Government

Enemy of the People

I want you to read this article. It’s a description of how Democrats used the power of government during the Biden administration to build a registry of everyone who donated to the Trump campaign. Capitol Police, who you will remember have an office in the Tampa area, are conducting surveillance of Republican members of Congress, their contacts, and their donors.

There is a huge effort by Federal agencies to create and maintain a list of Americans who are enemies of the revolution. The post office is keeping a list. All they have to do is see who you get mail from. The NRA? Second Amendment Foundation? Conservative fundraising? Think about the mail you get, and ask if someone could determine your political leanings by looking at your correspondence. It’s basic traffic analysis.

After all, a sitting member of Congress is the one who suggested that the government keep an “enemies list” so they can be confronted. Even the media joined in, including the “conservative blogger” who works for the Washington Post:

1. Lists of people interacting with Trump’s Twitter account—2023.
Smith’s office obtained a warrant requiring Twitter to disclose account interactions from October 2020 through January 2021. It expressly sought lists of users who followed, unfollowed, muted, blocked, or otherwise took specified actions toward Trump’s account. Reporting on the released warrant also identifies demands for lists of people who liked or retweeted his posts. This is a close parallel: investigators sought identifiable groups connected to Trump’s online activity.

2. Bank searches using “Trump” and “MAGA”—January–February 2021.
FinCEN shared methods with banks for reviewing transactions, including payment-message searches containing those political terms. Treasury’s February 2024 response acknowledged the terms but said they were intended to be considered alongside other suspicious-activity indicators.

3. Bank of America’s customer list supplied to the FBI—2021.
According to testimony reproduced in the House report, Bank of America supplied names of customers who used its cards in the Washington region January 5–7, 2021, with firearm-purchase information used to prioritize names. The FBI circulated information to field offices.

Separately, the FEC maintains searchable political-donor records, including Trump donors, under disclosure requirements applying across parties. Those are public campaign-finance records, a different category from investigative collection.

Now combine that with the location data that is being compiled by a nationwide network of Flock cameras.

These lists are going to eventually be used- whether officially, unofficially, or simply abused by those who have access. We’ve already seen some so-called “rogue cops” who are using them to stalk former and current lovers as well as targeting enemies. Make sure that you have robust contact with others who may be on the list. Once prominent people on the list begin to disappear, you will know that the lists are being used.

It is a sure sign of a dictatorship when there are mass arrests and disappearances. The Soviets even had a word for it- “vzyali” meaning “they have taken,” and there was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. They were feared. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested, because there were no charges and no trial. They simply disappeared. Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens.

The people who were vzyali were never put in jail. They weren’t executed, for the most part. No, they were put into camps where they were forced to work themselves to death. Read about the eight most evil gulags at this page, and remember that all communists wind up using their lists for this purpose.

By Divemedic, ago

Working Out On Your Dime

The Broward county sheriff built a $75 million gymnasium for his cops to use. The commissioners of the county want to investigate the expenditures, and voted 7-0 to open the facility up for inspection. The Sheriff is refusing, claiming it could endanger undercover officers who may be working out at the facility.

This is the ridiculous bullshit the cops always pull out-

“Oh, we are undercover, and there are criminals out there who are targeting us. That’s why we need money and nationwide weapons permits. You never know, some meter maid from Oregon might be on vacation at Disney with her family, and some criminal will attack them, which is why we need LEOSA.”

What this really is, is more of the same old, same old: government wasting your tax money to set themselves up as some sort of potentates who are living large on your dime. I don’t care if it’s cops, firemen, or the town clerk. There is no evidence of any criminals hunting down and attacking police officers, other than a few cases of Mafia members targeting FBI agents. Some cop from Bugtussle, Arkansas has no greater risk of being stalked and attacked by criminals than does anyone else in the public.

Still, there is one lever left to the county commission- cut off all or some funding of the Sheriff’s office until he permits the requested investigation.

In the meantime, I will vote to do the same, by voting for Amendment 3.

By Divemedic, ago

First Civil War

I’ve long said the Civil War of the 1860’s was not about slavery. At its core, that war was about the North pillaging the wealth of the Southern states. Profits were being secured by having the southern states nearly completely fund the federal government, and those same states were forced by tariffs into captive consumers of union manufactured goods. Protectionism at its most brutal.

The entire war was a way to steal the wealth of less populous states while cloaking the theft in the veneer of freeing the slaves.

The Tariff of 1828, which included very high duties on raw materials, raised the average tariff on imported goods to 45 percent. The Mid-Atlantic states were the biggest supporters of the new tariff. Southerners, who imported all of their industrial products, strongly opposed this tariff. 

The tariff was nominally created to repay the debts incurred after the War of 1812. This wasn’t actually the case. By 1832 the national debt was paid and there was no reason for this tariff. What actually happened was that the tariff created a favorable situation for the North, who benefited greatly from such high taxes at the expense of the South. Since the Southern states didn’t produce manufactured goods, they were forced to buy those goods from either Europe or the Northern states. Since the South also needed to sell their agricultural goods in Europe, this created a situation where the Southern states were paying roughly 75% of all American taxes.

The Southern states just didn’t want to pay the tariffs, and began refusing to do so. (This idea of “State nullification” of Federal laws that states didn’t feel were constitutional was first advanced by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.) The states, led by South Carolina, declared the tariff null and void, and simply refused to pay.

So in 1833, the “Force Bill” was passed, allowing the president to use whatever force he deemed necessary, including the military, to collect taxes owed by the Southern states. Along came Lincoln, who campaigned on a platform of putting the tariffs back in place so that his sponsors could again enjoy the profits that the protectionist scheme caused.

Then it came to pass that in 1861, a new tax was passed, the Morrill Tariff. This tariff was the highest tax in American history to that point, and taxed imports at over 45%, with imported iron products taxed at 50%. This forced the South to buy northern iron products from the North at whatever prices the North wanted to charge. Victorious Republicans cheered the heavy taxes that benefitted the Northern industrialists who had backed Lincoln’s campaign.

The South announced that it no longer wanted to be a part of a union where they would be robbed in order to make northern businessmen wealthy. They seceded. The north still enforced the tariffs using military force.

Draw your own parallels as you realize the Union states were nothing more than thieves who were using the power of the Federal government and an Army as a means of stealing the wealth of others. No different from the DSA party movement of today.

By Divemedic, ago

Mostly Fraud

I’m convinced at this point that more than half of all government spending is just fraud and corruption:

This is pretty widespread at every level of government. I am going to vote to cut every tax I can. That’s why I am voting for Amendment 3. (Yeah, I know that A3 is about local and county taxes, but it’s a tax.)

Why, someone should do a comprehensive investigation:

By Divemedic, ago

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