Get Along Home, Cindy, Cindy.....Get Along Home!

I keep hearing this song lead-in bumper on The Laura Ingraham Show; and now it's stuck in my head.

So I went out and bought this song (along with the entire boxed CD set, effectively making me $80 poorer- but helping the economy, right? Plus, I do love Johnny Cash). I'd add a picture of Cindy Sheehan to go with the lyrics as well, but why torture you further?

Cindy (featuring Nick Cave) ------Johnny Cash

♪ I wish I was an apple, a-hangin' on a tree and every time my Cindy passed, she'd take a little bite of me.

Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I'll marry you one day.

Well, Cindy is my honey the sweetest in the south, when we kissed to bees would all swarm around her mouth. ♪

Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I'll marry you one day.

♪ Well, I wish I had a needle and thread, fine as I could sow. I'd sow my Cindy to my side and down the road I'd go.

Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I'll marry you one day.

Well, Cindy got religion. She'd had it once before, she grabbed my ole banjo, man and throw it on the floor.

Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I'll marry you one day.

♬ Well, it's apples in the summer time, peaches in the fall. If I can't have the gal I want I won't have none at all.

Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I'll marry you one day.

♥ Cindy hugged and kissed me, she hung her head and cried, I swore she was the prettiest thing that ever lived or died.
♬
Get along, home, Cindy, Cindy, get along home. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy,
I'll marry you one day
I'll marry you one day ♬


HAHA....someone creative with time on their hands should revamp the lyrics to make it all about Muther Sheehan. Strangely enough, the Unearthed album also features a song called "Casey's Last Ride".

My thanks to Michael and Mark on ideas on how to incorporate audio into my blog. Unfortunately for you and I, I took the easy way out and used audioblogger. Terrible, terrible....as your tortured ears can attest to. This comes from having to load up the audiosound from dialing it in over the phone. Ugh! How primitive.....I played the song on my computer and held my cell phone up to the speaker (no landline- cut the cord 5 years ago).

I do apologize for the sound quality. And for the song that's now riding through your head.

Photos Never Lie!

Aww.....touching photo:



Touching ain't it? I mean, c'mon....admit it tugs on your heartstrings just a little.

Well, let's pan out here, shall we, and get a broader perspective on things:







Ahahaha.....Kinda changes the effect, doesn't it?

Nice to see Reverend Sharpton squeeze into the photo. Too bad that other media attention whore, Reverend Jackson, is too busy shaking hands with Chavez for his own photo op.


Hat tip to Ex-Donkey.

On the state of media, old and new

Interesting LA Times article on the state of talk radio. A transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview by Tim Rutten can be found at Radioblogger. Hewitt says he'll air the interview on his radio program Monday, if Hurricane Katrina doesn't overwhelm with news priority. Also,

"Tim's piece accurately quotes me, but I suspect that anyone who hears the interview or reads the transcript will be surprised at what he thought inmportant enough to include in the column, and what he left out."

The entire post is good. Read it.

Another favorite talk radio host of mine, Michael Medved, has posted up a column on 9 big differences and one similarity between Iraq and Vietnam.

More Military related links and blog burnout

Another amazing account by Michael Yon in Mosul. It really deserves being read in its entirety. He got interviewed by Hugh Hewitt this past Friday, the transcript of which can be found at Radio Blogger. Hat tip to BlackFive.

Very cool tribute to our military heroes and their families.....(thanks to Ex-Donkey for the tip off). The photographs are excellent. The one of the little girl holding up a hero's welcome for her Dad brought tears to my eyes.

Apologies to my viewership of four, for my not blogging much in the past week. Life doesn't slow down, and a mound of reading material clutters my comp. Ah well....at least tonight I was able to link you to a few stories that have caught my interest tonight.

Most of the mainstream news, I have no real interest in commenting on at this time, such as Cindy Sheehan and John Roberts, when so many others have been doing it so much better, and covering them more thoroughly. I will try to link to stories more often, and other people's thoughts, when I don't comment myself on them. Go check out Mark's or Mary's blogs, which in turn will lead you to more links and more blogs. I don't know if you other bloggers feel this way, but I am absolutely exhausted with trying to keep up with everything from mainstream news, to favorite blogs, to reading from those I disagree with......Cindy Sheehan opens her mouth, and I can read about 100 different opinions on it, if I so desired. Is there such a thing as too much information and opinionating? Welcome to the blogosphere, I suppose....

I'm still green, and learning how to balance and juggle here.

Blogging will be difficult to squeeze in until after Labor Day Weekend, as I will be...um.....laboring through next Monday.

Take Two Conservative Aspirins with that Liberal Kool-Aid, and Call Me in the Morning!

Last sunday, I happened to catch some of "Company of Heroes", a FOX News special. What really struck me, is the stark contrast between the manner in which Fox presented the tragedy of loss when a soldier is horribly maimed or killed in action; and the manner in which other news stations and programs present the toll of 1853 soldier deaths and some 14,000 wounded. When I watched "Company of Heroes", it made me feel proud and grateful to these heroes and their families. These soldiers were given the dignity and honor that is due to them. Nameless heroes are given a name; they are given a face and personal story attached to that face, so you become intimately familiar with the loss to our country and the nobility of their selflessness and sacrifice. Rather than demoralizing, you are left inspired, with a deep appreciation and love of patriot and country. The sacrifice that these fellow citizens make on behalf of our nation is humbling and they deserve our everlasting love and gratitude.

Then flip over to....say.....60 Minutes or Nightline.....and after running their news stories on dead soldiers and soldiers maimed by the war, what you are left with is a feeling of "war is wrong"...."war is not the answer"......"another life wasted".

It's rather fascinating, really. Just flip back and forth between CNN and FOX, and there are times when you do a kind of double-take, to make sure you are listening to the same exact story being reported. Sometimes, it's night and day.

A really great blog I discovered through the military bloggers, is Michael Yon's Online Magazine. He is an independent, citizen-journalist chronicling from his own perspective, what is really going on in Iraq. Just read "Jungle Law" for a vivid account of being out on combat patrol in Mosul with the Deuce Four. And Pundit Review has a radio interview with Yon. (Incidentally, for those who give credence to Cindy Sheehan's current opinion regarding President Bush's sincerity and concern over military deaths and how they affect military families, read this and this. Pundit Review also reminds us there of a couple of stories you might have seen before in e-mail forwards, verifiable as true stories when cross-checked with urban legend sites like snopes.com. In light of the current media frenzy over Cindy Sheehan and her charge of President Bush being uncaring of his soldiers and callous, this and this might be nice to revive. Also this story. And more. Try downing these next time you're drinking that bitter liberal kool-aid!

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

I haven't felt this excited and hopeful about a movie series since The Lord of the Rings anticipation. I've never read any of the Harry Potter books and have not been able to get into the movies at all. The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia are modern epic literature that I grew up on. These works are integrated into my being.

The website is amazing! Do click around. It's a bit of an adventure in itself and quite fun. Take a look at the trailers (I won't ruin it for you- do your own hunting and snooping around!).



Remember that all worlds draw to an end
and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.
C.S. Lewis ~ The Last Battle

Trashing Our History: Troops in Iraq

August 10, 2005
Thomas Sowell

Back in June, this column pointed out that it is impossible to fight a war without heroism — but that you would never know that from the mainstream media. Nothing heroic done by American troops in Iraq is likely to make headlines in the New York Times or be featured on the big three broadcast network news programs.

That fact has now been belatedly recognized in a New York Times opinion piece, but with a strange twist.

After briefly mentioning a few acts of bravery in Iraq — including a Marine who smothered an enemy grenade with his own body, saving the lives of his fellow Marines at the cost of his own — the Times' writer said, "the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II."

Think about that spin: The reason we don't hear about such things is because of the Pentagon, Bush and "the culture at large."

Neither the Pentagon, the White House or "the culture at large" can stop the newspapers or the televisions networks from publicizing whatever they want to publicize. They all have reporters on the scene but what they choose to feature in their reports are all the negative things they can find.

The very issue of the New York Times in which this essay appeared — August 7th — featured a front-page picture of a funeral for a Marine killed in Iraq. If you judged by the front page of this and many other newspapers, our troops in Iraq don't do anything except get killed.

The plain fact is that the mainstream media have been too busy depicting our troops as victims to have much time left to tell about the heroic things they have done, the far greater casualties which they have inflicted on their enemies, or their attempts to restore some basic services and basic decencies to this country that has been torn apart for years by internal and external wars — even before the first American troops arrived on the scene.

The unrelenting quest for stories depicting American troops as victims — including even front-page stories about the financial problems of some National Guardsmen called to active duty — has created a virtual reality in the media that has no place for heroes.

Senator John Kerry has called the activation of reservists and National Guardsmen "a backdoor draft," as if joining the reserves or the National Guard is supposed to mean an exemption from ever having to fight. The theme of troops as victims has been a steady drumbeat in the media, because of the way the media have chosen to filter the news, filtering out heroes, among other things.

This virtual reality can become more important than any facts. Even a young lady interviewer on Fox News Channel — of all places — recently asked a guest how long the American people will be able to continue supporting the war in Iraq with all the casualties.

All the American deaths in Iraq since the war began are not even half of the deaths of U.S. Marines taking the one island of Iwo Jima in a couple of months of fighting. And Iwo Jima was just one battle in a war that was raging on other fronts around the world simultaneously and continuing for nearly four long years.

It is not the casualties which are unprecedented but the media filtering and the gullibility of those who accept the virtual reality created by the media.

This is a re-creation of the media's role in the Vietnam War, where American victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media.

Even the current Communist rulers of Vietnam have admitted that they lost militarily in Vietnam but hung on because they expected to win politically in the United States — as they did, with the help of the Jane Fondas, the Walter Cronkites and a cast of thousands in the streets and on campuses across the country.

The very people who have been anti-military for years, who filter out American heroes in battle, are now proclaiming that they are "honoring" our troops by publicizing every death by name, day in and day out.

Has the dumbed-down education in our schools left us so ill-equipped that we cannot see through even the most blatant hypocrisy?

~<>IS THERE MEDIA BIAS OR WHAT?<>~

The Pope is visiting DC and President Bush takes him out for an afternoon on the Potomac...sailing on the presidential yacht.

They're admiring the sights when, all of a sudden, the Pope's hat (zucchetto) blows off his head and out into the water. Secret service guys start to launch a boat, but Bush waves them off, saying "Wait, wait. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."

Bush then steps off the yacht onto the surface of the water and walks out to the Holy Father's little hat, bends over and picks it up, then walks back to the yacht and climbs aboard. He hands the hat to the Pope amid stunned silence. The next morning, the Washington Post carries a story, with front page photos, of the event. The banner headline is:

"Bush Can't Swim!"

Yes, yes...yet another conservative blogger's venemous diatribe, bashing the liberal media bias. So, what of it? You have the freedom to stop reading or the freedom to break lances with me; not by running me through in a physical joust, but by engaging me in dialogue, and leaving a comment.

The bit of satire I led in with, illustrates in a humorous way, a very sad reality: that the majority of mainstream journalists lean to the left. It irks many liberals to no end to hear conservatives claiming that there is a liberal bias in the media. It just baffles me, at times, when I feel like the bias is so transparent. And then my liberal friends will come back with, "but you have FOX News and talk radio!!!". I do see FOX as slightly right of center (not as far right as angry Leftists will have you believe, though)...but isn't it funny that FOX is usually the only network they mention as an example? (runner up would be talk radio, but more on that in a few paragraphs down....). If they are more savvy, they might include The Washington Times in there as well; in contrast, I can cite CNN, ABC, NBC, see BS...er, sorry...I mean, CBS, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the BBC, the CBC, NPR, PBS, Reuters and the AP, and all the countless other mainstream news outlets, major and minor. More bizarre are the extreme Leftists who buy into conspiracy theories, and see all the mainstream as having a conservative agenda, and as going easy on President Bush.

FOX News has been huge in its success, but its audience share is so ridiculously small in comparison to the number of viewers the Big Three reach every night.

Liberal and conservative worldview perceptions injected into a news story doesn't upset me. I don't see anyway around it. What does disturb me is the dishonesty of claiming nonpartisanship.

What I find extremely mystifying and more disturbing, is how we often can't even agree upon what the barebone facts are. Both sides seem to have selective hearing. When President Bush gives a speech...when Charles Duelfer and David Kay give their WMD findings, or when the 9-11 Commission concluded their research....what is quoted is like night and day. What is heard from a President Bush speech by Democrats and what is heard by Republicans...sometimes it's like they were listening to two different speeches being delivered!

What is also bizarre to me, is how liberals can't seem to distinguish between straight news reporting, and opinion journalism. They act like conservative talk radio hosts hide behind a badge of nonpartisanship. Absolutely baffling, when these radio political pundits are unapologetically partisan, and admitted idealogues. They are not reporting "just the facts" in a news story; but rather, giving their interpretation, perspective, and opinion on how those news items are perceived through the filter of their conservative-colored lens. What is devious, though, is when you have the top newspaper in the country, the New York Times, and similar mainstream rags, pass themselves off as nonpartisan; yet time and time again, their liberal slant seeps through...sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant to where the frontpage blurb begins to look like the op-ed section of the paper.

Liberal media bias in the mainstream is so pervasive, I don't understand how you can't feel suffocated by it. It's message isn't just in the news headlines and stories: it's also in our mainstream culture: from universities, to pop music, to Hollywood movies and television; they often have liberal messages...you have political correctness and other liberal-related issues, like multiculturalism, laced into children's programming (such as Sesame Street).

Its presence in our lives doesn't bother me half as much as it bothers me that the left-leaning in media is not recognized and acknowledged by liberals; even more, that those who profess to be "apolitical" or don't care for politics....who don't follow the news much and may only catch headline blurbs and news soundbytes....might be completely oblivious that the news they do get is colored with a journalist's own biased leanings. I suppose that's their own fault, and it's a matter of making sure that the conservative voice is heard out there, through the alternative media.

I do see a rise in the conservative voice as the success of FOX News has given rise to similar opinionists appearing on rival networks, such as Scarborough Country at MSNBC; of course, then there's the continuing conservative influence talk radio has on listeners; and then there's the new media, with right-of-center bloggers far more politically influential right now than left-of-center bloggers. Military bloggers also tend to lean rightward, and their opinions right now command a great deal of weight and power in our consciousness, and on our conscience.

Now that I've come across as just another conservative whiner, boo-hooing and poo-pooing over liberal media bias like it's some well-coordinated Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, I'll reiterate that I don't mind the freedom of having a free press....free to print news through a liberal lens worldview, and free to publish through a conservative one. Like a free-market society, allow it to succeed or fail, by standing on its own merits. It's funny how liberals have always portrayed themselves as the champion of free speech and diversity and tolerance...yet in the past few decades, it seems like conservative viewpoints have been shut out of many universities, journalism schools, and other outlets of influence for public exposure. It would just be nice if all news sources would be honest with themselves and to their viewer/readership and openly declare their political leanings. Many journalists who claim to be moderates or who deem themselves nonpartisan, are more fair and nuanced than fair and balanced. To them, FOX News seems so far to the right, and partisan, only because it stands out in such sharp contrast to the liberal press.

I do think that most of the straight news reporters do try to be honest and nonpartisan, but I also see it as an attempt to defy human nature. Bias can creep into one's writings in the most subtle ways....just think of how a simple word choice can make all the difference in the meaning and context of what is being reported: "killed"....."died"....."murdered"....."lost".... Each of those 4 words can essentially be true to the story, but color the facts with their own distinct flavor of meaning. A writer can subconsciously choose one word over another, revealing his political leanings, without intentionally meaning for it to happen.

I think most conservative messages, stand on their own merits; and so long as conservatives are not completely shut out of airing their opinions and ideology, the liberalism of old media will continue to decline and the rise of new media and conservative beliefs will gain momentum. I think part of the recent success of alternative media like talk radio is not because the conservative talk radio hosts do what they do so well; it's also because for 4 decades, liberals have been controlling the mainstream, coloring their coverage of news story with their ideological outlook.

I'm done. I might go back and edit in some links. There's plenty of research and studies, including those from liberal sources like the Pew Research Center, whose recent study last year concluded that a significant majority of journalists do lean left. In closing, I don't mean to toss around the word "liberal" like it's a dirty word. I label rags like The New York Times as left-of-center, overall, but don't mean to suggest that their reporters are somehow incompetent, and engaging in yellow journalism and outright fabrications. It's a matter of skewing the perception, which results in a distorted view of the events happening in the world, and their level of import and significance, in the overall grand scheme of things.

Some Pro- U.S. Military Photos

I received these images a couple of months ago. My friend is apolitical, but found the photos touching. I agree (although I am unapologetically partisan, here). So I'd like to share them publically on this blog if you haven't seen these yet...just a little something to provide a counterbalance to the overwhelming negative news being pushed by the mainstream:






I've heard of Iraqi newborns who have been named
"George Bush" out of a sense of gratitude. Hope that
doesn't play out like the song, "A Boy Named Sue".....or
those kids are in for some rough treatment.










60 Minutes was all but eager to publish the Abu Ghraib photos and the New York Times ran 40+ frontpage news stories on the scandal....wonder if they will ever devote as much coverage to the positives coming out of Iraq? Of the nobility and professionalism of our military men and women?




"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."

~Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, USMC

May 25, 2008 Update: This poem has long been mis-attributed...the true author is Charles Michael Province. Thanks to Flag Gazer:

"It Is The Soldier", which has, for several years. been attributed to Father Denis Edward OBrien, USMC. Mr Province has advised that Father O'Brien once sent a copy of the poem to "Dear Abby" and it was printed erroneously giving credit to Father O'Brien for writing it. It is at that point that the authorship became clouded, and I reproduce this information in the hope of ensuring Mr Province receives full, appropriate and most deserved credit for his wonderful piece.

Charles M. Province, a veteran of the US Army, is the sole and single Founder and President of The George S. Patton, Jr. Historical Society. He is the author of "The Unknown Patton", "Patton's Third Army", and "Patton's One-Minute Messages" More details are displayed on his website, particularly at http://www.pattonhq.com/koreamemorial.html where this poem is displayed.

Semper Fi

"Kill one, scare ten thousand"
~Sun Tzu

I don't know about others, but I'm sick of stupid opinion polls from MSM and the IRRESPONSIBLE influence they are having on public perception. Iraq is not Vietnam...but it's like the leftstream wants to relive the glory days of influencing a war, so that even though we don't lose the war on the battlefield, we lose it from propaganda pushed by our own media and a hostile, anti-American media overseas. For every tragedy and the slightest bad news that gets pushed by the media into screaming at the top of its lungs, "Quagmire!", it feeds into the morale of the insurgency, (some of which are paid fighters and not Sunni/Iraqi patriots), and invites for more attacks against our soldiers, Coalition Forces, and Iraqi civilians, to batter our will and weaken our constitution to see this through. We are turning into our own worst enemy, and bringing to reality the statement Osama bin Laden made in '98 about America being a "Paper tiger", and not having what it takes to engage in warfare and defend itself. Thank God for the courage of our brave military which does not kowtow to the enemy, and the enemy within.

The following is from A Soldier's Perspective:

The Death Toll
Blogged by CJ Friday August 5, 2005
I know things have been light lately, but I want to shift gears for a second and talk about something serious: deaths in Iraq.

To the best of my knowledge, we have lost about 1,828 soldiers in Iraq. This number does not include contractors and DA civilians I don’t think. If they were, the number wouldn’t be too much higher. Before I get into the meat of this, I want to say for the record that even one American is too many. There’s no such thing as ONLY one or ONLY 1,828 when you’re talking to those surviving family members. To them, that one person is everything. With that said, let me continue.

The media likes to throw around this number at every opportunity they can. I swear they have a huge jellybean machine that drops another jelly bean for everyone to munch one whenever another soldier dies. “Well, guys, that’s 1,828 jelly beans so far.” These bean counters have made it a point to highlight this fact numerous times. “And today, two more soldiers were killed by an IED outside [insert town], bringing the number of dead Americans to 1,828 to date.”

Allow me to bring a little perspective to these numbers. There have been more than 1,100,000 military personnel stationed in Iraq. This number includes multiple deployments. In other words, if I deployed twice and took myself out of this figure, it’d only be 1,099,998. So, more than 1,100,000 deployed to Iraq. That is .16% of the total number of personnel who were deployed that were killed. Not even a full percent. Judging by what our esteemed media would have you believe, our soldiers are dropping like flies.

In Los Angeles alone, a city of 3.8 million people, there are about 1,070 homocides reported each year. Therefore, since March 2003 when we first went into Iraq, there have been approximately 2,675 homocides…deaths to the uneducated. Par that down to the per 1,000,000 percentage and you get about 705 deaths.
Now let’s add in another city. In New York City, there are approximately 710 reported homocides each year. That’s about 1775 people since March 2003 averaging.

These are two of the largest cities we have in the US. The numbers listed above reflect ONLY homocide. It doesn’t include the people killed during armed robberies, arson, or other violent crimes. Nationwide, there are over 15,000 people killed in violent crimes. That’s 37,500 since March 2003. That number is .02% of the entire American population, not much higher than in Iraq.

Now, here’s another curveball the media doesn’t tell you about. You know all those deaths their reporting after a story about 2 soldiers killed by an IED? Only 1423 are from hostile fire. 405 are from accidents, illnesses, or other reasons. That drops the percentage to about .13%.

With all this said, let me restate again that I never wanted to see that number jump past zero. However, as soldiers we realize that our lives may be shorter than yours. We sacrifice that time with our wives, our husbands, our children, and our friends for that very reason. We don’t want to die, but if that’s what it takes spread freedom and defeat corruption, we’ll do it.

Those 1800+ soldiers died helping people they don’t know personally nor have a vested interest in. The Iraqi people are just as worthy of our sacrifice as we are. Every person on this planet is. You won’t find many soldiers who think we’re wasting our time over there. And you’ll find even fewer among those who have actually gone.

I’m tired of hearing the number as if every soldier to deploy is dropping like a fly. I’m tired of the scare tactics used by the media to force public perception their way. I’m tired of the media telling me what they THINK we want to know as opposed to what we should know. All the good stories are coming from guys and girls willing to get their hands dirty and ride with the troops through the trenches. The desk jockeys stuck in their little fortresses and getting out far enough to interview Iraqis walking past the gate are misinformed playing the enemy’s information operations game to a tee. Osama is probably grinning with each report.

Another, great, recent blog entry from the same milblogger; if it doesn't stir something deeply noble and patriotic and an unconditional love for our military men and women within you....then I can't relate at all to what makes you tick. It's not the first time I've seen this e-mail forward of which he speaks of. Definitely worth passing along.

Of related interest, is the under-reporting of military reenlistments

God bless and protect the families of the 21 Marines killed last week from the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment. Since arriving in Iraq, they have lost (at least) 37 Marines. A couple of good write ups from Black Five.

Interesting write-up on milblogs.

The "Dear Leader" of North Korea is full of Kimshee!!!

*Ahem*.....uh....um...uhm....yeah....riiiiiiiight.

Will the Real Kim Jong-Il Please Stand Up?



If I had a dog with a face as ugly as this one, I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards; cripes! No wonder he has the need to spread around tall tales about his mental prowess. His self-esteem could never handle the truth of just how nerdy he is! William Hung has more charisma than this guy! And probably isn't as ronery!

Tue Aug 2,10:59 AM ET

Eleven holes-in-one in a single round...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il never forgets a phone number, a cadre's career or a line of computer code.

According to an article posted Tuesday on a Web site run by North Korea, Kim wakes up early every day for intensive memory training where he sits down and commits to his keen mind items such as the phone numbers of workers in his Stalinist state.

"I remember all computer codes and telephones that workers are using now," Kim was quoted as saying on the Web Site "Uri-Min-jok-kiri" (www.uriminzokkiri.dprkorea.com), or "Among our People."

Kim surprised a group of North Korean officials attending a meeting in 2002 by recalling all their phone numbers "with lightning speed," the site said.

On a day Kim visited a cemetery, he looked around at the tombs and he remembered the achievements, characteristics, tastes and bereaved family members for hundreds of the dead by a quick glance at the names on tombstones, it said.

"All the attendants were surprised at his incredible memory," the site says.

North Korean propaganda is ripe with the amazing achievements of its Dear Leader. The highly controlled state also closely monitors its citizens to make sure they do not speak out against Kim or challenge his rule.

Kim pilots jet fighters, pens operas, produces movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf by shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played.
The Web Site said Kim told all workers they should develop their ability to memorize. "The memory of a person gets better when a person uses their brain often," he was quoted as saying.


Kim Jong-il is full of kimchee! President Bush may be waging a global struggle against extreme obesity, but the North Korean "dear leader" is waging a global struggle against LMAO!!!

[update] Kim Jong-Il vs. Hans Blix.