Divemedic

 Michael Keaton thinks that because he played a fictional, anti gun character called Batman that he is qualified to tell me who to vote for. 

First of all, he was replaced 28 years and  11 Batman movies ago. 

Second: he is an ACTOR.

Shut up and dance, monkey. 

 There is a news article blasting California school officials for threatening parents with the arrest of their child for truancy. Many on the right have a problem with this, and I am not sure I have a problem with enforcing truancy. I think that it should, however, be the parents who face penalties.

Truancy isn’t a new problem that has just come about die to COVID. For years, I have sat and watched as more than 75% of my students are chronically absent. Chronically absent means that a student is not in school more than ten percent of the time. More than a third of my students miss more than half of class time. One in ten of my students miss three quarters or more of school hours. Out of 180 school days, the median number of absent days is 23. If an adult were to miss that much work, they wouldn’t have a job for very long, yet half of my students are gone for the equivalent of a month each school year. 

I have had students whose parents sign them out of school every day, two hours before the end of the school day, so the student can go to an after school job. Some students are late by an hour more to school every morning, and when you ask them why, they will tell you because they wanted to stop to get breakfast with their boyfriend/girlfriend. 

Teachers are held responsible for what their students learn or do not learn. If a teacher’s students are not learning enough, that teacher can lose their job. If enough students fail to learn, the entire administrative staff MUST be terminated by law. 

Taxpayers should be livid, because the courts have ruled that a free education is a constitutional right. That means the school must be funded with taxpayer dollars, even if the students choose not to go. These truants and their parents are robbing the taxpayers blind. 

I think it should look like this:

For students under the age of 15: 

If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school. 

If a student misses more than 10 school days in a semester, then that fine increases to a maximum of $1,000. 

If a student misses more than 30 days in an entire school year, then the parent can be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and additional fines. 

For students over the age of 15: 

If a student is tardy to school more than 5 times in a semester, then the student loses campus parking privileges.

If a student skips or otherwise misses 15 hours of any single class in a single school year, they will automatically fail the course and their parents would be subject to a fine of not more than $500. 

If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school. 

If a student misses more than 10 days in a school semester, they will be subject to a hearing that will determine whether or not they are defacto dropouts. If they are ruled to be dropouts, the student will be removed from taxpayer funded school and will not be able to re-enroll in school at taxpayer expense. Wanna skip school and waste money? Do it on your own dime.

 They are furious that the Republican Senate is about to confirm ACB. They are claiming that the refusal to fill Scalia’s seat is ‘court packing’ and somehow wrong. 

The Democrats could have selected Scalia’s replacement in 2016, and the accusation is that the Republicans wouldn’t allow his selectee to be voted upon. That is pure BS. The Obama administration could have had Scalia’s replacement in 2016. All they had to do was offer a replacement that was not a hard core leftist. If they had offered a more centrist candidate, the Republicans would have likely approved. The reason is that the Republican Senate would have approved a left leaning centrist, rather than wait to see the hard core leftist that HRC was going to nominate. 

But Obama didn’t do that. Why not?

You see, everyone who mattered thought that Hillary was going to be the next President. The Democrats believed it so much, they decided to stick to the extremist pick on the theory that HRC was going to ram through a leftist candidate to replace Scalia and swing the court to the left. 

The Republicans, with nothing to lose, decided to call the bet and see what was in the cards.

The Democrats went all in on an HRC victory. Trump’s win destroyed all of that. During the primaries, the Democrats could look and see that they were likely not going to win the 2020 Presidential elections. They knew that and were going to cheat their way to a Biden victory, boot Biden out of office using the 25th Amendment and place Kamala Harris in the Whitehouse as the first female President. RBG could retire and be replaced with a younger woman, who would likely serve on SCOTUS for 40 or 50 years. 

Then RBG died. 

Now the Democrats are going to lose the Presidency, their hope of having the first Female President, and they are going to lose the Supreme Court. 

That, frankly, pisses them right the fuck off.  

 When a nation wants to prepare for starting a war, they train their forces to the best level possible. Then they rest and perform maintenance. These two steps ensure the highest level of readiness. 

This could explain the abrupt decrease in violent protests. The next two weeks will tell. 

 From the Florida state Second court of appeals:

“An armed man can continue to pose a threat of death or great bodily harm even when he is seeking cover behind or inside a car”

Read the whole story at Jon Gutmacher’s blog. 

 In my county, Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 2:1. Here are some things that surprised me about my area:

All voters:

24% Democrat   57% Republican  19% No party affiliation 

84% White 6% Hispanic 4% black 7% other

43% Men 54% women 3% other or unknown (chose not to say when they registered)

White voters: 

59% Republican     21% Democrat   19% No party affiliation  

Among registered Black voters:

80% are Democrat     11% are no party affiliation   8 % Republican

Among Hispanic Voters:

35% Republican   34% Democrat   30% No party affiliation

I knew that the Democrats considered the Black voting bloc to be in their pocket, but I had no idea that it was so overwhelming. In fact, it is more pronounced among black women:

Democrat 86 %    Republican 4%    Other and No party affiliation: 10%

This explains why elections have become about race. 

29 percent of registered voters in my county have requested absentee ballots. There are more absentee ballots than there are registered Democrats. 

Even though early voting is only 2 days old, more than a third of the county has already voted. I plan on voting on Thursday. 

Quote of the day:

 “Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s breast and that the once-happy plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?” George Washington.

 On a news article about the cruise lines, I saw a comment that the cruise ships should be used to provide free housing to people made homeless because they lost their jobs due to the COVID shut down. I had to respond.

Divemedic: Why should the cruise lines have to shoulder even more costs for COVID? How much of your own money are you willing to donate to make this happen?

Liberal: We already are by paying much more in taxes than our commander in chief. How much is he willing to pay to help those in need? Could give a government grant to the cruise line industry to safely house people and maybe help keep them afloat.

DM: What do the President’s taxes have to do with that? A cruise ship is not a very economical way to house homeless people. Besides, how can you make the case that it is OK for homeless people to be living on a cruise ship, but not OK for that same cruise ship to resume operation? The reason the cruise industry is in trouble is because the government won’t allow them to sail because COVID.

Liberal: Think you’ve done too many dives without your mask.

DM: This is a good way to tell when someone has lost in the discussion of ideas: they revert to personal attacks. The point here is this: you want the owners of the cruise line (or taxpayers, or the President, you keep moving the goal posts) to shoulder the cost of housing people who are homeless because they lost their jobs due to COVID. The ironic part of your argument is that the people wouldn’t be jobless OR homeless if the government hadn’t put them out of work by declaring that people couldn’t live on cruise ships in the first place. Instead of addressing that flaw in your plan, you resort to attacking my handle.

At that point, my posts became moderated by the station. They are no longer visible.