Government

Wasting Time and Money

This is an event designed for charity, where students placed boxes of donated cereal as if they were dominoes. Apparently, schools all over the United States participated.

Racine, Wisconsin’s Red Apple Elementary placed 7,000 boxes of cereal. Here is the story behind it:

Glad to see that property tax money is being spent so efficiently. See, the taxpayers of Racine Wisconsin are paying these schools to educate children and have every expectation that their money isn’t being wasted. Instead of learning, these kids are playing dominos, meanwhile the students at this school are only score 26% at or above proficiency in math compared to the Wisconsin state average of 40% to 55%. In reading, 38% proficient, with a state average as high as 53%, Science they scored 44% proficient, compared to the state average of 53%, and social studies saw them 50% proficient with a state average of 63%.

Other schools that participated in this are no better. Watervliet Elementary School in Watervliet, New York, should be more concerned that 33% of students are proficient in math, 33% in reading, and 28% in science.

In fact, our schools are a total waste of time and money. We are pouring money down a black hole, and have turned schools from a place of education into a taxpayer funded daycare center. Schools need to get back on task and stop wasting time and money on this shit.

The state AVERAGE is only about half of students know how to read, write, and perform arithmetic, and these schools can’t even manage that anemic standard.

It’s not just teachers. There are teachers who care and are quite good at what they do. Then there are the parents who just don’t give a shit. Students who tell teachers (quite literally) to go fuck themselves, and administrators who do absolutely nothing about it. Truancy laws are generally ignored, with about 22% of all students being chronically absent (meaning absent more than 10% of the time). In urban schools (which are overwhelmingly black), that number rises to more than 30% of students being chronically absent.

When the kids DO come to school, they spend their time playing dominos with cereal boxes instead of learning.

By Divemedic, ago

Better Than You

One of the things I don’t like about some of the dickheads in the military is how they denigrate their comrades in the service. The “You weren’t in the shit like I was, so your service doesn’t count for as much as mine did” bullshit. Like this:

Everyone who served had a job to do, and none of those who served could have done their job as well without the contributions of every one of those who were there. The Army can’t fight without tanks, fuel, ammo, and other supplies. That takes a Navy to keep sea lanes open.

The Marines open the beachhead. They need follow on heavier troops from the Army. The Air Force and Navy provide air support. It’s a cooperative mission. Stop tearing down the others who served. You did your job, so did they. It’s not a dick measuring contest.

I had an Army guy at a previous job tell me my job didn’t count because he was Army, and my service in the Navy was just sitting at sea, watching TV.

By Divemedic, ago

Regret

One regret I still have is not following my gut. There was a day, I think it was in 2001 or 2002, when an old lady came to the fire station. She pulled up on to the driveway while another firefighter and I were doing some training with our brush truck. (We were standing on the back of it, playing with the water.)

She told me her husband, a Vietnam war veteran, had passed away. She told me she didn’t know what to do with some of his old things and decided to bring them to us. In the trunk of her car was an ammo can. Inside of that can was half a dozen hand grenades. I still regret letting the cops know about it. The bomb squad came out and took possession of them.

I also know a guy who was a Combat Engineer. He had a few blocks of C4 and some detonators located in ammo cans in his garage. I forget the guys name, but I am sure he turned them in. yeah.

I am thinking there is a lot more military ammo and ordinance out there than anyone knows about. Remember the M60 that turned up in a Chicago buyback? How about the time that National Guard unit lost an M240? (It was never found) In fact, the US military loses about 200 weapons a year, on average, that they know about. Many times, a weapon goes missing and it’s covered up by people who don’t want to get in hot water.

By Divemedic, ago

Stolen Cars

The person who stole that car isn’t a car thief. No, they are an undocumented car owner. It’s unfair to take a car from the person who needs it, as this is their only transportation, their only way to get to their job and earn money to feed their families.

That’s why I am proposing a path to car ownership. Once a person has been in possession of a car for 24 months, there should be an automatic title issued on that vehicle to the person that’s in possession of it. They’ve been working, paying taxes, and using that car to contribute to the economy. That’s only fair.

That’s the argument being made here:

By Divemedic, ago

Feeding the World

The Orlando Sentinel did a story this week about several families who can’t afford to eat because those mean people won’t give them food stamps.

For starters, no one in that picture is missing meals. Every one of them is overweight. Next, let’s talk about the facts involved here. The woman, Keaidy Bennett, is a so-called “freelance writer” which to me means “unemployed writer who occasionally sells a story.”

So I looked her up. She has an Amazon page. It turns out that she is a liar or a grifter. Here is the bio from that page:

Keaidy Bennett is a poet, publisher, ghostwriter, and advocate whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling and strategy. For more than thirteen years, she has run LexxiKhan Presents Publishing, a hybrid publishing house that has produced over 150 bestselling titles and partnered with clients ranging from first-time authors to Fortune 500 executives and professional athletes.

Her debut, Charge It to the Game, follows protagonist Tamia Santiago through an Afro-Latina coming-of-age story that traditional publishers passed on, so Keaidy published it herself. That decision became the foundation of everything she has built since, including her managed imprints, Moxey’s Way Publishing and 2 Crowns Publishing, along with her media ventures.

A former debate student, Keaidy brings the same discipline and clarity to her advocacy work as she does to her writing, with a long history of involvement in domestic violence advocacy and memoir work centered on transformation and reclaiming narrative. She writes under her own name because every story she tells, and every author she serves, deserves to be met with that same honesty.

She lives and works in Central Florida, where she continues to write, publish, and build platforms for authors who refuse to let a “no” be the end of their story.

There is more to the story. She was married and living in Fort Worth until she filed for divorce from her husband in 2020. She talks about how she wishes her and her husband had kept their home and lived in it together after the divorce.

I pay $1,598 for my townhome, and with extras like internet and the in-unit washer and dryer, it comes to almost $2,000 a month. It’s more than our previous mortgage of $1,738.

The number of stories written by and about this woman tells you her real career- she is a story teller for the media. She makes up sob stories. In this story, it wasn’t a marriage that just fell apart, but one in which she fled the marriage because he was abusing her.

In fact, her company (a publishing company) claims over $250,000 a year in sales.

But she needs your tax dollars to feed her and her fat kids.

By Divemedic, ago

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