Uh-oh! North Korea last night made good on a surefire promise and blew up, for the third time, a nuclear bomb. The idea is to perfect a nuke so small it could fit atop a missile bound for these here United States. Or Japan. Or South Korea. Barack Obama is pretty unhappy, since this kind of ruins his State of the Union party. But this time China, North Korea’s only real global pal, is also pretty pissed.
Iran, weirdly, has decided to slow its production of weapons-grade nuke fuel—opening up a longer timeline for diplomatic talks. Both North Korea and Iran are suffering under global economic sanctions. The difference is North Korea doesn’t care at all.
The president’s big speech won’t just be about the economy. He’ll announce the return of 34,000 fighters from Afghanistan, the next phase ahead of full(-ish) withdrawal in 2014.
Expect to hear about guns. Like the gun a University of Maryland student just used to kill himself and a roommate.
What’s been a crippling spike in health care costs for several years has begun to ease, for reasons unknown. (It might be because of health care reform, but only a little bit.) But the trend has shaved hundreds of millions from government spending forecasts.
Four years have elapsed without a fatal airline crash in the United States—the longest span without a deadly tumble from the sky since the dawn of the jet age. Last year also marked a global record for airline safety.
The Summer Olympics hates that one sport where you writhe around on mats with another human and exchange ringworm and acne sebum.
This is a bad idea. The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office has decided it needs an aerial drone—but no, definitely not, don’t be crazy, it’s not for surveillance.
The retiring pope’s older brother, a more kindly looking regular priest, says Benedict won’t come back to Germany, won’t write any more books, and most certainly won’t be succeeded by anyone with brown skin. Because of course not. Sigh.
A Montana TV station has apologized to its five or six people regular viewers after hackers hacked its emergency signal to say something about a zombie apocalypse during another gripping episode of The Steve Wilkos Show.
The North Korean nuclear program is, as usual, misunderstood/obfuscated/propagandized by many “defense” analysts here in the United States.
The North Koreans are not developing a series of nuclear warheads to destroy an American city, but for the Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). An nuclear burst at 300 mile-elevation has the capability to fry just about all electronics on the ground within a 1470 mile radius, and knock out all of the communications satellites for the hemisphere. Lingering radiation might affect the possibility of launching satellites for months or possibly years. Basically, a single nuclear bomb in space is a much larger threat than several nuclear weapons on the ground, simply because of the EMP and our dependence upon electronic technology for our economy and defense systems. It would cripple the global economy in a way unparalleled in all of human history. This would give the North Koreans a huge advantage and significantly level the playing field in the event of war.
Americans have deployed experimental systems to counter an ICBM launch, but these systems are unable to engage multiple targets. So, if you launch 5 or 6 warheads into space, you only need 1 to reach its target – and the Korean’s proved their capability to achieve an EMP satellite strike just two months ago. No body dies right away, but everything is ruined.
It’s a real threat – but thankfully we’re squandering our defense resources on manufacturing new enemies.
What good is gettin’ rid uh rasslin’ unless the O-limpics brings in banjo pluckin’ instead?