It takes two: TGR ski porn milks the skier/camera interaction.

Watching the TGR premier in Jackson Hole is great for two reasons: local footage and stoked locals. They always have a substantial portion of local footage that plenty of locals in the room have also skied. Even though these are some of the most jaded been-there-done-that skiers anywhere, they still went wild for several parts of the flick such as the ridiculously deep, dry powder in Haines and really tight couloirs in the North Cascades.

The movie's title refers not just to the zeitgeist across the country this last winter, but also to TGR's own situation. They too, had to tighten their belt for this production with the loss of Jeep as their primary sponsor. Amazingly, RE:SESSION was put together without a big auto sponsor that was key to their initial success. That they can now put out a movie without one shows how far they've come since Continuum.

That said, they definitely are cutting corners to focus on the meat and potatoes of jib/park sessions, AK big-mountain freeriding, and hucking. There's some powder, some incidental shots of the new tram, and a tacked-on tribute to Shane McConkey, but no real storyline, plot development or examination of the characters. This is the same complaint many people make about porn though, and this is ski porn. What most people want is to cut straight to the action. Methinks it has more to do with limited budgets than lack of creativity. In fact, I would expect a challenge such as this to stimulate the creative minds of the Tetons to make something new happen.

And that's what I was originally thinking about as I watched the movie and noticed a somewhat flat response in the crowd to some sections. The athletes are still there doing their thing, but the rad heli-cam might have been curtailed, leaving it up to the magic between skier and camera, instead of the mechanics. I am saying that some of the shots were unimaginative and unimpressive, but as skiers continue to play with the different features of the mountain and the photogs/videogs learn to make the most of this tightened budget situation, we will continue to see innovation and be impressed in new ways by the art of filming skiing.

So who wants to play?

Wingnut healthcare opposition: "I got mine!"

I like to keep in touch with the fringe. By that, I mean groups and people interested in the same issues as me, but with completely illogical stances on the issues. I listen to Rush and Savage on occasion. Since I got seriously informed and active about health care reform this spring, I have spread a lot of my thoughts on Facebook -and so have other health care reform activists, but one group of very fringe folks is catching my attention. They are calling their group "Hands Off My Health", like the government is going to come and put lead in their coffee, mercury in their toothpaste, bury dioxin in rusting barrels in their backyard, clog the toilet with paper towels and leave. It's got a lot of misinformation, anti-government blathering, and general opposition to anything except Republican hegemony. It's kind of the teabaggers of health care. Here are some posts that give good examples of the thought process in the "Nobama" camp.

[Looney associations and thoughts that were only half-finished when they left the author's head]:

Deborah A. Talmadge Obama forgets that allopathic medicine killed George Washington....They bled him and then decided to give him 65 miligrams of mercury......the cure was worse than the illness, kind of like cemotherapy. Obama is trying to get rid of naturepath's. I have great allopathic medical coverage, but chose ....to go to a naturepath and that cost me.
Obama needs to get it togeather[sic].

Jennifer Kent

"We don't know what it would be like to be treated as second rate citizens just because we're not insured. Sadly, good friends of mine do. Affordable health care plans should be available to every citizen."

Last sentence is correct and is currently true in the U.S. The fact that any number of people are uninsured is not an argument for health care reform nor is it an indication of failure of our current system. That's one of the biggest fallacies that underlie Obamacare.

Arrogant bully? That's funny. Obama makes Bush look like the picture of modesty and graciousness and gentleness. I find it hilarious that people criticize Bush for the very traits that describe Obama: arrogance, lack of class, non-intellectual (yes, Obama may use fancy words thanks to his speech writers but catch him on the fly and he sounds unprepared, uncouth, and very ignorant.) ...

The emperor has no clothes, people!

[Threats against the president for trying to do what all other industrialized countries already do for their citizens]:

Sharon Donehey Obama's attempt to turn America into the euro-socialist nanny state of his dreams deserves to fail. Sic semper tyrannis!

[Really flimsy attempts to gloss over the central issue in the health care debate (whether Americans should join together to provide health care to all or if we should go everyone for themselves) with presumptive statements]:

Cheryl Leger Osipov

[Obama] has a track record of lying. Too many ignorant Americans who chose to forget campaign promises that were made to them. And too many ignorant Americans who refuse to remove their blinders and see what's happening. If they believe it's all for the common good - then it's okay, right? Common Good is Socialism. I'm all for charity and helping out, ... but it's not the governments responsibliity to provide my healthcare or welfare. Unfortunately, we've raised a society of entitlement thinking people - it's EASIER to let the government do it for me instead of being responsible for themselves. God forbid - one be responsible for their own bills and themselves?! What a concept!

[Just despicable "I'm worth more than anyone else" crap]:

Joseph Bennett

Hamish - We can kick 25% to 50% of the uninsured out of this country if we enacted a 21st century iteration of "Operation Wetback."

Also, why should I have to wait in the same "Universal Healthcare" queue as a welfare recipient and her ten bastard kids, when I have an advanced degree and contribute far more to the local, state, and federal tax coffers in one year than they ever will?


[And the usual "love it or leave it" assinine ultimatum]:

Bart Cauley

hamish your a ifoolish person go live in one of those nations and get terminally ill you will begging for private insurance from America a first rate nation.. It sad that you want something easy and free get a job pay for it and get what you pay for..

Helen Joyce Box

this person sounds so immature &
uniformed & needs a lesson in history,
& needs to move where they have socialized medicine

My response, after reading a fiery blog on Huffington Post that basically told the "love it or leave it" crowd to get with the program -as in, the "America is a democratic nation and we are all in this together" program, was this piece of my own vitriol:



I wish to tell these kick-the-ladder-down types to go take their selfish, greedy, idiotic tribe and do what they keep telling us, the majority, who LOVE AMERICA, to do: "Go find yourself a floating island, an uninhabited bomb test site -a space station for all I care- and start your own libertarian paradise where you have to pay just to breathe. And when you need laborers because you need to build your profits on someone else's slaving, you want to gobble up America's natural resources or use our military to "defend" your corporate interests...Well! You can just pay them a living wage and also compensate the state for educating them so they are knowledgable in math and literacy, adding to their productivity; and you, my cloistered "free-marketeers", you can pay us a hefty sum for using in a few centuries what took the earth eons to create -with a disastrous environmental impact on the most vulnerable of us- and then, dear Teabag Patriots, you can defend your own damn corporations if you really think they are so holy that foreign countries have no business kicking us out when our corporations buy out their governments, rape their resources, enslave their labor and in-debt their children. When you're ready to talk about paying the bottom 95% of this country for what you currently get FOR A SONG, then...just maybe then...we'll consider your proposal. Until then, accept that Universal Health Care is going to be good for all Americans (including you!) and the same goes for the next piece of progressive change. After seeing the result of Americans working for change that benefits us all, I hope you don't make us force a healthier environment, living wages, and corruption-free public campaigns down your throat.

Enzi gets it

When it comes to health care reform, my senator Mike Enzi gets it -he just doesn't put it all together.

Enzi in 2006: "If you have no insurance, it doesn't matter what services are mandated by the state." (His excuse to vote AGAINST legislation that would stop insurance companies from listing spousal abuse as a "pre-existing condition" that allowed them to rescind the policy.)
Enzi in 2009: "If I hadn't been involved in this process ...you would already have national health care." "National Health Care", one has to assume, would include a mechanism to provide or mandate insurance for the whole nation. So the Senator knows that reforms of insurance has no affect on the uninsured, but is working AGAINST covering the uninsured.

Enzi sees the gaps, but doesn't want to enact the reforms.

I feel...different

What's happening to me lately? I've gone from a mountain man willing to forgo lucrative pay for ski town wages in order to live close to my dreams. It makes a nice slogan for Cloudveil, but a tough life for those working to make seasonal service job income match up with destination vacation location cost of living. But a shadowed clause in the basic contract of "work for subsistence wages and we'll give you a ski pass", represents a gaping hole for the majority of those working in ski towns: no employer-sponsored health insurance with your seasonal job.
So back to me. I live in Jackson. Manage 6 employees as one part of an operation with over 40. Make less than $20K a year with no health insurance. Still, I ski (as we all do here), climb, paraglide and bike and get stupid drunk while building insane pump tracks in the back yard.
So here we are, living for love instead of for work, and when the inevitable injuries happen, we're hosed. Some of us have insurance, but it doesn't cover much, and if your injury takes you out of work, you might lose it all together. At least one injury this summer forced the victim to leave town and move back in with his parents. You'd think people around here would be interested in securing some kind of reform to help them get more affordable insurance. At least, that's my thinking.
So I organized a couple meetings through BarackObama.com, Healthcare for America Now, and Facebook. I called my senators and rep. I wrote letters and signed online petitions. I post constantly on FB the articles I find here and there and have become a crusader in "Hands off My Health" -a group that is dedicated to saying "NO" to everything proposed by the Obama administration.
That's what I've been up to. Not entirely changing the focus from mountain adventures, but adding the perspective of politically active mountain town people who are concerned about the world beyond their own idealistic vale. Not many blogs out there cover a political issue, except some of the conservative quips on Wildsnow.com, so if you find any that straddle the gap between active lifestyle and politically active, please let me know.

Today: Huge moment for health care

I've been dormant here, but active on Facebook, about health care for the last few months. I should be agitating, informing, and organizing here too, because I know there are tons of mountain adventurers who need health insurance or just have some really piddly "catastrophic" coverage. (I use scare quotes because, even with the insurance, any injury/illness is still going to be a catastrophe, considering the huge deductible and meager co-insurance typical of these plans). Forthwith, I plan on showing up here as well for those of you who consider, not only whether a tight couloir or runout climb might break your leg, but how the hell you plan on paying the bills for that broken leg, not to mention lost work, rehab, and interest on the bills (supposing you pay some on your credit card). Those of us who are college-educated (and some who are not) who are settling for low-paying jobs in order to be in a ski town, getting as much pow as possible, are particularly vulnerable -economically and from a risk standpoint- of getting F'ed up by a serious illness or injury. Even just the flu can be serious for the uninsured/underinsured. Case in point: this winter, my roommate got a pretty nasty strain of influenza. The cough became a hack and just wouldn't go away. In about a week, it had turned into pneumonia -which is what happens with untreated flu. The coughing continued and caused a cracked rib. Finally, with mounting pain (and all of us yelling at him to get help), he finally went to the doctor for antibiotics, painkillers, x-rays, etc.

Huge bill.

If you've been paying attention, you still might not now much about single-payer, the national health insurance system used by most other industrialized countries, because there has been a media blackout.

You still have a chance to get involved, and the time is now. Obama is trying to get healthcare legislation to the floor of Congress before the August break. Get involved and do something to help yourself and your bros:

I am a political strategist

Dear Mr Plouffe,
I donated and thanks for your efforts. I just want to warn you that I think your compromising has undermined the effort to achieve anything meaningful on health care reform. By dropping single-payer at the start, you lost a very effective argument against private insurance, but you also made the "public option" your only bargaining chip. Now that is getting weakened and it looks like we're going to get very little change out of the reform effort. I think you need to stop fighting for the welter-weight public option to be given a chance and let the whole effort fall on its face so that you can start over with single-payer pitted against the public insurance profiteers. How do you set this up so that Dems don't look like ineffective losers? Well, it's hard since they started themselves down that road, but make sure the Republicans and AHIP lobbyists are seen to have a hand in organizing the reform. That way, when it falls flat they have egg on their faces. If something still comes out of the effort, it's going to be a lipstick-on-pig reform that Americans should be outraged about. When some worthless reform comes out that reduces the rate of increase of health care costs from 6% to 5% annually, I'm going to think "that's what happens when you let Republicans and the industry that profits the most from the status quo take control of reform." Then I'm going to think "now I want Democrats to follow public opinion and enact a single-payer system to finance universal health coverage for all Americans, freeing our businesses and households from an onerous financial cost, while steamrolling Republicans who are offering absolutely nothing (except opposition and foot-dragging) in the face of a dire need for change.

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 1:03 PM, David Plouffe, BarackObama.com wrote:

Hamish -- We knew healthcare reform would face fierce opposition -- and it's begun. As we speak, the same people behind the notorious "swiftboat" ads of 2004 are already pumping millions of dollars into deceptive television ads. Their plan is simple: torpedo healthcare reform before it sees the light of day by scaring the public and distorting the President's approach. We need the resources to take them head on with an urgent, grassroots campaign to pass real healthcare reform in 2009. When the swiftboaters flood the airwaves with distortions, we'll flood the streets with volunteers armed with facts. When they send lobbyists to tell Congress to back down, we'll send millions of calls, letters, and stories from real Americans asking them to stand up. Please donate $5 or more by midnight Sunday to fight back against these phony attacks and take our message of reform to the American people. The swiftboaters are once again trying to sell the American people short. As during the election, we deserve a serious conversation -- not fear-mongering and deceit. You and I see the importance of healthcare reform every day. We can't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to face one of America's greatest challenges head on. Passing real healthcare reform will be the toughest, most important challenge we've faced together since electing Barack Obama President. But it's also a big reason we fought so hard to get here. I know that by working together, and speaking with one, determined voice, we can prevail over the cynics and defenders of the status quo. America's families are counting on us to do just that. Donate $5 or more to defend healthcare reform today: https://donate.barackobama.com/defendhealthcare Thank you, David Plouffe

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Monetary contributions to the Democratic National Committee are not tax-deductible. This email was sent to: tengudo@gmail.com To unsubscribe, go to: http://my.barackobama.com/unsubscribe

--
"I am wedded to the notion that everyone in America should have access to a doctor when they need it and that this should be done fairly and at reasonable cost."
--PBS Reporter T.R. Reid

Republicans: The Party of "NO".

When I was a kid, just becoming politically aware sometime in the 80s, I had a very basic understanding of politics. It seemed Democrats had some good ideas, but it was always the Republicans who shot them down. To me, the Republicans were the party of "NO". While I now have a more nuanced understanding of national politics (Democrats are actually quite often more concerned with their own careers than making good policy and sometimes neither party makes any sense), I'm dismayed to see the Republicans pretty much just saying "NO" to health care reform without any sort of proposal for the situation we're drowning in. High costs, gaps in coverage, well-known inefficiencies are all hobbling healthcare coverage and the economy. You would expect Republicans to try and fix this, since it adversely effects small business, and is forcing us to spend more public money on health care for the uninsured. But with a reform-minded president and Democratic caucus, they are simply agin' it, without trying to shape the reform to Republican ideals. (Without any proposals to increase coverage, you wonder if Republican ideals actually are for less coverage). To make matters worse, they are playing dirty: using a stall-and-deflect strategy to cripple reform efforts and pull the teeth out of any final product from the process. In addition, they are doing it with a strategy based on fear. They're not saying "it ain't broke so don't fix it." They're saying "something scary and unknown about change; we should just stick with what we've got since there's no telling what will happen if we try to reform." See the story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-merkley/words-designed-to-kill-he_b_199373.html

Also, for the record, here are the tenets of the "public option" portion of Obama's reform proposal -one of the most contentious parts of the debate since they decided to shoot low and keep the best option (single-payer) "off the table"

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OBAMA'S PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION

The choice of a public health insurance plan is crucial to real health care reform. But right now, it's being smeared by conservatives and insurance-industry front groups. Here's what you really need to know:

1. Choice, choice, choice. If the public health insurance option passes, Americans will be able to choose between their current insurance and a high-quality, government-run plan similar to Medicare. If you like your current care, you can keep it. If you don't—or don't have any—you can get the public insurance plan.²

2. It will be high-quality coverage with a choice of doctors. Government-run plans have a track record of innovating to improve quality, because they're not just focused on short-term profits. And if you choose the public plan, you'll still get to choose your doctor and hospital.³

3. We'll all save a bunch of money. The public health insurance option won't have to spend money on things like CEO bonuses, shareholder dividends, or excessive advertising, so it'll cost a lot less. Plus, the private plans will have to lower their rates and provide better value to compete, so people who keep their current insurance will save, too.⁴

4. It will always be there for you and your family. A for-profit insurer can close, move out of the area, or just kick you off their insurance rolls. The public health insurance option will always be available to provide you with the health security you need.⁵

5. And it's a key part of universal health care. No longer will sick people or folks in rural communities, or low-income Americans be forced to go without coverage. The public health insurance plan will be available and accessible to everyone. And for those struggling to make ends meet, the premiums will be subsidized by the government.⁶