The US State Department sometimes — okay — frequently runs counter to common sense, logic, proportion and reality because it is primarily populated by what I term GOWPs: Guilty Overeducated White People. A velvet painting of British PM Neville Chamberlain hangs in every office, illuminated by a hidden black light, as a reminder and inspiration.

So it is, again, with another State Department Loon. This time, she’s the Number Three in charge and its senior career diplomat. From The Weekly Standard:

Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department, had some rather nice things to say about the reclusive Kim Jong Il, the dictatorial leader of North Korea who died a few days ago. She had met the rogue dictator, Josh Rogin reports, when Sherman “served as State Department counselor and North Korea policy coordinator under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, [and had] traveled to Pyongyang with Albright in 2000.”

An NPR obituary quotes the high ranking State Department official as saying that “He was smart and a quick problem-solver,” and that “[Kim Jong Il] is also witty and humorous. Our overall impression was very different from the way he was known to the outside world.”

Wendy Sherman, now the No. 3 official in the State Department, who served as counselor to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and accompanied her to North Korea, said in 2008: “He was smart, engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident, sort of the master-director of all he surveyed. He was a conceptual thinker,” Ms Sherman had said.

Let me also add, if I may, that he was kind to his cat named Class Envy, changed underwear daily, flossed when the filet mignon from the Kobe beef got caught in his upper back molar, and religiously put the toilet seat down for his nightly mistresses.

In consideration of Undersecretary of State Sherman’s loving statements, even the left-leaning Wikipedia writes:

Human rights record

See also: Human rights in North Korea

According to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, the North Korean government under Kim was “among the world’s most repressive governments”, having up to 200,000 political prisoners according to U.S. and South Korean officials,^[49] and no freedom of the press or religion, political opposition or equal education:^[50] “Virtually every aspect of political, social, and economic life is controlled by the government.”

The Hermit Kingdom continues, now under the 27-year-old four-star general Kim Jong-un. Up to and until other military forces intercede.

Eight million North Koreans still struggle to overcome starvation every winter. North Korea can’t even produce window glass that isn’t flawed, pebbled and distorted. North Korea is, at its base, a suicidal and purposely-isolationist country that impedes commerce in Asian markets.

And why the massive disparity between North and South Koreas?

The clear answer: leadership, anyone?

Wendy Sherman, at least you don’t disappoint; you loyally continue the US State Department meme of tinfoil caps and beautifully-iced shrimp at evening DC parties.

BZ

From The Weekly Standard, in Boston, Massachusetts:

Today, after deliberating for less than ten hours, a federal jury found Tarek Mehanna guilty of the most serious charges leveled by federal prosecutors against him, including providing material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill in a foreign country, and lying to counterterrorism officials. He faces a possible life sentence.

When Islam is shut down, on any level, for any reason — particularly in my country — I rejoice.

As I reported in the July 25 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Mehanna, a young Egyptian-American pharmacist who self-radicalized shortly after 9/11, gained notoriety as an English-language al Qaeda propagandist who helped plan multiple terror attacks. Mehanna’s dreams of waging physical jihad against the United States never materialized—mostly thanks to the incompetence of Mehanna and his terrorist cohort.

Islam is here, ladies and gentlemen. It is in our country, actively recruiting the dregs of society, the brain-damaged, the ignorant, the ill-educated, and is making serious inroads because of Do-Goody-ism in our prisons via GOWPs (Guilty Overeducated White People in the guise of pastors, priests, fathers, sisters and others brimming with irrational religious naivete.)

Continuing, from The Weekly Standard:

Misguided Boston leftists had come to view Mehanna as some sort of authentic Muslim civil rights activist. Here was a young man who took joy in the 9/11 attacks, celebrated Osama bin Laden as his spiritual father, and called for moderate and liberal Muslims to be brutalized for daring to challenge Islamism in their communities. Nevertheless, not long after my piece was published, Mehanna’s cause became a staple of the local Occupy Wall Street protest. Boston “occupiers” dressed in pink spandex and organized a flash mob near Boston’s South Station to bring attention to his “plight.”

An “authentic Muslim” means that all disbelievers must convert or die. An “authentic Muslim” believes that women are subservient and must be covered from head-to-toe, endure clitorectomies, walk behind their men, have no votes or rights in Muslim society. They can be killed for any perceived affront. They are chattel.

By delivering a guilty verdict, the Boston jury decisively repudiated the nauseating message put forth by this bizarre—and politically sophisticated—alliance of the far left and radical Islamism.

And because of this decision, I find it unusual that a jury somehow managed, in this Politically Correct and guilty climate, to deliver a finding based upon fact, history and logic.

My hat is off to this Boston jury who, despite their surroundings and the heat they’re clearly now having to take, made the proper decision here.

I say once again, people: “demography is prophecy.”

You can do the Logical Extension on that one.

BZ

The US State Department frequently — okay —

The US State Department sometimes — okay —

The Republicans are Evil, Greedy, Fascist and Racist.

From Bill Whittle:

Nicely done, except for this rather large caveat which differentiates, more and more, Republicans from Conservatives. And that is this:

Increasingly, Republicans look like Demorats insofar as they both want (or truly don’t do much to discourage) Big Government.

There isn’t much spending that isn’t favored. There isn’t much expansion of government power that isn’t rubber-stamped. There aren’t many pay or benefit increases to the House or Senate that aren’t rushed through. And there are damned few — if any — rules issued from DC that likewise apply to their drafters/creators.

Both sides of the aisle shop at Exemptions R‘ Us.

Imagine that.

We, as Republicans (and more pointedly as Conservatives) have to “come together” through “bi-partisanship” and holding “moderate” (meaning: thinking more like Demorats) thoughts — i.e., compromise. With, naturally, the idea of compromise appearing only to take the form of Demorat wishes.

These days, you can’t put more than two or three sheets of paper between a Demorat and the average beltway Republican.

They both want to be treated with deference and demand separatism and exceptionalism from the masses. The laws they decree just don’t apply to them.

They gaze down upon the Groundlings from Mt DC in their imperious and all-knowing mien.

Old School Demorats and Old School Republicans need to just step down.

“Politics as usual” just doesn’t and won’t “cut it.”

Which is why, if some Americans have the actual brainpower to wonder, Congress is so “locked up.”

It’s because there’s a new band of GOP Freshmen who won’t arbitrarily “sign off” on whatever the leadership demands. And that simply grates and irritates on Boehner and the other GOP Ancients.

Which is why, on the GOP part, Republican Speaker John Boehner is so terribly disappointed that the bulk of the Freshmen Congressmen don’t march lockstep to his demands. Because, of course, that’s how Things Have Gone in the past.

The Senate is gone. Senate Republicans are soft Vampires out for their own warm blood. Just don’t disturb their feeding.

The House is another matter entirely. Hence the distress of Boehner. Because these New TEA Party GOP Assholes just aren’t “coming around.”

Their numbers are small but they could increase.

Everyone loves their OWN Congressman. But not like I admire and respect mine. Because my 4th District Congressman is Tom McClintock.

And he is the Real Deal.

He is both Republican and Conservative.

BZ

[h/t to Geeeez!]