Brian's blogs

International -
In Ludwigshafen Germany, Kamil Kaplan had to make a tough and terrible decision. Kaplan dropped his 9-month-old nephew, Onur Celar, from his flaming four-story apartment building. A policeman waiting below caught the boy. Unfortunately the boy’s two-year-old brother was killed in the brother along with nine other people, five of them children. Onur’s father was badly injured and remains hospitalized. The cause of the fire is uncertain.

Opinion – there are some amazing pictures of the baby falling from the window. Supposedly this happened while people in the streets were celebrating Carnival. Someone was most likely just careless. It’s a real sad, but amazing story at the same time. I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to drop my nephew though. That was gutsy.

National - So this article isn’t as much news as it simply sums up how I feel about McCain quite well. McCain is leading the GOP and will almost definitely get the nomination, and Republicans should suck it up. All the little quips against McCain – his support of limits on campaign spending, his support for comprehensive immigration reform, and his switch-around on the Bush tax cuts all have legitimate reasoning behind them. He wasn’t for the tax cuts to begin with because they didn’t come with a cut-back on government spending (we’re at war). Concerning immigration reform, McCain is ready to do something to secure the borders, but what are we going to do with all the illegal immigrants already here? As much as some radically conservative talk show hosts might like the idea, there’s no way we’ll end up sending them on 21st Century Trail of Tears back to Mexico. They’ll have to assimilate, and we ought to help them by making it easier. So on and so forth. The point being that the dumbest thing for Conservatives to do is to say they’d even vote for Hilary or run a third-party candidate rather than back McCain. He’s the best chance we have at getting a conservative President who might actually be able to accomplish something with a Democratic Congress.

Opinion – I guess most of my opinion is in the previous paragraph and in that article. This is what I’ve thought about McCain for a while and I was pleased to find someone else had already written the exact same thing. Over the past couple days I’ve heard multiple people say they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for McCain because that would be betraying their values. I think that’s a bunch of malarkey for the reasons previously listed. Plus, McCain is a Christian, isn’t he? As much as any politician is (and that includes you Huckabee). At worst, McCain is ready to work with the opposing party to get things done, and even Newt Gingrich says that one of the problems with Republicans is that they see everything as Red vs. Blue. And in some ways I feel they live in as much of a fantasy world as the Democrats do. If McCain truly is going to forever change the GOP with his nomination, I say it’s for the best. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see whether I’m proved right or wrong.

Here is a video of a Peruvian man and his cat. Surfing. There’s also a cowboy monkey

National -
So here’s the run-down. Obama’s in the lead again, while Hilary was in the lead this morning. And McCain is far ahead for the Republicans, while Romney and Huckabee are trailing behind. It looks like McCain has it made, while people are still trying to predict whether Hilary or Obama will come out on top. Whichever one wins, there will be a tough campaign for McCain against the democrats.

Opinion – I think the coming campaign for the general election will be extremely different dependent on whether Hillary or Obama wins. Won’t McCain’s strategy largely depend on that? But what will be really interesting is whether or not Hillary and Obama decide to run together no matter who wins. I’m also wouldn’t be opposed to McCain naming Huckabee as his running mate.

International - Iran is now testing advanced centrifuges on the basis that all they want is nuclear power, not weapons. Diplomats have been keeping a close eye on the Iranian nuclear program, and the country has been under sanctions for keeping its nuclear activity under wraps.

Opinion – Once again, I don’t feel Iran is a major threat, but I think it’s smart to keep a close eye on what they are doing. The anti-American sentiment in that country is kind of scary, but what can you do? Unless they show hostile intent or proclaim it (like Saddam Hussein did) we need to sit back and keep our eyes open.