October 2013

Maddy, a juror (juror B39) in the Zimmerman case, says that the trial ruined her life. She claims that it resulted in her being fired from her job, and has cost her financially. She goes on to say:

she questions whether she was right to acquit Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. She says she has followed reports on Zimmerman since the trial ended this summer.
“We all know who’s guilty,” she says. “George Zimmerman thinks he didn’t do anything wrong.”

 I want you to keep in mind that this is the same juror who went on the air just after the trial, and claimed that Zimmerman “got away with murder” for killing Trayvon Martin and feels she owes an apology Martin’s parents. She also went on air to say:

George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God.

 As a single mother with eight small children, who were recent transplants to the area, she easily could have gotten dismissed as a hardship case, but she didn’t. Why not? My guess is that she saw a chance to make money and jumped at it. As one of the jurors that convicted Zimmerman, she would have made a lot of money and been a celebrity of sorts. That didn’t happen, so the money and fame isn’t there. Not like

The other jurors stated that there was a single holdout for conviction, and it was Maddy. According to her own statements:

Maddy went into deliberations believing Zimmerman was guilty of
second-degree murder. “I was the juror that was going to give them the
hung jury. I fought to the end,” she said. “But as the law was read to
me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say
he’s guilty.”

This is a woman who seems to be against self defense. She admits that she wanted to find Zimmerman guilty, but the law “thwarted” her:

 A lot of us wanted to find something bad, something we could connect to
the laws,” said Maddy, who had recently moved to Sanford, Fla., from
Chicago. “But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof he killed
him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty,” she added.

Still, Maddy is hoping to cash in by selling her story to Inside Edition. Welcome to your 15 minutes, Maddy.

Fifty two percent of all EMS responders report having been physically
attacked on the job at some time within the previous twelve months. According
to the University of Maryland, the risk of nonfatal assault resulting in lost
work time among EMS workers is 57 cases per 10,000 workers per year. The
national average for all professions is about 1.8 cases per 10,000 workers per
year, making the relative risk for EMS workers about 30 times higher than the
national average. This isn’t just EMS getting hurt: in 1999, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics estimated that 2,637 nonfatal assaults occurred to hospital
workers–a rate of 8.3 assaults per 10,000 workers. Healthcare providers are twice
as likely, and EMS workers 15 times as likely, to be assaulted on the job than
are police officers or prison guards. Some locations and cities are obviously
seeing injury rates that are far above the average.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
has identified violence in the medical setting as a potential hazard, and found
the training of medical staff to identify and deal with potential violence
ineffective. It is the third leading cause of on the job injuries in EMS (only
lifting patients and vehicle collisions injure more EMS workers) and the second
leading cause of on the job fatalities (behind vehicle accidents), yet the only
training we get is “don’t enter the scene unless it is safe.” This
approach is obviously not working.
There remains a reluctance on the part of
EMS agencies and hospital administrators to provide training to effectively
address workplace violence.
Why are EMS agencies so reluctant
to face this issue? In most agencies, there is no policy for dealing with
violent encounters, training for dealing with such encounters is rare, yet the
problem seems endemic. There appears to be a variety of reasons for this: some may not
recognize the extent of the problem, and thus don’t perceive the need for training
personnel in basic defensive measures, while others erroneously perceive using
defensive tactics as fighting or a form of aggression. Still other agencies
feel that the liability that defensive uses of force would bring upon the
agency is greater than the costs of treating injured employees.

Whatever the
reason, allowing the situation to continue as it is now is resulting in
seriously injured workers, and the problem is not going to get any better until
we as a profession find a way to deal with this issue.

Some changes are desperately needed if we are to see an
improvement in the number of injuries that are inflicted upon EMS workers by
their violent patients. It is obvious that the current policy of “scene
safety” is not working. There is a definite need for research into this
area that impacts the safety of our medical workers, so that a solution can be
found for preventing and dealing with this epidemic of violence.

 Maguire BL. Hunting KL.
Smith GS. Levick NR. Occupational
fatalities in EMS: A hidden Crisis. Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2002;
40(6): 625-632.

Maguire BL. Hunting KL.
Smith GS. Levick NR.
Occupational Injuries Among Emergency Medical Services Personnel. Prehospital Emergency
Care. 2005, 9:405-411

Maguire BJ. Walz BJ.
Current Emergency Medical Services Workforce Issues in the United States. Journal
of Emergency Management. 2004; 2(3): 17-26.

The economy drags on in its doldrums. I retired two years ago, so that I could attend grad school. After a few months of not being educated, I decided that I had had enough, and I would simply get another job. That was a year and a half ago, and aside from short term, part time jobs, there is nothing out there.

One of the local theme parks won’t hire part time medics unless they are already working full time somewhere else. The manager that I spoke with, a friend of mine, tells me that this is because of Obamacare. See, if you already have a full time job with health insurance, they won’t have to worry about providing you with any.
I made it all the way to a job offer with another theme park in the area, but then the Union complained about hiring more paramedics to work in the park stating that there were part time medics that should be getting more hours. The offer was withdrawn as a result.
This leaves few options for a person of my age. My pension means that I cannot work for a fire department, or that pension will be suspended until I again retire. Even so, few fire departments want to hire a man in his late 40’s. I could do interfacility, but they aren’t hiring.
So, I pick up odd jobs, and count myself lucky to have a pension that pays the bills and a house with no payments.
Thanks Obamacare

So Salon magazine is claiming that the stimulus fueled increase in food stamps better not end in November, or people are going to riot. That’s right- if the food stamp recipients lose that extra $36 a month they get, they are going to burn your shit down.
Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon that policymakers “are attempting to punish people for being poor.” So in NewSpeak, it is punishing someone to tell them that they can’t have my money, even though many of them are selling their benefits on Craigslist.

My sister is a waitress at TGI Fridays. She makes between $100 and $150 a night in tips. Her live in boyfriend does not have a job. She gets several hundred dollars a month in food stamps. She is not scraping by. She goes out to theme parks with her season pass almost every chance she gets, taking the kids and her boyfriend with her. She even bought a “Frequent Fear” pass for herself and her boyfriend. She is constantly posting pictures of herself on FaceBook, sitting in a bar, drink in hand.

She, along with the rest of the welfare community, could use a few cuts.

I got this email from a “fan”

So, I guess Martin had no right to stand his ground? He was being unlawfully
perused by that fat coward, who needs a gun to feel like a man. Like most
of
you gun nuts compensating for something, cowardness, small penis,
unfounded fear that the boogey man is going to get you. I feel bad for
you.

 Here is my reply:
1 All “Stand your ground” means is that a person is not required to retreat before responding with force when attacked by force. Nothing in the law allows you to attack a person when they are merely following you.
2 There is no law that says you cannot follow someone. Show me where Zimmerman’s following of Martin was unlawful.
3 This entire email is a validation of Markley’s Law, which states:

As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the
probability of an ad hominem attack involving penis size approaches 1.

 4 In Zimmerman’s case, his fear was not unfounded.

While I was on one of the dive boats this weekend, we had a man riding along with his wife. He said that he had not been diving since he got out of the Navy in 1992, and was out of practice. I asked him what he did, and he replied “I was on Special Teams.”

Blink. He was a punt returner?

I told him I used to be in the Navy, and that I was an Electrician’s Mate Second Class. I told him that I went to boot camp in Orlando. He told me how lucky I was, and said that he had done boot and A school in Great Lakes. 

So I asked him where he was stationed, and he replied that he was stationed at New London, CT. He then told me that he was a Machinist Mate First Class. He started to tell me stories about how he would be inserted into places by exiting the submarine through a small tube.

So I asked him what his BUD/S class number was. He replied, “Buds? What’s that?”

I immediately knew that he was a poser. He wasn’t a SEAL, because he didn’t know what BUD/S was. I know at least 4 people who claim that they were at one time SEALs. They are all likely lying.

Why do so many feel the need to make themselves look cool by claiming to be something that they are not?

… qualified to DUI. A Volusia County Deputy is caught on video, driving while intoxicated in her patrol car, and a 7 year old child in her car.

It is time for taxpayer funded take home patrol cars to come to an end.

A 7-11 store is robbed by a man who attacks a clerk with a cup of hot coffee, pulls a knife, and attempts to steal the contents of the register. The clerk, who had been robbed several times during his six years there, drew a handgun and the robber fled without anyone getting hurt.

The clerk lost his job for violating a ‘no weapons’ policy.

Like I have said before, the employer faces liability if they do not prohibit weapons. They face no liability if a defenseless employee or customer is killed by a criminal. The truth here is that the business thinks that their bottom line is more important than the lives of its customers and employees.

That is why I don’t care what your policy is: I carry everywhere I am permitted to by law. I don’t give two shits about your policy.