Government

Just a Kid

People on Social Media are up in arms because an 11 year old kid has been arrested and charged for riding an electric motorcycle (he called it an ‘electric bike’) to the pond down the street to go fishing.

Here is a link to the actual news story about the case. In the recording of that court appearance, Cade can be heard saying he knew his e-bike was actually a motorcycle. Police said the motorbike was capable of traveling 50 MPH and was powered by a 4,500-watt motor. It was likely this one.

After the hearing, Cade’s father, Chris Kirchner, commented on the court appearance.

“How ridiculous that he had to miss school for that,” Chris Kirchner said.

I have a different take from my own personal experience: Jacob was just 12 years old when he was struck by a car while riding his bike on a dark country road 30 years ago. When I found him unconscious and covered in his own blood on the side of the road, I ran my hands down his back to check for injuries and the fingers of my right hand sunk into his lower back. His entire back was ripped open by that hit and run driver. He died right there on the side of the road, not 40 feet from the bike he had been riding.

As a paramedic who has seen this play out time and time again, I think this child has no business riding a motorcycle on the road, whether it is 300 feet or 300 miles. The roads are a dangerous place, and an 11 year old child doesn’t belong there. Not only should he be charged for riding it, the parents should be charged for letting him buy and ride a motorcycle.

Those cops may very well have saved his life. I’ve seen comments where people say something like “Maybe he should get a Glock with a switch,” or “Why aren’t the cops out there catching REAL criminals?” Like it or not, this IS a real crime, and it’s one that is intended to save lives. According to the National Institutes of Health, auto accidents are the leading cause of death in children and adolescents.

Then the lilbertarians showed up.

everyone should be allowed to drive around with no tags dl or insurance. unless there’s a valid reason to stop them. I don’t view cars and motorcycles any differently than I view bicycles or horses, neither of which need those things (in most places).

Completely ignoring the fact that this is an 11 year old child.

By Divemedic, ago

Rediscovering the Tenth

The left is rediscovering the Tenth Amendment. Judge David Leibowitz in Miami tossed a case against a Jamaican national accused of voting in our elections for years with a fake birth certificate. He ruled that the 1996 law making noncitizen voting a federal crime is unconstitutional because only the states get to set voter qualifications.

These are Federal elections for President and Congress, and a Federal judge just said the Federal government can’t punish a foreigner for voting in them. Reports say about 45 more of these cases are pending around the country, and we’re 33 days from the midterms.

What does this mean? It means when the left says there is no evidence illegal immigrants are voting in our elections, they are lying.

There is no way we can vote our way out of this. First, even if we could, it wouldn’t be allowed. Second, the two parties are virtually indistinguishable in practice. One party openly claims to be socialist, while the other says they are different, but votes like the socialist party.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again- just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean the Republicans are your friends.

By Divemedic, ago

That Will Fix It

Keep telling me how voting for Republicans will save us all.

Even the name of the Act is in Spanish with an English subtitle.

By Divemedic, ago

Because it was mentioned

Plague Monk says the sailors on the USS Lincoln were served moldy food. I want to set the record straight. The source of that “fact” was a story published by USA Today. Take a look:

That picture is a crop from this photo:

A few things that are important to note: Navy ships don’t have cinderblock walls. They don’t have drop ceilings in the enlisted mess (some officer messes do and the chief’s mess does, but this isn’t the officer mess, the tables are wrong). There is no bullseye on any of the walls. Note how the only two people visible in this photo aren’t wearing military uniforms. This isn’t from the USS Lincoln. It’s fake news ragebaiting bullshit.

In the Navy, the commanding officer and the embarked admiral get the best food. On a carrier, they don’t eat with the officers. He has a private mess, and he can’t eat in the wardroom without permission for reasons I will soon explain.

Next down are the chief petty officers (E7 through E9). They get great food. For example, the rest of the crew gets Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, and Special K. The chiefs get Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, and Apple Jacks. I used to find reasons to sneak own there and pilfer cereal from the Chief’s storeroom. One of my favorite tricks was to pull the fuses on the lights to their storeroom and show up to fix it with a tool bag. Once I wasn’t being watched, I would stuff the bag with all the food I could fit in it. Here is a pic of the Chief’s chow line. Note the food looks great, and they eat on real plates. There is also a battle lantern and a first aid kit on the bulkhead:

The officers are paid BAS, and pay for their food out of their own funds via payroll deduction. That’s why the CO and Admiral can’t eat there. It isn’t their food, that food belongs to the officers.

Here is the chow line for enlisted sailors (E6 and below). Note the woman getting fed. Does she look hungry or malnourished? This is how food is served on Navy ships- a line, and they give you as much or as little as you want. If there is an actual plate looking empty, that is because the person getting the food didn’t ask for more. Note the plate, electrical boxes, and piping and ductwork in this photo.

Here is the dining area. Note the plates again. There isn’t a divided plate in sight. Any photo you see where the Lincoln food is supposedly on divided trays is fake. See the bulkheads? Piping, wiring, no drop ceiling. Look at the light fixtures. Those are sealed against water, because it’s a ship. As an Navy electrician, I repaired thousands of those in my 6 years of service- the ones pictured are authentic. There is an officer in this photo wearing a flight suit. He is a Captain, likely the Commander of the Air Group (CAG), because this dinner is for a Mother’s day celebration.

This is what Navy ships look like, and any photo that doesn’t look like this is a fake.

By Divemedic, ago

Psychological Torture

In August 2018, Thomas Perez Jr. called the police in Fontana, California, to report that his 71-year-old father, who had dementia, was missing. Police arrived, searched the house with his permission, and claimed to find “visible bloodstains.” A police dog allegedly “detected the presence of a corpse.” Despite Perez Jr.’s cooperation, the officers found his demeanor “suspicious” and brought him to the station for questioning.

Police questioned him for over 17 hours. Detectives falsely claimed they found his father’s corpse and bloodstains, denied him blood pressure and anxiety medication, and brought in his dog to falsely claim the animal would be euthanized because it witnessed the murder.

The interrogation began with hours of questioning while police obtained warrants to seize Perez Jr.’s electronic devices. After some time, they took him for a drive, claiming they were looking for his father. The ride was a pretense, just another way to continue questioning him. All it accomplished was a visible decline in Perez Jr.’s mental state.

Back at the station, Perez Jr. asked for his medication and requested to be taken to a hospital. The officers refused, saying, “We’re not going to go to the hospital, because that’s not going to help you.” From there, the pressure intensified.

By this point, Perez Jr. was in clear mental distress—rocking, pulling his hair, crying, shaking, and pleading for help. When he fell to the floor and hugged his dog, the officers laughed and told him he was stressing the animal out. Sixteen hours into the interrogation, the detectives told Perez Jr. they had found his father’s body in the morgue with stab wounds. It was a lie. But Perez Jr., mentally broken and physically exhausted, confessed. Under severe psychological distress and a complete mental breakdown, Perez falsely confessed to killing his father.

The detectives then received a call from Perez Jr.’s sister: Thomas Sr. was alive and at LAX, about to board a flight to visit her. They didn’t rush back to tell Perez Jr. the good news. Instead, they let him sit alone in the interrogation room for another hour. During this time, Perez Jr., hopeless and defeated, untied his shoes and attempted to hang himself.

The officers intervened—not to reassure him but to Mirandize him for the first time. They then sent him to a psychiatric hospital, leaving instructions with the staff that he was to have no contact with family members. On their way out, they dropped the dog at the pound as a stray.

In May 2023, a federal judge ruled the interrogation tactics were unconstitutional, stating:

“[Perez] was berated, worn down, and pressured into a false confession after 17 hours of questioning. [The officers] did this with full awareness of his compromised mental and physical state and need for his medications.”

Perez filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the Fontana Police Department of false imprisonment, due process violations, and what a judge described as unconstitutional “psychological torture.” The city agreed to a nearly $900,000 settlement to resolve the lawsuit, admitting no formal wrongdoing while maintaining that their tactics, though involving extreme ruses, did not break laws.

This would be illegal to do to a POW in time of war, a violation of the Geneva convention. The cops of Fontana think this is good police procedure.

When the police want to talk to you about anything, pretend that you are a POW in time of war:

  • Shut the fuck up. Don’t answer questions.
  • Ask if you are free to leave
  • If you are not, the law requires that you identify yourself.
  • After you do that, tell them you want a lawyer.
  • Then shut the fuck up.
  • The police aren’t your friends. They can lie to you. They can use your weaknesses against you.
  • Did I mention that you shouldn’t answer questions, and should just shut the fuck up?
By Divemedic, ago

Firefighters

I spend a good number of posts in pointing out police malfeasance. Now I am going to take some firefighters to task. Those who read this blog know that I was a firefighter for more than 2 decades, and I have a drawer full of certifications that back this up. I want you to look at this video, then I will give you my 2 cents’ worth.

Firefighters are permitted to break and move things, as well as forcibly damage property in order to deal with exigent circumstances. The emergency does not give them unlimited authority, but firefighters are not generally permitted to do more than is reasonably necessary for the exigency. Courts assess the need and the response in light of what responders reasonably knew at the time. The controlling court case here is Bowditch v. Boston, 101 U.S. 16 (1879).

The exact authority, compensation rules, and potential liability also depend on the state and local law governing the fire department. Bowditch, for example, addressed a Massachusetts statutory compensation scheme, while the Fifth Circuit’s Baker v. City of McKinney limited its ruling against compensation to damage objectively necessary to prevent imminent harm during an active emergency.

So the question becomes: Was that path for the hose objectively necessary to gain access to the water supply? I would argue that there was a better path for that hose, and taking that alternate path to gain access to the water supply would have taken less time than breaking the windows on the car. Here is a picture of Engine 82 (the same exact fire truck). If you look at the area within the red circle, you will see that there is pump intake in the middle of the fire truck, and the yellow circle is the front bumper intake of the fire truck.

Looking at the video, the firefighters spent 41 seconds breaking out the windows on the car, and another full minute passing the hose through the car from the hydrant to the front intake. So, it was nearly two minutes to connect the hose by going through the car.

Now take a look from the video of the firefighters breaking the window:

Which method do you think would be faster? The question then turns, according to the court cases involved, was it necessary for the firefighters to break this car’s windows?

Note the New York firefighter who posted this admits they weren’t doing it to gain access to the hydrant, they did what they did to “deliver justice like this to the bad guys,” and also calling this an “act of justice.”

Delivering justice as some sort of ad hoc parking enforcement court is not the firefighters’ job. Go ahead, Google “FDNY engine 82 break car windows” and see just how many times FDNY is “delivering justice” by doing thousands of dollars in damage to car owners whose only transgression is illegal parking.

This is wrong. Had I done this in my department, I would have been fired, and rightfully so.

By Divemedic, ago

Watch

Watch how these cops walk on to this guy’s property. They are raiding his house because he called one of them out for speeding. Now imagine the guy whose home they are raiding is waiting for them.

By Divemedic, ago

Pearl Clutching

Trump excluded certain left leaning members of the MSM from the White House grounds. The left is losing their collective minds, claiming this to be an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment, and of course making comparisons to Hitler, their standard accusation. They have almost completely memory holed the fact that both Obama and Biden did the same thing.

In October 2009, amid a feud in which White House officials (including Communications Director Anita Dunn) publicly described Fox News as not a legitimate news organization but more like “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party” and said they would treat it “the way we would treat an opponent,” even while saying the network’s point of view was “ultimately destructive” to the nation, then ordered the Treasury Department to exclude a Fox journalist from a multi-network interview pool.

Obama’s administration was widely criticized by journalists (including from outlets not aligned with Fox) for tight control of information, fewer formal press conferences than many predecessors, restricted photographer access (favoring official White House images), delays or stonewalling on FOIA, and “blackballing” or limiting access for some critical reporters at agencies.

Obama’s efforts to plug leaks and persecute leakers even exceeded those of George W. Bush’s administration. The administration prosecuted Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, merely for discussing a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen, even going so far as to seize Associated Press phone records for two months and used the FBI to conduct surveillance on James Rosen (naming him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in one case) and New York Times reporter James Risen while trying to identify sources.

Even in earlier times, the actions were hardly unprecedented:

  • Woodrow Wilson investigated journalists critical of his administration by invoking the espionage act of 1917.
  • During the late 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt harassed activists, including members of the press, who sought to keep the United States out of the war raging in Europe.
  • Richard Nixon went to great lengths attempting to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers because those documents exposed how US policymakers repeatedly lied to Congress and the American people about the Vietnam War.

Cato institute has a lengthy article about the abuses of opposing press outlets by Presidents. As for my blog, I detailed how the Bush administration and Republicans used laws against pornography. One of the Florida enforcers of this is none other than Sheriff Grady Judd.

Christopher Michael Wilson was investigated by Judd because he ran a website that allowed people to post nude pictures of women on the site, and it required a credit card to access so that the Wilson would know that people accessing the site were adults. Military men deployed in the Iraq war complained that they could not do so while in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, because the web servers in those countries blocked credit cards from being processed by companies who promoted pornography. Because of this, Wilson allowed members proving they were deployed by posting pictures from the war zone to have access to the site. Because of those pictures, the site became a photo journal that chronicled the Iraq war. It was one of the first sites to publish the Abu Grhaib pictures that so embarrassed former President Bush. The pictures being posted to that site caused major problems for the Bush administration.

Judd arrested Wilson on 301 counts of distributing pornography, even though Wilson did not post the pictures, he merely ran a site where people posted content, and the servers were not in Polk County (they were in the Netherlands). A plea deal was reached where Wilson had to turn the website over to Judd.

Even though the charges themselves were over pornography, according to Judd, the investigation was because of the Iraq pictures, also according to Judd.

Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who broke the law in 2011 when they lobbied the state legislators to defeat the open carry law. I am one of the few people not on the left who think Judd is a grandstanding, authoritarian asshole. He also has previously engaged in arresting people who are critical of his policies, including arresting one woman for “lewd activity in the presence of a minor” because her neighbor and his child heard a “sexual sounding noise” coming from the woman’s home 48 days earlier. Of course, it was only a coincidence that the woman had been critical of the sheriff and his policies. The charges were dropped, but the woman had to sign an agreement to stop criticizing the sheriff.

Yeah, so using political power to silence dissent is nothing new. It’s been going on as long as we have had a nation. Both parties do it, but each claims the other is the evil one. I have news for you: they both are evil, power grabbing assholes who will stop at nothing to gain power.

By Divemedic, ago

Being Overrun

To those who keep supporting immigrants, watch as the city commission of Lake Worth Beach, FL disqualifies a candidate for City Manager because he isn’t Guatemalan and doesn’t speak Spanish.

By Divemedic, ago