Welcome to the World of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez
In His Pocket May 1, 2017
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We are pleased to announce an addition to our staff here at michaelpramirez.com. Grace, 17, plans to study Journalism and Political Science this fall. She is editor of her Southern Californian high school newspaper, and she took the initiative to approach us for a summer internship. We thought it would be great to hear a young Republican's perspective.
Trump's Lone Call to Action by Grace Thirty-one days. That is how long until I graduate from high school. My life is just beginning. So yes to be blunt, I am worried about the bombs North Korea is dropping. Kids my age don’t say much about them other than President Trump is not dealing with the threat the right way, (they seem to use that excuse for everything), but from what I can tell President Trump is the only one doing anything. With an unstable leader like Kim Jong Un, I think foreign leaders need to stand up and do their jobs. North Korea is not just threatening the US but them as well. Take China for example, they are one of North Korea’s only allies. Yet, despite all the rising tension between North Korea and other nations, they still tested a ballistic missile just two days ago, ultimately a slap in China’s face. Yet, what is China doing about it? Well, they are supplying North Korea with weapons. How does that make any sense? Why are the Chinese giving North Korea things that will only enable them to continue to terrorize so many people? I want to start this new chapter in my life on the right foot. I want to go to college, pursue a career, and have a family. What I don’t want is to live in fear of North Korea dropping a bomb on our country. I say respectfully: can the leaders of every country involved please take a stand and do their jobs? I want to know, as the future generation, what is being done? No more talking, I want to see some real action being taken to prevent this so called “World War III”. |
THE MAGAZINE: From the May 8 Issue
North Korea, Then and Now MAY 08, 2017 | By ETHAN EPSTEIN THE WEEKLY STANDARD Regrets—we've all had a few. L'esprit de l'escalier—that wonderful line coming to mind a moment too late—is a common annoyance after failed dates and dud job interviews; dented fenders and bum shoulders attest to avoidable failures of depth perception and misjudged forays into backyard football games. When it comes to the development of nuclear weapons by rogue states, however, regrets become rather more profound. Consider the apparently intractable problem of North Korea's weapons program. Pyongyang began surreptitiously developing nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and by the early 1990s, the totalitarian state had announced its intention to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a bold statement of its desire to go nuclear. Come 1994, North Korea planned to extract enough raw material from its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to create five or six nuclear weapons. President Bill Clinton strongly considered launching a preemptive strike on Yongbyon—the defense journalist Jamie McIntyre reports that the administration had drawn up an attack plan consisting of cruise missiles and F-117 fighter jets. Clinton's—correct—calculus was that it would be unacceptable to allow a sociopathic dictatorship to arm itself with nukes, especially one with no regard for human rights, a history of threatening (and invading) its neighbors, and a penchant for unpredictability. And then he blinked. With a little "help" from Jimmy Carter, who took a trip to North Korea to meet Kim Il-sung, Clinton by October 1994 had struck the "Agreed Framework" between the two countries. Bill Clinton, we suspect, has more regrets in his life than most, but this one should be atop the list: The Agreed Framework allowed the North Koreans to, in McIntyre's words, "cloak their covert nuclear program until they could build a working bomb." Now, North Korea has upwards of 20 nuclear weapons, with more on the way. The regime is making strides in its missile program, with the goal of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles—capable of hitting the United States and carrying nuclear weapons—tantalizingly close. -read more at Weekly Standard |