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N. Korea Launches Ballistic Missile
The BBC reports that North Korea's military today launched a ballistic missile from that country's east coast; the missile fell into the water after a flight of about 500 miles.
Reuters adds some more details, and names a different launching point. From their report: South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the missile was likely a medium-range Rodong-missile. ... The missile was launched from an area near the west coast north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the [peninsula] and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. CNN adds a sobering graphic indicating the projected range of North Korea's missile arsenal.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/...
Hell, I'll take a system with a 20% chance of working over nothing, if it can be improved over time.
From the article:
Despite years of tinkering and vows to fix technical shortcomings, the system's performance has gotten worse, not better, since testing began in 1999. Of the eight tests held since GMD became operational in 2004, five have been failures.
So the difference is... people on the right want to piss away large amounts of money on useless things to help them from being scared of their own shadow, while people on the left want something that actually works. Must be hell going through life as a coward.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Straight defense spending is about the same as social security being the program WITH A DEDICATED TAX THAT FUNDS IT PAID FOR BY WORKERS. Medicare also has THAT DEDICATED TAX SYSTEM. That defense spending is just what's in the defense budget, and doesn't include veterans, the nuclear arsenal, and interest on the debt made up of past military/war expenditures. All told, our "defense" spending purely on military oriented items is ~1 trillion a year.
BUT, here's the difference. social security are DEDICATED taxes. They are paid for by a tax that is collected ONLY because SS and Medicare exist. And i'll be honest, i think providing 40 million elderly a fixed income WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, and 65 million elderly and disabled medical services WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, to be a hell of a lot better use of money than giving billions to companies that produce weapons systems THAT DO NOT WORK.
I do think "idiot" is a good term for anyone who would rather piss away money on something THAT DOES NOT WORK rather than helping tens of millions of people with something that does, especially when THEY PAID FOR IT WITH A DEDICATED TAX.
So we're again back to, it takes a special kind of coward to waste money on FAILED military programs just to keep them from being scared of their shadow.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The West wont touch NK because of China, China doesn't want to deal with NK because it doesn't want to deal with millions of desperate migrants out of NK, nor does it want a likely Western oriented nation (United Korea) directly on it's doorstep.
The calculus will change if and when North Korea becomes a bigger problem to have on your doorstep than a Western friendly nation would and the cost of refugees ends up being lower than the cost of a madman. China doesn't want to have to occupy North Korea because it's already got enough restive regions on it's plate to deal with such as Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang province etc. without having to add yet another one. Contrary to China's big strong image it's a fragile divided nation only one arab-spring type event away from seeing a pandemic of breakaway states. It doesn't need another one of those on it's plate if it can help it.
Kim exists as he does because he's convenient to the Chinese now - having a buffer nation to retain extremely poor North Koreans so that you don't have to deal with them yourself, and to separate you physically from a Western facing nation like South Korea is extremely convenient for China. As soon as he becomes much more inconvenient he and his state will cease to exist as they do now - if Kim keeps people poor the number of people trying to escape to China will only increase and so China will suffer the refugee influx regardless. If he keeps acting in a manner that forces a greater Western military buildup in the seas around the area then the relevance of that buffer zone between them and the West will start to erode also.
Kim can push, but only so far, and if he crosses a line he'll no longer be useful.