Divemedic

This evening, I sat and watched the show for the first time. One of the families was a prepper group that was preparing for a New Madrid earthquake event. They were pretty well set up with food, farming, honey bees, and a decent skill set. They had a prepper community of about 30 people in the area that traded skills and supplies. There was one main flaw in their preparations: security.

They claimed that they ethically did not want to have guns and ammunition like the “right wingers” and said that their main security was being part of a nurturing, friendly community of people who would support each other. They said that should a marauding band of armed people come to take their stuff, they would feed them and offer to trade with them. If that failed, they claim that they will poison the attackers with the food supply, or cut their throats while they sleep.

That tells me that it is not an ethical issue about violence, but a fear of inanimate objects. It also tells me that since they have no way of protecting their food and supplies, they will not keep them for very long.

I also concluded that the preppers in this show make the prepping community look like a bunch of idiots. From the 400 pound guy running around his yard with a rifle, to the family that was building a bunker to defend against a world wide tornado swarm, this show make preppers look like a bunch of loons. Maybe that is because the first rule of prepping is to keep a low profile, and the only preppers who would go on such a show are the dumb ones.

When the US federal government spends money, expenses are officially categorized in three different ways:

Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, VA benefits, etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid.

Interest on the debt. 

Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related
to government– the Military, all of the Alphabet agencies, the courts, Federal prisons, foreign aid, food stamps, welfare, bailouts, etc.

The two categories that must be spent every year are the interest on the debt, and mandatory spending. That totaled about $2.5 trillion in FY 2011.

The government took in about $2.3 trillion in tax revenue in FY2011. Even if the rest of government had been shut down, we would still have a $200 billion deficit. With the discretionary fund, this resulted in a deficit of $1.3 trillion.

What does this mean? This means that the government could confiscate 100% of the income of the top 1% of wage earners (anyone who makes more than $340,000 a year), and there would still be a $300 billion deficit.

In fact, increasing the taxes of all Americans by a third (133% of last year) would still require that all government discretionary spending be cut in half.

Does anyone here think that we can fix this?

My local gun store opened at 7 a.m. this morning. By 8:30, they had sold 15 AR15 rifles, their entire inventory. Also, there are no magazines to be had, and they are running out of ammo. They also told me that calls to their distributors have revealed that all black rifles and their magazines will be back ordered for the foreseeable future.
I wonder how many of the people buying these guns today voted for Obama yesterday.

(I voted for Johnson.)

Being a post whore, there is a topic that is guaranteed to get hits: Sex. A recent study showed that women’s sexual appetite falls as a relationship ages, while the appetite of men remains constant.

This creates a bit of a question in my mind: For women, as the “shiny” wears off, her desire to have sex diminishes. Does this mean that this predisposes women to have an affair with a new male, who would presumably trigger increased desire, or does it mean that the man who has the same desire as he always had will be predisposed to an affair with a woman that still desires sex?

In other words, are we as humans biologically designed to preclude monogamy?

So we all know the four rules:

I used to be in favor of the death penalty. My opinion has changed over the past few years: I am in favor of the death penalty in theory, but after seeing the
innocence project and the Duke Lacrosse case, I am of the opinion that
our legal system is too corrupt to ensure that we are not executing the
innocent.

Maurice Patterson was convicted of murder in 2002 for a fight where the
victim was stabbed 14 times. Three people witnessed the fight,
fleetingly and in the dark, and a fourth witness claimed to have seen a
man with blood on his hand hiding from the police. All four witnesses
identified Maurice Patterson in a live lineup weeks after the attack,
but they only testified regarding these identifications after being
threatened with Contempt of Court.

A bloody knife was found near
the scene and sent to Orchid Cellmark for DNA testing. STR test results
excluded Patterson, indicating a mixture of the victim’s profile and an
unknown profile. Comparison to the State CODIS DNA database revealed
that the unknown profile belonged to a drug addict with a history of
violence. Though the State Police Forensic Science Center had been
notified that the sample included the victim’s blood, this information
was never directly communicated to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s
Office. Prosecutors continued with the case against Patterson regardless
of the exculpatory results.

Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera served almost 10 years in North
Carolina prisons for a murder they didn’t commit before a three-judge
panel overturned their convictions on September 22, 2011, based on DNA
evidence proving innocence.

In this case, a man was killed during a home invasion, and police managed to secure confessions from the two defendants. Three bandanas and two pairs of gloves were located on the side of the
road near the Bowman residence and were collected by deputies as
evidence in the case. The bandanas and gloves found near the crime scene
were submitted for pre-trial DNA testing. Results excluded all six
co-defendants, however this information was never turned over to
Kagonyera or Wilcoxson’s attorneys.

Sure,
we have DNA and such, but when the system is so corrupt that
exculpatory evidence is “lost” or buried, we are executing the innocent.
That makes us all as a society guilty of murder.

So there is this category one hurricane heading for the northeast, and we are being subjected to a nationwide news blitz about how there will be death and destruction. I pointed out that there is a bit of hyperbole going on here, and I see comments about how the central pressure of the storm makes it a cat 4. You Yankees are smoking crack. It isn’t the minimum central pressure that is important in a hurricane, it is the sustained winds. As of this writing, Sandy has maximum winds of about 90mph. That makes it a Category One on the Saffir-Simpson scale. At Cat1, all we do here is evacuate trailer parks and beach fronts. New York panics and closes elevators, mass transit, the Stock Exchange, and tunnels.

In Orlando, when Hurricanes Charley (CAT4) and Frances (CAT3) made landfall in 2004, Walt Disney World closed for half a day. I thought New Yorkers brag about toughness! What does this mean? Why is this a bad thing?

In 2004, the fire department that I worked for had just hired a new chief. He was from New York, and as Hurricane Charley neared, the chairman of our department’s hurricane committee wanted to meet with him to discuss our disaster plan with him. His reply was that they got hurricanes in New York all the time, they were not any worse than a nor’easter, and he then left to attend a conference in New Orleans.

The town had major damage, power was out for two weeks, and he was unable to get a flight back. He had to rent a car and drive back. Making such a big deal out of a minor storm puts a false sense of security the next time a REAL hurricane nears, and that endangers lives.

This is what happens when citizens decide that they can do the jobs of the police: The cops, of course, claim that policing should be left to the professionals.

The answer to yesterday’s post:
If you look, every other complex has a different shape to the ‘P’ wave, and is followed by a compensatory pause, making them PACs. This means that the rhythm is Atrial Bigeminy.