Foreign press: North Korea plans to launch missile at Hawaii July 4th or so

[followsthewolf]

It would seem that a "sense of proportion" is not the only sense that appears to be missing. 

[Palehorse]

It would seem that a "sense of proportion" is not the only sense that appears to be missing. 

Indeed!

[me]

The reasons opposing sides choose to do what they do in such situations are always less than admirable, the US included. Diplomacy involves allowing each side to "save face" on the global stage while enabling a solution to the problem. Each situation has its scapegoat or pawn, but a diplomat gladly fills the role in order to achieve a higher good.

I find it shameful that the average American has become so skeptical of diplomacy and political figures as to automatically ascribe ill meaning to everything that transpires. Granted, many of them can be utilized as being the root cause for this state we find ourselves in; faithless when it comes to government. How can a nation without trust and faith in its own government and its ability to make the hard decisions for the greater good, continue to survive?

Some of those decisions that are being made are not for the greater good but for the good of the politicians.  How can you trust people who are trying their darnedest to give away everything a person has worked hard for all of their lives?  How can you trust a government who you can't disagree with or you're told you're being racist and a trouble maker?  How can you trust a government who tries to rush a bill through that no one has read which might contain something detrimental to anyone over 50 as well as those who might become seriously ill?  How can you trust a government who won't be up front about things and controls the press in such a way that it is reported only 200 or 300 showed up at a rally when in all actuality over 5000 showed up and there are now photos on youtube, thanks to cell phones, to dispute the reports?  No, I won't go get the links I already done the research and it's up to you to do some ground work and quit trusting all you hear. ACORN rallies are organized not whats going on now.  These are ordinary concerned citizens who are tired of being jerked around not people who are paid and transported to these meetings.  The government is doing its best to discredit anyone who questions or disagrees and that is not right any way you look at it.

Save that sanctimonious, self righteousness for someone that is as delusional as yourself will yah. If you are so concerned over the political skulduggery where was this negativity when the Chimp was dipping into our wallets to fund his personal crusade for oil?

More sour grapes in a bullshit sauce. . .

Uh-oh. Refusing to provide sources only makes us believe you don't have any. Bad strategy.

What am I missing here? Neither of these two videos seem to have anything to do with the two journalists who were held in North Korea.

I had gotten off on to something else and was just following up on it.  Sorry 'bout that. 

[Anne]

Hey I am no Bill Clinton supporter; ask around here. . . But, the man did something I found admirable and maybe even out of character as far as my perceptions of him go. Not to mention good. . . no! Damned good. I may not like him but I will acknowledge good no matter who does it, and if it ended up giving him some positive face time and allowed him to feel useful again, who can blame anyone for taking advantage of it?

The end result far outweighs any negativity that may or may not have been going on behind the scenes. He is not the POTUS anymore and in fact can never be POTUS again. That he can still positively contribute to society and our government is only right, and that he chooses to do so admirable. (Didn't see peanut boy or the shrubs anywhere did you?)

He went because he was specifically asked for by the NK. They wanted him to come there back in 2000 when he was still President. If they had asked for Mr. Bush or most any other politician I am sure most would have gone. Don't get me wrong, I am glad those two women are home, I just don't think Mr. Clinton is the saint people seem to think he is. He went, he did his job and he got publicity and his face on tv. Good for him. Just don't try to tell me he was in danger or he expected to get nothing from it.

[Palehorse]

He went because he was specifically asked for by the NK. They wanted him to come there back in 2000 when he was still President. If they had asked for Mr. Bush or most any other politician I am sure most would have gone. Don't get me wrong, I am glad those two women are home, I just don't think Mr. Clinton is the saint people seem to think he is. He went, he did his job and he got publicity and his face on tv. Good for him. Just don't try to tell me he was in danger or he expected to get nothing from it.

He went because he was asked by the parents of one of those women. . . based upon a conversation NK had with them (the women themselves) wherein they requested that it be Clinton.

. . .

Mid-July

During a Call To Family In The United States, The Women Say Pyongyang Would Be Prepared To Pardon Them In Return For a Visit By Bill Clinton. Family Members Pass That Request On To The Obama Administration And To Former Vice-President Al Gore, The Chairman And Founder Of Current TV, The Cable And Satellite Channel That Employs The Women. Mr. Gore Talks To Mr. Clinton About The Possibility.. . .

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=1863867&p=2

[Henry Hawk]

He went because he was asked by the parents of one of those women. . . based upon a conversation NK had with them (the women themselves) wherein they requested that it be Clinton.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=1863867&p=2

According to this article...Bill Clinton was the only man North Korea wanted to see....

[LOsborne]

Does it matter who had the idea first? Somebody wanted it to be Clinton. Clinton agreed to go. He came home with the journalists. Because he is no longer a member of the current administration, it is not possible that he committed the US to any "back-room deals" or compromises. Can't y'all just be happy for the families? Whether the original request came from the families of the writers, or the NK government, Bill Clinton stepped up to the plate and pulled off the release. What can possibly be wrong about that?

[Exterminator]

Clinton derangement syndrome, North Korean strain

Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.

But pundits everywhere -- from the newsrooms of the "liberal media" to the blogosphere to the Republican noise machine -- seem to be the preferred hosts of the pathogen. While not lethal or physically disabling, it troubles their minds -- and strikes the same people over and over and over again. Symptoms include the recitation of dull sexual japes, sour reflections on celebrity, mindless pronouncements on foreign policy, false accusations of grandstanding, and even furious attacks on innocent individuals who dare to express admiration or gratitude to Bill Clinton (on this particular occasion for saving their lives).

On display in the wake of his successful effort to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee is the purest and most virulent form of a disorder all too familiar to anyone who lived through the Clinton presidency.

Here was an effort that exemplified the best of America -- a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a former head of state, with all the power of government behind him, to the aid of two women in distress. Here was a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mother back to her little girl, that surely uplifted the spirit of anyone who actually believes in family values. Here was a moment of pride and joy.

But not for Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigot who cackled about "Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton." Not for Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe who wondered aloud whether Clinton "hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home." Not for Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist who insisted that "the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton" (and who neglected to mention that Clinton did not speak to the eagerly waiting press corps and has given not a single interview on the North Korea mission). Not for Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who predictably seized on Clinton's mission as an opportunity for gratuitous and ugly insults to his wife, weirdly imagining that the prisoner release was "some clever North Korean revenge plot, giving the limelight to Daddy to punish Mommy." And not for the editors of the Huffington Post, who posted a very strange headline -- "Bill Upstages Hillary ... Once Again" -- on an Associated Press story that didn't mention her at all.

Analysts have long speculated on the sexual envy that may or may not predispose the syndrome's sufferers to say these things. What seems clear, however, is that no matter what humanitarian acts Clinton may perform in his post-presidency, he cannot do anything without provoking such inappropriate and embarrassing outbursts. The result, of course, is that their remarks always reveal more about them than about their intended target.

Consider the reaction of the former president's former advisor Dick Morris, who still pontificates on the Fox News Channel airwaves as a Clinton expert, although he hasn't spoken with either of them for more than 10 years. Denouncing Clinton's trip as "awful" and "ridiculous," he suggested with a sickening grin that Ling and Lee should instead have been left to "live with the consequences of their acts" -- essentially a death sentence in a hard labor camp. (Is that what any Fox commentator would say in the unlikely event that any of their colleagues had the guts to try to report on life in North Korea -- and got arrested?)

John Podhoretz didn't go quite that far in Commentary, but he too felt deeply disturbed by Clinton's achievement. As a "journalist" who spends most of his life watching television and eating ice cream, he felt moved to mock Ling and Lee for seeking to expose the dark side of the North Korean regime -- and to throw in a few bitter words about Al Gore for employing them at Current TV. If that sounds bizarre coming from a self-styled hard-liner, it is simply another symptom of the mental imbalance induced in some people by the sight of Clinton (and Gore).

Finally there are the "serious" commentators, most notably former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, the former diplomat best known for disdaining diplomacy and rattling the atomic saber until he was mercifully relieved of public responsibilities. In him the syndrome's most noticeable effect is a severe case of amnesia. On the pages of the Washington Post, he complained that despite "decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so." Leaving aside the question of whether this situation in any way fits that description, Bolton has clearly forgotten the Iran-Contra affair, when his colleagues in the Reagan administration, all the way up to and including the president, negotiated with Iran's leaders to release hostages in exchange for deadly missiles -- violating statute and policy. He also seems to have forgotten how he tried to help cover up that outrage as an assistant attorney general.

But perhaps this latest outbreak should be considered mild, when compared with the devastating episodes of years past. Nobody is claiming that Clinton murdered or drugged anyone on his trip to Korea, that he profited by selling a real estate parcel there, or that he is a secret agent of the Dear Leader.

They're saving all that for Barack Obama.

[Henry Hawk]

Does it matter who had the idea first? Somebody wanted it to be Clinton. Clinton agreed to go. He came home with the journalists. Because he is no longer a member of the current administration, it is not possible that he committed the US to any "back-room deals" or compromises. Can't y'all just be happy for the families? Whether the original request came from the families of the writers, or the NK government, Bill Clinton stepped up to the plate and pulled off the release. What can possibly be wrong about that?

Read my first post on this........I said I was glad to see these journalist return safely, and I gave props to Clinton....I am simply posting an article that contradicted Palehorses.....that's it.