Saturday - January 28, 2012
pirates and travelers. all brothers under the skin color
Here’s what’s in some of the papers tomorrow or on the radio today.
Go figure. Was a time when pirates were simply deep 6’d and forgot about.
How times and pc thinking have changed. And not for the better.
Here’s the headline.
Somali pirates captured by navy to face court in Seychelles
Right. That’ll put the frighteners on em ok.
Britain has agreed to what has been described as a “ground breaking” deal with the Seychelles, who will prosecute 14 pirates in return for help building and running its prisons. The Seychelles agreed to prosecute after about $300,000 was earmarked to improve prison capacity.
Would it not have been more cost effective to let the vermin drown after firing their boat? Just asking.
Then this little blurb appeared with no headline or author.
Hey Drew. Take note. Reason I say that is because while I was in the states, Drew did a darn good job posting this story from here. Well, here’s an update on the kafuffle at a place called Dale Farm. Anyone remember that? Large group of Travelers (thieves by any other name) took up illegal residence and stayed for ten years. They were finally evicted among much press coverage and the usual damnation from the radical left. Well guess what?
THEY’RE BAAAAAAAAAK!
Some are anyway. They’ve returned in defiance of a high court order. There were violent clashes reported in October last, when the police tossed the bastards out. But this group says they are back and are staying. Understandable really as the laws of this country do not apply to them. Just ask em.
-30-
Posted by peiper
on 01/28/2012 at 02:23 PM
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters •
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Permalink • man helps store security …. man being sued
This is nothing new. It happens all the time and all the time it remains of some maddening interest. Happens in the USA as well so this isn’t unique to the UK.
The bad guy in this case is represented by the law firm of Hype, Con and Hustle.
I hate the term so much used by Brits. “Have a go hero.” I’m sure in many cases they are that okay but the phrase to my ear somehow diminishes what really is a brave act. Have a go. Oh go on. Just one cigar. Have a go. Take a puff. Kinda like that.
Shop hero who wrestled with ‘thief’s accomplice’ is sued for compensationBy ALISON SMITH SQUIRE
A have-a-go hero who intervened when a suspected shoplifting incident turned nasty has found himself on the receiving end of a compensation claim.
The drama began when a former heroin addict with two knives in his waistband was stopped by a security guard after setting off the alarms as he left a busy branch of Boots.
As he was being taken back into the store, he became aggressive. At the same time, a second man seemed to be rushing to join him.
It was then shopper Reginald Wharton went to the aid of the outnumbered security guard, trying to calm the second man – who was feared to be an accomplice – before wrestling him to the ground.
Police arrested the suspected shoplifter and accomplice, and the Boots manager thanked Mr Wharton for his bravery.
But more than a year after the incident Mr Wharton faces a legal nightmare after receiving a lawyer’s letter seeking compensation for an injured elbow from the man he wrestled to the floor.
Mr Wharton, 31, said: ‘If I hadn’t stepped in someone could have been stabbed. I can’t believe the justice system in our country allows anyone to sue like this. I face the devastating possibility of being sued for thousands of pounds.’
He was in Boots in Torquay, Devon, with his four-year-old twins in November 2010 when recovering heroin addict Justin Birt, 30, was detained for shoplifting.
It was when he began arguing with the security guard that the man assumed to be his accomplice, Phillip McCarthy, became involved.
‘The man [Birt] became aggressive, and at the same time a man I took to be his accomplice appeared from nowhere and roughly grabbed hold of the security guard by his left arm.
‘The store was packed with shoppers, mostly families with young children, and the apparent accomplice was swearing loudly at the security guard. Instinctively I stepped in front of the man and asked him to calm down.’
But he said the man began shouting more and eventually he had to grapple him to the floor. ‘I’ve worked as trained security guard myself and have learnt the proper way to put someone on the ground without hurting them,’ he said.
Birt, 30, later pleaded guilty to possession of two knives, a serrated bread knife and a meat knife. He was not charged with shoplifting. Mr McCarthy was arrested for a public order offence and questioned. He was not charged.
Mr Wharton believed that was the end of the matter. But last week he received a letter from personal injury lawyers Almy & Thomas saying that under a no-win, no-fee agreement they had been instructed by Mr McCarthy to sue for damages and costs. The letter said he had injured his left elbow, which needed treatment at the police station.
Posted by peiper
on 01/28/2012 at 04:41 AM
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •
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Permalink • Friday - January 27, 2012
Ro/Ro Row Your Boat
The Foss M/V Delata Mariner, launched in 1999, is a 312 foot long, 50 foot tall, 80 foot wide Roll On/Roll Off (Ro/Ro) carrier ship with an 8,000HP engine and just one job: it ferries giant missile engines, the Delta IV boosters used on the Space Shuttle and other rockets, from the Boeing factory in Decatur, Alabama down the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway, into the Mississippi, past New Orleans and then across the Gulf of Mexico either around Florida and up to Cape Canaveral, or through the Panama Canal and north to Vandenburg AFB in California. And that is all that it does. It’s a rocket ship, even though it has a top speed of just 15 knots. Rocket transport ship that is.
Thursday night the ship was heading upriver, and it looks like it tried to go under the wrong span of the Eggner Ferry Bridge. Big mistake. The impact tore out one span of the bridge and rolled it up like a rug, roadway and all. Some hours later another span of the 1932 bridge also fell. No deaths or injuries; the old bridge doesn’t see much traffic and was nearly empty in the middle of the night when the accident occurred. One local man was driving on the bridge, but he managed to stop his pickup truck just in time.
The ship doesn’t even look all that damaged, but it will take some time to clean up the mess and fix the bridge.
AURORA, Ky. – State officials are inspecting what’s left of a southwestern Kentucky bridge that partially collapsed when it was struck by a cargo ship that was too tall to pass under the structure.
Pieces of the Eggner Ferry Bridge at Aurora, Ky., are strewn across the front of the motor vessel Delta Mariner as it sits at the site of a Thursday accident.
Two spans of the Eggner Ferry Bridge at US 68 and Kentucky 80 were destroyed Thursday night by the Delta Mariner. No injuries were reported on the bridge or in the boat.
The ship was traveling upriver toward the Kentucky Lock and Dam when it hit the aging steel bridge, which was built in the 1930s and handles about 2,800 vehicles a day.
On Friday morning, the front of the ship remained tangled with steel from the bridge and hunks of asphalt from the roadway. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet officials said inspectors began an in-depth review of the bridge at daylight.
“There is a point where they may have to disassemble the structure completely or use a crane to move the debris,” Jim LeFevre, highway department chief engineer, told The Paducah Sun. “That ship is going to be there for some time.”
Transportation Cabinet spokesman Keith Todd said he believes most [italics: Drew458] of the navigational lights were functioning on the bridge at the time of the impact.
“Our people talked to the Coast Guard as recently as Tuesday to update them on the navigational lights, and we believe most of them were working at the time of this wreck,” Todd said. “Although the green bridge marker lights on the bridge should have been visible from both sides of the bridge.”
The 312-foot-long cargo ship was built to navigate shallow waterways and was carrying empty rocket booster cores, Coast Guard Lt. Jason Franz told The Sun.
Interestingly, but only as one of those odd coincidences, the Foss company, which is a shipbuilder, a transportation support conglomerate, and the largest barge company on the west coast, also supports bridge construction. They helped build the Tacoma Narrows bridge, and they’ve also just released their new “green” hybrid tugboat, which utilizes their new and patented hybrid propulsion system.
The Eggner Bridge is in western Kentucky, southeast of Paducah, in that thin corner of the state between Tennessee and Illinois. No blame is being assessed at this point; perhaps the green lights were not lit under the higher spans of the bridge where this ship should have gone.
The transportation cabinet said the bridge was in the process of being replaced, and pre-construction work began months ago.
Another one of those happy coincidences I guess.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2012 at 04:00 PM
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, big machinery, and automobiles • Space •
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Permalink • criminals tell lies and the system sucks
Some newspapers have reported that half the guys who sneak into your home and rob things, are repeat offenders. Oh. Now that’s a surprise. And I bet they all promised to behave if freed. I guess they all lied. And that’s a surprise too.
Guy with record and warm hearted judge plus uman rights laws.
I believe I posted a story weeks ago about a burglar who was let off because he has five kids he has to care for. Remember that one? Appeal judges ruled he had a right to a family life. That’s part of the EU court system which the Brits are trying to dump, as they have and have had for hundreds of years, their own set of laws. Which does not in the least impress the europeeons.
His original sentence was only 8 months and already had a record for other offences. When he was freed he said at that time that he was surprised, as he never expected to be freed. Yeah well, it didn’t surprise the public at all.
His wife works some kind of split shift and isn’t home, as I understand it. Or isn’t for the period she’s working. And he is unemployed. Figures.
Well, four weeks after his release he was in trouble again. He and his bouncer brother attacked some guy in a market in full view of shoppers. While his brother held the guy in a headlock, our hero proceeded to punch his face. Beat the heck out of the guy, customers fleeing in all directions and all caught on CCTV security cameras.
Cops come, he refuses to talk, ends up back in court (along with his bruiser brother) where both deny doing what dozens witnessed plus what was caught on camera.
So he’s out on bail at the moment but ………….
His lawyer says they plan on using the kids to avoid jail again, on account of they are his clients responsibility.
Hey, what great legal thinking.
And what a great system.
Jeesh.
What a bad joke the system is.
Posted by peiper
on 01/27/2012 at 01:17 PM
Filed Under: • Crime • Daily Life • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •
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Permalink • the mane attraction
As one who becomes ever more follicularly challenged every day (D’oh!!!), I find myself mesmerized and fascinated by those who take for granted what I never ever even came close to having. Clicky clicky.
hair today, gone tomorrow?
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2012 at 01:06 PM
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •
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Permalink • Teach The Public Well
A bit of a PSA in Ireland?
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2012 at 01:03 PM
Filed Under: • Humor •
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Permalink • silly but cute. do these folks think this kind of thing will get ppl to stop eating meat?
Although to be very honest, taking a bite outta her might be an experience. Purely as an educational endeavor of course.
Posted by peiper
on 01/27/2012 at 11:52 AM
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Humor • UK •
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Permalink • Makes Me Wonder
I can’t say if this is tinfoil hat stuff or not ...
A very interesting, if difficult, read in 3 parts over at Ulsterman, in which a drunken White House Insider rambles on about dirty politics inside the Obama and (to a much lesser extent) Clinton White Houses. Murder, drugs, clones?, the amazing power of certain billionaires, perhaps a few muted references to the Bilderberg group? Barack the athiest and Mooch the hater of Whites. It all gells in the comments at the end of Part 3, and will leave you wondering. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Tip: “name deleted” refers to several different people across the essay. It can be a bit confusing, but the rather astute commenters figure it out in the end ... and yes, these things really did happen, right down to Diane Feinstein announcing Bin Laden’s death at the funeral for political operative Kam Kuwataan hour or more before the news broke. Spooky shit.
Let’s take a little side trip over to Birther Land: No ruling in Georgia court about Obama’s legitimacy to be on that state’s ballot, even though his attorneys dissed the court with a no show. Rumor is that a Default Judgement will be made, and the Birther people certainly had their day in court; see the videos at that link, where experts find that his SSN and birth certificate are fake. Lots of excitement at a number of Birther sympathetic blogs ( < a href="http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/01/26/court-hearing-on-obama-eligibility-completed-now-what/">here too ) but no official word from the bench one way or the other.
Plenty of other interesting reading at The Ulsterman Report, such as Fast and Furious‘s Cunningham taking the 5th and resigning, Holder not continuing as AG past the end of the year, etc ... all delivered before the news really got out.
The interviews with “Wall Street Insider” are ... well, “shocking” doesn’t begin to cover it:
President Barack Obama has been closely tied to Shorebank for far longer than most realize – nearly twenty years. Is it so much to imagine then that his rise to power…an oddly meteoric rise mind you…is it so much to think that perhaps then there are those within the move for globalization that have been the unknown hand behind this untested and inexperienced man’s ability to be elected President of the United States?
UM: A conspiracy?
WSI: No – a simple investment. President Obama is nothing more than an investment with the expectation of return. Nothing more. What is politics – those who finance politics…but a system of investment? So too is the Obama presidency.
What makes this different though, is that the return on investment this time is the collapse of the American economy and its subsequent replacement within the larger globalization movement.
Conspiracy theories or not, the UM guy does seem to be well connected. The silence of the lambs - no GOP leader is saying a word about Holder and F&F - could be quite telling. And all these stories are interrelated to some extent. Makes my head spin. NAFTA, CAFTA, IMF, F&F, the mortgage crisis, QE1, 2, & 3, mid-east unrest, dumbed down education, exhortations to class warfare ... just different parts of the same pie? Really spooky shit.
And in parting, a PS from another Ulsterman post:
Tony West, appointed by Barack Obama to one of the highest positions within the Obama Department of Justice , working directly under the supervision of Attorney General Eric Holder, is in fact the brother-in-law to current California Attorney General Kamala Harris – the same Kamala Harris who Kam Kuwata was working against during that campaign in 2010.
A brief overview of Mr. West details some rather interesting tidbits – including his participation in defending the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh in 2002.
Perhaps even more telling in the context of the Kam Kuwata story is this detail:
As co-chairman of Obama’s campaign, West was instrumental in helping the candidate raise an estimated $65 million in California.
And my own PS: If you don’t frequent Discover The Networks, you really ought to. The Who’s Who is vast and complex, but all the players in all the shows on all the stages all know each other, more or less.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2012 at 10:46 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Scary Stuff •
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Permalink • Thursday - January 26, 2012
Lefty Fantasy Time
Eye bleach may be necessary for this one.
Aritist Ron English has sculpted President Obama as The Incredible Hulk. I’m sure it will soon be available as a rubber dolly for metro-diversity boys and gender neutral children to play with.
Even worse, the sculpture is entitled “America’s Back”, because, you know, Fearless Reader is such a strong military leader and international image fixer upper world saver kinda guy.
Controversial American contemporary artist Ron English is back at it again with his latest construction, “America’s Back,” a new sculpture which depicts Barack Obama as an angry, brown Hulk with huge bulging muscles, torn pants and a menacing look.
The President can be viewed as a hero who comes to the rescue when America is in trouble, but also as someone very angry.
It seems like Ron is a genuine artiste; he just had a little show at the MoMA. Then again, those museums will do anything brash to sell tickets.
Picture after the fold, if you dare.
Personally, I think if you put a straw hat on the artwork, and maybe let the steroids wear off for a week or two, it would look just like Big Jim from Gone With The Wind, but saying so is probably raaaaaaaaaaacist. But those pants, please. Straight outta Tara.
small update: nope, no “action figure” rubber dolly will be forthcoming. Too many property rights and branding issues probably.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/26/2012 at 11:23 PM
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Glue Ball
Strange weather this week for being in the middle of winter. What bit of snow we got the other day is gone, and it’s been cool and rainy all week. The weather affects the lane conditions, even though the alley is climate controlled. I’m pretty sure that is why the lanes were like glue this week, for both leagues I’m in. I wasn’t seeing much in the way of oil pickup on the ball, and the level of accumulated grime wasn’t too bad, but the mid lanes were like bowling through rubber cement. The balls weren’t turning early, but they sure did seem to slow down, and had the energy sucked right out of them. The only answer to that is to throw harder, and that’s a challenge to do accurately and with the proper amount of hand. Too easy to blast a shot down your line and have it not break at all, or break late. So I took a more inside line, and tried to loft the ball as much as I could. “Git ‘er out there”. Meh, that mostly worked. Mostly.
I bowled a bit over average all 3 games on Tuesday’s Greed League, and we won all 7. I was 35 under the first game tonight, 44 over the second, and 17 over the third tonight in Cheap League, and we won all 7 of those against the top ranked team. They beat us 5-2 last week in a position round, but this week their one power roller couldn’t get it together so they went down in flames. Big flames; we beat them by a total of over 300 for the night. Overkill, but we might just float back up to 2nd place because of it.
Right now my arm is really tired and my fingers are burning, so I’ve decided to soak them all in rum. From the inside. As a remedial treatment of course.
No phone call from the MIL either today or yesterday. Guess she’s happy with her new toy and has nothing to complain about. Phew.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/26/2012 at 10:54 PM
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •
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Permalink • red and white
but no blue suede shoes ... playin’, playin’ in the snow.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/26/2012 at 01:22 PM
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •
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Permalink • Failure To Think Is Inexcusable
Let’s Get The Stoopit™ Out Of Government
We Could Start in Denver Colorado
Failure to think. Not jut circular logic, but spiral logic. Death spiral logic. Toss ‘em, start over. You ought not to be allowed to be this stupid or this dishonest and hold a job in government.
DENVER—A proposal to let Colorado residents carry concealed weapons without a permit failed Monday over concerns that it would make it easier for criminals and the mentally ill to have guns in public places.
A Senate committee rejected the bill on a 3-2 party-line vote, with Democrats voting against it. It’s the second year in a row the proposal has failed, but identical legislation is still running in the Republican-controlled House.
The bill would allow anyone legally able to have a gun to carry it concealed in public places, including colleges and private schools. Law enforcement officials testified against the bill, saying that removing the need for a concealed-carry permit would eliminate a safeguard authorities have to prevent some people from having weapons.
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said every year he denies conceal-carry permit requests from people who are mentally ill, are suicidal, or have substance abuse problems.
“These are people who otherwise are legally able to carry a firearm, and under this bill could carry a concealed firearm. These are people who are sometimes psychotic,” he said.
Stop me if I’m wrong, but the basic definition of a criminal is one who does not obey the law, right? So how is a permitting process going to even slow these people down?
Let’s not forget the purchasing process is still in place, and it’s still run by the feds, with that NICS system and all. Which, by LAW, disqualifies proven hard core criminals and the mentally ill already. Which means that they can’t legally buy a gun to begin with. Well, at least they can’t legally buy a gun from a gun store. Not sure how the disqualifications extend to personal sales, but I bet they do. Guaranteed, right?
PS - the Sheriff ought to be horse whipped, shot, and then fired. Nervy mother fucker, ain’t he, carrying out his own laws? Last time I checked, Colorado is NOT a “may issue” state, it is a “shall issue” one. Run this corrupt badge the hell out of town ASAP.
Republicans argued that they are trying to protect Second Amendment rights and that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit would increase public safety because people could more easily defend themselves.
...
Sen. Bob Bacon, a Democratic member of the committee that rejected the bill, said he worried about people being able to have firearms on college campuses, and he questioned Republicans’ argument that law-abiding citizens would be the ones taking advantage of the law.
“For me, law-abiding citizen is not a permanent condition,” he said. “All of us, on certain occasions, can snap,” he added.
And boy howdy, if the above quotes aren’t the clearest example of the core differences between the two parties, I don’t know what is. The Repubs want to pass the bill to increase your freedom and safety, both of which are your responsibility. The Dems don’t want to pass it because you can’t be trusted; you are a criminal in waiting and must be overseen by your masters in government. For your own good.
h/t to OCM
Posted by Drew458
on 01/26/2012 at 08:42 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Guns and Gun Control •
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 25, 2012
REMEMBERING DANIEL PEARL
Lest we forget, and honestly I never did. I lifted this from Front Page today. I don’t know what I can say that would add anything. I think the article says it all.
I thought I should share it and I think you should read it. The rest is as usual, at the link.
The Unlearned Lessons of Daniel Pearl’s Murder
Bruce Thornton
Ten years ago this week, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan, after he had been lured into what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani about the links between al Qaeda and the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. The shadowy Pakistani group that kidnapped Pearl accused him of being a spy for the CIA, and made several demands, including the release of Pakistani detainees from Guantanamo. Nine days later, Pearl was murdered and beheaded, and on February 21, a video was released called “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.”
The footage showed Pearl’s “confession” and brutal decapitation, interspersed with images of dead Muslims, George Bush shaking hands with Ariel Sharon, and Palestinians allegedly killed by Israeli Defense Forces, including 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, whose death was later exposed as a Palestinian fabrication. Later, captured 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would brag to interrogators that he personally had beheaded Pearl. As for his abductor, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, though tried and condemned to death, still lives in a Pakistani jail cell, from which according to some reports he has planned other terrorist attacks.
The killing of Pearl concentrated much of what Andrew McCarthy calls the “willful blindness” of many in the West to the Islamic roots of the perpetrators’ violence. At the time, most of the media mainly decried Pearl’s death because he was a reporter. Worse yet were the comments that scolded the terrorists for not understanding that American journalists are neutral observers whose impartiality could help them get their story out. As a New York Times editorial put it,
“The terrible irony of Mr. Pearl’s murder is that he and other independent journalists have been trying to present a detailed and informed portrait of the mindset, motives and grievances of the Islamic fundamentalists in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan. That work will continue despite the killing, but the kidnappers have only undermined their cause by their acts.”The professional corruption of the mainstream-media was revealed in this statement, with its claims that journalists are objective (mostly false) and have no loyalties to their own country and people (mostly true), and that the murderers had a legitimate “cause” and “grievances” (moral idiocy and cowardice).
Posted by peiper
on 01/25/2012 at 11:53 AM
Filed Under: • muslims • Terrorists •
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Permalink • So How Was Your Day?
Yup, that’s how I spent half of my day yesterday. Doing, fixing, researching and learning.
My mother in law isn’t in the best physical shape anymore. She’s old and ailing, and has been pretty much bed ridden for the past several months from a back injury. She finally seems to be healing, and wanted a walker to help her get around her house. She’d been using two little canes, the “stable” kind with the plate on the bottom that has 4 feet on it, but things were still quite wobbly, so a walker it was. But not just any walker, she wanted one with wheels on, and that kind is called a rollator. News to me. Naturally, being my mother in law, any old rollator wasn’t good enough. She’s short and heavy, so she needed the special kind built for people of her dimension. Hard to find. Oh, and it had to have a backrest, and a seat, a padded seat that is, extra wide. And it had to have a basket, thank you very much, or else it was no good. Oh, and exceptionally low handles, because the MIL is the size of a hobbit.
So we looked online, and went through dozens of different models. Hundreds? I’d never given these things a thought, and was rather surprised to find that there are hundreds of different models out there, in all sizes and materials, in a wide price range from “not bad” to “you’ve got to be kidding”. And good luck to you finding the useful specifications, such as seat size, seat height, and handle height range. They all look pretty much like this:
So we finally located one, and it turned out to be the least expensive model out there, and we could have even ordered it from Wal-mart. The box got shipped, she opened the carton, and without even putting the thing together we heard a solid week of phone calls telling us how no good it was. Gosh, so glad we spent hours and hours shopping online for you. We would have gone down there and put it together for her right away, but with work schedules and the snowstorm ... you know how it goes.
I was in the area yesterday morning so I stopped over and put it together, which was beyond simplicity itself. Take off the plastic wrapping, unfold it, and slide the handles into the frame. Turn 2 big knobs to tighten the handles. Done. 1 minute, no muscle required. And from her perspective sitting on the couch, it was still no good. The seat was too tall, her legs would dangle. The handles were too high, she couldn’t reach. Now, my MIL and I have a bit of an understanding, arrived at after all the projects I’ve done at her place over the years. The kind of crap she pulls on her daughters just doesn’t fly with me, and I’m not going to put up with her crybaby BS. I accept that there are many things she can’t do, and that’s fine, but I do expect her to at least give it a fair go. So I had her get up and give the thing a try. And after about 20 seconds of trepidation she was in love with her new gizmo, positively zooming around the house, doing donuts and K turns all over the place. It turned out that the handle height she’d been using with her canes was too low, and the slightly higher height on the rollator handles allowed her a better stance. And the high seat worked in her favor, allowing for a shorter drop to a sitting position so sitting down was easy, and which nearly stood her upright when she slid off the seat to stand up. And the higher seat lets her park the walker by the stove and she can cook sitting down. Given that little epiphany, I sawed off 4 little chunks of a 2x4 and slid them under the feet of her very low bed, and now it’s much easier for her to get in and out of that as well. And she’s zooming around the house like a kid on a sugar high at the country fair. Woo hoo!
While I was down in the basement cutting the lumber with the only saw in her house - a joke of a tool, a plastic mini saw from the $1 store - I found the big monkey wrench. Finally! See, she lives in an old one floor house, and the P-trap for the bathtub is in the basement, and her pipes have been terribly clogged for a long time now. The monkey wrench let me open the clean out tap on the old rotting iron P-trap and use a wire to try and clean out some of the gunk. It didn’t work, so I decided to take the thing apart. Like everything else in her home, which is one of what I call an “I built it” home, handmade by somebody with no idea how to do anything, her plumbing is a nightmare. So the 1 1/2” thin wall brass drain in the bathtub mates up to a few lengths of various diameter PVC downpipe, which has a rubber collar on the end to mate to the old 2” galvanized P trap, which in turn feeds into the 2” hub on the sanitary tee on the main stack. The whole thing dangles 4 or 5 feet from the bathtub up above. Hey, the rubber collar used to be held in place with twisted bailing wire. At least I got some good radiator clamps on it a few years ago.
What on earth is a sanitary tee? This is:
I didn’t know beans about pipe, so I learned a little, and found a whole new vocabulary of terms that only plumbers know. Pipe terms, not swear words. The sewer line in your house has a vertical part. This is called the stack. It is usually made up of many pieces of cast iron pipe, stacked together. Duh. The top end of the stack is open to the air, sticks through your roof, and is called a soil vent. It lets smell out and air in, so that no suction builds up in the pipe and things keep moving along. The bottom end of the pipe, the horizontal bit that runs out the side of your basement wall, is the sewer line proper, and is joined to the stack with a corner pipe called an elbow that has a removable plate on the side called a clean out. This is where the Roto-Rooter guy goes to do his thing when the line gets clogged. One end of each pipe piece is flared out to accept the next piece of pipe, and that flare is called a hub. The other end, unflared, is called the spigot. Spigots fit into hubs, and with the aid of poured lead and oakum are joined together permanently in a watertight manner. When side pipes - drain lines for tubs and sinks etc - have to join the stack they do so via a special pipe called a sanitary. There are sanitary tees, crosses, double tees, and so forth; a whole menagerie of interesting and unusual shapes. But they’re all called sanitary because the secondary pipes join in through a specially shaped corner bend, which is designed to minimize siphoning. That design keeps the poop in the line from being sucked back up into your bathtub, and thus the name sanitary. There are also regular pipe junctures - tees, whys, elbows, bends, four ways, Ess Offsets, etc - that don’t have that special corner, but they aren’t called unsanitary. They’re just regular junctures. Pipe is sized according to its inner diameter, so a 2” gavlanized mild steel pipe is actually a bit more than 2 1/4” in overall diameter, and the socket part of a 2” pipe hub is even larger, so that the plumber can have room to put the lead seal in. Or not, as the general move lately is away from lead anything, so gaskets, o-rings, and several types of adhesive are used these days instead. To make matters more complex, sewer pipe is made in 2 varieties, Service Weight (marked “SV” because it originated during WWII as a lightweight pipe that saved metal for the War Effort and thus was at first called “Service Victory") and regular weight (marked “XH” for extra-heavy duty), and the outer diameters of these pipes are not the same for a given inner diameter. The hub sizes are also different for the same reason.
So when I went to unscrew the top elbow for the deep P ( a regular P-trap keeps about 2” of standing water on either side of the bottom U-bend. This keeps the rank smell of the sewer line in the sewer line and not the rest of your house. A deep P does the same job, but uses about 4” to 6” of water on either side. I have no idea if one works better than the other as stink catching, or if the deeper design has some other advantage or meets some special need. ) the whole horizontal pipe pulled right out of the hub fitting. This was only a small surprise, as the hub was covered over with generations of caulk and putty to seal the join. Obviously it never was a proper tight fit; a well done joint is the closest thing to forever that exists, and usually needs two oxen and a large application of fire to take apart. Like I said, this is an “I built it” home, where stupid battles with lazy and cheap on a regular basis, and nobody wins in the end. But I finally had the whole P-trap thing removed as a unit, and I proceeded to removed the clogs with a stiff wire and a screwdriver. Then I went after the throat of the sanitary, which was also crusted almost solid. And that’s when I found the heart of the problem. Somehow a small plastic cup had got down the pipe, and was stuck right on the very end of the corner. A little thing, hardly bigger than a bottle cap, a hard to see bit of clear plastic the size of a quarter that was blocking most of the opening. Using two large screwdrivers like the most maniacal pair of chopsticks ever, I was able to capture the little bastard and get it out. Ta friggin’ Da! Now the tub drain should run like Niagara Falls. I put everything back together and sealed the hub with a whole handful of window caulk, which should be right. Then I noticed that the rotting old P-trap was cracked up the side. I had neither torch nor solder with me to seal it properly, so I kept the “I built it” motif going and slathered the thing with a big blob of roofing asphalt that happened to be sitting there in a can. That should hold for a couple days, especially since the old lady isn’t even using the tub right now at all because her knees are too weak to let her lift her calves up over the side of the tub.
And that’s why she has the salesman from one of those walk-in tubs for seniors coming Saturday. So we all have to go down there for that, to make sure he doesn’t twist her arm into signing up for some $10,000 deluxe spa device when all she really needs is a low edged shower stall, or one of those conversions where they cut a door into the side of your tub. I’ll use that visit to do some more work on the P-trap. It’s rotting apart, like I said. I want to replace the old galvanized parts with some nice new PVC parts, and that means I’ll have to clean out the hub on the sanitary tee. You can’t fit plastic PVC to a cast iron hub with the old poured molten lead method. You have to use a special rubber seal instead, and that means I need a Fernco Donut. Fernco is the company that makes the thing, and a donut is another name for the O-ring kind of seal:
They come specially sized for whatever kind of pipe you’re using, and I’ll be using standard Schedule 40 2” DWV PVC . This is a fairly common fitting these days, assuming I can figure out whether her stack uses SV or XH, and in theory you just have to hammer it in. Short work, easy project. Which means a 2 or 3 day effort at my MIL’s place. Call a plumber? Are you kidding? They’d charge hundreds just to remove the old seal, and hundreds more to put in a new one and rig up a new PVC P-trap. Plus, I know that my “I built it"s will last forever, because I build things to a standard that would make Mike Holmes blush.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/25/2012 at 10:05 AM
Filed Under: • Daily Life •
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