Divemedic

Boycotts and revolt

There are organizations out there calling for a boycott of Florida because of the “Stand your ground” law and the Zimmerman case. Here is one:

It calls for a boycott based upon the supposedly racially motivated killings of numerous black people. The problem is that only one of them (Trayvon Martin) was killed in Florida. Oscar Grant was killed in California, while Chamberlain, Gray, and Graham were all killed in New York. Furthermore, all of the killings except Martin were performed by police officers, and none of the cases had anything to do with “stand your ground.”

So who is behind this? The People’s Power Assemblies, for another. They are a part of the Workers World Party, a communist organization that intends to overthrow the government.

So there you have it. The reason that all of this is being pushed, is that there are forces involved here that want to overthrow the US government. How is that for “fundamentally transforming” America?

By Divemedic, ago

Reasoned discourse

I have been posting comments on various Channel 6 WKMG articles for several days. Each and everyone has fallen victim to “reasoned discourse” deletion. Here is a copy of my last comment, that was also deleted within minutes:


Acquit Alexander? The woman who was in an argument with her husband at his house, where she was not
living at the time. In fact, she had gotten a restraining order against
hm because she was afraid of him, and then left her newborn baby at the
hospital and then went to his house to spend the night with him. Doesn’t sound scared to me.
Anyway,
at breakfast, she showed pictures of the new baby to her husband by
handing him her cell phone. While looking at them, he found evidence
that she was having an affair with her ex-husband. he questioned whether
the new child was his, and this started an argument. In the midst of
the argument, she went outside, got a gun out of her car, and then came
back, shot at him, and missed. Can’t be self defense, because the threat
to her ended when she left the house. Going back inside made her the
attacker in an all new, second fight.
She was arrested, and made bail. While out on bail, she went back to the house, and punched her husband, giving him a black eye.
She committed armed battery. She deserved every year of the sentence she got. This is plainly NOT a self defense case.

Read the court documents for yourself:
Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/89763280/Order-Denying-Defendants-Motion-for-Immunity-and-Motion-to-Dismiss

There is an agenda here, and they are not about to let the facts get in the way.

By Divemedic, ago

Culture

In reference to the shooting that I mention here and here, the older brother of the would-be burglar has a Facebook page. According to the page, he is 23 years old, and graduated from Miles College in 2010. Miles college is a liberal arts black college that receives funding from the United Negro College Fund.

Here are a few examples of this college graduate’s writing:

Let
me tell who don’t no boots in da Sommer is a no no lol i saw a nigga
with some polo boots on with some shorts on then i saw a somebody with
some Tims on do you no how dum u look it 100 degrees out side in you got
this shit on 3,words kill your self

and this little gem:

 Man
it’s time 4 me to do wat I have to do I can’t be happy cause of all da –
shit around me I’m ta dat point wat aver happens happens I’m killing my
self. 4 da last 3 n a 1/2 week my head been pound I’m lose in a lot of
wight I can’t go back n play ball cause dis n dat on my mind wat ever
happens from here da man above no wats best 4 me.

Do you want to know why the black culture is failing? This is why. This man is the male role model for his younger brother, the one he looked up to, the one who raised him. This is a broken culture, and saving the lives and futures of blacks, as well as lowering US crime, is going to have to start with fixing this broken culture.



By Divemedic, ago

More on the Louisiana shooting

I posted yesterday about a man that shot a teen that had scaled a 5 foot tall fence to enter the shooter’s driveway, was confronted by the homeowner, and was shot. The homeowner, who was standing next to his back door, states that he told the intruder to freeze, the intruder (who has a history of burglaries and thefts) turned toward the homeowner with his hand in his waistband, and was shot. Here is a picture of the driveway:

The state has charged the homeowner with attempted second degree murder. In Louisiana, there are only four ways that the state can prove second degree murder. Two of them have to do with the sale of drugs, and don’t apply here. A third involves death as a result of a violent felony, and also doesn’t apply. The final way involves a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm. In other words, they have to prove that he intended to severely injure or kill when he shot the lad.

One would think that the act of shooting someone in itself proves intent, but that is not the case. A killing can not be second degree murder if the shooter
possessed a belief that he must use deadly
force in self-defense, even if that belief turns out to be unreasonable, rather than the intentional mental state of
committing a murder. Like the Zimmerman case, prosecutors are overcharging what is clearly a manslaughter case, ar the most.

This is a common tactic for prosecutors: Overcharge, and push for a plea deal. If the person doesn’t take a plea, they must defend against the charge, and all of the lesser included charges. These two cases illustrate for me the need to do away with lesser included charges. I think that prosecutors should file the charge that the person is likely guilty of, instead of overcharging and hoping that a lesser charge sticks.

Anyway, the homeowner will likely use Louisiana’s self defense statute as a defense.

Use of force or violence in defense

A.  The use of force or violence upon
the person of another is justifiable when committed for the purpose of
preventing a forcible offense against the person or a forcible offense
or trespass against property in a person’s lawful possession, provided
that the force or violence used must be reasonable and apparently
necessary to prevent such offense, and that this Section shall not apply
where the force or violence results in a homicide.
B.  For the purposes of this Section,
there shall be a presumption that a person lawfully inside a dwelling,
place of business, or motor vehicle held a reasonable belief that the
use of force or violence was necessary to prevent unlawful entry
thereto, or to compel an unlawful intruder to leave the premises or
motor vehicle, if both of the following occur:
(1)  The person against whom the force
or violence was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcibly
entering or had unlawfully and forcibly entered the dwelling, place of
business, or motor vehicle.
(2)  The person who used force or
violence knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible
entry was occurring or had occurred.
C.  A person who is not engaged in
unlawful activity and who is in a place where he or she has a right to
be shall have no duty to retreat before using force or violence as
provided for in this Section and may stand his or her ground and meet
force with force.
D.  No finder of fact shall be
permitted to consider the possibility of retreat as a factor in
determining whether or not the person who used force or violence in
defense of his person or property had a reasonable belief that force or
violence was reasonable and apparently necessary to prevent a forcible
offense or to prevent the unlawful entry. (emphasis added)
Note that the law states that the force must be reasonable and necessary under the circumstances,
but does not explicitly limit the degree of force to non-deadly force.The law also states that a person lawfully in his residence can use force, if he holds a reasonable belief that force is required to prevent a break in, as long as two conditions are met: The person must be in the process of entering the residence, and must have reason to believe that an unlawful entry was occurring.

The presence of an unknown person immediately outside your backdoor at
2:00AM,where the intruder was required to scale a
fence, would seem to allow a reasonable
belief that an unlawful entry into the dwelling was occurring or about to occur.

Again, I think that this is a lawful shoot, but that will likely get me called a barbarian and a racist, like I was yesterday for my Zimmerman and Alexander opinions.

By Divemedic, ago

The rest of the story

Anti-gun forces and race baiters are trying to use the case of a black woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a “warning shot” at her reportedly abusive husband in contrast to the Zimmerman/Martin case as proof that blacks are being discriminated against under the law in Florida. Of course, the facts don’t support this, but anti-gunners and race baiters never let the facts get in the way when they are trying to score points.

Background 

Marissa Alexander was married to her (I think second) husband. The man she was married to had reportedly been abusive to a previous woman. They had been dating for approximately three years, and she claimed in September of 2009 that he had battered her. Nevertheless, they were married on May 14, 2010. Shortly thereafter, she obtained a domestic violence restraining order, and that order was in effect at the time of the shooting on August 1, 2010. In fact, she had not been living in the home since June of 2010. She was pregnant at the time of the marriage and separation, and gave birth to a baby sometime during the last half of July, 2010.

The events leading up to the shooting

On July 31, 2010, Ms. Alexander signed out of the hospital and left her newborn baby there, and arrived at the marital home, a home that she had not lived in for over two months, and where her husband lived with his two sons from a previous marriage. The husband that she was so afraid of that she sought a restraining order against. She parked her car in the garage, and entered the home. She spent the night.

The next morning, the husband arrived home with his two sons and entered through the garage to find his estranged wife there. He cooked breakfast, and they all ate. After breakfast, Ms. Alexander handed her phone to her husband, so that he could see pictures of the newborn child that was still in the hospital, and then entered the bathroom. While she was in the bathroom, her husband found evidence in the phone that she had a continuing relationship with her ex-husband Lincoln Alexander (whose last name she chose to keep) and questioned her as to the paternity of the child. A verbal argument ensued, and the husband told his sons to get dressed, and that they were leaving the home.

The shooting

Ms. Alexander went to the garage where her car was parked. She claims that she tried to leave, but that the door would not open. There is no evidence to back up the claim that the door was inoperable. She retrieved a gun from the car, and reentered the house through the kitchen, and pointed the gun at her husband, who raised his hands in surrender. She then shot at him, and struck the wall next to his head. The bullet went through the wall, and entered the ceiling of the adjacent living room.

The husband and the 2 children fled to the back yard and called 911. The woman was arrested.

The aftermath

Ms. Alexander posted bail, and was ordered as a condition of her release that she have no contact with her husband or his children. She made contact with them anyway, and tried to convince them to lie at their deposition, to protect her. The husband changed his testimony to protect her, and was caught doing so. He later admitted that he had changed his testimony to help Alexander avoid prison.

In December, Alexander drove to the new house where her husband and his two children had moved after the shooting. That was when she attacked the husband, giving him a black eye, because he would not allow her to stay the night. She was again arrested and her bond was revoked.

Hardly self defense. she deserved every one of the 20 years that she got.

Here is my source.

By Divemedic, ago

Here we go again

Another black choirboy who has been arrested multiple times for burglary is shot while trying to burglarize a man’s house, this time in New Orleans. He was seen by others in the neighborhood earlier in the evening, riding his bicycle with another black teen, apparently casing the neighborhood. The people were afraid to call police, because they didn’t want to be accused of racism.

The person shot was a 14 year old with a criminal history:

Marshall Coulter, who had been on medication for attention deficit
hyperactive disorder, was awaiting trial for “stealing stuff,” his
brother said.
“He would steal — he was a professional thief,
sure,” David Coulter said. “But he would never pick up a gun, not in a
million years. He was too scared to aim a gun at the grass, let alone
aim it at a person. No way. Before he’ll ever pick up a gun, he’ll be
your friend first.

Who was caught on a security camera entering the fenced yard of a home, and leaving a second black youth on the street as a lookout.
Here is a picture of the “sweet, innocent, 14 year old boy” that was shot:

People, locking their doors and afraid to go outside because criminals own our neighborhoods and our streets. If you go outside, and are confronted by a person not of your race, you have to take a chance and let them rob you while praying that they are not armed and won’t decide to kill you. If you decide to defend yourself, the government will take everything from you and from your family. They will destroy you.

I predict a coming backlash against minorities, and a coming race war.

EDITED TO ADD: Here is a link to another article on the shooting.

By Divemedic, ago

Foreclosure scams

A new chapter in the Florida foreclosure mess has opened, as real estate scammers are renting out homes that are to be foreclosed, by posing as the home’s owner. In this case, a pair of cops were arrested for the scheme. This is possible, because it takes years to foreclose a home, thanks to the criminal activity of the banks themselves.

People who are caught up in the fraudulent foreclosure system, where the banks gave loans to people that they knew couldn’t afford them, so that those people could buy homes that were selling for far more than they were worth. The banks then paid appraisers to overstate the homes’ value, and sold the loans off to investors before the first payment was due by calling them mortgage backed securities. The securities were rated as top notch investments by ratings firms, even though they were subprime loans. They created a company called “MERS” to aid in obscuring the fraud by taking mortgage transfers out of the public record and hiding them in a maze of private files.

The homebuyers soon defaulted, crashing the economy, and the entire deck of cards collapsed. The banks moved to foreclose, but had destroyed the paperwork. A savvy lawyer working in Jacksonville discovered the lack of notes and mortgages, and people began fighting the foreclosures. The banks responded by “creating” and forging paperwork. Banks were reportedly calling this the “art department.”

They got caught, and lost quite a bit of money. In February of 2012, several banks came to a settlement with the federal government, where the banks paid $25 billion for wrongfully foreclosing on people’s homes. The agreement settles state and federal investigations finding that the country’s five largest
mortgage servicers routinely signed foreclosure related documents outside the presence of a notary public and without really knowing whether the facts they contained were correct.  Both of these practices violate the law. Federal and state governments received the lion’s share of the money, and only $1.5 billion went to reimburse the people whose homes were stolen through this fraud. The politicians are bought and paid for. Of course, the homeowners are still able to pursue their own court actions.

This had the effect of slowing the foreclosure process, because in many cases, the banks cannot prove that the homeowner owes them any money. So now the other scammers move in: people are posing as the homeowner of vacant homes (sometimes the banks themselves), and are renting them out and pocketing the money. It is an added slap in the face that some of the criminals doing this are also the very police that are supposed to prevent that sort of thing.
 

By Divemedic, ago

A warning to youngsters

People signing up for EMT and Paramedic schools are at an all time high. The economy is so bad, that people are trying to gain job skills to be employable. Employers are taking advantage of this, and things are getting tight. In the peninsula of Florida, there are a few choices for EMT or Paramedic jobs:

1- Fire Department. This is a decent job with good pay, but the hours are long. You go to EMT school, and then Fire school. This takes about 7 months to complete. You take a certifying exam for both, and then start looking for work. Paramedic takes an additional year. Starting pay is $10-12 an hour for a Firefighter-EMT with no experience. Paramedics get around $13-16 an hour. Firefighters work 48-56 hours a week on average, so take home starts near $30,000 a year for EMTs, and $40,000 for Paramedics. Pensions are nor what they once were, but they are still better than most other professions. The real downside is that the competition is fierce. Even a “stepping stone” department, where many new firefighters get a job, earn experience, and them move on has a lot of applicants. Departments with a job opening are getting 200-300 applicants for each position. For that reason, there are so many unemployed people with firefighter certifications, that the state has largely shut down funding for the training of new firefighters. Unless you have experience or are a minority, getting a job as a firefighter is a long shot.

2- Hospitals, Doctor’s offices, and clinics: These usually have decent hours, good working conditions, and pay varies widely. Hospitals pay well, and you usually work the Emergency Department in 3-12 hour shifts per week. Starting pay is usually $12 for EMTs and $16-$17 for Paramedics. Again, hard to come by, but not as hard as firefighter or theme park spots. You are restricted in what you can do by many places, so the work is not very exciting or challenging.

3- Theme parks: Even more difficult to get into than a firefighting spot, but the hours are great and flexible, and the starting pay is $14-16 an hour. Benefits are outstanding, if you can get a full time spot, but those are becoming as rare as unicorn sightings.

4- So you are then left with private ambulances. In this area, all these companies do is haul non-emergency medical patients between nursing homes, hospitals, and dialysis clinics. No 911 or emergency calls. In fact, in many counties, if the patient is emergent the ambulance is REQUIRED to pull over and wait for a 911 unit from the fire department to take over the patient. Starting pay is $9-10 for EMTs, and $13-14 for paramedics. Benefits are poor. Shifts are long, normally 12-14 hours each. You do not get a station to sit in on those times where you wait for your next call. You sit in the truck and wait. No reading, eating, sleeping, watching movies on your electronic devices, no texting, no phone use, and no drinking of anything except water. (Not even coffee) These jobs are easy to get, but turnover is high, and most people don’t stay for long, using this place to get experience and move on. A person that stays at one of these places for more than 2 years becomes unemployable anywhere else, because many employers assume that you are stuck there for a reason.

One manager at a private ambulance company told me that his crews were not allowed to eat during shift, because he doesn’t pay them to eat. Another told me that patient care is secondary to keeping the customer (nursing home, hospital, etc) happy, and that the patient was just cargo, and no one cares what cargo thinks. One of my former EMT students was told by an employer when he complained about working conditions, that for every EMT that was working there, there were 7 more looking for a job, and if he didn’t like it, he could be replaced tomorrow.

Compare that to other jobs in the area: Fast food pays $8.50-9 an hour, or about as much as an EMT, and without the exposure to diseases that comes with EMT. Paramedic jobs that started at $14 an hour ten years ago are starting at $13.23 now. In comparison, my son went to nursing school after only three years as a paramedic, and his pay is now $32 an hour. Nursing school is the same length as paramedic, but more than double the pay.

There is a reason why the average EMT or paramedic spends less than 5 years in this job: injuries, poor working conditions, a lack of appreciation for hard work, and low pay all too frequently make the best and most talented leave. My advice to people that are thinking about a career in this field changed about two years ago: stay away.

By Divemedic, ago

Cooking the books

I will no longer post about the country’s national debt. That number, as reported by the treasury, is no longer accurate. According to the US treasury, the national debt has remained the same (it is actually about $700 million lower) since May 31, at $16.738 trillion. Are you telling me that the Federal government has not spent any money in the past two months?
The books are either being cooked by changing accounting methods in a way that would have a private sector accountant thrown in jail, or the government is monetizing the debt like nobody’s business, meaning that inflation, and lots of it, is on the horizon.
Either way, those figures are now meaningless.

By Divemedic, ago