Great, Just What We Needed: Another North Korean Nuclear Test

September 09, 2016

You never know just what the heck this year will throw at us:

North Korea claimed Friday that it successfully conducted a "higher level" test of a nuclear weapon, its second in eight months and its fifth since 2006. The announcement drew immediate condemnation from the United States, South Korea, China and Japan.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on the matter Friday.

The North Korean government in the capital of Pyongyang said the test was of a nuclear warhead designed to be mounted on ballistic rockets and demonstrated that it was prepared to hit back at its enemies including the United States if provoked. North Korea's state TV said the test was "examined and confirmed." The announcement followed seismic activity near the country's nuclear site picked up by foreign monitors.

The test violates United Nations resolutions and will further strain North Korea's already tense relations with the U.S. and other countries in the region.

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian argues that sanctions have failed to impact North Korea's behavior — a pretty reasonable conclusion — but then argues it is time to repeal them . . . effectively rewarding them for setting off a nuke.

There aren't a lot of good options, but as with the worsening mess in Syria discussed yesterday, it feels like the Obama administration and other world leaders are content to just . . .offer rote denunciations as a bad situation gets worse.

"The more often they fire rockets and test nuclear devices, they will get nearer technological perfection and produce more nuclear materials," says Koh Myung-hyun, researcher at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies think-tank. "North Korea will never give up its nuclear ambitions until they are recognised as a nuclear power."

Years of Washington's hands-off approach towards the issue, described as "strategic patience," have proved ineffective in reining in the North's growing military threat.

Are we absolutely certain these guys don't want to strike the United States one day? Or enable someone else to do the same?

"It seems like North Korea is trying to qualitatively improve its missiles and develop options to evade or fool U.S. missile defenses," said Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. "If this continues unchecked, they could develop an inter-continental ballistic missile that could pose a threat to the United States in the next decade."

Is it "strategic patience" or strategic inertia?

The Most Unexpected Member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: Matt Lauer

Man, Hillary's biggest fans in the media are just blisteringly furious with Matt Lauer.

Journalists and longtime political observers pounced. "How in the hell does Lauer not factcheck Trump lying about Iraq? This is embarrassingly bad," wrote Tommy Vietor, a former aide to President Obama. Glenn Kessler, the chief fact checker at The Washington Post, posted a link to NBC's check of Mr. Trump's claim and wrote: "@MLauer should have been prepared to do this."

"Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump," Norman Ornstein, the political commentator, wrote in a Twitter message, adding: "Tough to be a woman running for president."

On social media, surrogates for Mrs. Clinton began mounting a sustained attack on the anchor. "Imagine if @NBCNews had done its job," wrote Nick Merrill, her press secretary, on Twitter. Neera Tanden, a close Clinton ally, was even harsher: "I guess the good news is that Matt Lauer isn't moderating an actual debate," she wrote.

Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, concluded, "This forum was an absolute disgrace. Matt Lauer treated this forum less as a chance to educate voters about the real differences in temperament and policy between the candidates and more as a chance to do clickbait trolling."

Some of Lauer's critics were pretty explicit about their intent to put pressure on the moderator of the first debate. Morris Pearl, the chair of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy progressives fighting for tax increases, put Lester Holt on notice:

I am deeply disappointed in Matt Lauer's performance last night. At a moment when Americans are desperately looking for the right answers, Mr. Lauer failed to even ask the right questions. We hope that NBC will redeem itself at the first national presidential debate to be held on September 26th by both asking the right questions, and demanding the candidates actually answer them. In particular, we hope that Lester Holt will ask the candidates about their plans to repair our American democracy, which is currently under egregious attacks by monied interests and unscrupulous politicians who use disenfranchisement as a political strategy.

Let's face it, the real damage to Hillary Clinton didn't come from anything Lauer said. It came from one particular question in the audience, one that spotlighted the insanely lenient standard applied to the Democratic nominee:

JACKSON: Hi, Matt. I'm with Lieutenant Jon Lester (ph), who will stand with me here. He began his military career by enlisting in the Air Force and then switched over to the Navy before he retired, where he flew P-3 Orions in Desert Storm and in Desert Shield. He's a Republican, and he has this question for you, Secretary Clinton.

CLINTON: Thank you.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, thank you very much for coming tonight. As a naval flight officer, I held a top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance. And that provided me access to materials and information highly sensitive to our war-fighting capabilities. Had I communicated this information not following prescribed protocols, I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned. Secretary Clinton, how can you expect those such as myself who were and are entrusted with America's most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security?

Recall a portion of Clinton's answer was "I did exactly what I should have done" which is completely, laughably false.

You're also hearing enormous griping from seemingly every corner that less than 30 minutes (the introductions took a few minutes) provided way too little time to have a worthwhile discussion of serious military and veterans issues. Indeed, it probably is too short a time period. But both campaigns agreed to that time limit. If you're Hillary Clinton, and you're convinced you know these policy issues backwards and forwards, inside and out, why not agree to go longer? For Trump, a brief nationally televised appearance makes sense: Send him out there, let him talk about how much the current VA is a disgrace and how much he loves veterans, hope he doesn't say "take the oil" too many times, and get him off.

But Hillary's campaign wanted it kept to a half-hour, too. Why?

Those Lingering Questions about Hillary's Health . . .

We all have our theories about why Hillary might not want to have to answer questions on live television for an extended period of time, don't we?

I keep hearing from readers that Trump foolishly agreed to be seated at all of the debates instead of the usual standing at dueling lecterns, a request allegedly made by the Clinton campaign to hide her difficulty standing for long periods of time. (Never mind the fact that she stood, delivering her convention speech in Philadelphia, for more than an hour.) No one can point to an actual article or report confirming the Clinton campaign's request or Trump's acquiesence; it's as if it appeared out of the ether one day.

Could Hillary Clinton have some serious health ailment that she's hiding from the public? Sure, I concur with Kevin Williamson:

Given her history of rampant, craven, deep, broad, sustained, overarching, continuous, relentless dishonesty about practically every aspect of her personal and public lives, is it really so implausible that she'd lie about her health? No. She'd lie about her health even if there were nothing to lie about, just to keep in practice.

She did have a blood clot in the vein connecting to her brain and takes blood thinners. Maybe it's just hypothyroidism and seasonal allergies — although we notice no one else around her seems to be bothered by the allergens that give her occasional on-stage coughing fits. But considering how the presidency ages a person much faster than normal, and is probably one of the most stressful jobs imaginable, these don't seem like unfair concerns.

Ace of Spades noticed a YouTube video of a doctor who reviewed lots of videos of Clinton at public events and concluded she has a serious neurological condition, one that often leads to dementia. (As Ace notes, he begins by citing InfoWars, so . . . take that guy's diagnosis with as many grains of salt as you see fit, and/or a salt mine.) I have hard time getting my head around the idea that Hillary Clinton could have a serious ailment, one that is likely to worsen and lead to symptoms that would be impossible to hide and almost certainly lead to invoking the 25th Amendment, and that everyone who knew and cared about her would go along with the cover-up. If you were Bill Clinton or Chelsea Clinton, would you want your loved one spending the coming years dealing with all that and trying to perform the duties of president?

Or are they just wired completely differently? Is it worth it all to be president for a year, or two years, or three, and then one day need to turn it all over to Tim Kaine?

ADDENDA: This week on the pop-culture podcast, we're ready for the new NFL season but bewildered by the official Twitter hashtags for most of the teams; we investigate the chilling spike in sightings of nut-jobs in clown masks across the country; wonder whether creating a conservative-focused web TV service is just embracing cultural isolation; Mickey's love for the drug cartel docudrama Narcos, and what you remember about your first days of school.

NFL Predictions for the year ahead that I will conveniently forget once they're proven wrong . . .

NFC Playoff Teams: Washington Redskins, Green Bay Packers, Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks*, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons

AFC Playoff Teams: New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, Indianapolis Colts, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets

Super Bowl: Arizona Cardinals over the Pittsburgh Steelers

* If the Seahawks sit for the National Anthem on 9/11, they will go 0-16.