Divemedic

So what?

The hospital where I work was once down to only two COVID patients. The specialized COVID floor was shut down and reduced to a single wing weeks ago. Then the wing was reduced to a single hallway. Two weeks ago, there was not even a hallway- there were only two rooms with COVID patients. The hospital relaxed many COVID protocols- where we were once testing every single patient for COVID no matter why they were being seen, patients were being tested for COVID only if they had symptoms. It seemed that COVID was over.

When I last left work yesterday evening, there were more than thirty COVID patients. What caused the big change? Well for starters, the hospital began testing every patient again. Many patients who are COVID positive are there for other reasons and have no COVID symptoms. Many, but not all.

In the ICU, more than half of the patients there are COVID patients. We had a COVID fatality on Saturday. Every ICU patient with COVID is unvaccinated, and most of the other COVID positive patients are as well.

So what?

If people choose to be unvaccinated, that is their choice. I have chosen to get the vaccine. If someone else reviews the facts and doesn’t want it, that is up to them. What they choose doesn’t affect you.

By Divemedic, ago

Out of Spec

So I decided to continue working on my Skirmish rifle this morning. I completed the machining of the lower that I got from 5d, washed it, dried it, and began to put the parts into the lower. The first step was the magazine catch, and…

It doesn’t fit. The slot in the lower is too small for the catch to fit. I tried a second catch, and that one doesn’t fit, either. So I am assuming that the slot that 5d cut for the magazine catch is out of spec. I emailed them, and we will see what they say.

In other news, here is the parts list so far for this lower:

That brings the cost (so far) for this lower to $691, with nearly half of that ($270) being the trigger and buffer. I want to have this rifle done by the end of September, so I am still on schedule.

DISCLAIMER: I have no relationship with any of the vendors or manufacturers mentioned in this post, other than me being a customer. The prices paid and any discounts I received were those available to the general public.

By Divemedic, ago

End runs

Let’s say that the police want to search your home, but they don’t have the probable cause needed to get a warrant. So to solve this “problem” they come up with a plan. They have a criminal on speed dial who they recently caught committing a burglary do them a favor in exchange for the cops not arresting them. In this case, the burglar breaks into your house then anonymously calls the police to report seeing a dead body in the home. Or perhaps bomb making material. It doesn’t matter what he claims to have seen. This call falls under one of the exceptions that would allow the police to enter your home.

That’s a dick move, right? Would you consider that to be a violation of your Constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure? In this case, the police didn’t have the legal ability to search your home, so they got another person to do it on their behalf.

Isn’t having a private business violate your First Amendment rights the same thing?

The “liberal” or “progressive” stance has always been that free speech is only about state suppression, not about private companies or individuals.

The argument has always been that Facebook/Twitter/Google etc. are private companies that have every right to decide what appears on their platforms. Of course, if the state is actively instructing the private companies on what to remove…that argument crumbles to dust.

Now do a little thinking and let me know what other Constitutional rights are being subverted because the government has enlisted others to do the violating.

By Divemedic, ago

Only one

The US government has decided that only their employees can be called astronauts, unless you do what they say.

According to the FAA, space explorers must go through training and fly beyond 80 kilometres above the Earth surface as a flight crew on a permitted launch or reentry vehicle to be considered an astronaut. They also must have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”

By that definition, there were no US astronauts from 2011 to 2019, since all Americans who went into space in that time period were passengers on Russian spacecraft.

By Divemedic, ago

Fascism

New Mexico and Tennessee have something in common. New Mexico’s Supreme Court decided to hold gas stations accountable for the acts of drunk drivers. The theory is that a drunk driver couldn’t get in an accident if he didn’t have the gas to drive around. This is the same theory that lies at the heart of suing gun manufacturers for the acts of a mass shooter: companies are now responsible for the criminal misuse of their products, bars for serving people who get drunk and then get in an accident on the way home.

This policy deflects responsibility from the person who committed the act onto a third party who had little to nothing to do with what happened. This is something that “no recovery/no fee” ambulance chasing trial lawyers LOVE. Drunk drivers generally don’t have deep pockets. Gas stations, bars, and their insurance companies do.

It flips liability on its head, in that companies engaged in legal commerce are now charged with law enforcement. This is a path to tyranny, and appears to be the perfect end run around the restrictions placed upon our government by the Constitution. Want to enforce an unconstitutional edict? Use the courts to create a liability upon companies. Their corporate policies will make a defacto law.

We saw that happen in the 1980s. For those of you old enough to remember, every newspaper in America used to have a firearms section of the classifieds. People could run an ad in the paper, advertising their personally owned firearm for sale, and sell it there. It was kind of like Gunbroker, but every newspaper in the country used to participate. I bought my very first handgun that way, a Smith and Wesson Model 59.

So what happened? Newspapers decided that they would no longer allow ads for firearms.

This policy will have far reaching consequences, and it will allow the courts to shape our nation in multiple ways. Now any liberal judge will be able to apply this doctrine to any business or industry that they wish to see destroyed.

Business and government, working together for tyranny. That is the very definition of Mussolini Fascism, the granting of powers to business.

By Divemedic, ago

Back again

The good thing about working where I do is that our normal shift is three- twelve hour days per week. I managed to get the schedule worked, so that I had to work the first three days of the week and the last three days of this week. I refused to work overtime these two weeks. That left me with a continuous eight days scheduled off. I used those eight days to travel to Maine for some fishing.

I have a cabin up there. I keep a boat and some supplies up there. So I went fishing. My wife and in-laws left two weeks before I flew up to join them. We caught bass, pickerel, white perch, yellow perch, and chub. We threw everything back. The fishing up there is incredible. If you aren’t catching a fish every couple of minutes, you need to check your line to see if it’s baited.

The weather was a nice escape from Florida’s oppressive July heat. It was 20+ degrees cooler the entire time we were there. There is a lack of technology in the entire state, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s tough to get any internet there by cell, and even hardline based is slow and unreliable across the entire state, with the exception of the southeast part of the state.

Maine’s future doesn’t look good. I have been fishing there each summer for a decade, and I can see that the cities on the coast are being filled with refugees from the liberal cities of the northeast, especially Boston and New York City. They just made all plastic bags illegal, the cities of Maine are papered and painted in the new rainbow flags, and the laws are slipping to the left. The inland counties hate it. The people I talked to up there don’t want it, but the coastal cities are driving a hard run to the left.

  • The upcoming fight will be cities vs rural areas

The inland areas are still using plastic bags, still not dying their hair blue, and are resisting, but that won’t last long.

Now it’s time to go back to work.

By Divemedic, ago

Missed deadline

I am currently fishing on the Penobscot River, just a few miles south of the Canadian border. There isn’t much in the way of cell service up here, and since you are reading this, it means that I didn’t get today’s post done due to lack of internet access.

By Divemedic, ago

Tax filing

I find it ironic that this article makes the claim that Intuit is “screwing over” taxpayers by charging them to use its products without mentioning how it is the government screwing over taxpayers by making the product necessary in the first place.

By Divemedic, ago