Kim Jong Il ain’t looking too good. I mean, not even for him; there are just some things a giant pair of eighties Magnum P.I. sunglasses cannot hide. So, who takes over for him, if he can’t do it any more? That’s worth freaking out about a little.

And it turns out that his eldest son is probably not interested in the job. After all, he just got busted trying to sneak into Japan to go to Disneyland. That apparently leaves his youngest son, a mid-twenty something kid, as the next in line. I presume the middle child is, . . . well, a middle child and not suitable.

So, should we be concerned with the idea of a dictatorship run in a cult of personality and which possesses nuclear weapons should be taken control of by a guy who may not have even kissed a girl yet? Hell yeah, we should.

In response to some of the concern out there about Saturn’s potential demise, Saturn has sent out an email to it’s customers. They say that the idea may be for Saturn to go it’s own separate way, not to vanish as we fear:

Today, we confirmed that Saturn and GM would further investigate one of those options: a spin-off of an independent Saturn Distribution Corporation.

The Saturn Distribution Corporation already exists as an indirect subsidiary of GM. It’s the entity with which our retailers currently have their franchise agreement. An independent Saturn would still have its great retailers, and it would continue to source current products from GM through 2011. If successful, SDC at that point would source products from other manufacturers.

The goal—from a product perspective—would be to find future vehicles that match the Saturn Brand: fuel-efficient, safe, reliable and affordable. From a retailing perspective, we would build on our core strength of unmatched customer service. The same hassle-free experience that is a hallmark of the brand could be taken to even higher levels.

This leaves open the question of what they do to manufacture cars without GM’s backbone. The implication is that they would outsource elsewhere, but where?

Amazing that they don’t even try to have some sort of balance in their reporting. CNN declares the stimulus package “ripe for fraud, waste and corruption.” How do they know this? Are they aware of some corruption the rest of us don’t know about? They should just come right out and say it in that case.

No one’s claiming that fraud is not a risk with this or any other bill. But it’s funny how billions of dollars slip into a black hole in Iraq but CNN suddenly cares about fraud now.

When are Republicans going to get that you can’t just use a rock and roll song without at minimum earning the commentary of the original rocker? John McCain had John Mellencamp. Now the Minority Whip, Eric Cantor has Aerosmith up in arms over his use of Back in the Saddle.

And am I wrong? It seems to me that if anyone would be on the side of DRM and the “rights” of corporations, it should be the Republicans. How could you be so stupid as to not have gotten the performance rights before releasing a video to YouTube?

The Pew Research Center’s People Polling website shows that an increasing majority of Americans are becoming aware that the country’s serious slide into recession may end up being a slide into a Depression. Among the more interesting statistics are that four times the number of people report joblessness as the most serious issue facing us right now, a clear indication that the economic problems once shoved off by the media as simple a poor and irresponsible people issue in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis has hit home for a plurality of Americans.

And it is with this as a backdrop that Republicans choose to fight against the stimulus package. Bravo! Fight on, noble dipshits.