Divemedic

4096: That is how many hotel rooms were leased out for the night when Obama went to the G20 conference in Australia. The cost for rooms alone was $1.7 million. It makes me wonder a couple of things:

1 Were there really over 8,000 staffers that are absolutely necessary for a one day conference? They were staying double occupancy, right?
2 At an average cost of $415 per room, the Deputy Under Secretary of Whitehouse bed linens was staying in a nicer room than the average national leader. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott opted for the thrifty $270-a-night Rydges hotel, while Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe required just $170 of public funds for his stay at Novotel. China’s Xi Jinping came closest to Obama’s bill, spending $1,450 on his room, followed by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, whose room cost British taxpayers $1,070.

Just last spring, Obama went to Brussels with 900 of his hangers on, bringing along 45 vehicles, 7 helicopters, 4 jumbo jets, and a $10.4 security bill for Brussels. 

 This goes along with the 46 car motorcade (plus motorcyle escort) that travels every time the President wants to take a ride across Washington. Things like this are less about security and more to show the peasants who is boss. After all, it isn’t THEIR money being spent.

This is all reminiscent of a medieval king. 

In the news, it was announced that Chicago scientists discovered a 2,500 year old Egyptian coffin. When they opened it, they discovered the mummy was holding 21,100 absentee ballots for candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections.

Apparently, the African-American community organizer who was in the coffin was on his way to deliver the ballots to the supervisor of elections when he was detained by racist police officers. Democrats claim that a recount that includes these ballots would ensure that they retain control of the Senate. They claim that every vote should count, and it is wrong to disenfranchise the Africans who cast the absentee ballots, and to do so would violate their constitutional rights, or something. Eric Holder has initiated a Department of Justice investigation into any potential civil rights violations.

“Records show that more than 80% of mummies are black. This disproportionate number of mummies is further illustration that white privilege is alive and well in this country,” said Holder, “Rest assured, we will not rest until black men in America can feel safe from being mummified.”

Protesters stood outside the field museum, chanting “No mummies, just votes.”

White cop shoots unarmed black man… and no one rioted.

An off-duty Brevard County deputy shot a man during a burglary…Authorities said Deputy Jessie Holton was alerted by another resident
in the area of the alleged burglar, identified as 32-year-old Wilford
McCloud. As Holton attempted to arrest McCloud, the man was reportedly violently resisting, which led to Holton shooting McCloud…McCloud was arrested just days before for carrying a concealed firearm by a convicted felon and has an extensive record.

 I thought the mantra was “black lives matter.”

Today is the day that the Japanese attacked the Naval facility at Pearl Harbor. The US claimed that it was a sneak attack, but was it really? Some claim that the attack came as a surprise because of Japanese treachery, while others claim that the US government (to include its military) were simply myopic.

Me? I believe that the attack was a part of ongoing hostilities between the two countries, and the Japanese were simply responding in kind. That’s right: the US started the war with Japan by attacking her first. Not only that, the US government put the Japanese government in a position where the only logical choice that they had was either go to war, or allow the US to rule them.

In 1940, Roosevelt even stated that war with Japan was inevitable.
Roosevelt had wanted the US in the wars in Europe and in the Far East
for years. Standing in Roosevelt’s way was the fact that many US
citizens felt that the wars were not their problem.

First, the United States, continuing in its tradition of using treaties to keep other countries weak, refused to allow the Japanese Navy to maintain itself at the same level as the US Navy. This caused the Japanese to withdraw from the Naval Disarmament Conference in 1936.Then the US began imposing trade restrictions and sanctions against Japan in 1938.

The sanctions were expanded, and the Japanese were being denied the access to materials that they needed: things like steel and copper. The US closed the Panama Canal to all Japanese shipping. This particularly hit Japan’s economy hard because 74.1% of Japan’s scrap iron and 93% of her copper came from the United States. Then, in July of 1941, the US froze all Japanese assets and established an embargo of all gasoline and oil sales to Japan. At the time, more than 80% of all Japanese fuel came from the United States. The US claimed that the sanctions and embargoes would continue until the war with China came to an end.

The problem with this, is that the Japanese tried to engage in a mutually agreeable treaty with Chine to end the war, but China, seeing Japan on the ropes economically, wanted far more in concessions than the Japanese were willing to offer. Japan had two choices: go to war with an aggressive US, or surrender.

Then there was the First American Volunteer Group, AKA the Flying Tigers. Of course, there were machinations that took place to make the process technically deniable: The US loaned money to China, and China then used the money to purchase US war materiel and pay the aircrews. Roosevelt then signed a “secret executive order” in April of 1941, authorizing servicemen on active duty to resign in order to join the AVG.

 In July of 1941, the emperor of Japan was told that his nation had two years of oil remaining. The course was set: Japan had no choice but to fight.

All of this should have been no surprise to Roosevelt, and I would argue that this was a deliberate attempt to enter the war on the President’s part.

Why does the elevator in a building with only two floors need a button for each floor? Why can’t there just be one button labelled “Not this one?”

This is what intellectual liberals think of me:

You’re a scared white person, almost certainly male.
You do not live in a major city, or near a university or intellectual
hub of any note, nor have you ever traveled very far from your home
town, much less out of state or anywhere further than, say, Mexico.
Once. And that was enough.

You do not read complicated books. You do not like new or weird things. You watch lots of TV, mostly Fox News,

The truth:
 I am white. Mostly. My great grandfather was black, and another of my great grandfathers is a Cherokee. Being white is no surprise, gun owner or not, as over 75% if the country is white.
I don’t live in a major city, but neither does 92% of the US population. (Cities that have a population of 1 million or more have a total population of 25.2 million)
I live less than 50 miles from the University of Florida. Does that count?
I have lived in five states (Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Florida), and I have traveled to 34 of them. I have traveled to 27 foreign countries on 4 different continents. I travel constantly, with my last trip out of the country being just two weeks ago.
I am quite well read and somewhat educated. I have four college degrees. I am constantly trying new things, and I do not watch much TV (although I have to confess that I have a liking of ice hockey), and I mostly get my news from a wide variety of sources on the internet.

Sorry that I don’t fit your stereotype, you hoplophobic bigot.

There is a lot of complaining about how Mr. Brown’s body was left lying in the street for four hours after he was shot and killed by Officer Wilson. During the 22 years that I spent as a paramedic and firefighter before retirement, I was present for more than a few homicide investigations. Vehicular homicide, arson with homicide, shootings, and many other scenes involving dead people, all of them have one thing in common:

The police only have one chance to gather all of the evidence that they will ever get. At a crime scene, the police must map out and measure everything. They then have to collect every scrap of evidence from blood spatter to empty casings from expended ammunition, and that includes the body. All of this must be done flawlessly, and once the police leave the crime scene, the collecting of evidence is over.

What you see on TV shows like CSI, where the investigator returns to the crime scene hours, or even days, later and finds that crucial piece of evidence just can’t happen, and this is why: Any defense attorney, even one fresh out of law school, will say “I object to the introduction of this evidence. It was collected from a the scene HOURS after police left. How can anyone be certain that this evidence wasn’t placed there after the police left the scene?” and then the judge will agree, and the evidence will never be seen by the jury.

I once responded to a vehicle fire in a Wal Mart parking lot as the company officer (supervisor) of a heavy rescue squad. When the engine company put out the fire, they found the vehicle to contain a handgun, 2- 20 pound propane tanks, a case of road flares, 50 pounds of black powder, 3 five gallon cans of gasoline, and 40 pounds of a homemade explosive that was later determined to be ANFO (edited to add:) in addition to a dead body. (end edit). They called for the squad because of the hazardous materials, and because the police would need to disassemble the car to collect evidence.

I spent over ten hours at that scene. We used hydraulic tools to cut the car apart, and had to stop every time we made a cut, so the evidence collection guys could take pictures. The scene was so meticulous that we had to give the police samples of our hydraulic fluid and our fingerprints, so that they could document the entire scene. We didn’t even remove the body from the car until nearly 8 hours had passed since the fire was extinguished.

Claining that a body at a crime scene should be immediately covered is wrong, and the NY cop that said that is either lying or a fool. When you are dealing with evidence, everything must be documented before you move or touch ANYTHING. What if that sheet you cover the body in has a hair on it from another crime scene? What if the sheet drags away a shell casing? Soaks up some blood? The crime scene has now been irrevocably altered.

So to those who think that it was wrong to leave Brown’s body there for four hours: Had this case gone to trial, the evidence collected during those four hours would have been needed at that trial. That is just the way our court system works: we require evidence to convict people of crimes, not just feelings and assumptions. Shame on the press for not clearing this up. Your job is to educate and inform, not to inflame tensions and cause unrest. The riots of this week are as much your fault as they are anyone else’s.

Some idiot named Juan Williams was on the Sean Hannity show, commenting on the shooting in Ferguson, MO. Williams stated that Officer Wilson should have just gotten back in his patrol vehicle and driven away rather than use force, and also stated that police officers should not be allowed to shoot anyone.

I am at a loss for words…

Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I am not shy about calling out cops who are being overly aggressive. With that being said, I think that the decision to “no bill” the officer in the Ferguson shooting was the proper one. That doesn’t mean that I think the cop is telling the truth. I have no idea if he is or isn’t. What my agreement means is that Wilson  (the cop) is claiming that Brown (the decedent) was attacking him at the time, and presented a deadly threat. The physical evidence that I have seen corroborates that statement, and I haven’t seen enough evidence to show that Wilson’s account is false beyond a reasonable doubt. With that being the case, the only possible verdict is not guilty, and prosecutors are bound to only prosecute cases where there is no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused.

As for the other shooting in Cleveland of the 12 year old, I am looking at the video, and the video does not match the statements of the cops in question. The video in that case seems to support those particular cops being charged. We will have to wait to see how the evidence plays out.

I would also like to point out that Moms Demand action is getting exactly what they hoped for: They want to call the cops every time they see someone with a gun, in the hope that police will kill them. Congratulations, Moms, Tamir’s death is on you…