Wisdom And Insanity From 'The Worm'

While today, many of our cohorts in the media will be discussing with feigned seriousness President Obama's humorous jab at GOP Sen. Marco Rubio this past weekend at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner, we thought we'd aim a bit higher this morning, at a topic just a tad more important.

For example, nuclear war.

If you've been a bit busy dealing with the final winter blast of the season, as many Americans in the plains and Northeast have, you may have missed the latest news coming from the Korean peninsula, halfway around the world.

We're not talking about the recent visit to North Korea by former NBA star Dennis Rodman, also known by his nickname 'The Worm'. For all his ridiculous stammering and half-baked assertions, after his return to the U.S., Rodman did make a serious point about North Korea. Backed up by comments from well-known, successful diplomat and former U.N. Ambassador, Bill Richardson, Rodman's point appeared to be that regardless of how frustrating North Korea's leaders may be, America can't just walk away and isolate the government there.

That said, the North Korean government's growing experimentation with nuclear weapons, combined with its belligerence towards both it's Southern rival and the U.S., has many international political watchers on the verge of ducking for cover. What's more, North Korea's suicidal bluster about using nuclear weapons appears to be generating new interest among South Koreans to develop their own nuclear weapons programs.

It's at times like this when it becomes incredibly handy to have someone skilled with languages on our staff.

In translating between Western English and Korean, one possible conversion of the word 'suicidal' translates to "self-determination" - a trait many in the West not only appreciate, but laud as the goal of all free people.

Regardless of how Westerners see them, North Koreans are a very proud people, who on their few occasions to communicate with the West often proudly assert their self-determination with no help from their state media minders. It's easy to see how what we rightly perceive as suicidal behavior may literally be seen by North Koreans as simply asserting their rights as a freedom-loving people.

North Koreans, however are not truly free.

As Korean studies experts Ellen Kim and Carolyn Marie Dumond noted on CNN.com last week, life for the average North Korean has never been great - and now conditions are getting even more brutal. The levels of famine and starvation in North Korea are virtually unimaginable to most other people on Earth. The levels of civil rights violations are also astoundingly appalling.

North Korea's human rights violations have become so heinous, both Japan and the European Union begin proceedings today, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, to call for an official international inquiry into possible crimes against humanity by the North Korean government. This is on top of the sanctions authorized last week by the U.N. Security Council, in a unanimous vote, imposed on North Korea for holding its third IAEA unapproved nuclear weapons test in February.

Even China - for many years one of North Korea's only official international connections - backed the U.N. sanctions, and is now taking a harder line with North Korea. China is not abandoning their relationship with North Korea, but sources say things have grown "icy" between the two nations diplomatically since February's nuclear test.

All of which may simply make it easier for a more isolated North Korea to look at firing nuclear weapons as a solution, and not as the disaster it most certainly would be.

Crazy as he may seem at times, Dennis Rodman's point about keeping communications lines open with North Korea may have been one of the wisest things he's ever said - though we can't say we'd recommend him for our next U.N. Ambassador.

Friday Funday: Better Than Nothing

As we head into the weekend where most Americans will be springing forward with Daylight Saving Time, we've had one of those weeks where life makes it very clear: Some days - and some weeks - are longer than others, and certainly longer than they appear on the clock or calendar.

The massive federal budget cuts that are part of the sequester that began this week, and while the most noticable effect the cuts have had so far may have been to help thaw the political climate in DC,  many near our DC offices are already feeling a chill in the economic atmosphere of the region. Sadly, we already know of FAA employees, customs workers, Secret Service members, and teachers at military bases that have had their work hours and paychecks cut back, or have received notice of certain cutbacks coming soon.

Two groups of Washington, DC residents that may have only just begun noticing the federal budget cuts today - as they attempted to go home for the weekend - are the two groups of people most responsible for those cuts: Senators and Congresspersons.

While we chuckle at the unlikely mental image of certain members of Congress having to go through a TSA pat down today, there were a few positive outcomes from Washington this week.

President Obama and Vice President Biden signed and presented the new version of the Violence Against Women Act on Thursday, one of the few things that actually got accomplished on Capitol Hill this week. For that alone, we're grateful that Congress finally acted on something.

The Senate also confirmed John Brennan as CIA director, an outcome that Senator Rand Paul nominally attempted to stop with his thirteen hour filibuster. Still, for confirming another of President Obama's nominees - even after a massive, weeks-long legislative temper tantrum - we're willing to give Congress partial credit for accomplishing something.

In fact, even while Sen. Rand Paul's titular reason for his filibuster failed, and even though we - like Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post - think Sen. Paul is an "archconservative kook", the fact remains that Paul did something no one on any side has done for far too long: Get up and take credit for his beliefs on the floor of the U.S. Senate, loudly and publicly.

Sure, it's likely that what Paul did was a stunt, the kind of cable TV-friendly action that gins up political donations from core supporters, while angering publications like the Wall Street Journal. It's also true that - as we noted - Paul's action did not stop John Brennan from being confirmed.

What Paul's action did do, as Greg Sargent noted twice on Thursday, is remind Americans - and other members of the Senate in both parties - exactly what filibusters are supposed to look like. It also showed exactly what has been wrong with the way the Senate has been handling - or not handling - its business for far too long.

For that reason alone, we're willing to give Congress just a bit more credit today.

In total, if you add up the full and partial credits of things that Congress accomplished, we count the karmic equivalent of two things that they actually accomplished this week.

That's better than two groups of idiots getting nothing done - which is what Americans have become far more used to seeing on Capitol Hill.

So today, we'll give credit where credit is due. Congress worked, at least a little bit this week - which shouldn't be a complete surprise.

After all, even a broken analog clock works correctly twice a day.

Grand, Stupid, Distractions

We hate the news media today.

Not just "today," Thursday, but also today, in the sense of our modern news media. This has been a week filled with many in the media screaming multiple different stories at you. From the sequester and its effects, to what was supposed to be a massive snowstorm in DC (that wasn't), to the talking filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul, and new all-time highs reached on the stock market, our national media colleagues have been racing from one story to another as though their pants were on fire - which in some cases, they have been.

What few media outlets have discussed in all the hoopla, however - either directly or obliquely - is our economy. Sure, the stock market is back - but our economy, specifically the jobs of millions of Americans - has yet to return. What's worse, our level of wealth inequality is at an all-time high, while the real median wage for working Americans is 8 percent lower than it was during the last year of President Clinton's tenure.

That said, we're going to do our best today to drag our colleagues into talking about the REAL economy - not just headlines flashing across some building-wide electronic ticker that screams "Dow Hits New High!"

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the official jobs numbers for February tomorrow, and the private firm ADP released its survey of February's jobs numbers yesterday. Both numbers show significant improvement, as jobless claims fell to a near five-year low. Further, in a different survey by the Fed, economic growth has been found to be widespread and improving. That said, employers are still sitting on their hands, waiting for some mythical 'perfect' conditions that will likely never come.

As Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton makes note of this week, there are several other reasons workers are still getting the shaft in our economy, from productivity gains, to globalization, to the current bargaining power of workers. As Wonkblog's Neil Irwin notes, another reason workers are still getting the shaft is because Congress is too busy also sitting on its collective hands, trying not to do anything other than posture effectively, so they can get re-elected in 2014.

The only government organization that's actually been able to be successful in helping give the economy a boost back towards a healthy state is the Federal Reserve. The problem is, the Fed only really has one blunt tool - monetary policy - to help spur the economy forward.

It's true that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have put forward a slew of ideas to try and help more Americans get back to work - everything from raising the minimum wage, to the American Reinvestment Act (also known as the Obama stimulus, which professional economists agree worked), to more sensible tax policies that would close loopholes and spur hiring. Still, they can't do it all themselves.

Congressional Republicans have been doing everything in their power to implement economic austerity - like the sequester - which has resulted in countless numbers of jobs lost already, and will result in even more unless their insanity can be brought to a screeching halt.

The simple facts are clear - something even our colleagues in the rest of the news media can see, even if they don't want to report on them.

Americans must stop allowing our nation to be distracted with grand gestures like Sen. Rand Paul's pointless filibuster, and unnecessary hype about debt and deficits. Instead, we must focus on jobs, as President Obama has been trying to do now for four years, so we can get millions of Americans back to work.

There are some positive economic signs popping up, as we noted earlier this week, and as the jobless numbers show today. Still, the American people have yet to fully recover, even if the stock market already has. Until the massive building-wide electronic tickers scream "Unemployment 2%" and American wealth inequality is gone, we'll keep drawing attention back to this issue - because that's where the focus of our nation, at all levels, really belongs.