Government

Third World Policing

Wirecutter over at Knukledraggin my Life Away points out a story of a tiny Alabama town that has discovered that it can use cops as a money making machine and has become the worst speed trap in the entire nation. The town has less than 1300 residents, but has at least sixteen full time cops and a number of part time cops. (The police chief, claiming “security” won’t tell how many cops he has) Those cops make over 1,000 arrests, write over 3,000 traffic citations, and have their own SWAT team, complete with an armored vehicle that they call a “riot control vehicle.” (How big of a riot can that small of a town have?)

Read the article that the post is based on, and think about this quote:

Chief Jones testified under oath that just one of the 10 Brookside vehicles is painted with police striping, but nine others bear no emblems, and seven are tinted all the way around, making it impossible to see inside. Jones testified his officers wear gray uniforms with no Brookside insignias.

These dumbasses think that they are badasses because they carry the authority of a badge that they don’t even wear. Thinking that they are some kid of secret agents, they act more like a street gang that is shaking down the citizens for protection money. They refer to themselves as “agents” and do not provide their identification, even on arrest affidavits:

The names of the officers were not listed on the tickets in secretive Brookside. Instead, the arresting officer was listed as “Agent JS,” while the assisting officer was “Agent AR.”

Arrests in Alabama come from all sorts of things that you wouldn’t think are a crime. For example: It is considered road rage in Alabama to drive in the left lane for more than a mile and a half. One of my favorite legal Youtube channels is Lehto’s Law. Take a look:

The entire thing is a scam. The traffic court judge is a local lawyer who was hired as the municipal traffic court judge to hold court one day a month. When audited, the town had no written budget. Wanna take odds on some skimming off the top by the police chief, Mayor, and judge?

These idiots are so predictable, it begs for an ambush. The kinder version would have a person with hidden cameras break a traffic law in full view of Roscoe Coaltrain, and when he pulls you over it seems like it would be easy to get some civil rights violations on film. Then they can be taken down by some good attorneys.

The more aggressive ambush would be to goad them into a traffic stop, coming to a halt in a kill zone, then having an ambush team light up one of these would be secret agents. Since they are in unmarked vehicles and wearing clothes with no insignia, one could argue that they look more like a criminal gang conducting an ambush than they do a legitimate police force.

By Divemedic, ago

Ivy Prestige

There are eight Ivy league colleges in the United States: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. All have this reputation of being the best colleges that the country has to offer. Being accepted to one of them is an indication of excellence. Is pride in that accomplishment justified?

Only a five students have been accepted by all eight of them.

What do all of these students have in common? (Other than being accepted by all eight Ivy League schools, of course.) They have a lot in common:

  • They are all black.
  • They are all immigrants. 3 are from Nigeria, 1 from Guyana, 1 from Ghana
  • All five of them went to high school within 35 miles of Manhattan.

Admittedly, they have high grades and test scores. However, lots of students have that. So then explain to me how David Hogg qualified for Harvard with his SAT scores, which were low enough to place him in the 5th percentile.

Keep in mind that Harvard accepts less than 6 percent of applicants. The other schools in the Ivy league do the same. They have been sued for discrimination in the past.

William Fitzsimmons, the 30-year dean of admissions, who oversees the screening process of about 40,000 applicants and narrows them down to 2,000 acceptance letters that are handed out each year, testified that African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores out of a possible 1600 combined math and verbal, are sent recruitment letters with a score as low as 1100, whereas Asian-Americans need to score at least 250 points higher – 1350 for women and 1380 for men.

Tell me that being accepted to those prestigious schools is about your ability and accomplishments, and not about meeting the woke checkboxes. The admissions departments at these schools claim that this isn’t discrimination, because they are attempting to “break the cycle of the discrimination of the past.” Fighting discrimination by discriminating against people is like fucking to preserve virginity.

Harvard isn’t the only one. Yale was also sued by the justice department under President Trump for discriminating against qualified white and Asian students.

Meanwhile, 49 percent of the students at Harvard have straight A’s.

I don’t understand how a University that admits students based on race, then gives them straight A’s can possibly be an elite school that carries any sort of prestige.

By Divemedic, ago

The Useless Generation

Just last week, I asked how people could afford to simply up and quit their jobs as a part of the great resignation. It seems as though the child tax credit was a big part of it, and now that credit has come to an end.

Yahoo brings to us a piece that explains how those who have quit their jobs are now complaining that the loss of the tax cut means that they have no money for bills, believing that the government should pay them to sit at home and do nothing but breed.

Roberts, who lives in Marks, Miss., left her job as an insurance agent at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when her employer wouldn’t let her work from home…”This tax credit is the only way we’ve kept food on the table,” said Roberts, who is raising a 5- and 7-year-old. “For a lot of the working poor, it gave us a chance to finally take a freaking breath and not stress so much about how the bills get paid every month.”

Imagine how easy it would be to pay your bills if you didn’t quit your job.

Back in Mississippi, Roberts – who took custody of her cousin’s grandchildren five years ago – says she’ll probably let her car insurance payments lapse so she can buy groceries. She has just $388 left in her bank account but feels lucky to own her house, which she says puts her in a much better position than many friends who are at risk of eviction or foreclosure.

This poor woman is stuck having to raise and provide for the grandkids of her cousin. I feel bad for her, but it isn’t the responsibility of the US taxpayer to give her money, simply because she has a sad backstory.

Who else is sad because they aren’t getting checks anymore?

In San Antonio, Nathaniel Miller and his wife used their monthly payments to buy gluten-free food, oat milk and diapers for their 1-year-old daughter, who has severe food allergies. Without it, he says his family of four will have to start using their savings to cover everyday expenses.

“We’re a one-income household, so that money has been a lifeline,” said Miller, 34, who works in communications. “Now that it’s gone, I don’t know where that extra money is going to come from. We have a little bit in savings, but savings deplete quickly. If anything else comes up, we’re kind of screwed.”

My wife and I both have jobs. Why doesn’t yours?

Caroline Nasella, a government attorney in Sacramento with 3- and 6-year-old daughters, said the extra $400 a month helped cover child-care costs and provided extra breathing room during the pandemic.

Or how about this woman:

Kelly McKernan, an artist and illustrator in Nashville, used her $250 monthly checks to cover mid-month bills and buy school clothes and winter boots for her second-grader. Her income has been cut in nearly half, to about $25,000, during the pandemic.

“Not having that money is already having a really big impact,” said McKernan, 35, who’s working on a graphic novel anthology with the rock band Evanescence and is looking for art teaching positions to make ends meet.

It’s good to know that my paycheck is cut in half by taxes so my tax money can be used by a woman to sit at home and work part time on a comic book about a rock band.

By Divemedic, ago

SCOTUS Incenses Left

This morning’s article in Slate illustrates just how pissed off the left is over the SCOTUS decision to strike down Biden’s vaccine mandate. Here is why they are pissed:

COVID is undoubtedly a “grave danger” and a “new hazard” to workers, this broad language is not enough, because it does not “plainly authorize” the mandate. Why not? 

A grave danger? For people under 60 years old, there is less than a 0.1% fatality rate. It certainly isn’t a “new hazard.” COVID first came about in February 2020, but the vaccine mandate wasn’t enacted until November 2021, nearly two years later.

Congress is the country’s legislative body. Had congress wanted there to be a vaccine mandate, they would have passed one by now. In fact, the majority of the Senate voted AGAINST mandating a vaccine. When the legislature specifically rejects passing a law, it isn’t the prerogative of the executive to simply ignore the will of that legislature and issue edicts. That isn’t how the “democracy” that Biden claims to be defending works.

The Biden administration even admitted that his edict was a “workaround” of the will of congress.

Don’t even get me started on the mental gymnastics that SCOTUS will go through to approve a leftist wishlist. Remember the Obamacare fine that wasn’t a fine? That partisan moron Sotomayor denied that the vaccine mandate was actually a mandate, because workers had the option of weekly testing instead.

By Divemedic, ago

NORAD Alert

North Korea launched a missile early Tuesday morning local time that apparently spooked NORAD, which caused more of a stir than government sources are willing to admit. The missile itself appears to have had a different signature than earlier test launches, probably caused by the fact that it appeared to have hit Mach 10, causing the missile to reach a high enough altitude that the hypersonic glide vehicle could have reached the west coast.

As a result, the FAA issued a pair of ground stops for aircraft on the west coast that lasted a total of 17 minutes. NORAD initially denied issuing an alert message before later admitting to it. (Actual ATC ground stop slips pictured)

Now let me tell you that I am part of a hobbyist group that monitors the US radio network that is used to issue messages to nuclear capable units, among other things. Called an EAM (Emergency Action Message) they are encoded, but you still get a sense that something is happening when radio traffic increases. The messages sound like this:

So last night, I was repeatedly awakened as no fewer than 22 EAMs between 2100 and midnight. I wondered what was going on, then discovered the textgroup had been alive with aircraft reports.

Some of the members of the group are HAM radio enthusiasts like myself, others are air traffic controllers, some just radio nerds. Here is what was reported to me:

Two B-1B bombers were scrambled out of Joint base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, callsigns Javelin 71 and 72. They were accompanied by 4 KC-135 tankers, callsigns Pearl 71, 72, 73, and 74. They were diverted and landed at Misawa AFB in Japan. I don’t think that these were armed with nuclear weapons, both because the B-1B has reportedly had its nuclear capabilities removed, and I doubt Japan wants nuclear weapons stored on its soil.

Note: Reader Wolfgang Gullich posted a comment (see below) that there were never any B-1’s at Elmendorf on the day in question. Don’t know what this means, since the callsigns and flight paths have been verified by flight tracking software.

At the same time, it seems that some B-52s were scrambled out of Barksdale, a pair of E-6 Mercury TACAMO craft (callsign Shrub 46 and Ruff 07) took off out of Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City and Joint Base Andrews in Morningside, Maryland, while a VC-32A also lifted out of Andrews at nearly the same time, using the callsign SAM-116.

B-52 out of Barksdale over Louisiana
Ruff 07 from Tinker

The B-52 is of course a nuclear capable bomber, but there is no way of knowing if any of the aircraft launched had actual nuclear weapons loaded, but that would be the safe bet. I mean, why draw an unloaded firearm from the holster, right?

The E-6 Mercury is a “doomsday” plane that has the capability to both launch the nation’s land based nuclear missiles and order the Navy’s Trident submarines to launch their weapons. It is staffed by a flag officer (either an Air Force general or Navy Admiral) with access to the country’s nuclear codes, so that they can order a nuclear retaliatory strike in the event that other levels of the command structure are destroyed in an attack. They used to be airborne 24/7, until 1990. Since that time, they are kept on ground alert with the capability of being launched on short notice. The Navy (who owns the aircraft) only bought 16 of these aircraft, so it is a big deal to have two of them airborne at any one time, for any length of time.

The VC-32 is used by the Vice President under the callsign Air Force-2, and by cabinet level officers in the chain of succession using the SAM callsigns.

As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, there is still at least one E-6B over the country. One of them (RUFF01) is currently airborne over Nebraska.

Here is what I think happened:

NORAD detected the missile launch and noted that its speed and maximum altitude fit the profile for a possible CONUS impact. This caused NORAD to issue a ground stop for the west coast, as well as flushing some nuclear capable forces off of ground alert and headed towards Korea, while also getting a Presidential successor and the generals in charge of any possible nuclear response into their airborne command posts.

By Divemedic, ago