Government

Military Experts

I get so sick of people claiming to be experts with firearms because they earned a ribbon in the military. Let be give you a great example of that:

To support his supposed opinion, he makes the appeal to authority, claiming, well…

The Coast Guard pistol qualifier consisted of 30 shots taken from 3 yards out to 15 yards, with every shot worth up to five points. Expert requires the shooter to score 143 points or more, or about 96% of the scored shots earning the maximum of 5 points. So how hard is that? Here is a picture of the Coast Guard target.

The colored zones are worth from 1 to 5 points. The target is 25 inches by 40 inches. The 5 point zone is 8 inches by 14 inches, making the maximum 5 point area much larger than the IDPA 8 inch -0 zone. Here is where the course gets easy. A total of 48 shots are fired, and the best 30 of those shots are the ones that are scored. The rest of them are considered “practice shots” and are essentially scored as mulligans.

DistanceTotal rounds in published sequence
3 yards12
7 yards12
15 yards24
Total48

So to REALLY take a look at what it takes to be a Coast Guard pistol expert, the shooter fires 48 shots. Of those, only 60 percent of them have to hit the center of the target. The shots have to be fired in a certain about of time:

DistanceStringTime
3 yardsDraw and fire 24 sec
3 yardsDraw and fire 24 sec
3 yardsFire 2, reload, fire 210 sec
3 yardsDraw and fire 4, including a hand transition8 sec
7 yardsSame four strings4, 4, 10 and 8 sec
15 yardsDraw and fire 24 sec
15 yardsDraw and fire 24 sec
15 yardsDraw and fire 48 sec
15 yardsFire 4, reload, fire 420 sec
15 yardsKneel and fire 820 sec

I want you to note that not one of those stages says, “Draw, rack the slide, fire two.” Instead, he uses as an example, a Coastie shooting himself in the leg as his reasoning for not carrying one in the chamber. I pray this one is satire.

By Divemedic, ago

Navy Food

There is a lot of press on the Navy and the conditions on its ships. Let’s talk about a few of them:

Water

  • An aircraft carrier makes about 400,000 gallons of water per day through distillation. The total amount of water used is not just for personnel use. Water use is prolific.
  • Galleys: Preparing roughly 18,000 meals daily, beverages, washing produce, cleaning equipment, and operating dishwashers.
  • Laundry: Several thousand people generate an enormous daily laundry load. This includes the main ship’s laundry, uniform washing, linens, towels, and medical laundry.
  • Aircraft maintenance: Fresh-water washing removes salt from aircraft and engines to prevent corrosion. The Navy considers this mission-essential even during water restrictions.
  • Steam catapults: Roughly 200 gallons’ water-equivalent per launch. One hundred launches would represent about 20,000 gallons.
  • Reactor and steam plants: High-purity makeup water replaces losses in the propulsion, electrical-generation, and auxiliary steam systems. Most water circulates repeatedly, but leakage, sampling, maintenance, and steam losses require replacement.
  • Medical and dental spaces: Sterilizers, scrub sinks, laboratory work, patient care, and sanitation.
  • Ship cleaning and sanitation: Galley decks, berthing, heads, workshops, food-service spaces, and garbage-processing areas.
  • Closed-loop machinery systems: Air-conditioning chilled water and other cooling or heating circuits normally recirculate their water, but require makeup water.
  • Potable-water-system maintenance: Tank cleaning, flushing repaired piping, testing, leakage, and maintaining tank reserves.

During my six years living on a carrier, we were constantly placed on water restrictions. There were days when we couldn’t shower. We heard a constant round of complaining from the CO that he wanted us to use less than 22 gallons per person, per day.

For that reason, the Navy has special shower heads for enlisted showers that require you to hold down a stiff button to get water. Showers that simply run like the ones in your home are referred to as “Hollywood showers” and are not permitted.

Food

The food on submarines is top notch. While the food on aircraft carriers isn’t as high quality, it’s still plentiful. There were multiple dining facilities. Let me demonstrate:

  • There are three dining facilities for officers (called wardrooms) onboard. I never worked or ate in any of them, so I can’t give more details than that.
  • The Captain’s mess is for the commanding officer to have private meals with anyone he invites to dine with him.
  • There is a similar dining facility called the Admiral’s mess for the embarked Admiral and his invitees.
  • There is a chief’s mess for Chief Petty Officers (E-7 through E-9)
  • There are three different dining halls for enlisted crew members (E-1 through E-6) called the mess decks: Forward, Aft, and the Bar (which was connected to and adjacent to the Aft mess decks)

The forward mess decks specialized in fast, grab and go items like hamburgers (sliders), hot dogs (rollers), cereal, boiled eggs, sandwiches made of ham, egg, and cheese, and other quick options.

The aft mess decks were for hot meals. There were usually multiple options there- two or more main dishes to choose from, sides, vegetables, bread, and dessert.

The bar was what it sounds like- a buffet option where salads, a taco bar, a baked potato bar were available. Sailors could assemble those items with common toppings.

Here is the schedule for the enlisted dining:

  • 0100-0330: The forward mess decks open for “Jet setters,” a meal of boiled eggs, cereal, and egg sandwiches.
  • 0400-0800: Breakfast on both the forward and aft mess decks
  • 1000-1200 The bar is open
  • 1100-1400 Lunch is served on both the forward and aft mess decks. Full lunch aft, sandwiches, burgers, and dogs as well as fries and sometimes pizza forward.
  • 1400-1600: The bar is open
  • 1600-1900: Forward and Aft mess decks open for dinner
  • 2100-0100: Aft mess decks open for “midrats” which is usually composed of leftovers from dinner, as well as cold cuts to make sandwiches.

There were choices, and as you can see, there was somewhere and something to eat 19.5 hours per day. In addition, there were multiple stores for sailors to purchase snacks, chips, candy bars, etc.. The Navy calls that stuff “geedunk” and it is sold onboard. The third deck has the ship’s “mall” where things like soap, uniform items, stationery, geedunk, and other things can be bought. It’s on the 3rd deck, next to the post office. Six floors higher, on the 03 level, there was the “Seven-11” where geedunk was for sale. It was located next to the ship’s barber shop, which offered free haircuts. On the second deck, next to the video arcade between the personnel offices and the aft mess decks, there were half a dozen soda and snack machines.

You could always eat. Now I will say that I didn’t always like the food, but there was always plenty of it. Our mess cooks had a high number of Philipinos, and that caused us to eat a lot of adobo and other foods from that nation. I didn’t like that. I tried not to eat on the forward mess decks because I didn’t want to eat a lot of junk, but sometimes I did because the lines to eat aft were long, especially when the food being served aft was good.

On the nights when there was steak, pizza, spaghetti, lobster, or other popular meals, a person could wait in line for an hour or more to eat. My duties didn’t permit me that kind of time, so I would eat a slider from forward. We would get steak and/or lobster about once per month when deployed.

The food was repetitive sometimes, because the mess cooks would screw up and order too much of something. They would get creative in naming it, in an attempt to make us forget we were eating the same meal every day for a week. First it was steamship round, then Yankee pot roast, Savory Roast beef, Prime rib, beef stew, pepper steak, etc,. We once ate chicken at every meal for 14 days straight. Even for breakfast.

Once we were at sea for 45 days or longer, each Friday we would have pizza and pasta night. During that meal, each sailor who wanted it could have two non-alcoholic beers. The enlisted got O’Douls, the chiefs and officers got Sharp’s.

I was once assigned to a working party that was onloading food at the pier in Norfolk. It sucked, because we were carrying food onboard while it was snowing. Four of us ducked into an electrical load center with a box of donuts and hid in there, snacking. The issue is that we had to get rid of the evidence or we would have been caught. So we ate the entire box. There are 144 donuts in a box. The donuts were lemon filled. Eating 3 dozen donuts made me sick. I couldn’t stand the taste of lemon filling for years after that.

Did we bitch about it? Of course we did. Our command Master Chief (the senior enlisted man onboard) used to say “A bitching sailor is a happy sailor. When they stop complaining and the crew goes silent, that’s when trouble is brewing.” The difference is that today, the sailors have social media and combined with the press looking for any reason to slam the military (and by extension, Trump) the complaints are getting traction in the press.

What should the CO do? Cut off all access to social media for the entire crew. Then have the crew scrub and paint the entire ship until it sparkles, now that they have so much free time. That way, they can’t post videos of mold in the showers or dirty berthing areas because they will be clean.

When I was an E-3, I spent a lot of time needle gunning, painting, buffing and polishing floors, and scrubbing the gadoogin deck edges. In fact, about a third of your workday is spent cleaning things when you are E-3 and below. That’s the real motivation to be promoted- you aren’t a janitor any longer.

By Divemedic, ago

Forfeiture

Brought to you by the same people who keep your cash if they find it in your car during a traffic stop:

Police request public’s help to find suspect who picked up $30 off ground in Walmart

Since they couldn’t solve the case of the murder of 9 year old Nigel Brown and the charges against his killer, Gerdnardric Pittman, were dropped by the District Attorney’s office, I would have taken my chances. This would never have gone to court.

Black men who murder 9 year old white kids walk free, but an old white man who finds 30 bucks on the ground are the subject of nationwide manhunts.

By Divemedic, ago

Oh Dear Lord

This is why our military is spending so much time whining, it’s filled with faggots. Its become a jobs program instead of a war machine.

By Divemedic, ago

I’m Sure Most of Them Aren’t Like This

Just this past February, an FHP trooper was driving down US 192 near Melbourne and sawa a motorcycle blow by him in the opposite direction at 111 mph. He is heard to say on his dash camera: “That guy’s going to jail,” as he turned the car around to give chase.

I know this area well. There is a spot not far from where this stop took place where the road enters a curve and the speed limit drops from 45 to 35. I took my foot off the gas and entered the curve. When the curve ended, I saw a cop sitting there. I got a speeding ticket for going 42 in a 35.

FHP troopers are well known for ticketing everyone. After all, traffic enforcement is their entire job. That’s all they do. Florida has a law called the “super speeder law,” making it a crime to drive more than 100 mph. First time offenders can face up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor. It also turns out the rider didn’t have a motorcycle endorsement. In Florida, you must have a motorcycle endorsement on your license in order to operate a motorcycle. FHP troopers are well known for ticketing everyone. After all, traffic enforcement is their entire job. That’s all they do. This motorcyclist was in a world of trouble.

Or he would have been, except the motorcycle rider was a fellow cop that had worked for Brevard County as a Deputy since 2024. Not just any cop, he is the Brevard county Deputy of the Year. He was awarded the medal of valor for shooting a suicidal man he had claimed charged him with a knife. One same day as the awards ceremony, the deputy’s ex-girlfriend sent an email to the sheriff’s office detailing numerous allegations against the deputy. They are pretty serious (see below).

Back to the traffic stop: The entire stop was caught on the trooper’s dash cam. Since the stop had been called in, the trooper had to do SOMETHING, so the cop returned to his patrol car and called his sergeant for advice. The sergeant told the trooper it was up to him what he did, so the Deputy got a citation for 9 mph over the speed limit. The deputy has resigned so as to avoid being terminated and losing his ability to be a cop somewhere else.

This story would have been enough for a blog post on its own, but there is more, far more to the story.

The email from Deputy Crime Wave’s ex-girlfriend caused some of his crimes to come to light:

  • placing his department issued firearm in his ex-girlfriend’s mouth and pointing it at the back of her head during sex
  • making an inappropriate Facetime call from his patrol car while wearing his uniform as he masturbated
  • appearing to perform a “Nazi salute” in a photograph captured shortly before he was hired as a deputy
  • using racially insensitive language in text messages, calling some of the people he came into contact with “niggers”
  • accessing the agency’s Flock camera license plate reader system to stalk his ex-girlfriend

After Sheriff Wayne Ivey expressed his intent to terminate the Deputy of the Year, he resigned. Even though the Sherriff’s department’s investigation revealed criminal acts on the part of the Deputy, there is no indication that he was criminally charged or even investigated. It turns out the FHP trooper’s stop wasn’t the first time he had been stopped for the same offense- there were at least four occasions in two months while riding his motorcycle off duty. 

The investigation of this one man crime wave eventually caught up other cops, including the FHP trooper. The FHP’s Office of Professional Compliance is reviewing the trooper’s actions.

“Trooper (Joshua) Provencher was aware that Deputy Fultz’s speed, along with the traffic conditions which made his speed a danger to other drivers, met the statutory criminal requirements for the new ‘super speeder law’,” sheriff’s investigators wrote. “Deputy Fultz admitted the speeds at which he was travelling did violate the ‘super speeder’ law, and he was aware that BCSO and FHP were in a current campaign to aggressively curtail excessive and unlawful speeding.”

This isn’t a story about one criminal wearing a badge, as bad as that would be. This deputy was caught multiple times (at least four) violating the law, but other cops let him go. The FHP trooper in this story even called his supervisor, who also told the trooper it was fine to let him go.

There are people who read this blog that would say I am anti-cop. That’s nonsense. I just want cops held to the same standards as the rest of us. Others would say this cop is just a bad apple. That’s also nonsense- at least five other cops permitted this behavior and let him go when the law clearly demanded they do something.

The FHP trooper falsified documents, showed favoritism, and his Sergeant was a willing accomplice with a “It’s up to you whether or not you let him go,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

This is a widespread practice amongst cops, although many or even most will deny it. There are bad cops, then there are also good cops who overlook the criminal of the bad cops because they are cops, which makes all of them bad cops.

That’s the reason why we as a society need to limit the powers we grant to our police, and need to closely supervise and monitor them.

Source Material

111 mph: Brevard Deputy of the Year avoids arrest under Florida ‘Super Speeder’ law

Brevard Deputy of the Year quits after ‘egregious misconduct’ exposed

FHP reviewing traffic stop of Florida deputy caught speeding 111 mph

By Divemedic, ago

Glimpse Into Navy Life

When I was in the Navy, all of the electricians E-6 and below lived in one large compartment on the ass end of the second deck (that’s one deck below the hanger, 5 decks below the flight deck) directly below the jet engine repair shop. The electricians (EM and IC) all 250 or so of us, were in a compartment that ran the width of the ship, and about 40 feet in length. We shared that space with the machinists, so in all, there were about 500 people who lived in an area of about 6000 square feet. We shared 4 urinals, 10 commodes, 8 sinks, and 10 shower stalls.

The floor above us had the jet engine shop, where they would test jet engines at full throttle, day and night. Directly below us were the two steering gear rooms, machinery rooms with loud hydraulic systems in them to turn the ship’s rudders. There was never a quiet time in that space while we were at sea.

Imagine the smell of 500 men who all work 16 hour days (or more) in hot machinery spaces, all crammed into a relatively small compartment, body odor, farts, and snoring all combining with the never-ending noise of a ship at sea. There were days the smell was truly horrific. Six people were assigned to clean this compartment on a rotating basis- one E-4, and five E-3 and below. The duty was referred to as “coop cleaning.” Those six people had numerous duties, including cleaning the floors, the heads, and also doing the laundry.

In this compartment, there were twelve large laundry bins, marked “colors” and “whites.” Each person would toss their clothes into the bins- you tie your socks in a knot through the belt loops of your pants, toss them and your shirts in the colors bin, then toss underwear and t-shirts into the whites bin. Twice a week, the coop cleaners would empty those bins and take them down to the ship’s laundry for cleaning. It would usually be 300-400 pounds of laundry. Imagine the smell of the whites bin with 750 pairs of sweaty underwear in them.

When the laundry had been washed and dried, the coop cleaners would return them to your bunk (unfolded), which was easy to do, since all uniforms had your name on them, with one exception. The coop cleaners would select the pair of underwear with the largest skid mark, and post them on the bulletin board with a sign over it that read “skid mark of the week.” Since your name is on your underwear, everyone knew whose they were.

There was one particular guy who always seemed to win that particular contest. His skid marks were so incredibly large, they had to be done on purpose. It was pretty disgusting and unbelievable.

By Divemedic, ago

Stop Playing Around

When I was in the military, I spent a bit of time as part of the Master at Arms force. One of our duties was escorting prisoners from the brig to various places: chow, to courts martial, medical appointments, etc.

When we were escorting them, we carried sidearms and deadly force was authorized to prevent their escape. We were permitted to use deadly force on the prisoner or on anyone who was attempting to help the prisoner escape.

With that in mind, watch this video of foreign nationals attacking Federal law enforcement in the performance of their duties in an attempt to assist another foreign national in escaping custody.

It wouldn’t take that many. Once a few get shot, the rest will stop doing this shit. The only reason this happens is because we allow it to happen with almost no consequences.

By Divemedic, ago

Crazy

A man broke up with his girlfriend. That morning, she claims to have been getting her hair done and had a “hunch” he would be at another woman’s house. She showed up there and began attacking him. He left in his car, she followed him and kept ramming his car with her own. Hey, the old saying is “don’t put your dick in crazy.” It’s even worse when the crazy woman who is ramming your car happens to be a police officer.

So what was name of this hunch that allowed the woman to find him? I think there is a good chance it wasn’t really a hunch, but was instead Flock.

In a side note, the police department she worked for was recently mentioned in this blog when one of its patrol supervisors was doing 124 miles per hour with lights and sirens on because he was late for work.

By Divemedic, ago

Games

The window for gun rights to be won in court is closing. Democrats are trying to game the court because they are convinced the court is political. Of course it is, and everyone has known it for the past 100 years. That’s why there is such a fight every time a vacancy appears on the court. That’s why they are trying to do anything they can to make the court a permanent rubber stamp for their own agenda.

The Democrats had friends in justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor and Lewis F. Powell Jr., all Republican-appointed justices whose votes often swung to the left. Now the justices largely vote with the party of the President who nominated them. Thanks to some maneuvering by the Republicans and a bit of stupidity and vanity on the part of Democrats, the Republican party has a bit of an advantage on the court, something they hadn’t been able to say for decades.

  • Antonin Scalia died under mysterious circumstances in 2016. Mitch McConnell managed to delay a vote on his replacement until after the 2016 election. Democrats, convinced that Hillary was a lock for the White House, went along with it. That put Neil Gorsuch on the bench and infuriated the left.
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg, trying to hold on to staying in office forever, managed to die during the last year of Trump’s first term. Republicans, not being as dumb as they usually are, were smart enough to replace her with Amy Barret, who hasn’t really been a stalwart Republican vote.

Leftist professors argue “This is the first time where you have a court where the ideology really maps onto partisan affiliation,” which is patently and verifiably false. The courts were left leaning for decades before Trump managed to shift the court more to the right. Anyone who says differently is either foolish or lying. The court would regularly tie itself in knots to rubber stamp things like Obamacare and the NFA.

Make no mistake, the left is doing everything it can to seize control of the nation and take it down the path to communism.

By Divemedic, ago