Who runs North Korea? As Kim Jong-un plays the tough guy, his aunt and uncle hold the reins of power. Emphasis on the Aunt.

UK Telegraph  "But as the "first family", the couple's most important role is to defend the dynasty by forging the young Kim's credentials as a powerful military figure, amid concerns that some generals in the powerful armed forces do not trust him.
"North Korea has been a family affair ever since its inception in 1948 under Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994 but remains its Eternal President."....

Kim Kyong-hui is often only female face on official photographs. She is the daughter of the North Korean Eternal President Kim Il-sung
The pair, who are both 66, were seen on either side of Kim Jong-un at a central committee session of the Workers' Party last weekend, where their nephew pledged to maintain nuclear weapons as 'the nation's life treasure'. The following week saw escalating tensions as Mr Kim threatened the US and South Korea....
She also owns the only burger restaurant in Pyongyang, where the menu offers 'minced meat and bread' rather than using the American word 'burger'.

Vitriol infests Pastor Rick Warren's family grief

USA Today  "Pastor Rick Warren, the best-known name in American evangelism after Rev. Billy Graham, lost his 27-year-old son, Matthew, to suicide this week.
"Uncounted strangers have joined the 20,000 congregants who worship at the ....Warren's nearly 1 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers in flooding social media with consolation and prayer.
"But a shocking number are taking this moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on the digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed at him personally and at his Christian message
"Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew's bereaved mother, that there's no heaven where they'll meet their son again."....

The story: Megachurch pastor and author of "The Purpose Driven Life" said his son struggled "from birth" with mental illness
More here: http://purposedriven.com/

Examiner.com:   "Many people think that clerics do not face the same personal challenges that occur in the lives of those in other professions, but this tragedy reminds us that this is just not true.      
"In an email to church staff, Pastor Rick Warren wrote that he and his wife had just spent a “fun time” with his son in the hours before his death. Mathew had returned to his home and was overtaken by "a momentary wave of despair." "

Rick Warren Asks for Prayer After Son Takes Own Life  "After Rick Warren's son took his own life, the Saddleback Church pastor turned to his staff for intercessory prayer. Charisma News obtained the following e-mail
Warren distributed. Please join with us in praying for his family."

Update: Left Shows Great Compassion To Pastor Rick Warren On Suicide Of His Son; Accuse His Son, Who Suffered From Mental Illness, Of Being Gay  "Of course, there are many kinds of illness that strike all kinds of people, but leave it to the despicable left to hope to justify their hatred for religion by wishing a suicide was caused by homosexuality."

Norktoons

 

Obatoons

Victor Davis Hanson on the Iraq War. Plus an appropriate update about...North Korea?

   You see here what you may think is a strange juxtaposition of the Iraq War and the years leading up to World War 2 (a war that Winston Churchill called the most easily prevented war in history). Linking the two eras of history is the influence of the pacifist left, then and now.
   In a world growing ever more dangerous, with truly evil men possessing the most awesome of weapons, as happened in the 1930's we see leaders in the free world paralyzed by the pacifist left and unable to meet evil with strength and will. The Nazis and the Japanese noticed college groups and their professors in Britain declaring they would never fight for England and they were emboldened.
   As Winston Churchill observed in The Gathering Storm, in just a few years, many of those very students would be killed or maimed fighting that same Axis they had so encouraged.
   Following 9-11, similar pacifists resisted America punishing the Islamic radicals, they opposed the surge that gave us victory in Iraq and voted for a president who would squander that same victory and tarnish the honor of our nation.    The Tunnel Dweller

Iraq a Convenient Scapegoat  "We can perhaps admire either those who were consistently against the war when it was at first unpopular, or those who kept their support when it was even more unpopular. But how does political convenience — in a war that hinged on the enemy destroying our morale — translate into courage or wisdom?"   (Emphasis added.)

Above: World War 2 cartoon depicting pacifist democracies who would not fight Hitler until it was too late to save Europe and the millions who were murdered by the Axis*.

  .... "Going to war is a matter not of avoiding mistakes, but of seeking to correct them as soon as possible. For a postmodern society that knows no history, mistakes must not occur. And when they do, someone else is always to be blamed."  (Emphasis again added)

Iraq – Agony, Ordeal, and Recovery  "We are an ahistorical, me-only generation. An Okinawa or Hue does not exist in our memories. War is supposed to proceed like apps on an iPhone. No one knows of the intelligence failures surrounding Pearl Harbor, the near criminally wrong protocols of the B-17 campaign between 1942-3, or the failure to provide our troops with adequate tanks and anti-tank weaponry in World War II.

"Going to war is a matter not of avoiding mistakes, but of seeking to correct them as soon as possible. For a postmodern society that knows no history, mistakes must not occur. And when they do, someone else is always to be blamed.

"Axis", for all history-challenged readers is explained here.  We know there are at least 50 million such people in the US.  

 

And North Korea wants all those 50 million to stand by them: North Korea to progressives: Join us in war against U.S. (Update).

"According to a post at the North Korean News Service, the United States is the “common enemy” of all the world’s progressives, including, apparently, those in the United States.  And the regime wants them to join Kim Jung Un in his effort against the United States."  Hat tip to Joe Newby

Those enlisting in this fight will get a free Un-phone.

Hitler Survivor: ‘Keep Your Guns and Buy More Guns’

The Right Planet   "Katie Worthman was born in Austria and lived there for seven years under Hitler’s brutal regime. After World War II, she also lived for three years under Soviet communist occupation. Needless to say, Mrs. Worthman is someone who has an acute awareness of how the media distorts things and tyranny comes to power." 

MSNBC’s Resident Marxist Melissa Harris-Perry: All Your Kids Belong to Us (Updated)

The Right Planet 

"...MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry considers the unborn child a “thing” which takes a “lot of money” to “turn into a human,” costing thousands of dollars to care for each year of his/her life. Now it appears that Harris-Perry thinks that, after they’re born, children fundamentally belong to the state.

"Narrating a new MSNBC “Lean Forward” spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America “haven’t had a very collective notion that these are our children.” “[W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities,” Harris-Perry argued."

While I think it is true that our children are a national resource and the future of our nation for good or evil, the import of Obama-thinkers' social philosophies can be scary to contemplate. I fear the consequences if Harris-Perry's outlook translates into government control.
 

MSNBC's expected outlook   "Of course, if as Harris-Perry holds,"[t]he cost to raise a child [is] $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year," and if children should be viewed as collectively "owned" by "society," then taken to its logical extension, a woman's choices about having a child should be informed by the economic considerations of the "community," would it not? But of course, that logic would take someone to justify, for example, the "one-child" policy in Communist China.
"What's more, the notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry "Lean Forward" spot contains a reference to a "great leap forward," which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s."

Update: If Politicians Are Stupid and Corrupt, Why Should We Let Them Run Our Lives?   Mayor Bloomberg ironically asks:

“And yet these are the ones we keep re-electing. You’ve got to ask yourself why.”

 

If government wants to raise our children, they will be brought up by nincompoops. Which leads us to our next post...

Nincompoopery

Always On Watch
Nincompoop:

a person lacking common sense, a person who lacks good sense or judgment ;  a foolish or stupid person  40 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $333,000 in back taxes Obama's White House is open to the rich and closed to the poor: President Obama's pledges to open up the White House are going in reverse American food stamps advertised by the American government — in Mexico Health Insurance Companies Privately Warning Premiums Could Jump By As Much As 116% Because Of Obamacare +30.5B: Federal Spending Up, Not Down, in First 5 Months of FY13 Taxpayer-Subsidized Lab Obama Used To Plug His Green Energy Plan Hasn’t Produced A Single Battery (and the batteries were for the official car of the Obama administration, the Chevy Volt) ICE on Release of Illegals: ‘We Have Released Many Individuals Who Have DUI Offenses’ Massachusetts principal calls off Honors Night because it could be 'devastating' to students who missed mark

Tony Branco, one of my favorite cartoonists

Check out his work at Comically Incorrect. Here is just a sample:

 

 

Military warned 'evangelicals' No. 1 threat; Christians targeted ahead of Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, KKK

Look out! He's carrying an offering plate!

World Net Daily  "A slide titled “Religious Extremism” lists multiple organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Nation of Islam, the Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Identity movement as examples of extremist groups.
"However, the first group on the list is evangelical Christianity. Catholicism and ultra-orthodox Judaism are also on the list of religious extremist organizations."
....
"Crews said it is astounding that soldiers were taught that a key foundation of the Christian faith is now considered extreme and compared to those who want to implement Shariah law."  But I thought Sharia was now cool.

Ah HA! Are they singing "Glorious things of thee are spoken" or is that the German national anthem, "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles"?

bsimmons.wordpress.com

 

It was just between Democrats. Nothing to see here folks; keep moving. It's not as if it was said by a Republican

Obama Apologizes to Calif. AG for Comment on Looks
"Carney said Obama did not want the reference to her appearance to “diminish the attorney general’s accomplishments and her capabilities,” noting Obama said he believed Harris has done “great work” and is “dedicated and tough.”
"Carney sought to make the comment appear a little less controversial by noting that Obama and Harris are old and good friends, suggesting it was kind of joshing between people who know each other well."

Obama Excited by California’s Attorney General

Obama gave a shout-out to Rep. Mike Honda and to state Attorney General Kamala Harris, noting a couple of times that she is, objectively, easy on the eyes. “She’s brilliant and she’s dedicated, she’s tough… She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general…. It’s true! C’mon.” The crowd laughed.

Governor Palin got the Obama treatment as you may recall from 2008
Along the same lines, do you remember Obama calling this reporter "Sweetie"?

Why not give Obama the Musberger treatment?

After Obama; Republican or Democrat, our next president will be a budget hawk.

Victor Davis Hanson 

"Barack Obama is a landmark figure: young, charismatic, seemingly post-national, and supposedly post-racial. For those reasons alone, he enjoys a level of unshakeable political support not predicated on the actual record of his tenure as president (just as most remember fondly that he won the Nobel Prize but don’t quite know what he did to earn it).
"Obama’s economic record will be dispassionately acknowledged to be similar to that of Jimmy Carter. But, unlike Carter, Obama will remain a mythical figure in liberal circles.
"To borrow a line from a classic Western, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And so we will do just that."