Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Two union things to start off this morning

First, threats of boycott. Including against places that didn't allow any political advertising on the property or didn't endorse ANYONE. But when you've got a good threat going, what's the problem with threatening- and vandalizing- the wrong people?
Leaders of seven unions representing police, firefighters, teachers, and law enforcement signed a letter sent to M &I Bank.
...
The groups are giving M&I Bank until March 17th to publicly oppose Walker’s efforts. If it does, the unions will publicly celebrate the partnership to preserve rights. If the bank hasn’t responded by March 17th, the groups will publicly and formally boycott the company
.
"Nice business you got here; shame if anything should happen to it, huh?"
Owner of Sendik’s Grocery Store in Shorewood, Anne Finch-Nehring, doesn’t understand why people would choose to boycott her store, because of what she may or may not believe. She says, “I have no political signage at our store, and we can’t. I wouldn’t do that, because I wouldn’t want to offend or tread on other customers rights to support who ever they want to support.”
Because you're a convenient target, and they want to damage anyone who doesn't bow down.

The other is on dirtbag union (excuses for)teachers:
Aren't you forgetting a thing or 2? You've got them chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, Scott Walker has got to go" — but what do they know about Scott Walker? That he's done something the teachers don't like. So, maybe some day, when you do something they don't like, some kid might start "Hey hey, ho ho, [TEACHER'S NAME] has got to go." Today, you're pleased to teach them "The children, united, will never be divided." I'm picturing them repurposing that chant back in the classroom.
Yeah, that's great. Use school time to teach the kids union chants and then use more school time to display the kids as props. That's REALLY going to get the parents on your side, isn't it?
Unions: is there anyone they won't screw over for the unions benefit?


I can understand someone not agreeing with Palin on things, I can understand someone thinking she has the wrong view on something; this kind of bullshit I do not:
“But if you close your eyes and listen to Palin and her most irate supporters constantly squawk or bellyache or tweet about how unfair a ride she gets from evil mustache-twirling elites and RINO saboteurs, she sounds like a professional victimologist, the flip side of any lefty grievance group leader. She’s becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition. The only difference being, she wears naughty-librarian glasses instead of a James Brown ‘do.”
Reminds me of the people who, after the Tucson shooting, were blaming her for it and then, when she dared respond, screeched "SHE'S TRYING TO MAKE THIS ABOUT HER! Isn't she DISGUSTING?"
And 'naught-librarian glasses'? Screw you LaBash, you sound like a clown trying to make sure you're invited to the 'right' parties.


The Prevaricator in Chief is still talking about the wonders of 'change' in the mid-East & north Africa, but doing squat except talking. And talking. And pretending to be doing something.


The NRA has announced it won't take part in Obama's "Let's have some new ways to screw with the 2nd Amendment" talks; a view that they're doing it because 'the fix is in'. From his post the other day:
The GOP leadership is loathe to push the Project Gunwalker scandal hearings. Said one congresscritter to someone he thought was sympathetic, "We don't want to be enemies with the ATF." Issa and Smith are both said to be disinterested.

How could that be, you ask, when Smith just sent that demand letter to ATF? Remember he only did it because the NRA was calling for hearings. And why did the NRA call for hearings?

From two sources on or near the NRA board:

"The NRA is doing this just to say that they did. The same goes for Lamar Smith and Issa. After the CBS stories they had to do SOMETHING. LaPierre tried to stay out of it, but he felt the push from below by board members and regular membership, especially some of our law enforcement members."



And from Tam on all the "oh Noes, NUCLEAR!" screaming,
Jesus wept! How about a sense of proportion here? Potentially ten thousand or more dead in an instant from a tidal wave and everybody's worried about a bump in thyroid cancers down the road? (And I'll point out that those '60s-vintage GE reactors compare to the current state of the art in the safety features department like a '60s-vintage Chevy does to the current product.)

2 comments:

Keith said...

I may go over and disagree with Tam later, on the safety features argument.

You can have all the safety features you want on a Chevy, but if a 40' shipping container lands on it...

That is partly what the mag 9 quake was equivalent to.

The other part is, you can't cure bad decisions after they've been made.

It looks like the engineering team was trying to retain the reactors in repairable condition.

If they had pumped them full of sea water, the chlorides would have trashed the stainless pressure vessels and other reactor innards, preventing their safe re-use.

Loss of the reactors would have been a big financial hit, however, it now looks like the decision not to pump sea water in to start with will cost them the reactors anyway, along with several hundred square km of exclusion zone for the next century or more.

Japan is very mountainous, and is desperately short of both agricultural and development land. That exclusion zone will hurt Japan far more than Chernobyl's exclusion zone hurts the Ukraine.

As a last point, who the hell thought that having the ponds for storing spent fuel rods on top of the reactor was a safe idea?

I wonder where those hot rods are sizzling away at now? they're not the sort of thing you want to spend even a second looking at at close range, and the blasts have scattered them far and wide.

Ireland wanted to build nukes once upon a time. Nuclear reactors, and the Irish mentality of "sure, be grand..." don't mix for long.

Keith said...

Back when I was at school, Sellafield was the nearest big chemical industry site that would host school trips. I was round it several times, allong with visits to some of the other magnox stations.

The nuke industry guys explained how the control rods were held up by motors and if the power to the motors failed, the rods would drop, stopping the reaction and all would be ok.

That wasn't the whole truth. The Brits home grown conventional reactors were gas cooled (the prototype fast breeder reactors were sodium cooled).

If the station had its power supply knocked out, They had next to zero capacity for dealing with the heat generated by decaying isotopes in the rods after the reaction was stopped.

It's something like the dilemma facing the guys in the 50s when the site was called "Windscale"

They had two air cooled reactors for bomb making, and needed to periodically anneal the graphite moderator, by turning off the blowers and allowing the temperature to rise. One time one of the reactors kept getting hotter after the blowers were re started - the moderator was burning - what to do?

turn off the fans and get a meltdown?

or leave the fans on and it burns and goes up the chimney?

or risk a big explosion with water?

They manually shoved the uranium out and used water. The milk from the surrounding farms was pumped out to sea after that.

The Windscale fire is one possible source for the cesium 137 in the surrounding areas, which was blamed on Chernobyl, but which nuclear scientists will admit to being there in hay and silage harvested a year before Chernobyl