Divemedic

This year has been one of absolute turmoil, and of change. I went on my sabbatical by taking a 6 week, 7,200 mile road trip that took me to  15 states, one territory, four foreign countries, and returned last weekend. When I arrived home, I had a call from a school that wanted to interview me in connection with my newest career change. I had that interview on Wednesday.

They called me Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and offered me a job. The catch? The job started the following morning at 7:30 a.m.. The job was 85 miles away from my house. Students start class in less than a week. In that time, I have to complete new hire training, attend all of the staff meetings, write all of my lesson plans, the syllabus, make all of my teaching aids for at least the first couple of weeks, and attend the new student orientation to meet my new students and their parents. All while trying to relocate to a house 80 miles from my old one. I barely have time for eating and sleeping.

As I am sure that you can understand, blogging has taken a back burner. Even during the road trip, blogging was problematic because I was in an area of backwoods Maine for several weeks, where there were no cell phone towers and, in many cases, the places where I was staying were completely off the grid. No power, no phone, no television, and certainly no internet. There are some interesting stories to tell, and just as soon as I get the time, they will be told.

A man looks at a woman while jogging. She freaks out. Somehow, it is the man’s fault, and she decides that he is a threat.

I can understand increased vigilance, but the man here did nothing wrong. Women seem to feel that all men are rapists. She claims that no one believes a woman that reports an assault. That is total bullshit. Men are constantly having their lives and careers damaged by women who falsely accuse them of domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

She says:

I’m ashamed for feeling ashamed.
I expect more from myself. But I also expect more from that man, from any man.

What should men do? Avoid all women?

Congress, when it passed Obamacare without even bothering to read it, set up a system where people who purchased health insurance policies from exchanges that were “established by the State under section
1311″ would receive a tax subsidy to assist in deferring the cost of the policy. That subsidy would then be billed to the consumer’s employer in the form of a tax, which the supreme court ruled was completely within Congress’ taxing power to do.

Now the DC court rules that a person who does not buy their plan from an exchange that was “established by the State under section
1311,” but instead buys the policy from a Federal exchange, is not eligible for the subsidy, which in turn means that their employer is not subject to the tax.

The Democrats and the mainstream press (but I repeat myself) are incensed. This is the same party that has insisted for years that “Security of a free state” cannot be ignored is now claiming that ignoring “established by the State under section
1311″ is within the power of the IRS.

Now the case will be heard en banc by the entire 11 judge panel, and four of the additional judges are Obama appointees, meaning that there are now 5 judges who will side with Obama on this law. The mental gymnastics that are occurring here make it astoundingly obvious to me that there is no longer any interest on the part of the judiciary in maintaining a constitutional republic, but rather they seek to maintain party politics.

The Republic is dead. What is left in its place is a massive government that has rotted to its very core, where even the judges have foregone the idea of checks and balances, in favor of a system where every person is in the game only to their own benefit. A nation founded on the ideals of personal liberty is now a nation run for the financial benefit of each person at the expense of others, a massive rat race where people will do anything to win.

So this animal kills a cop, and the only thing his widow has to say about it, is that she wishes he had killed more of them before the cops shot him. This wasn’t even this crazed animal’s first murder: he had killed at least once before.

What I find most incredible is that this critter got his gun by stabbing and then beating up an armed security guard and stealing his gun, and the family of the felon are blaming the guard! This is what happens when you are living in a state where guns are illegal, the animals take over. They exploit that “beat someone up and steal their gun” loophole.

Animals like that are the reason that I carry.

After all that has happened over the past 6 months, I decided to go on sabbatical and wander the country. About a month ago, I left on a journey to see what I could see. Since that day, I have been to Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maine, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. I am in Pennsylvania now, and I am going to take a tour of Hershey this afternoon. I have traveled nearly 3,000 miles so far.
So far this summer, I have gone to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, saw Times Square, gambled in a Maine Casino, and caught a 4 pound bass on the Canadian border. I have eaten lobster rolls, had a Maine lobster boil, eaten authentic New York pizza, Corned beef Reubens, and Coney Island hot dogs. I saw a concert in Atlanta.
I plan on visiting Tennessee and West Virginia before I head back to Florida. I have a lot of stories to tell, and they will be spelled out in this blog over the next few weeks. The three days I spent in New York City are going to be worth a few blog posts all by themselves.

As you all know, for the past three weeks, I was a prohibited person. I was not allowed to possess firearms or ammunition. My concealed weapons permit has been revoked. Why? My ex-girlfriend is accusing me of stalking, and filed a complaint for a domestic violence restraining order against me. At an ex parte hearing, it was granted. 

Keep in mind that we broke up in December. She didn’t allege anything until May.

We had our first hearing where I could be present on June 2, and I appeared there with my attorney. He announced in court that we want to have a full hearing, where we will present subpoenaed witnesses in my defense. The motion was granted, so…

We had our second hearing on June 17th. She did not have an attorney or a single witness. The basis of her claim was that I read her text messages and emails while we were a couple, I sent a text to her new boyfriend, I was stalking her, and I came to her workplace and got her fired.

I had an attorney and four witnesses. We were going to testify to the following facts, even though it turns out that they were not needed:

1. Yes, I read her emails while we were a couple. That was how I found out she was cheating. What she left out of the story was that a year earlier, she had given me the password and told me that I could read her email.
2. Yes, I texted her new boyfriend. The reason? I asked him if he really was sleeping with her. No threats. I was just confirming what I saw in the emails, because I didn’t want to accuse her over a misunderstanding.
3. A mutual friend was going to testify that he was asked by my ex-girlfriend to inform her of my whereabouts so she could surprise me with a visit next time I went SCUBA diving. He was there to testify that she was the one following me around.
4. My current girlfriend was to testify that we were not in the state of Florida on some of the dates that I am being accused of stalking her. I was nowhere near her (not even in the same county- I was 100 miles away) on the dates in question.
5. My mother would have testified that the ex-girlfriend never lived with the two of us (my mother lived with me at the time). This is important, because an important element of proving domestic violence is to prove either:
           -That the two involved had a child together, or;
           – That they were married at some point, or;
           – that they lived together as if a family at some point.
   Since none of those is true, there can be no domestic violence.

Yes, I admit that I went to her workplace, and I also admit that me visiting that workplace is what got her fired, but the devil is in the details.

• I was working as a paramedic, and she worked at one of the hospitals that I routinely went to as a part of my job duties.
• My ex girlfriend had been fired for stealing, not because I stalked her. She had left some belongings at my house, which I had attempted to return to her through the mutual friend from paragraph 3, above. Those belongings included a cardboard box that I had not opened. She didn’t pick up those belongings, so after a month I opened the box to find a large cache of pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, medical records with patient information and social security numbers on them, along with other medical supplies. They were marked “Property of XXX hospital,” so I contacted the hospital to see what they wanted done with their property. The supervisor asked me to bring them in, which I did. The hospital did an investigation, connected them to her, and they fired her for stealing hospital property and mishandling medical records. At the time of her firing, her employer told her how they caught her.

Less than an hour after she was fired, she was at the courthouse, where she filled out a written statement that I had committed domestic violence against her, and that she was afraid of me coming to hurt her. The court issued a DV injunction at an ex parte hearing, and I became a prohibited person for the duration of the order. I was not allowed contact with her, nor could I come within 500 feet of her. It took me three weeks to get to this morning’s hearing.

To protect myself from any potential allegations of violating the order, I left the state for two weeks. I went into exile. I traveled to Atlanta with my new girlfriend for two days, and from there we went to St Martin, St Thomas, and to the Bahamas. I can prove with passport records and airline boarding passes that I was nowhere near her for the past three weeks (I wasn’t even in the country for most of it).

I also had records from the toll transponder for my car, showing that I was nowhere near her on the dates and times that she claimed I was stalking her.

None of it was needed. She presented her case, and before we called our first witness, my attorney pointed out that there was no evidence of violence presented by her. All she alleged was that I had contacted her boss (for a legitimate reason) and new boyfriend. The judge agreed and dismissed all charges.

After this, she said in open court that her new boyfriend is a cop, and that “this isn’t over” because the cop is initiating a criminal investigation into how I got his phone number, among other things, and that he is going to have me arrested.

My lawyer said that if he does that, we will sue for wrongful prosecution and his career will be over.

Now I have to get things back in order. I have my guns again. I have to apply for and get another CWP to replace the one that had been revoked. I can move on. Until she pulls her next stunt.

Using accusations of domestic violence has become a common tactic for women who wish to win divorce and child custody cases, as well as angry girlfriends who wish to get back at former boyfriends. Men have no legal recourse against women who are proven to be lying. I can’t even sue her to recover my considerable legal fees. She won’t even face any criminal charges. This needs to change. Sign the petition here:

Have you ever wondered why Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day? The short answer: Greed, the French Monarchy, and the Catholic Church. Like most stories, the long version is more complicated. This is the legend as I heard it:

“The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon” were a military order of men who were living in Jerusalem in 1099 AD, at the tail end of the Crusades. There were nine of them at the time, and they were so poor that they were living in a stable, and begging for food. Legend has it that they discovered some of King Solomon’s treasure while digging in the area.

They returned to Europe, and invented what was essentially the first international banking society. They were involved in shipping, banking, and other money making ventures. They formed large society, which at its peak, was comprised of over 20,000 members. Members held different ranks, with the highest being called Knight Templar. A Knight Templar was similar to what a full partner or a member of the board of directors would be today. The ‘board meetings’ only took place at night, and this was because of the need for secrecy. Remember that this was in the age of pure monarchy, when no one who was not a King could own anything without the King taking a large cut of it.

One odd thing about them was that they practiced elaborate rituals that were designed to ensure secrecy. Since it was a crime punishable by death at the time to engage in any ritual not endorsed by the Catholic Church, any person who took part in such a ritual was bound to keep the secrets of the others, or he himself would be killed.

The Knights Templar hired many men of the free masons’ guild to build large structures, such as the Cathedral at Notre Dame. At the time, the free masons were not especially liked by the Church, mostly because the masons were teaching that mathematics ran the world, and not a deity. The Church had to put up with this to a certain extent, however, because God was not in the business of building the Church’s cathedrals, and the free masons were.

The free masons, having built many buildings for the order, needed to be sworn to secrecy. So they were sworn in as minor members of the order, and were taught many of the Templar rituals. 

All went well until October 13, 1307, when the King of France at the time, King Philip IV, entered a partnership with Pope Clement V and decreed that all of the Knights Templar would be declared to be Satan worshipers and would be put to death. The king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, homosexuality, heresy,
sodomy, immorality, and abuses.

Many of the Kinghts Templar were killed at dawn that Friday the 13th, so that their wealth could be confiscated, and at the same time eliminate the possible threat that the military order might pose to Philip’s quest for more power. The ones who weren’t killed were tortured into confessing to their crimes. The Pope then issued arrest warrants for all of the Templars world wide, and the Church confiscated their assets, in order to avoid the military action that Philip threatened to take against the Church. The arrested members of the order were burned at the stake in 1314, and the remainder of the Templars went underground and became a secret society.

King Phillip and Pope Clement both died before the end of 1314, after being cursed by one of the Templars they burned at the stake. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God.
His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows : “Dieu sait
qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous
ont condamnés à mort” (free translation : “God knows who is wrong and
has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to
death”).

No one really knows if this is the true account of what happened, but that doesn’t surprise me. History is a fiction that is written by the winners. The history of less than 100 years ago, and even this morning’s newspapers are seldom an account of what actually took place.