Government

Dangers of Imagination

A middle school in the Orlando area was placed on lockdown after a student was seen carrying a clarinet by an automated weapons detection system, which decided the child’s clarinet was actually a gun. My thoughts here are that your automated weapons detection system sucks. That isn’t how the principal of the school saw it, however.

A student was walking in the hallway, holding a musical instrument as if it were a weapon, which triggered the Code Red to activate. While there was no threat to campus, I’d like to ask you to speak with your student about the dangers of pretending to have a weapon on a school campus.

What danger was there, actually? None. No one was hurt. No one could be hurt. The real danger was that your system doesn’t work correctly, and it caused unnecessary panic. Not only that, but just like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it creates alarm fatigue in that people will be less likely to believe future calls for lockdowns when they remember all of the times that they were forced to hide because of stupid nonsense like this.

By Divemedic, ago

Divide

What we have here is a sharp divide. On the right, there are those who want immigration laws enforced.

On the left, there are those who want open borders and unlimited money giveaways, just not their own money.

This is nothing new. America has been sharply divided many times before: Vietnam, civil rights, women’s suffrage, the temperance movement, and the trade war that brought about the civil war.

What makes today a problem that’s as serious as 1860 is the the judiciary is just as polarized and perfectly willing to twist the law and the constitution to fit their own views.

Thats evident in the Trump kangaroo courts, and in many immigration hearings. Read this one for an example.

When this illegal couple was approached by ICE, they attempted to flee to a local police station in the belief that the cops would rescue them from the Feds.

By Divemedic, ago

Guns Aren’t Probable Cause

A man is pulled over by the police for a minor traffic infraction. He notifies the cop that he is carrying a firearm and hands over his concealed weapons permit. The cop said: “Once I knew he had a gun, that gave me reason to search for more contraband.” Note that the cop had no reason to believe that there was any crime being committed- after all, the man had a permit and had notified the cop that he was carrying. Still, the cop used that information to pull the man from his car, handcuff him, and leave him locked in the back seat of his patrol car for more than 30 minutes while the cop tore through and searched his vehicle.

I had a similar run in back in 2001 with an Orange county deputy in Orlando, and he threatened to kill me. That’s why I don’t tell cops shit. In this case, the victim of this roid raging idiot sued. Anyhow, here is a lawyer’s take on this case.

Some of the things that this lawyer says, and I grant that they are sensible pieces of advice, is upsetting to me. They are:

  • Keep your hands visible
  • Don’t make any sudden moves
  • Don’t reach for anything, not even your wallet

Because cops are nervous, they tend to overreact, and will assume that you are about to use a weapon.

Cops are basically scared little boys with weapons and carte blanche to use them to kill you. That’s a bad combination, and something that speaks volumes about American law and American policing. You are the enemy and a threat- despite the fact that there are 20 million traffic stops per year and only about 120 of them result in cops being shot. (That’s a 0.000006% chance that any given traffic stop will involve cops being shot.) Cops are more likely to have a heart attack on duty, yet they don’t go around shooting people that sell fatty food.

By Divemedic, ago

Zone 2

With this news, Salt Lake City is now a Zone 2 city- authorities have ceded some measure of lawful control to Antifa.

By Divemedic, ago

Uh, Drug Dealer

A woman is complaining that her husband is refusing to take his medication or eat because he is being held in Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz. He is asking to be deported because he now hates this country.

They are calling it inhumane and have complained to Amnesty International.

The rest of the story?

He is an illegal immigrant that has had a deportation order for nearly 30 years since he was convicted of being a Cocaine dealer.

I don’t care. Ship his criminal ass back to Cuba. We don’t need more criminal drug dealers. We have plenty of those already.

By Divemedic, ago

Smoke and Mirrors

I know that I tackled this one 16 years ago, but after eighteen years of running this blog, there are very few topics that I haven’t mentioned. The left loves to claim that Clinton ran a budget surplus when he was President. That is false. The national debt actually went up every single year that he was President. The reason that they can claim this, is the money was moved from one account to the other.

Let me explain:

Let’s say that your wife is angry that you are spending all of your money on guns and booze, and is afraid that you are maxing out the credit cards. You show her the bank statements from the checking account, and low and behold, your balance is larger now than it was a year ago: “See?” you say, “We have a positive cash flow.”

But what you didn’t show your wife was that the only reason your checking account is larger is that you borrowed the money from the kids’ college fund. It’s cool, your kids are only 8 and 6 years old. You have more than a decade to pay yourself back. It will be fine. It doesn’t count as debt, because you owe it to yourself.

That’s going to cost you later, because your wife is going to be pissed when she gets ready to send the crotch critters off to college, but that’s a problem for future you to deal with.

Well, that is exactly what the government did. They took the money from the Social Security Trust fund and used that money to cover the deficit. Every administration since 1983 has used Social Security surpluses to mask deficits elsewhere.

Politicians love the unified budget because it lets them:

  • Spend more
  • Claim fiscal discipline
  • Avoid raising taxes
  • Increase total debt hidden inside trust fund obligations

Gen Z keeps bitching about how “Boomers” are making life hard on them because housing costs or something. This is not how the previous generations really screwed them. The Silent Generation (those born between 1928-1945- my parents’ generation) were young adults when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, establishing it as part of the New Deal to help workers and the elderly during the Great Depression. The architects of this deal were the Greatest Generation (born 1901-1927), led by FDR.

What Social Security was, was a plan for the Silent generation to be made whole because the Greatest generation screwed up the nation’s economy. In order to prevent the silent generation from stringing people up from lampposts, the Social Security Ponzi scheme was invented. This permitted the Silent generation to be taken care of in their older years, despite the fact that the Greatest generation had wiped out everyone’s retirement nest eggs.

At the same time this was being done, FDR also eliminated the domestic gold standard. In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt:

  • Prohibited the private ownership of gold bullion
  • Stopped redeeming dollars for gold inside the U.S.
  • Devalued the dollar

But at this time:

  • The Greatest Generation (born ~1901–1927) were young adults
  • The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945) were children
  • Baby Boomers had not yet been born

So this step did NOT involve Boomers.

The greatest generation had spent all of the silent generation’s money on booze, coke, and hookers, so the silent generation was reimbursed by stealing the future earnings of their children, the baby boomers. Like all Ponzi schemes, the people who got in early made the most money, and those who got in late are paying the bills. The older generations got way more than they paid in, but have ignored how badly they shafted their descendants.

In 1971, Richard Nixon permanently ended the ability of foreign governments to convert U.S. dollars into gold and this is what truly created our modern fiat currency system. This is the event almost everyone refers to when they ask about “who eliminated the gold standard.” Who were the key players?

  • Richard Nixon (born 1913) → Greatest Generation
  • His advisors (Shultz, Connally, Burns) → Greatest & Silent Generations
  • Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) were young adults, entering the workforce, or still teenagers.

Although Boomers didn’t decide the change, the fiat-dollar economy that followed became the system they lived their entire adult lives under, and which they defended politically as they took leadership roles in the 1980s–2000s. To understand how bad of an idea Social Security really is, let’s look at the math:

Let’s say that a person put $4100 per year into a retirement account that is earning 8% per year. This would simulate a person making $33,000 per year and the 12.4% Social Security tax is invested instead of being given to the government, who will quite literally spend it on booze and hookers. We will compare that to Social Security.

After working for 47 years, the person turns 65 and decides to retire. They have contributed a total of $192,700 into their account. If that money had gone to Social Security, their monthly benefit would be $2800. If they had instead invested that money as above, the balance on the account would be $1,856,890. It would earn $12,379 per month in interest. We have all been screwed out of our money.

So now generations that comprise the Millennials and GenZ are likely not going to get anything near what they are paying in, because all of it is gone. It’s been spent. That fund is nothing but a file cabinet full of several trillion dollars in IOU’s, but there is no money in there.

That is why the younger generations should be angry- they were robbed of their future earnings nearly 100 years before they were even born. They were born into a life of slavery. It wasn’t the Boomers who did it- it was the Greatest generation and the Silent generation- if you are GenZ, you were robbed by your great-great grandparents.

The system is insolvent. There isn’t enough money in the world to cover the debts created by that system. Currently, Social Security owes everyone about $75 trillion more than we have to pay- an amount that is double what our national debt already is- in other words our national debt isn’t $34 trillion, it’s more like $107 trillion. If you total all of the money in the world: every nation, every currency, every ounce of gold, it comes up to $134 trillion.

In other words, we are on the cusp of owing more money than actually exists. Even the official national debt of $34 trillion wouldn’t be eliminated if the government confiscated every 401k, IRA, 457 plan, and all other retirement accounts. The retirement accounts of US citizens are only worth about $31 trillion.

We are about to see a collapse of the US economy, and with it, the world economy. It’s inevitable.

By Divemedic, ago

Heretics

The left is angry (aren’t they always?) because Oklahoma University has suspended one of its professors. Why was he suspended? He gave an assignment to his class on transgenderism. The assignment was a 650-word essay reacting to an article about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender.

In her essay, Samantha Fulnecky argued that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes. She cited the Bible to support her stance that eliminating gender in society would be “detrimental” because that would put people “farther from God’s original plan for humans.”

She received a zero on the assignment, not because she didn’t conform to the rubric, but because she didn’t conform to the professor’s opinion. The assignment doesn’t even require the students to be on topic or to apply anything they’re learning from the curriculum to the topic, but rather just to have read and reacted to the article. The grading standard for the assignment was 25 points, based upon the following criteria:

  • The paper shows a clear tie in to the assigned article (10 points)
  • The paper shows a thoughtful reaction to the article, rather than just a summary of what it said (10 points)
  • That the paper was clearly written(5 points)

Here is the paper:

In my opinion, the student DID have a clear tie in, so 10 points there. I would have given probably 7 points on the thoughtful reaction, and perhaps a 2 out of 5 for the last point, because the paper was poorly organized and had some errors in punctuation and format, not to mention that she apparently doesn’t know what a paragraph is. Still, that would have been 19/25, or a 76%, which is solid C.

Ms. Fulnecky responded to the zero she received by filing a complaint for religious discrimination. The professor was suspended and the student’s grade was restored. As it should have been. She did the assignment, and should not be penalized for having an opinion that differed from the professor’s.

The professor gave her a low grade, but he was the one who made an error. I was a teacher for a few years, and I would occasionally give writing assignments just like this one. I would grade the papers based upon their use of logic, writing skill, and proper use of source material. I didn’t care which side of the issue the paper took, as long as it was well written. My mantra was that teachers are here to teach you HOW to think, but not to teach you WHAT to think. This professor isn’t doing that.

Look, the professor asked for a paper on students’ opinions. An opinion piece is just that- an opinion that isn’t based in facts. Some things just aren’t meant to be based upon facts. Some arguments are intractable – issues of personal taste or the subjective importance of certain values cannot be resolved empirically. In an argument like that, once both sides have expressed themselves as clearly as possible, if there is still no agreement then there is nothing left to do but acknowledge there is a disagreement, and leave it at that.

If I am holding a flamethrower and you are holding a lit match, it is true that we can both start fires, but pretending that we can just “agree to disagree” about which is better suited to the task of lighting a candle is nonsense. Had this student made such an argument, she would have been wrong, and deserved the grade she received.

In this case, you are asking students to argue about whether or not we should eliminate the position that a person born with DNA and genitals of a particular sex can be whatever sex or gender that they choose, not just forever, but changing on a day to day basis based upon that person’s feelings on that particular moment. Then you are asking them to apply logic to this, but only the logic of which you personally approve.

This professor deserves what they are getting.

By Divemedic, ago

Gifted

As a child, they measured my IQ at 154 before placing me in a gifted program. This meant that, once per day, I was pulled out of class and placed in a class with other gifted students, where we received separate instruction. I hated it, and fought to keep my children out of the program when the school wanted to place them in it. Not because I disagreed with the program, its aims, or how children are selected. No, I opposed it because of how teachers treated me. There were a couple of teachers who constantly pulled me up in front of the class to make fun of me- saying things like “He is supposed to be gifted, but he isn’t very smart.”

That teacher was black.

She hated me because I symbolized intelligence, while very few black children are above the median intelligence. In order to make themselves feel better, blacks have to convince themselves that gifted programs, and the intelligence tests used to screen for them, are racist constructs of the white race. That’s the premise behind this story in the New York Times.

I maxed out every aptitude test I was given. When I was in the Fifth grade, I was reading at the same level as a fourth year college student. My reading speed was over 300 words per minute with 80% comprehension. Even today it’s still high. My reading speed was recently measured at over 250 words per minute with 84% comprehension. When I took the GRE, I scored in the 96th percentile. I’m just good at tests, I guess.

To listen to those who oppose intelligence testing, they would claim that it’s because these tests are biased in favor of whites. Of course, that ignores the fact that Asians frequently outscore whites. The real issue here is that blacks are the third rail of political discourse. There is incontrovertible evidence that blacks are less intelligent, more prone to violence, and better in athletics than are other demographics, yet the only difference we are permitted to recognize is athleticism. Any result that reflects this- low credit scores, high homicide rates, poverty, or other negative outcomes are simply hand waved away as being evidence that whites are simply prejudiced.

They point out that children in poor households don’t do as well when taking intelligence tests, and then point out that blacks are poor, therefore the tests are prejudiced. Bullshit. Intelligence is hereditary. Since affluence is related to intelligence, we can conclude that rich parents tend to be more affluent, and tend to have smart, affluent children.

Now name the ten most violent neighborhoods in America. What do they all have in common? The most dangerous neighborhood in the US is in Los Angeles and is contained within E. 5th St., S. Los Angeles St., Boyd St., and S. San Pedro St.. That nine block area has 347 violent crimes for every 1,000 residents. In other words, if you live in this area, you have roughly a 35% chance of being the victim of a violent crime. In these few blocks, 55% of the households in this neighborhood earned less than 99.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods. The median household income of this area is around $9,175 per year. 83% of the residents were male, and about 80% of the population aged 16+ were not in the labor force—which is higher than 99% of U.S. block groups. The overwhelming population is black.

This plays out over and over again.

We have programs for “special” children, but we used to call those kids “retarded.” That moniker has fallen from favor, as accurate as it was. However, there is a movement to eliminate programs for “gifted” children, because not enough black kids are smart enough to be considered so.

It’s time to scrap public education. The entire system has failed.

By Divemedic, ago

Illegals

There is a lot of outrage over this video of a Colorado health inspector pouring bleach into a “street vendor’s” food.

The video is a lie. The truth is this: It wasn’t just over a fee. This so-called street vendor is a business being operated by an illegal immigrant, a man by the name of Isidro Garcia Barrientos. He is operating this business without licenses, and after having received more than a dozen health code violations for unsanitary conditions and improper storage of food. Each time, the workers simply move the popup to a different location and resume selling. So far, he has been seen operating in several counties and cities, and has been dodging the law for months.

In this case, the health worker showed up, and the workers again started boxing up the food to relocate, placing it into a locked truck and refusing to obey the law. To prevent this, the health inspector poured bleach in the food. The inspector was doing her job and isn’t being charged with any crimes.

Source for the story is here.

By Divemedic, ago