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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

It's So Predictable

It's been quite a day in matters relating to North Korea.  First came the news that the NKs have succeeded in making nuclear warheads small enough to fit on the tip of their missiles.  Next, the President warned the NKs to stop making threats against the USA or they would be met with fire and ruin.  Then, as quickly as possible, the North Korean leader announced that his country was considering an attack on Guam unless the USA stops its "warlike" behavior.  To put it bluntly, the level of tension has been ratcheted up by two or three notches.  We are not yet at the breaking point, but we are close.  Right now, an inadvertent mistake could lead to war.

Tonight, I wanted to see how the story was covered on cable news.  First, I saw the coverage on Special Report on Fox News which is, by far, the best news program on the air.  They covered the story pretty straight down the middle.  They did bring in Gordon Chang for a discussion, so we got the usual hype from him, and he spoke before the threat to Guam had been announced.  Most discussion and reporting centered on possible choices for US policy.

I also saw coverage from CNN on Anderson Cooper's show.  There, much of the discussion was strangely about the political impact of the crisis.  Somehow, I thought the question of war was more important than how it might affect the next election, but not, I guess, on CNN.

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow had on guests who explained why President Trump is not well suited to handling this sort of crisis.  Even the threat of war was just used as a backdrop for the endless anti-Trump propaganda machine.

Now I did not watch all of these shows, so I may have just seen coverage at the wrong time, but I doubt it.  The shows were so predictable.

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