EricF

This is the first time I've been hungover since the Irish car bombs night... Holy crap. I woke up today with my button-down shirt halfway on, my socks on, my contacts in, and no pants or boxers. Tight work, Eric.

Hmm, I'll see if I can get any of the friends..

Another depressing night of working on the Vo' and pretending not to notice that my sister and her friends (girls) don't really notice me beyond pleasantries. The same girls who will be at the Orlando meet. So go buck wild...

Blah.

I'm jacked up on 4 Starbucks espresso double shots... Does that count as drunk or hungover?

I'm monkeyin wired.

i can drunk dial the ladies AND post on volvospeed, thats multi tasking right there.

"hayyyyy, um yea u wanna come over or something...hang on im tryin to type.."

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This man has posted my life story... And to hell with that "reading between the lines" bullshit. You're on the phone and you tell the woman to be patient because at that very moment you are posting (well, this)....

I have been drinking... Orange juice!!!111122233

11 beers and I don't feel adequately monkeyed up to be posting in here...

Just watched Apocalypse Now, played flip cup with my sister and her friends, and listened to a few Johnny Cash CD's.

Hooooooooooooooooooooller.

not sure if they are brothers....

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I took that on totally the wrong level.

Higher birth weight = Big Deal. We win on Higher Teen Weight...down here we have tons (no pun intended or implied) of 14-yr old girls waddling around with Whoppers and Super Sized Fries in their lil' hands, their cellphone jammed between an ear and a shoulder, and rolls of fat jigglin' above their lowrider jeans.

Save us, O Canada, ship down some of those low carb baby harp sealburgers. We'll send Celline Boring back to you.

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It has been a long time since I actually laughed out loud at Volvospeed...

Thank you.

Powell would rock, but he would never accept the nomination.

Hillary won't get the nomination.

Juliani might get the nomination.

Jeb isn't bad, don't judge him by name, Ken As other Floridians have said, things have not been going so badly here.

Arnold will win and I will cheer.

What a can of worms.

I wish we could have a structured debate in here one day (and I don't mean National Forensics League type debate)... Just something with guidelines set, key terms defined before arguing, etc. Would be interesting

I don't kid myself though, that's not the material of internet forums.

Also, call me an idealist, but I think we would have had an easier time with world opinion with that as our cause. Not to mention, if we came saying "We're here because we feel you deserve better", we might have been better recieved. Of course, we would have also needed a good propiganda campaign there (not terribly difficult, I would imagine, if we "bombed" them with food & pamphlets -- but this time, we'd have to make sure the food parcels DIDN'T look like cluster munitions)

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A major problem in selling military involvement in Iraq was the two very different audiences it needed to be sold to.

1: The American population at large. I don't think a simple humanitarian agenda would have flown here. Especially not in the post-9/11 mindset, it just wasn't the main concern of Americans.

2: The rest of the world, who is extremely wary of everything the United States does as to its involvement abroad. Here, as you said, it may have worked.

When confronted with this situation, it becomes clear who you want to focus your reasons on... To execute this war, American support is more or less needed, though the same can't be said for the rest of the world's support.

Additionally, this administration is largely hegemonist in thinking. Hegemonists think (among many things) that acting unilaterally ain't no thang because no one else is powerful enough to say anything about it.

on a sunday afternoon... feelin, couldn't get away so soon.

so what in the hell is going on in here?

Kim Jong-Il isn't retarded or completely insane, though it may seem so at times. He wouldn't have the power he does if such were the case...

As far as I'm concerned, all nukes will do is make weak-spined nations of the world (ours included a lot of the time) more receptive to his requests for oil and food and such. If he does let it be known in one way or another that he has nukes and ICBM's of some sort, it's just an attempt to re-establish some international credibility. And, it will probably work, because he does an OK job of making people think he's just crazy enough to use them :)

me's had like a bunch of beers while barbecuing and a bunch while at a good friend's tripple kegger.

just wanted to make a note of how cool (really) i am.

give word to your mother.

Maybe we should talk to Charles about a politics/religion forum?

This is what www.floridasportsman.com did when things started getting hot about the election, and OT over there is back to its glory days.

They also have close to 40k members, too.

It's just an easy way to clean things up IMO :)

I am the man... and all you bitches need to learn more about cars, and all that jazz.

First time poster, long time listener... So like I've been drinking some beer but .. Nevermind, it's always good to drink beer.

I drank half a bottle of whisky at the fair last night and I was monkeyed up all morning.

I don't remember how I got home, shame I didn't post something here.

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All YOU bitches are soft.

I'm on my 5th glass of wine (mr. backspace is my best friend), and things be floatin around, and yes, men drink wine. Fools.

And on top of that, me's in a hurricane... what now? chaos, that's what. have fun.

I think to a large degree N. Korea is already isolated, so further isolation will probably not do much. They do get alot of food from international aid programs, but I suspect that refusing them food supplies would create a groundswell of domestic nationalism in N. Korea, and would make any further political actions much more complicated.

An alternate is to undermine the government by INCREASING aid, but doing so in a fashion that clearly cannot be claimed by the N. Korean government as being a result of their actions. Extending a helping hand to the populace will make them more ameniable to American concerns, and will in due time (and without too much prompting by us, I suspect) lead to the N. Koreans as a whole to take care of the problem of Mr. Kim.

Also, my apologies to EricF. I use Shrub because I can't bring myself to call him "President" Bush, and quite frankly, dislike him to the extent that I would rather demean him through the name I use for him than to use his given name. I understand that this may not be savory to alot of people (and it really does not belong in this discourse), so I'll try and avoid doing so in the future.

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Ah, the conundrum of trying to aid a totalitarian country's population... Give them aid and it will either not get past the gov't officials, or the state-run media will portray the situation as being the result of heroic efforts of the government acting abroad for the good of their nation, and there you have another possible swell of nationalism...

Yet, cut them off, and the state media can play with that stance as you said, and try to villainize the world and create more nationalism. Also, you'll get the same military threats that they have always delivered (though they don't have much credit anymore with the world community), and I would suspect that these threats become much more difficult to dismiss once they have nuclear connotations.

I feel and it is my hunch that China is the key to this issue... Get China to seriously consider sponsoring or leading, or at the very least endorsing a UN-led invasion into N Korea, and this issue will crumble.

Still though, I don't feel anything should be done until we have reached some sort of semi-closure in Iraq and have most of our resources therein back. We could easily overrun N Korea militarily (not like Iraq at all of course), and it should be something of a cake walk with full UN military support (though that seems to be a mythical term), despite the size of N Korea's armed forces.

Eh, these discussions should go without calling the president Shrub or Shrubby or anything :-P

Give it a few months until our assets are less absorbed into Middle Eastern conflict, after the Iraqi election, though I would suspect it a few months after the election that we see any large troop withdrawals.

That said, I'm sure the president is none too happy with Kim about this episode, it really puts him in a bad bind right before elections. So I would really expect for him to downplay any significance that this event has, if it does indeed end up having some.

Although it does bode well for Kerry, as he could probably come into office and make a cake walk to the UN and get some real support for doing something about this, and all the Democrats in the country could be like "Oh, oh, I told you so! We could have done this for Iraq but look at your stupid president!"

And all the Republicans could be like "Shut up! You're so STUPID!"

Not a good thing for the bi-partisan divide in this country right now, but maybe Mr. President can sweep it under the rug until someone has an idea of what to do about it....

I think culturally, N. Korea and China are diverse enough that China would not want the added complications of attempting to integrate the Koreans. China seemed to have a rough enough time integrating Hong Kong (which was Chinese-populated), so I can't seem them wanting to take on backwater (and ethnically Korean very different) N. Korea. It would be interesting to see if they try and play through the UN to garner international support, however, I honestly don't see them going this route for domestic reasons (they would then be seen by the populace as pandering to the US). I think the Chinese wouldn't feel the need to burden-share, since they have their own nuclear arsenal and large military, but somehow I think they will more or less ignore their small southern neighbor.

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It is not a terribly likely scenario, but there are a few variables that could influence them either way...

Who knows, maybe the neo-cons will think of this and start giving covert incentives to the Chinese. It just seems like a possible step towards further integration into the rest of the developed world, which is what China's been yearning for since before we opened trade relations with them.

Ah well, nothing will probably come of this, but it would be quite the international relations case to study if something did...

I'm not thinking that China is going to support them; China, as you said, has enough problems as is. However, a nuclear test near a border is generally a sign of aggression-- witness the geographic location(s) of the Indian and Pakistani bomb tests (which as I recall, were somewhat close to the contested region). Traditionally, any military activity on a border is a sign of aggression; look at both our behavior in Berlin, and that of the Russians, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Other examples include the Sino-Soviet frontier, or in pre-WW II history, the Manchurian conflicts between the Russians and the Japanese garrisons/ invading force. N. Korea may be trying to apply pressure on China, which is in many ways in a teniable position internationally; China is, itself, in an interesting position economically. While China is a new player on the international stage (at least economically) they already have alot of clout; witness the growing imports from China here in the US. While some of the things coming in are still the old crappy stuff, an increasing amount of our food and electronics are coming from Chinese fields and factories; China also has now has what looks to be the most advanced nuclear power industry in the world taking shape (witness the recent construction of a 10 MW pebble bed nuclear reactor, prototype to a series of 200-500 MW modular units). China is in a unique position to apply economic pressure on the US on the behalf of N. Korea (due to the imbalance of trade and the increasing amount of US currency on the world market in Chinese control); should China choose to dump the dollar on the international market, it has the potential to ripple into a domestic economic crisis that will could rival the Great Depression.

Since I know this sounds overtly reactionary, so I'll try and see if I can't spell out why and how this works. Current balance of payments between US and China favor China; we import much more than we export. This means US dollars are accumulating in China's foreign currency reserves; these dollars are then used to buy goods from America and certain other countries. Should China decide to dump their dollar reserves, which would in the short term require them to take a loss, the dollar would rapidly devalue on the international market. An example of this happening recently (to a certain extent) comes in the meltdown of the Southern Cone economies, most dramatically in Argentina and Brazil. Should the value of the dollar drop on the international market, it would translate to higher prices on all imported products, and since most of the means of production have been shifted overseas, this directly translates to higher prices across the board for all products bought and sold in the United States. The importance of this is best underlined by pointing to one of the predominant theories amongst the economics circle as to why the US went to war in Iraq: Saddam had discussed pegging oil prices to the Euro. Oil is currently priced in dollars/barrel, which gives the US a natural advantage in the petrolum business, since the price of oil coming to the US would, as such, remain more or less constant. Currencies not pegged to the dollar (ie, those which did not have a fixed exchange rate) were directly affected by this, as their price for petrol products was tied to their exchange rate with the US dollar. If oil was to be pegged to the Euro, we would then be vulnerable to currency fluxuations-- and given the increasing strength of the Euro, we would be put over a barrel (no pun intended).

In some ways, China already has incentives to dump the dollar; it destabilized the US in the international and economic arenas, and, perhaps more importantly, it gives OPEC good reason to change their oil pricing policies. OPEC has already discussed pegging oil to the Euro instead of the dollar, and if the dollar were to rapidly devalue on the international market, it could concieveably hurt OPEC severly unless they changed over to the Euro (since they are then forced to buy oil with dollars, which will be essentially otherwise worthless). China has a fairly large domestic petrol industry, so the damage to OPEC would probably not affect it. In fact, they may be able to usurp part of OPEC's role in international oil production in this way, since China is increasingly focused on nuclear power (and other so-called "clean" energy sources). However, the US is dependant upon OPEC oil (as well as South American, but with the collapse of the Southern Cone, and due to our political behavior in the region, this may not be oil we can continue to count on), so we would be dead in the water. China would then be able to move into those production roles still occupied by the US (what few are left), and would probably make a handsome profit from continuing to supply the US with our essentials (since things like farms can't suddenly start producing again overnight).

There are other arguements as well, I just can't recall them at 1 AM (or most of the words I intended to use.. I apologize if my rhetoric seemed repetitive). I don't know that N. Korea's possible bomb test will mean much in the long run, nor that China will choose to excercise it's economic position of strength relative to the US in the manner described, but it's worth remembering that these things ARE possible, and that these actions ripple. I know I've undoubtably skipped a few of the ripples which would result from China dumping the dollar, but mebbe I'll look over this drivel in the morning and rework it as neccisary.

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Very nice post

Another possible avenue to explore would be Chinese militarized conflict with N Korea as an eventuality, in which case we would be more than willing to support them, along with South Korea... That would be quite the interesting situation.

China sees North Korea trying to flex its muscles at them and gets uncomfortable, and sees that they would have little to no negative ramifications if they were to annex North Korea (aside from the resources it would take to do so, which would inevitably be recovered, factor in the burden-sharing that would inevitably occur, esp. in light of the U.S. designation of N Korea as part of the axis of evil, etc).

China feels more comfortable as the regional hegemon, US-China relations possibly grow even stronger (possibly not though, as a power vacuum in N Korea would leave US-backed S Korea and China kind of grappling [civilly, we would hope] for control over what would then be uncontrolled), and South Korea can sigh a sigh of relief (depending on what happens with the territory after Kim Jong-Il is gone).

Complications to this scenario are largely in what happens after Kim Jong-Il would be removed... And how interested China would be in getting UN-US support. Would they want the burden shared badly enough to give up the rights to N Korea as a new territory (instead likely as an independent democratic republic, or united with S Korea)?

If they would reject offers of Western support to maintain their own determination as to what to do with N Korea after the fact, then they would see their already pretty low soft power take another blow... Whereas if they accepted the support or acted through the UN (again, with the possibility of N Korea as an independent Democratic Republic), their soft power would jump dramatically, and they would be much more "in" as far as the international community crowds are concerned. The benefits of either arrangement are clear, as are the drawbacks...

So, are the Chinese pragmatic and aggressive (and risky?) enough to make something of this? They surely realize that if they did something here that essentially no one in the world would object... Even if they did and rejected our support, we'd secretly be rooting for them.

Just the 4:15 am ponderings of one International Relations student who likes theory and gets into this sort of thing way too easily...

Personally, I'd be more worried about N. Korea and China, and how they interact. The placement of the test was probably no accident...

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Giving Kim Jong-Il a test drive? Who knows...

I think China's too focused on their economic standing to risk any sort of military aggression or terribly questionable allegiance (supporting N Korea or aiding them militarily in such a bold way would really just be their way of shooting themselves in the foot economically).

Will be interesting to see what kinda drama comes of this, if any :huh:

North Korea would only use it to threaten us with anyway

Not like they've used their massive military in the last 50 years for anything other than making threats so we give them food and oil and candy and such.

The only real question is will we be ballsy enough to call that bluff if they've got a nuke? Not that they would magically get an ICBM system in the next 200 years or anything... But they could throw it by hand at South Korea.