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February 07, 2012

Comments

Gmax

first

Melinda Romanoff

I see no problem with a lit ignition source within a New England home.

None.

Nor will your insurance company.

Janet

If you think that contraption doesn't count as a real fireplace...you might be a Conservative.

Dave (in MA)

Gives off CO2...

OH NOES!

Jane

I love that pix.

Gmax

Minnesota is now called for Santorum. Wasn't this a state that Romney carried last time?

Jim Ryan

REST OF COUNTRY: W-w-what? You picked Santorum by a wide margin? But everything was going Romney, or maybe Newt. Why'd you pick Santorum?

MISSOURI: I give up. Because Santorum's not a dink?

REST OF COUNTRY:

MISSOURI: What.

Strawman Cometh

Well Paw-Paw endorsed Mittens, so there ya go.

Strawman Cometh

$10 for 2 hours?

Melinda Romanoff

Strawman-

Well played.

jimmyk

Heh, Janet.

Here's one for you: You might be a conservative if... you'd prefer your kid's college to have vending machines for cigarettes than for the morning after pill.

(Not that I'd be so keen on either....)

jimmyk

Jane, check your fwdaj e-mail if you can.

Mark Folkestad

I just got back from my caucus, just south of St. Paul. I can only speak about the results from my own precinct. Santorum 8, Crazy Uncle 7, Romney 6 and Gingrich 4. The Ronulans were a bit rude at times, and many of them left immediately after the straw poll, having no interest in precinct officer, delegate, election judge or pollwatcher positions. They were also a large percentage of the huge crowd of first-timers.

Clarice

I love the looks of those things. We never use the fireplaces in our house any more because they are only nice when it's very cold out (rare) and when it is cold the draft brings in more cold air then the fireplace brings in heat.
Especially since you cannot close the draft until all the ashes are out.

I wonder if I should switch to gas for my fireplaces.

Melinda Romanoff

Clarice-

You still have to play with the damper, no matter what.

Unless you've figured out that pesky CO thingie...

Mark Folkestad

T-Paw's wife addressed our gathering before we split up into precincts to transact our business. She was enthusiastically for Romney. Some asshole Paulbots booed her.

Our state senator passed along word that both houses of the legislature are ready to submit an amendment to the state constitution requiring voter ID, which would be on the general election ballot in two years. The intent is to bypass Governor Jim Beam (Dayton), who has pledged to veto any voter ID legislation. But now the moron has threatened to veto the proposed amendment, and the governor has absolutely no power to do so.

Clarice

Yes, but once you turn the gas off you can shut the damper, can't you? I have to keep my open for hours after the fire is out because the embers are still smoldering and we like to breathe oxygen.

Mark Folkestad

Sorry to be an anal-retentive troglodyte, but I will never accept a fireplace that does not burn wood. Gasketed doors and outside combustion air vastly improve the efficiency. Some poor souls tried to convert me to gas fireplaces for my future cabin in Alaska. The idea was to save me the work of cutting and hauling wood. But living on an island with no road access would mean that I would have to wrestle propane tanks on and off my boat constantly. Phooey. Give me the wood any day, of which I will have more than I could possibly burn.

Danube of Thought

Clarice, forget the thermodynamics of the thing. Every once in a while just build yourself a roaring open fire, sit back with a bit of Scotch or brandy and enjoy the sight, sound and smell of the thing. If you're cold, a little blanket on the lap will do just fine.

It really helps if you have a spouse and a dog like mine. But nobody is that lucky.

Jane

Jimmy, got it. It's great. I will post it in the AM. Can I use your whole name?

Santorum just gave a heck of a speech.

Threadkiller

Now Santa can come to the projects.

Ignatz

--The fireplace burns cleanly and efficiently — it only gives off water vapor and carbon dioxide.....--

The two primary green house gases one of which the EPA has already declared a pollutant.
Surely Barry's storm troopers are enroute.

Jane

Clarice, my fp is propane, and I love it. You can now close the flu part so it gives off heat.

Clarice

Well, Mark and DoT, that's why I haven't made the conversion--the smell and sight of wood crackling really can't be duplicated by gas and fake logs.

Jim Ryan

Clarice, I'm thinking of ripping out my gas pipes and converting back to a log fireplace.

The hierarchy:

Log fire
Gas fire
This thing TM posted about
A video of a fire

Clarice

Yeah, Jim. In my heart of hearts I know you're right.

There are many versions of the thing TM posted. They would make perfect sense in an apt where you could not install a real fireplace or a vacation place with the same limitations.. I mean it is fun to watch fire, isn't it?

Rick Ballard

"I mean it is fun to watch fire, isn't it?"

Not much if it's the Voltive candle in the garage.

Santorum is opening wider in Colorado at the moment. 42/31 with 26% counted. This is an interesting evening.

Danube of Thought

"it is fun to watch fire, isn't it?"

Like watching big surf. It can be mesmerizing.

Stephanie

So Mitts folks are playing tonights results down by remarking that last go round McCain lost 19 states.

Nice blue print they are following.

Jim Ryan

Clarice, that is a good point about having to leave the flue open to the drafts after the fire. I never thought of that.

jimmyk

Yes, that's ok with me, Jane. Thanks.

jimmyk

Nice blue print they are following.

Ha. And they could add that Mitt won Colorado last time and lost the nomination, so it's better to lose Colorado. Or something.

Danube of Thought

If I'm reading things correctly, Mitt is likely to lose Colorado as well.

At this point I have to take my pleasure where I can find it: reading everything Sara has to say tomorrow.

Sue

Oh my. I think I just fell in love with Santorum.

Threadkiller

So Paul is out?

Threadkiller

So Paul is out?

Danube of Thought

Is it fair to say--as we sports scribes are so fond of saying--that Mitt Romney has absorbed a savage drubbing tonight?

My initial inclination is to characterize this as a wholesale repudiation--a rejection--of Mitt by his own party.

What say you, Sara? (I'll give you the last word.)

Wow. A trouncing. A humiliating, sneering, contemptuous rebuke. I believe his party has said, in something of a full-throated roar, "We don't like you and we don't want you."

But I'll wait to hear from Sara....

mockmook


I have a penalty on DoT for piling on!!! :)

Danube of Thought

Guilty as charged, Mockmook. To my regret I am not always a kind person. On the other hand, I am unkind only when God commands me to be so.

Rick Ballard

Too early, DoT. Colorado just flipped.

glasater

Colorado just flipped

Must have been those amateur counters or whatever they're called.

glasater

Now Romney and Santorum are tied with 64% reporting!

Sara

DOT: How old are you? You are acting like a little kid. I will say tomorrow the same thing I've said all along.

mockmook

C'mon Sara, don't begrudge DoT having a little joy during this miserable slog. Don't be a bitter Newt.

Ralph L

My sister has taken to stalking old friends and relatives on Facebook. She says DoT's nephew's son is GQ material (she obviously hasn't read one in 20 years, but you get the point).

My dad commanded both a single minesweeper and a division of 4 of them. The backest backwater of the Navy, but he did get to surround the Soviet Med. Fleet during the Six Day War (in wooden-hulled, almost-unarmed ships). Guess they didn't want to provoke them into WWIII. After that, they trusted him with an amphibious ship (LSD), the second-backest backwater of the Navy.

Hank Johnson

Colorado just flipped

I warned 'em about having all those Air Force guys east of I-25.

Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA

Colorado called for Santorum. LUN.
What a long, strange trip...

glasater

For Rick B-

Below is a link to a David Stockman email message to Bruce Krasting:

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-stockman-its-true-the-bls-data-is-made-up-2012-2

Closing graph:

"In short, if you spend a little time with these numbers you will know that they are being made up. Funny thing that I remember during the depths of the 1982 recession Reagan read in Human Events one night that the seasonally adjusted numbers were being manipulated and one should look at the unadjusted numbers, instead. The next morning during an economic update briefing Reagan said, he wanted to talk about the ”unadjusted” unemployment rate. Marty Feldstein turned white as a ghost, and then talked him out of it. Hmmm!"

Extraneus

Santorum? Sheesh.

I wonder if this opens the door for a late-entry candidate.

Extraneus

Btw, I have a fairly large fireplace, around 48" wide or so. Great if you have a bunch of split logs, a good place to keep them dry that's far enough away from the house to not worry too much about bugs and snakes, and the ambition to start and keep a big fire going. Therefore, I converted to propane.

Since it's a large fireplace, the large propane logs I got use a lot of gas. I figure over $5 for a few hours of fire, but I don't use it so often and I think it was worth it overall.

As for reaching up inside to close the flu while the fireplace is still hot, I never do it.

Clarice

Complex race says Noemie Emery, too. But she's defined "the establishment" for us:

"f we can tell the insurgent (a millionaire lobbyist) from the establishment candidate, (a mega-rich businessman), it still raises the question of who the Establishment is.

In South Carolina, the Establishment is Jim DeMint, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, all Tea Party leaders. None opposed Romney: Haley endorsed him, DeMint helped him, and Scott did nothing to interfere with his rise.

In Florida, Marco Rubio, a movement conservative and Tea Party hero (and protegee of Jeb Bush, of the Establishment) also helped Romney. If you can't tell the players without a scorecard, you can't tell the teams apart either.

This isn't the story line that we were promised. It's much more complex than you think."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/2012/02/gop-race-complicated/246676

peter

Mitt's been Rick-rolled.

rse

Morning clarice. We have gas at beach and took out the gas in ATL. My parents gave hubby a cord of wood for Christmas. Making a fire seems to make everyone relax.

LUN is a followup to my point on Dickens from yestreday. When the UK's Guardian wants to revive your work it has OWS potential. Also apparently AP, NYT, and the British Council all used yesterday to push new interest in Dickens.

That polar bear picture is all I could think about those silly Coke SB commercials. What's the point is not a good PR response.

peter

We don't use our fireplace due to the same issues Clarice is describing. When we are in the mood, I put on my Arthur Brown records.

rse

Has anyone linked to this WaPo story on earmarks to add "public amenities" near private property owned by Congress members?

To the tune of about $300 million.

Clarice

The thing about that story, rse, is that almost anything in some districts is near some property a Congressman or his family owns, isn't it? It seems a rather broad brush. Harder to justify is the related practice (also reported in the WaPo) of earmarks to institutions which employ members of the Congessman's family.

daddy

Just arrived in Seattle, turned on the tube, and see Santorum won.

Wow. Very unexpected to me.

My quick impression is that Romney has so far failed to sell himself to Conservatives, so Conservatives are going elsewhere with their votes.
Congratulations Santorum.

Now to get some beauty sleep for our afternoon JOMboree.

G'nite.

Jane

GM, the Treasury and You

Our own Jimmy tracks our tax dollars at work play.

Oh to be a crony.

daddy

Jane,

If possible, can you link the original article JimmyK mentions in his post at YouToo.

henry

I have two big fireplaces which are wonderful. One friend put a firebox in his fireplace, which uses less wood for equal heat and avoids the draft problem (close the doors and deal with the flue later). I'm thinking about putting a firebox in one fireplace to heat the house, and keeping the open flame ambiance with the other.

On recall news, Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald will challenge enough signatures to void his recall. Challenges for all 4 senators are due tomorrow, then we get to watch the GAB ignore the challenges.

Jane

Daddy,

No, but I bet Jimmy can and then I will put it in the piece. He linked to it the other day here. (I'd look but I am running out the door)

Janet

This post is very good on the media bias in the SGK-PP story.

", Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell complimented each other on getting Komen to buckle under pressure."

RichatUF

Is this it? paper

Might be a bit dry for 5:35AM in Seattle.

NK

Maguire-- you can't be serious. Get one of those when you move to a deluxe apartment in the sky, not in a Ct house.

Speaking of which, when are you going to link to the NY Post reportage on Yankee GM, and now famous horndog, Brian Cashman! Multi-year affair, then blackmailed by a tribeca freak, now a divorce. A philanderer's hat trick! There will be a big house up for sale in Darien!

rse

Did anyone link to vdh's story yesterday about this election becoming a referendum on the American system itself? LUN

I agree with vdh. One of the things on my list yesterday after I stopped writing for a while was to listen to a February 2009 TED presentation by Elizabeth Coleman, Pres of Bennington. It's about 18 minutes. I had never heard of her and was actually tracking her son, David, whose ideas for implementing Common Core fit a pattern I had seen before. Liz gives the whole speech with her left hand in pocket in a monotone voice that struck me as quite contemptuous.

Her contempt for the political system created by the Founding Fathers and desire to use ed to have students help the then new Admin override it is hard to listen to. It's been viewed though more than 200,000 times.

GMAX

Three for three? I am sure the spin will be furious from the excitable melodramatic one. Maybe just maybe he should say that Romneycare big @ssed mistake and after thinking about it a bunch, though it was hard for me to admit, I have come to that sober conclusion. Its probably the minimum that he needs to put his sputtering and missing Rambler back on the road.

RichatUF

And in catching up on the threads, I'm surprised that I didn't see someone linking to Maria Menounos paying off her bet?

Porchlight

I thought this was pretty amusing, from the article TM linked:

The Pureflame fireplace comes in a number of different styles to match your decor. Some have a more solid, more traditional look, but all are decidedly modern-looking. After all, it's fire that's on your wall.

I like Jim Ryan's hierarchy.

GMAX

So will it be 99.5% negative ads on Santorum now? It seems he knows how to do that, but selling himself, not so much.

sbw

rse, Dickens' "Hard Times" speaks to our times.

Of school in Hard Times, Dickens despaired, ‘It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions.’

narciso

The Tpaw Mo is an awesome thing, sarc.

RichatUF

Oops, I should have linked. Cheesecake is on me this morning.

Porchlight

Yes, narciso. Now we know why Pawlenty dropped out. Couldn't even deliver MN to Romney.

GMAX

Pawlenty is Mitch Daniels without the personality...

Appalled

Santorum vs. Romney is a harder fight for Mitch than Gingrich vs Romney. Santorum does not have same baggage as Newt.

The problem is Santorum really is a throwback to the social conservatism of 2006, which may seem relevent today (in wake of the 9th circuit acting, alas, like the 9th circuit, and the Obama administration's monomania on abortion rights imposed via healthcare reform), but really seems like a political approach that antagonizes too many moderates, and makes Obama's boogey man campaign a lot more likely. I personally can't stand that particular strain of the GOP, but can vote for it in November if I have to, under the circumstances. (My reaction to Santorum is similar to many of you for Romney)

I hope, if Romney goes the negative route, he fights on the basis of ideas, rather than the personal stuff deployed against Newt. I get the impression with Santorum that he is a good guy who lives his faith, as opposed to a petulant self-important whiner like Newt.

If Gingrich were a true Conservative, he would, at this point, accept the verdict of the voters, and endorse Santorum as the "not-Romney" candidate. Anyone placing bets on whether he'll do that?

Captain Hate

Romney needs to make the case for himself instead of attacking Santorum. He seems to surround himself with the same sort of dimwits that McRINO did.

Sue

If you didn't see Santorum's speech last night, you should. I might just be a Santorum supporter after last night.

Clarice

If Romney plans to run the country the way he's run his campaign , we will hardly find him an improvement. Overpaid , childish morons..without a whiff of Palin's or Reagan's natural political instincts.

Clarice

Don Surber collects the punditry's views of the hole in the Romney electability bubble:
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/51168

Pls, Let's see a new dark horse that we can ride..

Melinda Romanoff

Oh< I get a whiff alright.

Danube of Thought

Minus 11 at Raz today.

One gets the palpable sense that GOP voters are yea,rning desperately for someone other than Mitt.

Ms. Emery got it right.

bio mom

For the Santorum supporters: Your man is a lifetime Washington insider who lost his last election big and who then became a D.C. lobbyist. During his time in government he was the “compassionate conservative” you claim to disdain. Also, he is running a populist campaign and supports unions. I wonder how many people see only his true social conservatism and jump to the conclusion about his being the “true conservative” just based on that. He really isn’t.

Extraneus

Pls, Let's see a new dark horse that we can ride..

No kidding, Clarice.

Maybe Mitt should drop out.

Sue

Your man is a lifetime Washington insider who lost his last election big and who then became a D.C. lobbyist.

::sigh:: I quit looking for perfect a long time ago.

Janet

but really seems like a political approach that antagonizes too many moderates,

from Jonah Goldberg via Instapundit -

"It's all a farce. Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war (and not always for the worse, as the civil rights movement demonstrates). What they object to isn't so much the government imposing its values on people — heck, they love that. They see nothing wrong with imposing their views about diet, exercise, sex, race and the environment on Americans. What outrages them is resistance, or even non-compliance with their agenda. "Why are you making such a scene?" progressives complain. "Just do what we want and there will be no fuss.""

bold mine

I know it is suppose to be "It's the economy, stupid!" but IMO lots of Americans are starved for some push back against the lib. social agenda. If Republicans want more black & Latino votes those are in the social conservative areas.

Sue

Janet,

Don't google santorum. You will be sick. I had no idea that Rick Santorum was so hated by the gay community.

centralcal

Sue: I seem to recall - especially early in the primary season - Santorum calling out Google and demanding that they do something about their search results.

sbw

Neither a big government liberal or big government conservative is appealing.

sbw

What business does Santorum have insinuating himself in a gay's bedroom anyway?

GMAX

Did Romney buy ad time under Bio Mom's moniker? LOL

The negativity begins.

Janet

I know Sue. Here is a Newsbuster post about a Bill Maher show where 2 libs are yucking it up about violent hate sex with Rick Santorum & Michele Bachmann.

"SAVAGE: …he needs it. So, it’s not, it's not just women we’re talking about f--king. Like, let's bone that Santorum boy.

MARON: Alright. Let’s video it.

SAVAGE: I’m up for whipping up some santorum in Santorum"

I guess that exchange is no big deal...at least they haven't set fire to Santorum's or Bachmann's church yet...oh wait...that wouldn't make the news either.

rse

janet-that reads like Jonah is getting ready for his upcoming book tour.

I think he did an excellent job with Liberal Fascism and emphasized some unappreciated points.

Hope his next is as good.

Sue

What business does Santorum have insinuating himself in a gay's bedroom anyway?

I have no idea what Santorum did that you are referring to. Can you help me out?

MarkO

"GOP voters are yearning desperately for someone other than Mitt."

Right you are, sir. But, that yearning is not for Newt and will not be for Rick.

It could be that GOP voters are fickle this year--perhaps believing that Obama will lose to anyone--and they will never really join behind a nominee. Even on this blog many have expressed their firm determination not to vote for X or Y.

I suppose one can rationally argue there is time so to do, yet the bloodletting seems to have weakened those in the race and those not in the race would suffer the same fate.

Danube of Thought

"Maybe Mitt should drop out"

Bad for book sales.

Extraneus

I thought Liberal Fascism was a slog to get through. He made a lot of good points, and it was well researched, but the writing wasn't as good as the content. Just my two cents.

Danube of Thought

Oops. I read "Mitt" but was thinking"Newt."

jimmyk

Jane, Daddy,
The Cato article isn't available online. This WSJ article (assuming it's viewable to non-subscribers) covers part of the story.

Danube of Thought

At this point we have four candidates, not one of whom I can stand. Small wonder that turnout is down everywhere.

jimmyk

Actually, I take it back, a working paper version of the Cato article is here.

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