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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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May 16, 2011 - 10:50am PT
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Chief...i drive 55 most of the time to cheat the chevron and Tom Cage out of his 5$ a gallon rape...that and i enjoy the scenery when i am driving 395.. I am the scorn of Escalade enthusiast and their middle fingers...don't own a gas hog...my 4 cylinder vehicle is 23 yrs. old and get's 30 MPG.. i try to cycle or walk on my errands around town...when i bike , i try to do so from my humble abode to avoid wearing out my car...I dislike driving and being strapped to the iron horse...i guess you could call me a hypocrite...
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 16, 2011 - 10:54am PT
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Chief flunks.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 16, 2011 - 11:10am PT
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Of course I do. All because I DO NOT agree with your hysteria and sence of needing to be in control.
Those are just in your mind. I'm not hysterical and have no need to be in control.
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Stewart Johnson
climber
lake forest
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May 16, 2011 - 11:14am PT
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welcome to the ice age...
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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May 16, 2011 - 11:16am PT
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Chief...you sound hysterical...? go for a bike ride...
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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May 16, 2011 - 11:21am PT
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"There is no danger from global warming! It's a hoax" Says the selfish person driving a V8 gas guzzler at 75 MPH.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:23am PT
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MORE REASONS NOT TO JOIN A UNION:
Union members who blew the whistle on bosses who were stealing from the union got forcible reminders of how unions operate:
Unionized phone company employees say they were beaten or threatened after they accused their labor bosses of looting their coffers through various scams.
One member of Communications Workers of America Local 1101 said that after he reported a time-sheet padding scheme, a thug beat him so badly his spine was injured.
Another says he found a dead rat in his locker, while a third said a union officer warned that suspected informants should be brought off company property and "taken care of." ...
DiStefano told the Daily News he was "attacked by a union thug" as he started the morning shift at a Verizon garage in the Bronx in April 2009. "He pounded me with his fists, he spit on me, he choked me and threw me down to the floor," he said.
DiStefano said he suffered two herniated discs and had knee problems that required surgery. ...
Taravella said a dead rat was put in his locker with "a note tied to his tail" that said "Rest in Peace, Sebbie."
Card-check legislation is the unions' top priority and is strongly favored by Barack Obama and most Democrats. Why? Because under card check, there is no secret ballot. The unions know who is supporting them and who isn't. How will they treat the ones who don't sign the union card? The same way they treated the communications union workers who didn't appreciate having their money stolen by the bosses. If you think union violence is an old-fashioned concept, just let the Democrats adopt card check.
From Powerline.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:26am PT
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Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
An election-season essay
By playwright David Mamet
March 11, 2008
John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.
Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.
Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.
When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.
Every playwright's dream.
I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.
My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.
But I digress.
I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.
But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.
The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the f*#k up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.
The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.
Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.
White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.
White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "
The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:37am PT
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The Chief -- there is a HUGE difference however between conservatism and "progressivism" (as the libs now like to be called, since "liberalism" has such a bad rep). Conservatives believe in the founding principles -- namely, that your rights come from God, not the State (i.e., man); that man is a mess and his power over other men must be constantly checked; and that freedom from government intrusion is a primary duty of our system.
I abandoned the GOP after Bush -- not because of his foreign policy (which I thought was pretty good) but because of his views on the role of the federal government and spending. Bush was a plain ol liberal when it came to spending -- his presidency was the spark that lit the TEA party.
Now, thankfully, the TEA party is cleaning house on the GOP and running the faux-conservatives out.
My vote for president? Herman Cain -- check him out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkacOveF0
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:43am PT
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The Chief -- AGW is the biggest fraud in history -- a massive scam by the "progressives" to justify two primary things: 1) massive state intrusion into your life, and 2) massive transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers.
AGW is just socialism in disguise, all dressed up as being "green."
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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May 16, 2011 - 11:44am PT
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Chief I look at it like this:
Humans are pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the air
Atmospheric CO2 gas spiked way higher/faster than any natural historic changes
The global average temp is going up
We are seeing lots of sever weather
Climate is very complex with lots of feedback mechanisms so we can't say for sure what will happen
We could get hit by an asteroid, supernova, solar flare, nuclear bomb, etc.
So do we do nothing because we are not sure, or because it may not matter anyway?
Or do we give up cars, heating our houses, travel, etc. because other people aren't doing their part?
I choose to continue to do what I want with my life (travel, climb, etc.) but attempt to do it with reasonable efforts to reduce my impacts. I cut my carbon footprint by about 40% and still do what I want to do. If all Americans did that we'd be in a lot better shape. Is it enough, maybe not, but who knows what the future holds, maybe an energy source with no emissions or maybe Armageddon.
What's ridiculous is inventing a boogey man (a global warming scare industry that somehow holds more sway than big oil) because people are afraid to believe what is most likely the truth and do anything that might inconvenience them.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:44am PT
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IRONIC TWIST OF FATE in Wisconsin recount. “By demanding a statewide recount, and insisting that the recount continue to the end even as it became clear she had no chance of success, JoAnne Kloppenburg has seen her public persona devolve into a caricature of a bitter partisan lacking the necessary judgment for the job she seeks. By contrast, Kathy Nickolaus, the Republican Waukesha County clerk who was harshly criticized by Democrats for an election night reporting mistake, is seeing a rehabilitation of her reputation as the city of Brookfield and Waukesha County recounts demonstrate no meaningful errors much less fraud.”
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:46am PT
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The left's goal is control over the individual, to mold the individual into something the left believes is correct.
AGW is the most massive fraud in history, designed to control what you drive, what you eat, and how you think.
Fight. Back.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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May 16, 2011 - 11:46am PT
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shutup, you know the only thing worse than an ideologue liberal is right? An ideologue conservative. Bleeding heart vs. selfish bigot.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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May 16, 2011 - 11:47am PT
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What's that have to do with climate change...oh? political climate...got it..
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:48am PT
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A REPORT CARD ON THAT WONDERFUL SCAM -- OBAMA'S 800 BILLION DOLLAR "STIMULUS":
Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have studied the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the purported stimulus bill) with great rigor. Earlier this week, they reported their findings in a paper titled "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled." The paper is dense and rather lengthy, and requires considerable study. Here, however, is the bottom line:
Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.
So the American people borrowed and spent close to a trillion dollars to destroy a net of more than one-half million jobs. Does President Obama understand this? I very much doubt it. When he expressed puzzlement at the idea that the stimulus money may not have been well-spent, and said that "spending equals stimulus," he betrayed a shocking level of economic ignorance.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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May 16, 2011 - 11:49am PT
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Reposting due to suap spew...
Chief I look at it like this:
Humans are pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the air
Atmospheric CO2 gas spiked way higher/faster than any natural historic changes
The global average temp is going up
We are seeing lots of sever weather
Climate is very complex with lots of feedback mechanisms so we can't say for sure what will happen
We could get hit by an asteroid, supernova, solar flare, nuclear bomb, etc.
So do we do nothing because we are not sure, or because it may not matter anyway?
Or do we give up cars, heating our houses, travel, etc. because other people aren't doing their part?
I choose to continue to do what I want with my life (travel, climb, etc.) but attempt to do it with reasonable efforts to reduce my impacts. I cut my carbon footprint by about 40% and still do what I want to do. If all Americans did that we'd be in a lot better shape. Is it enough, maybe not, but who knows what the future holds, maybe an energy source with no emissions or maybe Armageddon.
What's ridiculous is inventing a boogey man (a global warming scare industry that somehow holds more sway than big oil) because people are afraid to believe what is most likely the truth and do anything that might inconvenience them.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:50am PT
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The Chief -- don't distrust the TEA party. They are our only hope right now to save this country from the fascistic progressives who want to radically change this country to a Euro-welfare state.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 16, 2011 - 11:54am PT
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In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At Icecap, Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity:
It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:
• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.
• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.
• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.
• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.
• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.
We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:
• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.
• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.
• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.
• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the "hockey stick" graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.
• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.
Contrary to many public statements:
• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.
• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.
• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.
• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.
• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.
The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.
Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word "ever" is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean "in the last 20 years," or "the last 70 years." "Ever" means the last 4.5 billion years.
For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, "How long is ever?" The answer is since 1979. And then ask, "Is it still warming?" The answer is unequivocally "No." Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word "unprecedented" cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.
From Powerline.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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May 16, 2011 - 11:54am PT
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No distrust everyone that hasn't earned your trust. Figure out their motivations and you'll find the truth behind their actions.
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