Blatant Reality

Words do not describe how shocked and angry I am at Jimmy Carter. Honestly, why in the world would he decide to tell the world that Israel has 150 nuclear devices?

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

 

His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line. Carter, who has immersed himself since his presidency in Israeli-Palestinian relations, was highly critical of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, and of Israel’s refusal to talk to elected officials of the Islamic party Hamas, although he said that Israel’s security was his prime concern.

If I was Israel right now I would be very angry at Carter. I mean, the world basically knew that they had nukes with every one of those “Nuclear Capable Countries” maps listing Israel but to claim the exact amount they have is crazy.

Also, if that information was gained when he was president, isn’t it illegal for him to share it with anyone? Wouldn’t it be considered treason to share state secrets with the world? Even if it isn’t treason since its not exactly our secret, shouldn’t there be some consequences?

Carter has been living in a world where he thinks that being a former president makes him immune from the consequences. From openly meeting with terrorists to making this announcement, it’s time for something to be done.

What do you folks think?

Hat Tip Gateway Pundit

Recently, John McCain has invited Mike Murphy onto his campaign as an adviser. Supposedly, Murphy told McCain that he needs to “tone down” his attacks on Obama (my emphasis).

Last Sunday, he invited Mike Murphy, his longtime friend and political adviser, who is not involved in this campaign, to his home in Virginia. There, Mr. Murphy reportedly gave him a detailed and at times tough assessment of what Mr. McCain had done wrong.

 

Mr. Murphy urged him to tone down his attacks on Mr. Obama and stop coming across as so angry. He recommended that Mr. McCain concentrate on running as a reform candidate to strip that issue from Mr. Obama, and to make greater efforts to distance himself from Mr. Bush, Republicans familiar with the conversation said.

 

Some of Mr. McCain’s associates said that Mr. McCain might be interested in bringing Mr. Murphy back on board, but that his current circle of advisers was resisting that.

 

As soon as Mr. Obama secures the Democratic nomination, Mr. Schmidt said, Mr. McCain will begin a series of speeches intended to contrast their positions. Mr. McCain’s advisers said they did not think it made sense to do that until Mr. Obama wrapped up his battle against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, given how the two Democrats are dominating the news.

I really hope The New York Times is just having one of those faulty reporting days and this whole article is full of half truths and outright falsehoods. If it’s not, there are so many things wrong with the McCain camp.

First off, McCain doesn’t need to tone down his attacks on Obama because the “attacks” are nonexistent. Have you heard of a single attack? The only “attacks” I have heard about are McCain’s against conservatives for attacking Obama. What McCain needs in his campaign are more attacks against Obama and Hillary.

The next thing that I have an issue with is the idea that McCain wants to be known as a “reform” candidate. I, for one, am not scared of change. However, when McCain wants to be comparable to Obama in the aspect, I tend to have problems. Think about it: How much should “conservative” McCain have in common with the most liberal senator? For example, how much in common should McCain have with Obama on immigration reform? Personally, I think the commonality should be very slim.

Finally, why in the world is McCain waiting for Obama to secure the nomination to begin to contrast their positions? Shouldn’t the differences in their positions be obvious enough? It’s not like McCain is going against Obama in a primary where both of them have the same basic views (or at least I think McCain has different views). The funny thing is, the only real issue that I know for certain that McCain differs from either Clinton or Obama is his stance on abortion. For gun laws though, you would think McCain is a liberal.

Once again I find myself wishing, hoping, and yes, even praying that McCain and his campaign wakes up and discovers that he has a whole lot of conservatives wanting to throw their full support behind him. The only thing he has to do is stop looking like a Democrat by his constantly pandering and courting the other side.

According to a poll conducted a little while ago, Representative Kenny Hulshof is currently leading in the Missouri Republican Primary polls. He is only leading State Treasurer Sarah Steelman by 4% which is really small when considering that out of the 400 Republicans polled, 32% were still undecided. With the primary still a couple of months away, things can easily change.

And it is not the parts that one wants to have repeated. As Ed Morrissey from Hot Air points out this morning, Barack Obama once again forgot what city he was in and called it “Sunshine” instead of “Sunrise” Florida.

ABC News’ Tahman Bradley reports: Before a packed stadium on a rainy afternoon in Sunrise, Fla., Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voiced pleasure with his first visit to the state in six months. “We’ve had a great three days campaigning here in Florida. But I regret that we couldn’t campaign here earlier. But I promise you we’re going to make up for some lost time,” said the presidential hopeful, who initially referred several times to Sunrise as Sunshine.

Thats several times he referred to Sunrise as Sunshine before he caught it. Here is the video of the event where you see he refers to it as “Sunshine” at least twice. Notice how CNN conveniently put the location on the screen.

Now, some of you think that all these gaffes are happening just because this has been a very stressful primary season. Well do you think being the leader of the free world is going to be any less stressful?

Imagine a world where President Obama meets with with the leader of Niger and refers to his country as “Nigeria” or the leader of Kyrgyzstan and calls it “Kazakhstan.” Think that is too far fetched? I, for one, don’t think it is.

Plus, if Obama keeps repeating his own mistakes again and again, what is to stop him from repeating history’s mistakes? Many people are already viewing him as an appeaser so what is to stop him from possibly making Chamberlain’s mistakes in the future?

This one incident is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things but when you combine it with his previous mix up in city names and his “57 states” comments, you begin to see a trend.

And people think Bush is a moron just because he likes to pronounce words differently.

Another week, another picture. This one was taken on the island of St. Thomas a couple of summers ago. I think its a pretty cool picture minus the big telephone pole in the middle of it.

St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

As you may know, I was formally a Mike Huckabee supporter. Once he dropped out, I urged my fellow Huckabee followers to switch over to John McCain, the presumptive nominee by that time, because the alternative was far worse.

Many conservatives, including myself, were not that happy with our candidate, but for the good of the party many of us fell in line. At this time, McCain wasn’t sounding too bad. It seemed, though not many of us believed it, that he might actually turn out to be more conservative than we all thought. However, this brief bit of hope was soon lost.

With McCain now beginning to fall back into his old ways, many conservatives are beginning to lose hope. John Hawkins, who helped convince me to vote McCain, has now lost complete faith in McCain and has confessed that he will not be voting for him in November.

So does this recent information affect who I am going to be voting for in November? The answer is I just don’t know. Does that mean I will be voting for Obama or Hillary or both? Absolutely not. Will I abstain from voting? I couldn’t in clear conscious not vote since it is one of our most important liberties.

Where does this leave me then? Well, I think it leaves me in quite the pickle. If I vote for McCain, I really won’t be able to do that with a clear conscience. Sure he is a heck of a lot better then the Democratic candidates but he definitely isn’t a conservative.

The only thing left for me to do would be to vote for an independent conservative candidate. The only problem with that is I know full and well that I will be basically helping the Democrats win the White House. I, like most conservatives, really don’t like helping them win and would prefer to hinder them at all possible.

So basically anything I do this November is going to be against my conscious. It’s one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of deals. Once again, it seems that my only option would be to pick the lesser of the evils and you know what that will probably be? Vote McCain.

He still has a little over 5 months to prove to conservatives he can still be our candidate. Lets hope he doesn’t squander that time by pandering to the other side.

Today, two men were stopped from entering a nuclear power plant in Sweden after they were discovered to be carrying small amounts the same highly explosive material used by suicide bombers in Israel.

“They told us a welder who was going to perform a job there had been stopped in a random security check. He had been carrying small amounts of the highly explosive material TATP,” Karlsson said.

 

TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is a high explosive which is extremely unstable, especially when subjected to heat, friction and shock.

 

The compound can be prepared in a home laboratory from easily available household chemicals. It has been employed by suicide bombers in Israel and by Richard Reid, the thwarted British “shoebomber” who attempted to blow up a transatlantic airliner in 2001.

Weird how the article doesn’t mention anything about how these men might be terrorists because it sure sounds like it could be one.

Michael Weiss wrote an excellent article that points out some of Obama’s contradictions and his ignorance on many issues concerning the Iraq War. Take a look.

If you didn’t know this already, the French like to protest a lot. These aren’t the same kind of protest we are used to where only a few, sporadic groups might participate; These are nationwide protests that can potentially shut down the country and force a lot a people to upgrade their cars.

What might the French want to protest about this time? Well it seems that President Sarkozy wants to modernize France which has led to whispers of revolt in the streets.

While past Presidents have caved to this “street democracy”, Sarkozy will not follow his predecessors examples.

n the same breath, he has made clear that he will not back away from a five-year program for modernizing France – or a showdown in the streets. “I was not elected to bow down in front of all the special interests and everything and everyone opposing change,” he said last week.

 

With this, Sarkozy can marshal arguments – although with little success in penetrating French public opinion – that purchasing power actually increased last year by 3.3 percent (the best figure in five years), and that growth in France 2008 will be around 2 percent (on target and better than the often-cited models of Britain and Spain).

Finally, a French president with some guts and some past successes already under his belt to back up his position. It’s about time. Too bad the French don’t seem to like him too much because, quite honestly, I would probably like him more than whoever is in the White House come January.

Sometimes I just have to shake my head and laugh. It’s times like these that there really is nothing more one can do.