker’s holy grail of bagging all 54 of Colorado’s Fourteeners.
The extended op-ed contains the most detail on the subject yet, including the names of 3 fourteeners climbed (Capitol, Pyramid and Shavano) and the next one he hopes to climb (Holy Cross). Despite this comparative wealth of detail, Andrews now claims he got this level of detail from a Ryan staffer, not Ryan as the original op-ed stated.
Note how Call, Ryan, and the Denver Post all now refer to the 2009 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article’s total of 28 peaks as if it were the last word on Ryan’s fourteener total. But why that interview is now accepted as the undisputed truth regarding Ryan’s total number of fourteeners is not explained. As we have learned, when Ryan tells a reporter or talk radio host about his athletic feats, that does not mean that what he says is the gospel truth. It has now been one week since Ryan and his brother Tobin were counting fourteeners while flying forty thousand feet above the Rockies and still no list has been produced. This makes me suspect that 28 is not the true total, since any fourteener collector can produce his or her list in less than the time it takes to recite “The Coming American.”
In my earlier post I suspected that Ryan had not really climbed 40 out of the 54. That suspicion turned out to be well founded. The lesson for the Colorado GOP is that if your strategy is to make athletic feats of your candidate a major campaign theme by asserting that their opponents are feckless wimps because they aren’t as athletic, don’t exaggerate the numbers .
Better yet, scrap the whole theme promoting Ryan as a “man to match my mountains” because of his amazing hiking feats. Consider the two leaders of the English speaking allies during World War II, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Roosevelt was got around in a wheel chair and Churchill’s main exercise was the repeated lifting of champagne glasses. Churchill was so opposed to even mild exertion that he employed a man servant to help him bathe and get dressed. FDR and Churchill turned out to be pretty effective leaders.
Klk- Why is this important? Because the GOP has put forward the theme of that the great athlete, Paul Ryan, is better than his rivals because of his heroic mountain hiking in Colorado. It is only fair play to point out that his feats are inflated, just like the GOP rhetoric extolling Paul Ryan as a man to match the Colorado mountains.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 12:30pm PT
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September 12, 2012
It has been reported that Paul Ryan’s favorite thinker is Ayn Rand.
"But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."
He told Insight on the News on May 24, 1999, that the books he most often rereads are "The Bible, Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/paul-ryan-ayn-rand_b_1767403.html
"People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked."
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Ch. 2
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2012 - 12:39pm PT
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September 12, 2012
Rocky Mountain Lie or the Paul Ryan Fourteener Song
(sung to the tune of Rocky Mountain High)
He said he climbed fourteeners,
He claimed forty or some more,
He then walked that back
To a whole lot less than that.
And yet he has no proof of them,
No listing, no dates, no times
No partners, no one with photographs.
It’s the Colorado Rocky Mountain Lie,
Not even a very nice try,
Counting up fourteeners from forty thousand high,
Rocky Mountain Lie.
Paul Ryan’s Rocky Mountain Lie,
I’ve counted peaks from forty thousand high,
Surrogates and handlers, and everybody lies,
Rocky Mountain Lie,
Rocky Mountain Lie, Colorado
Rocky Mountain Lie, Colorado
Rocky Mountain Lie.
My first attempt as a lyricist, so it’s a bit rough. You musicians and creative types could surely do better and I encourage you to improve it or add your own verses.
Thanks to zBrown for the idea.
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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bump to the top.
and since it's somewhat related... if i wanted to snowboard off of a 14er which ones might I look at?
and thanks for starting this up again, Rick.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Thanks again Rick A. :)
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