Stupid Is...As Stupid Does...

Harsh Reality Alert: If You Feel at ALL Sorry For THIS Guy, You May Be as Stupid as HE Is!...

Or as Cappy Cap (http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/) puts it, “The price of ignorance is this”:

"I am fool."

That self-assessment comes from Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean economist who moved to North Korea a quarter-century ago, dragging along his unhappy wife and two teenage daughters (pictured above in N Korean Prison Camp). He then defected to the West, leaving his family stranded in a country his wife had called "a living hell."

Oh lives alone now in a fusty, computer-filled apartment in the capital of South Korea. At 68, he is retired as a researcher for a government-funded think tank. He says he drinks too much rice wine and dwells too much on what might have been...

...His wife and daughters - if alive – are believed to be prisoners in Camp No. 15, one of several sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea.

The self-acknowledged foolishness of Oh began in Germany in 1985. He was married with two young daughters and studying for a doctoral degree in economics at the University of Tuebingen. He was also an outspoken and left-leaning opponent of the  authoritarian government then running South Korea.

His activism attracted the attention of North Korean agents, who approached Oh and offered help with a family medical problem.

His wife, Shin Sook-ja, a South Korean nurse, was sick with hepatitis. The North Koreans convinced Oh that she would get free first-class treatment in Pyongyang and that he would get a good government job.

"My wife did not want to go," Oh said. "I ignored her objections."

Via East Germany and Moscow, the family
arrived in Pyongyang on Dec. 3, 1985, Oh
said, and was immediately taken to nearby
mountains for indoctrination at a military
camp.

"The moment we stepped into that camp, I knew my wife was right and I had made the wrong decision," Oh said.

His wife received no treatment for hepatitis.

Instead, she and her husband spent several months studying the teachings of Kim Il Sung, the "Great Leader" and founding dictator of North Korea. He died in 1994 and was replaced by his son, Kim Jong Il, who continues to run what is often called the
most repressive state on Earth.

Oh and his wife were given jobs working in a radio station broadcasting propaganda to South Korea. Soon, though, authorities ordered Oh to return to Germany and recruit more South Korean students to live in North Korea. His wife and daughters, he was told, could not go along...

...Oh recalls that he and his wife argued bitterly about what he should do.

"She hit me in the face when I said I would come back with some South Koreans," Oh said. "She said I could not have that on my conscience. She told me to leave North Korea and never come back. She told me to think of her and our daughters as being dead from a car accident."

Shortly after Oh defected, his wife and daughters were detained in Pyongyang and taken to Camp 15, a former North Korean prisoner told Amnesty International. Two years later, according to another former prisoner, the three were moved from a "rehabilitation" section of the camp, where prisoners are sometimes released, to a "complete control district," where they work until they die.

There has been no further information about Oh's wife and daughters since then.

In the early 1990s, Oh wrote a book, "Please Return My Wife and Daughters, Kim Il Sung." It did not occasion a response from North Korea.

Oh said he sometimes believes his family is still alive, and sometimes he is convinced that they are dead. Either way, he blames himself.

http://www.startribune.com/world/85009842.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUss

Yes it’s a sad story, left-wing dupe falls for the leftist lies of some leftist tyrant and he and his family are subjected to a concentration camp life as “the worker’s paradise” he’d been promised. Then the pathetic left-wing dupe re-defects, leaving his helpless wife and teenaged daughters in that hell hole...and then spends the rest of his miserable life whining about how much HE lost!

Oh Kil-nam isn’t much more insipid than any of the hordes of other Western Leftists who pine away for a “socialist utopia,” who shout inane slogans like, “The people and their needs must be above the demands of markets,”

No reasonable, rational person can have any sympathy at all for a cowardly fool like Oh Kil-nam, after all, the ONLY true “victims” in all of this are his wife and daughters. As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a MARONE!”

The Central Irony in “The Age of Obama”...

These are certainly "trying" and I fear, increasingly "harder (especially economic) times" in which to live.

We've overspent and borrowed ourselves into a disastrous state due primarily a leftward lurch by our government, caused by politicians seeing the need for more government action everywhere and have yet to feel the full consequences of that.

And this profligacy didn't start with Barack Obama....not by a long shot.

Our leftward lurch, itself, probably started with Woodrow Wilson a liberal Democrat (and avowed racial bigot) who oversaw the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment (the progressive income tax)...it followed through Warren Harding's one term, with a brief Conservative respite with Calvin Coolidge's tenure, before roaring back to life under the first "Progressive President of the USA" - Herbert Hoover, who started many of the programs that FDR built the New Deal upon!

Hoover also had the U.S. Army engage in one of its most shameful acts - firing upon hundreds of WW I Vets who had come to Washington, D.C. to claim their promised "Bonus Checks." That incident, the attack on the "Bonus Marchers,” was led by, of all people, General Douglas MacArthur!

Here's one account; "On 28 July, 1932, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the police evacuation of the Bonus Army veterans. When they resisted the police shot at them, killing two. When told of this, President Hoover ordered the army to effect the evacuation of the Bonus Army from Washington.

"At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, Fort Myer, Virginia, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch the U.S. Army attack its own veterans. The Bonus Marchers, believing the display was in their honour, cheered the troops until Maj. Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them — an action which prompted the civil service spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"

"After the cavalry charge the infantry, with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp and President Hoover ordered the assault stopped. However Gen. MacArthur, feeling this exercise was a Communist attempt at overthrowing the U.S. Government, ignored the President and ordered a new attack. Hundreds of veterans were injured and several killed "

That was probably the worst abuse of power, yet to be unleashed on American soil, against American citizens and by America’s own government! Fittingly it occurred under the auspices of “the Jimmy Carter of his day,” Herbert Hoover, who, like Carter was a man noted for his brilliance, a trained engineer and a modern “progressive,” who inanely believed that “Every problem has a scientific solution best implemented by a benevolent government.”

That liberalism continued unabated through FDR's four terms...

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...After WWII (the event that finally ended the Great Depression) America was reborn (economically) as the sole super-power (the last nation standing) after that conflict and reaped decades of easy prosperity that later fueled the disastrous 1960s and the unbridled excesses of the LBJ administration, followed by the equally onerous and equally Keynesian policies of the Nixon-Ford administrations, until we had our second major economic calamity under the aforementioned Jimmy Carter, who until today reigned as "the most liberal President in American history." He is now second to B Obama.

But Congress STILL overspent during Reagan's tenure, during Bush Sr's tenure and under Bill Clinton UNTIL 1995, when the "Gingrich Congress" came in and halted government spending.

After Gingrich left office in late 1998, the GOP Congress (under DeLay and later Hastert) became as spendthrift as almost any Congress had been, either Democrat or Republican....UNTIL the Pelosi-Reid Congress who've overspent and run the U.S. economy aground since 1997!

And G W Bush can be charged with having helped the Pelosi-Reid gang, or at least, doing little, if anything to stop them.

So by the time Barack Obama's first term ends, America will have suffered 100 years of (almost unabated and unchecked) big government liberalism....an ideology that turned America's Founding principles on their heads!

One of the great ironies of America’s rise to greatness is that it's the prosperity generated by Capitalist entrepreneurialism that forged so much of this nation’s excessive generosity and so much of its activist/equalizing and redistributionist "liberalism."

Now the days of cheap energy and cheap commodities are quickly coming to an end....we are competing for that energy, that water and those commodities with billions of others in quickly industrializing nations and the result is higher energy, water and commodity prices, making it harder to make the kinds of profits that earlier on, generated so much of our overly optimistic generosity.

We are not only heading into harder economic times due to decades of excessive government spending (politician's generosity with other people's money) and Keynesian economic policies (BOTH G W Bush and Barack Obama have been stalwart Keynesians), but we're doing so as the tectonic plates, both culturally and economically, shift beneath our feet.

The new realities (higher prices for energy, water and other commodities that will make generating Capital more arduous) that are already upon us will all but eradicate that sense of optimistic generosity that is the foundation of the West's egalitarian liberalism.

There are even some on the far-Left, who've suggested that Barack Obama, who has said to have been enthralled by Milton Friedman while at the University of Chicago and later surprised people as the editor of Harvard's law Review in seeking out "ideological diversity," in the form of more Conservative voices, may have been a stealth candidate set up to discredit and destroy liberalism in America once and for all.

That last bit is surely merely the paranoid ramblings of some on the extreme-Left, but it is ironic that "the most liberal President in U.S. history" would preside over its shockingly sudden implosion.

Who would have thought, fifteen months ago, in the wake of American liberalism having risen so high and so fast that it had many political pundits speculating that “Conservatives may not win any significant number of elections for a generation or more,” that it would fall so far, so fast, and with so little hope of reality cooperating with any liberal resurgence?

Deliberate or not, American Conservatives almost certainly do owe a great debt to Barack Obama. This administration has over-reached and turned a tone deaf ear to a populace clamoring for jobs and economic security and instead has busied itself attempting to deliver an ill-conceived healthcare takeover that would cost MORE instead of LESS. In so doing they have galvanized Conservative opposition and turned liberalism and progressivism into a dirty words in less than a year!


It took Jimmy Carter a full three years to accomplish all that!

H/T to Maria (namaste) of MyVoiceontheWingsofChange and Robert at WiseConservatism for stimulating these thoughts.

Joseph Stack – a “Conservative Tea Partier," Of Course....

This is a GREAT cartoon that appeared in Red State a few days ago.

It captures the essence of the media spin on IRA kamikaze, Joseph Stack.

What it doesn't explain is the equally ridiculous back-story - stung by a bona fide far-Left loon and ardent Obama supporter Amy Bishop gunning down colleagues at the University of Alabama, the MSM did what it always reflexively does, to grab at another incident and shout, "You guys do it TOO!"

Except of course, Conservatives DON'T!

It’s Happening!...

For over a year I’ve been saying “the worst is yet to come,” because I knew this Keynesian-triggered recession would not be brief and would NOT spare those usually spared – government workers.

Back on January 11^th, 2009 I said, “Think things are bad now?

Wait till we see tens of thousands of cops, teachers and other Municipal workers getting pension “buyouts” of pennies on the dollar, screaming about the “broken trust.”

http://workingclassconservative.blogspot.com/2009/01/coming-economic-strom-and-what.html

Aside from taking credit for yet more prescient prognostication, I take no pleasure in documenting how right I’ve been.

Today, California teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and about a dozen states are not very far behind, if behind Cali at all.

In New York, the MTA is laying off 1,100 transit workers. The City of New York is looking at massive layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters and New Jersey is facing the same kinds of draconian cuts.

Yes, a lot of those spoiled, insular Americans (mostly government workers) who wrongly thought they were immune from recessions are finding that’s far from true!

Turns out that the law of gravity applies to them too.

Fact is, without a vibrant PRIVATE sector, there can’t be a large, well paid PUBLIC sector.

NEED counts for nothing.

If NEED made those jobs necessary, OR if public sector jobs “were as good for the economy as private sector ones,” then Zimbabwe could find prosperity by merely hiring an Army of bureaucrats!

No, a country must first produce goods and services in demand by others in order to afford to care for the “needs” that the public sector services provide for.

And make no mistake, this is just the beginning! The WORST is STILL “yet to come!”

I’m not at all happy to say that.

Not So Funny Story - Joseph Stack (the IRS Kamikaze Pilot) Turns Out to Have Been a Raging Leftist....

You know what’s really pathetic about the post-event coverage of Joseph Stack’s kamikaze attack on a Texas IRS office?

It’s the mainstream media’s bending over backwards to make Joe Stack into a “Right-wing, tea party going, radical tax protester.”

Funny stuff, especially in light of Stack’s rambling LEFTIST tirade, that also served as his suicide note, in effect, his “dying declaration.”

His rant starts off, “We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.”

He then rambled on about the abuses of American businesses, “Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.”

He then turned his attentions to the Left’s favorite past time, “(GW) Bush bashing”; “As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough).”

And another favorite past time of the Left, “religion-bashing”; “Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy.”

One of his rambling anecdotes also centered around corporate abuse; “...at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.”

He ended his rant with this raging anti-Capitalist sentiment;

“The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

“The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”

Just as surely as Herbert Hoover was an outright and self-proclaimed Progressive,” a man who claimed that “Every problem has a scientific solution, best implemented by a benevolent government,” Joseph Stack was an ardent anti-Capitalist and a passionate leftist. Stack’s dying declaration bashed G W Bush but never even mentioned the current President, Barack Obama.

Does that sound at all like a “Right-wing, Tea-Partier”?

No, not at all, but it DOES sound very much like any generic Leftist.

UPDATE:

A GREAT post on the media's linking IRS Kamiakze, Joseph Stack to the Tea Party Movement can be found over at Sweetness and Light:
Media Link Joseph Stack To ‘Tea Party’

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/time-wapo-link-joe-stack-to-tea-party

Rep. Alan Grayson Reviles Free Speech...

Rep. Grayson of Florida wants the owner of a parody website imprisoned for five years...for “running that website”

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando, Florida (pictured above) has taken such offense at a parody website aimed at unseating him that the freshman Democrat has asked that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder investigate the Lake County activist who started the anti-Grayson website “mycongressmanisnuts.com,” a parody based on Grayson’s own “Congressmanwithguts.com.”

Rep. Grayson accuses Republican activist Angie Langley of, among other things, lying to federal elections. His four-page complaint highlights the fact that the Clermont resident lives outside his district, but that Langley still uses the term “my” in “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”

“Ms. Langley has deliberately masqueraded as a constituent of mine, in order to try to create the false appearance that she speaks for constituents who don’t support me,” writes Grayson. “[She] has chosen a name for her committee that is utterly tasteless and juvenile.”

Alan Grayson has requested that Langley be fined and “imprisoned for five years.”

Sounds about right, for a very REAL anti-1^st Amendment fascist.

The Oath Keepers – Constitutionalists Among America’s Military and Emergency Services....

 







“We are...Americans [who’ve sworn an oath to the Constitution] who want the Constitution returned to its legal and rightful place, intact, as the ultimate Law of the Land.”

So states one of the tenets of a new group of “Oath Sworn Americans” (active and retired military, police and firefighters) who have joined together to support the U.S. Constitution and Constitutional governance.

As you might expect, the far-Left in America takes a very dim view of such folks!

“Oath Keepers, the militia/“Patriot” extremist group made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans...”

Southern Poverty Law Center Blog

by Rob Waters

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/10/21/oath-keepers-say-theyre-on-patrol-in-iraq/#more-3449

“Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, a conspiracy-minded, antigovernment organization composed mostly of active-duty police and military officers and veterans...”

The Southern Poverty Law Center

by Larry Keller

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/02/01/gun-rights-advocates-to-march-against-phantom-threat/#more-3599

So, who are the Oath Keepers?

Well, in their own words, from their own website (http://oathkeepers.org/oath/);

“Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, veterans, peace officers, and firefighters who will fulfill the oath we swore to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God.

“Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and we will not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders, such as orders to disarm the American people or to place them under martial law and deprive them of their ancient right to jury trial.

“We Oath Keepers have drawn a line in the sand. We will not “just follow orders.”

“Our motto is “Not on our watch!”

“If you, the American people, are forced to once again fight for your liberty in another American Revolution, you will not be alone. We will stand with you.

“There is at this time a debate within the ranks of the military regarding their oath. Some mistakenly believe they must follow any order the President issues. But you can rest assured that many others in the military do understand that their loyalty is to the Constitution, and understand what that means.

“The mission of Oath Keepers is to vastly increase their numbers. We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of our own troops. To win that battle, Oath Keepers will use written and video testimony of active duty military, veterans (especially combat vets), and peace officers to reach, teach, and inspire our brothers in arms in the military and police to fulfill their oaths and stand as guardians of the Republic.

“If you are currently in the military, are a veteran, or are a peace officer, please submit your written and/or video testimony on your oath, so you can help us win that battle for hearts and minds. Your submission may be anonymous.

“Guardians of the Republic, fulfill your oath. Join us.”

Stewart Rhodes (pictured above) even defines what the Oath Keepers are NOT;

“What We Are Not

“We are Not advocating or promoting the overthrow of any government whether local, state or national. We want our governments to return to the Constitutional Republic which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution defined and instituted.

“We are Not advocating or promoting violence towards any organization, group or person. We are determined to Keep our Oath to support and defend the Constitution.

“We are not advocating or promoting the removal of any person from his or her elected office. We want all elected persons to live up to their Oath to “support and defend the Constitution” as it is written or to leave of their own volition.

“We are not advocating or promoting that anyone in the Judicial Branch be removed or replaced. We want the Justices in the Judicial Branch to follow the Constitution as written without interpretation.

“We are not advocating or promoting any particular form of government other than the Constitutional Republic which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution defined and instituted.

“We are not advocating or promoting the rewriting of the Constitution nor are we asking for an Amendment thereto. We are insisting on the Constitution being Enforced as it is written.

“We are Not advocating or promoting any act or acts of aggression against any organization or person for any
reason including, but not limited to; race, religion, national origin, political affiliation, gender or sexual orientation.

We hope for a return to a Constitutional Republic free from fear and hatred. We hate only tyranny.

“We are Oath Sworn Americans who want the Constitution returned to its legal and rightful place, intact, as the ultimate Law of the Land.”

I support the Oath Keepers and strongly believe my fellow Americans should, as well. While only military and emergency service peace officers can join as full members, every citizen can join as “associate members.”

Their website is; http://oathkeepers.org/oath/