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Kim Jong Un, the newly appointed supreme leader of North Korea is being hailed as the "Great Successor, Supreme Leader and Sagacious Leader." I had to look up sagacious again to make sure.
sagacious |səˈgā sh əs|
adjective
having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd : they were sagacious enough to avoid any outright confrontation.
DERIVATIVES
sagaciously adverb
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin sagax, sagac- ‘wise’ + -ious .
Wow, not even thirty and he is already all that. Hey, what the hell, how in the hell do I know if he is indeed, sagacious or not? What I find most interesting is the efforts that must be going on behind the scenes by the real power brokers, presumably the military to keep the whole autocratic, paranoid, vicious regime going forward, nary missing a beat.
Because it is one thing to worship a ruler who rules his tortured fiefdom as an almost religious figure, and another matter entirely to craft the same image for a wet behind the ears punk kid. Takes a much better sales job. So they are very vulnerable right now. People might have an enlightened moment and the whole jig is up. You never know? There are reports that there is disquiet both among the citizenry and amongst the military.
So who are the powerbrokers? The Christian Science Monitor reports that the announcement of the succession was made by Yang Hyong-sop, a member of the political bureau of the Workers’ Party. "Our people are honored to be led by the great president Kim Il-sung and the great general Kim Jong-il. Now we also have the honor of being led by General Kim Jong-un." The other behind the scenes puppeteers might be General Choe Ryong Hae, General Oh Kum Chol, and Military Director-General Oh Il Jong, according to the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo.
North Korea has to be the strangest place, a starving populace, a nepotistic dictatorship that has engaged in acts of criminal deception and malice out of a medieval storybook. Here is some of the legendary tale of the dearly departed Great Leader.
He was supposedly born in 1942 at a secret military camp on Mount Paektu, revered as the birthplace of the Korean people. His birth was prophesied by a swallow, and heralded by a double rainbow over the mountain. Historical records show him actually being born in Siberia, in an anti japanese guerrilla camp.
He had a nasty habit of kidnapping both innocent Japanese and South Koreans for his playthings. It is said that they kidnapped 70 to 80 people but the North Koreans will admit to only 13 and say that everything is cool because they sent 5 back. In 1980, the North Korean Rodong newspaper celebrates Kim’s continued rise within the Workers’ Party: “Christians, do not go to Jerusalem. Come rather to Korea. Do not believe in God. Believe in the great man.”
He was responsible for downing South Korean Airlines flight # 858, killing 155 people on board according to the confession of the North Korean agent who planted the bomb. He liked to abscond with pretty girls that he saw and then eliminate their families so that no one would talk.
These guys are like evil comic book badasses.
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Reports that the International Monitors now in place in Syria haven't done squat and the daily killings go on unabated. Not hard to figure, they are accompanied by senior members of the Syrian military and those with the temerity to speak out against the regime find themselves suddenly quite dead. The commission is a hoot, one of the members being Sudanese Lt. Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, wanted himself on charges of committing genocide in Darfur by international tribunals.
Amnesty International said al-Dabi led al-Bashir’s military intelligence service until August 1995, when he was appointed head of external security. “During the early 1990s, the military intelligence in Sudan was responsible for the arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture or other ill-treatment of numerous people in Sudan,” it said in a statement.
“The Arab League’s decision to appoint as the head of the observer mission a Sudanese general on whose watch severe human rights violations were committed in Sudan risks undermining the League’s efforts so far and seriously calls into question the mission’s credibility,” Amnesty said.
An Arab League official defended the choice of al-Dabi, saying he enjoyed the support of all 22 members.*
My congressman, Darrell Issa is mentioned in this not so charming article about Issa and the state of his district in AlterNet.
"The hard times that most Americans continue to experience don't seem to be making an impact on their representatives in Washington. Now a new report might shed some light on why. According to a Washington Post story this week, “Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home equity.”*
Members of Congress have only been getting richer over the last 25 years.
“Over the same period,” the Post continued, “the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500." “In Mr. Issa’s case, it is sometimes difficult to separate the business of Congress from the business of Darrell Issa.”...
Those were the words of Eric Lichtblau, writing in the New York Times this August about the activities of the man the Washington Post calls the richest in Congress. According to the Post, he has an average net worth of $448,125,017, and Lichtblau noted that unlike many other wealthy members of Congress (including Rockefeller and Sen. John Kerry), Issa takes a direct hand in running his outside business.
In Issa's Southern California district, 14 percent of the people and 21 percent of the children are living below the poverty line. 13.8 percent are unemployed, and 5.1 percent used food stamps in the past year. Median household income is relatively high --$57,399--but 5 percent still make less than 10K. While Issa has been good at bringing home projects that enhance his private wealth, it seems that many of his constituents are not feeling the benefits.
Lichtblau wrote, “As his private wealth and public power have grown, so too has the overlap between his private and business lives, with at least some of the congressman’s government actions helping to make a rich man even richer and raising the potential for conflicts.”
My friend Fred had a seizure and had his car impounded. He is s.o.l.. Too bad he doesn't live in Escondido, it is against the law to impound a car there because the latino political muscle is starting to flex its political muscle and fight against immigration policy. The cops and border patrol were towing cars of illegals and it was costing a lot for the illegals to get them out of hock so they can't do that anymore.
I know that what I am going to say will elicit gasps from the more politically correct but here goes anyway. The 65 million in school aid for illegal children so that they can go to university is bullshit. Help legal American kids of all shades and ethnicities, don't reward someone for breaking the law. My friend B had to pay his copay up front for his back surgery two weeks ago. If he had been illegal, the whole thing would be gratis. I have a friend with a latino name that had 100k written off his emergency stomach surgery. How do I know?, I came up with a big chunk of the 12k copay, money I hope to see again one day.
If you decide to drop in to our country and have a batch of kids, don't cry because the I.N.S. is breaking up your happy family. There is a right way and a wrong way to obtain residency. Yet for all of my protestations, more and more sweet deals like the college aid are coming down the pike because politicians know which way the winds blow. And the rising political power is latino. It is a numbers game. So look at the politicians to start going real easy.
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