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[jfb]

Caught up on some of Sunday's paper over lunch.

George Ryan's speech on his blanket clemency for Illinois death row inmates is worth reading.

Another variant on the statistics you've heard before, from a New York Times piece on the changing definition of "the rich":

"In the 80's, it was not so much the top moving way ahead," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group in Washington. "It was the bottom getting smashed."

In the 1990's, by contrast, inequality kept growing because the wealthy did fabulously well. Despite the decade's prosperity and the raises given to most workers, the top 20 percent of earners were the only group to increase its share of the nation's income.

Speaking of money, this morning I heard a few minutes of the Rush Limbaugh show. The topic, I gathered, was why we need to attack Iraq (which might have nuclear weapons) and not North Korea (which does).

Limbaugh explained that there are three things a nation will use nuclear weapons for: As a deterrent (in which case, they'll tell you they have them), for leverage (ditto), or to attack (in which case they'll keep them a secret until the big surprise). North Korea has proclaimed its possession of nuclear weapons, which means that they're not planning to use them, so they're not the threat we need to focus on.

I'm trying to remember--it's been a couple of months, so things are hazy--but wasn't North Korea trying to hide its weapons program until the U.S. called them on it?

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

So by this logic, we would never attack a country that said it had nukes, right?
Iraq should annouce it has nukes.

Hem, I have so many nukeses.

[(Anonymous)]

So far as I can recall, North Korea just announced one day "Hey, we have nuclear weapons". The U.S. response to this for a while seemed pointedly looking away, hands clapped over its ears, saying, "la la la".

While my memory isn't what it once was, this would mean your point doesn't invalidate Rush's argument, although usually something does.

Incidentally, the scariest thing I've heard lately from The Administration is Rumsfeld announcing that he believed that the inspectors not finding weapons could be taken as a sign that Iraq was in material breach. He did not explain the logic behind this statement, of course.

In the same report, I finally heard a reason for why The Administration doesn't seem to actually want the inspectors to actually find anything (i.e. why the US is claiming it knows of hidden weapons, but won't tell the inspectors where to find them). If the inspectors find anything, it's their job to destroy it -- poof, no more weapons, no more pressing need to invade Iraq.

-AE

Re: Hem, I have so many nukeses.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Aha, I was confused. Here's the story, I think (based on this CNN timeline (http://asia.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/10/nkorea.timeline.nuclear.ap/) and, still, my own hazy recollection): North Korea secretly told the U.S. government they had a weapons program. Then the government told the press, not that North Korea had a weapons program, but that North Korea had said they had a weapons program, although the U.S. also had evidence of the program, so anyway, that was all confusing, and then there were a couple of denials and then an admission. Good times.

Your last paragraph is horrifying and funny and sadly plausible.

[flipzagging.livejournal.com]

Ask Mr. Limbaugh if he now believes missile defense is unnecessary.

The rationale for a nuclear shield is that a "rogue" state might suicidally attack the U.S. with just a few missiles. North Korea is the usually the example, since it has a long history of acting bizarrely, maybe deliberately (to gain concessions) and maybe not.

The actual use of nuclear weapons is far from the only problem. They can credibly threaten to use them, or export them to other countries or even terrorist groups. That means we end up bowing and scraping to this penny-ante dictator. We now have an active interest in keeping the hideous regime there stable.

Limbaugh's analysis (I can't believe I typed that) is like a hyper-dimensional manifold of doublethink. But I'm not sure the Bush administration's actions are wrong either. It does make a sort of sense to hit the potential nuclear power with all you've got, and tiptoe around the actual nuclear power.