Not So Much

Dear Dear Leader:

The running dogs at The New York Times are telling us that your stairway to the stars, or "rocket to the front door of Sarah Palin's igloo," as you've so often joked over an expensive after dinner cognac or brandy, didn't go so well. 

The United States Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, issued a statement on Sunday that portrayed the launching as a major failure. It based its information on a maze of federal radars, spy ships and satellites that monitor global missile firings. The command said that North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 missile at 11:30 a.m. Sunday local time, or 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday, and that its first stage fell into the Sea of Japan, which analysts had expected as the point of splashdown in a successful launching. However, “the remaining stages, along with the payload itself, landed in the Pacific Ocean,” the statement said. Analysts had expected the rocket’s second stage to land in the Pacific but its third stage and its ostensible satellite payload to fly into space. The command emphasized that “no object entered orbit,” apparently a reference to both the rocket’s third stage as well as the supposed satellite.

Well, D. L., we'll be the first to tell you that you just can't win them all.

The launching itself of the three-stage rocket on Sunday, which the North Korean government portrayed as a success — even bragging that the supposed satellite payload was now broadcasting patriotic tunes from space — outraged Japan and South Korea, led to widespread rebuke by President Obama and other leaders, and prompted the United Nations Security Council to go into an emergency session.

Hey, whether the damn thing worked or not, it drummed up a load of hysteria among the sour-pusses in the "international community," didn't it? And that's at least half your game, right? 

It'll work next time, D. L. Anxiously awaiting those patriotic tunes from space, 

M. Bouffant 

P. S.: Hope we weren't telling tales out of school. Did those people you have working for you tell you those patriotic numbers on the radio were coming from the ether? We wonder about some of your toadies sometimes. The boot-lickers here in L. A. really are a step up. You should look into it.

As B/4,  M. B.