How does that coffee taste this morning? Fairly bitter.

Love this quote from Kos: "Every single time it gets this bad, and this has been the worst time for him (Bush), something happens to pull it out."

It, er, never occurs to the author of that quote that the answer is simple - Bush's worldview is largely correct and predictive, and he is reacting prudently. To someone who assumes Bush's worldview is paranoid or bizarre, it must be enormously frustrating and mystifying how events conspire to rescue him....

Has any president ever been handed a better pretext for an October Surprise?

Don't know OJ - the MSM meme is already "it's Bush's fault" and they long for the days when sophisticated foreign policy people like Clinton/Albright/Christopher ran things.

Also, I can't be sure but it seemed that the Foley thing was starting to bite back at the Dems (like Wetterling). NK will push the Foley thing off the radar before the Dems get too much blowback so it might be good for the Dems as well.

Peter - Those comments show little concern about North Korea's nukes, much about how this news will affect their vendetta against Bush and the Republicans.

Bruce's point is excellent.

My coffee was excellent as usual.

How can you bear going to any Kos comment-section? It's not like you can ever learn anything other than how bilious, spiteful and willfully deluded people can be.

Red Rose tea was fine this morning! The kos comments were pridictable and funny!

I second what others have been saying:
Isolate the regime and let it die.

They want to sit at the big kids table then take the kid-gloves off.

If they start massing their artillery to bombard Seoul, well then that is exactly the kind of target that neutron bombs were made for.

"Bush to blame" gives him carte blanche to fix it. If you accuse him of not reacting you can't also fault him for nuclear reacting.

There is speculation around the net that given the low yield (~0.5 KT) and the seismic signature, it may have been a conventional high explosive detonation. Either way, a dud or a fake, it is not very impressive, especially since the rumor was that the NorKs were aiming at a 400 KT yield.

There is no such thing as a 400kT atomic bomb. I heard this reported also, but it's nonsense. Atomic bombs max out at somewhere between 40 and 60 kT. To get bigger one must go hydrogen. Has something to do with disassembly time vs. neutron propagation.

Number One son is in the intel portion of a what we used to call a MAG in Korea. We haven't heard from him for a while now. I wonder why.

lebeaux - you are rignt and wrong. A simple fission weapon is limited, but can be enhanced by the addition of deuterium, tritium, or lithium_6. However, there exist nuclear (fusion) weapons with yields up to 50 MT (perhaps even >100 MT), contrary to your assertion.

jd watson -To clarify, by atomic I mean fission and by hydrogen I mean fusion. No working bombs use lithium (lifetime too short), or straight deuterium or tritium... you are thinking of lithium-deuteride (because it is solid at room temps). And a bomb made with lithium-deuteride would be a hydrogen (or fusion) bomb.

Atomic (fission) bombs max out at around 50kT because only so much material can be used before it flies apart. If you pack some more fissionable material around the atomic bomb you just get dirtier debris, not larger yield. If you put fussionable material near the atomic bomb with a clever gamma-radiation reflecting geometry then supposedly you get a hydrogen bomb.