Divemedic

FAILURE THEATER

This, 100 percent this: 

 When Congress meets on January 6th, these objections will be filed, the House and Senate will then each perform a two-hour debate, and then vote, not as per the Constitution but in accordance with an 1887 election law. Since the Democrats hold the majority in the House, they will win there. And since the Republican leadership in the Senate opposes any investigation into the election allegations, there will be just enough opposition from enough Republicans to give the Democratic Party minority the victory in the Senate as well.

No investigation will happen. Joe Biden’s questionable victory will be endorsed.

And the Republicans will once again claim that they fought as hard as they could, but couldn’t do it. Vote for us so that next time we can win for you!

This is why the Republicans are not really fighting. They don’t want to win, they just want to remain in the game. Please read the entire thing.  Closing it out:

If the Republican Party allows this fraud to stand now this will be their last performance of failure theater, their ultimate performance, an award-winning example of a party of true losers.

By Divemedic, ago

Schools are in fact dead, but teachers are a small part of it

 JKB posted over at Gunfreezone about how teachers were issuing grades to a young man who wasn’t even a student. He forwards the opinion that Public Schools are dead, and teachers are phoning it in. He is partly correct, and partly wrong. He clearly misunderstood some of the issues, and instead of a long winded response, I figured that I could explain a bit of what happened. 

Let’s start with the grading scale. Most school systems use automated, electronic gradebooks. In Florida, most schools use software called “Skyward.”  The New York City school system moved away from the traditional a through F grading system and awarding GPAs because COVID. Students who are not passing will receive a mark indicating that they are “progressing toward” subject mastery. It’s the same concept that is used when the parents refuse to keep score when the little snowflakes play soccer. 

My school has a few requirements: 

No more than 15% of my students can receive a grade below a C. If more than that number does, I have 48 hours to submit a learning plan that will detail how I will provide extra instruction and tutoring outside of my normal working hours that will improve the grades of these students. If by the next grading period the plan is unsuccessful at increasing their grades, it has a negative effect on my evaluation. 

No student who is a “sheltered ESOL” student can receive a grade below a C. A sheltered ESOL student is a student who is not a native English speaker and is in their first two years as a US student. 

Any student who receives a grade below a C MUST have comments attached to the grade. Comments are fixed, prearranged comments that are attached by a code number. The comments are programmed by the administrators in charge of each school district. Here is an example of the ones in my district:

To attach a comment, the teacher merely enters a two digit code to the student’s grade, and the corresponding comment is attached to the student’s grade. Up to five such codes can be attached to each student’s record. This is the part where I take a wild assed guess. Judging by the “no failure” grading policy, I am guessing that the comments available to each teacher are things like “progressing towards content mastery” or some other nonsense that is intended to spare the student from a harsh look at reality. 

So this places teachers in a tough spot. You have a student who is on your roster. They MUST be given a grade, and in more than 85% of cases, that must be a grade of a C or higher. If that student DOES get a grade lower than a C, then a comment must be placed on that grade, and it must be a grade chosen from a list. 

As a teacher, you aren’t going to change the system. If you refuse, they will simply fire you before replacing you with someone who will do as they are told. So we each must decide where the line is: that invisible line where you are willing to lose your job to avoid crossing it. Avoiding putting comments on a report card isn’t it. 

Is the system fucked up? It sure is. Can it be fixed? I don’t think it can. 

By Divemedic, ago

Family

 We have been entertaining family since December 23. It has been a busy and stressful time. It began when my brother in law arrived on the 22nd. On the 23rd, his best friend arrived, accompanied by a girlfriend. On Christmas eve, the brother in law’s girlfriend arrived. In the middle of that, they went to Clearwater Beach for two of the days. 

They are all from the New York City area, and some of them bring with them the attitude that New Yorkers are famous for: they complain about the high taxes and high cost of living, but then want to change everywhere else into having the same politics as NYC, without realizing that the two go hand in hand. One of them told me that they like the gun laws in NYC, because it is good to keep poor people and blacks from having guns, because they can’t be trusted with them. 

On Christmas Day, they overheard my wife say something about our hedges being overgrown. They were “bored” with life down here, so they decided to repay our hospitality by doing some yard work. I told my wife I didn’t want them messing with it, because the job would take far longer than they thought it would, and then I would be stuck having to deal with it. Of course, they didn’t listen to a word I said, and this is what I am left with:

They cut the top 4 feet off the hedges. It’s hard to tell height, but the hedges were about 12 feet tall, but parts of them are now 8 feet tall. Of the 100 linear feet of hedge, they only got about 40 feet of it cut, plus left a large pile of cuttings in the yard, and we had guests coming over for a party the next day. I was sure that I would wind up with the rest, and I was pretty pissed off. 

We had a Christmas party on December 26. My son’s fiancé got drunk and made sexual overtures towards another female guest. That guest complained that it made her feel awkward and uncomfortable. I am going to have to sit down with my son and talk to him about that. My brother and his family, as well as half of my sister’s family, decided not to come. 

The hedges are still sitting there, waiting to be cut. 

By Divemedic, ago

The year that was- some highlights

 There are many jokes and complaints out there, detailing how 2020 was a bad year. For my house, it wasn’t that bad. We began the year resting at home because we had flown in from Las Vegas the previous night and didn’t get home until about 5am. The odd part was that there was a CBRN team in Las Vegas for the new year. 

February came, and I was hit by a ricochet at the range. Luckily, my range glasses stopped the fragment from hitting me in the eye. My wife and I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were there for a superspreader event of what would later be called COVID-19. 

In March, my wife and I went on a date to the prom- we were chaperones to the prom for the school where she is a teacher. The very next weekend, we had tickets to two NHL hockey games and were then going to fly to a casino for an all expenses paid trip (including airfare). We never got to do any of that. We were locked down for the next 12 weeks. During the beginning of this lockdown, we had a CD mature that was worth about $75K. We used the money from that to buy a shitload of stocks at bargain prices. More on that later. 

In June we took my brother to Houston for his cancer treatment. At the time, things didn’t look good for him. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma that has a 15% survival rate. We were going to Houston for an experimental treatment. I honestly thought that the trip would be my brother and I spending his final days together. I am happy to report that he is still with us. 

We did a week vacation to Las Vegas in July. 

I got to build a dream rifle. 

In December, we largely cashed out of the stock market, and made a six figure profit on that stock we bought in April. Our two biggest winners were RCL, which we bought 1,000 shares at $21 a share and sold at $82 a share, and DRI, which we bought at $55 a share and sold for $120. We made more on stock profits this year than from all other sources combined. .

So all in all, a good year, even if the events of the nation were a total shit show.

I am not looking forward to 2021. I don’t think we can stay insulated from the events around us for much longer.

By Divemedic, ago

An argument for incorporating

 This woman was selling children’s clothing through Amazon. She sells to California residents less than 20 times per year. California passed a law in 2019 that allows them to demand sales tax RETROACTIVELY from all businesses who sold goods in the state.  According to the state of California, because Amazon had a warehouse inside of the state, she should have collected sales tax from those sales, and did not. 

The state of California has seized all of this woman’s bank account because the 50 or so sales that she made to residents of that state paid no sales tax. This woman almost certainly sold less than $5,000 in merchandise to California residents, so California has decided to take $10,000 of this woman’s money. 

That is the primary reason why my business is conducted through corporations. It costs $140 a year to maintain a corporation in my state. As soon as I got a demand for ten grand from California for a small retail business with less than $5K in annual sales, I would have had that corporation file Chapter 7 and walked away. However, this poor woman appeared to be doing business as a sole proprietor, and now is going to be out $10,000 because California has run out of its own citizens’ money and is extorting it from citizens in other states. 

By Divemedic, ago

No consequences

 Due to a new law in New York no one can be evicted nor have any negative acts taken against them, even including a negative credit entry, for failing to pay rent or mortgage payments. This law applies to all rents and payments due until May 1, 2021. The law, according to officials, doesn’t absolve people from the debt, merely places it “on pause.” So how exactly can a landlord extract payment if eviction and negative credit reporting is off the table?

So tell me why on earth would anyone in New York pay rent for the next six months? Your average NYC apartment rents for $3,000 or more per month, meaning that New York’s landlords are on the hook for $20,000 or more for EACH rental property that they own. 

This is all a part of the Socialists using COVID as an excuse to extract themselves some wealth redistribution. 

By Divemedic, ago

If you don’t want to pay for it, you must be a bigot

 On social media, there is a discussion going on about this article, where a child rapist wants to get a sex change operation while in prison at taxpayer expense. A judge agreed, and has ordered that the operation will be done at taxpayer expense. Here is how the discussion went:

Man#1: So messed up. I’d love to know why tax payers should be forced to pay this bill? None of this makes any sense.

Snowflake: Because it falls under the realm of healthcare and prisoners can’t be denied healthcare.

Woman#1: this isn’t healthcare

Snowflake: Yeah it really is healthcare. Just cuz we don’t like the circumstances don’t mean it isn’t.

Man #2:  It’s cosmetic surgery. This it seems healthy, why can’t he get a paying prison job and save his money?

 Snowflake: We could make this argument about any healthcare issue for any inmate. For example, if a murder needs heart surgery the murder will get it.

 Woman#1: you are comparing apples and elephants.

Snowflake: Are you saying you’re okay with a murderer getting healthcare but not a rapist? Or do you just hate trans people more than murderers?

Divemedic: No, she is saying that sexual reassignment is not a necessary procedure. It is elective, no different than a person expecting a facelift or a breast enlargement on the public dime.

Snowflake: That’s just an uneducated opinion. Most doctors and therapists would agree with this action.

Divemedic: Of course they would. I am sure that most auto dealers would support buying every inmate a car. If doctors support it so much, then they can do the surgery for free. Or perhaps the inmate desiring the elective procedure can set up  a gofundme page, and all of the people who support it can pay for it.

 Snowflake:  False equivalence. I mean if ya hate trans people then just say you hate trans people. 

 Divemedic: I don’t hate trans people any more than I hate people who want to drive a Ferrari. I just don’t think it is proper to force me (through taxes) to pay for something that someone else chooses to do.

Just because I believe that the procedure shouldn’t be done at my expense doesn’t mean that I hate anyone. 

 

By Divemedic, ago