Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Bark louder, little dog.

The revolution will be supervised.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The willow is too close to the house.

This really is a full service blog.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

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58Comments

  3. 3.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    Freaky. Roonie Roo and I watched a couple of documentaries about North Korea this weekend, and now this shows up on BJ.

    I realize PRoK is in the news for legitimate reasons, but still…freaky.

  5. 5.

    raven

    Here’s the trailer to the movie “Silmido” the story of the special SK unit formed after the Blue House Raid in 1968. It’s a Dirty Dozen thing but apparently a true story. When the NK’s came down in that raid their objective was to take Park-Chung-Hee’s head back with them. Crazy then and crazy now.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    some anonymous MoveOn members were to George W. Bush.

    Actually, the anonymous MoveOn members were disrespectful of Hitler, comparing him to a cowardly deserting half-wit.

  7. 7.

    Brutusettu

    Just wait until the North Koreans are reminded how difficult it is to find a Mr. Kim in Seoul.

  8. 8.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    I’ve got some friends living in Seoul. I’m not real happy about the current situation, which seems to boil down to “kid gets handed control of nation mafia property, is in way over his head, and is trying to keep from being shot and dumped in a river by a bunch of other dudes who can (and just might) decide they want it more.”

  9. 9.

    ranchandsyrup

    Back in the day I had a roommate that was a dog trainer. His company’s motto was, “We make bad dogs good and good dogs great!”.

    My roomie had a client that was Korean who showed up one day to drop off his dog. My roommate wasn’t home yet and we were shooting the breeze waiting for him. The client took a look at the motto and said, “What, does he have some sort of sauce or something?”

  10. 10.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    I’d be more worried if I saw video of North Korean soldiers working out on the dreaded playground equipment that the middle eastern terrorists are always hanging from.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    Wow. These guys sound pretty ticked off. But isn’t gesticulating in a ticked-off fashion with a pistol in your hand, um, kind of not a very safe thing to do?

  12. 12.

    Lolis

    Their weapons are less sophisticated than what an NRA member keeps stockpiled in his garage. Somehow I don’t find that comforting at all.

  13. 13.

    FoxinSocks

    @Amir Khalid:

    Yes! I think that’s a sign of how lousy their training must be. Was waiting for the guy with the mike off-screen to get accidentally shot.

  15. 15.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Ha! Those soldiers were bribed. Every one of them was given a picture of a ham.

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    @raven:
    I don’t doubt for one second the training or discipline or determination of the DPRK army that fought the Korean War 60 years ago. But from this video, it looks like standards may have slipped since then.

  19. 19.

    Violet

    The whole situation is bizarre. I don’t know what to make of it. Glad I’m not in S. Korea.

  22. 22.

    raven

    @Amir Khalid: From a NK survivor of the Blue House Raid:

    In the wake of the North Korean artillery attack last month on Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea, which killed two marines and two civilians, Mr. Kim has openly called for a new military readiness in South Korea, along with a harder line and a deeper suspicion toward his former homeland.

    “A whole village was bombed to the point of no return, and aside from a few who want to retaliate, the rest of the country is not ready, discipline-wise,” he said. “South Korea is above North Korea in everything except discipline. If there’s a war, and it comes down to psychology, they would still win.”

  23. 23.

    raven

    And another piece:

    The North Korean Army has the largest standing special operations force in the world—it makes our SOCOM look like a rifle platoon in comparison. They have a standing special operations force estimated to be 70,000–100,000 strong. Their training takes places in the northernmost part of Korea where the extreme elevation of the mountain ranges would boggle the mind.

  27. 27.

    raven

    Ha, the very last frame a shepherd went around the gate instead of over it. Proof that they are pussies and dead-enders.

  28. 28.

    The Other Chuck

    @raven: And they have zero capacity to place their Super Awesome Ultra Power Force anywhere. A ten ton boulder has a bunch of potential energy, but it’s still just a rock.

  29. 29.

    Cermet

    And NK has the vast fuel reserves to fight a modern war … wait, they are (even now) begging for fuel – that is the whole point of these threats, of late. Yes, we really need to be worried – wait, the South needs to be worried. The north’s army is large, lead by highly stupid peole and very ill equiped to fight any war against a modern power like the South, much less the US; dangerous but no threat to win a real war. Kill a lot of people for a short time and lose big time.

  30. 30.

    Cassidy

    @Lolis: The US military uses less sophisticated weaponry than what the average NRA member keeps in his garage. For ex: the Colt M4 v. any top end AR-15. The top end gun is more sexy, boasts more features, more accurate, etc. What it does not do well is survive well under adverse conditions. A less sophisticated weapon, machined to looser tolerances can get dirt and grime on them and still function in a hostile environment.

    As Raven said @14…these guys aren’t a bunch of dirt farmers who’ve been handed a gun.

    @raven: Well, being real, the AF designates anything not Air Wing related as special oeprations and MARSOC pulled all the recon battalions (not Force Recon, but the Scout/ Sniper) under their heading. Special Operations is a very broad term. If my memory serves correctly, the military SOF for North Korea aren’t much more than our standard LRS-D unit, but the intel guys are supposed to be pretty scary. This is hearsay from intel people I knew, so I could be compeltely talking out my ass.

  31. 31.

    Cassidy

    @Lolis: The US military uses less sophisticated weaponry than what the average NRA member keeps in his garage. For ex: the Colt M4 v. any top end AR-15. The top end gun is more sexy, boasts more features, more accurate, etc. What it does not do well is survive well under adverse conditions. A less sophisticated weapon, machined to looser tolerances can get dirt and grime on them and still function in a hostile environment.

    As Raven said @14…these guys aren’t a bunch of dirt farmers who’ve been handed a gun.

    @raven: Well, being real, the AF designates anything not Air Wing related as special oeprations and MARSOC pulled all the recon battalions (not Force Recon, but the Scout/ Sniper) under their heading. Special Operations is a very broad term. If my memory serves correctly, the military SOF for North Korea aren’t much more than our standard LRS-D unit, but the intel guys are supposed to be pretty scary. This is hearsay from intel people I knew, so I could be compeltely talking out my ass.

  32. 32.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    I love the way the guy talking to the mike keeps waving his pistol around in the face of the person holding the mike…

    Very professional…

  33. 33.

    Kyle

    @Sly:

    You beat me to it.
    No thread on North Korea would be complete without the NK People’s Army Funky Get Down Juche Party.

  37. 37.

    gene108

    @raven:

    I think North Korea has to deliver a knock out punch immediately, otherwise South Korea’s superior industrial capacity would kick in and North Korea would be finished.

    From what I’ve read about the 1994 famine, the government is completely propped up ny China. Without Chinese subsidies North Korea would slide back to the mid-1990’s failures.

    I believe China and South Korea are significant trading partners, so I don’t know if China would hurt their economy to keep North Korea propped up, if they start a war.

  38. 38.

    pamelabrown53

    @Cermet:
    Thank you for pointing out something so fundamental yet so ignored: they have no fuel reserves; they rely on welfare handouts from China. No ones saying that a broadside wouldn’t wreak havoc on Seoul but NOTHING supports they have a chance in hell to survive the counter-attack.

    That said, I really hope we can find a non violent way to neutralize North Korea but that seems Pollyanish when we’re dealing with paranoid psychotics.

  40. 40.

    raven

    @pamelabrown53: “they have a chance in hell to survive the counter-attack’

    We KNOW they have nukes. If the balloon goes up our response won’t be some bullshit shock and awe PR campaign. Paved Paradise Put Up A Parking Lot.

  41. 41.

    Cassidy

    @pamelabrown53: That’s never been their plan, though. They’ve always had the same plan: massive artillery barrage to level everything north of Camp Casey followed by alrge wave of forces pushing to the ocean, hopefully making it all the way south before we can get a division in the air. It almost worked last time.

    When I was stationed there, we all knew the plan. Hell, my company’s mission was to immediately report to the golf course, board helos, and go south to settle up a “final” skirmish line between the invading NK Army and Seoul with the expectation we’d not be moving backwards for any reason. The counter-attack “plan” started with notify the 82nd and goes from there.

  42. 42.

    Bart

    Gotta love the hypocrisy of the media, screaming that this video is in bad taste. But bombs that were about to be dropped on Iraq with Saddam’s name on it or something like “eat this terrorists!” — that’s all in good taste.

    Just like when Chavez was equating Bush with the devil: that shit was still mentioned in his eulogies as if it was the worst thing anyone ever had done to another human being. But Reagan calling the USSR the “Evil Empire”? All good. Bush talking about an “axis of evil”? All good.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @pamelabrown53:

    That said, I really hope we can find a non violent way to neutralize North Korea but that seems Pollyanish when we’re dealing with paranoid psychotics.

    I don’t think it’s obvious that they are paranoid psychotics. They’re rational people (or at least no less rational than other world leaders) who are trapped in a difficult situation. Their economy sucks, they lack natural resources needed to modernize it, and they’re officially at war with a more prosperous neighbor who won’t accept peace without absorbing them. Their single biggest asset is a military they can use to threaten their neighbor, so that’s exactly what they’re doing: trying to extort whatever they need by threatening war with the South. To make the threats effective, they have to act like they genuinely mean it, which means behaving like paranoid psychotics, but their behavior fits the mold of rational but selfish people just as well.

  44. 44.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Thought I heard somebody of ours, maybe SecDef, saying very coolly: If they launch a nuclear weapon that will be their last official act.

  45. 45.

    gene108

    @raven:

    EDIT: Sorry for the sort of double post with @37, but @37 was from my mobile and it said it failed to publish.

    I think North Korea, for all their bluster, has one shot to beat South Korea into submission. Otherwise South Korea’s superior industrial strength will kick in and North Korea’s days will be numbered.

    From what I read about the 1994 famine, North Korea kept itself afloat from its inception by mooching aid from the Communist block countries. When that fell apart, along with bad harvests, you ended up with a severe famine and without international aid, you’d have probably seen North Korea fall in the mid-1990’s, because not even the army would’ve gotten enough to eat.

    Right now, I’m not sure how long North Korea could actually survive, if China pulled out its subsidies.

    China, South Korea and Japan are looking to create a three-way free trade zone. I don’t see China being willing to screw up their economy and the future of their economy, by sticking up for North Korea, if it came to a shooting war.

    It might almost be worth it to find out, who’s in charge over there, pay them some money to abdicate, give them a safe haven to retire to and then work to unify Korea and rebuild the North.

    On a cost/benefit analysis, it might be cheaper than maintaining the DMZ.

  46. 46.

    Yutsano

    @gene108: North Korea won’t do bupkess without the backing of big brother China including actual boots onna ground. I think Eun knows he doesn’t have that, so he’s just posturing for show with the populace. And China isn’t about to piss off their biggest trading partner when no other part of the globe an come close to picking up the slack.

  47. 47.

    Hoodie

    @raven: Highest point in Korea is an extinct volcano that reaches about 9000 ft, surrounded by a plateau at about 5-6000 ft. Think Crater Lake. Not exactly mind-boggling. North Korea operates in a bubble of bullshit. They have willingness and some capability to do nasty things, but not at scale. The biggest risk is an artillery and missile attack on Seoul because of its proximity to the border,which could be awful just because Seoul has some 25 million souls in the metro area. Horrific civilian casualties. I imagine there are contingency plans for those batteries to be obliterated in relatively short order by South Korean and US aircraft operating out of Korea and Japan.

  48. 48.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    So if North Korea are thinking of starting a fight, they’ll want to bear in mind that they don’t have what it takes to finish it, and their benefactors aren’t about to provide them with it. I guess it comes down to how much common sense was drilled into the world’s only communist boy-king.

  50. 50.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah gun safety is not a strong point there. Jesus send the NRA there.(the one guy interviewed could be the NK’s version of Wayne LaPierre)
    @raven:That was a pretty good movie. I liked also Shiri about a female NK agent sent to assassinate the president of South Korea the opening of the film was intense.

  51. 51.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Yutsano: China’s relationship with North Korea is not as rosy, on one hand North Korea does resent China using NK as a resource to get all those minerals for China’s industries, China doesn’t care for the chest pounding to piss off all the nations that surround the Korean peninsula, Russia and Japan included. China hates that cult of personality that North Korea shows off, case in point when Kim Jong Il had a statue of his father, encased in gold, in front of his father’s mausoleum, China told him in no uncertain terms that if they can afford to do that, they don’t need to borrow from China for other stuff, so the statue was recast in bronze.

  52. 52.

    Suffern ACE

    @Mr Stagger Lee: Yes. I’ve always thought China was keeping North Korea around as a way to make certain the US didn’t get too cocky in it’s support for Taiwan. Instant regional war if Taiwan started something. Or maybe as a trade (we’ll let the NK government fall and the S. Korean’s take over if you promise to look the other way while we grab Taiwan). That kind of thing.

  53. 53.

    Yutsano

    @Mr Stagger Lee: At the start of the 1951 war the North was losing badly until the Chinese intervened. Then it almost went the other way until the US stepped up and the end result is the stalemate we have today. But China is a very different country than it was during the Korean War, and they have much more to lose if they go too far in assisting young Eun. And without a supplier for fuel and food any war the North would start would end very quickly, but it would create a huge fallout in Seoul and a massive humanitarian crisis that would mostly hit China. I really don’t see China getting hugely involved except telling young Eun to knock it the fuck off.

    (reposted because FYWP.)

  57. 57.

    fuckwit

    I have no military experience, but a former brother-in-law was stationed there in the 90’s as a non-comm officer, training KATUSAs.

    He said after coming home for a visit that he thought the KATUSAs were good, smart young soldiers. As for “discipline”: the Americans he had under him would be fucking around and acting entitled, and his Koreans would be buried in books, studying their asses off. So that’s my meaningless second-hand hearsay to report.

    Not that it’d come to that anyway. If war is a failure of politics by other means, my guess is the “other means” are WAY Too Big To Fail in this case. There is too much economically at stake for either the ROK, China, or the US to let this get out of hand. And, if DPRK is as fucked-up economically as it seems, then there is too much at stake even for them as well.

    I predict a big nothingburger, lots of tension and saber-rattling and noise, followed by the internal political collapse of the DPRK, probably in the form of a coup.

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