Divemedic

I remember when we learned about the first World War while in history class. I thought it was kind of stupid for all of Europe to engage in a war that would kill millions, all over one useless guy that no one had really heard of before getting shot.

Now I know why and how stupid shit like this gets started, and all I had to do was read this morning’s headlines to see where we are headed:

• U.S. imposing ‘swift and severe costs’ on Russia following Putin’s Ukraine annexation
• Zelensky says Ukraine filing expedited application to join NATO
• US Embassy warns Americans to leave Russia
• Here’s What Would Happen If Putin Ordered A Nuclear Strike In Ukraine
• Patrol spots Chinese, Russian naval ships off Alaska island

You can see where it’s going, and our nation is being led by a senile idiot who is owned by Zelensky because of the grift he has already sent to the big guy.

Is the United States still united? For that matter, is it still a nation? The dictionary defines the word nation as:

a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory

I don’t think that we are united by very much any longer.

Everyone in the nation saw the same video: Lizzo playing a crystal flute once owned by President James Madison. Even though the video was the same, each side saw something distinctly different. On the left, they saw a black woman who is a professionally trained musician and a rapper playing a musical instrument once owned by a slaveowner. They called it a ‘hilarious moment’ as she twerked while playing the priceless artifact.

The right saw it as the desecration of a priceless article of American history, a deliberate insult carried out by a woman shaking her naked ass while being the first and only person to EVER play. Those on the left called the opinion and outrage of the right a ‘racist dogwhistle’ that was really caused by her being black, and not by her playing a flute that ‘no one even knew existed before she played it’.

The left and right cannot even agree on the definition of woman and man. They can’t agree on anything. How can we say that we are a body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, when we can’t agree on any of those things, even when both sides view a video of the same event and can’t even agree on what happened?

We are a large body of people who are trying to assert power and reign over each other. There is no longer a commonality, and this land once called a nation is anything but united. There is a split coming. The only question is how violent it will be. For if there is not a split, there will be only one of two outcomes: a dictatorship, or a war. In either case, it will be genocidal.

Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones

The second amendment doesn’t give you the right to overthrow the government.

— David Hogg ☮️ (@davidhogg111) September 30, 2022

He is completely correct. The Second Amendment doesn’t GIVE anyone the right to overthrow the government. In fact, the Constitution doesn’t give anyone a single right. It never did. Not the right to free speech, not a right to a trial, nothing.

The Constitution was written as a grant of government power from the people to the government. Then, built into that document, is a list of powers that the government may never have. Those powers (among others) that will never be granted to the government include the power to regulate speech, search your papers and effects without a warrant, and yes, infringe upon your right to keep and bear arms.

So, David Hogg is correct, but not in the way that he thinks that he is. The Second Amendment doesn’t give people the right to overthrow the government. It merely ensures that they retain the ability.

As Hurricane Ian approached the coast, government officials issued mandatory evacuation orders, as they always do when a big storm approaches. Just like every mandatory evacuation order, there are always a few people who refuse to evacuate.

Ignoring a mandatory evacuation isn’t going to get you arrested or in any other trouble with the law. What it is going to get you is on your own. If you ignore a mandatory evacuation order and things go wrong, you are on your own. No help is coming to save you. Rescue services evacuate the area, and stop responding to calls for help. If you were one of the people who remained behind, that is your problem.

Now that the hurricane has passed, there are hundreds of reports of people who remained on barrier islands in the path of the hurricane who ignored orders to evacuate and are now begging for someone to come save them. A great example of this is Pine Island.

Pine Island is an 18 mile long barrier island that was right where the hurricane made landfall. The highest point on the island is approximately 10 feet above mean sea level. Some of the people who were on the island were residents, and at least one bills himself as an “extreme meteorologist” trying to make himself famous by getting storm footage.

By 0900, the entire island was without power. The storm surge hit the island with seas about 7 feet higher than normal, with waves and a high tide adding to that. The eye of the storm made landfall at 1500. By 1600, at least one resident on the island was begging for help.

“Please can someone send help,” Darcy Lynn Conner, of Bokeelia at the northern end of the island, posted at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

To all of the people who are mentioned in the article:

Have you bothered to think of the responders? Your selfish ass decided to do some stupid shit like stay on a 10 foot tall island in the face of 20 foot hurricane driven waves, and now you are expecting people to risk their lives to come and save you. On top of that, society will pay the expenses for the rescue attempts.

If you stayed and are trying to do it on your own, whatever. That’s on you. But if you are now begging for help, you are a selfish asshole who is getting more help than you deserve. Every one of those responders should be allowed to kick you dead in the balls.

Social media is today filled with leftists claiming that Republicans asking for disaster relief are all of a sudden supporters of socialism. Not everything done by the government is socialism.

Let’s start with a couple of definitions.

The purpose of government is to provide for mutual defense, settle disputes between citizens, and protect citizens from being victimized by others. Socialism is where a government goes beyond that and tells businesses what goods and services they must produce. Socialism isn’t a synonym for “anything that a government does.”

There was a time when the fire department was a private business. Fire companies would contract with insurance companies to provide fire protection to the properties insured by those insurers. Fire companies would mark their territory with “fire brands” so arriving fire companies would know who had the contract for that particular building.

Fire companies did outrageous things like engage in fistfights to for the right to put out the fire and the right to bill for extinguishing it. Engine crews, knowing that whoever controlled the water would extinguish the fire, would send the meanest, toughest goons they had ahead of the pumper to guard the plug. Anyone from another crew who came near it would have to fight him.

So it was obvious that system didn’t work. Governments began assuming responsibility for fire protection. Fire departments, facing budget cuts due to better building codes reducing the number of fires, began looking for other things that they could do to remain relevant. So they began doing things like EMS, hazardous materials, and other disaster response.

Just because the government is providing a service doesn’t make that service socialism.

It looks like we are not going to get anything close to what they were predicting. It appears as though the storm went in about 60 miles further south than originally predicted. That means that it is crossing the state that much further away than they were telling us. The local news is forecasting our peak winds to be in about an hour, and it just isn’t happening.

The strongest gust so far has been 27 mph. It hasn’t even rained in this area for about 2 hours. My Internet is even back up. The winds have gradually shifted from easterly to northeasterly, meaning that we are now on the left side of the storm. That is, since the winds of a hurricane rotate around the center in a counter clockwise direction, we are now on the western semicircle of the storm.

At its peak, Ian’s hurricane force winds extended out 40 miles from the center. A 60 mile miss makes for a huge difference. I also don’t think that the 155 mile per hour thing is very accurate. It looks like sustained winds of 100 miles per hour or so is what was actually felt by real people on the ground, with gusts a bit higher.

Combine those two factors and we will escape this with a breezy, rainy night.

My sister, who lives in Apopka, says her power is out. My mother in Altamonte tells me the weather there is just light rain, with my daughter and grandchildren in Winter Garden reporting the same.

The people down there in Port Charlotte and Naples are getting hammered, and I wish them the best. I have some friends down there, and I hope they dodge much of the damage.

Just remember: prep for the worst that you will probably face, and anything less is a walk in the park. If you do your preps correctly, things should be boring. If things are exciting, you didn’t properly prepare.