Crime

Disney loves Pedos

Miguel over at Gunfreezone points out that Disney’s opposition to the anti grooming bill is because some of their employees are child predators. This isn’t anything new. I first blogged about that fifteen years ago, when Disney announced that employees being arrested for child porn would not be fired until they were convicted of a crime because they were entitled to due process, but summarily fired employees caught with weapons in their vehicles.

Disney thinks that it is A-OK for its employees to rape children, but draws the line at their employees being legally in possession of firearms. It happens so often that I set up an entire category for it.

By Divemedic, ago

Two Justice Systems

I was going to post on this later in the week, but JKB over at Gunfreezone beat me to it, albeit from a different angle. A Dunkin’ employee killed someone because that person called him the so-called “n word.”

In this case, the 77 year old white man received a sentence of death for daring to use that sort of language. The 27 year old black man, so threatened by the use of an unkind word, committed a battery upon the elderly citizen. That’s right, an old man received a death sentence for using mean words. I want to mention that the article also revealed that the 77 year old victim was a convicted sex offender. Since the killer had no way of knowing that, I don’t think it was germane to the story.

For this crime, the black man was permitted to plea to felony battery. OK, I am on board with this, so far. The death was an unintentional side effect of a young, fit man punching an old man. Here is where the justice system fails:

The sentence in the case was for 200 hours of community service and two years of house arrest. He will have to stay at home, unless he is at work or church. The prosecutor had this to say:

“Two of the primary factors were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant, and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language,” Kamm told the newspaper.

We constantly hear about so called “white privilege.” Now name one thing that a black man can say that will allow a white man to kill him. Contrast this with the Kyle Rittenhouse case, or the George Zimmerman case. In both of those cases, the one who did the killing was engaged in self defense from an actual attack instead of meting out punishment for the mere use of a word.

You know, the word that is used every day by rappers and other assorted “people of color.” However, if this “magic word” is uttered a single time by a white person, it can be used as an excuse for anything that a black person does for him, even if the word was uttered decades ago and the black person didn’t even hear the white person say the word.

There are now two justice systems in this country. One for straight, white males, and one for everyone else. Yes, Vonelle Cook was a sex offender with multiple convictions for having sex with 15 and 16 year old children, so I don’t mourn his passing. At the same time, the killer in this case wasn’t aware of that, so I don’t see that it was at all pertinent to what happened here. Nope, Vonelle Cook proved that you can be cancelled for using the wrong word.

By Divemedic, ago

Just Give Them What They Want

A man robbed a Best Western hotel in Orlando. During the robbery, he stabbed the clerk.

Those who oppose gun ownership and self defense frequently say that we don’t need to have guns for self defense, because all we need to do is give them what they want and they won’t hurt us. After all, they are just poor people who need money to feed their families.

But what if they aren’t just someone trying to feed their kids? What if what they want is to kill you? What if they are a violent feral yard ape who enjoys hurting people and the money is just a bonus?

Instead, punch his ticket. Preferably several times. Shoot the asshole until he is no longer a threat. Don’t take chances. I’m sick of reading this shit.

By Divemedic, ago

Song Lyrics

There are many in the self defense community who say you shouldn’t have certain types of firearm accessories, shouldn’t use certain symbols on firearm accessories, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, because it will be used to make you look bad in court.

Whatever. A prosecutor will use anything that he can. An example is the trial of the critter in the school shooting that occurred in Parkland Florida back in 2018. The prosecutor in that case is using the lyrics from a song that the shooter listened to before the shooting as evidence of his mindset.

In my opinion, this is a First Amendment issue. Using a song, a stupid cliche, or any other item should not be used against you. Having a dustcover that says “Smile and Wait For the Flash” doesn’t change the circumstances of the shoot and neither does listening to a song, but prosecutors are gonna do what the courts let them get away with.

By Divemedic, ago

Thief of Air BNB

A man calling himself the “wolf of airbnb” is taking advantage of New York’s eviction moratorium to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. He signs a lease for an apartment, and then simply doesn’t pay the rent. He then lists the apartment on AirBNB, renting it at a profit.

When the property owners finally attempt to evict him, he avoids service of process, sometimes for months. Then he claims hardship. All of this ties up these apartments for months, all while he is illegally renting them out. He is making hundreds of thousands in profit. He owes roughly $450,000 in rent dating to at least February 2020. Even worse, the owners of the property are the ones being fined by the city for running illegal AirBNB operations.

He calls himself a “wolf” because he says he is hungry and ruthless enough to get on top of the financial ladder. I call him a thief. He doesn’t know what ruthless is. One can only hope that he pulls this with the wrong landlord, and that person sends cousin Vito over there to explain to him what ruthless really is.

By Divemedic, ago

You Can’t Lock Up Only One

Nikolas Cruz has been found guilty of the Parkland school shooting that killed 17 high school students. The defense is trying to argue that only one of Cruz’s multiple personalities committed the shooting.

Who cares? We can’t sentence only one personality while all of them live in one body.

I’m against the death penalty. Not in theory, but because I don’t trust cops and prosecutors not to lie and rig the game.

I still think Cruz should go to prison for the rest of his life. No parole.

By Divemedic, ago

Protecting Criminals

I know that many of us talk about how the government seems to be protecting criminals. In New York, that has become quite literally what is happening. The city has established the country’s first “overdose prevention center” where medical professionals oversee and assist people in administering illegal drugs to themselves.

The people behind it say- and I’m not kidding- that this is based upon science. They are saving lives, don’t you know.

I wonder what science will discover next. Perhaps they will declare that the police need to escort thieves into your home, so that thieves don’t have to risk working and stealing in an unsafe environment. Think of the lives they will save.

By Divemedic, ago

Computer Security Problems

My wife and I got a security alert that our personal information was found on the dark web. I decided to do a computer security update on both of us, including checking her password wallet. We use LastPass to store our passwords.

The idea being that all you have to do is know the master password for the LastPass, and then allow LastPass to generate and store all of the other passwords you need. They can be as long and complicated as you need them to be. I began using it after I struggled with passwords a decade ago.

With a tool like that, there is no need for short, easy to remember passwords that are easy to guess or on the list of weakest passwords. There is no need to reuse a password. You can use a random password like Defw;n%348mEoi and know that no one is going to guess it, you will never need to remember it, and as long as you keep the master password secure, things are great. You password is stored in an encrypted format that uses your master password as the decryption key. No one, not even the company that makes LastPass, can access your wallet without knowing the master password.

The app will even generate secure passwords for you at the touch of a button. You can the specify the length of the password, as well as characters used. I have mine generate 15 character passwords that contain an upper case letter, lower case letter, numerical digits, and symbols.

That is why I was so disappointed when I opened our LastPass wallets to run the built in password security analyzer. It checks all of your stored passwords to ensure that they are strong, and that they are not duplicated. My score was fine, a 94 out of 100. My wife’s security score was a 50.2. I opened the detailed report to see why. That was when I discovered that she had more than 200 passwords stored, and:

  • 140 of them were classified as “weak” passwords.
  • 112 of them were duplicates of another password.
  • 40 of the “weak” passwords had a score of less than 10 out of 100
  • 10 of the duplicates were the word “password” or a variation of it
  • 5 of the duplicates were simply her name

Even worse, her master password was one of the passwords stored in her wallet. Now to the positive side, the passwords to financial accounts and other high risk passwords were valid, high security ones with scores of 75 to 100. She just didn’t see the risk to having low security passwords to store shopping accounts like those used for customer loyalty cards or online shopping retailers.

So we had to have a conversation about computer security, why I pay for us to have a secure password wallet, and why it’s a bad idea to not use it correctly. I had to point out to her that computer criminals are more active that ever before, and barely a week goes by that we don’t get a notice that one company or another that we do business with has had a data security breach.

Imagine that you do business with an online retailer. Say, an online pet supply store. Their data is compromised. The hackers now have your name, address, password, your pet’s name, and your email address. They now cross reference that email address to others retailer where you reused the same password. Now they are gaining small, seemingly insignificant details of your life until they hit the big one- they gain your SSN, credit card number, and date of birth from a breach of your hospital’s computers.

So I am spending time today to correct and update all of her passwords. My goal is to get her security score above a 75 by the time this post goes live.

ANOTHER TIP FOR SECURITY: LastPass allows you to store secure notes for each retailer. For your security questions, have the password generator create another random password and store that in the notes as the answer to your question. Then if you ever need it, you have a secure answer to that question about your mom’s maiden name that some hacker can’t get from another source.

DISCLAIMER: As usual, I will inform everyone that the products and services I mention on this site are not paid advertisements. I have no connection to them whatsoever, other than being a paying customer. I receive no discounts or special pricing beyond that which is available to anyone else in the general public.

By Divemedic, ago

Don’t Mention It

When I saw the article about the California firefighter shot and killed while fighting a dumpster fire, this jumped out at me as odd:

Stockton police said a 67-year-old man had been detained and a weapon recovered.

No description, no name of a suspect, nothing. When you see that, it usually means…

Yep. That’s what I thought. It seems that whenever the press dodges making a description, it usually is for a reason.

This post is not a comment on the shooting itself, as there are too few details available on what happened to draw any conclusions. Instead, this post is intended to point out that the press always seems to cover up stories that involve certain demographics.

By Divemedic, ago

Still Counting Bullet Holes

Two cars full of NRA members white men gang members unidentified young men engaged in a running gun battle in Winter Haven, Florida. All four people riding in one car, and at least on person in the other car, were hit. The Sheriff’s Department spokesman said that they are still counting casings and bullet holes to try and determine how many shots were fired.

Winter Haven is known as the bailiwick of Sheriff Grady Judd. Some try to make him into some sort of ‘tough guy’ hero cop. While I certainly commend his stance on people who commit violent crimes, he is also the sort of grandstanding cop that I can’t abide.

Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who has broken Florida law by lobbying state legislators to defeat open carry and defeat Constitutional carry. It is illegal for government officials to lobby the State Legislature for changes to the law, but that doesn’t matter to a police official who supports ‘law and order’ when the law is in opposition to his orders.

His opinion on guns seems to change, depending on who is listening:

By Divemedic, ago