Tag Archives: North Korea

International news

Again, it’s worth asking: Why suck up to this brute?

Donald John Trump continues to confound reasonable human beings with his ridiculous — yes, worthy of ridicule — notion that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is worthy of any praise at all.

The president went over the top, around the bend and through the wall with his suggestion that Kim Jong Un is a “strong leader.”

Mr. President, your newest BFF is far more than that. He is a brute. He is a killer. He is a murderous tyrant with whom the United States is seeking to do business.

The president’s quicky summit in Singapore this past week with Kim produced a few vague promises. I was initially hopeful that it might lead to a productive conclusion — a Korean War peace treaty and the eventual de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. You can now put me in the camp of the doubters.

We demanded next to nothing of Kim Jong Un, who in return got a promise from Trump that U.S.-South Korean “war games” would end. Why? Because they are “provocative.” Good grief, dude! What’s more, he issued the order without consulting with South Korean military leaders — or even his own Joint Chiefs of Staff!

Instead, we are hearing some weird commentary from the president of the United States about how Kim Jong Un commands the “love” of his people and how he “loves” them in return.

There is no love being shown officially north of the 38th Parallel, Mr. President. Instead, we are seeing fear, terror and abject brutality that many observers say is the worst of any experienced anywhere on Earth.

Kim Jong Un has merely continued the regimen of horror began by his grandfather and continued by his father, from whom he inherited his role of Dear Leader upon Kim Jong Il’s death.

Kim Jong Un has ordered the deaths of members of his own family!

This is the guy upon whom the president is heaping praise.

Sickening.

national news, political news

Lame ducks find their voices

Bob Corker’s lame duck status has enabled him to find the guts to say what he ought to have said all along.

The Tennessee Republican is leaving the U.S. Senate at the end of the year. He hadn’t been overly candid about Donald J. Trump until just before he announced his decision to call it a career.

Now, though, he’s talking about what he perceives to be a “cult” developing with his political party. The cult is devoted blindly, according to Corker, to the president who has seized the party by the throat, has throttled it and has bullied intraparty foes incessantly.

Corker isn’t alone among Republicans who have discovered their courage in the waning months of their political career. He joins Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has finally — finally! — called out the president by name for the manner he has chosen to govern the nation.

I fear that Corker’s cult description is far more accurate than even he would prefer. Cult leaders traditionally imbue their “followers” with fear over political retribution if they cross the man/woman at the top of the pecking order.

That just might explain the Republican reluctance to challenge the continual stream of lies and assorted nonsense that fly out of Trump’s mouth. Indeed, the president’s lying mouth has kicked into overdrive since his summit with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean despot who gave up virtually nothing but got a ton of concessions from the president who proclaims himself to be a “great negotiator.”

Why don’t they call the president out for his effusive praise of Kim, the tyrant who murders his foes, his family members, starves his fellow Koreans and threatens the world with nuclear annihilation? He has broken previous promises and kept his people in the dark — quite literally — while he lives in relative opulence.

Is it that cult thing to which Sen. Corker has referred? If only more members of his party would speak as candidly and honestly about what is happening within the halls of power.

International news

‘I want my people to do the same’

Donald J. Trump’s joke telling needs work. Lots of work.

The president went on Fox News this morning and made some goofy remark about how people sit up straight at attention whenever North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un speaks. “I want my people to do the same,” he said.

I couldn’t stop laughing out loud when I heard him say it. Actually, I didn’t laugh at all.

Where do we begin? For starters, Trump likely doesn’t expect everyone around him to sit up straight whenever he speaks.

Or does he?

Trump said he was joking. He said he doesn’t really want that to happen. However, the idea that he would make such a “joking” remark begs the question: Why would a president of the United States — leader of the free world — want to joke about the world’s most murderous dictator?

Kim Jong Un hasn’t “earned” the adoration of his subjects. He demands that they demonstrate it openly. Kim’s subjects do what they’re told under threat of imprisonment or worse.

This is the guy who’s been receiving bucketloads of rhetorical love from the individual who used to sneer at him, hanging epithets like “Little Rocket Man” on the brutal despot.

Donald Trump has been spiraling out of control since returning from that Singapore summit. He has lied profusely and has made declarations that have many of us slapping our foreheads in utter disbelief … not just that he’s making these preposterous statements, but that he got elected president of the United States.

Astonishing.

International news, media news

Who’s the real ‘enemy,’ Mr. President?

I find it weird in the extreme that Donald J. Trump is getting cozy with a real “enemy of the American people.”

Except that the president has declared another entity to be the people’s No. 1 enemy.

He calls North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un an “honorable” man. Yes, a young despot who should be tried for crimes against humanity on the basis of the treatment he levels against his own people is now the president’s newest best friend. Trump calls Kim “smart” and a “great negotiator.”

Oh, but who’s the “enemy” that Trump has identified? It’s the media. The American journalists who cover the Trump administration has incurred the president’s wrath. He calls the media the “greatest enemy of the American people.”

Now, I believe that is a perversion of the first order.

The president cuddles (proverbially) with dictators/thugs/killers while excoriating the media that are seeking to hold him and his administration accountable to the public — the president’s employers.

I don’t know about you, but the president has it exactly backward.

Oh, and then there are the Russians …

International news

Trump defends a killer? Weird, man

Donald J. Trump’s infatuation with men who run their nations under heavy boots, heavy hands and sheer fright is shining more brightly than ever.

The president is defending his newest best friend, Kim Jong Un, by suggesting that his ruthlessness in governing North Korea is done out of necessity.

Here is how Politico reported some of what Trump has said about Kim: “He’s a tough guy,” the president said during a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday. “When you take over a country, a tough country, tough people and you take it over from your father — I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have — if you can do that at 27 years old, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. So he’s a very smart guy. He’s a great negotiator, but I think we understand each other.”

So, Kim’s father — Kim Jong Il — died in 2011, giving the young man a chance to lead his desperately poor nation. How does Kim Jong Un respond? By furthering the starvation, intimidation, abuses, crimes against humanity that his father and grandfather made infamous during their respective regimes.

Politico continued: Trump made his comments Tuesday aboard Air Force One on his return from Singapore, where he’d met with Kim and hailed the North Korean leader as a “smart” and “funny guy” who “loves his people.”

Smart? Funny guy? Someone who “loves” his people?

He is cagey, cunning and supremely frightening to his subjects, the citizens of North Korea.

I laughed out loud last night when MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell made this curious observation: He said Kim Jong Un is the only “overweight” North Korean because he — unlike his subjects — is able to eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants and in whatever quantities he chooses. North Korea’s citizens, meanwhile, are starving — many of them to death.

This is the guy Donald Trump calls “honorable”?

Disgraceful.

International news

No longer a nuke threat? Really, Mr. President?

Donald J. Trump needs to get over himself.

Well, I am aware that he won’t, but I thought I’d say it anyway.

The president has returned to the White House and has declared categorically, without equivocation, that the United States no longer faces a “nuclear threat” from North Korea.

Whoa! Let’s hold on here. Trump and North Korean killer/dictator/despot Kim Jong Un met in Singapore earlier this week. They signed a vague agreement to begin to talk about “denuclearization,” and now the president says the threat from the North is over? It’s gone? Finished? We can live in peace and harmony?

Pardon my skepticism, but I believe the president has gotten way ahead of his own dog-and-pony show.

I agree with many observers that Trump gave away far more than he got from Kim during their meeting in Singapore. The president ended joint military exercises — aka “war games” — with South Korea, which is precisely what Kim had demanded. The two leaders apparently said next to nothing about human rights atrocities that occur daily in North Korea. Then Kim said Trump promised to end economic sanctions against North Korea.

The two met with virtually no preconditions. Remember how Republicans — and, yes, Democrats — excoriated Barack Obama for suggesting he might do that? Now it’s OK. No sweat.

The president hasn’t removed any threat of nuclear war with North Korea, despite his boasting and bellowing.

He won’t control his impulse for self-aggrandizement. It falls on the many of his constituents to seek to lend some perspective to all the bellicosity.

International news

Are we witnessing a classic liar’s contest?

Donald J. Trump is known rather colloquially here in the States as the “Liar in Chief.”

I have no idea what they call Kim Jong Un in his country, North Korea. Certainly nothing out loud, given the junior despot’s propensity for offing those who speak — or even think — ill of him.

This much apparently has been established about Kim: He’s a liar. Maybe he’s even more adept at lying than Donald Trump, not that the president is any good at lying.

Kim has made plenty of promises. And broken them. That makes him a liar. He comes from good lying stock, given what his father — Kim Jong Il — promised in 1994: He’d get rid of nuclear weapons; the elder Kim didn’t do what he said he would do.

As for Trump, well, his lying has become legendary: He said he tracked down evidence that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii; he did nothing of the kind. He said he witnessed “thousands of Muslims” cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11; he lied there. Trump said President Obama ordered the bugging of his campaign offices in Trump Tower; another lie.

He lies constantly. The question now becomes whether he knows he’s lying, whether he thinks he’s telling the truth or whether he knows that we know he’s lying, but doesn’t give a damn.

Trump and Kim have looked each other in the eye. Trump made more promises than Kim did, or so it appears. How does Kim believe the president who I am sure he knows is the pathological liar he has proven to be? For that matter, how does Trump trust Kim to keep his own word, given that he no doubt knows about Kim’s behavior?

I am fond of referring to a “liar’s contest” involving two men who are prone to telling tall tales.

Something tells me this newfound Donald Trump/Kim Jong Un “friendship” is built on a body of lies.

International news

Did POTUS give away the store to Kim?

Honest to goodness, I want to give Donald Trump props for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and possibly start laying down the building blocks for a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

However, I gave some thought en route from Amarillo to Fairview about what transpired this week.

I am wondering plenty at this moment about what the president has given away.

  • Donald Trump has called this killer, despot and tyrant an “honorable” man. He has said his people “love” him. The president who once called Kim “Little Rocket Man” has now become his newest BFF.
  • Then he decided to end joint military exercises with South Korea. Did the president consult with, oh, South Korea? Or with his own defense secretary, James “Mad Dog” Mattis? Or the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Oh, no. Trump did it on his own. Hey, he’s commander in chief, so I guess he is entitled to do whatever the hell he wants. How do you suppose Kim Jong Un responded to that idea? He well might have jumped straight into the air, high-fiving his top aides; he got what he has demanded all along!
  • And did the president raise any issue about human rights, which do not exist in North Korea? Kim is starving his people. He is imprisoning them for no good reason. He orders the deaths of foes. Kim’s goons capture tourist and charge them with bogus allegations. Did the negotiator in chief bring any of this up with Little Rocket Man? I do not believe he did.

So, where do we stand?

Trump and Kim have signed a vague two-page letter committing to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons in North Korea. No promise that the North Koreans will actually get rid of them, just a vow to talk about it.

I’m still hoping to cheer the president. I still want him to succeed for the benefit of the country. I still await some sign that Donald Trump knows what he is doing.

I am afraid I must withhold the cheers.

International news

It’s only a beginning, however …

Well, so far so good. Maybe. Possibly. We can hold our breath now.

Donald J. Trump and Kim Jong Un — the leaders of two enemy nations — have met, shaken hands and have signed an agreement that commits North Korea to reaching a peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula.

That means eventual “denuclearization.” It means an end to “war games” with U.S. and South Korean forces practicing ways they can fend off a potential attack from the North; the president called the exercises “provocative.”

Where in the name of world peace to we go from here?

Perhaps the bigger question is whether we can trust the North Korean dictator — who’s killed dissenters by the thousands and ordered the murder of members of his own family — to keep his word.

The president, in an extraordinary — and frankly, incredulous — about-face, has called Kim an “honorable” man. He said his people “love” him. Really, Mr. President? They love this guy?

President Reagan used to invoke a Russian saying that translated loosely means “trust, but verify.” I am waiting for signs that our side has instituted any verification mechanisms to validate the pledges that Kim has made to Donald Trump.

Maybe they’re in there, somewhere, hidden from public view.

Then again, maybe the president of the United States has been taken for a ride.

Still, this first-ever meeting between a U.S. president and a North Korean despot holds enormous promise.

Or … it might all explode.

Now we wait.

International news

Tough to overstate significance of these talks

It is damn near impossible to overstate the significance of what the world witnessed a little while ago this evening.

Two men strode toward each other, extended their hands, with one of them grabbing the other man’s arm with his “off hand.”

The men are Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, and Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea.

What they said to each other in that private meeting — with no staff members present — remains a secret at this moment. We’ll find out likely as the president wings his way back home aboard Air Force One.

But … the meeting, the shaking of hands, the cautious smiles and courtesy between these men is a very big deal in and of themselves.

The United States and North Korea remain in a state of war. The Korean War didn’t “end” when the shooting stopped in 1953; the ceasefire merely ended the killing. There is no peace treaty. There’s no document that declares peace between South and North Korea.

Today’s monumental first step marks the first-ever meeting between the heads of state between the United States and North Korea.

Critics of the U.S.-North Korea summit say it gives legitimacy to a brutal dictator. Those who praise it say it might open the door to that long-awaited peace treaty — and it well might result eventually in a pact that persuades Kim Jong Un to “denuclearize” his arsenal.

His countrymen and women are starving. North Korea remains a desperately poor nation. Yet the dictator has continued to tons of money into a weapons system the country cannot afford.

Have we seen the beginning of a new era? Is there a possibility that the handshakes, the smiles and the apparent good tidings can produce something — anything! — of substance?

Well, a handshake is a start.