Divemedic

Every treaty that has to do with controlling pollution seems to require that the US limit emissions, pay money, or some other economic penalty. It turns out that the US is responsible for a tiny fraction of the world’s pollution.

For example, the LA Times did a piece earlier this year where the US and Europe were blamed for plastic polluting the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The only problem is that plastic polluting the world’s oceans aren’t coming from the Americas or from Europe. In fact, there are ten rivers in the word that are responsible for 90% of the plastic that winds up in the world’s oceans. Eight of those rivers are in Asia. Two are in Africa.

Of the estimated 13 million tons of plastic that winds up in the ocean each year, the US is responsible for only 280,000 tons of it. That is about 2 percent of the world’s total. So why is the US always the nation that has to pay through the nose for these pollution accords?

The large push by Liberals to punish the west for pollution that they aren’t generating has nothing to do with ecology and everything to do with destroying the US and replacing it with a communist nation. These pollution treaties are designed to punish the US for daring to be successful.

We just got back from a 7 day cruise to the Caribbean with my wife’s side of the family. My brother in law and his girlfriend flew in to the Tampa airport from New York the day before the cruise. We drove to Tampa, a 90 minute drive, to pick them up. When they arrived at the airport, we tried for two hours to recover their luggage, only to find out that it was still sitting in the airport in New York.

The airline blamed TSA, and TSA blamed the airline. The airline said that they would have the bags to them the next day at 7 pm. That was unacceptable, because our cruise was due to leave the dock at 4. We then asked if they would send the bags to Orlando on flight arriving there at 11 am. No problem, they said.

No matter whose fault it was: the airline or TSA, what happened next was all airline. The next morning, we called the New York baggage office at 6 am to make sure the bags made it on to the flight. They told us they were busy, put us on hold, and then the call was disconnected. Repeat calls went unanswered.

We stopped at the Orlando airport on the way to the cruise terminal, and the bags were not on the flight. We made a rush trip to the mall to buy clothes and other necessities for two people to be able to go on a 7 day cruise. Everything from toothbrushes to swimsuits, an from shampoo to formal wear was needed.

Repeated phone calls got a promise to have the bags forwarded to Jamaica, and one employee told my brother in law that his missing bags weren’t her problem.

At any rate, we got back from our seven day cruise and the bags are still in limbo. This is why I try not to ever fly.

I hope all of you are enjoying this holiday with friends and family.

Sleep tight, enjoy family, and forget the worries of the world for a couple of days.

We think of campaigns in terms of people, but they’re often decided by circumstances. The American voters follow their wallets into the voting booth. The bigger the increase in real disposable income from the year before, the more likely voters are to vote for the incumbent party.

Changes in real disposable income correlate with seats gained and lost by the incumbent party going back to 1950. If disposable income when adjusted for inflation goes down, the incumbents lose seats. When it goes up, they gain. This is why the Democrats have fought the tax reform plan, and why they continue to try and paint it as being only for the rich. If real disposable income rises by more than 3 percent, the Republicans will likely keep their majority in the house, and if the growth in disposable income is greater than 6 percent, they will likely keep the Senate. 


This is why Trump and the GOP wanted to get this bill done and signed as soon as possible. The IRS will need time to change the tax tables, and getting larger paychecks to employees is the key to the GOP winning the next election.

Here are two documents that have been sent to teachers in my area in recent days. (pdf alert) I disagree with the premise:

Consider two scenarios: A principal is late on a report and the boss says, “You
didn’t do it on time, so you don’t have to do it.” It’s April 16, your income taxes
haven’t been submitted, and you receive an e-mail from the IRS stating, “Your taxes
are late so you don’t have to pay them this year.” Neither scenario is realistic, yet in
schools many educators have policies that if a student doesn’t complete work on
time, the student earns a zero and the work cannot be completed for credit. Thus,
the student doesn’t do it. It is just the opposite that should be true: Students should
be required to do the work and not permitted to take the easy way out by accepting
the zero grade.

This is ridiculous. The student either meets the learning objective, or doesn’t. You can’t grade what isn’t turned in. When a student doesn’t do the work, what then? The author says that you assign them to an after school “homework club,” and if that doesn’t work, assign them to “Saturday school.” Many of my students don’t even come to regular school. What makes you think that they will come in on Saturday?

Let’s being this to the real world: You boss tells you that he wants a particular project completed by Friday, so it can be completed for an important client. You don’t do it. The boss tells you that you need to come in on Saturday. You don’t. What will the boss do? Fire you. If he doesn’t, he will still be forced to fire you when all of his clients find other ways of getting what they need.

This constant mollycoddling of students is why they are all graduating with expectations of being paid for not really doing anything.

This is what I have been saying about education for years. We are required to give 85% of our kids a C or higher. Even then, we are often asked to increase grades later. Earlier this year, I was asked to change a student’s grade from last year so he could be eligible to play basketball.

There are news stories that the leaders of the investigation into then Presidential Candidate Donald Trump that was responsible for the Fusion GPS dossier and wiretapping of the NYC election headquarters of Trump’s campaign were using HAM radios to communicate and coordinate this effort, in violation of Federal law.

I find this to be a very useful bit of information, and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. The National Security Agency (NSA) picks up and records almost all electronic communications, thereby effectively wiretapping telephone conversations, email, and practically everything else we send out electronically.  When a FISA court permits spying on American citizens, that universal wiretapping capability can be used to spy on their conversations.  It now appears that an elaborate plot was crafted to generate phony accusations of dirty ties to Russia that would be used to get a FISA court warrant to spy on members of the Trump campaign.

The wife of a Deputy Director of the DOJ was coordinating this attempted coup, and would be well aware of the NSA’s capabilities. For that reason, I got to thinking about that. There are many technical reasons why spying on HAM radio would be a nearly impossible task. Just by using the frequencies and methods permitted to a person with a Technician license, there are thousands of available channels. Toss in the various modes like Digital, SSB, USB, AM, FM, CW, etc., and then consider that the higher frequencies are short range and would require hundreds of listening stations in every state, and it becomes a very difficult proposition to monitor HAM radio.

Insert basic tradecraft where a message is inserted into an innocent sounding conversation, and there is no practical way to shut down or monitor communications. It also becomes impossible to monitor a quick message through traffic analysis, if the operators do not identify, the conversation is short, and the transmitters mobile. 

The coup plotters know this, and this is why they chose to communicate that way. This is how the pros do it, so they can participate in an extra-constitutional coup. Lesson complete.