packsaddle

Elvis IS alive and he is the best guide you can hire in the Caribbean. I know..I've hiked with him on numerous treks.

Eagledad, care to share your explanation for what you think 'natural' is? How must someone else understand it in order to apply the term in the same way you apply it?

For over 37,000 dead and wounded American soldiers, it's already too late.

Wow, there's a solution to the world's problems: famine. Stop supplying food handouts to starving people and things will turn out just fine. There's a Republican in SC who famously noted during his campaign, a quote from his grandmother with regard to stray cats and dogs that he applied to poor, hungry people: "Don't feed them...they breed." I think this should be called the "Idle Hands" theory. Thank goodness we're at least not blaming it on junk food! Yeah, what we need is a horrible, punishing depression to impoverish us and reduce us to living in pig sties in famine and slavish servitude at the feet of the Chinese to keep us busy. THEN we'll be a moral society again. But above all else, don't let us have cheap or easy access to food! We might breed. Edit: I wonder....what is 'perverse' to a monkey? That's OK, you don't have to answer. We all know that evolutionarily we're practically monkeys anyway so if WE think it's perverse for us, it must be so for our closest evolutionary relatives. One more confirmation of evolution and man's ancestry. Nice.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Wow, you're right. It all makes sense now.

"...Bush's predecessor..." Are you now blaming Clinton?

some light reading: http://nation.foxnews.com/joe-miller/2010/11/19/miller-sues-stop-certification http://townhall.com/columnists/ArmstrongWilliams/2010/11/19/alaskans_hypocrisy

Yes, Brent, I was disgusted. That kind of crap is low no matter who does it. I'm sorry you have to ask. "The day that a new poll showed McCain five points ahead in the state, Bush allied himself on stage with a marginal and controversial veterans activist named J. Thomas Burch, who accused McCain of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues..." thus began the dirty tricks. But McCain was ahead and Bush took a low road. It was at that time that the racial smear began. But as long as we're dropping names.... Carroll Campbell...1978 Congressional campaign, whose manager, Lee Atwater, played the anti-semitism card against Max Heller...sure Brent. None of that stuff works in SC...right. I remember my co-workers (contractors for the feds) snickering about McCain's illegitimate child. I heard plenty about it. Just like I heard gasps of surprise at Heller's 'Jewishness' by persons who could be swayed by racial factors in 1978. I consider that to have been just as shameful and cowardly. I'm sure you agree. But as WAKWIB predicted, that one turned on Campbell. His old Congressional campaign tactic was a factor in Bob Dole's decision to choose Jack Kemp rather than Governor Campbell as his running mate during the 1996 Presidential bid. At least Atwater repented while he was dying. He apologized for those low tactics in those campaigns. That's something at least. I grant you there's no way to establish for certain what did or did not make or break a particular campaign but it IS for certain that the race card was played in 2000, by Republicans against Republicans. And THAT is relevant to the topic of the thread...racism in politics.

McCain had kicked butt in NH. SC was looking good for him. The Bush campaign needed SC to turn the tide. From Wikipedia: "An unidentified party began a semi-underground smear campaign against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, audience plants, and the like. These claimed most famously that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter Bridget was adopted from Bangladesh; this misrepresentation was thought to be an especially effective slur in a Deep South state where race was still central..." I consider this to be especially low, even for a state like SC. I blame myself for hearing and reading this kind of stuff and still giving Bush the benefit of the doubt once he was in. I was wrong. Bush denied any involvement in these slurs but he sure benefited from them. As I said, Republican on Republican. Nice.

WAKWIB, since you mention poo, I remind you that it WAS a shameful and cowardly and racist attack on McCain in the 2000 SC primary that turned things for the Bush campaign. That was Republican on Republican and about as racist as is possible. You think any 'members' of the current Tea Party might have been involved?

You know...maybe we should elect the most competent people we can find, persons who really do understand the system and the problems, who have a good chance at finding solutions, who care more about solving problems than self-promotion, whose motivation is to serve the public rather than special interests. Naaaaahhhh!

Beavah, you must have known what was going to happen. Anyway, to respond, I think that individuals can be racist. However it's tough to paint an entire group that way - although the racists I know (and I do know quite a few) claim to be Republican or Tea Party or Libertarian (go figure). One of them is a Democrat (really need to talk to that guy sometime to find out how he maintains that). I can't say that I'd be able to characterize any of them as stupid but some of them are terribly prejudiced against almost any ethnic background other than their own. One seems sympathetic toward Hispanics. One says that other than killing his Jesus, he doesn't hold much against Jews. One adopted a black infant and proceeded to replay the whole Cinderella story in his household. He's also the one who flies the Confederate Flag above the American flag on the same staff. Did I mention he's a fundamentalist Christian minister. There are just so many things I just don't 'get'. The words of Lyndon Johnson ring with a hint of truth for some of them because I happen to have heard them state clearly that they switched from being Democrats to Republicans as a result of passage of the Civil Rights Act. They'll get old and die in another decade or two. I share the outrage of the Tea Party over some of the things Brent mentioned. I am not a Tea Party 'member', whatever that is, because my outrage is focused almost solely on the fiscal mess and I paint nearly everyone with responsibility for that (I also doubt that we, as a nation, have the fortitude to address it) So Beavah, I think your 'colleague' may be justified in applying the label to someone he knows very well. But correlation does not translate to causality and his claim is, to me, just one more prejudicial statement. I disagree with application of the 'racist' label to the group.

Welcome to the forums! I met my wife at Lakeside Lab on Lake Okoboji. Iowa will always be a special place for me.

OK, let me see what possibilities there are to travel over your way. Maybe I'll pick up some more escargot while I'm at it. What little cholesterol we add over lunch will pale in comparison to the assaults I've already taken from decades of aluminum cooking pans, fried food, and my mother's obsession with saccharin...probably just the tip of the wad of crud, so-to-speak. So...might as well enjoy it! (This message has been edited by packsaddle)

OK gwd, let me get this straight. The country's economy is augering in, infrastructure failing, and institutions falling apart, while the administration accelerates the process and congress is deadlocked or in disarray and people are out of work, factories closed, jobs sent overseas, and shysters are out in droves preying on the misfortunate and...you're saying that you have doubts about the veracity of a special interest group's claim about a political issue? Wow. There is only one way to address this: we need to drown ourselves in cholesterol at Lee's BBQ!

I think there's another risk of putting so much emphasis on earmarks. The risk is that once success is achieved, they'll raise a banner that says "Mission Accomplished" and declare victory. And that will be that. I agree with up or down vote on the commission recommendations. Sure kill the earmarks. But just make sure we kill the stuff that really counts as well.

Oh, I think A.C. is hot in a 'Skeletor' kind of way. But really, are any of those names actual 'journalists' as opposed to entertainers?

Trev, that was brutal. I liked it.

Does it have to be a branding iron or can it be a wood-burning tool? How big is the brand? Edit: Gary, I might be interested. What can you do? PM me if you want.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

This unit defines it by having enough in the bank (or pledged) in order to cover current and anticipated expenses.

Welcome to the forums, TomTrailblazer. Starting in this particular forum might be like a "trial by fire". I hope you come away unsinged. I would like to see what you think would be a starting draft of the declaration that you propose. As is, it is kind of left to the imagination.

For those of us in this region there's a fantastic resource at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory near Franklin, NC. It's thousands of acres of forest and experimental watersheds with a center in which you can find a huge amount of supporting material for environmental science MB. Plus there are trails..the AT goes right across the top over Albert Mtn and although there's no camping within the boundary, you CAN camp just across the boundary to the west, just off the AT. It's a great place for a day or several.

from FactCheck: "In fact, before the war Bush and others often downplayed or omitted any mention of doubts about Saddam's nuclear program." There WAS doubt. LIE OK, "Citing Bush administration officials, The New York Times reported Sunday that Iraq tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes. The tubes, Rice said, "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." CNN September 8, 2002 Here is the analysis: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB326/index.htm an excerpt: "Aluminum Tubes At around this time, the U.S. learned that Iraq was interested in buying 60,000 aluminum tubes (advertisements appeared on the internet). A CIA analyst who was not a nuclear weapons specialist became convinced that the high-strength alloy tubes could only be intended for uranium enrichment centrifuges to manufacture nuclear weapons. The CIA endorsed his opinion and passed it on to Bush in a Presidents Daily Brief. An April 10 follow-up report was circulated among national security officials and the CIA analysis was immediately questioned by nuclear weapons experts. On April 11 scientists led by the chief of the Oak Ridge National Laboratorys Advanced Technology Division reported that the diameter of the tubes was off by 50 percent (compared to a centrifuge that Iraq tested in 1990), among other discrepancies. The Oak Ridge team concluded the tubes were probably not intended for centrifuges. On May 9 the Energy Department reported in a Daily Intelligence Highlight, published on a website used by the White House and the intelligence community, that the intercepted tubes were quite similar to ones that Iraq used to build conventional rocket launchers. In June the U.S. got direct access to the intercepted shipment. The CIA analyst admitted they were the wrong size for standard centrifuges, but said they matched the dimensions of those used for a centrifuge designed in the 1950s by a German scientist. The scientist told him they werent even close. This direct access to the tubes was met with the highest possible level of interest within the administration. The State Department alerted Secretary Powell, and arranged for a sample to be shown to President Bush immediately -- before even a preliminary determination had been made as to the tubes likely end use. (U.N. arms inspectors, on the other hand, planned to analyze samples before drawing conclusions.) What did get priority was planning for publicizing the interdiction to our advantage, and Getting the right story out. [Doc. 4] For its part, the CIA notified Congress of the development immediately -- without prior coordination with the State Department. [Doc. 5] The agency produced at least nine reports throughout the summer of 2002 that said that the tubes proved that Iraq had restarted a nuclear weapons program, documents that were given to Bush and other high-level officials. Energy Department and State Department Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts, who assumed that the claim had long since been put to rest, did not see the reports. (Note 10) More than a year after the interdiction, on September 8, 2002, the New York Times reported that American officials believed that the tubes were meant for use in centrifuges. (Note 11) The report was based on documents deliberately leaked by the White House. Cheney, Powell, and Condoleezza Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows the same day to draw attention to the report. Rice said that the tubes were only suitable for nuclear weapons programs, and warned, most famously, we dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. (Note 12)" LIE

What Beavah said. Yeah, ditto Beavah. ...h'mmmm....I'd make the comparison to depleted uranium. Actually if a deadbeat owed me money, yes, I WOULD like to get paid back with money the deadbeat borrowed from some chump...as long as it wasn't ME again. And if the deadbeat had a legal printing press, I'd gladly take the first run off it so I could invest in something substantial BEFORE the inflation took effect. It's only good business.

Yes, welcome to the forums. You know, for some reason I had suspected you were from Australia. ...where did I get that idea....? Are you from upstate or the city?