Korea: Legends Of The Fall

  Making Waves?   

Gone but not forgotten, former Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s self-defenestration has already been reduced to trivia in America, withmembers of  MSNBC’s online beloved community invited to sort out his death details, multiple choice style!

MSNBC asks, “Are you smart?

How much do you remember about the week in news? Take msnbc.com’s weekly quiz and find out what you can recall.

6. In South Korea, meanwhile, the nation was shocked when a former president, Roh Moo-hyun, disgraced in a corruption scandal, committed suicide. How did he end his life?

By throwing himself off a cliff in the mountains near his home
By shooting himself at his party’s headquarters
By asphyxiating himself in his car
By hanging himself

Child Safe, Fact Free


Kids Explain The Darnedest Things http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/mlkdaysaulloebgetty.jpg

John Emerson’s Social Design Notes blog studies recent self-explanations by museum and presidential library creators, and sums up the their evil work:

I keep seeing this trend: stories of monuments and memorials sold on infantilism, using the lens of “childhood” to conjure an air of authenticity and gravitas.

Emerson quotes the Washington Post on presidential library market maker Ralph Appelbaum’s Nigeria project:

What does it take to make a Nigerian child?’ It’s an unanswerable question, but it provided the necessary aha moment that made it all come together, a positive theme that finesses some of the philosophical problems of a presidential library in a country riven by corruption, violence, and religious, ethnic, linguistic and economic divisions.”

Stiff Competition http://www.casahistoria.net/images/lenin%20and%20stalin%20in%20death.jpg

Applebaum’s firm is the American equivilant of Lenin’s embalmers touching down in Angola and Vietnam, loosing upon the world our packaged solutions for immortality.

Ronald Reagan: Africa Calling!

The Lives Of Others  lincoln-kennedy-oddities.jpg

The haunting parallels of Lincoln’s and Kennedy’s lives infest the Internet, but what of Ronald Reagan and the latest New Reagan?

The unlikely Reaganaut is the bad boy of South African politics, Jacob Zuma, and the stories premise is amiable front man for expert staff achieved greatness.

Zuma is expected to be elected South African President Wednesday:

Let’s examine the amazing Reagan/Zuma life coincidences!

reagan-smiling.jpg                                                zuma-smiles.jpg

Started as trade unionist                      Started as trade unionist

Challenged sitting president              Challenged sitting president

More than one marriage                      More than one marriage

Arms scandal!                                          Arms scandal!

Sale Of The Century:Yachts Of Luck


  Meet Mohamed Nasheed, New Look President of the sun-kissed  Republic of the Maldives.   He’s the Sarah Palin of the Indian Ocean, getting big play talking about selling his evil bad guy predecessor’s yacht on EBay.

Eventually we learned she hadn’t sold her predecessor’s jet  on EBay at all, but for a loss elsewhere. And he’s been elected since October with no action.

Nasheed defeated a not nice person,  Maumoon Gayoom, who indeed ran a repressive kleptocracy of which the boat and a presidential  island retreat were symbols. But live by the symbol, die by the symbol.

Plain spoken Mr. Nasheed has gotten a lot of mileage as well from refusing the tacky gold-inflicted presidential palace Gayoom built.

  http://thumbsgm.virtualglobetrotting.com/1/7/17186.gif But Nasheed has instead moved into the former Sultan’s palace, no slum.

If the Maldives ever gets around to selling the boat they may find the economic tide against them.  When Iraq finally got title to a Saddam yacht which surfaced in Europe they hauled it back to Basra for lack of a buyer.

And Plouffe, It Was Gone!

2012 Update:  The RNC Remembers

[Not that their hacks don’t do the same and worse]

David Plouffe Shocked To Learn Oil Oligarchy Controversial aliyev-bust-son.jpg

                                              …To Donate Speaking Fee To The Oppressed

The Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama campaign wizard David Plouffe meant no offense in consorting with dictators, will donate his honorarium to some of those done to by the Aliyev clan.

Plouffe is on the ground in Baku, where his comments after a closed door speech gave no hint he’d be giving up the cash.

The oil-soaked region is so blessed that even tourism materials feature gas flaring. azerbaijan-tourism.jpg