You Can't Silence Us

Losing a Friend

Our fire department Chaplain was a great man. He would come and ride the trucks sometimes. He officiated at many firefighter weddings. He would talk to us while in the station, but never, not once discussed religion with you unless you brought it up. He was an older guy, a real father figure. He dispensed the sort of advice you saw from television dads, always seeming to say just the right things. I remember that he walked me through some tough times.

  • At the scene of a drive by shooting with a police officer holding a shotgun standing behind you in case the shooter comes back
  • running into an unsecure scene with multiple gunshot victims to save a 17 year old girl who was shot 15 times.
  • the girl who was stabbed 7 times in the chest by her estranged boyfriend
  • The time that took the worst toll on me was the baby that drowned. I bore the guilt of not being able to save him for years. I was in therapy for six months. It was crushing. I’m better now, and I have come to terms with it, but it’s still there.
  • the Hurricane Katrina response.
  • I was the triage officer for 1999’s tornado swarm in Central Florida. We spent over a week looking for bodies.
  • The new mother with the 6 week old child who had a seizure. I spent years believing that I should have criked her. Maybe, if only, etc.
  • Trauma on top of emotional trauma. Pastor Pete was there for all of it.

He didn’t need to push his religion on anyone. His faith, he would say, didn’t require agreement or validation from anyone. It wasn’t threatened by someone else who didn’t believe. He is all that I would hope a godly and Christian man should be.

.He didn’t retire until a few years after I did.

I recently got in a discussion of evolution with someone online. He demanded that I prove that evolution exists, then handwaved away every single piece of evidence. The only evidence he provided for his own beliefs was a book, written by men, and so he said, inspired by a god he couldn’t provide evidence for.

The Pastor would not have done the same. He was an honest man who didn’t need to attack the beliefs and ideas of others in order to validate his own ideals. All of us would be mush better people if we could emulate him. I know that I am not cut from that cloth, although I occasionally try.

Pastor Pete died just last week, I was just told yesterday by a friend. I haven’t seen him in a few years, but the world is a little bit less without him. He will be sorely missed, even in absentia.

People who have read this post: 131
By Divemedic, ago

Another Point

The left is still using “Rules for Radicals” as an instruction manual:

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

They are using the Right’s own values as a weapon:

  • Saying that real Christians would help the poor and the illegal immigrants- using your religion, that they themselves don’t share, as a weapon
  • Saying you aren’t a “real” supporter of the 2A if you don’t start shooting ICE agents, even though they haven’t ever cared about the 2A themselves
  • Wringing their hands over children being deported, even though they care so little about children themselves that they abort millions of them

They are posting dumb shit like this:

They don’t know how pistols work, but they will use that ignorance as a weapon against you.

I am to the point where I recognize this for what it is: The left has no guiding principles, except this one:

They want to win, they want to be in power, no matter the cost.

This is why I no longer care about rules, other than winning. It’s time to reflect on two basic truths:

  1. You can have principles, or you can win. If one side is playing a game without rules, you are doomed to lose. Imagine playing Monopoly against the person that is the banker, and who is making interest free loans to himself as needed. You can stand by your principles, but in the end, those principles will see you lined up in front of a trench with a gun to your head. It’s going to get much, much worse.
  2. All that matters is what you are willing to do, and what you are willing to put up with. This is no longer a philosophical disagreement. It’s a fight for survival.

That famous philosopher Johnny Depp (as Captain Jack Sparrow) said:

Will Turner: You didn’t beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I’d kill you.

Jack Sparrow: That’s not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?…The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do.

Don’t let the left tie you down with irrelevancies. Rules are luxuries that only apply in games and civilized society. We are not in either.

People who have read this post: 169
By Divemedic, ago

Civil War Warning

The man killed in Minneapolis by ICE was a moron. He went to a protest armed, then decided to attack police officers:

Other videos show Pretti seemingly coming to the defense of a legal observer who was shoved to the ground by a federal officer. That officer then sprays Pretti with a chemical agent, repeatedly, before tackling him to the street along with other agents.

Coming to the defense of a “legal observer” while armed? That isn’t a protest. As soon as you participated, you are no longer observing, you are participating. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying he doesn’t have a right to be armed, but if you are, then you engage in an altercation with someone who is also armed, you are no longer a participant, you have now crossed the line to being a combatant.

The left is having a field day, screaming that gun owners should be coming to their aid. Yeah, go fuck yourselves. You are on your own. In fact, I hope ICE shoots a few more of you. Did you give a shit about Viki Weaver? Ashli Babbitt?

On that topic, Tim Walz is doubling down. He has placed Trump in a position where he has to respond. Watch his stupid speech, where he says that he will be using the National Guard to “get these people out of here,” meaning Federal law enforcement:

We will soon see a sitting Governor order national guard troops to assist in engaging and capturing Federal law enforcement. Of course, everyone knows Trump can’t back down. That means this can only result in a few outcomes, and all of them are bad.

At this point, we are closer to a Civil War than we have been in more than 60 years.

People who have read this post: 450
By Divemedic, ago

Bravado

As I said, too many morons like to talk about manpower. The thing is, manpower means exactly nothing when they don’t have supplies or transportation. The US military is quite good at using force multipliers. Once all of the infrastructure is blown up, those million troops on the other side of the ocean are useless, as are the 40 million unarmed civilians sitting less than 100 miles from the US border.

Most on the left know nothing about warfare or anything, really. That doesn’t mean all of them are clueless, but the vast majority are. They have no idea what such a war would mean.

People who have read this post: 276
By Divemedic, ago

Inflation

People confuse rising prices with inflation. That’s incorrect. Inflation DOES cause higher prices, but that isn’t the only thing that causes higher prices. No, inflation is the devaluation of currency, and it causes EVERYTHING sold, as seen in terms of that that currency, to rise.

An easy way to document inflation, although it isn’t foolproof, is the price of precious metals. For years, the plunge protection team has used government money to manipulate the price of various commodities, including precious metals. That’s where I believe the gold in Fort Knox went: pushing large amounts of gold into international markets has been used to increase supply of the precious metal, and that’s what has kept gold prices down.

With that being said, for whatever reason, whatever they have been doing to manipulate PMs isn’t working any longer. Silver crossed the $100 per ounce line today. I expect that gold will cross the $5000 per ounce line on Monday. Platinum is nearly $2800 per ounce this evening and will probably cross $3000 per ounce before the end of January.

Digest that for a moment. In the past 6 months, in terms of dollars:

  • Gold is 1.5 times higher
  • Silver’s value in dollars is 2.5 times higher
  • Platinum has doubled

That is an inflation rate of around 120%. This is devastating if it continues.

People who have read this post: 249
By Divemedic, ago

Brutal, but Accurate

Having interviewed and rejected for a management role with every hospital chain in Florida, I was conversing with Chat GPT to formulate a plan forward. This is what I was told:

  • White male → no DEI tailwind
  • Nearly 60 → systems prefer “long runway”
  • Nonlinear career → HR hates translation
  • MBA → irrelevant unless paired with the “right” titles

None of these are moral judgments.
They’re selection biases in modern healthcare.

And they stack.

Then the model went on to say:

In hospital nursing:

  • Degrees don’t open doors
  • Titles do
  • Timing does
  • Internal sponsorship does

The MBA was necessary but not sufficient — and at this stage, not decisive.

ADN nurses are getting leadership roles because they:

  • Are internal
  • Are younger
  • Have the “right” nurse-coded stepping stones

So, with that analysis, here was the recommendation:

Travel gives you:

  • Novelty
  • Distance from bullshit
  • Clear boundaries
  • Financial upside
  • Half the year off if you want it

If you want to be brutally rational:

  • Hospital management track → low probability, high emotional cost
  • Travel nursing → medium probability of satisfaction, high autonomy, reversible
  • Staying put → worst outcome

That makes travel the dominant strategy, even if it’s not perfect.

What’s odd is that the machine chose to say “distance from bullshit” even though I have not once used any sort of profanity in the chat. It also recognizes DEI and age as being probable disqualifiers.

Honestly, I want to start ramping down from working full time. The only misgiving I have is winding up in shitty hospitals. Then again, I am in one now. This week was brutal. Not in the patients that I had- I love taking care of seriously ill people, as the challenge of difficult cases is the draw for me. No, it’s working for people who are rank amateurs that got their position through favoritism and DEI instead of talent.

At least on a 13 week contract, I won’t have to put up with that shit for more than a couple of months at a time.

People who have read this post: 457
By Divemedic, ago

Genius

What Trump just did is a master class on how to get what you want. Let me explain. Take a look at the location of Russia’s strategic forces:

If you draw a great circle route from Russia’s missile fields to the US, two things become apparent:

  • The route for missiles launched from Russia’s Asian missile fields headed to the US west coast fly over Alaska.
  • The route for missiles launched from Russia’s European missile fields headed to the US east coast fly over southern Greenland and Iceland.

Since we already have missile interceptors in Alaska, the western routes have some protection (although there aren’t nearly enough of those interceptors to handle a massive attack). What we need is a place to put interceptors that cover those eastern routes. Iceland only covers a few of those approaches, but Greenland is ideal for a US missile defense base. Defending the US from a European based missile threat vitally requires interceptors (missile or energy weapon) in Greenland.

That’s why Trump wants Greenland. Everyone thinks that it is about mineral rights. I don’t believe that. If it were minerals, there were easier ways to do that. We don’t need the entire island, just a small part of it. It can’t be something another nation can take from us by simply demanding that we leave.

Sure, we have a base there now, but it isn’t a permanent one. Under the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement, the United States was allowed to operate the base under a NATO framework, as long as both Denmark and the United States remain NATO members. Under the agreement, the Danish national flag must be flown at the base to recognize that the base is on Danish territory. In other words, when we leave NATO, we lose the base.

No, the land where those interceptors will be must be US territory. Of course, Denmark wasn’t just going to GIVE it to us, so Trump had to do some creative acquisition.

That’s what he did- he got NATO to believe the US was going to invade. Europe, being the pussies that they are, decided to cave in to his demands without a shot being fired. The US has now secured a deal for some of Greenland to be ceded to the US. The NYT notes that according to officials who attended the meeting, the deal is similar to the United Kingdom’s bases in Cyprus, which are regarded as British territory. No matter what, this was a masterful demonstration of how to get what you want.

Once that is secured, I am wondering if the NATO accords are going to be pushed aside. After all, Trump has long declared the treaty to be a huge cost to the US with little benefit in these post-Soviet years.

People who have read this post: 254
By Divemedic, ago

Pull Them Out

Yet again, we have a case where the American public is told that cops don’t have to protect you. The school resource officer from the Uvalde school shooting was just found not guilty of all charges for standing outside of the school and hiding while the shooter massacred the students that the cop had a duty to protect.

It turns out, the cops don’t have a duty to do a damned thing except collect a pension. This echoes the case where the coward of Broward, Scot Peterson, was allowed to retire with his pension intact, even though he hid during the Parkland School Massacre and as the School’s Resource Officer, it was his job to protect the school’s students.

If police don’t have a duty to do anything, then why do we even have SROs in school in the first place? In shooting after shooting, we know that the police are cowardly pussies who will take cover while our children are slaughtered. That’s how we know that they aren’t about to go door to door to take shit.

Pull the cops out of the schools and cut police and school budgets by an appropriate amount. School resource officers are a horrendous waste of money.

People who have read this post: 235
By Divemedic, ago

More Dishonesty

Now the anti-gun idiots are saying that the 2A is irrelevant because gun owners won’t rise up and fight the very policies they voted for.

Let me clue you in:

  • You said cops and the military should be the only ones armed
  • You are STILL opposed to citizens owning guns
  • Therefore, you are a disingenuous ass who doesn’t really think guns are needed UNLESS they are used for your purposes
  • I wouldn’t fight for you. Hell, I wouldn’t piss down your throat if your tonsils were on fire

We aren’t fighting it because this is what we voted for. You keep bragging about what you are going to do to us and to ICE Agents once you reclaim power. That’s when the real games will begin. Deporting a few illegals is nothing, a prelude.

People who have read this post: 519
By Divemedic, ago