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Politics : BuSab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (1728)	9/19/2009 4:58:11 AM
From: SmoothSail	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23934

Things are really picking up in Iran. There have been several officials around the country assassinated. Guards tried to attack opposition leader Mousavi and his people when they attended one of the demonstrations but were unsuccessful. The crowds are turning on the Basiji, beating them and burning their motorcycles. Some Basiji are joining the demonstrators. Venezuelans, who were brought into the country to police the crowds, are being attacked by the crowds. The chants are interesting. The usual ones that I mentioned before but they've added Death to Russia and No to Palestine. Ahmydinnerjacket, who's scheduled to visit the UN next week, was denied lodging at the Helmsley Hotel. He spoke at Tehran's university and once again threatened Israel saying their days are numbered. (As an aside: Quds Day was created by the mullahs to underline their support of Palestine. It's a 3-day holiday. Another chant is: We'll die for Iran, not Palestine.) What will the mullahs do next? The crowds are out of control and are looking for their heads. There have been assassinations of high level officials. How are they going to save themselves? Once they get one of them, all of them go down.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (1728)	9/19/2009 8:35:03 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23934

must watch: market-ticker.org

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (1728)	9/19/2009 7:21:12 PM
From: arno	1 Recommendation Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23934

I like this post I made about unions... Yeah...I do too. I am really glad you linked to it again as I was going to respond to it when I was scanning the 1k posts earlier to get caught up here. But, I just seemed to space it out, or life pulled me away.....whatever. I too am anti-union. I have pretty much worked in a non-union environment all of my adult life. I now see the effects it has on commerce generally...and the nuclear utility industry specifically. When a plant goes 'into outage mode' to refuel, repair, and/or upgrade, most of the craft workers hired are union. When a utility is not producing electricity during this down time they have to buy it on the open market to deliver to their customers. It costs a utility nearly 2 million dollars a day to do this. A planned outage consists of enormous amout of workers...1500 to 2000...to get all of the work done so the plant can come back up online on time. It is a choreography that is mind boggling. The union workers (most, it seems....it's hard not to paint with a broad brush here) have the mind set that if I work too efficiently I am just working myself out of a gravy train job. So they have adopted what we (non-union) call the Union Shuffle. i.e. Don't get in a hurry, don't over-do, and...god forbid...don't start a task if it is less than an hour 'til 'break'. Since our group in non-union we are sometimes looked at with disdain if not outright hatred that we are 'taking a brothers' job.....that is until they see the equipment we use and the responsibilty that we bear. Sometimes it is troubling to hear the hourly wage that a lowly scaffold builder or toilet cleaner makes compared to what I do. True story here: I was at a plant in southern Michigan and was heading into containment. Before I got to security there was a guy struggling to get a heavy box up the stairs. Naturally, being the nice guy that I am :) I helped him get the box up the stairs. He asked "What local are you?" I replied that I wasn't union. He actually tried to get the name off my ID badge to report me for doing 'union' labor. Shheeesh! It costs the utility a lot of money to have this mindset working against them, but is so ingrained..I don't see it changing much.