Divemedic

Just Following the President’s Orders

You won’t see this getting much coverage in the MSM, but in North Dakota, a 42 year old Democrat murdered an 18 year old man. What makes this noteworthy is that the murderer says he killed the victim because the victim was “part of a Republican extremist group.”

Listen to what they are telling you. Never forget what the President said:

The MAGA agenda represents an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.

It doesn’t respect our Constitution.
It doesn’t believe in the rule of law.
And it doesn’t recognize the will of the people.

Open warfare edges closer. Those on the right are being attacked and killed. The right is not yet responding.

By Divemedic, ago

Shortages

Last month, I mentioned that the hospital where I work is bringing Philippino nurses in to fill vacant positions for less money than hiring Americans. There is more news on that front.

We have been short staffed for nearly three years. They have made up the shortfall by paying huge bonuses to get nurses to work extra shifts. They tried foreign workers. Still, they don’t have enough. Determined to save money now that the COVID funding has dried up, hospital administration announced on Saturday that there will be no more bonuses offered. Once the shifts that are already promised bonuses are paid out, they will be no more. Nurses who were making $2500 a day for working a 12 hour over time shift are now being asked to work the same overtime hours, but for $600-$900 each 12 hour shift.

I know that I was working 60 hours or more a week. I was making good money to do that, but now that the money has dried up, I am not working those kinds of hours for a fraction of the pay. No one that I know is willing to do that.

So now the entire staff of the ED is not taking any extra shifts. They are working their contracted hours, and that is it. Me? My contract says that I have to work 4 shifts a month. That is all I am doing. Everyone else is doing the same. So now the hospital is even more short handed.

Here is what was texted out to us this morning by the ED department head:

Hello team
We know this week has definitely had its ups and downs already and we appreciate all the hard work done by everyone. While we all fight this same battle we still have patients who are expecting the best care we can provide.
Starting tonight through the weekend we could use anyone on any shift to assist your fellow team and patients.
Please any help is appreciated.

As if guilt tripping us will get us to work all of those extra hours for a third of what we were making before. I want to help my patients and coworkers, but at the end of the day, this is a financial arrangement. It’s business.

So now the hospital is getting desperate. A third of the ED beds were shut down today for lack of staff.

The hospital where I work can only fill itself to somewhere near 60% capacity because they don’t have enough nurses, and that was when people were working extra shifts for bonus money. That means that patients often stay in the ED until there is an open bed on the inpatient floors. Our ED is frequently more than half filled with patients on “admission holds” awaiting beds. Couple that with the fact that the ED is also short nurses, and you have a problem.

Picture a 50 bed emergency room. To staff a 50 bed ED takes 14 nurses, 4 paramedics, 4 general technicians, 3 doctors, a nurse practitioner or PA, a respiratory therapist, secretary, three registration clerks, two lab technicians, three radiology techs, and two janitors. Every shift.

Now picture that you only have enough nurses for 10 per shift. Now you can only handle 40 patients at a time instead of 50. Now also picture that you have 30 admit holds, taking up beds and waiting for an inpatient bed- some for more than 48 hours. Now you can only handle 10 patients because your staff is busy caring for holds. So the waiting room backs up.

This means you have people sitting in the waiting room for 4, 5, or even 6 hours as they wait for treatment. And all of that was happening before you cut off the bonus money.

Now instead of 60% staffed, you are more like 45% staffed. Instead of 10 nurses, you only have 7. Now picture that across the entire hospital. A 600 bed hospital with a 50 bed ED requires 100 nurses or more each shift. You only have 50 or 60. Now what do you do? There aren’t enough foreign workers to fill that many spots.

My hospital can’t be alone in this. Here is the warning: there is a potential collapse of health care coming. It takes 3 to 4 years to train a nurse to the point where they are licensed, and another 2 years or so for that nurse to be proficient enough in their job to staff an ED, even longer for places like the ICU.

By Divemedic, ago

Useless

A Dad is catching crap from the woke police for daring to teach his daughter how to cook.

First, why? I taught both my son and daughter how to cook. Being able to cook a meal is a skill that all functional adults should have.

Second: This is why so many men no longer want to get married. What does a woman who has no job skills, can’t cook, can’t maintain the household, and is a sedentary lie-about offer to a relationship? What does she bring to the table? Congratulations to the woke crowd for reducing a woman’s value to merely being life support for a vagina.

I agree with this post, even if it does piss off feminists.

most modern women are not able to boil water, much less cook a meal. They are often slobs. They often do not want children and those who do want children think motherhood consists of laying by the pool while sipping Kahlua mudslides.

Most modern women don’t have the skills that would allow them to earn a lot of money. They might have a degree, but it is in something useless like avant-garde poetry, or gender studies. On the other hand, the few women who do have marketable skills have jettisoned anything that made them feminine: charm, the capacity to nurture, and the ability to be receptive. In other words, most modern women, like very small children, have no skills. The only thing they bring to a relationship is their vagina. Unlike children though, they have no excuse.

By Divemedic, ago

Environmental Shell Game

There is an old physics joke that goes like this: “There’s this farmer, and he has these chickens, but they won’t lay any eggs. So, he calls a physicist to help. The physicist then does some calculations, and he says, um, I have a solution, but it only works with spherical chickens in a vacuum.”

The joke here is that theory frequently ignores reality. In order for the theory to match reality, one has to assume that things like irregularly shaped chickens living in contact with the real world don’t exist, because they make it impossible for theory to match reality. Which brings us to today’s post.

The claims about EVs are that they are more efficient than internal combustion engines. The claims are that even an F-150 gets an equivalent to 65 miles per gallon. What are they using for an equivalent? Some bullshit math that is purely theoretical and has no basis in reality? Or are they representing the actual facts?

The EPA is the one who decides, through what they call ‘advanced computer modeling’ what the Miles Per Gallon equivalent is for each car. The EPA says one gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 BTUs of energy–which equates to 33.7 kilowatt-hours, equaling 3,412 BTUs per KW-hour.

A natural gas powered generator like this one uses 301 cubic feet of gas to generate 20 kilowatt hours of electric power. Since  1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1,037 BTU, then one KW of electricity costs 15,606 BTUs to create in the real world. What this means is that the EPA is claiming that electric generation is almost 5 times more efficient in theory than it is in practicality. Why? Because a lot of the energy in that natural gas is lost to inefficiencies like friction in the bearings, hysteresis losses, and other things in the generating process that generate heat.

Perhaps it’s more efficient in large power plants? Nope, it turns out that large powerplants are inefficient as well.

In theory, 3,412 Btu of thermal energy is equivalent to 1 kWh of electric energy. For existing coal-fired power plants, heat rates are typically in the range of 9,000 Btu/kWh to 11,000 Btu/kWh. 

There are also line losses. That is, the electric lines, transformers, and other parts of the electric grid have their own losses caused by imperfect conduction and distribution. Physics is a bitch.

The game that they are playing here is obvious. They are taking the theoretical value for gasoline and electricity and ignoring the losses that occur due to inefficiencies in generation and transmission of electricity so that they get a number that far overstates the efficiency of electricity, making EVs seem far more efficient than they are.

This is why that F-150 that is supposed to be the most efficient pickup truck only has a range of 58 miles when towing a boat. My F-150 with its 36 gallon fuel tank has a range of over 300 miles towing my 18 foot pontoon boat.

Since we know that they are vastly overstating the efficiency of electric vehicles, that calls the environmental value of electric vehicles into question. Even using the EPA’s faulty metrics, one must drive an EV for over 20,000 miles before it becomes ‘greener’ than than an internal combustion powered vehicle. This is due to the toxic and environmentally unfriendly battery.

The thing is, the battery must be changed out much sooner than the engine in an ICE powered car. The US government requires that a battery on an EV be warrantied for 8 years or 100,000 miles. That is apparently the limit for batteries, as one Florida family recently discovered. I once had a car with over 250,000 miles on it. I still saw it driving around town for years after I sold it.

Over all, I think that there is a shell game being played with EVs. They are not nearly as efficient or as environmentally friendly as we are being led to believe. So the question remains: Why are we being misled, and to whose benefit?

By Divemedic, ago

Threat and Threat Assessment

Didn’t post this weekend because the wife wanted to take a bit of a trip. She overruled me when it comes to safety, calling me paranoid. She wanted to see Kevin Hart at Amway Arena in Orlando, and wasn’t taking no for an answer.

The area between the separators is an edit to add: Because there was a comment of “my wife can’t override me” I am adding this. She was going to see Kevin Hart whether I wanted to or not. If I didn’t want to go, I could stay home. She isn’t my slave or my property. We are a partnership.

As far as it goes, she can make you feel like a pussy. Whenever I balk about having to go unarmed, she points out that before we met, she drove from Orlando to LA by herself with no problems. “Surely a manly guy like yourself can make do with pepper spray and a knife for one evening without being more scared than a woman traveling alone across the country for a week. Or perhaps remember the time I drove by myself from New York to Detroit, then down to Atlanta by myself.” She says that we can’t be so afraid to live our lives that we spend them living in a prison of our own making. Understand the risk and mitigate it as much as you can, but take a few risks and live life.

She is, of course, correct. What is the point of freedom if you are afraid to use it. So I figure out ways to make it work. End of Edit.

The entire trip had me on the verge of a panic attack. Let me explain:

She booked a hotel for us in Orlando for the weekend. Now I normally hate going to Orlando, especially since it has become the woke left wing hive of scum and villainy that it has morphed into over the past three years. Even worse, we would be spending the weekend directly across the street from Universal Studios. You know, the site of recent gang shootings.

In fact, the Double Tree where we were staying was less than 1,000 feet from a Walgreens where I missed an armed robbery by less than a minute back in 2013. The neighborhood is even less safe than it was then.

On top of this, we went to Amway Arena. To enter this locale, all weapons are prohibited. We periodically do this, and I don’t like it every time we go. Being that the building is owned by the city, I don’t event think it’s legal for them to ban weapons and search those entering, but Florida Carry doesn’t seem to care as long as fishing isn’t involved. One of the reasons why I dropped my membership in that particular group. At any rate, I still bring pepper spray and a small dagger into the venue, as they don’t trip magnetometers, and are better than nothing. I left my firearm locked in a vehicle safe (you DO have one, don’t you?)

To make matters worse, the venue confiscates your cell phone and watch, puts them in a locked bag, then returns them to you in the bag. You have to stop on the way out to retrieve your phone and watch. I’m sure that it’s to keep you from recording the show, but would deny you the ability to call 911 if needed. It’s OK, my plan was to cut the bag open if I needed the phone.

On Saturday night, she wanted to dine at Mama Della’s, which is a restaurant located in one of Universal’s Resort Hotels. Now I am going to tell you that the food was superb. We had Calamari and Pasta Fajioli as appetizers. My main course was Chicken Parmesan, and Dessert was Lemon and Raspberry Sorbetto. It was outstanding. There were singers who were singing in Italian, and the food was great. She wanted to go to Universal’s City Walk after dinner, but in order to do that you have to submit to a search, so I was again disarmed for the evening. That meant pepper spray and a dagger was again the rule of the night. My firearm had to remain in the hotel room’s safe.

Look, I recognize that the odds of being a victim of violent crime on any given night are very long odds indeed. It still makes me nervous to be in rough neighborhoods without being armed.

Find ways to be armed that can make it through security. If you DO need to use them, remember that being armed against a company’s policy isn’t a crime in Florida, unless they specifically tell you to leave and you refuse. A sign saying “weapons prohibited” doesn’t count for a thing in Florida. So the important thing here is to avoid being told to leave. That means making sure that they don’t know you are armed.

In the case of this weekend, the people within the perimeter were unlikely to have firearms, meaning that the largest threats were:

  • Being attacked by more than one person, or
  • Being attacked while in transit between their ad hoc security zone and your cache of firearms.

You limit the first by carrying something to slow down one or more of the group. This allows you to incapacitate one attacker at a time, rather than having to face all of them at once. Pepper spray is useful for that. The dagger then allows you do rapidly incapacitate the one you are facing.

You limit the second by shortening the distance between the perimeter and your cache. Leave your cache securely locked in the vehicle, and then park the vehicle as close as possible to the security perimeter. Even if it costs more, pay to park in the garage right next to the checkpoint.

I know that the chances of being attacked and needing a weapon are slim indeed. It isn’t the chances, it is the stakes.

By Divemedic, ago

Military and Civilians

So many on the right keep claiming that the military would never fire on American citizens if they were ordered to do so. WRSA comes up with a few examples of the military firing on American citizens. They left out an important one.

The Bonus Army.

Congress had long paid a bonus to troops who fought in times of war, to make up the difference between a soldier’s full time civilian job and his soldier’s pay. Coolidge tried to veto the bonus for the troops of World War 1, but his veto was overridden.

Under the law that was passed,  each veteran was to receive a dollar for each day of domestic service, up to a maximum of $500 (equivalent to $7,900 in 2021), and $1.25 for each day of overseas service, up to a maximum of $625 (equivalent to $9,900 in 2021). Deducted from this was $60, for the $60 they received upon discharge. Amounts of $50 or less were immediately paid. All other amounts were issued as Certificates of Service maturing in 20 years’ time, or 1945.

By 1932, many veterans had been out of work because of the depression, so about 17,000 of them camped out in two Hoovervilles that were located in Washington, DC. They went there with their families, hoping to be paid the bonus that they were owed in 1932 instead of 1945. The two groups numbered as many as 50,000 men, women, and children.

 The camps were tightly controlled and well cared for by the veterans, who laid out streets, built sanitation facilities, set up an internal police force and held daily parades. A vibrant community arose, including churches in tents, kitchens, a library, and even their own post office.

They were told that the only way that they would be paid what they were already owed was to accept work in the Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Hunt, Virginia.

Some accepted that and went to work, others did not. The veterans thought that by sitting there and refusing to leave, the government would eventually have to relent and pay them what they were owed. Instead, they were given an ultimatum: leave by May 22, or else.

Hoover ordered police to go in and clear them out on July 28, 1932. When some of the veterans refused to leave, one policeman drew his service revolver and shot two of them, both of whom were killed. General Douglas MacArthur then rolled in that afternoon with 1,000 armed troops of the 12th Infantry and 3rd Cavalry regiments, 800 policemen, and six tanks, all supported by machine guns.

Patton, who was in charge of the 3rd Cavalry, had this to say:

“If you must fire do a good job — a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson. . . . When a mob starts to move keep it on the run. . . . Use a bayonet to encourage its retreat. If they are running, a few good wounds in the buttocks will encourage them. If they resist, they must be killed.”

The infantry charge was made with fixed bayonets and suppported by the use of Adamsite (an arsenic based vomiting agent). Hoover ordered the assault stopped once the veterans had retreated across the river, but MacArthur chose to ignore the president and ordered a new attack, claiming that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the US government. A veteran’s wife miscarried. When one 12-week-old infant died of respiratory complications caused by the chemical warfare attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis. In the end, a total of three civilians were killed, more than 1,000 were injured (some by gas, including an 8 year old boy left blind for life) and 2 police officers received injuries.

The negative publicity of the attack on its own veterans was believed to be one of the major factors in Hoover losing the 1932 election to FDR.

Not only were MacArthur and his troops willing to fire on and use chemical warfare agents against veterans and their families, in many cases the veterans who were being fired upon had served in the same units as the soldiers who were attacking them with bayonets. In the end, none of the veterans received a single cent of what they were owed, not in 1932, not in 1945, not ever.

Don’t make the mistake of believing for one single second that the military today would hesitate to kill you, if so ordered.

By Divemedic, ago

Concentration Camps

It has long been said that wealthy, elitist Democrats don’t care about illegal immigration because they don’t have illegal immigrants in their neighborhoods. Ron Desantis has proven that old saying to be correct by shipping some illegals to Martha’s Vineyard.

FDR put inconvenient non-whites into military guarded camps. Now the left has found another group of non-white people to put into camps. Less than 36 hours after arriving in Martha’s Vineyard, which declared itself to be a sanctuary location, the immigrants that arrived there were shipped off to a concentration camp to be guarded by 125 National Guard troops activated for that express purpose.

It isn’t that liberals don’t understand hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, as Miguel argues. They fully understand it. The leftists have simply decided that they don’t have to follow the rules that they have set for others.

In the meantime, everyone on the left who supports this needs to be called a racist who supports putting Hispanics into concentration camps.

By Divemedic, ago

Orange County Rent Controls

In Florida, enacting rent control isn’t easy. Landlords in Florida can’t raise rent during the term of the lease. My tenants sign a lease for a year, and the rent is laid out in the lease. That is the amount they pay for that year. When the lease is up, we can negotiate for another year, but that deal is separate from the year before.

To restrict the new lease, Florida statute 125.0103 is pretty explicit. There are a number of steps that have to be followed.

  1. The city has to declare a housing emergency. Such governing body makes and recites in such measure its findings establishing the existence in fact of a housing emergency so grave as to constitute a serious menace to the general public and that such controls are necessary and proper to eliminate such grave housing emergency.
  2. The city puts rent control on the ballot.
  3. The measure must be approved by a majority of the voters in that city.
  4. The rent control doesn’t apply to seasonal rentals or to “luxury rentals.” A luxury rental is defined as a rental that would have cost more than $250 in 1977. There is nothing in there about adjusting that amount for inflation, but even if a court does so, according to the US inflation calculator, that would today be a rent of $1,222. There are virtually no rentals for that amount.
  5. The rent control is only in effect for one year.
  6. To go for another year, the entire process has to be repeated.

Even so, Orange County decided to go for it back in April. In August, the county moved to include it in the next election. Yesterday, a judge approved the measure to be on the ballot in November. The judge ruled that the landlords who sued could not prove that they would suffer harm merely because the measure is on the ballot because the measure may not pass.

I imagine that it will pass. There are a lot more grifters than there are landlords, especially in blue Orange county. I couldn’t find the wording of the proposed rent control ordnance. I imagine that there will be court cases to decide the amounts, which rentals it will apply to, and more. This case will be an important one to watch, as it will have a HUGE effect on not just the Florida rental market, but the Florida residential real estate market as a whole.

By Divemedic, ago

Meanwhile, in Martha’s Vineyard

Residents of Martha’s Vineyard, which declared itself to be a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, are freaking out because Florida Governor shipped 50 illegals to their island. It wasn’t so long ago that residents there were posting shit like this:

Wait, they were just virtue signaling? Who knew?

Meanwhile, all of the residents of Martha’s Vineyard are like:

The best part of it was the liberal who said that: “Martha’s Vineyard is just a bunch of rich people. It’s weird that you all think you’re sticking it to the libs. Millionaires ranting about illegal immigrants aren’t liberals.”

My reply? “Don’t the Obamas own a house in Martha’s Vineyard?”

It’s easy to be a “sanctuary city” when there is no one there who needs sanctuary. When you are one of the states being overrun by illegals, it’s no longer academic. 50 illegals? There are millions of them in New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, and Texas.

Liberals:

By Divemedic, ago