Defiantone.com

John McCain is the guy leading the republican side of the race and Obama is in the lead on the other front.

I’ve been watching McCain for years and I’ve gotta say that I like him more than any of the other candidates. He has been under fire from conservatives because he isn’t conservative enough. I like him for that reason alone. He has been branded a hot headed maverick. He plays both sides of the field. He stands up for what is right. He listens when he needs to and acts when he needs to.

Obama feels like media hype to me. I don’t know enough about the guy to understand how he might react to something. When I choose a candidate I stray away from the “issues” and try to determine how that individual will react in a crisis. Will they make a sound judgment call?

I’m still quite undecided - aside from the fact that I will never vote for Hillary - unless Cheney was running - in which case I might move to Canada.

I took a few new photos - including one of myself

I tried out the panorama maker software of my camera with surprising results (click the image for the BIG version)

I’m looking to the time I get out of here - I’m planning on doing something - as identified by the photo below. Its never Miller time - its Guinness time -

I took a few random videos - I don’t even remember what they were - you’ll have to watch and see

I wish I had time to really write something of note but this is all that I’ve got time for at the moment.

Tags: Balad, Canada, desert, Guinness, McCain, Obama, politics

I had a chance to upload all of the photos from Canada - you can check all of them out right here. Enjoi!

So, I’ve been hanging out in Canada with Jessica’s family while staying at a friend of the family’s cabin, house, tent, and camper. There are a few of us here and we could barely fit in one house but luckily there are plenty of places to stay. Jessica’s parents have been running the dogs daily and its been cool to see how its all done. There hasn’t been enough snow to hook them up to the sleds but they’ve been running them behind the 4 wheelers. I don’t think we’re going to see enough snow here to run them but all in all its still quite a cool deal. I’ve got a few photos in my camera that I haven’t had the time to upload or edit.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that happens to read this… and as always, more to come later.

I’ve had a morning with no work… so I’ve had a little time to write and read the news.. enjoi!

Mexico and immigration

America is a nation that is comprised almost entirely of immigrants. It has been said that even native americans crossed the Bering strait at some point in time to live what is now known as the United States, Canada, and Mexico. No matter what your background is, you’re an imigrant; the battle that faces us to today is based upon what degree of immigrant you are. At one point in American history there was a mass exodus of mainly Irish immigrants onto the eastern part of the United States. At that time, there was alot of resentment and many laws were enacted to make it harder for people to immigrate and make it harder for those that had recently arrived. Why the animosity? They brought a different way of life with a different culture to the table. Sure, they did cause stress on the social system at the time (a problem we can still see today with mexican immigrants). So, whats the problem in this case? People are immigrating illegally.

Why in the world would they want to immigrate to our nation? I can hardly imagine a country that I grew up in and know as home to be so bad that I would face all peril to move out of it. We aren’t talking about a country that has a dictatorship or a communist government, we’re talking about a democratic nation. The people have the power to make a positive change in their country but aren’t being afforded the opportunity. It is my belief that every nation has the ability to become the greatest nation in the world, it took our country a civil war to get where we are and we still face problems. Its is an uphill battle that where the fighting never ceases, you can never quit.

Many politicians (and Americans) think that building a wall and sending troops to the border is the most effective way of solving the illegal immigration problem. All that we would be doing is to solve an effect of the larger problem at hand; this kind of action will never solve the problem of illegal immigration. We should be looking for the root of the problem : the living standards and social conditions in Mexico are so poor that a portion of the country sees only an exodus to America as the only viable solution.

Unforunately, I don’t know enough about our neighbor to the south to give any specifics but fixing ceiling tiles that are water damaged is a waste of time if you don’t fix the leak in the roof.

The G.W and Marriage

From MSNBC

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who says he believes marriage is the union of a man and a woman, said he nonetheless will vote against the amendment on a test vote Wednesday.

“The reason for this debate is to divide our society, to pit one against another,” Reid said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor. “This is another one of the presidents efforts to frighten, to distort, to distract and to confuse America. It is this administration’s way of avoiding the tough, real problems that American citizens are confronted with each and every day.”

If you want to read the whole thing check it out over at MSNBC

Why in the world should I be worried if Kyle and Steve or Mary and Jenny want to get hitched? Love is a crazy thing, it is not bound by gender, race, religion, or species (some people REALLY love their dogs… you’ve seen them, they’re often creepy old women with blue hair). This entire debate is a non-issue. We still have illiterate Americans, we still have Americans with no health care, we still have Americans that live in poverty, we still have Americans that haven’t recovered from Katrina, and we still have Americans dying daily fighting a war on terrorism; this is such a HUGE non-issue. Lets move onto the important stuff.

Looking through the window of the rushing train, I think: Siberia, so this is how it looks! I heard this name for the first time when I was seven years old. Stern mothers from our street cautioned “Children, behave yourselves, or they’ll deport you to the Sybir!” (They said it in Russian -Sybir- for this sounded more menacing, apocalyptic.) Gentle mothers would become indignant: “How can you frighten children this way!”

It wasn’t really possible to imagine Siberia. One of my friends finally showed me a drawing in a book: In a heavy snowstorm walked a column of tattered and hunched-over men. Heavy chains with iron balls at the end were attached to their hands and legs and they dragged these balls behind them over the ground.

Siberia, in its sinister, cruel form, is a freezing, icy space… plus dictatorship.

In many states there exist icy territories, lands that for the greater part of the year are frozen over, dead. Such, for instance, are the vast stretches of Canada. Or take Danish Greenland, or American Alaska. And yet it doesn’t occur to anyone to frighten children with: “Wash your hands or they’ll send you to Canada!” or “Play nicely with that little girl or they’ll deport you to America!” In those countries, quite simply, there is no dictatorship, nobody puts anyone in chains, nobody imprisons anyone in camps, dispatches him to work in hellish frost, to a certain death. In those frozen lands, man has one antagonist -the cold.

I read this in a book… thought I might share it. I’m sure the copyright layers are going to kill me now…

Ok, as I expected while at work if you say anything against the government while in the military people will immediately brand you as a traitor. I talked about the issue I mentioned yesterday (the national ID act rider) to a few the people I work with. I mentioned, with great sarcasm, that moving to canada would soon be the only option left to people that still want some brand of personal freedom. If what we do in the interests of security is left unchecked, this may be one of the only options left. To take a radical look at it in the future we won’t vote until we take a patriotism test and make sure that we are not terrorists. Its a messed up system and it needs to change. Now, the cool part about our country is that WE CAN CHANGE IT! Its going to take some time and some smart forward thinking people to do it. I would hope that we can stop the progression before it gets too far along. I love my country and would die for it if I had to (its not my first choice of things to do in life) . Again… term limits would be cool; but I’d settle for a change in thinking.