Once a Marine, always a Marine.

 

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

I love it when these hoodlums run up against someone that fights back and wins.

While it seems that crime, especially teen crime, is exploding, the data strongly says otherwise. Juvenile arrests (in the U.S. overall) are down something like 75% from their peak in the 1990s, and while there was a bump coming out of the pandemic (really, a rebound back to where they were), they are significantly lower than even just prior to the pandemic. But back in the 1990s, almost no incidents were caught by a camera and so they didn't get much coverage, even locally. Today there's so much coverage that the media has its pick of any number of incidents that are recorded -- and which the owners of the recording go out of their way to post it on every social media platform under the sun, where it gets shared and seen over and over. Consider this incident as an example. What are the chances that this would have gotten any news coverage at all, let alone been mentioned on this forum, if it hadn't been recorded. Almost zero. Conversely, a year or so ago I was backing out of my driveway and so was someone from the house across the street and we bumped into each other. Extremely minor damage (none to my car, a slightly caved in fender on hers). Yet she insisted that the police be called. Fine. She then sued, claiming significant bodily injury and emotional distress. Now, what are the chances that I could have gotten the local news to report anything about this? Nada. But what if I had doorbell camera footage of the incident? Now I could put together a YouTube video showing how minor the impact was, her getting out of her car walking around just fine, the cops coming and taking a statement, and then me showing the accident report and describing the frivolous lawsuit that she tried to bring. What are the chances that I could have gotten some news outfit to pick that up or even that it might go viral and get national coverage? Considering the mundane nature of many of the video-backed stories that we see every day on the national and even international news, the odds are probably better than it might seem and far better than it should be.

As for the suit, my insurance company refused to play her game and the mediation between the two insurance companies resulted in her and her lawyer being told to pound sand.

 

 

While I have no sympathy for the scammers and love to see them get taken down in a fitting way, I often find it a bit difficult to build up a lot of sympathy for people that fall victim to such obvious scams where red flags are flying all around and the alarm bells are deafening. The IRS is going to tell you to take out all of your savings, convert it to gold, and then give it to them in a parking lot for safe keeping???? At some point, people deserve what they get (ideally, the scammers go to jail AND the victim loses the money and it gets used for other worthy purposes).

Now, in cases where the victim is of diminished capacity for one reason or another (and just being elderly doesn't qualify by itself), the situation is completely different. Similarly for more sophisticated scams that have few, if any, warning signs.

 

A Michigan woman lost her ring. It was found 10 years later by a Howell plumbing company.

​

Workers with Titan Plumbing in Howell, Michigan, were on an emergency call when they noticed what appeared to be an engagement ring. It turned out that the ring had been lost for more than a decade

 

 

 

 

Not trying to take anything away from this lifeguard, truly, but this really isn't a story about someone doing something heroic or unusual, even though it is all over the news and they are falling all over themselves to interview this "hero" who just did his job just like the other lifeguards that perform around 90,000 rescues a year (about once every six minutes, probably more like a couple times a minute during the bulk of the time beaches are open, since most are closed at night and see the majority of visits during only a fraction of the year) at ocean beaches in the U.S., but are not caught on camera by someone that is more interested in recording something they hope will go viral than offering any assistance themselves. It's actually highly likely that at least one and very possibly a few other lifeguards were doing something similar somewhere else in the country at the exact same time this was happening.

I'm more impressed by the one person that raced out early on to assist, as well as the other folks that finally went out later to see if they could help. I don't know that the lifeguard actually needed assistance and it's possible that the "assistance" hindered more than helped -- which is often the case. Here, notice how the lifeguard waved them away and how a couple of the people that tried to assist came fairly close to needing help themselves, but I still give them credit for trying. The person that finally got to them and helped was another lifeguard, probably racing down from an adjacent station, which is why there weren't there to assist earlier. Notice how the first time the big wave hit him, he turned around and quartered into the wave, falling below the water's surface just before the wave hit to minimize the impact and likelihood of the victim being torn from their grasp. See how he never let go of the boy. He did this a few times.

 

Woman leaps from 11th-floor ledge into firefighter’s arms as Berlin high-rise burns

​

The dramatic rescue, captured on video, shows a woman in sweatpants scaling the exterior of an 11th-floor apartment, edging perilously along a window ledge as giant orange flames and black smoke billow from the apartment beside her.