Divemedic

 With news of today’s excitement in the Capitol comes word that the Washington, DC National Guard has been fully activated and is being reinforced with members of the Maryland and Virginia National Guard. New York has also sent over 1,000 armed troops. 

.Because the Washington, DC area is a Federal District, the General in charge of the unit answers only to the President of the United States. This authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army.  The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President. Any orders given to the Commanding General of the Washington, DC National Guard by any other entity or individual are not lawful orders. Why is that important?

The DC City Council released a statement earlier in the day, saying the Department of Defense initially denied the Mayor’s request for troops to be sent to the Capitol. “We were appalled that this fundamental request was denied,” the statement said.

According to Politico, the reason the DOD initially denied Bowser’s request was because “the original agreement stipulated that Guardsmen would not be in contact with civilians in order to avoid politicizing the military.”

President Trump sent out a tweet at 3:13pm. 

At 3:30 pm, Vice President Pence ordered the activation of the DC National Guard.  The Vice President is nowhere in the military chain of command, and as I pointed out, doesn’t have the power to order the DC national guard to do anything.

In a minute-long video posted to Twitter shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday, Trump repeated allegations about the election and addressed the protesters, asking them to “go home in peace.” Twitter deleted the post, suspended the President’s account, and some reports are out there that his Twitter account is permanently shut down. His Facebook account is also suspended. 

Republicans are quickly abandoning the President. Rep. David Cicilline, D-RI, said Congress should impeach and convict President Trump for inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol when the meet again on Thursday the 7th. 

Now that the entire Capitol city is under martial law that is being enforced by over 3,000 armed troops, the Senate has reconvened. They are meeting in a “Secure location” as of 8:00 pm, to continue the voting for Joe Biden. 

It is my belief that the only way that Pence could have lawfully given the orders to the Washington, DC National Guard is if he was the acting President. I am forwarding a hypothesis that the Vice-President polled the cabinet at some point between 3:13 and 3:30 pm today and declared the President to be incompetent under the 25th Amendment, making Pence the acting President. I also believe that Congress is going to impeach and remove the President from office some time within the next 48 hours. 

Donald Trump is, in my opinion, no longer the President of the United States. If this turns out to be true, the coup is complete. 

 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. 

 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.