On The Road

Since my attempted travels to Baltimore for a concert have been destroyed because the concert is sold out, I have chosen to rant.

Living in Utah in a predominately Mormon community I hear about presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) all the time. He’s always seemed a bit too conservative for me. (Along with almost everyone in Utah.) Tonight I was watching a rerun of the Colbert Report and they mentioned Romney’s view on Guantanamo. Since that show is on Comedy Central I seriously didn’t believe that he said what they said he did, so I looked it up online to confirm it. Here it is:

ROMNEY: I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

Really? So in the fog of war, all of the people that the Northern Alliance rounded up and handed over to the U.S. Marines are terrorists? Interesting. I don’t buy it for one second. Here is a quote I would like to submit in response to Romney’s:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If they were on U.S. soil it would be too hard to use the term ‘enemy combatant’ and deny them of said unalienable rights. The bill of rights would quickly come into play and the U.S. would have to come up with hard evidence against these so called ‘terrorists’ who would be allowed legal representation.

I really feel like I’m just going over something I think we all started learning about when we were kids. This is basic U.S. government, the foundation of everything in this country, and I feel like it’s glaringly obvious the problem with what he is saying.

I know there are those who agree with him and they’re allowed to. But personally, I don’t get it. We want to force democracy onto every nation in the world. We do it with bombs, blockades, embargoes, sanctions, and occasionally we actually use diplomacy but we just want to preach it, not actually practice it. Baffling.

Side Notes:

Interestingly enough, (or ironically enough) the following paragraph in the Declaration of Independence states that when a government becomes destructive of these rights and has a ‘long train of abuses’ it is the right and duty of the people to abolish such a government.

Other Romney Quotes:

I think Guantanamo is a symbol of our resolve.

The fact that we’re ’staying the course’ in a losing war is also symbol of our resolve. Just because you have resolve doesn’t mean you’re right. The Southern States showed great resolve to secede from the North.

I’ve only walked the battlefields at Gettysburg a few times, so please refresh my memory; How did that Southern resolve work out for them?

I do not want to see the legal system in this country potentially opened up to terrorists and feel we’re better keeping Guantanamo in place. And if we need additional space, why, we should be expanding Guantanamo.

WTF

In the travels throughout my life, driving through Wyoming has made me realize it’s one of the most boring places ever. No seriously, I mean what is the point of Wyoming? Well, I can now answer that question. Here is why Wyoming exists:

 
I really don’t want to post too much incriminating evidence about our trip to Wyoming, but we purchased enough fireworks to keep us busy for a while. It’s going to be one explosive Thanksgiving!

So to address the legality of this whole situation: There are some legal fireworks in there somewhere. As for the illegal ones, we used a hit and run approach for setting them off. Go to a park or large parking lot, set them off for five minutes then move on. Since just about every mountain and canyon around here has caught on fire in the past month, we figured Johnny Law wasn’t going to look kindly upon our rockets and mortars. But we tried to be responsible. We looked for parks that were recently watered so the grass was wet and stayed miles away from the mountains.

A few nights before the 4th we were setting some off in a freshly watered park near a friends house. The neighbors enjoyed the show but apparently the local fire and police departments thought otherwise. The group of friends was larger than is recommended for undertaking shady activities but as soon as the fire & rescue pickup was spotted everyone knew it was coming and it was time to go. About half of the group started walking away, figuring (correctly) that the park was big enough the truck couldn’t make it all the way around in time and we didn’t even need to run. Plus, they didn’t see us light any off and no one had anything on them so there was no proof we were doing anything wrong. The other half of the group, for reasons unknown to me, stood there and then approached the authorities. Perhaps they wanted to gamble that by doing this they would be in the good graces of the law. I don’t know, maybe someone will post a reason. I realize running can make you look guilty, but no one was running and on top of that, firemen can’t arrest you. Sooo, yeah, I walked away calmly and made it to see another day and set off more fireworks. (The group that stayed also got away after being lectured.)

The fourth itself was pretty fun and absent of any encounters with The Law. We did however have a technical difficulty during the grand finale. We took extra precaution for our final volley of rockets and mortars and duct taped the firing tubes to a piece of plywood and had a fire extinguisher on hand. Well, apparently the duct tape wasn’t enough. One of the double mortar shots knocked over the tube for another double shot. I think most people saw it coming and got out of the way, but regardless, no one was hurt so it’s ok to laugh. I know I did. And luckily, Karleigh got it all on video. Check it out. (But don’t comment or call me about the dangers of fireworks. I won’t listen.)