In September 2011 Former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, a key Northern Alliance leader and the only Tajik to be President of Afghanistan, was murdered after Taliban emissaries promised to deliver him an important message of peace. When welcomed, they blew him up.

In August 2011, after a conspiracy that lured in members of our Seal Team Six with other heroic Americans, the Taliban set up an ambush and murdered them.

Following those brutal attacks, President Obama’s strategy has been to hasten negotiations with the Taliban. Additionally, the Obama administration has now not only offered to release known Taliban terrorists from detention, but has already released some and additionally offered to legitimize our sworn enemy by furnishing them a princely office in Qatar.

In return, Obama’s agents defend that they are being tough on the Taliban by demanding that they not use the office to raise funds to support their terrorism. That is a bit reminiscent of the Clinton-Albright demand of North Korea that if we give them nuclear technology, they must promise to use it for electric generation and not weapons.

According to many Afghans, all of these and other Obama Administration actions give substantial credence to the Taliban claim, supported privately by some Pakistani leaders, that the U.S. has lost in Afghanistan and is now begging them for negotiations. One Taliban leader who was released from detention by the Obama administration for medical and end of life purposes, is now back in command and recently demanded on Afghan TV that since the Americans have now lost and are begging for negotiations, Afghans disloyal to the Taliban must come ask forgiveness and for safety from the Taliban.

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Washington (AP) Following is an edited transcript of Secretary of State Designate Joe Biden’s hearing today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Moved by President Obama’s pleadings, Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resigned their posts last week in order to switch positions and become America’s first Cabinet-level tag team.

On Monday, Clinton won Congressional approval to be the nation’s Number Two, adding a hefty bottom to the Democrats’ 2012 Presidential undercard.

CHAIRMAN JOHN KERRY:  Good morning, everyone.  The Committee is delighted to welcome former Vice President Biden, or, as he was referred to by White House pollsters, “Dead-Weight Joe.”

Once confirmed, he will oversee the steaming pile of dung that’s been our foreign policy under the capable Mrs. Clinton.  I assure you, Joe Biden can manage the load.

We all know America is a nation in decline, a nation hurtling toward the depths.  With his misplaced sense of humor, endearing ineptitude, and characteristic superciliousness, Joe is well-equipped to lead us into irrelevance.

Before we begin the questioning, I would like to offer a few thoughts about. . . .

. . . . defeating the worldwide scourge of male pattern baldness, preventing the unnecessary loss of trillions of innocent follicles. . . .

. . . . extraditing Dick Cheney to the Hague to account for his. . . .

. . . . returning Texas and California to Mexico, from whom we unjustly. . . .

. . . . calming Americans’ unreasoning dread of a Global Caliphate . . .

. . . . encouraging India to vaporize Pakistan, ushering in an era of peace in that troubled. . . .

Now, to save time, we’ll dispense with a self-serving statement from the Ranking Member and my esteemed colleague, Senator Lugar, and go right to questioning.  Suit you, Mr. Vice President?

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Joshua Stanton to discuss the legacy of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, the atrocities committed under his rule, and what the country’s new leadership might look like.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Kim Jong-il, North Korean Dictator, Dies
Global fears of North Korean nuclear arsenal heightened by leader’s death
One Free Korea

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One hopes that the dictator of North Korea suffered greatly before he died. After all, his totalitarian and communist (pardon the redundancy) policies caused untold death and misery.

But let’s try to learn an economics lesson. In a previous post, I compared  long-term growth in Hong Kong and Argentina to show the difference between capitalism and cronyism.

But for a much more dramatic comparison, look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

Hmmm…, I wonder if we can conclude that markets are better than statism? I bet even Harry Reid can guess the answer.

And if you like these types of comparisons, here’s a post showing how Singapore has caught up with the United States. And here’s another comparing what’s happened in the past 30 years in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela.

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BILL DALEY: You shouldn’t have used the phrase “leading from behind” last spring when you spoke off the record about Libya, Mr. Vice-President.

BIDEN:  Well, I didn’t, Billy boy.  I said Hillary was leading with her behind.  Or maybe I said the whole NATO operation was like the blind leading the blind.  I don’t remember.  But the guy misquoted me.

OBAMA:  No lasting harm.  Research and Destroy knocked that off the front pages fast with the Cain revelations.

DAVID PLOUFFE:  Oh, Mr. President, the Smithsonian taxidermist just delivered Gaddafi’s head.

OBAMA:  Okay.  Tell Housekeeping to mount it above the mantel in the Residence, next to bin Laden’s.  And remind them to leave room for Baby Assad and Boehner.

VALERIE JARRETT:  Sir, the Libya bump is fading since Fox reported diehard Islamists have seized control of the country and Gaddafi’s massive stock of surface-to-air missiles.

BIDEN:  Damn Ailes, trying to make people think we shoulda known that could happen. (more…)

Earlier this month, while South Korean President Lee Myung Bak was visiting the United States, his military commanders were back home watching out for ammunition boxes.

North Korea’s military had moved combat aircraft, mobile ground-to-air missiles and missile launchers to attack positions near the border with the South. Had those ammo boxes – the final step in preparations for an attack – appeared, whether for war-making or simply for live-fire exercises, it might well have triggered a resumption of the shooting war that began in the 1950s and never truly has ended.

Elsewhere recently, a North Korean diplomat at low-level talks at the University of Georgia said war on the peninsula seems closer now than it has in decades, and Iran was linked to a clumsy attempt to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington. The Iranians also are “playing” in hot spots throughout the Middle East – from Syria to Yemen to Egypt and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and working feverishly to overcome a cyber attack on its nuclear weapons development program.

Clearly, this is no time for the United States to let down its guard on missile defense. Congress – which is under pressure to cut defense spending but maintain capabilities – must show resolve to ensure our nation, troops and allies are protected.

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When Donald Trump began testing the presidential waters in late February, it was easy to discard his efforts as nothing more than a public relations ploy. It seemed “The Don” was just looking for one more way to get the Trump name up in lights. Thus, like so many others, I was not impressed.

Yet since that time, Trump has carved out a niche for himself politically and has not only proven his sincerity in considering a presidential run, but has also risen to the point of being the 2^nd most popular candidate among possible GOP primary contestants.  He has done this not only by saying what conservatives in America have long wanted a politician to say, but also by doing so with the kind of unapologetic tone that marks the words of a man who’s confident in the justness of his cause.

To my point: Trump is angry over what Obama has done to America and he’s not afraid to express this indignation via various radio, television, and print outlets. (It’s been a long time since a potential presidential candidate loved America enough to verbalize his disdain over the harm a sitting president has done to this country.)

He believes Obama has given us “a terrible presidency” and he wants to see America return to being “the greatest place in the world.”

And although some of Trump’s statements have been maligned by the MSM (and Glenn Beck) to date, his words communicate convictions that resonate with everyday Americans throughout the land.

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The stunning speed of events in the Middle East that brought about the fall of Tunisia’s strong-arm dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, followed by the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might suggest that our intelligence services were caught napping.  While the final chapter of the ousters of Mubarak and Ben Ali have not yet been written, depending upon the outcome, political recriminations are certain to follow.  After all, some historians still are asking the question:  “Who lost China?”  While blame is invariably a by‑product of political debate in a democracy, particularly where our intelligence services seem to have been caught flat‑footed, we suspect there is less here than meets the eye.

To over simplify, we might categorize small intelligence failures into two main areas:  those that involve state secrets that could be uncovered only by traditional cloak and dagger work; and those that derive from actual political conditions on the ground that can foment potential revolutionary change.  Even though the latter can involve tens of thousands of people when they erupt, they are more apt to be missed than intelligence that is gathered through traditional sleuthing.  We will get back to the reason for this later in this essay.   Our failure to know that Saddam’s nuclear arsenal didn’t exist or that North Korea would suddenly conduct nuclear tests or that some shadowy group would attack the USS Cole and later the World Trade Center, are failures of our traditional intelligence assets.   Although those events were planned virtually under cover of strict military secrecy, which is obviously difficult to penetrate, it is not an excuse for northpoor undercover work given the billions of dollars we spend on it.

Contrast that with political explosions in Tunisia, Egypt. Libya, Bahrain or Iran, which toppled from power the likes of President Ben Ali, President Mubarak, or, 35 years ago, the Shah of Iran.  Those events, once triggered, seem to take on a life of their own often leading to chaos with participants having different goals . . . or no simple unifying objective.  Sometimes they operate like mobs without leaders.  The forces that are unleashed seem to know what they don’t want (the current despotic leadership) but typically can’t articulate a coherent set of demands.  What is even more difficult to predict is the potential ripple effect of a sea change in a despotic form of government.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh to discus the impact of Steve Jobs’ leave at Apple, Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington and Pej’s Chicago Bears.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Apple’s Jobs Takes Medical Leave but Remains CEO
Obama and Hu share intimate dinner at White House
China on equal footing with US as Hu Jintao visits Washington
Hu Jintao set for lavish White House reception on state visit
Never a better time to ‘Beat the Packers’
Epicenter of Humanity: The playing surface

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Joshua Stanton of One Free Korea to discuss the latest developments as tensions remain high in the dispute between South and North Korea.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

TNL: Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto (Part 1)
WikiLeaks: China weary of North Korea behaving like ’spoiled child’
S. Korea’s Fine Line: Talk Tough, Keep Finger Off Trigger
North Korea provokes neighbours with ‘new’ nuclear facility announcement
One Free Korea

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This week we cram muscle shirts, pat downs, Thanksgiving, and North Korean aggression into one audio file. Peter gets the inside scoop on the National Review cruise from Rob (live from the Miami airport) and James. Then we get serious with John Bolton to discuss North Korea’s missile attack on the south. Will the TSA handle Rob’s junk? Tune in and find out. For links and music from this podcast or to comment directly to us, please visit us at Ricochet.com.

In 1983, Ronald Reagan infuriated liberals worldwide by accurately labeling the Soviet Union as the evil empire. George W. Bush received a similar reaction following his “axis of evil” speech in which he used the politically incorrect term, evil, to describe the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Although most Americans found it refreshing to hear a politician speak so directly and honestly, the media and the rest of the liberal elites went berserk. Imagine that. It was not that the Kim Jong-il regime kept the people of North Korea in a state of poverty and near starvation that got liberals in a tizzy. Rather, it was that Bush had the audacity to use the word evil to describe it.

The nearly two years of corruption, plunder, and economic destruction—combined with the mockery of the American people and vilification of the private sector—has crystallized for many a realization of a home grown threat more destructive and imminently dangerous to America than any of the substantial external threats we faced over the last century. It’s a threat that has been building quietly for many years but has come to the fore since President Obama was elected. Have you wondered how the radical left managed to capture the reins of power and govern in direct opposition to the will of two thirds of the population?  The answer is the New Axis of Evil. It is the power base of the left (and the Democratic Party).

No doubt, the list can be debated and expanded, but here, at least is a starting point—the dirty dozen if you will, with a few prime examples included.

1. Old Media (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR, NY Times)
2. Engorged Public Unions (SEIU, NEA, AFSCME)
3. Global Socialist Elites (Robert McChesney, Andy Stern, George Soros)
4. Liberal “Think” Tanks (Media Matters, Center for American Progress, ThinkProgress)
5. America Hating Academics (Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman )
6. Professional Victims Groups (La Raza, CAIR, NAACP, NOW)
7. Community Disorganizers & Activists (ACORN, Code Pink, ACLU)
8. Environmental Redistributionists (Greenpeace, EDF)
9. Social Justice Preachers (Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Jim Wallis)
10. Progressive Hollywood Elites (Oliver Stone, Sean Penn)
11. Bloated Federal Bureaucracy (DOE, DOA, TSA)
12. Public/Private Colluders (AARP, Government Motors, Goldman Sachs)

It almost goes without saying (but here I’ll say it anyway)—there are many good people scattered among these institutions.

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Last week the North Korean government (officially, the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, a misuse of the word “democratic” if ever there was one), threatened a massive nuclear strike if the United States and South Korea carried out their annual “war games” in international waters.  This set of war games is being conducted to demonstrate that both South Korea and the U.S. maintain considerable, well-coordinated military strength in the region, and that the action of North Korea, in sinking a South Korean ship, the Cheonan, was intolerable and that it would not be permitted to pass unnoticed.

This somewhat more muscular response follows another feckless resolution from the United Nations, which condemned the attack on the ship but not the attacker.  Why the fear of offending this bankrupt nation that cannot feed its own people, all of whom live in a virtual prison camp?  The answer is obvious; – it is estimated that North Korea has a nuclear arsenal of up to 10 nuclear bombs They also have a missile delivery system, and so the world must wait with bated breath to see what the stroke-ridden dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, known to his people as Dear Leader, will do in response to the war games.

We bring up North Korea to emphasize the outsize influence a rogue state can have if it possesses nuclear weapon capability.  The immediate relevance relates to Iran’s nuclear program on which there appears to be a consensus that weapons grade plutonium is being developed, and that a bomb will be manufactured shortly thereafter.  Whether the world is months or years away from Iran’s demonstration of its nuclear capability, we do not know.  Recently, CIA Director, Leon E. Panetta, stated that Iran already has material for two atomic bombs.  As we know, one nuclear bomb going off could spoil your whole day.

President Obama has spent a little more than a year reaching out to the Iranian regime to no avail.  No serious negotiations commenced.  Although the Iranians deny that their nuclear program is for other than peaceful uses, it will not permit international inspectors to verify that claim.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in a report this spring on Iran’s nuclear program, suggested that Tehran has produced 2400 kilograms of low enriched uranium, which is apparently enough to build two atomic weapons after the material is further enriched.  Iran has made clear its intention to further enrich its uranium, and, tellingly, has agreed to ship, for storage, only 1200 kilograms (or half) of its stockpile to Brazil and Turkey under the much heralded fig-leaf pact it entered into with those two nations last May.   Accordingly, the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States recently imposed further economic sanctions on Iran in hopes that this set of sanctions will convince the Iranians to abandon their nuclear efforts.  We think that is very unlikely.

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Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart launched his newest web venture, Big Peace. It will do for national security, what Big Hollywood has done for culture, Big Journalism for the media and Big Government for domestic policy. It has also caused me to climb into the way-back machine.

In 1985, I was an exchange student at a gymnasium (high school) in Bremen, West Germany. It was an anxious time; with renewed leftist terrorist attacks and hijackings throughout Europe. (The TWA airplane which took me to Frankfurt was hijacked about a week later.)  The Middle East was, predictably, tense. The Soviet Union looked as strong as ever. America was coming out of an economic and psychological malaise, but much of Europe, and U.S. political and media elites, were openly worried about a “warmongering” US President who didn’t understand complex foreign policy and might just start a war for kicks.

For those readers under forty, the political debates at the time centered on MX and Minuteman missiles, nuclear disarmament and small dust-ups like the Contras in Nicaragua. One night over dinner, my otherwise gracious German hosts, along with some of their friends, berated me for US foreign policy. Most every problem in the world could somehow be traced back to the U.S. They were particularly incensed about US Government support for the Contra rebels, fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

America should stay out of the affairs of all other countries, I was lectured. It shouldn’t interfere in any of the domestic squabbles in other nations. I replied that I understood that, but the Sandinistas were communist dictators who were supported by the Soviets and Cuba, so it was probable we would be involved.

Support for the Sandinistas from other countries was immaterial, I was told. America should be better and never involve itself in another country’s affairs, they argued.

So, I replied, what about that Berlin Airlift?

Oh, America had to do that, my German hosts replied. That was totally different.

It always is.

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June 25th is fast approaching and I hope this year, given the international tensions all around us, we pause and consider that it is not just another day but the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

When the 300,000 troops of the North Korean People’s Army supported by tanks and artillery violently smashed across the 38th parallel to invade and overrun most of the South, they unleashed a conflagration that would grow to be a three year bloodbath pitting the forces of Communism and the Western Democracies against each other for the first time.  (It would also be the first time that the nascent United Nations would commit military forces to halt the aggression of one nation against another, showing that the UN must be backed by military will to be effective.)  After initial see-saw fighting down to Pusan, then up to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings, and then back down again after the massive Chinese intervention, the fighting settled into a brutal stalemate along a line that eventually would mimic the original pre-war border.  When the fighting finally ended in July 1953, the war left in its wake four million military and civilian casualties, including 37,000 American dead and another 100,000 wounded.  South Korea’s army would suffer almost 1 million casualties, the other UN nations’ a combined 17,000 as well. An estimated 520,000 North Koreans and another 900,000 Chinese were casualties.

One of the wounded from that war was a young Second Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer from the 1st US Marine Division, my father.   In his more reflective moments, usually after a pint or three, he would tell me bits and pieces of what he saw and did there.  Needless to say, they were disturbing.  And the one thing I believe always went through his mind was this: was the sacrifice made by him and his fellow soldiers worth it?

The answer lies in the contrast between the two nations six decades later.  The tragic fact is that every day 23 million North Koreans are forced to endure an horrific existence in what can justifiably be classified a slave state.  I will not get into the nitty-gritty of the starvation, exposure, poor health conditions, the physical and mental abuse, the forced labor camps, and general privations these isolated people suffer as this has been well-documented.

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If we are to stop the march of this nation towards socialism, it is imperative that we understand and educate our fellow citizens as to what socialism is like.  This need not be limited to distant readings of history books about the gulags in Russia.  Indeed we get a very gripping modern-day reminder of the horrors of socialism from a recent article in the New York Times on North Korea.

The piece begins:

YANJI, China — Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury. His state employer had not paid him for so long that he had forgotten his salary. Indeed, he paid his boss to be listed as a dummy worker so that he could leave his work site. Then he and his wife could scrape out a living selling small bags of detergent on the black market.

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30.

Last month the construction worker sat in a safe house in this bustling northern Chinese city, lamenting years of useless sacrifice. Vegetables for his parents, his wife’s asthma medicine, the navy track suit his 15-year-old daughter craved — all were forsworn on the theory that, even in North Korea, the future was worth saving for.

“Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.”

Such is the horrifically arbitrary nature of communist regimes.  With the swift stroke of a pen the fruits of one’s labors can be reduced to nothing overnight.

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North Korea has cut off all contact with South Korea and is threatening war with its neighbor. The Chia Pet who runs North Korea has a long history of bluster and bombast. Nothing is quite what it seems in the old Hermit Kingdom. Still, it merits monitoring.

When President Obama first announced his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons, I laughed out loud. After all, what’s not to chuckle at?

Would he next offer future generations the gift of flight, like Britain’s Natural Law Party, or promise to abolish death like would-be Russian presidential candidate Grigory Grabovoi, shortly before he was jailed for accepting money to reincarnate a non-existent victim of the Beslan Tragedy?

Of course not, I thought. It’s just the usual political waffle, nothing to waste time thinking about. The president was striking a pose, attempting to sound statesmanlike, that sort of thing. All politicians indulge in this type of empty, grandstanding rhetoric and Obama’s personal weakness for it is well established. Meanwhile he had presented Russia with an opportunity to get rid of a lot of old weapons they didn’t really want any more, without losing face. Perhaps that was the plan: a conciliatory gesture to the Bear in the hope that it would help in other areas. Good luck with that, by the way.

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One of my favorite features of the Newseum in Washington, DC is the daily display of newspaper front pages from around the world. Today, Canada’s National Post was a standout with Alex Spillius’ coverage of a clash between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy.

obama sarkozy pdf –

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”