John Horvath

A list we had hoped our readers would enjoy turned out to be one of the most popular features in Adventure's five-year history. You asked for it—repeatedly—now you got it: the 100 Greatest in all their glory.

1. The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922) As War and Peace is to novels, so is The Worst Journey in the World to the literature of polar travel: the one to beat. The author volunteered as a young man to go to the Antarctic with Robert Falcon Scott in 1910; that, and writing this book, are the only things of substance he ever did in life. They were enough. The expedition set up camp on the edge of the continent while Scott waited to go for the Pole in the spring. But first, Cherry-Garrard and two other men set out on a midwinter trek to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was a heartbreaker: three men hauling 700 pounds (318 kilograms) of gear through unrelieved darkness, with temperatures reaching 50, 60, and 70 degrees below zero (-46, -51, and -57 degrees Celsius); clothes frozen so hard it took two men to bend them. But Cherry-Garrard's greater achievement was to imbue everything he endured with humanity and even humor. And—as when he describes his later search for Scott and the doomed South Pole team—with tragedy as well. His book earns its preeminent place on this list by captivating us on every level: It is vivid; it is moving; it is unforgettable.
National Geographic Books, 2002.

2. Journals, by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814) Are there two American explorers more famous? Were there any braver? When they left St. Louis in 1804 to find a water route to the Pacific, no one knew how extensive the Rocky Mountains were or even exactly where they were, and the land beyond was terra incognita. Lewis and Clark's Journals are the closest thing we have to a national epic, and they are magnificent, full of the wonder of the Great West. Here are the first sightings of the vast prairie dog cities; here are huge bears that keep on coming at you with five or six bullets in them, Indian tribes with no knowledge of white men, the mountains stretching for a thousand miles; here are the long rapids, the deep snows, the ways of the Sioux, Crow, Assiniboin; here are buffalo by the millions. Here is the West in its true mythic proportions. Historian Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage gives a fine overview, but to hear the adventure in the two captains' own dogged, rough-hewn words, you need the complete Elliott Coues edition in three volumes. Buy all three. Dive in. Rediscover heroism.
National Geographic Books, 2002. Editor Elliott Coues published the definitive text of the Lewis and Clark journals in 1893, now available in a three-volume set entitled The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Dover Publications, 1979). A new, abridged version is The Essential Lewis and Clark (HarperCollins, 2000).

3. Wind, Sand & Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) Saint-Exupéry was without question the great pilot-poet of the air. And this remarkable classic attains its high ranking here by soaring both as a piece of writing and as a tale of adventure. It was Saint-Exupéry's job in the 1920s to fly the mail from France to Spain across the Pyrenees, in all kinds of weather, with bad maps and no radio. The engine on his plane would sometimes quit, he says, "with a great rattle like the crash of crockery. And one would simply throw in one's hand: there was no hope of refuge on the rocky crust of Spain." Nor in North Africa. He came down once in the Libyan Desert, and there was no water. He and his companion tramped this way and that and found no hope. "Nothing is unbearable," he tells us after a while. "Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable." He is calm about it, thoughtful, disinterested, yet at the same time intense, riveting. He takes us to places between impossible hope and endless despair we did not know existed.
Harcourt Brace, 1992.

4. Exploration of the Colorado River, by John Wesley Powell (1875) Powell lost most of his right arm fighting for the Union, but that didn't stop him from leading the first descent of the Grand Canyon. The year was 1869, and he and his nine men started on the Green River in wooden boats. "We have an unknown distance yet to run," writes Powell, "an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well!" Ah, well, indeed. The rapids were overpowering. They lost boats and supplies. They ran out of food. Near the end, three of the men lost their nerve and climbed out of the canyon; they were killed by Indians. The others stayed with Powell and survived. Powell himself was an unusual man—tough, driven, hard to please. He was also a thoughtful man, a friend of Native Americans, and a gifted geologist. It is this combination—deep curiosity allied with great courage—that makes the book a classic.
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (National Geographic Books, 2002).

5. Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger (1959) The southern Arabian desert, a quarter million square miles of sand (650,000 square kilometers), is now a place of oil wells and Land Rovers, but before the 1950s it was still known as the Empty Quarter, a place you entered only on camel and only as an Arab. Only a few white men had ever seen it, much less crossed it. From 1945 to 1950, the British Thesiger crossed it twice, living with the Bedouin, sharing their hard lives. His book is the classic of desert exploration, a door opening on a vanished feudal world. It is a book of touches, little things-why the Bedouin will never predict the weather ("since to do so would be to claim knowledge that belongs to God"), how they know when the rabbit is in its hole and can be caught. It is written with great respect for these people and with an understanding that acknowledges its limits. With humility, that is, which is appropriate. Fail the humility test, and the desert will surely kill you.
Viking, 1985.

6. Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog (1952) No one had ever climbed an 8,000-meter (26,250-ft.) peak when Herzog led a team of the best climbers in France to Annapurna in 1950. Maps were sketchy and inadequate; they had trouble even finding the peak. They climbed without oxygen. The weather was bad. Nevertheless, Herzog and Louis Lachenal made it to the top. But on the descent, disaster: lost gloves, frostbite, an avalanche. When rescue came, Herzog had almost given up and could hardly move. He lost all his fingers and thus did not write but dictated this book. It has its faults, mostly in Herzog's failure to credit his teammates as fairly as he might. Yet it conveys the essential spirit of climbing as no popular book had before and earns its place here as the most influential mountaineering book of all time.
Lyons Press, 1997.

7. Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey (1968) Abbey is our very own desert father, a hermit loading up on silence and austerity and the radical beauty of empty places. Early on he spent summers working as a ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and those summers were the source for this book of reverence for the wild—and outrage over its destruction. But really his whole life was an adventure and a protest against all the masks of progress. He wanted to recapture life on the outside—bare-boned, contemptuous of what we call civilization—and to do it without flinching. He helped ignite the environmental movement, teaching his followers to save the world by leaving it absolutely alone.
Simon and Schuster, 1990.

8. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942) "A bloody wonderful book," Ernest Hemingway called it, and so it is—Africa from the seat of an Avro biplane, winged prose, if you will, about the lion that mauled her, about the Masai and the Kikuyu, about flying over the Serengeti, searching for the downed plane of her lover. It appears that Markham's third husband, writer Raoul Schumacher, contributed much of the literary polish. But what of it? The book, and the life, still radiate excitement: "I have lifted my plane from the Nairobi airport for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of firstborn adventure."
North Point Press, 2001.

9. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (1997) Was it fate that put Krakauer—at once a crack climber, a seasoned journalist, and a sensitive conscience—on the world's highest mountain during that notorious 1996 season? Unpredictable weather, human folly, and a mind-set committed to client satisfaction killed 12 people on Everest that year, while the whole world watched. Krakauer showed us what it really meant: the traffic jams on the summit ridge; guides bending their own rules to get exhausted clients to the top. He showed us the consequences of disrespect for this formidable goddess, Chomolungma, as the Sherpas call her. And Krakauer is as hard on himself as he is on the rest. Whereas Annapurna is the record of a triumph, Into Thin Air is the postmortem of a debacle—less inspiring, but no less powerful. As the most widely read mountaineering work in recent history, it has profoundly shaped our idea of extreme adventure and who and what it is for.
Anchor, 1999.

10. Travels, by Marco Polo (1298) Polo dictated these tales to a scribe, a writer of romances named Rustichello, while the two men shared a cell in a Genoese prison. Just how much Rustichello added to the text nobody knows. Yet most of what Polo tells us about his overland journey to Asia checks out. He traveled during a relatively peaceful time, so this is not a book about taking physical risks. Nor is it as accessible to modern readers as many of the books on this list. Yet it is without question the founding adventure book of the modern world. Polo gave to the age of exploration that followed the marvels of the East, the strange customs, the fabulous riches, the tribes with gold teeth. It was a Book of Dreams, an incentive, a goad. Out of it came Columbus (whose own copy of the book was heavily annotated), Magellan, Vasco da Gama, and the rest of modern history.
The Travels of Marco Polo, in two volumes (Dover Publications, 1993).

11. Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen (1897) In 1893, Nansen purposely froze his ship into the Arctic ice and traveled with the drift of the pack. When the ship approached striking distance of the Pole, he set out for it by dogsled, reaching the highest latitude yet attained by man before turning back to Norway. He was gone three years. The book is both an epic and a lyric masterpiece.
Modern Library, 1999.

12. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen (1978) He sees wolves, he sees the wild blue sheep of the Himalaya, but he never does see a snow leopard. Never mind, this is still Matthiessen's best book, a moving spiritual quest and a mountain adventure that celebrates the beauty of this dramatic country and the transcendence concealed in simple day-by-day survival.
Penguin, 2001.

13. Roughing It, by Mark Twain (1872) Twain lit out for the territory when the Civil War started and knocked around the West for six years. Roughing It is the record of that time, a great comic bonanza, hilarious when it isn't simply funny, full of the most outrageous characters and events. It is not an adventure book, it is an anti-adventure book, but no less indispensable.
Penguin, 2000.

14. Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana (1840) Scion of a prominent Boston family, Dana dropped out of Harvard and, hoping to recover the strength of his eyes, weakened by measles, signed on with a merchant ship as a common sailor. His book about his time at sea is an American classic, vivid in its description of the sailor's life and all its dangers and delights.
Penguin, 2000.

15. South, by Ernest Shackleton (1919) Shackleton's story bears endless retelling (and it has been retold, in fine accounts by Alfred Lansing and, more recently, Caroline Alexander). Here we have it in the great British explorer's own words, quiet, understated, enormously compelling. We all know the story: the expedition to Antarctica in the Endurance, the ship breaking up in the ice, the incredible journey in an open boat across the world's stormiest seas. Though Shackleton's literary gifts may not equal those of Cherry-Garrard or Nansen, his book is a testament, plain and true, to what human beings can endure.
Lyons Press, 1998.

16. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby (1958) A British high-fashion salesman and a diplomat, Newby and Hugh Carless, with four days' climbing lessons in the Welsh hills, walk into Afghanistan, climb mountains, run into Kafirs with rifles ("Here," one tells the pair happily, "we shoot people without permission"), have a grand time, and survive. The result? This witty, dry, and very English adventure book.
Lonely Planet, 1998.

17. Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl (1950) Nine balsa-wood logs, a big square sail, a bamboo "cabin" with a roof made of banana leaves—thus did Norwegian Heyerdahl and his companions set sail from Peru toward Polynesia to prove a point: that the South Pacific was settled from the east. Point proved? Maybe not, but it's one hell of a ride—a daring tale, dramatically told.
Hardcover edition from Adventure Library, 1997.

18. Travels in West Africa, by Mary Kingsley (1897) She went by steamboat and canoe, accompanied by native crewmen, up the Ogooué. She fought off crocodiles with a paddle, hit a leopard over the head with a pot, and wrote with equal charm about beetles and burial customs. Other African explorers were more daring, none more engaging. When she died, the British buried her at sea with full military honors.
National Geographic Books, 2002.

19. The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles Lindbergh (1953) This is Lindbergh's account of perhaps the most famous air journey ever made, the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. It's a spacious book, too, full of incident—bailouts over Illinois cornfields, Lindbergh's barnstorming days, family lore. More than the tale of a great adventure, it's a portrait of the adventurer.
Minnesota Historical Society, 1993.

new Ad from the big three automakers

2008-12-12T14:16:00.001-08:00

Fwd: Election night Pictures from around the world

2008-11-10T09:29:00.001-08:00

Re: FW: The Election is not lost

2008-10-31T08:59:00.001-07:00

I think issues such as abortion and homosexuality should be addressed in local communities and churches and not by passing laws at the federal level that try to restrict things that you can't restrict with laws. I don't think the federal government is helpful at increasing morals. People who want to shape their communities should be more involved with local and state governments, and we can reshape this country one community at a time, passing a law that says gays can't get married, or it is illegal to get an abortion won't stop those behaviors only make them criminal. We don't need a more of these kinds of criminals in jail, our jails are already overcrowded. If we have faith to move mountains then we can make changes without just passing some laws, that's lazy and non-effective. We do need smaller federal government. I don't think the people voting from Obama want a bigger government either... they may get it perhaps... he may be liberal, but I don't believe he is the 'enemy' or a terrorist. John McCain had praise for him at the Alfred E. Smith awards dinner. He is a competitor. It's dangerous to put everything into black and white I think... I think things are complex... A polarized world of everything must be good or evil makes people want to fight half the things they see instead of trying to love all the things they see.... maybe democrats *are* too huggy feel-good for everyone... I like that better than the fear-based tactics of the conservatives... there are real threats out there that need to be taken care of, but getting everybody into a fear-state is as bad in my opinion as getting everybody into a welfare-state! maybe that's the choice we have in 4 days... fear-state or welfare-state ;-)

Socialism and "Dead-Beats"

2008-10-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

I think if Obama has any chance to win it's because apparently 50% of the people in the country are skeptical of the kind of capitalism we got going now... Even if Obama wants to just give money to deadbeats that don't work (I think he "revised" his plan to only give the $1000 "wealth redistribution credit" to working folks) I would almost rather he give my money to the deadbeats than any more of my money going to the ultra-rich.... I wonder if in this global economy with the rich in China and Russia for example benefiting from corporate riches over here; if trickle down economics is really working for us. I don't think the rich are really using their wealth to create enough jobs over here. I think the best thing we can do long-term is pour money into early/middle/highschool/college education and get these deadbeats out of the gutter and make America competitive again. We're going to get beat by the developing countries if we rest on our laurels singing patriotic songs about how great we are without making serious adjustments. We don't need to socialize medicine to make it work better, but we might as well give insurance to the deadbeats because they use the ultra-expensive emergency rooms right now anytime they get a scratch, so we all pay for them now anyhow... might as well give them some preventive care and make it cheaper. Nobody (except the deadbeats) wants to just give welfare and handouts to the deadbeats (didn’t Clinton actually do some good here?) but any creative solutions to “bring-up” all of America, to people who are willing to work for it, will benefit all of us! It’s all interconnected, what we have now is not sustainable in my opinion.

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president

2008-10-19T08:47:00.001-07:00

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081019/ap_on_el_pr/powell

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer – 19 mins ago

Watch John McCain say that Sarah Palin knows more about energy than anyone in American... haahahahh

2008-10-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Watch John McCain say that Sarah Palin knows more about energy than anyone in American... haahahahh

Both McCain and Obama at their best last night at Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner Roast... very funny...

2008-10-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

Both McCain and Obama at their best last night at Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner Roast... very funny...

McCain roasts Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irXS4Q7mUKQ

Obama roasts McCain (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5YJkhizRs
Obama roasts McCain (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SkFjTCscM4

Check this out! Palin as President!

2008-10-16T14:44:00.001-07:00

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Presidential Material

2008-10-16T13:19:00.001-07:00

Unchecked communism or unchecked capitalism assist greedy corrupt people in hording and gluttony

2008-10-14T10:36:00.001-07:00

Unchecked communism or unchecked capitalism assist greedy corrupt people in hording and gluttony. When people are so poor they can't even feed their families, they'll do anything. This is how communism starts in a country because the poor revolt against the ultra-rich because at that point there is nothing else to lose.
How do we remove regulations and let free-market work properly without allowing the greedy to take advantage of less fortunate? I don't think that letting industries regulate themselves works, and also saying that the consumer will regulate the companies because consumers wont't buy from companies they don't like doesn't work either.
From what I have heard about McCain's health plan and letting insurance companies setup in any state sounds great for the companies and bad for the consumer. Idealistically it sounds great but it actuality I agree that the consumer would get dropped from their employer plan and would have the pre-existing condition crap to worry about when they are out shopping on their own without a group behind them and insurance companies would only do business in the states that had the least regulation.

President Bush said ...plan to partly nationalize nine major banks

2008-10-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

President Bush said this morning that the administration's "unprecedented and aggressive" plan to partly nationalize nine major banks was an "essential short-term measure to ensure the viability" of a battered financial system.

With the government poised to invest $250 billion of taxpayers' money into private banks, Bush and top economic policymakers tried to emphasize in morning remarks that the dramatic proposal was not meant to undermine the country's free market principles. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. called parts of the proposal "objectionable. . . . Today's actions are not what we ever wanted to do."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101400738.html?hpid=topnews

video
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2008/10/14/VI2008101400717.html

bush and the budget

2008-10-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-04-budget-hill_x.htm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb

Increases in the National Debt and Liberal Spending...

2008-10-13T20:58:00.001-07:00

Peter

2008-10-13T14:01:00.001-07:00

cutting taxes... how long before we have to pay off the "visa" bill ?

2008-10-11T23:29:00.001-07:00

cutting taxes (even when running a deficit) of course stimulates the economy like buying stereo equipment stimulates my happiness (even when I have a huge visa bill), but at some point I'm going to have to pay off that visa or else my "house of cards" will come tumbling down... (and nobody will loan me money or it will be at an extreme rate).. I owe money to chase bank like we now owe money to the Chinese... we can keep just printing more greenbacks but that devalues the dollar as we see now... a long-term weak dollar will weaken our military and our security...

while the democratic congress deserves some flak it's the president's administration that puts together the budget and the current neo-conservatives would have you think that we can just continue to run record deficits and continue to cut taxes and continue to borrow money and it won't matter because our GDP is some great that it doesn't matter, but as we now see, it does matter...

iraq... what a brilliant move... if we really had intelligence on weapons of mass destruction we should have gone in with the shock and awe, checked the entire country for WMDs, taken out Saddam and left... what about the vacuum that that we would leave you say? there will be a vacuum there if we leave after 3 months, 3 years, or 30 years... the united states thinks in terms of winning the war in weeks or a several years but the people in this part of the world can sit and wait for decades while we occupy and then resume when we leave... can't force democracy on people... better to set a good example of what democracy and freedom are all about, that is why the torture issues and lack of legal process are so disappointing at gitmo... when you start making exceptions such as; these guys are soooo bad they don't need legal process... that's a slippery slope...

-john

my buddy Jonathan rants about the current situation

2008-10-11T21:35:00.001-07:00

In 1996 to 2000 the government taxed fairly high, regulated more, the debt was being paid off, and the economy was steadily increasing. By 2008, the government taxed unfairly low, the debt more than doubled, deregulation occurred, the economy collapsed, and 5 years of growth was lost in a matter of months, US torture policy, deterioration of FEMA, Pentagon control of the CIA, a worldwide blunder on terror, return of the cold war, Russian weapons in Venezuala, North Korean and Iranian nukes, and lying campaign invoking fear and division.

So... The level of tax no matter how unfairly distributed does not correlate necessarily to economic prosperity. Pretty soon, you might be paying NO tax, and it will be the Democrats giving you a Bread Line.

I looked into Ayers and ACORN. There is nothing there! It's an absurd scare tactic whose accusations would certainly involve the Justice Department and hefty jail time if the accusations had merit, whereas Palin was found through a formal process to have actually violated policy.

Ayers... You don't necessarily know peoples' backgrounds when you go to sit on a board of directors, and anybody can contribute to your campaign. If somebody was a convicted felon it does not make you partner to their crime. Those organizations are clean and no work toward terrorism was ever performed or else it'd be a different story. Ayers was not active or recognizable as a terrorist nor engaged in anything of the sort during the time that Obama had contact with him.

ACORN... This is an organization that hired under privileged people to go out and sign up other under privileged people for voter registration. Obama was partner to their cause and there's no findings of wrong doing on Obama's part. However some of the under privileged workers would fill in fake names without going out and doing the real work of signing people up. As a result, they got paid for low effort, then they'd quit and take the easy money. There's no evidence of actual election fraud or else it's be a different story. Obama is not directly related to it or else it's be a different story. It is just a case of shady opportunists bending the truth to their own personal advantage. That's the real crime!

my buddy Kevin suggests some links on "Tax and Spend Liberals -or- Tax, Spend, and Whine Conservatives?"

2008-10-09T15:56:00.001-07:00

Try Charles Wheelan's writings...

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/archive/economist/charles-wheelan/1

My favorite of his being (the one that made me start paying attention to his writings - is this one from August, back before the Wallstreet bomb)...

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/98587

* This does not include the potential $3Trillion just spent due to the financial crisis if things go south (thus potential). In other words the FedDeficit (as of this week) has the potential to "exceed" the current "total Fed Income" and that doesn't include projections of reduced Fed-Tax income. So at this point in time the Fed's potential liabilities exceed the entire income of the Fed Government for a year. To say that is a drop in the bucket is hardly something to swallow.

There are no Republican fiscal hawks anymore, that roll is now filled by my new buds - the Blue Dog Democrats. The Republicans are just about running the government like the Pharasee's did, moral issues for everyone but themselves / budgets be damned, we're not in debt. Evil Republicans, and even more evil is the AARP.

This one is so-so...

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/108425

2004 ELECTION RESULTS - SHOWING AVERAGE IQ FOR EACH STATE

2008-10-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

2004 ELECTION RESULTS - SHOWING AVERAGE IQ FOR EACH STATE

Tax and Spend Liberals -or- Tax, Spend, and Whine Conservatives ?

2008-10-08T12:52:00.001-07:00

looking for information on "tax and spend liberals" compared to "tax and spend and whine conservatives"

http://www.mypolls.us/republican.national.debt.jpg

http://www.eriposte.com/economy/tax/tax_n_spend_truths.htm

http://www.eriposte.com/economy/other/demovsrep.htm

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/8/14/101123.shtml

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/mashek/2008/5/19/republicans-liberal-attacks-on-democrats-losing-their-sting.html

Obama health plan outperforms McCain plan in coverage and efficiency

2008-10-08T12:36:00.001-07:00

I am a little worried that I'm going to get a check for $2500 from McCain and lose my employer-health-plan insurance and then have to find a policy for individuals that has exclusions on pre-existing conditions and high deductibles...

The Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (TPC) (SEE BELOW) finds that both candidate's plans are in the same ball park as far as tax payer cost but the Obama plan insures many more people with less cost per person... don't believe the hype that Obama is for full socialized medicine... not true... go google for more comparisions

Obama health plan outperforms McCain plan in coverage and efficiency
May 23, 2008 | EPI Policy Memorandum #126
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/pm126

How We Became the United States of France

2008-09-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

This Time.com article How We Became the United States of France by Bill Saporito makes me want to rant a bit...

It certainly does seem like the ultra-rich in this country are doing pretty well while our country is being bankrupt by corruption... and what's the problem with american auto-makers?, they suck... they're crying NOW that they need government investment to make green cars to compete with the japanese? wow, I'm suprised the american auto-makers didn't see that coming earlier... idiots... mccain supporters are crying that obama is for 'redistribution of wealth'... seems to me like there already has been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last seven years... how many middle-class folks do you know who are doing better? go google about how the number of ultra-rich has gone exponential in last seven years... now we can't all blame it on one administration, these trends have been in motion for longer than seven years... I'm just still trying to figure out how a budget surplus turned into the biggest deficiet ever, and why raising taxes to support a 'just war' is a bad idea (instead of putting it on the credit card)...

my scuba pics are at fatjimmy.com

2008-05-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

check out my scuba pics

this is from some trips to Cozumel Mexico, Roatan Honduras, and Bonaire.