There is a reason why posting has been a little sporadic for the past few days. About three weeks ago, I posted about the state of Florida and the Army Corps dumping swamp water into the ocean. Three days after that incident, I got sick. Very sick. No one else in my house caught it, telling me that this was likely not the flu or anything.
My fever was high, my pulse racing, and it came with dizzy spells, vomiting, and diarrhea. My ears hurt. The illness lasted for two weeks. It was followed by a painful ear infection. On Friday, my left eardrum perforated, and for the next 24 hours, there was a green discharge coming from that ear. It still hurts like hell.
It is my belief that I caught whatever this was from being in that nasty swamp water. Stay out of that area of the Atlantic coast of Florida until they are finished dumping that swamp into the ocean.
Tipping
Tipping
So the IRS has changed the rules for the automated tips that many restaurants add to the bill of a large party. This will increase the taxes that they must pay, so many are doing away with the practice. The comments on the story have caused me to revisit my feelings on tips.
A waitress or waiter server writes down what I want and reports that to the kitchen staff. After the staff cooks the food, the server carries it to my table. The other duties of my server include filling my glass and bringing me the check. For this job, the server receives a wage of about $5 an hour from their employer.
My sister works at a TGI Friday’s and tells me that she brings home about $150 a night in tips. I imagine that she doesn’t report all of her cash tips, because many servers do not. This means that she is getting a tax subsidy, and is likely taking home enough cash to equal a $25 per hour wage.
My son in law works as an entertainer for a dinner show in the area, and at this show, there is no ordering of food, as the menu is a preset meal where the only choice is what soft drink you want. He reports to me that the servers get irate if they make less than $100 per show in tips. The venue does one three hour show per night Sunday through Thursday, and two on Fridays and Saturdays. That works out to nearly $40 per hour.
Compare that to the following hourly wages in the Central Florida area:
Paramedics: $13.23
Firemedics: $12.86
Registered Nurse: $24
Vending Machine Repairman: $10.50
Theme park ride operator: $8.35
Security Guard (unarmed): $10.55
Security Guard (armed): $13.25
After thinking about this, I am going to amend my tipping policy. If my party is less than 6 people, my tip for adequate service will be 15% of the check to a maximum of $8. I feel like a table that size taking up about 1/3 of a server’s time for an hour is worth no more than $8. After all, that works out to a gross of about $29 an hour. More than fair.
For a table of more than six, I will divide the number in my party by the number of servers that are taking care of the party, and pay 15% of the tab for adequate service to a maximum of $8 times that number, on the theory that large parties take up a larger amount of the server’s time.
It isn’t my problem that her employer or the other patrons don’t pay them more. If the server has a problem with that, they need to take it up with them. I am just no longer willing to pay someone $40 an hour to carry food around.
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Syrian backlash
Military personnel have apparently been participating in backlash against the President’s plan to fight for al Qaeda, and are posing with signs covering their faces in protest of the war.
The pentagon is attempting to figure out exactly who the servicemen are. I am assuming that the NSA will be tracking the internet trails left behind by these men. (It does appear to be all men in the photos)
The left is in an uproar, claiming that we should be behind the President, no matter what, and the right is in an uproar, protesting the move. Mysteriously, the celebrities that opposed war when a Republican did it are sitting this one out. Apparently, it is different when your guy does it.
Meanwhile, the Russians are sending a clear message to the Americans.
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Attitudes
There is an informal group of firefighters that call themselves the “Fraternal Order Of Leatherheads Society” or FOOLS, for short. Leatherheads refers to the fact that traditional firefighting helmets were made from leather. It was founded in my area by some firefighters that I know in 1995. It began as an informal drinking club. It has morphed into something else.
The informal motto of the organization is:
FTM-PTB-EGH-RFB-KTF-DTRT
Which stands for: Fuck the mutts, protect the brothers, everyone goes home, remember fallen brothers, keep the faith, do the right thing.
Officially, they say that FTM means “for the men” but that is just for public consumption. Here is how they define a “mutt.”
A
“Mutt” is someone or thing that will abuse and mistreat a Firefighter.
This can be the City, the Mayor, the Chief in Charge, the habitual
caller, or the homeless Person who starts a fire and leaves.
These
are people that have never crawled down a hall or made the last room in
an effort to do their job. If they can’t get the job done today well
maybe next week will do.
If
we don’t get the job done people might die and our brother and sister
might also die. So we always lay it on the line and leave a little
behind at every fire. I say that in a dark smoky hallway I can’t tell
the race, creed or sex of my fellow firefighter, I just know that they
are with me. I don’t care who or what you are as long as you are a
firefighter and want to protect your brothers and sisters.
This is an alarming trend in public safety: the police and fire personnel are looking at everyone else as if they are the enemy. I have seen the initials for this motto being posted more and more among my firefighting friends, and it alarms me.
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That’s 2,996 deaths of people, and one death of a nation.
I know that this is the day when we are supposed to reflect on what happened on that day, twelve years ago and mourn for the passing of our fellow countrymen. I remember clearly where I was that day. I was on duty, assigned to engine 12. It was a pleasant, sunny day. We were checking and performing maintenance on our assigned 850 fire hydrants, a project that takes about eight weeks every fall. Our Battalion Chief called us on the radio, and told us to stop working, return to the station, and turn on the television. That got our attention, as he had never once told us to stop working. Heck, he normally spent most of his day trying to figure out how to get us to work harder, or so it seemed.
We got back to the station just in time to see the second plane strike the towers. As soon as we saw this, we all knew that this was a terrorist attack. We saw as trapped victims leaped from windows to their deaths, rather than face the flames. Then the first tower collapsed. We all watched as the firefighters kept running in, even though we all knew that it was likely that the second tower would collapse as well. Each of us wondered if we would have the courage to do what the rescuers of New York did that day. Until you are faced with certain death, it is hard to know how you will react. A police officer, armed with a submachine gun, arrived at the station and rode with us for the remainder of the day.
What we should be mourning today is the death of a free nation. The terrorists killed it that morning. The Patriot Act, TSA’s warrantless searches at airports, shopping malls, sporting events, and even on the highways, the NSA spying, the establishment of secret prisons, secret courts, and secret searches of people’s homes all began on that day. Sure, there were people who had sought these powers before that day, but it was people’s fears of further attacks that were used to destroy the freedoms that made America what it was.
What made America special was the fact that we were, each of us, free individuals that were fiercely protective if individual liberties. The last of that spirit died when those towers fell. Now we are neither free, nor are we safe, except we are now using our military to protect the very organization that slaughtered our countrymen and our freedom. We stand in line to be searched at the airport, when we go to public gatherings, and when we drive on the highway. Our electronic communications are monitored, and our homes searched at the whim of authorities, without even the benefit of a warrant. Our police organizations are more heavily armed than many nations’ military forces.
From where I am standing, it looks like Al Qaeda won the war. That is what I mourn: that my fellow countrymen died in vain.
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Beggars and force
From the Bayou Renaissance Man, we have a report of a new tactic in begging for money: The beggar opens your car door while you are sitting at a stop light. Let’s take a minute to review the applicable Florida law:
Statute 812.133 defines carjacking as taking a car from the custody of another using force, violence, assault, or putting in fear. The statue then states that carjacking is a felony of the first degree.
Statute 776.08 is a list of forcible felonies, which includes carjacking, robbery, and any other felony that includes the use or threat of force.
Statute 776.013 states that a person is presumed to be in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm if another person is in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering an occupied vehicle, or is attempting to remove someone from a vehicle against their will. It further states that a person
who unlawfully and by force enters or attempts to enter a person’s
dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle is presumed to be doing so with
the intent to commit an unlawful act involving force or violence. I would also point out that this statute also defines a vehicle as any conveyance, whether or not motorized, which is designed to transport people or property. It seems to me then, that this law also allows the use of deadly force to prevent one’s removal from a skateboard, bicycle, or any similar device.
Thus, it seems to me that a person that walks up to your car and opens the door is in the process of unlawfully entering your occupied vehicle, and deadly force would be lawful under Florida law. Of course, I am not a lawyer, and even if I were, there is no guarantee that you will not face the same fate as George Zimmerman.
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Waste
The Orlando Naval Training Center was responsible for training hundreds of thousands of sailors in the 30 years that it was one of the three recruit training centers for the US Navy. During the years of 1968-1998, there were many service schools located there with the recruit training center. Torpedomen, signalmen, and nuclear power plant operators all trained here.
I myself attended boot camp, electrician’s mate “A” school, and nuclear power school here in 1986.
All of that came to an end in 1998, when the Navy decided to close the facility and give the land to the City of Orlando. The city tore down the classrooms, dorms, and other buildings. In its place, the city sold some of it to developers, who in turn made it into an exclusive luxury housing community. 55 acres of it was made into a park.
Then the city decided to put a middle school in the area, made up of portable classrooms. Wouldn’t it have been more cost effective to use the buildings that were already there?
Here is one of the buildings that was torn down:
Waste. It’s easier when you are spending other people’s money.
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The UN weighs in
With all of the atrocities that have happened in the world in the last two years, the United Nations has decided that George Zimmerman is the target of their scrutiny. Yesterday, the UN issued a demand that the Obama Administration do something about Zimmerman.
What is more disturbing is the cherry picking that our own government does:
According to the 2011 US Department of Justice Hate Crime Statistics,
71.9 per cent of the total number of victims of hate crimes reported to
the nation’s law enforcement agencies were victims of an offender’s
anti-black bias.
You know why?
Because this is not considered a hate crime, neither is this, or this, neither is this,
this isn’t either.
The UN article DOES go on to say:
In a 2012 survey, the local non-governmental organization Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
found that at least 136 unarmed African Americans were killed by
police, security guards and self-appointed vigilantes over the course of
a single year.
To insinuate that this shooting was somehow related to the cops being racist, and not the fact that he was a violent criminal that was shot while attacking police.
Fuck the UN
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More hating on Zimmerman
Shellie Zimmerman wants a divorce, and the press is all over it. I can’t blame her. Her husband’s life is ruined, and anyone that is associated with him has no future, either. The press will keep him under the microscope and will ensure that anything he does is fully documented. After all, the linked story even attempts to make hay out of the fact that he was pulled over twice for speeding, and I guess that somehow proves that he is not a nice person.
What do I take out of this story? His wife, who is divorcing him, doesn’t have many nice things to say about him. So what? How many ex-wives have nice things to say about their ex-husbands? The article states that she alleges that the marriage is “irretrievably broken” but fails to mention that this phrase is required in Florida divorce cases. A divorce will not be granted by the state of Florida, unless one of the following conditions is met:
- The marriage is irretrievably broken
- One of the parties is mentally incapacitated.
The thing here is that the press and the anti-gun establishment (I am being redundant, here) will not be happy unless this man’s life is destroyed. They take great pleasure in any misfortune that befalls anyone that defends themselves from a violent predator.
She wants a life insurance policy on George, naming her as the beneficiary. Why? Because she knows that he will likely be killed as soon as the New Black Panther Party, or some other similar organization, finds out where he is. A suspicious person would suspect that she might even tell them his location, once the policy is in place.
The rest of the divorce is pretty standard stuff: division of assets, restriction on selling or disposing of assets while the divorce is pending, etc. Of course, she will also have to split the marital debts, as well. I am guessing that they are both insolvent.
Either way, the behavior here of the press and the people out to persecute him is despicable.