Divemedic

Buzz

The latest viral video is of a man who takes his young daughters into an Alabama gas station restroom. After ensuring that there are no women inside, he takes them into the women’s restroom. A man then comes in to the bathroom, causing a scene and calls the police. The woman in the background is an employee of the gas station, who doesn’t seem to care that the man and his daughters are in there and is just trying to smooth things over.

It seems that everyone is falling into one of two camps:

  1. The dad has no business being in the women’s restroom for any reason. Bring your young daughters into the men’s restroom.
  2. The daughters shouldn’t be exposed to the men’s restroom. It’s fine for the dad to bring them in there.

Me? I don’t care which. His daughters, his parenting style. What I think everyone is missing here is this:

Why in the hell is the male Karen (Darren?) even worried about this to the point of calling the cops and causing a scene? The store employees don’t care, so why does it matter so much to him? He raises such a commotion that the poor little girls are scared and crying. He attempts to gain police sympathy by claiming his wife is waiting to use the restroom with her mother, who is ill and on oxygen.

Guess what? The police have other things to do than deal with Darren’s meltdown. They aren’t going to do shit because no laws have been broken. Why does it matter that his mother in law is on oxygen? Is there some life saving equipment in that restroom that will improve her respiration? Or is Darren an ass who needs a good ass kicking? I’m guess the latter, and he will get what he’s looking for if he keeps getting in people’s faces and pushing them like he does at 1:50 in the video.

The man stayed for police, who confirmed that no law had been broken.

Honestly, the police should respond to find a man that had just received a face full of pepper spray and me with that video demanding charges against him for assault.

When the police did arrive, they pointed out to the dad that it could be perceived as a man trying to perve in the women’s restroom. This is totally different than men wearing dresses hanging out in the women’s restroom because they want everyone else to play along with their delusion. Anyone who says they can’t see the difference is either lying or a complete retard.

Watch the videos and ask which of the two men above would YOU rather have for a neighbor?

By Divemedic, ago

Blocking Traffic

One of the things you learn when driving fire trucks is called “protecting the scene.” As the driver of a large piece of fire apparatus, you park it at an angle across the lane of the road where your crew is working and the one adjacent to it. You angle the front tires in such a way that, should the rig get struck, it won’t be pushed into your crew. A Fort Worth fire crew recently demonstrated why this idea is so important. The driver of this fire truck likely saved multiple lives when he did this.

By Divemedic, ago

Ad Hominems

There are not many rules for posting here that will get your post deleted, for the most part. The biggest thing is “no personal attacks.” I believe in honest discourse, and once a discussion has devolved to ad hominem attacks, the discussion is over. There can be no dialog once people begin attacking one another, rather than their ideas. It’s one of the things that the Internet is really bad at. Someone begins losing on their idea, and so they attack the person instead.

Periodically, someone will do that to me. It’s one of the reasons why I endeavor to keep my name out of things as much as I can. About twice a year, some leftist who gets his panties in a bunch because I disagreed with him on Twitter will come to this site, then begin attacking me. Nothing shows that the discussion is over and you have lost like engaging in attacking the person rather than their ideas. All that can be done at that point is block the person and move on. Nothing further is to be gained by continuing to engage with them.

That happened just this past week. A guy on Twitter that was the subject of a recent post here saw that post and used it as a springboard to attack me personally because he couldn’t defend his own point on its merits. Dialog at that point is over. There is no point in continuing. Just block him and move on. People like that will say “See? He blocked me, I won!” then they will move on, completely missing any self awareness.

It’s one of the reasons why I moderate comments here. Defend your ideas, attack someone else’s ideas. That’s how we learn and grow as humans. Attack the person, and you have just admitted that your ideas are not worthy of defending.

By Divemedic, ago

Amazon

This is the time of year that my Amazon Prime membership comes up for renewal. I’ve been buying from Amazon since 2003. That was back when Amazon only sold books. In fact, I didn’t buy anything BUT books from them until 2005. That was also the year they started offering Prime. Back then, the only benefit to Prime was free two day shipping.

Fast forward to today, and Prime gets you different benefits. The largest thing I have noticed from Amazon lately is how their shipping sucks. I place A LOT of orders with Amazon, I would say that I buy more things from Amazon than I do in brick and mortar stores. In the past 30 days, I have placed 35 orders through them. It’s been so convenient, until recently.

It seems as though something has recently changed there. At least once a week, an order gets lost or arrives late. I will frequently order things with a promised delivery, and it won’t arrive for two weeks, if it arrives at all.

I don’t know what’s going on over there.

By Divemedic, ago

Reading What You Want to Read

Even people on the supposed gun rights side of things tend to read the Constitution to say what they wished it said, rather than what it plainly says.

Yet the Constitution plainly allows for letters of Marque. When a letter of Marque was issued, called a commission, it would describe the vessel that it had been issued to and its master. The ship was described by the guns mounted. Here is an example:

In other words, the commission didn’t authorize the master and his vessel to mount guns- they were already there. All it did was authorize the master to use the guns already mounted on that vessel to act as a privateer.

So, we know from the historical record that the founders placed no limit on the lethality or number of weapons. Trying to spin it into “well, weapons that can destroy a city aren’t useful for defending a state, so they can be banned” is no different than claiming the 2A only applies to muskets. It’s simply faulty logic.

I would point out that biological weapons have been a thing since about 1500 BC, and would have been known to the founders, yet they didn’t see fit to prohibit them. In fact, the British used biological weapons against the colonies as far back as 1763. They didn’t know how the weapons worked or anything at all about germs, but they knew giving blankets that had been used by smallpox victims to people would cause the recipients to get smallpox.

If only the founders had seen a way for the Constitution to be modified as technology changed. I mean, there is the part in there about amending it. I’m sure the issue here is that you couldn’t get the requisite 2/3 vote of Congress and 3/4 of the states to sign on, especially if Trump were the one pushing for it. After all, the left hates Trump so much that even a proposal to restrict the protection of the Second Amendment to not include nukes would fail to clear the bar for Congress.

That’s the proper way to amend our supreme laws, not by simply declaring that it means something else because we don’t happen to like the result or implications.

By Divemedic, ago

Whiny Commie Kids

These kids today are bitching because they claim we of the older generations had it easy. They claim since rent is $2800/month, things are harder now than they were.

When I first got out of the military I moved to Arkansas. My entire family wound up living in the storeroom of the business I was trying to start. My kids were bathing in a 4 quart ice chest. It sucked. The only job I could find was working for a plant that made aluminum BBQ bits. Not as a maintenance worker or as an electrician, but filing the burrs off of metal castings for $5 per hour.

I decided we couldn’t make a living there, so we moved to Florida. When I got here, the only job I could get was as an electrician for $7.25 an hour. I was working for a company called Palmer electric, and two of us would be tasked with wiring a house (rough in) each day. That’s a lot of work for two people. The company charged the contractor $400 for the job. There was no real profit to be made. That’s why they started using illegals- the companies who were doing that could charge even less and still make money. This was 30+ years ago.

I was making $1000 per month and using that to support a family of four. The rent on our two bedroom apartment was $550 a month. That left us $450 per month for food, utilities, clothes, all of the other expenses. WalMart sold hotdogs $1 per pack, and Mac&Cheese $4 for 4 boxes. Slice 2 hot dogs up and mix with the pasta, and you have 4 dinners for $5. WalMart sold blue jeans for $8. I washed them in Borax to get the oil stains out. That’s how we made the money last.

I managed to get a job as an electrician at the airport, repairing boarding bridges, conveyor belts, and car washes. The pay was better- I was getting $9 an hour. We still struggled, so I got a second job as a part time firefighter.

This extreme poverty was what led me to asking my wife to get a job while the kids were in school. I just couldn’t take being poor and working two jobs while she sat home all day and the kids were in school. She refused, telling me that she married me so she wouldn’t have to work, and we wound up separating. Less than three months after that, I was homeless.

That’s not struggling, according to them. This generation thinks that no one else can possibly know what it’s like to struggle, as they complain about high rent. I can find a dozen apartments for less than $2k. Looking in my old neighborhood, I see a 2BR going for $1600. When you take into account the difference in pay from then, and housing is about the same cost as it was 30 years ago.

The poverty level for a family of 4 was $15,600 per year when all of that happened. I made $15,100 that year with a wife and two kids. The poverty level today for a single person is $15,300 per year and $32,150 for a family of 4. The difference is that Florida’s minimum wage is now $31,200. In other words, it’s EXACTLY the same as it was then. Nothing ever changes.

These people bitch over and over again about how they are poor. Then people who used to be poor come forward and give them perfectly reasonable advice on how to change. Instead of accepting that, they say “things are totally different now, you had it easy” then go back to bitching about how they are poor and it’s all Elon and “capitalism” that has caused it.

By Divemedic, ago

Getting What You Ordered

My wife decided that the pantry gets too warm. There isn’t a register in there for air conditioning. We looked at several options, and the one that was easiest and cheapest was to replace the pantry door from a two panel door to a louvered door. Lowes had the doors on sale for $415, so I figured that was the cheapest and best way to go. When I ordered the door, I was asked how I wanted the door cut for hinges. Here is the diagram:

Standing outside of the pantry, the door opens towards you with the hinges on the left and the door handle on your right, just like (4) LHO (Left Hand Out) in the diagram above. It says order right door handing, so that’s what I ordered.

Two days later, I got a text from the manufacturer with a copy of the diagram above, asking me how I wanted the door cut. I responded with “Left Hand Out.” They replied: “Well received. Thank you for the confirmation.”

Two weeks I waited for that door. As soon as it got delivered, I started to put the hinges on the door.

They are cut on the wrong side. The hinges are made for a left hand door. Now Lowes handled it well, telling me that I could return the door to the closest store, or they could schedule a pickup. I am bringing the door back to the store.

Now I have to reorder the door. That’s going to mess up my schedule, because I have a lot going on. I may have to wait to reorder it because I won’t have time to deal with it on July 4th weekend.

There are other things happening that are causing a lot of upheaval in my house right now. I will expand upon them at a later date, but let’s just say that I have a lot of issues on the agenda right now, and I feel like my schedule is filled to capacity.

By Divemedic, ago

Always

Here they are again, the fatigue is real.

They attacked a lifeguard by throwing shoes at them in full view of a cop. “We dindu nuthin”

Refuse to ID. “We dindu nuthin”

Kicked and spit on a cop. “We dindu nuthin”

I’m just over it.

All of this started because the black man exposed himself to a lifeguard and then refused to leave when told to do so by lifeguards. Then, when told to stay away from the woman he was showing his dick to, he tried to approach and talk to her about it, even though she was trying to hide from him.

Of course, they all whip out the race card and claim they are only being treated like this because they are black. Then told the black officer that he shouldn’t be taking the side of white cops, but should be on their side because they are black.

By Divemedic, ago

Dancing in Blood

A person who survived the Pulse shooting here in Orlando a decade ago wants to have a discussion about the shooting on a local television news station’s website. The topics, according to him, will be “gun safety” and the rights of the LGTBQIABCDEFG community. This is putting a political spin on things that I think is dishonest. I won’t bother engaging in the discussion- that particular news outlet heavily censors opinions with which they disagree.

First, this man is no more an expert on law and policy than I am. Simply being present when a mass shooting takes place doesn’t give anyone some magical wisdom or insight that enables them to assess public policy. He was there, and for whatever reason, the shooter made the decision to not shoot him. That doesn’t mean he is more qualified on any topic except hide and seek.

Second, and Miguel pointed this out on his own webpage this morning:

Omar Mateen began his killing and maiming rampage at 2:02 am. Police began to arrive at 2:04 am. He was sent to Allah at 5:14 am after killing 49 people and wounding 58 more.

The police stood around outside of the killing ground with their dicks in their hands for over three hours before managing to do a thing about the killer who was inside shooting people. No one is going to talk about that, even though it keeps happening.

Third, this shooter was likely targeting gays because he is Muslim and was carrying out a Jihadist attack. Those sorts of attacks aren’t going to cease, even if you pass a Constitutional Amendment saying that anyone who is gay is a deity. It just isn’t.

Fourth, no one in that bar was armed. The shooter was. Passing a law banning guns isn’t going to work in changing that. Read this list of the twenty deadliest mass murders:

  1. On 9/11, there were 2,996 dead and over 6,000 injured. The weapons used were box cutters and airplanes.
  2. October 31, 1999: Gameel al-Batouti cried out “I entrust myself to Allah” 11 times in Arabic as he deliberately piloted a plane full of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217 people.
  3. The Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. There were 168 dead and over 680 injured. The weapon used was a bomb made from fertilizer and diesel fuel.
  4.  The Hartford Circus Fire. 167 dead, 682 injured. Weapon used: fire
  5.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. There were 120 settlers killed when their wagon train was ambushed by Mormons. (I hesitated to include this one since it was a group of 20 Mormons who committed the killings, but if you are going to include 9/11, I figured you should include this one.)
  6.  The Happy Land fire of 1990: 87 are killed when a man sets a nightclub on fire.
  7.  The Las Vegas shooting. 58 killed, 413 injured by gunfire. Another 456 injured while fleeing.
  8. The Pulse Nightclub shooting, 2016. 49 dead, 53 injured. The weapon was an MCX rifle.
  9.  The Bath School massacre of 1927: 45 dead, and 58 injured. The weapon used were a pair of bombs.
  10. Pacific Air Flight 773 of 1964: 45 killed when a man murdered the pilot and copilot of an airplane, which subsequently crashed.
  11. United Airlines Flight 629 (1955): A man blew up a plane with a bomb, killing 44 people.
  12. Pacific Southwest Flight Flight 1771 of 1987: 43 people were killed when a man shot and killed the pilot and copilot of the plane, which subsequently crashed.
  13. New York Bombing of September 1920: There were 38 killed and several hundred injured. The weapon was a bomb.
  14. National Airlines Flight 2511 of 1960. 33 people killed by a bomb on an airplane.
  15. Virginia Tech massacre of 2007. 32 dead. The gunman was a South Korean student that had been showing signs of mental instability.
  16. The Upstairs Lounge Fire in New Orleans on June 24, 1973 was an arson that was intended to kill the patrons of a gay bar. It worked, killing 32 and injuring dozens. It was started with a Molotov cocktail.
  17. Newtown School shooting of 2012. 26 dead. The shooter used an AR-15 rifle that he acquired by murdering his mother.
  18. Dorothy Mae Arson of 1982. 25 killed. The arsonist claimed he didn’t mean to kill anyone, and only set the fire because he was stoned on marijuana and angry at his uncle, who was in the building.
  19. The Luby’s Cafeteria Massacre of 1991. A total of 23 people were killed by a spree shooter.
  20. The LA times was attacked with a bomb in 1910, killing 21.

Murder weapon

Of the above 20 killings:

  • 4 of them included an airplane as the murder weapon
  • 10 of them were committed by people using a bomb, incendiary device, or other arson tool
  • 5 were spree shootings
  • 1 (The Mountain Meadows Massacre) was committed by a group of people with multiple weapons, including gunfire, knives, and clubbing)

The fact is that guns have nothing to do with spree killings. In fact, 75 percent of the deadliest spree killings were not performed by firearms. The weapon used most frequently in prolific killings is an incendiary device or bomb.

No, this is a person who abhors guns, and is using his surviving a massacre to give his stance some sort of legitimacy that he wouldn’t otherwise have. He is dancing in the blood of dead victims.

By Divemedic, ago

Party of Small Government

Let’s contrast this. Here is a leftist:

Now let’s compare that post to this one from a prominent Republican who is opposed to the elimination of Florida’s property taxes. Click on this link to read the entire conversation: (this was removed due to confusion between two similar sounding names.)

There is no functional difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties want to take your money. The only difference between the two is which set of cronies are the recipients of your tax dollars that they they return to the party in question. It’s all a big lie.

I’ve said this tons of times: just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean that Republicans are your friend. I’m sick of both parties, as all they do is take my money and my freedom while telling me it’s for my own good, because they know how to spend my money better than I, but it always seems to benefit them more than it does me.

Party of small government and fiscal conservatism, my white ass. I may just return to my previous philosophy of “voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil” and not vote for candidates of either party. I will, however, vote to cut taxes and strip the government of powers at every opportunity.

I won’t vote for a Democrat, but Republicans are going to have to earn my vote. Give me a reason to vote for you- don’t just talk about being small government, prove it.

The two most prolific opponents of cutting Florida property taxes I see on my feed are Jeff Brandes and Holly Bullard.

Holly Bullard is the chief strategy and development officer of the same institute. Her job is directing fundraising, policy advocacy, coalition building, outreach and communications strategies. She makes $110,000 per year.

Florida Policy Institute is a left of center NGO that specializes in collecting government grants, as far as I can tell. Their funding is part of a nearly impenetrable web of grants and untraceable funding. It appears to me as if it were another grift.

By Divemedic, ago