Wednesday Chronicle: The World After Kim Jong Il

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Subscribe to The Patriot Post — It's Right and It's FREE: click here. Chronicle · December 21, 2011 The Foundation "States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct." --Alexander Hamilton Editorial Exegesis Kim Jong Il "When President George W. Bush included North Korea in his 'Axis of Evil' along with Iraq and Iran, he was greeted with snickers from those to whom evil is a foreign and unnecessarily provocative concept. Yet evil exists and will continue to be a threat even if its poster child, Kim Jong Il, is dead. ... North Korea developed nukes and the missiles to carry them while its depraved leader drank imported cognac and his people literally ate the bark off trees. Dear Leader's cognac bill was estimated at $500,000 a month. Despite one of the longest and costliest emergency international food relief efforts in history, North Korea's artificial famine has had a proportionately higher death toll than any in history -- worse even than Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. In remote locations not far from the borders with China and Russia, a gulag not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin holds 200,000 men, women and children accused of various crimes against the state. The North Korean Freedom Coalition estimates that between 400,000 and 1 million have perished in these death camps. After Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke in 2008, his third son, Kim Jong Un, estimated to be about 27, was designated as the tyrant-in-line. Kim Jong Un was made a general despite having no military experience. ... The uncertainty all this presents begs for a response better than the fuel oil and food diplomacy conducted in the past to buy time and kick the can down the road. We remember former President Jimmy Carter's naive and dangerous pilgrimage to North Korea. Carter praised North Korea's mass-murdering dictator as a 'vigorous and intelligent man.' Of this habitat for inhumanity, Carter stated: 'I don't see they are an outlaw nation.' ... China, Pyongyang's No. 1 supplier and benefactor, could have long ago helped us rein in this rogue and belligerent regime, but preferred to leave it as both a threat and annoyance to U.S. interests. Now, with the death of Kim Jong Il, uncertainty and instability make North Korea arguably a threat to both nations. As with our policy toward Iran, the other surviving member of the Axis of Evil, it should be clear that further appeasement of tyranny and evil may appear to buy time but only postpones the day of reckoning." --Investor's Business Daily How will North Korea's future impact U.S. national security? The Demo-gogues Hubris and bad news: "[I] would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. ... [B]ut when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do, and we're gonna keep on at it." --Barack Obama Blaming the Republicans: "[E]ven though Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were willing to compromise [on the payroll tax extension] for the good of the country, a faction of Republicans in the House are refusing to even vote on the Senate bill -- a bill that cuts taxes for 160 million Americans. And because of their refusal to cooperate, all those Americans could face a tax hike in just 11 days, and millions of Americans who are out there looking for work could find their unemployment insurance expired." --Barack Obama Over the top: "I consider leaving Americans without unemployment insurance for January and February a crime. I consider not extending the payroll tax cut ... a crime." --Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) Gravely mistaken: "I am confident that the vision that we believe in so deeply and that we've worked so hard for is the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people. " --Barack Obama Government as savior: "Many people aren't aware of the fact that the federal presence and federal employees in their community is vital and performs a life-saving kind of function that is highly revered and valued. And we need to get that narrative out there in every congressional district and in every state in the union to turn the tide in terms of this negative [Republican] narrative." --Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) Lecturing: "[House Democrat Whip Steny] Hoyer made it very clear to the Republicans that when bills come over that do not have policy riders attached to them, poison pills, that we can cooperate and vote together on them and we did so. ... And so it took sometime to talk them out of them, to show them the wisdom of getting rid of those unwise riders. Mr. Hoyer and I, and [Assistant Democrat Leader James E.] Clyburn, we're all appropriators, we're from that culture, we respect the appropriations process, and it is not to be a vehicle to put things on that could never get a presidential signature or pass the House and Senate unless they were on what Mr. Hoyer calls a 'must pass bill.'" --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Should Congress pass the payroll tax cut extension? Village Idiots Revisionist history: "Jesus was an Occupier, born under a death warrant, a Jew by religion, born in poverty under Roman occupation. Gandhi was an Occupier, Martin Luther King was an Occupier, [Nelson] Mandela was an Occupier." --"The Reverend" Jesse Jackson Delusional: "[C]ommunism [is] a great concept. On paper it makes perfect sense." --TV talker Whoopi Goldberg (She forgot the part about how it's a total disaster in practice.) Spin zone: "[W]e never said the taxpayer was going to get paid back. We put $82 billion in the car industry as a whole. We will get back all but $14 billion, plus or minus, of it. But in return for that we saved two million jobs in the Midwest and two great American companies." --Steven Rattner, Obama's car czar Fast and furious race card: "This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him. Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we're both African-American." --Attorney General Eric Holder accusing his critics of playing the race card because of accusations of incompetence involving the botched "Fast & Furious" scandal Upright "The more Attorney General Eric Holder proved contradictory in his recent statements about his knowledge of Fast and Furious, the more I expected that at some point, to save his tenure, he would play the race card. Apparently, he just has. ... Now, in extremis, when a growing chorus wants him gone, we get [accusations of racism] from Holder about his legislative critics. ... Holder should have resigned weeks ago, but at least he serves as a portent of what we can expect in the national dialogue of 2012." --historian Victor Davis Hanson "There's a basic rule in business: If you tell people that a product is free, they treat it like it has no value. We've spent the last 70 years in this country telling our poor that money and property are free. Of course, they don't attribute any value to money or property, then. Of course, they treat others' property as though it's valueless, to be stolen or taken at whim. The liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and President Obama hasn't turned thieves into sudden lovers of big-band swing. It's turned more and more Americans into thieves. Don't blame poverty. Blame morality. And blame a government and a society that have abandoned the notion of responsibility for juvenile delinquency." --columnist Ben Shapiro "The payroll-tax-cut debate is not really about the payroll tax, which is a very weak-kneed economic stimulant and a lackluster job creator because of its temporary nature. Without permanent incentives at lower tax rates, these rebates don't do anything for growth and jobs. Instead, the key to understanding the payroll-tax debate is to grasp President Barack Obama's leftist vision of taxing successful earners (the millionaire surtax) and his obsession with clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels. These are ideological positions. They support the Obama vision of class warfare and his attachment to radical environmentalism." --economist Lawrence Kudlow "Whether it's for two months or a year, a payroll tax cut extension is bad policy. ... In the context of comprehensive Social Security reform, it might make sense to tamper with the payroll tax. But as a half-hearted, gimmicky gesture to pander to the middle class, it doesn't. That is, it makes political sense -- but not policy sense. To me, this entire episode epitomizes the problems with Washington. Politics seemingly always trump principle." --blogger Tina Korbe Insight "Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas." --President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) Dezinformatsia False premise and misinformation: "During the Great Depression the government did create big programs to get people back to work. Why shouldn't they do that right now, why shouldn't there be that kind of action? ... In 2007, the nation's top one percent took home more after-tax pay than the total bottom 40 percent. And now, new reports show that at least one in 15 Americans are living in extreme poverty. So the gap between rich and poor is widening. Shouldn't the government do something to address that?" --ABC's Christiane Amanpour Stirring the pot of class envy: "There is that great concern about income inequality in this country. In the course of the last three weeks, I've been all over America, 19 cities altogether. And I've had a lot of high-income people come to me and say we really do have to do something about income inequality because that could trigger a class war in this country. And the consequences are not very pretty to contemplate." --former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw A good question: "Time's 'Person of the Year' was unveiled this week, and as you probably heard, it's not one person. It is instead 'The Protester,' a symbol of those who challenge the autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement here at home. But was that just a gimmick to avoid honoring a human being?" --CNN's Howard Kurtz Of course they do: "Don't you want to run against a do-nothing Congress?" --Fox News' Ed Henry to Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod Newspulper Headlines: Alternate Title: 'The Road Not Taken': "Jon Huntsman's Path to Victory" --New York Times website Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Will Gingrich Disown Himself?" --Commentary website We Blame George W. Bush: "Kerry Blames GOP for Failure of Supercommittee" --Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA) We Don't Believe It: "Study: Most People Still Don't Trust Online Info" --Associated Press News You Can Use: "How to Not Kill Your Co-Workers at the Holidays" --CNBC.com (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto) The Gift of Liberty For last-minute shoppers, there is no better gift than the gift of Liberty. Help ensure that your loved ones will continue to enjoy the blessings of Liberty that our Creator has bestowed upon us. So that we may effectively battle the enemies of what you hold dear, make a secure online donation today to The Patriot Post's 2011 Year-End Campaign. If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form. We have $100,800 yet to raise in just 12 days! Thank you! Nate Jackson Managing Editor Short Cuts "Speaking of Obama, I realize that back in 2008 he was called The One. Now that we know him so much better, I'm having a hard time deciding on a more appropriate moniker. A few that I've considered are Nanny Barack, the Preacher, the Great Pretender, the Scolder-in-Chief and Chairman Obama. But, here's hoping that after January, 2013, we'll be able to simply refer to him as the Dearly Departed." --columnist Burt Prelutsky "It's a shame Kim Jong-Il died before Obama ever got a chance to bow down to him or to even apologize to him. It's the one guy that Obama didn't get to apologize to or bow down to. How did our State Department ever let that happen? ... Obama did promise -- I'm not making this up -- Obama did promise that he would meet with Kim Jong-Il during one of the 2008 debates. Maybe Kim died holding his breath waiting for that to happen." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh "In a new HBO series, Jane Fonda will play a cable news CEO who manipulates news stories for her personal gain, no matter who gets hurt. Not very creative. She already did something like that back in '72." --former senator Fred Thompson "In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'" --humorist Dave Barry "The FDA is now warning people not to eat raw cookie dough this holiday season. Is that how fat we're getting in this country? Our ovens are too slow now?" --comedian Jay Leno Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team (To submit reader comments click here.) 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My 2011 Man of the Year More Commentary Policy and Analysis Heritage Foundation Insider Heritage Foundation Research American Enterprise Institute Center for Strategic and International Studies The Cato Institute Hoover Institution National Rifle Association Ludwig von Mises Institute Citizens Against Government Waste National Center for Policy Analysis The Heartland Institute (Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.) Follow The Patriot Post:

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