Divemedic

Florida Amendments

Florida is one of the states that permits the state Constitution to be amended through a popular vote. If 60% of those casting ballots vote for it, then it becomes a part of the state constitution. This election, there are six proposed Amendments on the ballot. I am researching this myself, and you benefit from my research. Let’s begin:

Amendment 1

Proposing amendments to the State Constitution to require members of a district school board to be elected in a partisan election rather than a nonpartisan election and to specify that the amendment only applies to elections held on or after the November 2026 general election. However, partisan primary elections may occur before the 2026 general election for purposes of nominating political party candidates to that office for placement on the 2026 general election ballot.

Amendment 1 Ballot Language

The current law is that all school board candidates must run as “no party affiliation.” A vote of yes means that the people running for the school board will run as members of their political party. I am of two minds on this one. One the one hand, it will be useful to know if a tranny supporting Democrat is on the ballot, but on the other, there are so many RINOs that it likely won’t matter.

My take? This is a useless amendment. If I can’t see a clear benefit to an amendment, I am voting no.

Amendment 2

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to preserve forever fishing and hunting, including by the use of traditional methods, as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife. Specifies that the amendment does not limit the authority granted to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission under Section 9 of Article IV of the State Constitution.

Amendment 2 Ballot Language

Not only is the ballot language clear, the enabling legalese behind it is as well. I am voting yes on this one.

Amendment 3

Allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise; allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute such products and accessories.

Amendment 3 Ballot Language

This one is a bit tricky. Normally, I will get behind anything that reduces government power. However, this isn’t the case here. Here is the proposed text that it would add to the state law:

(4) The non-medical personal use of marijuana products and marijuana accessories by an adult, as defined below, in compliance with this section is not subject to any criminal or civil liability or sanctions under Florida Law.
(5) Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other entities licensed as provided below, are allowed to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use upon the Effective Date provided below. A Medical Marijuana Treatment Center, or other state licensed entity, including its agents and employees, acting in accordance with this section as it relates to acquiring, cultivating, processing, manufacturing, selling, and distributing marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use shall not be subject to criminal or civil liability or sanctions under Florida law.

(11) “Marijuana accessories” means any equipment, product, or material of any kind that are used for inhaling, ingesting, topically applying, or otherwise introducing marijuana products into the human body for personal use.
(12) “Marijuana products” means marijuana or goods containing marijuana.
(13) “Personal use” means the possession, purchase, or use of marijuana products or marijuana accessories by an adult 21 years of age or older for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise. An adult need not be a qualifying patient in order to purchase marijuana products or marijuana accessories for personal use from a Medical Marijuana Treatment Center. An individual’s possession of marijuana for personal use shall not exceed 3.0 ounces of marijuana except that not more than five grams of marijuana may be in the form of concentrate.

The legislature may provide for the licensure of entities that are not Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to acquire, cultivate, possess, process, transfer, transport, sell, and distribute marijuana products and marijuana accessories for personal use by adults.

Note that it permits recreational marijuana, but only people who are licensed can grow or sell it. No personal growing for personal use. This is designed to permit the marijuana companies to make money, while doing little to nothing to prevent police abuses of power. In my opinion, this amendment is the typical “get out the vote” stuff that the left always puts on the ballot during a presidential election year. This one is designed to get the young potheads out to vote. This one is going to be a no from me.

Amendment 4

No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.

Amendment 4 ballot language

Again, the actual text is pretty vague. Note that the actual text of the Amendment is shorter than its ballot description, and I believe it is intentional to permit a loophole large enough to drive a truck full of purple haired non binary oddballs through:

Limiting government interference with abortion.— Except as provided in Article X, Section 22, no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.

Did you know that mental health, including anxiety, would likely be enough to permit abortions even after viability? That’s how it looks to me as I read this. I don’t like the way that this is written, and while I lean one way, I don’t have strong opinions on abortions. Still, it’s too vague and I hate that. In my opinion, this amendment is another of the typical “get out the vote” stuff that the left always puts on the ballot during a presidential election year. This one is designed to get their base out to vote. This one is going to be a no from me.

The hurricane has slowed my research. I will do the other two proposed amendments later.

By Divemedic, ago

Recovery Phase

Our highest wind gust last night was 78 mph. We had several hours of 40-50 mph wind. We wound up getting 4 inches of rain in total. There were a couple of instances where I heard something hit the house.

At first light, I went out and surveyed the damage. We had no damage to our house, but a neighbor had a couple of trees topple. I helped him do some chainsaw work. Another lost his roof. All in all, it was relatively painless. Once the breezes calm a bit, I will get the drone up to look at the area.

I set up the propane stove on the back porch, and we are cooking breakfast. Once the clouds are gone, we will go back to cooking on electric. I am just trying to limit electric loads while we are on battery.

We have plenty of food, water, and supplies.

By Divemedic, ago

Bright Flash

Update- The winds are now running about 45 mph. A weather station nearby just reported a gust of 120 mph, far more than we were supposed to get in this area. There was a momentary glitch in the power about an hour ago, which caused me to lose Internet connectivity as the modem reset. About 5 minutes after that, there was a bright flash outside and the power went out again, but didn’t come back on.

The power is out throughout the area, all is dark. We are now running on our fully charged Powerwalls. We have enough battery power for more than 24 hours at current consumption- I have turned off the upstairs air conditioner, the water heater, and all other large loads with the exception of the downstairs air conditioner.

I am sitting here watching the back door bow under the pressure of the wind. I’m sure that I won’t sleep well tonight.

By Divemedic, ago

Update

The local press is saying that Milton will make landfall right about in Venice, which is south of Tampa. I don’t know about that. I am no weather expert, but I can look at a map. The NHC says the hurricane as of noon is at 26.0N, 84.2W and moving at 17 mph at a heading of 035deg. This website draws me a map where you can put in starting coordinates, heading, and speed, and this is what it shows for 10 hours worth of movement:

In order to come ashore at Venice, it needs to take a pretty hard turn, and the longer it waits, the harder the turn will be needed.

By Divemedic, ago

Florida Knows Hurricanes

Floridians are the hurricane experts, even if those in South Carolina would disagree. When we went to Hurricane Katrina, the overwhelming response was “The experts from Florida are here, hurray.” The police in Alabama and Mississippi were still “commandeering” our truckloads of supplies as they travelled down the highway, to the point that we had to have armed escorts for them.

Even so, our state is constantly looking for better ways to respond and handle hurricane responses. A few years ago, Florida tried a plan called “contraflow” for evacuation routes. This plan was that both sides of a highway would be used for evacuating the danger zones along the coast, thus doubling the number of lanes available for evacuation. It turns out that this plan didn’t work as well as hoped, so the state is trying out a new plan called “ESU,” or Emergency Shoulder Use.

ESU is a plan where any vehicle that isn’t a tractor-trailer can use the road shoulders, sometimes called “emergency lanes” as an extra lane of travel. This makes two extra lanes available for traffic.

This enables two lanes to become four.

When loads of supplies are travelling and using these lanes to get through traffic, they are escorted by highway patrolmen. This is especially true for fuel deliveries to the fuel stops along Florida’s main emergency routes: the service plazas on Florida’s Ronald Reagan Turnpike, along with selected fuel stops on I-75 and I-95, the main routes for the west and east coasts, respectively.

So when you see police escorting trucks of fuel and supplies, it isn’t due to crime or hijacking of trucks, it is merely to help them get through the logjammed traffic.

Hope this makes things a bit more clear.

By Divemedic, ago

Preparations for Hurricane

I am under a hurricane warning, with winds of up to 110 miles per hour and nearly a foot of rain being expected in my area. We are now less than 24 hours to the expected arrival of tropical storm force winds. As soon as winds are above 45 miles per hour, emergency services stops responding and we are on our own until the storm has passed. So let’s review my hurricane checklist:

Records

Downloaded all vital records to my NAS. If for some reason your possessions are destroyed, the one thing that is most difficult to replace is data. Make sure that there are scans and backup copies of personal data: your driver’s license, professional licenses, birth certificates, bank information, etc. Then create a HYST file and download the contents of that HYST file to several thumb drives. One goes in the safe, one in the BOV.

Energy

Solar and Powerwalls take care of most of that. Powerwalls are charged to 100% automatically when bad weather approaches. I also charged up all of my rechargeable flashlights, lanterns, and other battery operated stuff. I also have 5 full Bar B Cue bombs that are full and ready for cooking on a portable propane stove. I also have propane lanterns and a grill.

Security

Let’s just say that we are OK there on weapons and leave it at that. I also picked up all of the outside stuff that can blow around, and secured them in the garage. Tested all communications, and updated the comms plan for the radio in the BOV. It’s a Yaesu 400XDR and is programmed with your frequencies by inserting a micro SD card. Done.

Shelter

The house, of course. For backup, we have a tent, and our closest BOL is the in-laws’ house an hour away.

Food and Water

We have an ample supply of both. We even have a good supply of Hurricane snacks, as is traditional in Florida.

Medical

We have our medical supplies laid in. That includes emergency medications, prescription medications, and plenty of first aid supplies.

Recon

Lastly, I did a drone flight around the area and got plenty of pictures for use later to survey damage.

So now I relax for a bit and get some rest for what promises to be a long day tomorrow.

By Divemedic, ago

Hurricane Preps

I really never have much to do for hurricanes, as most of my preps are done already. All I do is:

  • make sure that my truck is full of gas,
  • I fill a couple of gas cans because sometimes fuel is hard to find, and we need to get to work
  • put the outdoor furniture in the garage
  • Pack a bag in case I get called in to work.

That’s pretty much it, and I did that yesterday. I you wait until warnings and watches get issued, you wind up getting stuck with the crowds. I am spending the morning helping people in the area get ready. I went out with a few people and filled dozens of sandbags so people in the area who live in low lying homes can keep water out of their garages. I also helped clear out some vegetation from people’s drainage swales. In some cases, the homeowner helped, but in a couple of cases the people who lived there were old and infirm.

If we are going to make it, we need to unite with our neighbors. Doing it now ensures that you have goodwill in the area. It also lets you learn who is a “good” person and who isn’t.

It’s been raining for several days, so the ground is saturated. That is going to mean the rain/flood threat is high.

By Divemedic, ago

Three days in the ED this week

Day One

I was working in the red zone when a patient came in and went into cardiac arrest in the lobby. I went to the trauma room, and was put in charge of the code cart. That means you draw up the medications, run the defibrillator, and deliver shocks as needed. You don’t usually look at the patient, as you are busy with other things. When I did look over, I realized that the patient was the 30-something year old son of an old friend. The last time I saw the kid, he was still in high school. The entire time we worked him, his wife was in the room. We had offered to take her to wait in the chapel, but she refused to leave the room. When the charting nurse said, “Time of death, 6:17” the wife let out the most anguished scream. It was something that you felt all the way to your soul. I spoke with his father, who told me that parents aren’t supposed to bury their kids, and asked me in anguish what he was supposed to do next. It’s much harder to stay detached when it is someone you have known since he was born. I had trouble sleeping that night because of it, and woke up at 3 am before staring at the clock for an hour and a half. I wound up only getting about four hours of sleep, not nearly enough after a day like that.

There was the man who lived in a group home because he was mentally retarded. He came in with stomach pains, but couldn’t tell us what was wrong because he is mostly non-verbal. It turns out that the group home served him refried beans the night before, and he needed to take a gassy deuce.

Day Two

Day two saw me assigned to the green zone because I think that they were feeling sorry for me from the previous day. That day was rough because I was sleep deprived. A woman was angry because her teenaged daughter was diagnosed with COVID, and we were sending her home with instructions to take Tylenol. The woman wanted us to write her a prescription for the Tylenol so Medicaid would pay for it, because she didn’t want to pay for it herself. So of course we did, gotta have those Press-Ganey scores to get paid under the Obamacare rules, you know. Your tax dollars at work.

Day Three

I was in triage for day three. A guy came in complaining of abdominal pain. Said he hadn’t seen a doctor about it. Then I pulled his chart, and an alert came up that he had just been seen at another hospital 30 minutes away. He was just discharged 35 minutes before for the same problem. He said in response, “Yeah, but they didn’t give me what I want.” He has been seen 14 times in one ED or another over the past three months. But we can’t say no, thanks to EMTALA. So again, your tax dollars at work.

I slept in this morning, then went to a local eatery for some chicken fried steak and eggs breakfast. I paid extra for onions in my hashbrowns. Now I have to get prepped for our next hurricane, set to arrive on Tuesday. So this is all of the posting you get today.

By Divemedic, ago