Senate to debate "Cash for Couches" to help furniture industry

Aug 3, Washington DC

The US Senate today debated a new stimulus proposal dubbed "Cash for Couches" designed to lift the depressed domestic furniture industry. While the US auto market is only 50% domestic production, the Upholstered furniture market is over 90% produced in the United States, predominately in the North Carolina region.
"We would welcome the chance to put our laid off employees back to work," said Jim Leviton, CEO of Heritage Furniture. Heritage makes a furniture sold under a varitety of store brand names, and employs 350 people in its Winston-Salem plant. Earlier this year, 75 employees were laid off due to lack of demand.

The new "Cash for Couches" program would provide up to $500.00 trade-in for any couch or upholstered chair, regardless of condition. Like the "Cash for Clunkers" program, the couches would have to be destroyed to eliminate the possiblity of insect infestations from spreading. Unlike the car program, however, people trading in the couches would not have to provide any documentation of prior ownership for 6 months. Also, the dealer paperwork would be reduced to a single page.

Sen. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts said "This program will help get new couches in the hands of people who have been putting off purchases, and also get the furniture industry moving again." The program is proposed to be initially funded with just $200,000,000, which will allow 400,000 families to replace their couches at a reduced price.

Republicans initially indicated their opposition to the bill, but later agreed that nearly 100% of the money would be going to American companies, it was one way they could help stimulate the economy and show some bi-partisan support to be used as a bargaining chip in future health-care debates.

The Senate is expected to vote on the proposal shortly after coming back into session from their Summer recess. The House has not yet taken up a similar measure.

Do bikes even GO this fast?

This is a real sign. Found today 7/20/09 on the Sammamish River Trail at the south end by Marymoor park. Yes, there is some construction going on. NO, it wasn't going on when I rode by today. Unless you have to walk your bike over a 20 foot deep chasm on a 2x12 plank, I think we might be able to go through at least at WALKING speed, don't you think?

This way that way any way you want

You can get to 520 any way you turn. It's practically unavoidable!

Contractor awards, for doing what was in the plans even if it didn't make any sense.

Obama's science guy admits the sun causes global warming

In a recent article President Obama's science adviser John Holdren said that we might need to consider seeding the atmosphere with pollution to cut the solar gain from the sun, if global warming gets too severe. This, to my mind, admits that the sun is contributing to global warming right now. I have a few questions and commens for Mr.Holdren, and am awaiting his replies:

I heard about the plan to “research” what it would take to cut sunlight and curb warming by shooting pollution into the upper atmosphere, simulating a volcano eruption.

First off, I work in computers and we never do anything to a running system to improve it that we can’t reverse in case we don’t get the results we expect. In this case, please be sure that any such plans you have to tinker with the atmosphere include methods to completely UNDO your changes, should we decide that is advised.

Second, can you tell me of any experiment or project that has attempted to engineer weather or climate in such a scale that has been proven successful?

Third, your analogy of being in a car, heading toward a cliff, without brakes, in the fog is clever: we are headed for disaster, but we lack control of the rate of our movement, and in fact, we don’t even know how far away the disaster is; even if we try steering the car away from the disaster, since we lack visibility we don’t know if we will point ourselves toward or away from the cliff; our actions may actually hasten our demise. Although we can see the earth warming in places, we don’t yet know why it is warming; and in fact doesn’t shooting particles into the atmosphere admit that the SUN is one of the main causes of global warming, not human activity? If the sun is at fault here, it's not getting it's due. Most if not all of the current global warming solutions attempt to control CO2 production. What proportion of global warming is due to the sun?

I look forward to your answers to these questions.

Cars: never all that easy to do even the easy stuff

We are going to sell the Kia Sephia we bought for Krissy a year ago. Before I sell it, though, I need to change out the alternator. The one in there now has a bad bearing and sounds like a cement truck when the car is running.

OK, not too hard. Upper bolt. Lower bolt. Two wires.

Not so fast.

First off, need to jack up the car to get underneath. Then take off the front wheel for more room to move.

Now there's stuff in the way. Some funny little box with wires and cables coming out. Three bolts and it's loose.

Dang. I need all my metric sockets. They're over here.. rusty...can't read the numbers...

Loosen up the top bolt, no problem. Oh, right, remove the battery ground. Moving on, remove one cable. Now what about the bottom bolt?

Way under here...14mm... no 14mm socket. Have an open end wrench that'll fit.

Pull, pull harder... No go. Gotta get a socket. Oh, here's one. Good. Bottom bolt is loose now.

But this other wire -- it won't come out. It's a plug, must have a lock or something. But it won't come out. After about 20 min of fiddling, I manage to bust off the lock tab and it comes out.

Well now we're getting really close. The bolts are finally out, the wires are off. Just need to pull... wait, it's stuck. Pull it out ... no.. twist it.... nearly out but this fuel tubing is in the way.... how is this supposed to come out?

Hop on Chiltons' online.. no help.

Try again. Still stuck. Could I take the tubing off the injector manifold? I'd really rather not...

Ok, one more time. Pull this way, shove that way, and apply more force!

It's out! At last! And sure as shootin, that bearing sounds horrible.

zzyzx road