April 2011

Several years ago, I was injured at work. I ruptured my Achilles tendon. My employer sent me to a health clinic that they have a contract with. In the lobby of this clinic is a sign which reads: “We specialize at getting your employees back to work.” This attitude of the personnel at this clinic seems to be that all employees are goldbricking fakers that need to go back to work.

I told them that it felt like there was a problem with my Achilles tendon. Feeling the back of my swollen ankle, I could feel where the tendon was not there. They wanted to take an xray. I told them that a ruptured Achilles tendon won’t show on an xray. They argued with me and took it anyway. They saw nothing, diagnosed me with a sprain and sent me back to work on light duty. My employer gives no option of staying home sick when given light duty for an on the job injury.

Three weeks later, I finally demanded and got an MRI. Diagnosis? There was a fluid filled gap where the tendon is supposed to be. The ankle specialist that they finally sent me to said that it would probably be a career ending injury, and that I would never walk properly again, because there is a time limit of 10 days for repairing this sort of injury. He offered to try the surgery anyway, with the understanding that if it did not work I would need a cane for walking for the rest of my life. I went ahead with it. He said that even if the operation was a success, it would be 6 months before I could walk, and 18 months before I could work again.

It was 8 painful months later that I returned to full duty. I endured surgery, nauseating drugs, excruciating physical therapy, and unbelievable amounts of pain, followed by a month of weaning myself off the narcotics.

I was injured again this afternoon while responding to a burning Denny’s restaurant. This time, the other ankle. I am being sent to the same clinic that almost crippled me before. I am overjoyed.

While wages and other job-related income fell by a record $206 billion last year to $7.84 trillion, transfer payments from the government such as unemployment checks and Social Security burgeoned by $231 billion to $2.1 trillion. Meanwhile, the amount of taxes that individual Americans paid plummeted by $325 billion to $2.1 trillion as a result of middle-class tax cuts and because nearly 6 million people were thrown out of work and are no longer paying payroll taxes.

Did you get that? We pay out more in “give aways” that we are taking in through taxes, and that doesn’t include law enforcement, the courts, jails, or the military. This country is past the point of no return. It is doomed to failure.

It would probably be a good idea to make sure that you are not followed home. It makes me wonder what happened here, but it sounds like he was targeted. Whatever happened, his machine gun, along with some other nice pieces, are gone. Almost certainly stolen by someone who has no appreciation for fine firearms.

One of the standard lines that you hear when discussing the Second Amendment as a tool for allowing the citizens of a nation to replace the government if it becomes abusive is that citizen militias are useless for opposing government tyranny, because the government owns all sorts of weapons like tanks, jet fighters, Aegis cruisers, and even nuclear weapons, and a citizen militia armed with what amounts to hunting rifles would be powerless against that kind of force.

Leaving aside the fact that making such a statement makes me believe that this is actually making a case for loosening restrictions on what arms the citizens can own, the belief that a citizen militia cannot beat a tyrannical modern military is a sign of unimaginative thinking. I will admit that a bunch of citizens armed with semi automatic rifles would be soundly defeated on a battlefield by any modern military employing those tanks, jet fighters, and artillery. It is a wise move to avoid any battlefield where such weapons are being used. That is when a smart militia redefines the battlefield.

The M1 Abrams is a fuel hog. A company of 14 of those tanks needs nearly 1,000 gallons of fuel to move 100 miles. The tanks break down every 250 hours or so. The F16 fighter uses an average of 7 pounds of fuel for every minute of flight, and requires 12 hours of maintenance for every hour spent flying. Both of those weapons need spare parts, as they are wonders of technological achievement. Therein lies the weak spot. Convoys of fuel trucks and spare parts are easy to raid, and a tank with no fuel becomes a fixed pillbox. A jet fighter on the ground threatens no one. So the military has to spend time guarding the convoys.

Then you attack the factories that make the spare parts, the electric lines bringing them power, and the supply trucks and pipelines that supply the factories and refineries. Now the military has to use the high tech weapons and equipment to guard those.

Let a military armed with tanks and jet fighters choose the battlefield and you will lose. A citizen militia would have to avoid allowing that to happen, but it can be done.

Captain Mike Fewless of the Orange county Sheriff’s office teamed up with Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson, and Major Ken Davis of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office, and went to Tallahassee to lobby against SB 234. For those who do not know, SB 234 will allow those people in Florida who have a concealed weapons permit to carry a weapon openly. This law doesn’t change who carries a weapon, only how they carry it.

Fewless used his access as a law enforcement officer to research alleged members of a biker gang, take their pictures, and gave those pictures to the legislators on the Judiciary committee. He then told the judiciary that these are the types of people who would be openly carrying weapons, since these alleged gang members were CCW permit holders.

“I actually stopped by every one of your guy’s offices this morning and dropped off seven photographs of some biker outlaw gang guys that have carry and concealed firearm permits,” Fewless said to the committee.

In so doing, Fewless became a criminal himself. He violated more than one law in using his police powers to search restricted databases, and then released that information to the public. If it is true that the bikers would be permitted to openly carry firearms because they have concealed weapons  permits, this means one of two things: That the bikers in question have not broken any laws, or that they HAVE broken the law, and the cops themselves haven’t done their jobs. It is also illegal for public employees to lobby the legislature while on the clock.

According to Florida Statute, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services must suspend the licenses of those persons arrested or formally charged with a crime that would disqualify an individual for a license until final disposition of the case, and a licensee who is under an injunction that restrains them from committing acts of domestic violence or acts of repeat violence. Finally, the agency must revoke the license of a licensee who have been found guilty of, had adjudication of guilt withheld for, or had imposition of sentence suspended for one or more crimes of violence within the preceding three years. So if those men are in fact criminal bikers, they should not have permits.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Major Ken Davis told of a recent traffic stop of six Tampa Bay Outlaw motorcycle gang members. “Although the six Outlaws were certified gang members, and had histories of criminal arrests, most were also concealed carry permit [sic] holders”, he related.

Note that he was being misleading: They had a history of arrests. So what?  Were they convicted? He doesn’t say. I myself have been arrested. I was innocent until proven guilty, and since I was never convicted, I have a concealed weapons permit.

I would also note that Fewless’ boss is Orange County Sheriff Demmings, whose wife is Val Demmings, the police chief of Orlando. She ‘lost’ her gun  in 2009, when she left it in her unlocked vehicle in front of her house. The two agencies have had nearly a dozen firearms stolen from unmarked vehicles in the past five years, including a suppressed machine gun.

It bothers me less that a biker gang member who has never been convicted of a crime has a weapon than it bothers me that the cops carry them. Cops kill more people every year than do biker gangs. Cops have stolen more money from me at gunpoint than have biker gangs. and biker gangs are not lobbying the state legislature to grant them rights while simultaneously attempting to restrict mine. I feel safer with the bikers.

The Republicans claim the largest spending cut in US history this weekend, by cutting $38.4 billion from the $3.7 trillion budget. This represents a one percent cut, and leaves us with a trillion dollar plus deficit. That is what we are left with- a one percent cut.
Putting this in perspective, it took George W Bush two and a half years to borrow a trillion dollars. It took Clinton three and a half years, George HW Bush three years, and Reagan did it in six. No other President has borrowed that much money. In fact, it took 204 years for the government to borrow its first trillion. 

Explain to me how Republicans are different from the Democrats, again.