All North Korea All the Time

China’s Shift on N.Korea Brings Big Risks and Opportunities. If true this is a serious change.

Could North Korea Annihilate Seoul with Its Artillery?. This article is all very true from a factual perspective. But from a modern day political perspective, 20 dead civilians and 100 million dollars of property damage is enough to topple a government. And I don’t think even the optimistic people think the damage/deaths will be that low.

Did Trump-Xi call reveal subtle shift in China’s stance on North Korean nuclear crisis? More reading of the Chinese tea leaves.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un Risk Nuclear War. This article has a lot of bogus statements. For example, the claim that Kim is predictable and Trump is not could only be made by people who don’t remember Kim killing the uncle that everyone thought was his biggest supporter with an anti-aircraft cannon. But buried in the article is the reason even China is getting concerned. If the powers that be really think that North Korea will soon have hundreds of working nukes, they have to be thinking that North Korea will sell them to every one who has money.

The EMP Threat From North Korea Is Real, and Terrifying. A little harder to pull off then the article makes it seem like, but it would not be fun.

Writing love letters, bidding $100,000 extra: Buying a Southern California home is ‘insane’. Link added just for irony.

News for Today (4/25/17)

Japan Made Secret Deals With the NSA That Expanded Global Surveillance. I could not have guessed how this article was going to end. It starts off as a perfectly reasonable if boring story and by the end of it I was groaning in pain.

Mali’s Desert Climate Is the Doom of Armored Vehicles. Everyone seems to have forgotten this place but it is one of many places that the western powers are setting on to try to keep the world from blowing up.

Phoenix Point is now crowdfunding: we spoke to Julian Gollop about standing out in a post-XCOM world. I am skeptical, but it looks more interesting then I would have thought.

News for Today (4/20/17)

Bogus News Story Of The Day

Nothing for today

In The News

Medieval medical books could hold the recipe for new antibiotics

South Indian frog oozes molecule that inexplicably decimates flu viruses

Extremists on Left and Right Push France to the Brink

Not In The News But Should Be

This kind of reminder of how commanders of day were looking at things is sadly lacking in today’s historical education.

Entertainment of the Day

Nothing for today.

What I got for today

Um… NY Governor Cuomo made nearly $800K on a book that sold 3K copies?

The West Virginia Productivity Miracle. Really!. Headline tries a little too hard to contrarain but still some interesting thoughts.

‘They’re just hiding’: Experts say Puerto Rico may be underreporting Zika-affected births

Kevin O’Brien. So sad in a very selfish way. One of the few good military bloggers down.

News for Today (4/17/17)

Bogus News Story Of The Day

Such end-of-days gloom is puzzling. Near 10 percent unemployment and near invisible growth cannot explain it.

The tone deafness of the above sentence was really jarring to me. Technically the above link is for an opinion column so I should not be calling it a bogus news story. But its complete tone deafness exemplifies the reason that people in the New York Times don’t get the political trends that are sweeping the western world. France has double the unemployment of the US and a very high youth unemployment rate (around 25%). But the author says that those things can’t be the main problem because France is such a cool place to live. And it is if your are wealthy or upper middle class who have good jobs. But those are not the people fueling the anger he is trying to understand.

In The News

Against all odds, a leftist soars in French election polls

Navy SEAL drug use “staggering,” investigation finds

Mrs. Custer’s Tennyson

Not In The News But Should Be

Nothing for today.

Entertainment of the Day

All Right Wing News For Today.

All right wing news for today. Except I guess for the Bloomberg article but even that is just admitting that the sudden concern on the part of liberals for congressional authority has no liberal legal theory to support it.

The IRS Scandal, Day 1437: Lois Lerner Fears For Her Life, Asks Federal Court To Seal Her Upcoming Deposition Testimony.

Trump Doesn’t Need Congress to Strike in Syria. And that is a problem far bigger then Trump himself.

Yet Another Hoax: KKK Trump-Supporter Who Made Racist Threats Turns Out To Be … Black

Friday News

All the large chunks of oak tree are off the lawn and waiting to be split. In other less important news….

The Blood of the Crab

‘They Taught Us How To Decapitate a Person’

The U.S. Dropped a MOAB in Afghanistan and You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next! The amount of bad news stories about this bomb drop from both right wing and left wing sources is staggering. I never would have guessed that such a routine bomb drop would become such big news. Granted, it is probably not a good thing that the US is dropping ordnance all over the globe without it getting reported on, but the amount of misinformation by ignorant regarding this particular ordnance drop is staggering. Anyway, the link above will at least give you accurate numbers to put the bomb in context with other bombs and explosives the US drops all the time. Maybe some other day when I am not so tired I will link to a good over view of the military reasons that the US military sometimes uses MOABs.