Divemedic

 This is a great post about evidence. Let me give you a couple of quotes:

Now, let’s be clear here about what the word “evidence” actually means. It doesn’t mean “proof”. When a defendant is found not guilty, all the evidence against them doesn’t cease to exist; it is still evidence against them, which has been weighed and found not damning.

But the best quote of the entire post:

democracy is not primarily a decision-making mechanism. I mean, really, if you were setting out to design a good way of making good decisions, would you come up with democracy? Of course not. Because it’s laughably useless.

However, democracy is a very very good civil-war-prevention mechanism.

Truer words were never spoken. Once a people have decided that their vote doesn’t matter, they will resort to the only recourse left to them.
Read the whole thing, it is worth your time. For the last word of this post, I leave you with the words of John F Kennedy: 

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. 

For a short time, it seems that asking Siri how old the President was caused the devices to answer with Kamala Harris’ name. It doesn’t surprise me that big tech is forecasting a Biden/Harris victory, but are they also telling us that Biden won’t last long?  More than once source. 

 When nuclear weapons were first invented, militaries all over the world had to adopt new tactics. When it became possible for a single bomb to destroy large amounts of military firepower, it became imperative for militaries to spread their forces over large areas, so that a single nuclear strike to destroy them all. 

The same tactic applies to individuals who are into preparedness. You don’t want one single event to destroy all of your preparations. Events like a hurricane, fire, riot, or government action may limit your access to (or destroy) certain supplies that you may have stockpiled. 

Now might be a good time to review how and where you store supplies. Maybe you can have backup storage locations where some of your stuff is hidden. Some of it can be on property you have access to. Maybe some can be cached in PVC and buried on public land that you can relocate in an emergency. If you DO decide to cache supplies on public land, make sure that they are either “ghost supplies” that have no serial number or finger prints on them, make sure that they are “off paper” supplies, or use some other method to ensure that the cache cannot be traced back to you in the event that someone else finds them. 

 Schrodinger’s vote:

The act of observing a ballot being tallied alters its state. 

 It isn’t paranoia if someone really IS out to get you. There are Democrats who are compiling lists of Republicans to use as an enemies list. They are saying the list will be used to identify people who will be killed, jailed, sent to reeducation camps, or simply denied employment or other participation in society.

This isn’t just a few crackpots- the people participating in this include a sitting member of Congress, prominent members of the press, and other people in positions of power. This has advanced to the point where it is reminiscent of other government takeovers. 

Weeks ago, I did a three part series on insurgencies and how they are carried out. This one has so far followed the official CIA insurgency manual nearly to the letter. So closely in fact, that it is scary. If you didn’t see it, here is part one, here is part two, and here is part three. You might want to give it a read. 

I am afraid that the door to door disappearances are about to begin. The time is nearing for this blog to end. 

Graybeard comments on the post about Florida’s new minimum wage. He points out that there are many people who currently earn less than $15 an hour who are going to suddenly find themselves making minimum wage. I have been writing about this stupidity for over 

In 2016, the Miami Dade school system was looking for people with a 4 year STEM degree to teach STEM classes for $14.58 an hour.  

Starting pay for a paramedic who was not a firefighter was $14 an hour in 2002, when minimum wage was $5.15. By 2012, paramedics were starting at $13.25 an hour, but minimum wage was $7.79. Even though minimum wage had increased by $2.64 in the previous ten years, paramedic wages had fallen by $0.75. Those who support minimum wage increases mistakenly believe that a $2 increase in the minimum wage will mean that everyone else gets a $2 an hour raise. It doesn’t work like that.  The term for that is called “pay compression.”

To become an EMT, you have to attend EMT school, which usually is a 12 week course with 110 hours of classroom training and another 32 hours of internship. You must pass the National Certification exam for EMTs. 

To attend paramedic school, you must first be an EMT. The school lasts a year, requiring 1,200 hours of classroom training and 400 hours of internship. There is also a two part exam that must be passed with an 80 percent or higher.

Those paramedics are not going to be happy to discover that their wages are not going to rise anywhere near $2 an hour. How are you going to convince people to attend school and accept more responsibility when they won’t be paid for their efforts?

 I recently bought a set of Axil GX Extreme ear buds for hearing protection. I got them on sale for $129 each and bought two pair. They are Bluetooth ear buds that also have built in ambient sound processing. I took them to the indoor range and they did a good job of reducing the sound of gunshots to a non-painful level, as they don’t pass the actual gunshot through. The echoes still were passed through and that seemed a bit loud, but turning the volume down seemed to fix it. 

They are rechargeable with a microUSB cable and the battery lasts for hours. I have used them to make calls, listen to music and pod casts, and even to wear in high noise areas. They are much more comfortable and less obtrusive than earmuffs. 

I recommend. 

I did not receive any compensation for this review and paid what any other customer would pay, other than catching them on sale. 

 Florida’s new minimum wage rises from $8.56 to $10 an hour (a 16% increase) on September 30, 2021. However, there is a provision in that law allowing employers to take a “credit” on the wages of tipped employees and assume that some of their wages are paid in tips. The amendment sets that amount as what the FLSA allowed in 2003. In 2003, the allowable employer tip credit was $3.02 an hour. 

What this means is that instead of rising 16%, the minimum wage for tipped workers will increase from $5.44 to 6.98 an hour. Every restaurant in the state just saw their tipped labor costs rise by 28%.  Look for  price increases to cover that, plus you STILL get to tip.  

Even worse for dining establishments: on September 30, 2022, the tipped minimum wage will rise another 14% to $7.98 an hour. 

Most workers do not make minimum wage. The reason for this is that the value that the worker’s labor adds more to the transaction than that. If a worker is only making minimum wage, this is an indication that their job can literally be done by anyone, so the value of their labor is worth no more than whatever that minimum wage is. 

So workers whose labor is of low value figured out that it is easier to vote to have the government force people at police gunpoint to pay them more than it is to increase their skill set so that their labor is worth more. In other words, they are voting to remove voluntary cooperation from the market- they are warping market forces. 

So now I am going to have to pay the person who carries the food to my table a 28% raise as a part of my menu cost increase, plus a 15 percent tip? I don’t think so. So beginning September 30, I am going to cut my tip amount to 5 to 10 percent. Perhaps 2022 will see me no longer tipping at all. 

 One of  the things that must happen after a coup is that the new leaders must eliminate anyone who can challenge their authority. That includes members of the previous administration as well as any “up and coming” challengers. It is a sure sign of a dictatorship when there are mass arrests and disappearances. The Soviets even had a word for it- “vzyali” meaning “they have taken,” and there was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested. Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens. 

So that is what needs to be watched for– if Trump and his staff disappear. If the lists being made suddenly result in vzyali- this blog will immediately be shut down. The time for talk will be over. I know that I am not a big enough fish to make a national list, but the time to disappear myself before some local apparatchik gets around to it will have arrived. 

Do I think this is likely? No. However, TEOTWAWKI isn’t likely, but we still prepare for it. 

However, there are people whose disappearance should serve as a warning that it is coming. 

The arrest of Trump and/or his staff. The disappearances of prominent media personalities like Ron DeSantis or Sean Hannity. Locally, I have a list of major Trump donors that live near me that I obtained from the FEC database. 

There are three business owners in my area that donated a combined $140,000 to the Republican party and the Trump campaign within the last year. 

If they disappear- have they gone John Galt, or were they vzyali?