Defiantone.com

Well, after 130 some odd days my time in dodge is finally over and I am getting the heck out of here. I’ve got more time to kill before my plane gets here but I don’t have to sleep another night (or day in my case) in Iraq.

The most baffling thing about my trip is that for some reason I haven’t made the Iraqis free. I put together explosives and they get dropped on people and for some reason we haven’t cleaned up this whole debacle yet. I figured I, of all people, could come over here and stop the shenanigans in Iraq.

Alas, I have failed in my quest to make them free - I don’t think this one is going to be fixed overnight (or within the next 3-5 years).

Oh well -

Tags: Balad, Deployment, desert, Iraq, John, travel

My roommate (one of the three) told me that he was bored as hell here and couldn’t wait to leave. I told him that I really didn’t have a problem because I’m an expert at goofing off. I hope that my expertise will take me through the next week because I have little to do save for goof off and travel from one point to the next. I do have a few books I saved back in case I decide to read as well as a laptop filled with hours of music. Internet cafes are always close and there are places to play video games and watch movies. I can still go to the gym and I can eat 4 times a day if I really wanted to (I don’t). I can play card games and billiards at the rec center if I wished to do so. I could just walk around base and sweat - or I could just sweat - its warm out here. I’ve redefined warm by the way - if its less than 100 its warm. If its over 100 its hot. If its over 110 a gateway to hell has opened and is blasting us with the overwhelming heat of hell. If its 120+ well, its probably the end of the world as I know it… but, I’ll be fine.

Wish me luck - its goof off time

Tags: Balad, boredom, goofing off, Iraq, John, travel

I’ve been on a quest - a quest to regain some of my youth. In particular, I’ve been trying to get rid of weight that I shouldn’t have been carrying around in the first place. When I left the states I was carrying 195lbs on my 5′11 frame. To put that in terms of a BMI I was a whopping 27.2 - I was overweight - and I wasn’t far from what they consider obese. Today I am a svelte 165lbs and with a “normal” BMI of 23. I haven’t been at this weight since I was 20 (I’m almost 27)

The last five pounds went when I gave up one more thing. I gave up Gatorade. Sure, Gatorade tastes great (I swear to god they aren’t paying me for this) and it replaces lost salt but it has calories. Each bottle contained something like 230 calories - I was going through two of them a day. I ended up drinking another bottle or two of water - a drink that is devoid of calories.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I go home. I know that if I go back to my old habits I’m going to have to work three times as hard to stay at this weight. I had a soda a few weeks ago and I thought I was going to go into sugar shock - maybe, just maybe, I can figure out moderation. I’ve been able to do it with my meals and I have been able to cut out snacks - snacks are simply food that I really don’t need. I allow myself something sweet (cookies or ice cream) about three times a week and I’ve found that watching the portion size has really helped me reach my goal. Gone are the days when I use the “shovel” method to crap heaping mounds of ice cream into a bowl. I always felt ill after eating that much - I think that I’ve finally figured out how to listen to the signals my body is sending me.

If I can do it, you can do it. Its going to be hard and you’ve got to manage your portion sizes and get to the gym. Sure, you can try diet alone but your progress is going to crawl at a snails pace.

Tags: BMI, diet, gym, John, weight, workout

I woke yesterday and found not blue skies as I was used to but something much more sinister and disgusting. It was like the whole world was in a sepia filter and it had a strange color wash - we were in a brown world. The sky was being choked out by the dust in the air and I could stare directly at the sun at 4PM without it hurting my eyes - well, I could have stared at it if I could have found it. I took a few photos of the day and put them all together - notice how everything blends?

(you can click on the image for the high quality version)

The sky blends into the dirt, into the concrete, into my boots, into the buildings. The item that was the least brown was my shirt which is supposedly “sand” colored. Sand isn’t a color, brown is - you’re authorized to call things light brown and dark brown but there is no sand. If the color isn’t one of the 16 in the crayon box it doesn’t exist - its only a variation of a real color. Somebody had fun making up stupid names.

Its now the next day and I am still coughing and wheezing because lungs don’t react well to dust in that concentration. Why the hell would anyone want to live in Iraq when its such a brown place? The ground has got to be green where I live and the sky needs to be blue.

Tags: defiantone, desert, dirt, dust, Iraq, John, John King, photo

If only I could keep it up -

So, on Thursday night I spent the evening wearing a polo shirt that was provided to me as I stood directly next to the stage at a Faith Hill and Tim McGraw concert. For the evening I was a member of the security team. My only job was to be a visible presence, answer questions, and remove any fan that attempted to jump up on the stage. I only answered one question and nobody attempted to jump on the stage so it was a relatively boring evening. I’m not a fan of country music - save for Johnny Cash - so I almost fell asleep a few times. Jessica was with me and was watching from a different part of the floor. She was rather jealous of me and wished that I could have been sweat on by either one of them - I don’t quite get it. She had fun but it was an extremely long evening. If only it was music that I actually liked - Stevie Wonder would have been awesome.

Friday was another night of fun as we went to watch the Tacoma Rainiers play in a triple AAA game. I’m not a huge fan of watching baseball but when you go to the park there is a lot of other stuff to watch if you have little interest in the game. They also have two of my favorite food groups: brats and beer. I haven’t had a good brat in a while - you know, brat, bun, sour kraut, catsup ( or ketchup) - all the things that make it good. We were staying for the fireworks that were at the end of the game and I guess it was a good choice. The game was all tied up through the 9th inning and we gave up 5 runs in the top of the 10th. Three of them were from an unforced error… doh! Since the Rainiers hang out at the bottom of the standings I didn’t think they had a chance in hell of coming back from that one but a miracle happened and scored 6 runs. I was extremely tired by that point so I really didn’t care but it was one heck of an ending. There were fireworks after the game but I almost fell asleep. If I’m tired I’m willing to sleep almost anywhere.

Saturday - last night - I went to Katie’s house - she is one of Jessica’s friends. We imbibed large quantities of behavior influencing liquid. Needless to say…. I was inebriated. Good times were had by all.

The girl is making me pancakes right now - she could be a keeper. If only all of my time off of work was this enjoyable.

Tags: beer, car, defiantone, food, fun, game, Jessica, John, rain, sleep, sweat, tired, work

So, yeah… I like to write when things are spectacular or woeful. I write more for me than anything else because I know that I’m distant at times with most of the people I know. So, this is a way to get on the inside and see whats really going on. If you read the entire progression of this blog you’d see me grow up over the last couple of years…. its been a long journey but its not over yet.

I have bad days and they often end up on the front page - most of them are tagged with rants. I’ve never been able to recognize and share the many good things in my life but I make an honest effort. I’m obstinate and strong willed - I’m defiant and passionate about the things I believe in - thus the title of the website.

So who is this guy that bares almost everything on the internet

Name: John King - you could have figured that one out by looking at the bottom
of the page
Age: 26 and counting
Origin: Iowa
Current location: Tacoma, WA
Profession: Munitions Systems USAF
Hobbies: Keeping plugged-in to the world around me, reading, snowboarding, and trying to constantly entertain myself by whatever means I can find.
Favorite Sports Teams: THE Chicago Bears and the Seattle Mariners

Thats all I’m sharing out in the open - you can find more on Myspace or Facebook. Good luck on sifting through all of the people that share my name.

Tags: about, blog, John, John King

Free thought and liberty

All Americans are afforded the same protections under the constitution and the bill of rights regardless of what background they might come from. Our nation is great because we are a melting pot of people from many different nations with different backgrounds, opinions, and religions. Many Americans believe that no matter what, we should all be treated the same. Some people think that if I converted to Islam that I should have my security clearance revoked and that I should be put under a terror watch list. Americans are watching other Americans solely based upon the color of their skin and their religion.

In the mid-1800’s the United States was a divided nation as we fought in a brutal struggle for the rights of everyone despite their background or skin color. Hundreds of thousands died in this struggle in an effort to treat everyone equally. Despite the great loss of life America still did not treat everyone equally. America went through a large civil rights struggle for the equality of African Americans during the early to mid 20th century in an effort to even everything out. They wanted the right to be treated as an equal irregardless of how they might look. Today I think that we are still fighting the same battle but the participants are different. In the past month the president signed a law that allowed him and the secretary of defense to indefinitely hold anyone if they are suspected of terrorism. In a nutshell, they suspended the right of habeas corpus. The American civil liberties union immediately began to fight this new legislation as it was in violation of the rights spelled out in one of our nations greatest documents, the bill of rights.

Today I received an email from… someone that advocated the idea of spamming the ACLU with mail to adversely affect their mission: to protect the freedom of all Americans. First off, this is an illegal act. Second, this is one of the most foolish ideas I have heard of in a long time. Why in the world would we want to fight an organization that is fighting for all of our rights. Sure, the status quo in America is that we don’t care who we jail or whose rights we violate to stop terrorism but I know that I wouldn’t want to be one of those individuals who was illegally detained.

I mentioned this to someone yesterday and they mentioned that the ACLU is notorious for fighting only certain things and not all rights violations. In particular, they often fight not for the right to have religion but to remove it from a particular venue. In some cases, I can agree with this rational because we need to separate church from state. Why? Islam is nearly inseparable from most of the nations where the majority of people are of the Islamic faith. When this happens, only the faith of the majority is promoted and the others.. well, a Christian in Indonesia could get murdered and nobody would care. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was an individual of the Islamic faith the matter would be rigorously investigated.

Now that I’ve beat this to death… lets move on to the next topic today

Voting along party lines is foolish

Most politicians in America campaign on the party policy alone rather than their individual beliefs and ideas. We, as Americans, who live in greatest nation on earth, should elect people who think for themselves. When was the last time we voted on abortion in America? Do you think that the legislative body would subject themselves to a vote that would splinter the voting population in half. Lets face it, if there was a political climate change, as there is now, these people wouldn’t be elected the next time around. To make a campaign on polarizing material would be dangerous… the republican party joined together and supported GW’s decision to send Americans into Iraq. It will take years to figure out if the loss of life was worth setting them free. The crazy part is that they don’t care about what we’ve done over there… they just want us dead and gone.

Ok… whats the deal with this? well, I got an email yesterday telling people to vote on party lines citing the following reasons… time to tear them all apart

1. The economy. More than 6.6 million jobs have been created since 8/03. 4.1 annual growth is superior to all major industrialized nations. Dow hits new records. Productivity is up. Real after tax income has grown by 15% since 2001. Like VP Chaney would say…”What more do you want?” The tax cuts proposed by Bush and the R-Congress can take a bow.

More than anything else, the federal interest rates affect how our economy grows or shrinks. One man, who was put into that office by GW (and reagan before that), is responsible for that. Were you aware that 720,000 of the jobs created were government jobs? Creating a bigger government is not an effective way to reduce taxes and lower costs. Smaller governments are more efficient and cost less money.

Oh yeah, my data from Sept 06 says only 3 million jobs were created…. hmmm… fudging numbers somewhere?

Clinton took the jobless rate from 7.5% to 4% during his two terms in office. The GW took the jobless rate from 4% to 6.6% to 4.4%…. we’re almost back to where we started. He didn’t do anything legendary… he just got us back to where we started out in the first place.

You’ve also got to take into account that our nation now has over 300 million people… more people means more jobs.

want to know more check it out at senate.gov

2. The Patriot act. The much discussed civil liberty abuses have just not materialized. It has permitted the CIA and FBI to cooperate.

There has been no mention of civil rights abuses because all of the cases are handled in a seperate court that is out of the publics view. I am not aware of any… nor could I find any but the potential is just too great. Rewrite the legislation and give us something better. There IS a way to do it without infringing on citizens rights. The CIA and FBI have continually proven that although they can communicate they often do not communicate.

3. The ABM Treaty has been cancelled permitting us to work on missile defense. Is anyone but Nancy Pelosi sorry?

The fear mongers want us to spend billions on a missile defense system that does not work. They’ve already spent billions on the system and it doesn’t work… hey, I’ve got an idea. Give me your money and I’ll flush it down the toilet for you.

4. Immigration. The Republican Congress has gotten the first serious immigration restriction law passed in years.

If I was to look at the voting record I found that democrats and republicans worked on the reform together… you can’t take the credit for everything. Whats next? taking the credit for the sun rising every morning?

5. There has not been another terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. Who would have predicted that on 9/12?

You got me here… there also haven’t been any more flying spaghetti monsters attacking our cities…. this is the most asinine statement out of all of them… yes, voting republican stopped the terrorists… oh wait 2819 americans died on 9/11 and 2828 american soldiers have died so far in Iraq… yep, we really showed them (I just want out troops back… soon)

6. Libya has surrendered its nuclear program.

Hmm… years of economic pressure or they saw republicans and gave up…. duh!

7. A. Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling network has been rolled up.

Can you really attribute this to one party alone? No

8. John Roberts and Sam Alito sit on the Supreme Court.

I’ll give you this one…

9. The Demos that do not want to close Gitmo altogether want to give all its inmates the full panoply of rights Americans enjoy in criminal procedures.

Thats right, we don’t want to lock people up and throw away the key without trial because other nations watch what we do. If we abuse human rights why shouldn’t everyone else do it. We should at least give these guys and chance and if they are innocent… let em go, they didn’t do anything. It also doesn’t help that negativity is associated with the prison in the international community. One of the only reasons we have it is because its not located in America and we can pretty much do whatever we want to the prisoners.

10. Demos believe in immediate withdrawal from Iraq. If this happens the US will face a stinging defeat on the war against terror. According to Osama bin Laden, and those who share his views, we are militarily strong but psychologically and spiritually weak. Like it or not - and no one likes it - we cannot leave Iraq now without utterly and decisively validating this analysis.

Or maybe he says things like this to keep is embroiled in a war that we might not be able to win. He’s taunting us, this is what he does. I don’t want to loose either but if they outlook predicts no chance of winning… why stay? Lets get some guys together and find out what we need to win it… and win it. If we don’t change anything we don’t have a chance.

11. Demos would like to eliminate the terrorist surveillance program.

I can’t verify this one

12. If Demos achieve the majority in the House, Barney Frank will chair the Financial Services Committee, Henry Waxman the Government Reform Committee and Alcee Hastings the Intelligence Committee.

The three individuals are tools… but, we should get rid of them instead of voting for a republican… there have quite a few people in the past year that are involved in scandals, this time around most of them are republican…. lets keep the good people and get rid of the bad ones regardless of political party affiliation…

13. Demos believe the proper response to Kim Jong Il’s nuclear test isface-to-face talks. That’s what the Clinton Administration did for years.

For six years the bush administration has done no better… neither made any progress

What I’m trying to say is this, give me a list of facts and I can counter almost all of them as I’ve done here. Vote for the right person, don’t vote for someone based on party affiliation alone… its a bad idea.

Comments? please let me know your opinion

Tags: bad, Bush, car, Clinton, defiantone, Democrat, dust, economy, hate, Iraq, John, media, oil, opinion, service, terror, war, work

These links are a few days old but still relevant

Pat Tillmans brother has something to say, something that everyone should hear

Stories from the fronline -The Sandbox-

After all of these years, a speech Ike made is still relevant

Her music is probably awful but at least she has her head screwed on straight

This guy hates John Madden… and I think he is justified

Its just damn interesting… a website for those that love useless trivia

This feature only works on MSN search but its still cool as hell. This utility allows you to see all of the outgoing links from a website and what links come into your website

Enjoy, I’m off to work

Tags: birthday, blog, comics, dust, hate, John, work

Originally Posted by AFP
WASHINGTON - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in an interview, asked for a long-term US military presence in Iraq, saying his country will need two permanent US air bases to deter “foreign interference.”

“I think we will be in need of American forces for a long time — even two military bases to prevent foreign interference,” Talabani told The Washington Post.

“I don’t ask to have 100,000 American soldiers — 10,000 soldiers and two air bases would be enough.”

The president indicated the bases would most welcome in Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northern Iraq that has practiced de facto self-government since the 1991 Gulf War.

But he suggested that the Sunni Arab segment of the Iraqi population would also welcome a long-term US military presence in Iraq.

“In some places Sunnis want the Americans to stay,” he argued. “Sunnis think the main danger is coming from Iran now.”

The comments come as top US military commanders admitted the United States will not be able to reduce its 147,000-strong contingent in Iraq in the coming months because of spreading sectarian violence and the possibility of the country slipping into civil war.

US Central Command head General John Abizaid told defense reporters last week any previous plans to draw down US troops in Iraq had been put off until at least next spring, and the force level might even go up.

“I think these are prudent force levels,” Abizaid said of the current contingent. “We’ll bring in more forces if we have to.”

At one point I thought we might have Korea II…. and now it might happen.

This is crap… defend your own country… its a shame that after 50 years the Koreans can’t/won’t do it on their own

Tags: crap, Iraq, John, military, oil, war

It was only one part of a growing trend but it was fiercly debated by all. The president installed Bolton in the UN without the approval of congress. He said “NA NA BOO BOO!!!” and did what he wanted without the consent of others. He has been doing this to some extent or another for some time but time will only tell the full extent of how he will ignore everyone else to do what he wants. I guess he is doing the hear no evil, see no evil bit even though it is all around us.

I heard something… very interesting yesterday as I caught the last episode of the Daily Show. Joe Biden, (D) Senator from Delaware, mentioned running for president with a Republican running mate… John McCain. If it happens the implications are insane. Imagine, no more partisan politics and getting the job done because it needs to get done rather than squabbling over what one party wants over another. It would be so freakin cool either way if there was a flip-flop over who was the running mate and who was doing the actual running. Hopefully, this time around, we’ll get some worthwhile candidates that don’t say “NA NA BOO BOO!!!” and do what they want when things aren’t going their way.

Tags: John, McCain, politics, war