Month: March 2013

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Feinstein on the back burner…

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After a week of pain in my hand I’m typing again!

I don’t know what I did but for whatever reason I was having some serious problems moving my hand. Who would have thought that a sharp pain in the middle of your hand would cause so much interference just going about my daily life?

The pain was in the wrong position for stigmata so I’m relieved that I’ve not been called into the priesthood or anything.

I’ve been scanning the news and while there are many things that I probably should say I’m not going to.

I was glad to see that Feinstein’s gun bill wasn’t being voted on. I suspect that means that it will show up attached to some other group of bills that we really do need and thereby the old battle ax will have her way.

I can sort of understand her position on guns, early in her career she was first or second on the scene of at least two murders. That would have to change your opinion of guns and violence.

In my case it would make me decide to sponsor concealed or open carry that didn’t require registration. I’m a firm believer in the saying “An armed society is a polite society“

She has a right to her opinion and beliefs.

What concerns me is that she’s likely to snake her bill into something else and that bypasses the purpose of our politicians voting on bills/issues in the first place.

I’m in favor of out politicians having to vote on each law/bill individually. I think that would stop a lot of the pork and provide a more transparent and representative body of law.

It will never happen though…

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Does anyone think this was really about saving money?

It’s pretty clear that the DHS and Immigration officials were engaging in nothing more than political grandstanding in an attempt to punish and frighten American taxpayers.

The Immigration Depts release of thousands (Not Hundreds) of detainees can only be perceived as a blatant attempCt sc nw immigration releases jpg 20130314t to intimidate congress, more specifically the Republicans in Congress into a compromise with President Obama.

I suspect that the hope on the part of those who ordered this release was that outcry from angered citizens would force the acceptance of any agreement that would avert the sequester.

I was always taught that if you were a visitor to another country, specifically if you were seeking citizenship in that country that you had to keep your nose clean.

I’ve always believed that you needed to demonstrate that you were an upstanding person and that you were worthy of citizenship. I also believed that if you became involved in illicit activities you’d be immediately deported. All of this leads me to ask a couple of questions.

Why were these people being held in detention in the first place?

If they were to be released due to budgetary concerns why weren’t they simply put on a plane or a bus and returned to their countries of origin?

Since immigration knew that some of the offenders had not only already been convicted of prior felonies and were once again violating US immigration law why detain them at all?

Send these people home. No questions, no hearings. By virtue of the fact that these folks are here again without papers and have been involved in yet another crime, theres no need to hear their shit.

Congress is looking in the wrong direction into this obscenity.

Congress should be asking who gave the orders?

You know damn well that John Morton didn’t make this decision on his own. He’s simply being served up. He’s being a good soldier and taking the beating, for that I respect him.

But Mortons boss and I’d hazard a guess the chain of command all the way up to the President is where the order originated.

 

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I wouldn’t be taking a Carnival Cruise

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All joking aside what is going on with Carnival cruises?

To have so many ships in such a short time with serious / sometimes critical problems is concerning.

An engine fire could be called an accident, or an anomaly and it’s a good thing that the fire was controlled even if that meant 5000 passengers had a hellish week while the ship was being towed in.

Honestly, it could have been a lot worse. Fires on ships a sea are bad things. It’s not like you have a place to go, and you’re not going to hear a fire engine whizzing by to put out the flames. Sure you can hit the lifeboats then what? You wait for rescue, that is IF a distress call got out. Otherwise it’s up to the emergency beacons or radios in the lifeboats. The only place that a fire would be worse is in Space.

If the fire was a “one off” I’d be well everyone was lucky and I’m sorry their cruise was ruined.

What caught my attention is that Carnival has a fairly substantial number of it’s fleet reporting problems.

The problems being reported aren’t little things like a light bulb or a toilet not working.

All of these are engineering related problems.

Which in my mind begs the question… Are these ships being maintained properly? My knee jerk response is to say obviously not.

Looking at the dates the ships were completed you can see that they’re all pretty new, they shouldn’t be having these kinds of problems. There are freighters and fishing boats and other luxury liners that are operating every day which are much older.

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What does this say?

There are a couple of theories I can put out there.

1) The engineers maintaining the ships are young and inexperienced.

Ask any older worked if the person that replaced them could read well, or really understood cause & effect or could logically think through a problem to its resolution and you’re probably going to get a general trend in the answer. The trend will be towards “NO”.

 

This could simply be symptomatic of the retirement of experienced workers and their replacement with inexperienced or inferior workers.

Where do the mechanics and engineers on these cruise ships come from? Are they fully qualified to be doing the jobs they’re doing?

OR

2) Carnival Cruises is simply not paying to have the proper maintenance performed.

It wouldn’t be the first time that public / passenger / employee safety took a back seat to maximizing profit.

You really don’t want to think about how much fuel one of these ships burns per hour. With the world wide fuel prices bouncing all over hell and gone, it might be a situation where executives and accountants were trying to keep the bottom line in the black.

To do it, they started curtailing the routine replacement or refurbishment of critical components. I can hear the “Make it last another cruise” arguments now.

Having more than a passing familiarity with the business end of a screwdriver I’ve heard that argument myself. “Do we absolutely have to replace that powersupply right now? Can’t you make the machine work just a little longer even if it’s not perfect?”

Regardless of which of the theories is true or close to the truth.

I think that Carnival should be ordered to cease operations.

Each of their ships should be inspected from stem to stern and none of their ships should be allowed to leave port with passengers until all necessary maintenance has been completed.

Thus far, around 20,000+ passengers have been lucky. No-one has been seriously injured, they’ve only been inconvenienced.

It’s only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens and people start dying.