idiots

We interrupt this blog

I was going to post a part 2 to yesterday’s post that was the beginning of my theory on the biological reasons for why some people are criminals, but I need to take a minute to vent.

Yesterday, I posted the following image on a social networking site with the caption of “Aren’t we as Americans tired of this yet?”

 In response to this, my ex-sister in law, who is on food stamps, decided to post the following:

More restarants are accepting ebt so families can experience the going out to eat like families who can do it anytime they want, i think that america needs to learn that the unemployment isnt a joke and a lot of ppl have stopped lookin for work cause there isnt anythin out there, so stop complaining about ebt and be happy that if u have a job or are gettin paid to go to school atleast u dont have to deal with struggles like some families do

 Here was the reply that I sent her:

I don’t care if you go out. I do care if you go out and expect me to pay for it. The EBT system is meant for people to not starve, not so they can have luxuries like “experiencing going out to eat.” You have internet access, which tells me that you have at least some money for luxury. It is about priority and about working to get ahead, not about waiting for someone to give you something. I get paid to go to school because I worked and saved in order to do so, not because I sat around and expected handouts. It isn’t luck that I had a job or that I am in school, it is called HARD WORK. There were times that I had to work 3 jobs to make it. It isn’t that there are no jobs, it is that you don’t want to work at the jobs that are there. Get off the internet, stop using the EBT to go to Pizza Hut, put away the pride and take whatever job you can get, but stop asking me to pay your bills.

 It really angers me when someone says that I am somehow lucky to have what I have, or that I somehow fell into having a good life. 
I graduated from a public high school. So did you. We started from the same point.
I couldn’t afford college, so I joined the military.
While in, I got my girlfriend pregnant, and married her. We had a child when I was 19 years old. It was a struggle, but I provided for my family. Try making it on what an E3 makes, and see if you feel fortunate.
When I got out of the military, things were tough. At one point, we were homeless for about three months, and lived in a storeroom at my job. I bathed my kids in a 48 quart ice chest. 
I went from job to job for the next four years, each job paying more than the last, until I could afford to go to school. 
I then went to the fire academy and paramedic school at night and on the weekends while I worked during the day. Then, I got a job with the fire department, and worked my ass off to get promoted twice, and earn a retirement. During this time period, I worked three jobs so that I could save for a rainy day. 
After 12 years of that, I lost everything when the stock and real estate  market crashed. I wound up bankrupt. 
I worked hard some more, and finally retired with about $50,000 in savings so that I could go to school.


Socialists call that “good fortune” or “luck”

I call it hard work.
Get off your asses and get a job, but stop expecting me to pay your bills.

By Divemedic, ago

Everyone is a terrorist

Here is a list of things that the FBI says make you a possible terrorist:

if you pay cash for small purchases like a cup of coffee, or for large purchases
using encrypted files
shaving off your beard
SCUBA diving without certification card, or SCUBA training to get a certification card, being a SCUBA diver without a logbook, diving using “rebreathers”, use dive equipment for extended dive times or deep dives
taking pictures with a cell phone, having more than one cell phone, buying more than one disposible cell phone, not activating a prepaid phone at the time of purchase
At work: likes to work alone or unsupervised, and if at work, is willing to do tasks that no one else wants to do
people who are overdressed, underdressed, or are dressing to blend in
playing paintball on your own property
buying waterproof matches, MREs, or flashlights
absence from work for charity work
study of fields that can be used for terrorism like chemistry, gunsmithing, SCUBA training, rappelling, marksmanship, etc.
When renting a vehicle, inquiring about its fuel capacity
receiving a large number package deliveries
having weapons on your property, or buying bulk ammunition
refusing to allow landlord to enter rental property on demand, or changing locks without landlord permission
having offensive tattoos, or asking to have offensive tattoos concealed, covered, or altered
owning remote controlled model aircraft
use of model rocket engines and igniters
buying firearms and ammo outside of hunting season
requesting hotel room in specific location or floor
arrive at hotel with too little or too much luggage
persons mumbling to themselves
excessive sweating

This list covers so many activities that it is useless. If you read the list, everyone is a possible terrorist, because if we just focus on Muslim males between the ages of 16 and 35, the terrorists will know this and exploit it. Except looking harder at Muslims is profiling, and we can’t do that, that would be insensitive and discriminatory, thus ensuring that the terrorists don’t need to disguise themselves as non-Musilms.

By Divemedic, ago

Irony

I find it ironic that Mike Church, a talk show host on Sirius/XM radio (a paid subscription radio service) this morning on his show, states that companies that don’t make any tangible thing (like Facebook, Sports, and other entertainment) are a waste of money. He then says that society can’t afford to have them, as we will run out of money as a society as we waste it on entertainment.
I don’t know if he has thought this through. After all, he doesn’t do anything, either. He is a political commentator. That means that he doesn’t make anything, all he does is comment on politics, which is another group of people who don’t produce anything.

By Divemedic, ago

Mother of the year

When you are a parent, you get used to saying no to questions like: “Dad, can I juggle chainsaws?” or “Mom, can I go skydiving?” or even “Dad, I know I’m only 14, but we are in love and want to get married.” So what do you say to your ten year old when he wants a tattoo?
Not this mom. Maybe mother of the year is a bit premature, since we have about 49 more weeks of people doing stupid things left in the year, but she is probably going to be a finalist.

By Divemedic, ago

Just lucky, I guess

According to some douchebag named Tim Wise, I am the recipient of 12 to 13 years of institutionalized affirmative action as a result of my attending public school, and this is why I, as a member of the white establishment, am so fortunate.

When I graduated from high school, the school I graduated from was one of two in the entire county. Everyone from the east side went to one school, everyone from the west side of the county went to the other. We all attended the same classes, taught by the same teachers. I can’t see how there is any difference.

After high school, I joined the military and did six years there. When I got out, I was broke, but willing to work. I tried making it for a couple of years as a business owner, but we were soon technically homeless. My family and I lived in the storeroom of my business and we bathed in a 48 quart ice chest.

I took what little money we managed to scrape together and used it to rent a UHaul, then moved back to Florida. When I got there, I took a job in residential construction that paid $7.45 an hour. I spent 8 hours a day in the Florida summer heat, running electrical wire through roughed-out houses, taking home $950 a month to support a family of four. Our rent was $350 a month. The government told us that we wouldn’t qualify for public assistance as long as we were still married, so we got none.

Over the next 5 years, I moved jobs every time there was an opportunity to make more money: I  worked at the airport repairing ground support equipment, at Disney repairing the electronic control systems on dancing chickens, at Sherwin Williams on paint manufacturing equipment, and at a stainless steel mill repairing stainless steel pipe manufacturing equipment. There were ups and downs. A few times, they hired me as a maintenance worker because they had a lot of broken equipment and then fired me as soon as I fixed everything that was broken. Still, I didn’t give up.

Each time I changed jobs, it was for more money. Over that 5 year period, I went from $7.50 an hour to $12 an hour, and finally to a salary of $30,000 a year. Then Bill Clinton signed a “most favored nation” treaty with China, flooding the market with cheap stainless steel, making it cheaper to import stainless steel products than it was to manufacture them, which put my employer out of business. 

Finally tired of being laid off, and decided to take my volunteer firefighting occupation full time. I went to school, by working odd jobs during the day, and going to school at night. I graduated the fire academy and got hired. While I was in school, my wife and I got a divorce. Divorce is financially devastating, and the child support added up to about two thirds of my take home pay.

This was the poorest time in my life. I lost my car in the divorce, so I was running to work for a month before I could save enough for a bicycle. I lost 40 pounds that summer. After six more months of saving, I managed to buy a car at a buy here/pay here place. Now that I had a car, I was able to get a second job as a janitor, and then a third job as a lifeguard, to make ends meet.

Since then, I have earned 4 college degrees and I am getting ready to begin my masters degree. I did it without handouts, I did it without Pell grants, welfare, food stamps, or anything that I didn’t work for myself.

But hey, none of that was due to hard work and perseverance. It was all luck and ‘white privilege’ that got me here.

By Divemedic, ago

Only Fox news has biased coverage

Recently, there was an attack by a group of forty or more teens against a neighborhood, and one of the residents used a rifle to scare them off. Some of the people reading the article were asking why the news didn’t mention the fact that it was a group of forty black teens attacking residents of a white neighborhood, and the further alleged that if it had been a large group of white teens terrorizing a black neighborhood, it would have been the largest headline possible. Calls from the press to pass hate crime laws would have been heard. Instead, crickets.

The Chicago Tribune responded by saying:

It’s the newspaper’s sound general policy not to mention race in a story, whether about crime or anything else, unless it has some clear relevance to the topic. 

 Really? Let’s see:

Editorial accusing people who disagree with Obama of racism.

Story accusing Arizona of racism because they crack down on illegal immigrants, who happen to be Mexican because the Mexican border is closer to Arizona than the Canadian border.

Story about how blacks do not save their money like whites do.

Story about a man charged with a hate crime for pointing at another man and calling him a name.

The Chicago Tribune fails to realize that the race of people involved with a story only becomes relevant when you report the race of the people. Ignoring the fact that an attack is racially motivated makes the race of those people irrelevant and shows your bias.

By Divemedic, ago

Government complexity

The government makes EVERYTHING more complicated. When it comes to performing maintenance, the US Navy has a complicated system in place (or did when I was in)called the Material Maintenance Management (3M) system, which controls all PMS (Planned Maintenance System). PMS is time consuming and overly complicated. The procedure for each maintenance action is written on an MRC (Maintenance Requirement Card.

 What makes the system so complicated and cumbersome is the fact that government bureaucrats have managed to turn the system into a set of procedures that make doing your taxes seem easy. Failure to follow the procedure exactly can and does end with sailors being courts-martialed. Maintenance is scheduled for each work center, and the work center supervisor schedules each person for his maintenance. Let’s take a look at a required daily maintenance activity (D-1R). We are scheduled to perform that activity toady, so we look for the MRC, on the Maintenance Index Page (MIP) and confirm that it is correct MIP by checking it against the LOEP (List Of Effective Pages) after checking the effective date to ensure that the LOEP is the current one. After locating the current MRC, we confirm that it is correct by checking its effective date against the one on the MIP.

So take a look at the card here. Granted, this one is a joke, but looks remarkably like the real ones. There is a section that has the information about the equipment on the card and the frequency of maintenance. Then an area that specifies who may perform the maintenance, and the man hours it will take to complete. There are sections that specify safety regulations that must be followed, along with a list of every tool that is required. If the card calls for a 6 inch screwdriver, you better not get caught using a 4 inch or an 8 inch screwdriver. The procedure is then listed, and it must be followed exactly as per the card. Failure to do so can land you in prison.

These are the numbskulls that are getting ready to run our health care system. How do you think that will work out?

By Divemedic, ago

Civil rights, 1983 lawsuits, liability

After the incident that I last blogged about, where a Canton, OH police officer threatened a pair of citizens with physical force, I listened to the recording of the City Council President, where he gives his opinion on the whole incident:

The Council President states that the police officer’s actions were logical because the person involved was legally carrying a concealed weapon in a bad neighborhood at 1:30 in the morning, around prostitutes and drug dealers. Excusing the cop’s actions in this manner is a bit of a problem. Let me explain why:

42 USC 1983 provides that, “Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress“

Meaning that the citizen involved gets to sue both of the officers who violated his rights by threatening harm to him, and will probably be successful. You can sue cities and counties under 1983 in what is called a Monell claim. Under Monell, to hold a municipality liable you need to show that your constitutional injury was caused by a policy or custom of the municipality. Monell liability can be established where a municipal official with final policy-making authority ratifies a subordinate’s unconstitutional conduct and the basis for it. The theory behind municipal liability in this context is that the acts of persons with final policy-making authority are considered to be the equivalent of government policy.

To establish municipal liability, a claimant must show a persistent and pervasive practice of the police department in failing to respond to police misconduct. While a single act of misconduct is insufficient to establish municipal liability, a person in a policy making position can show that the unconstitutional behavior of the municipality approved of the act, and thus made the act a de facto policy. In police brutality cases, the municipal entity’s liability can be established by showing that the city encourageed or authorized the conduct.

By stating that the incident that took place is to be expected when people carry concealed weapons in compliance with state law, he has authorized the officer’s conduct and opened himself and the city to a 1983 lawsuit. Damage awards in civil rights cases can be high. In 2007, a man won over three million dollars for damages he suffered from false arrest and other indignities by Oakland, California police officers. That award included punitive damages.

By Divemedic, ago