Ballot Access - North Korea vs USA

From CNN (although I could have used numerous other sources, all mocking the idea that North Korea actually has an election process):

This Sunday, North Koreans will be required to show their assent for this political system at general elections universally expected to return the current incumbent Kim Jong Un.

 

While critics say the poll is merely a political show to legitimize the country's rubber stamp parliament -- previous elections in 2009 returned Kim Jong il (Kim Jong Un's predecessor and father) with a 100% mandate on a 99.98% turnout -- observers will be poring over the list of legislators for clues as to how Kim will govern the Communist nation over the next five years.

Kim himself is running for a seat in the Paekusan Constituency No.111; significant because the numbers are regarded as auspicious in Korean culture and because North Korea claims Mount Paektu, located in Paekusan on the border with China, to be the legendary birthplace of his father.

 

The ruling Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland holds all 687 seats within the Supreme People's Assembly and voters have only one candidate to vote for in each of the seats.

 

While the umbrella grouping officially contains four parties -- the Workers' Party of Korea, the Korean Social Democratic Party, the Cheondoist Chongu Party and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan -- all candidates must be sanctioned by the party including three independents currently sitting as deputies in the assembly.

 

While it is possible for a voter to cast a ballot against a candidate, they must walk to a special booth to do so. Critics say few are brave enough to cross out the name on the ballot.

 

From The New York Holy Times (although I could have used numerous other sources, all mocking the idea that the USA actually has an election process):

 

Two Libertarian candidates were tossed from Ohio’s primary ballot on Friday by Secretary of State Jon Husted in a ruling that sparked immediate plans for a legal challenge. Mr. Husted, a Republican, said he had adopted a hearing officer’s recommendations in disqualifying a candidate for governor, Charlie Earl, and an attorney general candidate, Steven Linnabary.

 

Their nominating petitions were challenged on two grounds: that signature gatherers failed to comply with Ohio laws requiring them to be either Libertarian or a political independent and another requiring them to disclose their employer.

 

Mark Brown, a lawyer for the Libertarian Party of Ohio, said it will challenge the decision in federal court. He said the ballot protests were an extension of Republican efforts to keep second third parties off the state’s ballot.

 

Mr. Earl could draw votes from Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, in his re-election bid this fall.

 

So.... We Libertarian Party folks are accustomed to skullduggery from the Beltway Party, trying to keep us off the ballot.  (I won't deny that we sometimes stumble when trying to get over the hurdles they place before us.) 

 

But it does appear that North Korea does offer an easier process for other parties to be represented. 

 

Just go to the alternative booth to vote for someone other than those in power.   

 

I've often said that it's easier for a Southern Baptist to get on the ballot in Saudi Arabia than it is for a Libertarian to get on the ballot in Oklahoma.  Or Ohio. 

 

And we are the country that sends its army and navy all over the world to guarantee free and fair elections. 

 

 

 

 

Why We Fight !!!

Many are wondering why we would consider going to war in Syria. 
Ok, it won't be a declared war, so let's take it down a notch. 
Many are wondering why we would do a limited police action in Syria. 
Ok, it won't be a limited police action.  There will be no "boots on the ground", so let's take it down a notch. 
Many are wondering why we would spend money and risk aviators by bombing Assad's people in Syria. 
Ok, we don't have a freakin' clue who we'll be bombing.  We're America, dammit, and we won't stand idly by while Assad's people execute their POW's. 

Oh.  Wait a minute.  The rebels are executing the POW's. 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well....we've spent a lot of money re-stocking our war arsenal, and there's no money in just letting the stuff sit there.  Economies are based on consumption. 

I once believed that we should get involved in Iraq because Saddam gassed 90,000 Kurds. 
I was wrong. 
Perhaps there should be some sort of humanitarian intervention, but it shouldn't come from us. 
We just aren't very good at it. 

A Question About "Quantitative Easing"

Ben Bernanke and the boys at the Federal Reserve have been printing an extra 85 billion dollars per month.  All in the name of "stimulus". 

North Korea has been printing a couple of million dollars per month.  In their case, it is called "counterfeiting". 

Both sets of printing press owners, Bernanke's and North Korea's, are churning out bills for themselves and their buddies - the people who get to spend them first. 

But let's assume that "stimulus" of this sort is a good thing. 

Does it matter where the stimulus is printed? 

Happy Earth Day - We'll Leave The Lights Off For You !!

I'll never tire of posting this satellite picture contrasting free-market, hog-stomping capitalist South Korea with its more "enlightened" big-government, top-down, control-freak, regulatory hell, benevolent Big Brother worshipping neighbor, North Korea. 

North Korea - Where Every Day Is Earth Day

North and South Korea - a perfect control group situation

North Korea and South Korea GDP. No further commentary necessary.

Socialism Does NOT Lead To Marxism

Socialism Does NOT Lead To Marxism.  Not all the time, anyway.  
But it does have a fairly consistent record of leading to cannibalism.  

I was doing some research on the total disaster known as North Korea.  Parents over there are eating their children.  Go here.  Parents are eating their children.  Parents are eating their children.  (On the upside, North Koreans have free healthcare, excellent gun control, and less of an income gap between rich and poor than the capitalist countries.)

I found this gem on Libertarian Reddit.  The blog from which it came has been taken down, but the horrors mentioned below are well-documented elsewhere.  

Freeze prices, take away the free market, eliminate incentives, eliminate property rights, all "for the common good" and for "fairness", and people will start eating each other.  It really is that simple.  

Socialists are everywhere these days. They loosely model themselves after the hippy movement; they drink PBR, smoke from elaborate bongs, and pretentiously advocate a form of socialism that they can’t quite define. They are unapologetically anti-American, anti-West, and usually, they aren’t worth anyone’s time, but lately, it has become overwhelming, so I would just like them to know one thing: socialism (i.e. abandoning property rights), wherever it has been tried, in whatever form, on whatever scale, has resulted in starvation and cannibalism. I compiled just a few examples for you:

North Korea: “We started seeing cannibalism. When one is very hungry, one can go crazy. One woman in my town killed her 7-month-old baby, and ate the baby with another woman. That woman's son reported them both to the authorities. I can't condemn cannibalism. Not that I wanted to eat human meat, but we were so hungry. It was common that people went to a fresh grave and dug up a body to eat meat. I witnessed a woman being questioned for cannibalism. She said it tasted good.”

Ukraine: “Some went insane. They never did become completely still. One could tell from their eyes–because their eyes shone. These were the people who cut up and cooked corpses, who killed their own children and ate them. In them the beast rose to the top as the human being died. I saw one. She had been brought to the district center under convoy. Her face was human, but her eyes were those of a wolf. These are cannibals.”

Soviet Union: “It is now and only now, when in the regions afflicted by the famine there is cannibalism and the roads are littered with hundreds if not thousands of corpses, that we can (and therefore must) pursue the acquisition of [church] valuables with the most ferocious and merciless energy, stopping at nothing in suppressing all resistance.” –Lenin

China: “Most of the culprits on the list practiced necrophagy, either eating those who had passed away or exhuming and eating cadavers after burial. When a team of inspectors was sent to review the Quiatou commune in Shizhu county, Sichuan, in early 1961, they were startled by the extent of cannibalism. In some cases, only parts of a body were eaten Zemin’s heart, for instance, was scooped out. Some people covered the meat in hot peppers.” (p. 323)

Cambodia: “When I got to the spot, I hid in a thicket from which I could watch the “ceremony” without being seen. But I was so horrified by what I saw that I nearly fainted. The condemned man was tied to a tree, his chest bare and blindfold over his eyes. Ta Sok, the executioner, using a large knife made a cut in the stomach of the poor man. In pain, the man screamed like a wild beast. Even today his cires still ring in my ears. Blood rushed out everywhere, his insides were all laid bare, and Ta Sok cut out his liver and cooked it on a little stove that Ta Chea had just heated up. They divided up the liver among them and ate it hungrily.” Another witness reports, “They ate many human livers this way.”

Angola: "The commander gave Kakule his knife, told him to pare the skin from an arm, a leg. He told Kakule and his other assistant to build a fire. From their satchels, the soldiers brought cassava bread. They sat in a circle. The commander placed the dead man's head at the center. He forced the two loggers to sit with them, to eat with them the pieces of boiled limb. The grilled liver, tongue and genitals had already been parceled out among the commander and his troops."

Jamestown, VA:  (Yes, Jamestown was founded as a Socialist Paradise.  The failed experiment ended when their government said "every man for himself".  The settlement then prospered.  Hit the Thanksgiving label at the bottom of this post. - TWS)  “So great was our famine that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sorte tooke him up againe and eat him; and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbs. It were too vile to say and scarce to be believed, what we endured: but the occasion was our own, for want of providence, industrie and government, and not the barrennesse and defect of the Country, as is generally supposed.”

“Can you really find anyone who is guilty? Just go and ask, and they will all tell you that they did it for the sake of virtue, for everybody’s good. That’s why they drove mothers to cannibalism.” -Ukraine

You Didn't Lift That

Finally. 

A nation whose citizens express proper gratitude to their leaders.

London, July 30(ANI): North Korean Olympian Om Yun Chol joined an elite list of weightlifters to have lifted three times their weight during the men's 56-kg, group B, clean and jerk weightlifting competition at the London Olympics, and he has credited his world-record feat to late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.


Om won the gold medal in the process, and according to him, it was all thanks due to their late 'great leader'.

The 20-year-old Om, who stands just a shade under 5 feet, also set an Olympic record when he cleared 168 kilograms (about 370 pounds) in the clean and jerk in the men's 56-kilogram (about 123 pounds) category.

"How can any man possibly lift 168kg? I believe the great Kim Jong Il looked over me," CBS quoted Om, as saying.

Let us all take a brief timeout from our daily tasks, go to a quiet place, and offer up prayers of gratitude to the Kims, Pol Pots, Bushes, Clintons, Reagans, Obamneys, Pelosis, Reids and Boehners who take our money away from us and then pay other people to do things for us with it.  For without them, we would have more choice in the matter. 

Go here for the entire story about Om. 
Go here for the theologian who first noted Om's proper attitude of reverence to The One who helped him lift 168 kilos.  His blog is called The Dignified Rant.  Via a link from Instapundit. 
If you've been moved by Om's story, you can go here for information on how pay for even more government's spending.  (Bush/Obama spending, not North Korean spending).

Send your checks to this address:

Attn: Dept G

Bureau of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

Ron Paul, on "An Administration Gone Rogue"

Guess who scored a ticket to Ron Paul's speech at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Cowtown on the 11th???
That should be good. 

BTW, Ron Paul has hired relatives as staffers, he's added non-germane earmarks to bills, somebody wrote some incredibly disturbing racist stuff in his late 80's-early 90's newsletters, and I think he once lost his patience with an incompetent nurse.  He once farted.  He has delivered more than 4,000 babies, most of whom now contribute to Global Warming.  There are rumors that in the 7th grade, Ron Paul wrote a negative book report about To Kill A Mockingbird. 
(I'm going to start getting all the negatives out of the way early so my Facebook and website trolls don't have to work so hard.) 

Here's Dr. Paul's latest broadside against Those Who Program The Teleprompter.  It's called "An Administration Gone Rogue". 

Have certain parts of the Constitution become irrelevant, as a former Republican leader once told me at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing? At the time, I was told that demanding a Congressional declaration of war before invading Iraq, as Article I Section 8 of the Constitution requires, was unnecessary and anachronistic. Congress and the president then proceeded without a Constitutional declaration and the disastrous Iraq invasion was the result.

Last week, Obama administration officials made it clear that even the fig leaf of Congressional participation provided by the 2003 "authorization" to use force in Iraq was to be ignored as well. In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated clearly and repeatedly that the administration felt it was legally justified to use military force against Syria solely with "international permission". Such "international permission" could come by way of the United Nations, NATO, or some other international body. Secretary Panetta then told Senator Sessions that depending on the situation, the administration would consider informing Congress of its decision and might even seek authorization after the fact.

While Senator Sessions expressed surprise at the casual audacity of Panetta in making this statement, in reality his was just a bluntly stated explanation of what has been, de facto, the case for many years.

If we had elected my Libertarian buddy John Jay Myers to Pete Sessions' seat in Congress, John Jay would've done more than merely "express surprise.  John Jay would've jumped the railing and gotten into Leon Panetta's fat, war-profiteer face.  Oh well. 

When President Obama committed the US military to a pre-emptive war against Libya last year, for example, Congress was kept completely out of the process. Likewise, military action in Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and so on, proceed without a Congressional declaration. In fact, we haven't had a proper, constitutional declaration of war since 1942, yet the US military has been engaged in Korea, Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia, Liberia, Haiti, and Libya with only UN resolutions as the authority. Congress's only role has been authorizing funds, which it always does without question, because one must "support the troops".

Of course we should reserve our harshest criticism for Congress rather than the Administration. If the people's branch of government abrogates its Constitutional authority to the Executive branch, who is to blame? Who is to blame that Congress as a body will not stand up and demand that the president treat the Constitution as more than an anachronistic piece of paper, or merely a set of aspirations and guidelines? The Constitution is the law of the land and for Congress to allow it to be flouted speaks as badly about Congress as it does about a president who seeks to do the flouting.

Just last week the administration announced that it would begin providing material support to the rebels who seek to overthrow the Syrian government. Was Congress involved in this decision to take sides in what may develop into a full-fledged civil war? And what of reports that US special forces may already be operating inside Syria? Still, Congress sits silently as its authority is undermined. Does anybody really wonder why approval numbers for Congress are so low?

Many of my colleagues who stood by as then-President Bush used the military as a kind of king's army are now calling for Congress to act against this president for openly admitting that is his intent. I agree it is time for Congressional action in response to these attacks on our Constitution, but the solution is simple and Constitutional. The solution is simply voting to withhold funds, since Congress has the power of the purse. No money for undeclared wars!

The picture of Barack Obama as a jet fighter came from SodaHead, in an essay entitled "Hey, Obama, What do you say?  How many kids did you kill today?" 

Don Surber is despicable. Or maybe just misinformed.

Don Surber, whose writing I ordinarily enjoy, has been pushed over the edge.  It seems that Ron Paul's opposition to Hillary Clinton's and Dick Cheney's and Condi Rice's and George Schultz's and Henry Kissinger's foreign policy screw-ups have driven him over the edge. 

He's got a piece on his site entitled "Ron Paul Is Despicable".  Here's Mr. Surber: 

His (Ron Paul's) weird take on the Constitution is Jacksonian and I do not mean that in a complimentary manner. Republican Congressman Ron Paul envisions a world in which the USA is neutered as she was in the 1990s. He talks as if the last 65 years without a major European war are not worth the sacrifices our nation has made over the years in standing up to communism and in standing up for democracy in Europe and elsewhere.

Ok, lets look at the easy stuff first.  There hasn't been a major European war, only a minor one in Yugoslavia/Bosnia/Serbia.   But let's broaden our horizon to include continents that don't include so many white folks.  What about Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and the financial aid and training we've given to dozens of dictators? 

Never mind.  Those folks ain't white, and they talk funny. 

There are places in the world where nothing is more terrifying than the U.S. coming over to "stand up for democracy". 

Back to Mr. Surber:

But even if I agreed with him, I would think of Ron Paul as a despicable human being because of this, which he said to supporters, according to CBS: “Just think of what happened after 9/11. Immediately before there was any assessment there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq.”

Well, if memory serves, we went into Iraq claiming that they had WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.  We never found any.  The flimsy evidence upon which we based our invasion was weak and flawed.  I repeat....WMD's were the only reason we had to invade Iraq at the time.  We went in.  We found nothing.  We were looking for anything, any excuse whatsoever, to go invade the place.  We were "gleeful" to have that excuse, as no others had presented themselves.  We're still there.  We now have the largest fort in the world over there, and it is disguised as an embassy.  We'll be there forever.  Mission accomplished.
And there was very little Al-Qaeda presence there until we showed up and started kicking over anthills. 

He is lucky we outlawed dueling, because I am pretty sure that given the opportunity, Dick Cheney would indeed issue such a challenge.

And if Dick Cheney's dueling skills are anything like his dove hunting skills, Ron Paul has nothing to fear.  Cheney's no better at hitting targets than he was at finding WMD's.   
 

UPDATE: Ron Paul need not worry about repercussions. No one in the Bush administration takes him serious. The London Daily Mail reported that Ari Fleisher, Bush’s spokesman during 9/11, tweeted, “The man is nuts.”

Ron Paul has peddled this bullcrap for years. Recall this exchange during the 2008 presidential debate season:

Ron Paul: “They attack us because we’ve been over there, we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East. I think Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics.”

Rudy Giuliani: “That’s an extraordinary statement of someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”

Ron Paul is a perennial presidential candidate whose first bid was in 1988. He has figured out how to make a buck or two off paranoid rubes who buy this swill. It is a cottage industry that others such as Lyndon LaRouche work quite well.

I defend his right to lie about honorable men because I trust that most people have the wisdom to understand how ignorant he is.

The day after this debate, Ron Paul's campaign took in one million dollars. 
Until Ron Paul dropped out of the race, he had the honor of receiving the most contributions from active military personnel. 

Here's something from the comments beneath Surber's article:

I wish Ron Paul was crazy. I wish Iraq really did have WMD’s. I wish the Federal Reserve really did have the knowledge and ability to maintain stable prices and full employment. I wish that our welfare programs were solvent and sustainable. I wish the sacrifices made by our troops were really necessary. I wish the Patriot Act was patriotic. I wish we didn’t have inflation and unemployment was only at 9%. I wish we could win the war on drugs. I wish the terrorists really did hate us for our freedom. I wish we were defending our national interests in Afghanistan. I wish our big banks really were too big to fail.

But I can’t believe these lies anymore, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who is brave enough to tell the truth. Open your eyes.