North Koreans mourn 'Dear Leader'

By Ron HartMore sad news to report from the world of crazed dictators: Kim Jong-Il has died at the tender age of 69.

He will be buried with his sun glasses on and an ample supply of his beloved Viagra. I hear it will be an open casket; so many years of Viagra use made the casket unclose-able. Vice President Joe Biden might attend, but I fear the sight of Kim Jong-Il lying in state in his open coffin with his oversized sunglasses facing skyward may lead Biden to think he is a solar energy company and give him $500 million of taxpayer money.

It seems his son, Kim Jong-Un, will take his dad's place ("Un" is Korean for "W"). The fast-living and hard-drinking son of a prominent leader could wake up one morning in Afghanistan and Iraq with no idea how he got there.

The youngest son of Kim Jong-Il, who beat out older brothe (Enlarge) A group of North Koreans take part in an organized display of mourning, in front of a portrait of Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, North Korea, the day after his death was announced, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011.

ANONYMOUS, ASSOCIATED PRESS r Mentally-Il, is heir apparently the Yin to Kim Jong-Il's Pyong-yang. I thought maybe a board could interview presidential applicants and look for the one who has the biggest ego and combs his hair into an odd pompadour. Perhaps this would be the same committee that hired Donald Trump.

Jong-Un has very little evil-dictating experience. He was educated in Switzerland, and some of his classmates say that he often privately doubted he was crazy enough to run North Korea.

The cherub-faced Un, what a great choice! Nothing makes starving citizens happier than to see that their fat-faced leader is getting plenty to eat. But the sons of ruthless leaders seldom succeed. They just will not murder, starve and steal with the intensity of their fathers. They are eventually toppled, get a reality show, and end up living out their lives in exile in $30 million Beverly Hills mansions. They can always raise money as Democratic bundlers for Obama, but deep down they know he will not succeed in making the USA quite the communist country North Korea once was.

If you want to get the new leader a congratulatory gift, you cannot go wrong with a pair of comically large women's sunglasses. Maybe now young Kim Jong-Un can beat out his father in North Korea's state-owned version of "People" magazine's Sexiest Man Alive award, one his father, the "Dear Leader," has won every year since gaining power.

This transition will be costly for the country of 24 million people who now have to replace the 50 million framed pictures of their "Glorious Leader" with pictures of his son. UN estimates say this could cost three years of North Korea's total GDP, but must it be done.

North Korea's main source of income consisted of, every few years, faking some military exercises and saying they wanted a nuke. Then America would send them money. North Korea's is an extortion-based economy.

Supposedly, North Korea will soon have a nuclear missile that can reach Washington State and California. When the Kardashian girls heard the news they got excited – finally, an Asian restaurant that delivers! Personally, I am not worried about their missile capability unless one can reach a red state or disrupt the SEC football schedule.

Obama has a clear, foreign "first strike" policy: he will only use our nuclear warheads against Iran, Israel and Fox News. Obama will only use nukes if his only other known war strategy, running negative ads against an opponent in Iowa or flying Air Force One to a swing state to make a speech against him, does not work.

Pentagon spokesmen maintain we have no plans to invade North Korea. Yeah, like not having a plan ever stopped us before. America is just about out of "invading money," and the world knows we only invade countries with no weapons of mass destruction.

With Rep. Barney Frank retiring, maybe instead of a nuclear attack we can destroy North Korea more quickly by sending him over there to install a Community Reinvestment Act, push Fannie Mae-backed sub-prime loans on them, and then pass a Kim-Dodd-Frank bill to make it more insidious. That should topple them.

When North Korea threatened the United States, it was fellow, supposedly "communist" China that came to our aid, not theirs. You'd think China would side with their fellow communist North Koreans. But when the USA owes China 1.3 trillion dollars, they want make sure we are OK. 2011 Benjamin Franklin Award Winner!

Ron Hart TO GO

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Ron in a recent appearance on Fox28 (WPGX) program NewsView - with Lee Sullivan

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Columns by Ronald Hart. Ron grew up in Tennessee and began writing a column for his hometown paper in 2002. He attended The University of Memphis and the Institute for Political and Economic Systems at Georgetown University. Ron graduated Magna Cum Laude and was elected student government president. Upon getting his MBA, he went to work for Goldman Sachs. He was appointed to the Tennessee Board of Regents by then Governor Lamar Alexander and is now a private investor. He appears on CNN and has been quoted in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal. His columns reflect a rare combination of Southern libertarian views and humor. They have been described as "Lewis Grizzard meets P.J. O'Rourke with a dash of Will Roger's horse sense". His columns are carried by 30 newspapers with a total weekly circulation of approximately 1 million readers.