Blatant Reality

Here is a good article on MSNBC.com that analyzes where the current Republican candidates are at. Looks like even though Huckabee is gaining in the polls, most analysts still just see him as a potential Vice President.

And National Review’s Rich Lowry also raves about Huckabee, but isn’t ready to concede the candidate has a shot at the nomination. “Pundits now say that Huckabee has made the GOP contest a ‘five man’ race. This is overkill. Without organization, money or an agenda, Huckabee is very unlikely to win the nomination. A presidential candidate has to be more than a performer. As one top social conservative says, ‘He’s not running for Toastmasters.’”

It never hurts being a good speaker as I’m sure Mitt Romney is discovering after his little Osama/Obama mix-up yesterday.

Well the answer is obviously Mike Huckabee.

Though Giuliani might be savvy enough to lead people, Fred Thompson wise enough to wade through the tides of politics, McCain tough enough to fight terrorism and Romney business-minded enough to grow our economy, I believe the only one who has all of the characteristics to lead America forward into the future is ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

In his latest dispatch, Michael Yon laments how much the world’s media is to blame for the continuation of false stereotypes of the present situation in Iraq.

All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It’s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car.

 

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.

He pledges to focus on the success that has been achieved in southern Iraq in his next couple dispatches. He is also in the process of totally revamping his website and is need of extra money for that project. You can donate money to support his independent reporting here. Remember, he isn’t affiliated to any news agency so he can report what stories he wants and without any editor taking anything out. This, however, puts him at a financial disadvantage so, if you appreciate his stories, show it.

The New York Times published a story today with a chart listing the views of leading Christian Conservative on the top four candidates. The interesting thing was that, out of Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, and McCain, only Romney received favorable opinions from Dobson, Perkins, and Bauer. I’m personally pulling for Huckabee but, if it came to me choosing between the current top four, I would definitely go with Romney.

The chart appeared in an article about Sam Brownback’s potential drop out.

In the past six years alone, North Korea has violated the Northern Limit Line 135 times, with 2/3 of those incursions being with military patrol boats.

Baek Seung-joo, chief researcher of the North Korean Studies Division for the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, said that the crossing of North Korean fishing boats “can be understood as the pursuit of economic purposes. But patrol ships’ violations are an obvious sign that North Korea has no intention to respect the NLL.” Baek recalled that the North has repeatedly demanded a redrawing of the line but mainly uses the matter as a convenient pretext to reject South Korean proposal to build up mutual military trust.

Well October 12 came and went and, by my account, Israel didn’t receive a “final response” from Iran.

However, Al Gore did win the Noble Peace Prize on Friday. Coincidence? Probably, but wouldn’t that be weird if it wasn’t?

Officials from Iran and Syria met yesterday and reviewed their mutual interest including how they could expand their “technological” cooperation.

They also explored new avenues for cooperation in technological field and it was agreed that the issue be followed up through exchange of visits between officials of both countries.

I’m sure that these countries won’t just be exchanging “visits” in the future.

Even though North Korea has promised to dismantle its nuclear program, the country still celebrated the one year anniversary of their first nuclear detonation.

On the one-year anniversary of its first nuclear test, North Korea gushed praise over the country’s success and its leader, saying the test was a “miracle.”

 

“Our leader Kim Jong-il has brought to us, 70 million people (on the Korean Peninsula), the sky of lasting peace, prosperity and hope,” said the Rodong Shinmun, the newspaper of the ruling North Korean Workers’ Party monitored in Seoul.

Jimmy Carter recently said that the situation in Darfur isn’t a genocide according to the textbook definition. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it.

With Putin positioning himself as the next prime minister of Russia, some are comparing him to Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Coming out of the seven-decade coma that was the Soviet Union, Russia rejoins the world having substantially - and painfully - reinvented itself. Whatever economic statistics say, most Russians have adopted a middle-class mindset that places a premium on state-enabled stability and income growth. In this regard, it makes less sense to compare Putin to former Russian leaders and more sense to compare him to Singapore’s founding father and longtime leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who, after overtly ruling for many years, still covertly steers the country as “minister mentor” to his son the prime minister.