Divemedic

The Military Follows Orders

Out of all of the urban legends out there, the one that makes me shake my head in wonder is, “the US military would never fire shots in anger against the American people.”

As if. The civilians who were threatened with force, or subjected to force, by American troops would like to have a word:

  • 1791: The Whiskey Rebellion
  • 1863: The New York City Draft Riots
  • 1877: Great Railroad Strike in 1877
  • 1932: The Bonus Army
  • 1957: Desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
  • 1962: Desegregation of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi
  • 1963: Desegregation of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
  • 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama
  • 1967 Detroit Riots
  • 1967: Newark Riots
  • 1968 King assassination riots in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
  • 1970 New York City Postal Strike in 1970
  • 1980 Cuban Refugee Crisis
  • 1989 Hurricane Hugo
  • 1992: Los Angeles Riots
  • 1993: Branch Davidians in Waco

This would play out with NCA finding a way to paint the targets as being insurrectionists, rebels, or some other hated class. This dehumanization reaches its peak, then the military is sent to solve the problem.

By Divemedic, ago

Qualified Immunity

Two police officers beat the crap out of a homeowner before arresting him for standing on his own porch. The two officers were dressed in plain clothes and driving an unmarked police car. They saw a man, later identified as Shase Howse, standing on the porch. Howse was standing there, trying to figure out which pocket his keys were in.

The two officers, who never identified themselves as being police officers, asked him if he lived there. Howse answered in the affirmative, but the officers asked him if he was sure that he lived there.

The cop then asked Howse if he was sure he lived there. “Yes, what the fuck?” Howse responded, still unaware that he was talking to a cop. The cop didn’t like his bad attitude, so exited the unmarked police vehicle and asked him again if he lived there.

The officer then told him to put his hands behind his back because he was under arrest. Howse refused, telling the men that he lived at the residence and that he’d done nothing wrong. The two men then threw Howse to the ground, and handcuffed him while Howse resisted. It was after he was tackled that Howse realized the men were police officers. They had not once identified themselves and produced identification.

Howse’s mother, who also lived at the home, testified that she saw the end of the confrontation, and that she watched the cops beat him once he was on the ground and in cuffs by straddling him and punching him repeatedly in the head. Charges were dropped, and the eventual lawsuit went all the way to SCOTUS, who said the cops had qualified immunity before dismissing the case.

This could easily have been me. I was once stopped by a bogus cop, but in my case I drew a gun on the asshole. What if he had actually BEEN a cop? It would have likely resulted in a gunfight, and there is a pretty good chance that I and one or more cops would have been killed. They would be completely immune.

Qualified immunity has to go.

By Divemedic, ago

Broken Beyond Repair

My brother is undergoing chemo treatment for cancer and is unable to tolerate a physical altercation because the chemo has weakened him enough that he would not survive a violent encounter. He is also a business owner, and even does business with the city and the police department. The cops in the smallish town know him for the most part, as he has been doing business there for about 30 years.

For 25 of those years, he has owned a distribution center that is contained in a large building. The main warehouse and his offices take up most of the building. He leases out several smaller spaces that are contained in the building and uses one of the spaces as a gym that is available for his own and his employees’ use. He also has a parking lot in front of the building, and there is a fenced in area where his delivery vehicles are parked at night. There are a pile of security cameras covering every square foot of the place.

The nature of his business is that he frequently has large amounts of cash on the property, sometimes as much as $25,000. His delivery drivers have been robbed a few times, twice at gunpoint. There is an armored car that comes by to pick up the cash on a regular basis, but because of the large amounts of cash, my brother is armed while at work, and he allows his office staff to carry firearms if they have a CCW. My mother used to be his manager, and she carried a gun at work. Yes, we really are a gun owning family. My sister is the only one of us that doesn’t routinely carry a gun.

(On a side note, he once had to make a large deposit, and I helped him out by riding literal shotgun in the back of the van that was carrying the cash. I was armed with a 12ga and a 9mm handgun. We weren’t robbed.)

One of his employees was working late. A pair of vagrants (1 male, 1 female) approached the employee while he was inside of the fenced area and asked for a handout. The employee refused, and the male vagrant responded by saying, “You are lucky that I asked. I usually just take what I want.” The employee called my brother and told him about it, and my brother called the police. When the police arrived, my brother gave the police a copy of security camera video. The police told him that they didn’t know who the pair were, but stated that they would investigate. It turns out that they were lying on both counts.

A week later, my brother was inside the onsite gym and heard a noise outside. He grabbed his Sig 365 and went to investigate. He found the pair outside of the building, but inside of the fenced in part of the property. When they were told to leave, the male of the pair immediately put his hands into a backpack that was at his feet. My brother, who was on the phone with 911, immediately drew his weapon and screamed at him, “Let me see your hands or I will shoot you.” The pair ran off.

When the cops arrived, they made contact with the pair of vagrants just a block away. They told the police that they were in fear for their lives, and that my brother threatened to kill them. One of the cops even admitted to my son that, if the officer had been faced with the same events, the vagrant would have gotten shot. The police began questioning my brother. A friend of his from the police department called him and warned him that the cops were going to try and flip it on him to make him look like the bad guy. It turns out that there was much more to the story. More on that at the end of this post.

When the detective arrived, he read my brother his rights, and that was when my brother told them he didn’t want to answer any questions without an attorney present. It was at that point that the detective told him to put his hands behind his back and arrested him for aggravated battery and intent to cause serious bodily harm. In the arrest report, the detective used my brother’s earlier statements from before his rights were read to him and also the fact that he refused to answer questions without an attorney once he was Mirandized as the reasons for probable cause to make the arrest. That is a blatant violation of my brother’s Constitutional Rights. You have a right to both remain silent, and to have an attorney present while being questioned, and exercising those rights can’t be used against you.

There is, as I said earlier, more to the story. The pair of vagrants were well known to the local cops. They are both known drug users. Even though my brother was not aware of it, they both have multiple felony convictions for burglary, possession of burglary tools, and drug possession (meth), as well as many more arrests that didn’t result in convictions. However, the cops certainly knew them and were lying about not being able to identify them, because the pair of them is being used by the police as confidential informants. This is a case of the police were trying to shield their informants for the attempted robbery from the week before. That is also important.

Pointing a firearm at someone is, under Florida law, NOT lethal force. Especially when they are on your property and in the process of committing a felony, and you (the property owner) have reason to believe that they are willing to commit violence AND are making furtive movements as if to retrieve a weapon.

My brother hired a good attorney, and they didn’t have a single hearing, with the exception of his arraignment. The attorney made her discovery request and demanded all information in the possession of the police, even a copy of the records of the vagant/informants. The police refused. Taking all of the facts into account, the state attorney decided to enter a notice of nolle prosequi.

This cost my brother three months of worry AND about $3,000 in legal fees. He also lost his concealed weapons permit, which was automatically revoked when he was arrested. His insurance company cancelled his company’s insurance policy because he was facing felony charges, and now he has a criminal record, which will cost him more money in the form of increased insurance fees for the foreseeable future.

The lawyer told him that she can get the arrest expunged from his record, but it will cost him another 5 large, and will take about a year. Meanwhile, the druggie douchebags have been arrested two more times since that night.

Tell me again that our legal system isn’t broken and the cops are mostly good guys. As a side note, my sister and I have had T-shirts made with my brother’s mugshot on them. We are going to be wearing them at Christmas dinner.

By Divemedic, ago

Shooting Analysis

From the male cops perspective, this was a good shoot.

The female cop in this incident just stood there watching. Had she deployed her Taser, there is a chance that the male cop wouldn’t have had to use his handgun. What followed was 40% her fault and 60% suicide by cop. There are those who would disagree, but they would be wrong. Sure, the woman initiated the incident by coming at the police with a lethal weapon in her hand. That’s on her. However, the cops are supposed to be trained and equipped to deal with these sorts of things. The fact that the female cop didn’t even TRY to deploy or even DRAW her Taser, deprived this woman of her only chance at not getting shot, and for that reason, the female cop is partly at fault. .

Still, there are morons in the comments claiming that the cops didn’t have to shoot her, claiming that instead they could have used a Taser, fired warning shots, or (I am not kidding) shot the knife out of her hand. For Christ’s sake, these people are fucking morons and they vote.

By Divemedic, ago

On The Take

When the Legislature controls what can be bought and what can be sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are the legislators themselves.

  • Elizabeth Warren Annual Salary: $285,000 Net Worth: $67 million
  • Nancy Pelosi Annual salary: $223,000 Net worth: $202 million
  • Mitch McConnell Annual salary: $200,000 Net worth: $95 million
  • Chuck Schumer Annual salary: $210,000 Net worth: $75 million
By Divemedic, ago

Panay Incident

I’ve alluded to the Panay Incident in past posts. It’s a story of what happens when a strong central government falls apart and leaves behind a power vacuum. I think history in this case illustrates what will happen in our near future and is an interesting story. Let’s tell the story now, on the 86th anniversary of the incident.

The US had a large presence of Americans in China in the form of Standard Oil and its refineries, wells, and subsequent employees, so they bought and maintained a fleet of oil tankers and several gunboats for their defense. The gunboats were part of the American naval operation called the Yangtze Patrol, which began following the joint British, French, and American victory in The Second Opium War, in 1918.

The US had maintained a naval presence there since 1854 with the gunboat USS Susquehanna. The naval personnel stationed on the Yangtze river called themselves the “River Rats.” As the last of China’s Dynasties lost its grip on the country, the Asiatic fleet found itself in more and more armed conflict with warring factions that were left behind in the power vacuum. The US was one of those factions, and US companies were making money by picking over the corpse of what had been the Chinese dynasties.

During the following decades, warlordism was becoming a full-blown civil war between Mao Zedong’s Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army, and this conflict would continue until the communists’ 1949 victory that established the ChiCom government we are all familiar with today.

In 1937, Japan entered the contest and invaded China, soon thereafter beginning the Nanking massacre. During the invasion of Nanking, Standard Oil was attempting to evacuate its employees, a mix of Chinese and US citizens. The evacuation was being carried out by one of those gunboats of the Yangtze Patrol, the USS Panay, and three of those oil tankers. The oil tankers were loaded with refugees, and all four vessels were prominently flying US flags, with the Panay even having a large flag painted on its topmost deck, for visibility from the air. The US Asiatic fleet had notified the Japanese army of their location and mission on the day before the incident.

While anchored upstream from Nanking, Panay and the three Standard Oil tankers were attacked by Japanese naval aircraft. The Panay was struck by two 130 pound bombs and was strafed by six fighters before sinking. Once the ship had gone to the bottom, the three Standard Oil tankers were also bombed and destroyed.

That wasn’t the end of the incident. While the Panay was sinking, Japanese aircraft, supported by gunboats of the Japanese Army, continued pouring fire into the boat and its lifeboats. Then the Japanese also fired upon and strafed the lifeboats and survivors who were trying to make it to shore.

As a result of the attack, three American sailors, the Captain of one of the oil tankers, dozens of Chinese Standard Oil employees, and an Italian journalist were killed. Another 43 sailors and 5 civilians were wounded.

Two US journalists, Norman Alley of Universal News and Eric Mayell of Movietone News, filmed part of the attack as well as the sinking of the ship in the middle of the river.

The Japanese claimed that they did not see the US flags being flown by the vessels, but that is not supported by the facts, and seemed to be a coordinated attack, as several other US and British vessels in the area were fired upon by shore batteries, aircraft, and gunboats of the Japanese armed forces on the same day.

Navy cryptographers had intercepted and decrypted traffic relating to the attacking planes which clearly indicated that they were under orders during the attack and that it had not been a mistake of any kind. This information was not released at the time because it would have revealed that the United States had broken Japanese Naval codes.

Fon Huffman, the last survivor of the incident, died in 2008. The last surviving Japanese pilot who participated in the attack was Kaname Harada, who died in 2016.

The entire incident was the result of world powers dividing up the riches of the collapsing Chinese dynasty. Expect the same thing to happen to a collapsing United States.

By Divemedic, ago

Cleaning Up the Mess

As all of you know, my mother passed away recently. There are many details that need to be handled:

  • Does she want to be buried or cremated?
  • Where to place her remains?
  • Who gets her belongings? Her money?
  • Who is to take care of her demented husband?
  • Where are my uncle’s ashes?

All of this could have been handled through a will, but she didn’t leave one. That leaves all of us to handle the mess that she left behind. Here is the mess:

We don’t know how much money she had, how many debts that she had, or where all of her belongings are located. I’m doing my best to honor her wishes while at the same time being fair to all involved, but it is a minefield.

First, all three of us siblings, as well as my brother’s wife (my SIL) remember her saying that she wanted to be cremated. Done. But what to do with the ashes?

  • Mom’s husband wants her ashes to be placed somewhere that they can be interred together.
  • My brother wants her ashes to be placed in the burial plot next to dad because mom paid for it, and even has her name and photo on the headstone.
  • My sister wants some of the ashes to be placed in lockets that she and her kids can wear.
  • My SIL says that mom told her that she didn’t want to be buried next to dad.
  • My response to all of this, is that if mom had strong feelings one way or the other, she should have had a will made up that would tell us what she wanted. In the absence of a will, we are left to do what we think is best.

Financially, we have found a credit card with her name on it that has an outstanding balance of $350, and a checking account that has less than $1,000. We don’t know where the rest of her money is, or even if there IS any more money. So how that gets distributed is a mystery. The three of us kids decided to just give the husband the money.

Then there is the fact that my brother and I are paying for the funeral arrangements because the husband can’t. The daughter won’t be able to take care of him. She doesn’t believe this, even though I tried to explain to her how much care is required for a person in their 80s who has dementia. She thinks that they are going to move in together so she can keep an eye on him. That isn’t going to work.

That means he will wind up in a nursing home or memory care center. The way that those work is that they are so expensive, the home takes every asset that the patient has- their home, social security benefits, savings, all of it. The only way to save those assets from being taken by the nursing home is to put any assets that they have in a trust. The daughter wants all of mom’s assets to be put in a trust to pay for the long term care of her widower, but the daughter wants us to name her as the trustee.

I don’t mind the husband getting most of that stuff, but in those scenarios, the nursing home or his daughter are the ones who get everything. None of it will actually benefit mom’s husband.

Mom also owned a car. The husband wants that car because the car he owns has a Blue Book value of $7500, but he still owes $10,000. The problem there is that he isn’t supposed to be driving because just a month ago, he was the subject of a search when he went to the store and was missing for hours because of his dementia.

Complicating all of this is the fact that Mom’s husband is obviously deep in the grips of dementia. He hasn’t yet been diagnosed with it because he refuses to go to the doctor, but he is worse than Joe Biden in the mental faculties department. What this means is that normally the husband would be the one to make these decisions as her next of kin, but he is in no position to pay for any of this, or to make any informed decisions. His daughter has stepped forward and claimed that, since he can’t make the decisions, it all falls on her because she is HIS next of kin.

As to who will take care of my mother’s husband, I was in my 50’s when my Mom married this guy. I don’t know him, nor do I owe him anything. Taking care of him is his daughter’s responsibility.

Even more complicated is that my aunt (mom’s younger sister) died back in March. My uncle (the aunt’s husband) died about a year ago. Mom wound up with the ashes of both of them. We found my aunt’s ashes. We haven’t found my uncle’s. My mom couldn’t stand his ass- she downright hated him. Mom had mentioned to my sister that she was planning on flushing “that no-good sonuvabitch’s” ashes down the toilet in the nastiest, dirtiest gas station bathroom that she could find. (Yes, Mom could hold a grudge) The issue there is that his family wants his ashes returned to them. We can’t find them, and well, I think I know where they went.

It’s a mess, and the three of us (me, my brother, and my sister) are left to try and navigate this mess. I’m trying to be as fair and objective as possible, but this is far more difficult than I thought it would be.

By Divemedic, ago

Booty Patrol

A guy driving a truck marked like a Border Patrol vehicle with “Booty Patrol” emblazoned on the sides was given a ticket for $115 because it had red and blue lights on it. He paid it. Then police found his website, one where he was trying to get social media fame, then arrested him for impersonating an officer.

Now we all know that I am not a lawyer, but I of course have an opinion on the matter.

  • He was already convicted of the offence and paid his fine because of the red and blue lights. Arresting and charging him again for that is double jeopardy.
  • Unless there is a “Booty Patrol” police office, he isn’t impersonating any cops with those markings. A green strip isn’t enough for impersonation charges. These charges are bullshit.
  • To publicly admit that you only charged him after you saw his social media page should be admissible in court, as it is evidence that they are trying to infringe on his First Amendment rights.

Don’t forget the Florida case where a man was arrested for having an “I eat ass” sticker on his truck. A police officer saw it and demanded that he remove it. The man refused, and was arrested for resisting an officer and obscene writing on a vehicle. The charges were dropped, but so was the man’s lawsuit, with the judge citing “qualified immunity.”

Though it was supposed to shield government officials only from lawsuits without merit, it instead shields them from ones with merit, including the two-dozen cops who blew up an innocent man’s home during a SWAT raid on the wrong residence, a cop who conducted an illegal search and ruined a man’s car, and cops who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

By Divemedic, ago

Stunt Double

Ear lobes being attached or not is a genetic, inheritable trait. I used to use it as an example in the Biology class I taught. We are looking at Joe Biden’s right earlobe. Take a close look at this picture of Joe Biden as a younger man, in 1987.

Here is a picture of Joe Biden receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January of 2017:

Here is a picture of Vice-President Joe Biden from an official White House photo in 2013:

Official portrait of Vice President Joe Biden in his West Wing Office at the White House, Jan. 10, 2013.

Here he is in a story from September of 2019:

Now take a look at this picture of Joe Biden from March of this year:

Any picture that I could find from before 2019, he has free earlobes. In any picture from 2019 or later, he doesn’t. Until recently. The last time I posted this, there were people who commented, claiming that Biden had gotten facelift as a way to explain this away. So I ask you- what if this article contained a picture of Biden with his earlobes unattached from just three months ago? Would that change your opinion?

What in the hell is going on?

By Divemedic, ago