What's Korean for "Merkwuerdigliebe"?

And you can bet the Russians & Chinese are sucking up all radio traffic, jargon, radar signatures and any telemetry we transmit.

Easier than stealing it from Silicon Valley or off the internet.

It's no wonder Chuck Hagel is deploying missile defenses --Kim Jong-un is threatening to obliterate cities on the West Coast of the U.S.

The execution of Saddam Hussein and the supposed execution of Osama Bin laden have left Americans without a bogeyman to hate. The kid in charge of North Korea seems to be preening for the position.

The bogeyman is not to be hated as much as feared. My guess is the US needs a new bogeyman to strike fear into the populace and seems to be auditioning Kim for the role.

They'd nuke Portland, but they'd be doing us a favor.

Silly rabbit. It's not OK for anybody else to do stuff like this, but when it comes to killer drones, nuclear weapons, preemptive strikes, occupations or detention of non-combatants on unspecified charges for indefinite periods of time the rules never apply to us.

Jack, you are 100% accurate on the boogey man / false flag thesis. If North Korea had petroleum reserves we would have never left in the 1950s. Every major economic cycle has its false flag/boogey man to blame. We're just ITCHING to invade Iran/Iraq, yet they did little to overtly provoke confrontation.

Meanwhile North Korea openly threatens impending attack on the western world empire. And we posture. It's been a good 12 years since the last big 'event' that galvanizes public opinion behind the war machine.

Watch what happens in the background with the money.

It's always about the money.

The Euro/Yen are America's canary in the coal mine...

The U.S. is still the big stick globally but after the Iraq misadventure (which maybe a reading of Britain's early 19th century experience should have told us a thing or two about the ensuing trap), we probably will be much more selective in the use of our military capabilities for the foreseeable future. The Iraq misadventure explains just as much about the down turn in GOP popularity in 2006 and 2008 as does the Great Recession.

So, why the change in tactics with respect to North Korea? Why is handing out some goodies to the noise new North Korean dictator now out of fashion (when it has been in fashion since the early 90s)?

The cynic in me suggests it is about the sequester, which cuts the increase in federal spending in half from about 5% to 2.5%. Half of the sequester is defense spending. Americans didn't swallow the horror stories Obama and crew were spouting about the sequester (a small but important symbol of fiscal restraint by the federal government), and this is so much the case, Obama's approval ratings dropped from above 50% to just over 45%.

So, the almost always available crisis opportunity, North Korea, may be of use to the White House and Democrats in breaking the sequester. Even some GOP want cover to break from sequester.

Maybe when Lavonne Griffith gets down cleaning up Portland's finances she could clean up the nation's finances.

When a leader gets in too much trouble at home he likes to find a bogeyman someplace else to divert attention.
Argentina is about to go insolvent *again* and so they are banging swords on shields and yelling "Malvinas" yet another time.

I would guess that Baby Doc Un is in some sort of trouble and the Generals might think he is ripe for a take over. Is he the third or fourth generation of his dynasty? The original gene pool is likely getting a bit diluted by now.

Errata:
last line to read: Our guys in charge of the kid in charge of North Korea (not Dennis Rodman) keep 'the kid' of the North propped up and bleating in the position.

set-up line to read: Americans without a bogeyman to hate from central casting might see the sociopathic enemies within, (U.S.Government of Defense, uber-awful U.S. GoD careerists), unless a replacement bogeyman gets made-up, costumed, and quickly into position of promoted distraction -- LOOK at that -- as Public Bogeyman No. 1 in-frame.

omitted tagline:
Neo-con Republicans are America's Taliban.

Bob Clark is right about going to war. I doubt that even Cheney on steroids could get us in to another war. There would be no popular support and we can't afford it.
I doubt the sequester figures in to the thinking much. The big contractors can always conjure up the danger of an asteroid attack and find things to do and bill for. Fox News manages to make it into a scary movie, repeatedly saying ALERT ALERT Korea could have nuclear ALERT ALERT missiles without mentioning our 70,000 nukie thingies of all sizes (assuming we can remember where we put them all).
We are not going to go nuclear on the border with China (really stupid) or near South Korea (those are US troops on that border). We again are caught armed with weapons too big to use, a problem even Rumsfeld understood but did little to solve.
The US owns the air and could drop lots of really big non=nukes on North Korea.
What we should really drop is food and medicine, good deeds that may be rewarded after the Klown Prince is ousted, maybe by China simply because he is an annoyance and being too adventurous for his country's role as a buffer between the real military powers.

The play's the same. Some of the actors may have been replaced. But, the play's the same. In the middle late '40s there wasn't much of a "bogeyman". To be sure, Russia was on some peoples list. But, their A bomb didn't become a "Menace" until about 1950. Just in time to play war in Korea.

Maybe the Chinese will do a coup in N Korea if baby UN gets too rambunctious.
Why do I visualize a child in a crib clutching missiles for toys?
He is a pretty scary man child...

We have met the bogeyman, and he is us!

"We will not have....a mine shaft gap!"

It’s hilarious that some of the commentators think we can’t “pay” for another war.

Newsflash: you didn’t “pay” for the last decade of wars. You goddamn Americans – people like me, veterans of this last decade, are the ones paying for it. You haven’t paid a red cent.

Even if you did, it’s not like our money is “real” – we’ll just have the Fed pump out a few more zeros on the national debt and ride the war machine until our dollar collapses. Look around you people, do any of you, with a serious face, think the American dollar has more than a decade left before it tumbles down?

War is the only thing keeping the national economy together, especially in terms of manufacturing and technology.

I doubt we’ll go to war because of the refugee situation, what exactly are you supposed to do with people who have never used electricity in 2013? The South Korean elite don’t want this problem, this was widely discussed in 2006 & 2007, with no answers from the Koreans or Americans. The war would tank the Asian markets, starting with S. Korea then China and Japan – this would only usher along the inevitable dollar collapse.

Also: N. Korea isn’t going to hit an American city with a nuclear bomb, they’ll detonate one in the stratosphere, as the lingering radio interference will knock out communications equipment for months. No more GPS-guided drones or bombs, and the Western Economy (including Europe) would be more crippled than the destruction of Seattle, L.A., and Portland combined.

I would guess that Baby Doc Un is in some sort of trouble and the Generals might think he is ripe for a take over.

Exactly what I've been thinking - the potential for a coup is there, so he's trying to show the generals who run the place that he's the reincarnation of Barnaby Bada$$.

supposed execution of Osama bin Laden

He wasn't executed? He isn't dead? Do tell...