– Democratic support is creeping East.
– The next four years are going to be awesome.
– There is nothing I don’t love about Kenny G’s manager yelling at The Stranger.
– Stay classy, rightwing media.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
Safely nestled in my Keller bunker I am willing to let the US go over the fiscal speed bump if only to watch John Bonehead’s head explode. Seriously though, I’m glad that BO appears to have figured out that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. In the words of the almighty Bruce Willis, “Shoot the hostage!”. New Die Hard coming out for Valentines Day. WhooHoo.
Ugh…I hate the Seattle Times. That’s a totally cool graphic with the article at the first link, but when you click on the map to see a larger version…you get a smaller version!!
Also, there are two graphics with the story…the map, and a campaign photo of a smarmy smiling Rob McKenna!
WTF?!
Only an idiot would ask for Billions in additional stimulous spending to counteract the negative effect his Owebammacare and Tax Hiking will do.
The movie Idiocracy was made for this guy and his supporters!
Damn that ObamaCare!
Medicare beneficiaries reach $5 billion in drug savings
Since passage of the health care overhaul two years ago, 5.8 million Medicare patients have saved $5 billion from prescription drug discounts…
The savings are a continuation of the 2010 health care law’s attempt to close the “doughnut hole” — or the prescription drug coverage expenses that kick in once Medicare coverage runs out…
@2 – This is good:
If Seattle didn’t exist, the state would be poverty stricken.
Corporate welfare run amok in where else?
The Great State of TexASS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12.....texas.html
It’d be nice if this idiocy was restricted to Texas but no sadly it’s a nation-wide sickness.
Interesting remark from the CEO of Hallmark:
If you’re looking at the competitiveness of a region, the most important thing a region can do is to focus on education. And this use of incentives is really transferring money from education to businesses.
Amen.
You know the Republican agenda which is to force budget cuts? And the wingnut insistence that President Obama is spending more money than any other President?
Turns out, according to the Market Watch section of that bastion of the “liveral media”, The Wall Street Journal – the Obama spending bing never happened. In fact, most of the spending the Republicans attribute to President Obama was incurred during the last fiscal year budget approved by George W. Bush.
Obama Spending bing never happened
@6 Facts don’t matter to Republicans Teabaggers
In the ongoing battle of the budget, President Obama has done something very cruel. Declaring that this time he won’t negotiate with himself, he has refused to lay out a proposal reflecting what he thinks Republicans want. Instead, he has demanded that Republicans themselves say, explicitly, what they want. And guess what: They can’t or won’t do it.
All this increase in federal spending that right wingers scream endlessly about is concentrated in:
Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid..
Because of an aging population and the Medicare drug benefit.. So many more people thrown into poverty since 2007 didn’t hurt either. So miserable cowardly Republicans won’t say what they’ll cut – they’d be screwing the fools that vote for them.
Obama says we fix it with raising revenues from the people who have done just fine over the last 10 plus years and the corporations whose profits are at an ALL TIME HIGH…
Ball’s in your court Republicans. You reap what you sow.
This series of slides are helpful:
http://www.businessinsider.com.....c-growth-1
Not sure I agree with all of them but I find them a good refresher on our current situation.
Lastly, remember that AWFUL 716 billion that Obama was going to CUT, CUT, CUT from senior’s Medicare?
Heh. Oh how did Romney and our trolls talk that one up!
Oh noes! What are you poor seniors going to do when that awful socialist Obama cuts your Medicare for his socialist Obamacare????
Well your good old conservative warrior, Randroid Paul Ryan, is incorporating those SAME cuts into his new budget:
http://thehill.com/blogs/healt.....icare-cuts
AGAIN! I mean don’t you just LOVE these Republicans???? It’s a laugh a minute with these clowns!
We are going off the fiscal curb.
Finally, Republicans offered up a their proposal but it’s basically a two-page whinefest about how much they hated President Obama’s proposal from last week. But the only thing included in their counteroffer is a regurgitation of their willingness to raise $800 billion in new revenue from unspecified tax reforms along with a proposal to cut $300 billion in discretionary spending and $900 billion in entitlements. They offer no details whatsoever to explain how they would achieve any of these targets.
Oh yeah, and their plan for more tax revenue? Lower tax rates. Brilliant!
We used to think that the Republicans wouldn’t risk a default because of the steep cuts to the military budget. I’ve become convinced that is so much hogwash.
It’s not that cuts aren’t needed. The biggest increase over the past few years in military spending has been to “consultants”. Some are needed for items beyond the military’s expertise, such as environmental cleanup of contaminated military basis, ect. (I was involved in that business for a while). But a lot of it is just Congressional icing spread upon the cake at the behest of lobbyists with lots of money in their pockets, to do studies that the Pentagon never asked for nor needed.
But the real truth is that the Republicans figure they can do without the military spending, at least for a while. They can then run around claiming, like Romney did in his campaign, that military cuts are Obama’s doing, and they are responsible for endangering our troops and the security of our country. After all, we need lots more swords, flintlocks, and WWII-era battleships!
After all, the current crop of Republicans have proven over the past four years that the it’s not the real welfare of the American People that is their priority. Their priority is to win the “war of rhetoric” so they can keep their jobs and get more power.
Speaking of “current crop”, I talked with my uncle in So. Alabama yesterday. He said his crop had become infested with a weed which has mutated into a “superweed”, thanks to the makers of Roundup. He said he had no choice but to mow the entire crop up, burn the entire thing in the hopes of killing off the seed pods, and then plow the rest of the field under.
Which got me to thinking that is probably the best analogy for what is wrong with the Republican Party, and the best way of fixing it (figuratively speaking).
# 11: I expected as much. Basically they took the Romney/Ryan campaign statement on how they would balance the budget, and make that their proposal. And you’ve got to laugh at their reliance upon the Reagan era “supply-side ecoomics”, which Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, called a “rosey scenario”.
Of course, that’s not roses you smell, that’s the manure they plan to spread around as fertilizer upon the rest of us.
I understand one of the current money sinks is the planned consolidation of the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security. It’s to be housed in the extensively (and no doubt expensively) refurbished campus of a onetime government-run insane asylum.
Why do some many stories seem to be themed
“Nobody could have possibly conceived that X could happen…”
when they mean
“We ignored the experts who said repeatedly that X will happen.”
I have never seen a more income destructive administration in my entire life. Good luck funding all those private pensions!
Hmmm, the trolls are silent today (so far). Are they depressed? Should they seek counseling?
It reminds me a bit of a billboard I saw a few years back, which struck me as funny in an awkward sort of way. It said “x% of people committing suicide were suffering from depression”. To which I responded, “Duh! I didn’t think they were in a really good mood at the time”.
Like I said, it was one of the things which struck me as awkard, and ultimately innappropriate. Depression is a serious disease. But the copywriter for the billboard needed to re-think his whole idea.
@10 Does anyone besides me find it ironic that Republicans, after campaigning against Obama by falsely claiming he would cut Medicare benefits by $716 billion, are now proposing a “fiscal cliff” deal whose largest single component is $600 billion in health care cuts?
Republicans: Lying hypocrites for the rich, against elderly and poor …
@11 “We are going off the fiscal curb.”
I came to that conclusion over a week ago. There are multiple nasty surprises in store for middle class taxpayers if we do.
First, the AMT (alternative minimum tax) will reach deeply into the middle class; instead of snaring 4 million taxpayers, it will entrap over 30 million. The income threshold at which AMT applies will, for married joint filers, revert to 2000 levels, i.e. drop from $75,000 to $45,000. And — get this — it will apply to the 2012 tax year; and if you didn’t have extra withholding throughout this year, you may not only owe over $3,000 of additional taxes but also under-withholding penalties on that amount.
Another unwelcome surprise for married joint filers is the reappearance of the “marriage penalty;” married joint filers will see their standard deduction drop by $2,000.
In addition, if you have high medical expenses, the deduction threshold rises in 2013 from 7.5% to 10% of AGI (adjusted gross income), unless you’re over 65 or blind.
There are lots of other punji stakes in the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, too, affecting things like the child tax credit and deductibility of student loan interest.
So, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts if we go over the “cliff” isn’t just about higher tax rates, it hits average taxpayers in multiple ways.
So I spent some of the weekend banging my head against the thick skull of a relative. The couples’ combined income was 247k last year and while talking about his promotion that would bump his end up about 12k he insisted that combined they would now make LESS in 2013 than in 2012 due to the tax increase. (Marginally true if his party insists on letting the AMT hit big in order to stand for John Schnatter’s hundreds of millions over families on principle.)
Damn, dual income suburban Republicans are stupid and ill-informed.
You’d think they’d be calling their right wing Congress critters to pass the middle class tax cut (which already passed the Senate) which applies to them every bit as it does to lower income people..
But no.. They obsess on the higher rate on any income over 250k no matter how small that income.
# 18: I had not considered the AMT. In past years the Congress had continually kicked the AMT down the road, making it something which could be routinely avoided. If they don’t do something, it’s going to hit hard. And it’s too late to do much about changing withholding.
Also, Ryan was a little flumoxed that the President wasn’t kow towing to him, and acting like the obedient servant Ryan wishes Obama to be. So he says that in addition to everything else, he’s going to hold back on any increased in the debt limit, bringing government to a standstill. There are some vague threats from “unnamed sources” about not allowing the Social Security administration to spend money to process or mail checks, in the hopes that an uprising of seniors, egged on by the GOP blaming Obama, would cause him to cavae. But I don’t see a way for them to do that.
Ryan must have a short memory. When the Republicans tried that against Clinton, the public outcry against the Republicans caused the Republicans to give way pretty easily.
Just don’t have any pizza delivered by interns to the White House this time around.
Congressional Republicans sure are silly idiots.
What the President should be saying today:
yep, they are so stupid that they make twice what you do.
Oh, and a bit of advice for the White House:
Cancel the vacation trip this year. Yes, Hawaii is his home, and there’s no good reason why he should be in cold Washington D.C. when he could be on the beaches, while the Republicans dither away.
But the Republicans would have a field day with pictures of Obama on the beach while the “fiscal cliff” is approaching, even if he’s doing nothing but waiting on a Republican response.
So instead, when Congress adjournes for the Christmas recess, we should get a few pictures of leading House Republicans on vacation with their families, instead of working on a way to resolve the impass.
# 24: As we’ve observed by watching the actions of numerous CEOs, executives, heirs, and other rich people, pay is no indicator of intelligence.
Many of the REAL producers of wealth in this country – folks that work hard for a living – can tell you in an hour everything that’s wrong about how their company is run. CEO’s and executives, however, have to hire MBA consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour to come to the wrong conclusion.
Boeing workers argued hard in 2002-20003 that getting rid of the ability to build aircraft parts and outsourcing almost all of it was a ridiculous strategy, removing Boeing from having effective schedule and quality control, and surrendering the potential profits on those parts to other companies. It wasn’t until almost ten years later, with the 787 program three years late in delivering it’s first airplane, that some executives admitted that “perhaps we went to far in that initiative”.
Speaking of ignorance…
In Atlanta today some 42 elementary school children were hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisening. It seems there was a leak in the boiler system, and the school had no carbon monoxide gas detectors. The results could have been tragic if teachers hadn’t quickly evacuated the school as the children fell ill.
http://seattletimes.com/html/n.....lized.html
I’m not talking about Georgia, or certainly not the students or teachers, as being ignorant. After all, almost half of the states don’t require carbon monoxide detectors in schools.
What is ignorant is the rightwing insistent that money doesn’t solve problems in the schools. You know, like in school systems like this one that wring every dollar allocated to them for basic instructional expenses (teachers, textbooks, desks, etc.), instead having the “luxory” of making fundamental infrastructure repairs which would allow a $20 carbon monoxide detector to be installed in each school.
Of course, Uncle Jim would say that the teachers who saved the lives of these kids weren’t the smart ones. To him, the smart ones are the ones who make $200K plus as a dual-income couple.
I’m cheering for going over the cliff, it’s the only way we’ll ever get the military-industrial-complex under control and the little extra I’ll pay in taxes wont hurt me.
@24
That’s assuming a lot. And like all Republican assumptions, 100% wrong. Actually, We do a little better than them but have a house that’s 1000sf smaller and while they drive a really nice Lexus I’m pretty happy in my bucket since I don’t drive a lot. So while if one of them lost a job they might need to come to me for aid, I can hold out for about 2 years.
But then I’m one of those irresponsible lefties who are waiting for Obamaclaus..
LMFAO…your comprehension of mechanical systems is comical..
speaking of TEH STOOPID…..
a leak in the boiler system…rofl….
ya, speaking of “assumptions” and broad brushes:“Damn, dual income suburban Republicans are stupid and ill-informed.”
fail.
no, uncle jim would say RHPiss once again shows what an ill informed fool he is.
then again, maybe you can tell us more black helicopter theories…lol
@31
Yep, any suburban family making between 250k and 500k and still voting Republican is stupid. Too stupid to know that while railing against high taxes they aren’t getting real tax cuts. Their tax cuts are replaced by regular property tax increases, skyrocketing tuition, poor public schools churning out more and more students unprepared to make a decent living as they don’t get federal funding at the rates they used to. They don’t realize that the grand experiment of Reagonomics is a sham. Don’t realize that by failing to fund mental-health and early learning programs society turns out more people who end up incarcerated. So you build more prisons and staff them all while keeping your taxes low. Or so they think while not noticing that their property taxes are way up and not at any level close to inflation since 1980. They don’t realize that when they send their little ones to college it is at least 12x more expensive than when they themselves were at UW.
In short, they are too stupid to realize that they are voting against their own interests just so they can maybe afford an LX instead of an RX right now and then not have a pot to piss in when they fail to qualify for Pell Grants and haven’t saved a couple hundred thousand for 3 kids, books, tuition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oh_-_x3-Wc
LOLZ…..oh wait, these are the smart people..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE2M7g_IWSE
LOLZ again…bonus smart people….
@24 It’s a fine point, but low character correlates to making money much better than high intelligence does.
And btw, money-centric values are decidedly un-Christian, as the teachings of the New Testament make utterly clear.
@25 I disagree. I think it’s extremely important for Obama to take his Hawaiian vacation. He should make a point of being out of town after December 20, so the Republicans know if they don’t wrap up a deal by then, we’re going over the cliff and they’ll be blamed.
And he should pick up some extra copies of his birth certificate while he’s there, in case having a photo ID isn’t good enough to vote in the next election.
@26 They’re going to pay dearly for shifting to nonunion labor, too. Maybe I should ditch my Boeing stock while it’s still worth something.
@28 I agree. Going over the cliff is castor oil, but when the patient is sick, bitter medicine may be the cure.
If Obama sits back and does nothing we’ll get immediate and massive deficit reduction, we’ll get the Federal Reserve back in its corral, we’ll get a significant downsizing of the industrial-military complex, we’ll get roadblocks to economic recovery removed, and best of all, voters will blame Republicans for the bad taste in their mouths.
@29 I live in a hole under a tree in a park, get around on my powerful hind legs, eat grass, and am gifted with prolific reproductive capacity. I can hold out forever.
@30 Prior to posting you may wish to have some slight knowledge of the subject. Boilers are fueled by many possible sources; wood, coal, bunker or lighter petroleums or natural gas. It is quite possible that incoming air to support combustion of these fuels was restricted and that incomplete combustion resulted in heightened CO levels. Often that CO leaks through old seals into the hot air ductwork, decreases O2 levels in enclosed spaces and causes complete or partial asphixiation. Ergo, the boiler system leaked. Please restrict your commentary to that about which you have some minimal understanding.
@41 “Please restrict your commentary to that about which you have some minimal understanding.”
That’s asking an awful lot of a troll.
Here’s a tutorial on why we run big deficits.
http://www.nbcnews.com/busines.....-1C7378082
(Hint: not because of spending.)
They can still talk with authority about goat sex.
Climate deniers in one chart
http://www.desmogblog.com/site.....-Chart.png
Just saying.
Syria seems to be getting worse. Fears that Rebel gains could see Assad deploy ballistic missiles tipped with chemical warheads, has NATO announcing that they will be backing Turkey(Article 5?), and expected to approve a request from Ankara for Patriot Missiles, despite objections from another Turkish neighbor, Russia.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl.....t-20590129
The first time NATO Article 5, which deals with response to attacks on NATO nations, was 9/11/2001.
@44 Goat sex should be illegal. Goats have feelings, too. How would you like it if you were a goat and you caught Mr. Cynical humping your doe?
This was quick. Over the weekend, a highway tunnel in Japan collapsed, and now, the authorities have raided the office of the tunnel operator. The raid could also happen to be conducted to show that they are in charge, as Japan has an election coming up. The tunnel collapse was fatal. The tunnel was built in 1977, different ruling party then, different electoral system.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20591082
@48 Politics works the same everywhere. Even Stalin fretted about his public image. That’s why he shot anyone who criticized him.
Business Week explains how the “Red Dawn” remake “makes a powerful case for why the U.S. should take a sledgehammer to its military budget.”
http://www.businessweek.com/ar.....g#r=hpt-fs
Plot spoiler: “Any North Korean invasion of the U.S. probably could be defeated by a misfit band of teenage dropouts.”
Btw the remake “bombed” at the box office (pun intended).
Roger Rabbit@48, great point. Although in Japan, honor is important in just about everything, even business. I read in a recent article in TRAINS Magazine, (August 2012) edition about Japanese Railway operator JR Hokaido, which owns and operates most passenger trackage on the Northernmost big island of Hokaido. The article was about the efficient operation(and the author, an American who taught English there mentioned that it could not be duplicated here for many reasons), and it was mentioned the aftermath of a trainwreck, where there were a few injuries, but no deaths, the head of the railroad(JR Hokaido), took his own life.
Roger Rabbit at 50.
THe original plan was for the enemy to be China, but allegedly changed to make it possible to sell the movie, in China. I wonder if China would have liked the original Red Dawn of the 1980s. THey were on our side in the movie.
@41
another person who doesnt understand mechanical systems…lol
of course, the article mentioned a “furnace”, not a boiler, as RHPiss claimed….and I am sure in his black helicopter world, they are the same thing.
Could you please show me a “boiler” connected to supply air ductwork please…..thanks…lol
# 53: When I attended schools, we had steam heat. So the furnace was an integral part of the heating system, using the furnace to burn coal (later oil) to heat the steam boilers which distributed steam throughout the school. If I substituted “boiler” for “furnace”, it was unintentional, only because we always referred to it as the “boiler room”.
But # 41 is correct anyway, destroying your self-annointed “expertise” in all things mechanical.
Even nuclear power plants convert heat from atomic fision to steam. In many ways, we are still in the “steam age”.
Of course, you weren’t interested in furnaces or boilers, like most trolls you are only interested in destructive criticism rather than a reasonable discussion of the issues. The issue, as you keep avoiding, is whether school funding should be kept so low that they can’t even buy carbon monoxide detectors for schools.
RR @ # 50, 52: When I first heard about the remake, I was incredulous. “Invaded? By who? The Soviet Union doesn’t exist any more!”
I guessed that it might be China, but that seems to be awfullyl incorrect these days on a number of levels. Besides, the Chinese only have one ostensible aircraft carrier (purchsed as a hulk when the Soviet Union collapsed) which is good only for experimentation and development of the concept – it doesn’t have an aircraft wing capable of making carier landings and takeoffs. At best, it could be a floating helicopter base. But the ability to land large bodies of troops by parachute or amphibious landing? Not possible – at least not for another twenty years or so (the reason why the landings at Normandy took place in 1944 instead of 1942 was the shortage of landing craft and amphibious support ships, and that was with a huge war effort crash building program at the time).
But North Korea? Their Navy couldn’t support an invasion of the Philipines, much less the Continental U.S.
Seems that Uncle Jim is a complete bozo, as we all knew, of course, but one that obliges us with his obnoxious celebrating over a point he thinks he’s won – but hasn’t.
Absolutely a boiler could be firing and heating a ducted hot air system, though that is far less common than it delivering heat through radiators. And CO could be entrained into that forced air system and contaminate the environment, causing sickness. Dipshit.
The point, though, as deathfrogg amply makes @41, is that whenever you’re burning carbon-based fuel, you will generate CO, and if the appliance is not maintained, and it’s burning inefficiently, you’ll get a lot more CO. The trick is to make sure the combustion products are vented.
Now, I could go on at length about direct versus atmospheric venting systems, but I won’t. The malfunctioning heating plant in question was likely atmospherically vented (common and older), and ill-maintained (because that’s what happens to public infrastructure in a Teahaddist Utopia), and failed by allowing the combustion products to accumulate in the conditioned space – where the people are.
Uncle Bozo is spiking the ball on the 40th, as is habitual with teahaddists, pointing out perceived errors in the comments of liberals, and in the process demonstrating his complete misapprehension of the topic he’s gloating over. He would much rather derail a discussion of public investment and children’s safety by screeching about inconsequential perceived inconsistencies on tangential points.
BTW, here’s a boiler (gas fired, wall-hung, high-efficiency, direct vent, closed combustion – see the two PVC pipes on top) that’s heating a forced air system. Here’s another, where the combustion – in this case wood, with atmospheric venting – is kept in an outbuilding for safety – from CO.
Just heard o Democracy Now! that a big typhoon is hitting the southern Philippines.
Wondering if expatchad is OK?
I notice that Jim Miller has closed yet another thread at (un)SP, again blaming “spammers”. Best I can tell, MikeBoyScout, Dr. Liberal and Dorky are the so-called spammers. Oh, and a Doctor Steve who seems to believe that being a wingnut is an illness treatable by the application of suitable voltage. I doubt it. Anyways, when discussion displeases Miller, such as when he and his handful of remaining dingbats are having their asses handed to them, which is every thread, he ends it.
Ruled by petulance, over at (un) SP every thread gets closed. Meanwhile, over here the moderators allow free-wheeling discussion.
Over there freedom is just a meaningless word they scream at people before they put an end to free discussion. Over here freedom is something real and it is acted out in these threads by both left and right.
(un)SP is in it’s death thoes, HA is still very much alive.
Left-right in a nutshell.
@58
I got bored over there, haven’t posted much for a couple of weeks.
I read the threads every once in a while, begin to get an itch to take apart one of RagnarDaneskold’s shrill, nasty, ill-informed, self-righteous posts robotically linking to the wingnut fever swamp…and then I shrug and know that I have better things to do with my time.
I get the sense that the populace over there is fairly geriatric, and take comfort that subsequent generations are getting more liberal. Dinosaurs.
@58
I’m going to leave a comment about that on the previous Jim Miller thread.
“self-righteous”
That goes quite well with my “overwrought”.
“I’m going to leave a comment about that on the previous Jim Miller thread.”
There’s still an open Miller thread?
@61
Yeah, it’s two threads down – the one about the Org guy dying.
I’m sure they’ll have kinipchins about ‘desecrating’ a solemn thread, or something.
When I hear “leak in boiler system” I think steam or water leak. When I do a search on “boiler system leak”, the world seems to agree with me. I also see that boiler leak detection systems don’t detect CO.
The only real information released about the problem that caused this incident so far is that CO levels built up in occupied spaces and rooms over the weekend and that the highest concentrations were found at the boiler location. That’s at least a clue.
I understand that in our own state CO detection is only required in residential Group R occupancies although there are exemptions even for those. Refer to WAC 51-51-0315 and WAC 51-50-0908. Group R can be found in mixed occupancies. For instance, the sleeping room area of a fire station is Group R.
Combustion-type Boiler systems as well as gas-fired hot water systems, furnaces, and other combustion-based systems are to be found in many of our own state’s public and private schools as well as other occupancies, including hospitals, and there’s no requirement for CO detection and you likely wouldn’t find a single CO detector in any of those buildings.
So I suggest that we all live in fear. Heh.
@54
The reason I brought it is because it is relevant to CO monitoring…..you dumbasses, especialy you, are mixing up two systems who’s CO monitoring needs and requirements are vastly different…..which skews your whole meme…
Keep being the fool rhpiss, you do it so well….
“Yeah, it’s two threads down”
Nope, it’s closed. Your very thought must have killed it.
# 63: Just before I entered our office building from the garage, I noticed that there was a carbon monoxide detector and alarm system right by the garage door. Apparantly it’s designed to detect insufficiently ventilated carbon monoxide emissions accumulating in the garage.
Which made me think – how much could such a unit even cost, for industrial applications? It can’t be that much. Heck, the carbon monoxide detectors I have in my house (we have two natural-gas fireplaces) cost us about twenty bucks appeace from Costco, and could be easily installed in each room.
“a leak in the boiler system…rofl….”
A leak in the boiler system? OMG!! CO!!
LMFAO!!
My place in Palo Alto had a small, gas-fired boiler and in-slab piping. Loved it, especially in the bathroom.
@66 The specific requirements for CO alarms are poorly addressed in the codes and standards. Compare CO with single and multiple-station smoke alarms and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t see multi-station systems, audible alarm dB levels, ADAAG visual alarms, spacing requirements, wiring methods, circuit supervision, primary and secondary power – none of that is addressed for CO.
Heh. What we need are more regulations!
From Spokane city council memeber Jon Snyder’s FaceBook feed.
Is there any doubt that the heads of Corporate America are unethical bastards or that the deck isn’t stacked in their favor?
“Which made me think – how much could such a unit even cost”
That’s not a good way to look at it. Using fire alarm system visual alarms as an example, I’d say in the end, billions. Speaking of visual alarms, you likely don’t know that when UL did their research back in 1990 or so, the researchers quickly discovered that the subjects didn’t respond to the indirect view of the light flash. So they closed the blinds of the Chiucago school classroom where the tests were conducted and the subjects started responding. That became the basis for a billion dollar industry and the NFPA installation standard. Do you think for one moment that a deaf person in a day-lit space will notice a .0375 footcandle flash of light hitting a wall that has 900 FC of daylight beating on it? Not a chance. Do billions of dollars worth of lights enhance notification? Yes, but that isn’t the intent. Will they do as advertised and notify deaf people? Maybe, if they’re lucky enough to be directly viewing the device. False assurance of safety is a real fucking problem but we live with it because manufacturers are racking it in and hearing impaired lobyists sold the idea that 10% of the population is hearing impaired, which does not mean that 10% can’t hear a fucking alarm. Those flashing fire alarm lights that ended up costing billions are basically a load of horseshit.
You usually need to have technical substantiation for changing the codes and standards. I say “usually” because following 9/11 manufacterers foisted a lot of crap on us through NFPA without any technical substatiation whatsofuckingever. Stuff like expensive fire-protected wire serving a plastic exit sign with electronics that crap out with heat. Gotta love the private sector’s imagination and initiative when it comes to making a buck.
@61
Wanker Jim Miller sends me this…
…and my response…
On the topic of boilers….
I decided, with my ongoing basement remodel, that the gas-fired forced-air furnace, which was at the end of its life and needed replacing, was not going to be replaced.
Instead, after tearing it out and all the ductwork, I designed and installed a high-efficiency gas-fired boiler system – a wall hung, direct vented (closed combustion) unit that supplies heat for both space heating (warm floors on the main floor via joist-space tubing, and radiators in the basement and second floor – mmmmmmmmmm!) and hot water – essentially endless supply (my teenager hasn’t bested the system yet!). It’s also plumbed for solar hot water panels to be installed on the roof next year.
It’s fantastic! Warm floors. No blowing dust. Quiet. Endless hot water. Super efficient.
Highly recommended.
NATO has approved the deployment of Patriot Missiles to augment Turkey’s air and missile defenses.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl.....t-20590129
Wait till people do their 2012 taxes…There will be one H of a lot of Owebamma Remorse. Marriage penalty, tax rates, fica, estate, you name it it’s going through the roof!
@55 China can’t make it across the Taiwan Strait let alone the Pacific Ocean. And if a nation is starved enough to invade the U.S., it’s hard to see how their troops would have the strength to lift a rifle much less jump from airplanes and drive around in tanks. You need strong healthy people to fight a war.
55)China has purchased, and is building under license as well, Russian SU-27 Flankers, of which, a navalized version exists, and is used on said aircraft carrier’s sister ship that is in service with the Russian Navy, the Admiral Kuzentsov. They did not copy our steam catapult design(neither did the French for their carriers, they bought the catapults for the Charles de Gualle from us). The Kuznetsov used a STOBAR, Short-Takeoff but Arrested Landing system, with deck restrainers and a ski-jump used. Their are rumors that China has purchased the naval variant as well.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/...../su-33.htm
Still, it is only one carrier, and the way the Kuzentsov, and it’s sister now in the Chinese Navy, were designed a little different than the Enterprise(now retired), Nimitz, and Ford class carriers. The Soviet, now Russian Navy was using it’s carriers for providing air defense for surface ships engaging carrier battle groups. The Kuznetsov has both surface to air and surface to surface missile capability. Our Pacific Fleet has more carriers than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-11
74)
Hasn’t North Korea been under a famine for about a generation? Also, the missile tests put the Pacific Rim on edge(the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are already moving missile interceptors into position just in case the alleged space launch test from North Korea happens and debris falls near Japan), but they tend to fail shortly after launch.
Facing Fiscal Cliff, Obama Goes Overboard on Christmas Trees and Vacation
So, what does the president of the United States do to set a good example as the country faces a looming financial meltdown? He keeps spending and spending. For this Christmas season, not only did Obama call for significantly more Christmas trees in the White House than last year, but he’s also getting ready for a $4 million vacation to Hawaii.
@81
You’re whining about too many Christmas trees?
God you’re pathetic.
More holiday trees? Good.
Hawaii vacation? Good.
Let the fucktard Congressional Republicans stew in Washington, or wherever.
The President is being presidential, and normal, and the people love him and his family.
Happy Holidays!!
81 – Neglecting your work on Orbusmax as the new goto place for GREECE!!! and the latest kook theories about Obama’s birthplace?
We’re going OFF the fiscal cliff given the unserious “proposal” from the Orange man.. You’ll be getting your beloved spending cuts and the middle class will be getting the shaft..
Just the way your kind likes it. You’ll have to answer for it in 2014.
Must be good to be King
Throw a few crumbs to the unemployed…whoops, looks like the fiscal cliff will kill their unemployment insurance benefits.
Please don’t bother leading by example, we wouldn’t want that as King!
Wait, I thought The President was a Moooslim and banned the Christmas tree.
Must chap your hide that he was re-elected in an electoral college landslide. 51-47, bigger margin than “Political Capital mandate” Smirkey the Shrub. Heh, heh.
Must make you seriously bitter.
@81
I find it rather laughable that the same people that were screaming about spending and the national debt are now screaming about going over the fiscal cliff, the very thing that would stop the spending and fix the debt. Kinda makes you think that the only thing those people know how to do is scream.
LMAO!! A “King” isn’t elected with over 51 percent of the vote twice in a row – first time since IKE..
Damn you’re a stupid right winger!
They’ll remember that it’s the Republican’s fault just like they remembered last Nov 6.
Obama ran on a platform of raising taxes on the rich and WON!
He won’t EVER back down.
@80 N. Korea practices a crude form of extortion in which they rattle swords and then demand food and other aid as the price for not doing something crazy. The latest permutation of this modus operandi is their attempt to threaten the U.S. mainland with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. It doesn’t need to work and they don’t need an arsenal of them; they figure they can get what they want simply by creating the possibility that one missile might be able to hit a West Coast city. Meanwhile, our nuclear deterrent isn’t much of a deterrent, because a regime willing to starve its own people probably doesn’t care if we annihilate the N. Korean population — for them a nuclear exchange merely means they’d have fewer mouths to feed. Yeah, they’re crazy; but it’s crazy like a fox.
I love how that Republiturd BONER is bitching.
After an election that repudiated all he stands for BONER still insists that Obama give him everything his CORPORATE MASTERS want: No taxes on the rich.
Fiscal Cliff or Fiscal Curb?
Any way you cut it I and my family was doing OK before THE SHRUB put in his tax give away to the rich. Sure, everyone got some, but the rich got a massive tax cut. Some of those bastards even got tax refunds on taxes they were not paying in the first place.
@81 Total bullshit. Obama is the least spendy president since Eisenhower. Despite the slowest growth in federal spending in 60 years, twits like you continue to blame spending. This lie didn’t sell on Nov. 6 and still doesn’t.
What is really funny is that the twit @81 is complaining that Obama is taking a vacation.
So twit, how did you feel about all the vacation days THE SHRUB took while in office?
Speaking of vacation days, THE BONER has scheduled 135 working days for the House. Wonder how much that is going to cost us…
6 trillion in 4 years, yeh the least spendy ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
@92
Is this where we complain that every time Boehner goes home it costs the taxpayers a bunch to fly on Pelosi’s jet?
Media reports say that two of the most radical Tea Party members have been kicked off the House Republican’s Budget Committe.
In the meantime, I’m seeing lots of chatter in Facebook and red-state letters to the editor urging Boener to stand pat on his no-tax pledge. There seems to be some coordination in those activities.
So I’m not sure what it all means. Boener may want to have at least a bit of flexibility, so he can give a smidgen on the tax issue and demand a lot in return – cripping Social Security and Medicare, for example.
Or the Tea Party members elected in 2010 could rise up and overthrow Boener as Speaker of the House. I could see Paul Ryan having visions of importance as a Speaker. And despicable as Boener is, he skipped the Inaugeration Eve Republican strategy session because he couldn’t stand some of those in attendence. He may find himself reconing with the extremists who he thought he could control – like the lion tamer who suddenly finds out he’s about to become lunch.
I’m fine, thanks so much for your concern. Too many people died just south of me, and that kind of event is all too common here.
I even have a dog life preserver for the Imperial Basset (she sneers at it).
You obviously have experience/knowledge of HVAC systems.
BTW, I have ancient Seattle Operating Engineer licenses for steam and refer. Interesting.
@96
Glad you’re OK!
RE HVAC, completely self-taught. John Siegenthaler’s Modern Hydronic Heating (a textbook), and the fine professionals at heatinghelp.com were invaluable.
Over the weekend, Mexico inaugarated a new President, and under the Mexican Constitution, he’s already a lame duck(one term limit). He is a return of the long-running Party that Mexican voters ousted in 2000. When his party was last in power, they privatized the Mexican National Railway(N de M), and most passenger services except for the Copper Canyon tour train went by the wayside. AMong President Enrique Pena Nieto’s initiatives, is expanding the Monterrey Metro, Guadalajara’s Light rail network, and new systems in Chalco and La Paz. The interesting thing, is he is proposing to bring back inter-city service, which currently is the domain of bus and airlines.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/.....jects.html
Now, there were protests over the Inaugaration in Mexico City, partly because he won, in a multi-way contest, with only 38% of the vote(no Electoral COllege or Runoff system).