Massive explosion near Waco, Tx.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by RendeR

Now can we ditch this randomness and get back to talking about the people in that poor town? A whole lot of families just had their world destroyed.

Yep. Based on the numbers of dead and injured, it is over 5% of the population of the town. Thank god it happened after school hours. Based on the damage to the school it would have been even worse.

[Matthean]

I grew up in a town even smaller but not by much. Something like this happening there I couldn't even begin to put into words.

[Butter]

Not that this is the time for it, but when this was first reported, I was wondering just where in western Texas this had taken place.

[bulletsponge]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

Not that this is the time for it, but when this was first reported, I was wondering just where in western Texas this had taken place.

central texas, near waco

[Butter]

Yeah, I realized that "West" was a town name, not directional in pretty short order.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

Not that this is the time for it, but when this was first reported, I was wondering just where in western Texas this had taken place.

I was in the same boat. I thought when they said west Texas, they were referring to the western side of the state. Didn't realize that it was the name of the town.

These events the last couple of days have made me really miss Headline News. It used to be nice to wake up and catch up on the news in 10 minutes. Now, I feel like I have to dig through the internet or sit through 30 minutes of Piers Morgan before I figure out what the heck has gone on while I was asleep.

[cartman]

Damn.

Austin Man Witnesses Boston Marathon Bombs, West Explosion | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Much clearer video of the explosion.....

[Abe Sargent]

CNN fail:


Final paragraph and then line from their updated version of this story:



"The plant's report to the EPA said even a worst-case scenario wouldn't be that dire: There would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that wouldn't kill or injure anyone, the newspaper reported.

What happened Wednesday night was much worse."



At that point, that sort of blatant understatement feels to me like a pedantic overly off point.

[sterlingice]

Self regulation like that is just scary. We saw this with Deepwater Horizon, too. The emergency planning is just whatever laughable measures you can get away with putting down on paper as no one really looks at them or validates them until a disaster strikes.

SI

[whomario]

terrible thing to happen, very scary ...

self regulation is just a big sham in many cases ...

Originally Posted by cartman

Damn.

Austin Man Witnesses Boston Marathon Bombs, West Explosion | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

reminds me of this : Tsutomu Yamaguchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (man being at the place of and surviving both atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

[mckerney]

Cruz called Sandy aid ‘pork’ but wants ‘all available resources’ after Texas blast | The Raw Story

So disaster relief is no longer wasteful. Hopefully zoning well no longer be seen as an undue intrusion of liberty and safety regulations and enforcement more than an unnecessary burden designed to harm small businesses.

[RendeR]

Oh just stop. You can throw all sorts of actual facts at a right wing nutjob from Texas but if its not covered in BBQ sauce and sandwiched between 2 stacks of 10k dollar bills you aren't gonna change his mind.

[SirFozzie]

If true, folks need to be jailed:

'Red flag': Texas plant had 1,350 times amount of chemical that would trigger oversight - U.S. News

The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 pounds or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

[sterlingice]

Again, this is what angers me about self-regulation and about our corporate environment protections here. If this happens in Europe, someone or someones is(are) going to their equivalent of federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Here, the company dissolves, can be reformed by the same people, and no one is criminally negligent because they're hidden behind the corporate legal structure. Someone was clearly breaking laws that they knew they were breaking and unless you have a smoking gun email kept on servers that the company controls, they're no real criminal prosecution.

SI

[cartman]

Gov. Perry is sticking to his guns that spending money on inspections wouldn't have prevented the explosion. Might have a point if it hadn't been 26 years since the last documented safety inspection.

Also, Homeland Security is supposed to be notified if a facility is storing at least 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate. At the time of the explosion, there were 270 TONS being stored. The plant owner never reported how much he was storing. You don't think an inspection might have noticed something like this, Gov. Perry?

[panerd]

Originally Posted by RendeR

Oh just stop. You can throw all sorts of actual facts at a right wing nutjob from Texas but if its not covered in BBQ sauce and sandwiched between 2 stacks of 10k dollar bills you aren't gonna change his mind.

LOL. They are all corrupt. Thinking otherwise is just as delusional as blaming the "right wing nutjobs" for corporate greed.

Jesse Jackson Jr. Pleads Guilty in Campaign Money Case - NYTimes.com

Denny Hecker moved to Colorado prison with Blagojevich, Enron's Skilling - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

[cartman]

Originally Posted by panerd

LOL. They are all corrupt. Thinking otherwise is just as delusional as blaming the "right wing nutjobs" for corporate greed.

Jesse Jackson Jr. Pleads Guilty in Campaign Money Case - NYTimes.com

Denny Hecker moved to Colorado prison with Blagojevich, Enron's Skilling - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

WTF are you going on about??? Render wasn't talking about corruption, he was talking about Cruz just being a bald-faced liar. Claiming that money spent on Hurricane Sandy relief is simply pork, then turning around and begging for relief funds for West isn't corruption, it is just naked shamelessness.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by cartman

Claiming that money spent on Hurricane Sandy relief is simply pork, then turning around and begging for relief funds for West isn't corruption, it is just naked shamelessness.

That's oversimplified bullshit.

There was pork included in the Sandy bills. Nearly $11B for future transportation projects that provided zero immediate relief. $150m for Alaskan fisheries. $8m for DHS and Justice to buy new cars. The list was not a short one, those are just a few examples. And Cruz pointing out that reality is different than asking for (presumably) legitimate relief.

Here's the Cruz statement at the time of the Sandy votes

“Hurricane Sandy inflicted devastating damage on the East Coast, and Congress appropriately responded with hurricane relief,” Cruz said in a statement earlier this year. “Unfortunately, cynical politicians in Washington could not resist loading up this relief bill with billions in new spending utterly unrelated to Sandy.”

[panerd]

Originally Posted by cartman

WTF are you going on about??? Render wasn't talking about corruption, he was talking about Cruz just being a bald-faced liar. Claiming that money spent on Hurricane Sandy relief is simply pork, then turning around and begging for relief funds for West isn't corruption, it is just naked shamelessness.

Could have sworn he said right wing nutjob but I guess I am wrong. Like you said he just said bald-faced liar. Carry on with your liberal mass masturbation, so much smarter than the dumb conservatives... (as Grantdawg has continued in the next post)

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by cartman

Gov. Perry is sticking to his guns that spending money on inspections wouldn't have prevented the explosion. Might have a point if it hadn't been 26 years since the last documented safety inspection.

Also, Homeland Security is supposed to be notified if a facility is storing at least 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate. At the time of the explosion, there were 270 TONS being stored. The plant owner never reported how much he was storing. You don't think an inspection might have noticed something like this, Gov. Perry?

You really surprised? The Republican answer to any problem is deregulation and tax cuts. It is just a matter of time before they say the whole explosion could have been prevented by having guns in every house, dissolving the EPA, and repealing Obamacare.

[molson]

Ha, I had forgotten about those Alaskan fisheries and the rest. Nothing like a disaster to bring out the best in our elected representatives. This is the language of our congresspeople, act shadily, but hide under the pretenses of good deeds so you can never be criticized. I just wonder, were the "news" sources that reported this angle on Cruz ignorant of the extras, or did they just choose to ignore that part because these kind of attacks generate a lot of web traffic?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

I just wonder, were the "news" sources that reported this angle on Cruz ignorant of the extras, or did they just choose to ignore that part because these kind of attacks generate a lot of web traffic?

They're just playing to both their agenda & their fan base.

What's that old quote, about how "the first casualty when war comes is truth". Nothing short of a state of war exists between the left & the rest of the country, so it's just part of the reality of the conflict.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

You really surprised? The Republican answer to any problem is deregulation and tax cuts. It is just a matter of time before they say the whole explosion could have been prevented by having guns in every house, dissolving the EPA, and repealing Obamacare.

If more people had guns they could have created a counter explosion that would neutralize the original explosion.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by panerd

Could have sworn he said right wing nutjob but I guess I am wrong. Like you said he just said bald-faced liar. Carry on with your liberal mass masturbation, so much smarter than the dumb conservatives... (as Grantdawg has continued in the next post)

Persecution complex much?

[molson]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

You really surprised? The Republican answer to any problem is deregulation and tax cuts. It is just a matter of time before they say the whole explosion could have been prevented by having guns in every house, dissolving the EPA, and repealing Obamacare.

Originally Posted by JPhillips

If more people had guns they could have created a counter explosion that would neutralize the original explosion.

Geez. On the bright side though, most the victims of the explosion were probably Republican, right?

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by cartman

Persecution complex much?

It seems rather silly and hypocritical of you to call panerd out for overgeneralizing a liberal standpoint without also calling out Grantdawg for his partisan assassination of the right, no?

[molson]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

It seems rather silly and hypocritical of you to call panerd out for overgeneralizing a liberal standpoint without also calling out Grantdawg for his partisan assassination of the right, no?

Everyone on the right is stupid though, so it's different. I think goes the logic.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by cartman

Persecution complex much?

I guess you are so busy trying to nail MBBF on something in the basketball thread you must have not read the last 20 or so posts in this one.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

It seems rather silly and hypocritical of you to call panerd out for overgeneralizing a liberal standpoint without also calling out Grantdawg for his partisan assassination of the right, no?

Saying the right is for tax cuts and deregulation, against the EPA and wanting to repeal the ACA is 'partisan assassination'?

[molson]

Originally Posted by cartman

Saying the right is for tax cuts and deregulation, against the EPA and wanting to repeal the ACA is 'partisan assassination'?

That's not what he said. I mean, I guess that general point was in there somewhere but it was presented very differently than your post

[molson]

OK, so it's the Republicans' fault the fertilizer plant blew up, do we know yet what party or manner of political thinking is responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing? How about the car accident downtown here that's making traffic a bitch?

[cartman]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

That's oversimplified bullshit.

There was pork included in the Sandy bills. Nearly $11B for future transportation projects that provided zero immediate relief. $150m for Alaskan fisheries. $8m for DHS and Justice to buy new cars. The list was not a short one, those are just a few examples. And Cruz pointing out that reality is different than asking for (presumably) legitimate relief.

Here's the Cruz statement at the time of the Sandy votes

Or the money that went to GOP districts to get them to vote for the bill.

Pork Holding Up Senate Sandy Relief Bill Funneled Into The Troughs Of GOP Deficit Hawks? You Betcha. - Forbes

[molson]

Originally Posted by cartman

Or the money that went to GOP districts to get them to vote for the bill.

Pork Holding Up Senate Sandy Relief Bill Funneled Into The Troughs Of GOP Deficit Hawks? You Betcha. - Forbes

Anyone who thinks this is a one-party issue is deluded beyond all hope. It's just a question of politics, connections, and contributions to determine which unrelated interests will benefit from any federal fertilizer plant explosion relief.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by cartman

Gov. Perry is sticking to his guns that spending money on inspections wouldn't have prevented the explosion. Might have a point if it hadn't been 26 years since the last documented safety inspection.

Also, Homeland Security is supposed to be notified if a facility is storing at least 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate. At the time of the explosion, there were 270 TONS being stored. The plant owner never reported how much he was storing. You don't think an inspection might have noticed something like this, Gov. Perry?

To be fair on that part, I believe I read that they had reported how much ammonium nitrate they had to the state government. Why that wasn't cross-checked with federal requirements and whether that should be done by the state or feds is beyond me. Bureaucracies suck in general, and inspections aren't an automatic answer - look at the Philadephia abortion clinic case for a place where a government agency had all the facts in front of it and the power to do something and just ignored them.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by molson

That's not what he said. I mean, I guess that general point was in there somewhere but it was presented very differently than your post

Exactly. The partisan assassination isn't that Republicans are for deregulation and tax cuts. But the second part where Grantdawg paints Republicans as excuse makers who will use a tragedy to take the most extreme points of their agenda forward.

For instance, Democrats answer to everything is to raise taxes for social programs and to regulate everything. I'm sure they will use the Boston Marathon bombing to remove all guns and knives from private ownership except BB guns and table cutlery, make saying the word "God" in public punishable by 5-10 years in local prison (but out in three months) and provide "free" healthcare for not only Americans, but the whole world.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

To be fair on that part, I believe I read that they had reported how much ammonium nitrate they had to the state government. Why that wasn't cross-checked with federal requirements and whether that should be done by the state or feds is beyond me. Bureaucracies suck in general, and inspections aren't an automatic answer - look at the Philadephia abortion clinic case for a place where a government agency had all the facts in front of it and the power to do something and just ignored them.

They did report it to the state, but the burden also falls on plant to also report it to the Feds. The state had no requirement to pass along their info.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Exactly. The partisan assassination isn't that Republicans are for deregulation and tax cuts. But the second part where Grantdawg paints Republicans as excuse makers who will use a tragedy to take the most extreme points of their agenda forward.

For instance, Democrats answer to everything is to raise taxes for social programs and to regulate everything. I'm sure they will use the Boston Marathon bombing to remove all guns and knives from private ownership except BB guns and table cutlery, make saying the word "God" in public punishable by 5-10 years in local prison (but out in three months) and provide "free" healthcare for not only Americans, but the whole world.

It's like calling Obama a socialist, or yelling about him wanting to take all our guns. It's lazy and dumb.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by molson

OK, so it's the Republicans' fault the fertilizer plant blew up, do we know yet what party or manner of political thinking is responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing? How about the car accident downtown here that's making traffic a bitch?

We haven't blamed anything on the Germans lately, have we? I say it's their fault!

EDIT: And the Rotary Club. And Webelos but not all of the Cub Scouts.

SI

[cartman]

Call me a commie liberal if you want, but I'm firmly for 'job-killing' regulations being in place and enforced so that 'people-killing' accidents can be reduced.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

So did this thread explode or the plant? I'm confused.

[molson]

Originally Posted by cartman

Call me a commie liberal if you want, but I'm firmly for 'job-killing' regulations being in place and enforced so that 'people-killing' accidents can be reduced.

Or, you can just support broader safety regulations with tougher and more active enforcement with the aim of reducing fertilizer plant accidents. I mean, that's a pretty rational position. It can stand on its own. If someone is only willing to take on opposing views that say, believe that more gun ownership could have prevented this, or resort to hyperbole and exaggeration that implicates an entire political ideology with the actual blowing up of the building, than I'd say that would show a unwarranted lack of confidence in your position. (And anybody who called you a "commie liberal" for doing so would probably be fringe weirdo whose opinion doesn't matter much anyway. For some reason it's just more socially acceptable to jump immediately to that fringe when criticizing the other side.)

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by cartman

Call me a commie liberal if you want, but I'm firmly for 'job-killing' regulations being in place and enforced so that 'people-killing' accidents can be reduced.

My response to you earlier had nothing to do with your personal political stance or to the legitimacy of the liberal viewpoint, but to your specific singling out of panerd without similarly calling out Grantdawg.

[RendeR]

My original point was that the Sandy Aid packages were held up for MONTHS because the Republicans in congress refused to let the aid through until most of that PORK was added tot eh bill for unrelated areas and support.

Cruz jumping into the fray saying he wants the full support of the government to fix the West Texas tragedy is a serious shitbag after the way the Sandy Relief was handled.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by RendeR

My original point was that the Sandy Aid packages were held up for MONTHS because the Republicans in congress refused to let the aid through until most of that PORK was added tot eh bill for unrelated areas and support.

Cruz jumping into the fray saying he wants the full support of the government to fix the West Texas tragedy is a serious shitbag after the way the Sandy Relief was handled.

Oh, that was your original point? Hard to figure out how we couldn't extrapolate it from this...

Originally Posted by RendeR

Oh just stop. You can throw all sorts of actual facts at a right wing nutjob from Texas but if its not covered in BBQ sauce and sandwiched between 2 stacks of 10k dollar bills you aren't gonna change his mind.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by molson

Geez. On the bright side though, most the victims of the explosion were probably Republican, right?

Calm down. It was a joke.

[molson]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Calm down. It was a joke.

It was an attempt at humor rooted in disdain. Edit: Actually I don't think it's really humor it's just more a super-sarcastic way of expressing disdain, like people who call liberals commies, or Obama a socialist, etc. It's harmless, but I'm sure you roll your eyes at least when people do that.

[JPhillips]

Thanks for the analysis. Just put the bill in the mail.

[JPhillips]

On a serious note, I find all this discussion of what is too extreme for either side to be pretty tiresome. I don't think measuring what is acceptable is very fruitful. If something said bothers you, ignore it.

[molson]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Thanks for the analysis. Just put the bill in the mail.

No point in charging a liberal, they'll just pass the buck to the next generation (see how fun it would be if we both talked like this?) I think we actually used to have a bunch of conservative posters that posted stuff like that in the political threads. They were rightfully mocked.