Zelly Belly, being watchful in the garden.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelly Belly, being watchful in the garden.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
[Content note: Guns, gun violence, gun culture, homophobia]
YOLO:
A federal judge has ruled that the United States government must make the morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages.
Chinese authorities have killed more than 20,000 birds from a live-poultry trading zone in Shanghai after an unusual strain of bird flu that has so far killed six people.
From the vaults: Roger Ebert discusses North on Siskel & Ebert's 1994 year-end show.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed a new gun control law that bans some weapons and the sale or purchase of high-capacity magazines.
The U.S. Navy is building a giant robot jellyfish! The U.S. Navy is building a giant robot jellyfish!
One, two, three more senators (all Dems) announced their support of marriage equality.
Happy Birthday, Space Cowboy!
Happy Birthday, Space Cowboy! You are such a dear friend to me, and to Iain. We love you. I'm so glad I made those note cards.
And, even though not everyone realizes it, this whole community is indebted to you for all the tech work you've done behind the scenes over the years. Thank you. You rock out loud.
(P.S. Space Cowboy will probably not be acknowledging these birthday wishes today, because he is doing something SUPERFUN for his birthday. But don't let that stop you! He'll see them eventually!)
The Parks and Rec Open Thread
Iceclown on Morphine: An American Portrait.
(Spoilers are getting totally stoned herein.)
Parks and Rec is back! Yay! Ronald Ulysses Swanson has been served! Softypants McHuggable! Icetown! Fred the Sled! FRED. THE. SLED. Other things!
"We should sue Jamm's parents for spawning a human turdburger." "April, could you call maintenance, please?" "You're so sexy when you talk about percentages." "You wanna make a baby, Traeger? Your hair, my everything else...that kid would be unstoppable." "I love telling the truth. Case in point: Sometimes when I blow my nose I get a boner. I dunno why. It just happens. Truth bomb!" "Just daydreaming about punching Jamm in the face." "I'm feeding your eagle. He's STARVING." "I regret nothing. The end."There weren't a lot of huge laughs for me in this episode—besides Donna's "that kid would be unstoppable" speech, which made me laugh out loud for one million years—but it was a very solid episode! I enjoyed it!
Discuss!
I'm So Glad We Elected a Democrat, Part Wev
President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.Perfect.
Specifically, the President is proposing to lower cost-of-living adjustments, in order to reduce the growth of Social Security, which will of course hit hardest the people most dependent on Social Security benefits, i.e. elderly people in poverty.
The proposed cuts will also disproportionately affect veterans and people with disabilities.
And, brace yourself, the cuts Obama has proposed on seniors are more severe than the closed loopholes/tax increases on the wealthy...Meanwhile, Republicans like Jim DeMint, newly anointed president of the Heritage Foundation, are doubling-down on Mitt Romney's "entitled to food" garbage: "Today, more people than ever before—69.5 million Americans, from college students to retirees to welfare beneficiaries—depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid, or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions. The United States must reverse the direction of these trends or face economic and social collapse."
President Obama's proposal would reduce benefits by 0.3 percent for each year after a worker retires. After ten years benefits would be cut by 3.0 percent, after twenty years 6.0 percent, and after 30 years 9.0 percent. Over a twenty year retirement, the average cut would be 3.0 percent…For even further clarification it should be noted the loopholes for the wealthy will not stay closed. The current tax system is designed for that type of gamesmanship. So what is likely to happen if Obama gets his dream deal? Social Security will be permanently cut and the rich will lose a deduction or two for a year before they get slipped back in. Exchanging temporary increases in taxes for permanent benefit cuts to those in need in an a two-tier economy is beyond cynical. If President Obama is legacy shopping, he might want to return this item.
By comparison, Social Security is about 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree. Since President Obama's proposal would lead to a 3 percent cut in Social Security benefits, it would reduce the income of the typical retiree by more than 2.0 percent, more than three times the size of the hit from the tax increase to the wealthy.
So we've got one party screaming at people with no options to get bootstrappin' before they destroy the country, and the other party telling them whooooooops here's even less because that other party is terrible and we need to
I don't even know what to say anymore. The United States government is failing its people. "If you're not rich, you're fucked!" is not a sustainable economic model, which is to say nothing of its colossal indecency.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
"You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country. It's true! C'mon."—President Obama, at a party fundraiser in suburban San Francisco yesterday, speaking about California's Attorney General and possible future gubernatorial candidate Kamala Harris.
I am seriously pissed that the President thinks it's in any way remotely appropriate to publicly comment on Harris' appearance, and I am equally pissed at the first part of his comment, which is not being as widely reported. You have to be careful to first say a woman is competent before you can wax lascivious* sexist about how smoking hot she is.
A White House spokesperson had no comment when asked for a response. But I'm sure they're busily drawing up something great, like: "Hey, have you heard about the Lilly Ledbetter Act?"
* On Twitter, Imani noted that the use of "lascivious" in reference to a black man is problematic. I have edited it. My apologies for not being more sensitive to the narratives into which "lascivious" played.
Question of the Day
How is your personality most different, if at all, at your current age from when you were 10 years old?
I am still shy, but nearly as shy as I was when I was 10.
Tom Hardy and a Puppy Visit Machu Piccu
The puppy says the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu is his favorite place they've visited so far.
Whooooooooooops!
[Content Note: Kyriarchy.]
This would be hilarious if it weren't so terrible:
How are white male managers doing when it comes to diversity? Great! At least that's what the white male managers said in a recent survey.That is a quite a disparity!
What do the non-white, non-male managers think? Not as upbeat.
...Asked to rate the diversity effectiveness among white male leaders in their companies, 45 percent of white men gave a positive rating. Among women and people of color, only 21 percent agreed. Wide gaps were also found in the perception of white men's abilities to coach and improve the performance of diverse employees (33 points difference); build strong, diverse teams (36 points); promote diverse talent on merit (36 points); and include diverse voices in decision making (40 points.)
The framing of the disparity in this piece is rather remarkable, too:
But according to the study, it's not entirely the fault of white male managers. What we have here, it claims, is failure to communicate.Ha ha that is definitely my experience with a decade of working in Corporate America—my (cis, straight) white male bosses were TOO RESPECTFUL. They were SO SCARED to criticize people who didn't share their privileges. Their overwhelming respect for us was a real problem.
...[White male leaders] are doing great when it comes to being respectful, the survey said, but fall short when it comes to saying what they really think. Too many fear that any criticism or discussion of race or gender will likely get them in trouble, so they avoid it entirely.
To quote my pal Pam: *blink*
[H/T to Shaker Brunocerous.]
Late Night, Bourbon Street
by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday, depending on a number of mysterious factors that I cannot reveal without tearing apart the universe at its very seams. Sorry!
[Content Note: Misogyny; hostility to consent; harassment.]
I went to New Orleans for the first time last week for a business trip. It was my first time there, and it was really cool to see parts of New Orleans I'd only ever seen before on television. The unique culture of the town is incredible and complex, but that is a whole other post. What I'm writing about today could, and does, happen in lots of places.
I was on Bourbon Street one night, my second time at a bar with a house band so great I had to go back. I was with a work colleague, another white man, and we were approached by a roving bartender, a young white woman. She'd approached us the previous night, too, on both occasions making some sexually suggestive moves with the test-tube shots she was hawking.
Jovially, I made a joke to the effect of, "I mean, you're really adorable, but you're totally barking up the wrong tree here!"
She put the test tubes back in the tray, laughed, and leaned over to tell me, "I'm just doing what works!"
I just looked at her for a second as my brain processed that admission, and she went on, telling me, "The guys on Bourbon St. expect something more. They don't just want a shot—even if it's from the prettiest woman in here. They want to kiss you or touch you or make you do those kinds of things if they're going to buy one from you."
I told her, "That's so fucking gross. I'm so sorry."
And she said, "I know, but I've got a 3-year-old daughter, and I get $24 for every tray of these shots I sell, and the more I do that, the faster they go. That's all that matters to me."
She stood with us for a few minutes and chatted over the excellent house band. During that conversation, the work persona she had to affect to make a living fell away. The woman I was now chatting with had an entirely different demeanor—the self-protective mask had fallen away and here was just a person trying to make ends meet. She was kind. She was funny. She was candid with us. She didn't owe us that, but she offered it anyway. And I really liked the person she let me know, a little bit, in that noisy bar.
What kept echoing in my head were her words, "the guys on Bourbon St. expect something more," and I knew that it wasn't just here on Bourbon St. that men "expected something more."
But it's the wrong kind of expecting more.
In a culture that routinely objectifies women, and in which every bit of casual misogyny aims to reinforce the idea that just being a woman isn't enough, the guys on Bourbon St. wanted more. And they felt entitled to it. They felt entitled to demand access to a woman's body if they were going to make a purchase, something that obviously wouldn't be an expected part of the purchase were it a man selling the product.
That's the problem. When even the smartest, most powerful women are routinely told what to do with their bodies by a patriarchal and misogynist culture (Stop running for the White House now! Now run for the White House!), it leaves someone like our roving bartender little more than two choices.
She can grudgingly offer something more—a touch, a kiss, access to her body—and sell out her tray of items to men who are only interested in the way her performance will please them, rather than the goods she is actually selling, or she can refuse to pander to a neighborhood culture (found in many neighborhoods) where misogyny rules, sell fewer items, and go home with less money to take care of her daughter, to take care of herself, to provide food and shelter.
She chose the former, and I could hear in her voice the way she had resigned herself to doing something she didn't want to do, but the only thing that mattered to her was having enough money at the end of the night, the end of the week, the end of the month, to take care of the most important person in her life.
I left the bar angry that night. Angry not at the choice she had made, but at the choices she had been offered—the choices that are created by men in a culture that has taught them in so many ways that a woman's body is not her own, but something meant for their satisfaction. Angry that the difference between making money and not making money in that atmosphere all came down to whether she was willing to stroke the egos of drunk men, and suggestively go along with their groping, their touching, their demands, all in the name of selling alcohol.
I don't begrudge her the choice she made. And I don't judge her for making it.
I am angry that she was given no truly meaningful choice in the first place.
[Related Reading: Why I'm Pro-Choice, and My Boyfriend Is, Too.]
More
[I originally published this in May 2009, and reposted it once in May 2010. As we have a lot of new readers recently, some of whom don't feel obliged to concern themselves with the required reading, I thought it was time to repost it. Also? Because I need it as much as anyone else.]
This, you may have noticed, is a blog about teaspoons.
It is a blog about increments of measurement so infinitesimally tiny they haven't been given names, about glitches in the Matrix so swift and subtle that they are more easily missed than noticed, about tangible particles of a thing called progress not visible to the naked eye.
It is a blog about hope—not the kind that's packaged and sold in anti-aging creams, soda pop cans, or even political campaigns—but the real thing: A hopefulness that radiates like whoa from the pores of indefatigably optimistic dreamers, who close their eyes and tilt their faces up toward the sun and imagine a future where equality and freedom are not aspirational concepts, but defining features of every human life.
It is a blog about connection, and the realization that we are all in this thing together, and the resolve to be all in, because we make a difference in this world, for good or ill, because we know there is no neutral; there is no moral ambiguity in staying silent; there is only standing up and saying no to the indignities one human visits upon another, or saying yes.
It is a blog of wildly unreasonable expectations, because unreasonable expectations are the seeds of progress.
One of the greatest American advocates for progress, a gentleman you may have heard of named Dr. King, is not remembered for giving a speech about his resignation to the status quo. He is remembered because he admonished us not to wallow in the valley of despair and exhorted us to envision big things and told us to never be satisfied with less. He said to the world, "I have a dream," and that dream was what many people might have called in its time (and may call still) an unreasonable expectation.
Eradicating any kind of bigotry is, by definition, an unreasonable expectation—because institutional bigotry is deeply entrenched. Prejudice is ancient. Only a fool would imagine it can be overcome.
Except, of course, that it can be. Bit by bit. Particle by particle. Teaspoon by teaspoon. Person by person. Prejudice is ancient, but it dies with its every carrier and must be taught again. And it can be unlearned. Bit by bit. Particle by particle. Teaspoon by teaspoon. Person by person.
Patience, it takes, and determined sanguinity, to create people filled with expansive love and intractable respect for one another in a culture that casts us as enemies.
And it takes unreasonable expectations, the seeds of progress.
Thus, every time someone asks me, greets my bellicose display of unreasonable expectations with, the exceedingly un-progressive question, "What do you expect?" I will answer the same as I always do: I expect more.
Of course the Republican Party is racist. What do you expect?
I expect more.
Of course lots of male bloggers are misogynists. What do you expect?
I expect more.
Of course some television show is homophobic. What do you expect?
I expect more.
Of course some feminists are transphobic. What do you expect?
I expect more.
Of course there are ablest jokes in sitcoms. What do you expect?
I expect more.
Of course there are fat-hating jokes in advertisements. What do you expect?
I expect more.
You can't expect people to mess with iconic cultural images just to give a nod to diversity. It will upset people.
The fuck I can't. I expect more.
I'm not ironically detached, I'm not apathetic, I'm not resigned, and I'm not contemptuous of bleeding hearts. I am a greedy bitch with voracious expectations, and I dream long and lustfully of a better world that is both my muse and objective. I want it like the cracked earth of the desert wants rain, and I will neither apologize for nor amend my desire because of its remove from the here and now; its distance encourages my reach.
Don't bother asking me what I expect.
You already know the answer.
Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month
[Content Note: detailed discussion of sexual assault/violence/abuse]
April is National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. Did you know that? Yes? No? Sorta-because-I-saw-someone-post-an-awareness pic-about-it-on-Facebook? In any case, you know now!
Even if you did know this month's designation, did you know:
* 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.
* 1 in 33 American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.
* 15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.
* 93% of juvenile sexual assault victims know their attacker. (source)
* Every 2 minutes, someone in the US is sexually assaulted.
* In 2005-10, 78% of sexual violence involved an offender who was a family member, intimate partner, friend, or acquaintance. (source)
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center's campaign this year is: It's time...to talk about it! Talk Early, Talk Often. Prevent sexual violence.
It's never too early to approach this subject, as the easiest and arguably most important form of prevention is teaching about consent. A person can start this when their child is a baby/toddler:
1. "No" always means no. If you're playing, like say tickling, and the child says "no, stop"--even if they are laughing--you stop. Full stop. You teach them you respect their boundaries and help them learn to respect the boundaries of other people.
2. Do not force them to give anyone affection, including to you. Do not force affection onto them.
3. With children, parents often have to make decisions that involve giving consent for the child (like medical decisions). Talk with the child about this and, as the child gets older, give them age-appropriate control and autonomy. In some states, once a person is 13, they have a right to privacy over their medical records and treatment.
***
However, I'd like to revisit the first line of their campaign: It's time...to talk about it.
Daily Dose of Cute
Olivia and Matilda deep in discussion about Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Seek and Ye Shall Find
[Content Note: Misogyny and rape culture.]
One of the common criticisms I read about myself and anyone who is engaged in social justice work, whether through a feminist/womanist lens or otherwise, is that we are offended by, or angry about, everything. Often, the criticism is leveled as the exasperated rhetorical question: "Is there anything that doesn't make this [chick, bitch, feminazi, etc.] mad?!"
It is, obviously, a familiar way of leveling the tiresome charge of being oversensitive, hysterical, easily offended, the Angry Feminist. Which, as always, misses the point about being oversensitive vs. not sensitive enough, and misses the distinctions between being angry and being dissatisfied, and being offended and being contemptuous.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that if someone is angry, well, maybe that's because there's a lot about which to be angry.
But framing this space (and lots of others like it) as a seething hotbed of reactionaries throwing red paint at the walls is also dependent on ignoring all the things that are written here about stuff we love. I write with abundant enthusiasm about people I admire (I have a label for "Great Broads," as but one example), about shows and films and music and artists and writers I adore, about my marvelous friends and brilliant colleagues (not mutually exclusive groups), about other bloggers whom I don't know personally but whose work delights and inspires me, about my lovely pets and animal rescue stories that warm the coldest of black hearts, about Tom Hardy kissing a puppy's muzzle! I post pictures of beautiful things and videos of songs I like and share stories of Iain saying funny things and Deeky sending me silly I MEAN AMAZING packages in the mail. There is a lot of content here that is straight-up about Stuff I Love.
Other contributors write about stuff they love, too. And there are plenty of gushing comments about personal successes, great documentaries to recommend, the best new tasty thing you should try, and every other conceivable variation on "I love this thing!"
It's funny that the people who accuse me of looking for things to get mad about seem only to find hatred and anger in a space so filled with love.
And then there's this: People do social justice work for a whole lot of reasons, but, generally speaking, it isn't because they hate the world or the people in it.
When I write a post about, say, the rape culture, cloaked in vibrating anger, it isn't because I hate the rape culture (although I certainly do); it's because I really love people, for the most part, and I don't want anyone, anyone, to be victimized by sexual violence, ever.
Yes, I want to dismantle the rape culture, and if it were a little box placed into my hands, I would throw it to the ground and smash it into a million bits and keep grinding those bits into dust with my fists until I was dragged away. But that is not the thing that motivates me to write about the rape culture, or any other intersecting system of oppression, every day, at no small cost to myself, until I feel sometimes like I'm swimming in a sea of shit that has no shore. What motivates me is love. Love of safety. Love of agency. Love of justice. Love of people.
"Isn't there anything this woman likes?" ask my incredulous critics.
Yes. More than I can say. It's there to find, if you're really looking.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, Christian supremacy, guns, gun culture, gun violence]
News and Whatnot:
Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.
Shut the fuck up, Jeremy Irons.
Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.
Check out Prince's hard-rock version of "Let's Go Crazy."
Bad news for assfucking: Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is asking the courts to revive the prohibition on consensual anal and oral sex, for both gay and straight people.
Gun lobbyists are still the best! Just the best!
Bill Clinton will be presented with the Advocate for Change Award by GLAAD Media Awards for his recent work on behalf of marriage equality. Oh. Okay.
Entertainment tonight: White dude retires from TV show, hands it over to white dude.
Take Your Boobs to the White House Watch
As I've mentioned previously, in 2008, there was so much pressure for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the Democratic Primary, even when she still had a decent chance of winning the nomination, that I started cataloging the public admonishments for her to go away in a series called Take Your Boobs and Go Home Watch.
Now, with no small amount of bitter irony, all anyone can talk about is whether Hillary Clinton will run for the 2016 nomination. These are just the pieces I've read this morning:
1. Alex Pareene at Salon: One Thing We Don't Know About Hillary: Did She Learn Any Lessons From 2008? What I love, ahem, most about this piece is its final observation:
The other question, of course, is what a Clinton 2016 campaign would do to The Right. The anti-Clinton machine would have to crank itself back up, though it's been dormant for so many years now that the default position among right-wingers since 2007 has been basically to proclaim unalloyed admiration and love for Hillary Clinton, as a means of insulting Obama in comparison. Anyone with a vague recollection of the age of Whitewater and Vince Foster and Travelgate and all the other weird shit that consumed both the fringe right-wing and the mainstream press for much of Bill Clinton's terms in office knows what made the Clintons and their inner circle so paranoid and hypersensitive to attacks.That's literally how the piece ends—on a note that the best argument for a Hillary Clinton presidency is discrediting the conservative movement because they can't resist unleashing fuckloads of vile misogynist vitriol on her. Welp, that's one way of looking at it. Personally, I believe the best argument for a Hillary Clinton presidency is that she is smart, talented, competent, and formidable, but what the fuck do I know.
For years the standard Republican talking point on Hillary Clinton was that she was a socialist lesbian harridan castrating bitch-queen puppet-master. If the conservative media goes down that road again — and I see little to suggest that they wouldn't, honestly — it would tragically undo so much of the important image rehabilitation work the conservative movement has been engaging in since last November. And the impotent raging backlash mentality that still powers the movement would have one more thing to be pissed about. (This is obviously the best argument for Clinton in 2016.)
(Yes, I know. I'm sure Pareene was just joking, and I am the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington because I don't find it hilarious to make a joke about sacrificing the most qualified female presidential candidate in the nation upon the altar of exposing the rightwing's disgusting misogyny of which everyone is already painfully aware.)
2. Maggie Haberman at Politico: A Viewer's Guide to Hillary Clinton Fever. This piece opens with a perfect explanation of why the Take Your Boobs to the White House Watch exists:
Will she run or won't she?A parlor game! Ha ha perfect. Not just the usual gross, cavalier, effects-indifferent description of politics as a game, but a parlor game. You know, for fancy ladies.
The obsessive speculation about Hillary Clinton's plans for 2016 promises to be the longest and most intense parlor game in the history of American politics. It is a consuming fixation already, not just among the operatives and reporters who always inhale this stuff but to an extraordinary degree among average Americans.
3. Leslie Kaufman in the NYT: Hillary Clinton Foreign Policy Book Coming Out Next Year. "Former Secretary of State and possible presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton will publish a new book in the summer of 2014 about American foreign policy, her publisher, Simon & Schuster, said Thursday morning." Everyone who wants to run for president writes a book. For real. Except maybe Fred Karger.
4. ABC News (video begins to play automatically at link): Hillary Clinton Appearance Sparks Presidential Rumors. Ha ha really?! I'm pretty sure there were "rumors" about Hillary Clinton running for president before she made one public appearance after her tenure as Secretary of State.
5. Public Policy Polling: Paul on the Rise, Hillary at New High.
On the Democratic side support for Hillary Clinton to be the party nominee has hit its highest level of support in our national polling since the election last year. 64% of the party's voters want her to be the candidate to 18% for Joe Biden, 5% for Elizabeth Warren, and 3% for Andrew Cuomo with no one else polling above 2%. Clinton has majority support from liberals and moderates, men and women, African Americans, Latinos, and white voters, and voters within every age group that we track.But the best argument for her candidacy is that she will drive conservatives into a self-discrediting frenzy of seething hatred.
6. Aaron Blake in the WaPo: James Carville Supporting Pro-Hillary Super PAC. Carville "emphasized he has not joined the super PAC in any official capacity but is happy to lend a hand to promote Clinton."
"I've been pretty clear that I'd like to see her run," he said. "But I'm not a member of the organization or anything like that."All right then!
I know Hillary Clinton has skin fully one million inches thick, and there is virtually nothing under the sun in politics that could get to her anymore. But she is also human. And what I hope is that the country she has lovingly and loyally served having told her to get out of the way for Obama and go the fuck home, only to tell her now, four years later, that she can't go home because it's time to serve some more at our demand, is something that makes her laugh, even if mirthlessly. What I hope is that it doesn't bother her, because it sure as fuck bothers me.
Um, What Is Going on with North Korea?
North Korea dramatically escalated its warlike rhetoric on Thursday, warning that it had authorised plans for nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.While experts believe North Korea doesn't yet have the weapons capability to hit the US, the major concern right now is that North Korea's belligerence could instigate "incidents on the tense and heavily militarised border between North and South Korea." South Korea's defense department has said it will take military action "if the safety of its citizens in Kaesong was threatened."
"The moment of explosion is approaching fast," the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out "today or tomorrow".
Pyongyang's latest pronouncement came as Washington scrambled to reinforce its Pacific missile defences, preparing to send ground-based interceptors to Guam and dispatching two Aegis class destroyers to the region.
Tension was also high on the North's heavily fortified border with South Korea, after Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime barred South Koreans from entering a Seoul-funded joint industrial park on its side of the frontier.
In a statement published by the state KCNA news agency, the Korean People's Army general staff warned Washington that US threats would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means".
"The merciless operation of our revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified," the statement said.
Last month, North Korea threatened a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike against the United States, and last week its supreme army command ordered strategic rocket units to combat status.
But, while Pyongyang has successfully carried out test nuclear detonations, most experts think it is not yet capable of mounting a device on a ballistic missile capable of striking US bases or territory.
...US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier said Pyongyang represented a "real and clear danger" to the United States and to its allies South Korea and Japan.
"They have nuclear capacity now, they have missile delivery capacity now," Hagel said after a strategy speech at the National Defense University. "We take those threats seriously, we have to take those threats seriously.
"We are doing everything we can, working with the Chinese and others, to defuse that situation on the peninsula."
Meanwhile, China, which is North Korea's only major ally, "appealed for 'calm' from all sides," which seems like a pretty mild response, but that's pretty much China telling North Korea to back the fuck down before they cause an international incident.
The White House called North Korea's posturing "unhelpful and unconstructive threats," which is polite.
I feel so bad for the North Korean people. What a nightmare of a government they've got, who is putting them in unnecessary danger, once again.
