That's a pretty good series, I've been watching it. We have Glacier and part of Yellowstone so HA!

lived in both ~ Wurster ~ for a spell

Bani

Thanks for the info...I loved Kalispell...at least I can say I lived in Montana for 5 years ~ but only spent a few weeks in Dallas, Texas 40 years ago shortly after JFK was CIA'ed:>)

The fellow who wrote this book was my professor @ u of montana for a semester

I guess that's another Texas connection for I understand the Bush Library has it, of course. Last I heard via email from him ~ Nate is still alive!

'over' 40 years ago...save data from correcting me:>)

Oswald acted alone, shit-for-brains. It's a lousy 200 foot shot any Marine could have made.

I am talking on ham radio with the current DCM M1 Garand 1,000 yard national champion. He's a Marine, coincidentally. Now go play in traffic.
(Apologies to Tosser.)

Oswald acted alone, shit-for-brains. It's a lousy 200 foot shot any Marine could have made.

#7 | Posted by Zatoichi

FF

John F. Kennedy
vs
The Federal Reserve

Starting this Sunday, PBS will be running a 6 part series about the National Parks and the people who helped save them.

Thanks for the heads up about this series. I'll be sure and watch. I'm a big advocate of saving and keeping our National Parks. It was one of the main reasons I voted for Obama (besides him opening up stem cell research to be able to cure more diseases) was that Obama promised to put a stop to Bush's ongoing policy of privatizing and selling off our national park system to the highest bidders. I was sickened by the way Bush was trying to dismantle our national parks.

Of course Teddy Roosevelt -- our conservation President -- will likely be mentioned.

Hopefully I'll get to see some good photos of my beloved Yosemite. Such beautiful granite mountain walls and waterfalls in Yosemite Valley.

#9 | Posted by Bani at 2009-09-26 04:43 PM | Reply | Flag: back to bluffalo blob's fantasy land

And Thru the tree in the way, too...yes, I & my brother looked out of the Texas building days afterward & wondered at the time about that shot...veteran of camp warren of the Northwoods moon lake sharp shooters we were...before 'they' closed off the window
...to the public later, of course

Thanks for the heads up about this series. I'll be sure and watch. I'm a big advocate of saving and keeping our National Parks. It was one of the main reasons I voted for Obama (besides him opening up stem cell research to be able to cure more diseases) was that Obama promised to put a stop to Bush's ongoing policy of privatizing and selling off our national park system to the highest bidders. I was sickened by the way Bush was trying to dismantle our national parks.
* * * *

Nice spin. None of that happened.

There will always either be logging in National Parks, or massive wildfires. Choose carefully. And in the event you go with "logging", why not get the highest price?
And BTW, Obama wasn't running against Bush, but against a guy from Arizona.

RightisWrong -- again

Nice spin. None of that happened.

There will always either be logging in National Parks, or massive wildfires. Choose carefully. And in the event you go with "logging", why not get the highest price?

And BTW, Obama wasn't running against Bush, but against a guy from Arizona.

Bull, Yes it happened. Bush was constantly intentionally underfunding our national parks and trying to privatize the consession and facilities within the parks.

As for Obama running against "a guy from Arizona" only an idiot didn't know McCain was only given the go-ahead to run for Prez by the GOP powers that be only as long as he promised a continuation of the Neo-Con agenda and to allow corporate rule/profit above over all else and tat was the ONLY reason McCain got the nomination -- he sold his soul. -

As for logging in our national forests, I'm not one of those idiots who don't believe in necessary thinning of forests in order to prevent massive wild fires. I live in CA, remember? I just got through with a fire here in Los Angeles last month which was the worst since 1896 and had 60 year old dead, dry brush fueling it.

So you're now saying that McCain would have done the exact opposite of Bush's policies as concerned the welfare of our national parks system were he elected back in 2008? HAH! You're delusional.

And you claim Bush only wanted what was best for our national parks when he tried to privatize them for corporate profit and all these (and countless more) articles are lies? Again - HAH! You're delusional.

tat = that

You have your links, I have mine:

BTW--they should open up the national parks for private concessions, etc. I live right next to Rocky Mountain National Park--it's ridiculous that in order to visit the place, you need to get a hotel room in Denver or Boulder. Why do libbies object so much to putting in a modest hotel or two, and some restaurants? How about a place to pull over and fill up your tank, so you're not worried about running out on Trail Ridge Drive?

"Oh no! They want to privatize the national parks!" I'm one of the biggest conservationists you'll ever find, but I sure wish there were a couple of other places I could find a vending machine.

In a way, though, it helps keep the riffraff out.

Oh no! They want to privatize the national parks!" I'm one of the biggest conservationists you'll ever find, but I sure wish there were a couple of other places I could find a vending machine.

In a way, though, it helps keep the riffraff out.

#17 | Posted by rightisright

A most righteous self-retorting retort.

Gotta watch out for the riffraff, they might actually say hi to you.

The National Parks: Mexico's Best Idea

There, fixed it for you....

RE: #17 | Posted by rightisright at 2009-09-26 06:27 PM

You "live right next to" RMNP?
You've never heard of Estes Park?? That town is on the eastern border of RMNP. The whole strip of highway leading to the entrance of RMNP is practically nothing but motels, hotels, and restaurants. Just how close (to the "wilderness") does your hotel have to be???

Meanwhile, it's only about 50 miles from Estes Park (on the east side of RMNP) to Granby (on the west side of RMNP). Trail Ridge Road is only PART of that drive (like maybe 20 miles). Who goes driving into the high country without being assured of having enough gas to go 50 miles????

Just how close (to the "wilderness") does your hotel have to be???
* * * *

In it. Kalispell and Whitefish, on the other hand, is hardly "nothing but motels, hotels, and restaurants."

Whatever though. I'm of two minds on it. On the one hand, it would be more enjoyable for millions more people to make the parks more accessible. On the other, opening up a gas station with an espresso machine would only be an invitation for more Californians and New Yorkersato come. And nobody wants that.

Forest management and logging are conducted in National Forests. Logging is prohibited in National Parks.

"Just how close (to the "wilderness") does your hotel have to be???
* * * *

In it. Kalispell and Whitefish, on the other hand, is hardly "nothing but motels, hotels, and restaurants.

Whatever though. I'm of two minds on it. On the one hand, it would be more enjoyable for millions more people to make the parks more accessible. On the other, opening up a gas station with an espresso machine would only be an invitation for more Californians and New Yorkersato come. And nobody wants that.
#21 | Posted by rightisright at 2009-09-26 11:16 PM"

Uh..., you said you lived near Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado) and were bemoaning the lack of facilities near RMNP. However, as pointed out, you were mistaken. There's an abundance of facilities near RMNP, which is probably why there is little incentive (or desire) to put similar facilities IN the Park. Kalispell and Whitefish are in Montana (near GLACIER NATIONAL PARK).

BTW--they should open up the national parks for private concessions, etc. I live right next to Rocky Mountain National Park--it's ridiculous that in order to visit the place, you need to get a hotel room in Denver or Boulder. Why do libbies object so much to putting in a modest hotel or two, and some restaurants? How about a place to pull over and fill up your tank, so you're not worried about running out on Trail Ridge Drive?

Because it never, ever stops with a couple modest hotels or restaurants or a gas station, dude. You know that as well as anyone else.

And your link doesn't disprove anything that calfchris linked to.

I wonder how long it will be before the government has to use National Parks as collateral for loans from the chinese. Maybe they already have.

That's some scary mierda right there, wursty.

Welcome to Yerrowstone.

Give the character at #27 a racist flag.

Shame.

Doesn't the gov own more land out west then private interests? I really do not have an opinion on NP's, having never enjoyed one to any extent. I have heard that the gov's taking of private property, like with eminent domain, is not viewed positively by all parties. One item from a pure balance sheet point of view...is that when the US gov balance sheet is tallied, they never count all the property the gov owns. Maybe someday some of it will get sold???

The push I fear as a fisherman, is the ultra left's push to make large swaths of our oceans' "ational parks". They call them Marine Protection Areas.

An horrible idea brought to you the Pew foundation

"Doesn't the gov own more land out west then private interests? I really do not have an opinion on NP's, having never enjoyed one to any extent. I have heard that the gov's taking of private property, like with eminent domain, is not viewed positively by all parties. One item from a pure balance sheet point of view...is that when the US gov balance sheet is tallied, they never count all the property the gov owns. Maybe someday some of it will get sold???"

Has there ever been a case of the gov't taking private land to turn it into a national park?

As for commercial fishing, I believe there are concerns about extinction and fishing that damages the environment. I'm not sure what to do about those things, though. As with almost any environmental issue (including extinction), there's no simple answer. No solution pleases everyone, nor can it.

#27-28 - FF for Hagbard. I'll have to remember that little trick. ;-)

I'm sure U.S. fleets are on the up and up. I'm not so sure about foreign fleets.

"Kalispell and Whitefish, on the other hand, is hardly "nothing but motels, hotels, and restaurants.""

True, there's a lot of casinos as well. :-)

Glacier is a great park though... be nice if the Canadian side would hand over the Flathead to complete it but they seem bound and determined to mine the coal instead.

I love national parks, and have hiked all over Glacier, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and many many times in the Smokeys.. (I live nearest to it)

My ONLY complaint (and its not a loud one) is that the park service is too populated and run by tree hugging Nazis.. who see the people visiting the parks as the enemies..

I've reminded a couple of Nazis in Yellowstone of what the original north entrance says..
"for the enjoyment of the people"..

But, overall, the parks are great.. a conservative backpacker.. who knew?

I agree with you, NMG NO. There's room to accomodate families with young kids, older folks, people who were confined to wheelchairs, etc. who would like a nearby place to grab a bite to eat and refreshments. Not everyone can "pack it in, pack it out." Some need a little help.

I know the tree hugging Nazi types of whom you speak. They want nothing but pristine forest and absolutley no commercial food stands or even a store for basics for miles around. But they can hike into the back country and have plenty of room to be by themselves.

Yosemite had the Awahnee Hotel in the middle of the Valley floor and it was nice to be able to drop by when you felt like it. Also liked having the Ansel Adams Studio nearby. You can only look at a tree for so long. I liked the camp ranger shows and the Yosemite Lodge entertainment and all the other hokey stuff. If you wanted to hike into the raw wilderness areas to camp you had that option too. Yosemite had both and neither really encroached on the other.

Open up Yellowstone to hunting. That would be a great idea.

National Parks are socialism brought to you by our ebil gub'mint.

" our ebil gub'mint. "

AKA Teddy Roosevelt.

TR's 1912 Bull Moose Party platform included universal health care.

Which, like the public financing of elections that every other modern Western democracy has today, is another damn good idea, like National Parks, that favors government of, by, and for the people.

We were the first country to create National Parks for the people, not just leave the land to the aristocracy.

And we'll apparently be the last to have public health care and public financing of campaigns.

"And done a hundred things you have not dreamed of"

And that was in 1963.

Social psychologists are mining gold.

I disagree. While parks ARE a great idea, rural electrification was better.

And Thru the tree in the way, too...yes, I & my brother looked out of the Texas building days afterward & wondered at the time about that shot...veteran of camp warren of the Northwoods moon lake sharp shooters we were...before 'they' closed off the window
...to the public later, of course

#12 | POSTED BY BANI

But it was open in the nineties when we visited the building.
I could not understand how this was done from one person with one rifle. It was a moving target approaching 300 feet and the shots were downward. I was quite familiar with shooting myself in the military. Obvious American marines are far superior to other soldiers in this world. Nobody in my divison could have done this shots. I wonder if they really tested it with a sharpshooter. Would have been easy. Never heard of something like that.

Not much of a park fan since I hate wilderness but I don't mind taxes coming out of my check for those who do like them. I just wish taxes were taken out other people's checks to supplement gym and dojo fees.

Umm....RiR? First, many of the National Parks have privately owned concessions in the parks. Rocky Mountain National Park does in its' Alpine Visitor Center. That restaurant and the gift shop are privately owned. Yellowstone has the famous Yellowstone Lodge. Grand Teton has several hotels within the park and guest cabins. Mesa Verde has a lovely hotel in the park as well as several restaurants and gift shops. I have not travelled to all the National Parks but those are the ones I have been to and that I know for a fact have hotels/guest cabins within the park itself.

You do not have to stay in Boulder or Denver if you wish to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. The park itself has 4 very well maintained campgrounds with cold running water (from May to October) and indoor toilet facilities that are quite comfortable. Estes Park, which is right at the park's front gate, has wonderful hotels and resorts as well as shower and laundry facilities for campers up at Rocky Mountain. If you have not visited RMNP just because you think you have to stay so far away, you have been missing a fabulous experience. Oh, you could also stay on the Western Slope in Grand Lake or Granby.

The documentary so far has not disappointed me. I have been very moved as well as educated about some things I did not previously know regarding the evolution of the National Park system. There is no doubt in my mind that our National Parks are our greatest natural treasure and must be protected from human greed and ignorance. I hope this series helps to further that goal.

Interesting to watch the documentary last night and learn that one of the main reasons the parks were nationalized was that private owners were GOUGING Americans in order for them to see our national treasures......

So much for those wishing to privatize and profit from them.....They were actually nationalized to STOP that from occurring and make them available to ALL Americans....

Socialism at it's finest, eh?

LOL

The push I fear as a fisherman, is the ultra left's push to make large swaths of our oceans' "ational parks". They call them Marine Protection Areas.
An horrible idea brought to you the Pew foundation

#29 | POSTED BY DAVETHEWAVE AT 2009-09-27 01:33 PM

Newsflash for you Dave.....the Pew Foundation isn't leftist at all.....

The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by the adult children of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. The four co-founders were J. Howard Pew, Mary Ethel Pew, Joseph N. Pew, Jr., and Mabel Pew Myrin. The Trusts is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an office in Washington, D.C..

Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust had as its mission to "acquaint the American people with 'the evils of bureaucracy' and 'the values of a free market' and 'to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won.'"

Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs."[2]

Most of the early beneficiaries were conservative organizations such as the John Birch Society, the American Liberty League, and the American Enterprise Institute,[3][4] although the beneficiaries also included a cancer research institute, a museum, higher education, the American Red Cross, and historically black colleges. For many years, the Trusts tended to fund charities and conservative causes located in Philadelphia.

wiki

Time YOU woke up, eh?

National Parks are just another example of the beauty of socialism, even though Shrub made sure we pay extra to actually use them.

And we'll apparently be the last to have public health care and public financing of campaigns.
#39 | Posted by Corky

Not to pick a fight, but our POTUS isn't exactly leading the charge on these fronts, sadly.

I seem to remember a few Rtards here on DR wanting to sell Yellowstone to the ChiComs a few years ago and bitching about not being able to drill for oil in the National Parks.

There are idiot Republicans here in Florida that want oil wells in the Everglades National Park and continue to elect Rtards to try to push this thru.

Put 'em up! Put 'em up! C'mon, c'mon! I'll murderlize ya's! (best Cowardly Lion accent)

Not on public financing, but he has to take these things one or two fights at a time. And we are closer to universal health care today than we have ever been.

btw, Blue Dawgs are now reading polls in their districts that are close to the national 65 percent approval numbers for a public option.

But Bubba came out this weekend supporting a "real" trigger on a public option, so we'll see what happens.

President Obama said that a world leader approached him at the G20 summit last week wondering why his critics are smearing him. The unidentified world leader told Obama, "We don't understand it. You're trying to make sure everybody has health care and they're putting a Hitler mustache on you I don't that doesn't make sense to me. Explain that to me."

ThinkProgress.org

Yeppers. This kind of socialism is just destroying the country.

Amusement parks like Didney just can't compete with National Parks. Barnes & Nobles and Borders being forced out of business by public libraries.

Private universities drowning in the tide of public colleges. Public beaches destroying private ones. Public transportation putting taxi cabs out of bidness in New Yawk City.

And Gawd knows that the artists formerly known as Blackwater have been pulverized by the US Military.

FEDEX and UPS going belly-up because of the post office. Huge insurance companies losing their oh so slim profit margin to Medicare.

Now this talk of the people pooling their money to buy health insurance!

Criminal. Just criminal I tells ya!

Well, there should be oil wells in the Everglades. Place is a putrid swamp. Nobody goes there anyhow. But Florida famously doesn't do offshore drilling, and it's fine with them for the Cubans to be drinking their milkshake.

"Not on public financing, but he has to take these things one or two fights at a time. And we are closer to universal health care today than we have ever been...."

My guess is that Public Financing will hit the agenda some time around 2014. But with that Supreme Court decision coming up over corporate speech....

"btw, Blue Dawgs are now reading polls in their districts that are close to the national 65 percent approval numbers for a public option.

But Bubba came out this weekend supporting a "real" trigger on a public option, so we'll see what happens."

I'm still skeptical about the public option, but I've got my fingers crossed.

"Nobody goes there anyhow."

There only value is as a tourist destination?

Really?

-some time around 2014

After his second election, prolly so.

-But with that Supreme Court decision coming up over corporate speech....

We need to replace a couple of more justices before that gets too far along to stop.

If we get a mandate, but no public option, I'm going to go Medieval on somebody.

Everglades have no value whatsoever. I used to live there. And don't waste your time looking for scientific posts about how it's such a valuable ecosystem--I know all that, and drilling wouldn't matter one bit.

But no matter. Eventually we'll be at $3.50 a gallon again, and nobody bitches about that louder than Californians and Floridians, who are actually in a position to do something about it, but don't.

And that's fine with me. I can afford it, and I hate the extra traffic.

-This is where we stand today

Gives new meaning to the term, "young Republicans".

Pretty disgusting.

AXIOM

Thank you! If it wasn't for you I likely would have missed this series on PBS about the national parks. I watched the first of the series late last night. It came on around 11 p.m. here in California and started off with my beloved Yosemite National Park. I was thrilled to get to see some of the footage again of the mountains and the Yosemite Valley and the waterfalls. I used to go there every year for a week or so. Haven't been there since the big flood of the Merced River so I imagine it's changed some but nothing can take away its beauty. Have you ever been there? Breathtaking.

And, although of course I'd heard of him, I enjoyed learning so much more about John Muir than I had ever known before. What an amazing, intense, and fascinating man when you delve into his background.

After Yosemite the series went on into Yellowstone and the building of the Yellowstone Lodge over at Old Faithful and the early mountain men who first came upon Yellowstone's geysers and odd landscape. I've been to Yellowstone too seeing it again last night brought everything back again and made me realize how much I missed it. Thoroughy enjoyed getting to see all the places again -- thanks to you.

Watching programs about Yellowstone tears my heart out every time. I'm still not entirely over leaving. It would probably be better if I wasn't living in Manhattan.

Don't tell my wife I said that.