Sarah Palin for President? Tea Partiers = Crazies? And, North Korea Courting Capitalism?

Sarah Palin, please run for President in 2012... so President Obama wins by a landslide.

It is almost beyond belief to think that several million votes and a heartbeat was all that separated Palin from assuming the reigns as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.

Scary.

The rhetoric fuming from Tea Partiers reminds me of another fringe group... Scientologists. Crazy, you say? Try this on for size...

A tea partier says to a reporter covering the National Tea Party Convention: "The mainstream media is the enemy." Scientologists have long declared journalists and the media as enemies. The latest evidence can be found on Google.com where a court injunction required Google to take down a website which was the leading global critic of Scientology practices. Where are we... China?

Tea Partiers are advocating for some form of purity test that political candidates must pass. Scientology can help with that: they have a seemingly endless list of purification programs and purification packages to choose from.

An overwhelming majority of tea partiers are opposed to openly gay men and women teaching in public schools. Scientology is about as anti-gay as they come.

Tea Party = Scientology? No.

Wacko = Wacko? Yes.

No need to waste any more thought on these jokers. On a more serious topic, I am reading that the poster child of all that is sane, North Korea's Kim Jong-il is courting international businesses to invest in its country so that it can become "mighty and prosperous by 2012." Orascom, an Eqyptian telecom company, who is partnered with American banking giant Morgan Stanley, is listening and is planning to invest in N. Korea's telecom infrastructure.

North Korea gaining the keys to a powerful capitalistic engine would be a tragedy. It must first be required to adopt democratic principles so that a representative system is in place to internally promote and protect human rights. It was wrong for an endless list of American businesses to invest in China over these many decades, without a mandate that the Chinese first adopt a democratic form of government. It was equally tragic when Intel and other western businesses began investing in Vietnam without a similar mandate that the Vietnamese adopt democracy.

History has proven that capitalism must be constantly checked by citizens otherwise the rights of people will be reduced to nothing more than an "expense" -- an externality -- that must give way to "efficiency" and "profitability."

Peace

Jeremy