A.M. Links: North Korea Threatens 'Any Mode of War' As U.S. Ships Approach Korean Waters, Rex Tillerson Says Russia Must Pick Between U.S. and Assad

• 

  Gage Skidmore / Flickr.com

  The Trump administration still has hundreds of important vacancies to fill throughout the federal government.

• North Korea says it is "ready" for "any mode of war" in response to U.S. ships heading for the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: "We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role. Or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we believe is not going to serve Russia's interests longer term."
• The suspect in last week's terrorist attack in Stockholm is expected to plead guilty.
• "Inside the sexting scandal that cost outgoing Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley his job and put him in jail."
• Rep. Justin Amash on House Speaker Paul Ryan: "We need either a change in direction from this speaker, or we need a new speaker."

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don't forget to sign up for Reason's daily updates for more content.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The Trump administration still has hundreds of important vacancies to fill throughout the federal government.

Shrinking government through ennui.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

WHERE'S AREC BADWIN WHEN YOU NEED HIM?!?

[DJF]

Shouldn't the headline be "Trump shrinks government by neglect, libertarians cheer".

[Rhywun]

Yeah but the headline we will get are getting everywhere else is "Trump wants to poison your kids, won't someone please think of the career bureaucrats?"

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

Oh god! Not MY bureaucrats! Please somebody, anybody, do something!

[Rhywun]

I love my Congressman - it's all the other ones that are horrible!

[$park? leftist poser]

The world would be a better place if all my reps fell into a bonfire.

[TapDancingXenomorph]

Sir Humphrey Appleby begs you

[Zeb]

Maybe when I see some reason to believe that government is actually shrinking. This could be sort of good, but it may well mean very little. And unless you actually eliminate the positions, it's only temporary. I'd cheer a lot more if departments and positions were actually being removed in a more deliberate way.

[Memory Hole]

Breaking news: Trump orders US Forest Service to plant Bonzai trees.

[MarkLastname]

Shrinking through ennui was my college nickname.

[Fist of Etiquette]

North Korea says it is "ready" for "any mode of war" in response to U.S. ships heading for the waters off the Korean Peninsula.

As long as it isn't a food fight.

[Juice]

*golf clap*
*green jacket*

[Memory Hole]

American fascism enamored with Russian fascism, I present to you some top rated Breitbart.com comments. "Russia is Christian. They helped us win the election. Reconsider the sanctions."

ILoveAmerica ? 12 hours ago
Russia is Christian and not Communist anymore, no wonder the Democrats hate them.
WTF happened to no regime change and going after ISIS and working with Russia to defeat ISIS?
Instead we hear regime change? We are 20 trillion in debt, wasted 6 trillion in the Middle East and now want to do more of the same? I want Trump's policy of America First and "Not a policeman of the world". MAGA

Val Bilby ? 12 hours ago
Maybe we should reconsider sanctions against Russia if we want them to help defeat ISIS.
Boris Johnson, UK foreign secretary, just blew Putin off -- won't go to visit Russia now. Cancels his visit. And now Russia won't see Tillerson. This all seems so silly. We should be working with Russia!

Anime Nazi Troll 3000 ? 12 hours ago
Agree. The Russians share many of our values, along with a desire to work things out.
If the Democrats are correct, they even helped us win the last election. We should be working together with Russia to stamp out Islamic extremism, not shooting $100M of missiles into the desert when we could build ONE THOUSAND houses for homeless people with that money. America First.

http://www.breitbart.com/natio.....-of-state/

[$park? leftist poser]

I'd bet you be hard pressed to find 10 teeth among this pack a clearly delusional hicks. Russia is the enemy forever. There is nothing Russia can do to make us like them. Ever.

[Troy muy grande boner]

Says who?

[JWatts]

George Orwell.

[$park? leftist poser]

Remember once upon a time when people were able to recognize sarcasm? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Yeah, keep hiding behind that excuse you elitist snob.

[DJF]

""""They helped us win the election."""'

Yeah by distracting the Democrat party into thinking that they needed to go after individual votes rather then Electoral Collage votes. Also by having Hillary get her buddies in the party to cheat against other democratic candidates.

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

Russian agents cunningly hacked the election by accurately showing how Hillary and her campaign staff operated.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Christo-Fascism is prevalent in the US but is admittedly a lame imitation of Islamo-Fascism.

[Rufus The Monocled]

It's ubiquitous and omnipotent and under the bed.

Lookame! I trow big wirds around!

[Drave Robber]

Russia is Christian

This time of year, yes. About a third only go to church once a year, at Easter. (unlike European Protestants who do so at Christmas)

[CooterBrown]

Yeah, righties have been loving Russia for a while now. No separation of church and state, they lock up homos, kill dissenters, and bully Muslims. They're doing it right!

[Fist of Etiquette]

The suspect in last week's terrorist attack in Stockholm is expected to plead guilty.

Otherwise you can't claim your reward.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Rep. Justin Amash on House Speaker Paul Ryan: "We need either a change in direction from this speaker, or we need a new speaker."

Speaker Paul Ryan to Rep. Justin Amash: "Come at me, bro."

[Memory Hole]

Celebrity Death Match: Jihadi Justin v. RINO Ryan

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

Amashadeen: "Your policies of Anglo-Norman corporatist fascism is doomed!"
RAUL: "You will kneel before RAUL."
Amashadeen: "You will never win, Raul, son of Gorion! I bear the torch of liberty"
RAUL: wicked laughter "Come then, let us battle with our lobbies!"
Amashadeen: internally "I am too weak for this confrontation..."

[Fist of Etiquette]

Or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we believe is not going to serve Russia's interests longer term.

Longer term they'll just install a more agreeable United States president.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

The New Age of Social Science : pudding!

Authorities in Sweden are attempting to solve a problem that appears unique to its child refugees - uppgivenhetssyndrom or "resignation syndrome". The condition causes healthy youngsters to deteriorate into a comatose-like state after learning of their impending deportation. It is believed to only exist among the refugee population in the Scandinavian country, where it has been prevalent since the early part of this century.

The main 'cure' for the condition is for refugee families to be awarded residency permits ? something even recognised by the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare.

[Rhywun]

Well, that ought to make them more pliable as they're being kicked out the door.

[Free Society]

So if the Swedes try to deport you, just play dead. Then the little vaginas inside their bodies will start releasing estrogen in such quantities that the Swedes will be unable to do anything other than give you everything you want.

[Hail Rataxes]

I have no idea why anyone would think you were a misogynistic piece of shit.

[Free Society]

Cisgendered heteronormativity will not be tolerated by someone as woke as Hail Rataxes.

[Hail Rataxes]

"Cisgendered heteronormativity" is an interesting way of putting it. Just wondering -- does your wife give you everything you want because of her estrogen-producing vagina? Or does that only work if you play dead first?

[Free Society]

Show me on the doll where the patriarchy touched you.

[Mr. Flanders]

lol

[Conchfritters]

"Among those to suffer from the syndrome are a young boy called Georgi, was from North Ossetia, Russia."

So.... You weren't really a refuge at all. When the war was over, and it was safe to go home, you decided you didn't wanted to stay. Sounds more like immigration to me. There should be two lines - one for the group who is waiting out a war back at home and will head home as soon as it is safe (we'll call them refuges), and another for people who flat out want to move out and never come back (we'll call them immigrants), who should therefore apply just like a Brazilian professor who gets a teaching job in Lund and decides to move to Sweden.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

D.C.'s war madness

The past week has been an immensely clarifying ? and profoundly demoralizing ? one in American politics. It has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the country's foreign policy establishment, along with its leading center-right and center-left politicians and pundits, are hopelessly, perhaps irredeemably, deluded about the role of the United States in the world.

let's start with absolute basics: Launching even one missile at another country is not, as we euphemistically like to presume, a "military action," a "military operation," or even a "humanitarian intervention." It is an act of war.

[Juice]

Um, it can be a military action/operation and still be an act of war.

[Zeb]

In fact, those things coincide most of the time.

But it's a good point anyway. They way people often talk about these things makes it sound like it's no big thing when you blow up part of a country that you (theoretically) are not at war with.

It's also fucking weird in this case that we seem to be fighting on both sides in this war, or trying to referee it or something.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

It's weird? "Bullets and Bandages" mean anything to you?

[Zeb]

Not really.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

Cui bono?

When you sell guns (or rape whistles), it is in your interest to have a continual need for your products, no? See US Defense Budget. That's "Bullets." That's also "giving guns to the moderate Libyan and Syrian resistance groups."

Further, Corporations have always been looking for cheap labor. Consider "Cui Bono" when an influx of refugees from these "war torn" areas who don't speak the language, don't have marketable skills, and don't care to assimilate fall upon the Western world. They aren't fleeing to Siberia, Finland, or South America. "These poor human souls need a home (in the first world.)" That's "Bandages."

It would seem that the cycle is "Reds get money from Weapon/Military Tech groups to instigate war. Blues get money from shadowy tax shelters to bring cheap labor to the US." Thus, the American political system owns the Bullets and the Bandages, or rather, has captured the entire input/output of geopolitical maneuvering. All for profit of course.

[JWatts]

"Bullets and Bandages" mean anything to you?"

Heavy metal band name?

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Alice Cooper's new album?

[$park? leftist poser]

Band-aids can't fix bullet holes
You say sorry just for show

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

Too bad the author later burped out this piece of clueless offal:

What these critics really mean is that Obama didn't embrace a policy of overthrowing governments around the world ("regime change"),

He cites Libya as the exception, but the truth of the matter is that the "Arab Spring", which resulted in Yemen, Libya, and Syria being thrown into utter chaos--and Egypt nearly so if their military hadn't asserted their authority there--can be lain squarely at the feet of the Obama administration, with its explicit (and selective) support for the overthrow of relatively secular Arab dictators.

[Konima]

Now that Trump knows that he can blow up things in order to distract from domestic issues and garner bipartisan support (You know he wants everyone to love him deep down), I can't say I'm feeling very optimistic. He's a simple person, and this is a simple way to get simple people to praise him. Politics is depressing.

[John DeWitt]

Yeah. We hit our high water mark with Gorsuch. Maybe he can replace another justice or two, but from a classically liberal perspective, it's all down hill from here.

[Lord_at_War]

I know- Trump was obviously paying attention when Clinton bombed Sudan...

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

'Everyone deserves love': Pamela Anderson opens up about her relationship with Julian Assange

While remaining quite coy about the nature of her relationship with the fugitive, she told People: "Julian is trying to free the world by educating it. It is a romantic struggle ? I love him for this.

"I understand that our 'affair' and the curiosity surrounding that might bring some attention to his situation. That's fine, but I'd rather not go into private details. Let's just say everyone deserves love."

I may not masturbate about her for a week now. Disgusting.

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

The woman's almost 50 and has more plastic in her than a Chinese toy factory. I doubt anyone other than Tommy Lee is jerking off to her anymore.

[BiPolarMoment]

A Chinese toy factory? Wouldn't that be mostly lead?

[Domestic Dissident]

The Trump administration still has hundreds of important vacancies to fill throughout the federal government.

Number one, why would libertarians give a fuck? Oh right, I forgot where I am for a second. What was I thinking.

Number two, part of the reason why is because Schumer's shitheads have been intentionally slow-walking the appointments he's trying to make to an extent never seen at the start of a new administration.

[Citizen X - #6]

What was I thinking.

Nothing, Mikey. You're not equipped for that.

[Zeb]

Did you know that you and Crusty are the same person now?

[Citizen X - #6]

Yeah. I'm not sure how i feel about that.

[Domestic Dissident]

You should feel like the completely worthless loser that you are.

[Citizen X - #6]

Nah, i feel pretty good about myself. Also, Mikey, i don't know why you haven't figured this out yet, but a guy who invents and then persists in using phrases like "cuckaschmuck" and "Block Insane Yomomma" has exactly zero credibility when it comes to judging other, better human beings.

[Domestic Dissident]

Well, you shouldn't. Getting your jollies sitting there with two browser windows open posting responses to yourself in two identities over and over and over again doesn't make you a "better human being." Quite the contrary: it makes you one of the saddest, most pitiable human beings imaginable.

[$park? leftist poser]

You know, Double Dummy, I don't think you're real. The things you post have passed into the realm of impossibly stupid. You've overplayed your hand. It isn't possible that anyone who was really as stupid as your posts are would be able to use the Internet. I refuse to believe that any person capable of effectively using a computer could be as stupid as the character you're portraying. The unfortunate part about your charade is that it's not even funny either.

[Citizen X - #6]

Well then, it's lucky for me that's just a scenario that your tiny, angry brain invented out of whole cloth.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Well then, it's lucky for me that's just a scenario that your tiny, angry brain invented out of whole cloth.

Oh, come clean already, you crafty cad.

[$park? leftist poser]

Those stupid cosmo cuckashmuck gay boys just want to polish Trump's knob. Or something. You sure are onto them, Sunshine. I think they'd really get your message if you devoted some serious time to sending all of the Reason staff emails directly. That ought to get them to wise up.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

You know what else would really show the Reason staff? Doing my yard work! They'll never expect it.

[Zeb]

Right, no one ever mentions anything if they don't think it's a major problem. Especially not in a links post about the news of the day.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Miami trial reveals feds investigating Chris Brown, Lil Wayne for drug ties

Federal authorities on Thursday revealed they are investigating a $15,000 wire transfer last year from Brown to the bank account of Garcia, who boasted that the money was for drugs and the popular cough syrup-and-soda known as "lean." And Garcia, when he was first arrested last October, confessed that he sold Lil Wayne "a lot of narcotics," a federal agent testified on Thursday in Garcia's trial for drug dealing.

Dat shit b weak.

[Conchfritters]

Fake news. Can't be true.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

EXCLUSIVE: Striking out on their own! Melania takes Tiffany, Barron and THIRTY Secret Service agents to fashionable NYC bowling alley

TW: There is a picture what the bowling alley claims is a piece of pizza.

[Citizen X - #6]

Daily Mail is British, no one on staff could possibly be expected to correctly identify what a pizza is. I've known Brits who think that pizza should have hard-boiled eggs on it, for Christ's sake.

[Zeb]

Now I want pizza with boiled eggs on it.

[Citizen X - #6]

My thoughts and prayers are with you.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

My thoughts and prayers are with you.

That's so us.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Too local.

[Meh.]

Related and equally disturbing, apparently the PM of New Zealand likes tinned spaghetti on his.

[Conchfritters]

Prince Charles eats his lathered in Hellmans.

[$park? leftist poser]

I don't care what they call it, gimme a dump truck full of that.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Trump, Bill Cosby, and Masturbating Bill O'Reilly - Three sexual predators cut from the same cloth:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business.....d=46628308

You gotta love America!

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

Pay your bet, shitheap.

[MarkLastname]

If irrelevance were an Olympic sport you'd be winning the World Series.

[Citizen X - #6]

The Trump administration still has hundreds of important vacancies to fill throughout the federal government.

[citation needed]

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Chechnya opens world's first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler's in the 1930s where campaigners say gay men are being tortured with electric shocks and beaten to death

A report by Novoya Gazeta said authorities had set up several camps where homosexuals are killed or forced to promise to leave the republic.

I am far more outraged by North Carolina.

[Citizen X - #6]

first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler's

Wrong. Way to other the gays of Cuba, Daily Mail.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

That's them there white Moose Limbs, eh?

[$park? leftist poser]

Tea and cake or death!

[John DeWitt]

Well, we're out of cake! We only had three bits and we didn't expect such a rush. So what do you want?

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

This has to be worth at least a gross of Tomahawks. It's a concentration camp for YHWH's sake!

[Mr. Flanders]

They even gathered them all up in one place for us!

[Rhywun]

LOL they're going with the "we don't have gay men here" excuse. I remember when China tried that during the AIDS-blood scandal some years ago.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

"It's really just a bunch of transgendered women, actually. It's a counseling workshop stay-away camp!"

[Fist of Etiquette]

As I recall, Iran didn't have any gays, either, according to their Members Only president. Those kids dangling on ropes must have been an accident of some type.

[A Cynic's Guide to Zen]

Amateur chiropractic therapy in an unregulated medicine State. Side Effects: May cause death.

[Rhywun]

Those kids dangling on ropes must have been an accident of some type.

To be fair, totalitarian (and totalitarian-lite) regimes do have a habit of cooking up bad-sex charges against inconvenient opposition. Those kids might have been strung up for any of various reasons.

[Free Society]

Caught fapping to pictures of uncovered ankles.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Doctors once treated alcoholism with heroin. Now, they want to treat heroin addiction with marijuana.

Fortunately for people facing the potentially deadly disorder of heroin addiction, there is no need to rely on marijuana or any other unproven treatment. Multiple, well-researched FDA-approved medications are available, as are psychological therapies and mutual support groups that can produce additional benefits for heroin-addicted patients. The federal government operates a 24-hour-a-day helpline that can help addicted individuals access these lifesaving services.

[Zeb]

I've known a number of alcoholics who probably would have been better off on heroin. Assuming a safe, inexpensive supply.

And all of the reformed junkies I know smoke lots of pot.

So both treatments get my anecdotal seal of approval.

[Conchfritters]

I took a substance abuse class led by a former alcoholic, and he flat out said that he has former drinking buddies who would be dead if not for marijuana. Miracle drug?

[John DeWitt]

Sounds like it's ruining the positive effects of Darwinism.

[Free Society]

The suspect in last week's terrorist attack in Stockholm is expected to plead guilty.

10 years in a soft prison with an Xbox in his cell.

[mashed potatoes]

"We came, we saw, he died" Black African slavery returns to the open in Libya.

https://tinyurl.com/l5dvmro

[Citizen X - #6]

Goddamn white devils.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

You shall know them by their fruits.

[John DeWitt]

What if they concentrate all their fruits in one location, i.e. Chechnya?

[Rhywun]

>:-/

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Fruit slavery, fruit sushi, whatever.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Gasoline prices jump to 19-month high and could be headed higher with spring driving season here

"I think we're going to get another 10 to 20 cents" this spring, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. "Anything beyond that would be event driven."

Thanks, Trump!

[Citizen X - #6]

"Spring driving season"? Tha fuq?

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

What is this "Spring Break" thing I hear the kids are into these days?

[$park? leftist poser]

The real reason they ran gas up to $4.25/gal years ago was so that people wouldn't complain when it got up to $2.25/gal now.

[Zeb]

Yeah, remember when $2 seemed insanely expensive?

[$park? leftist poser]

Yeah, when I first started driving the average was around $1.15/gal.

[Rhywun]

I remember when a pack of smokes was $2. Don't think they won't treat gas the same way some day if they feel like it.

[Zeb]

$2 was the price for smokes when I started smoking. Then there were the price wars of the early to mid 90s which briefly made them even cheaper.

I don't know. They'd probably have a revolt on their hands if we had to pay European gas prices.

[Mickey Rat]

Who says they are not? I believe it is the case that the largest component of the price of gas is the taxes.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Pfft! Children. I remember sitting in a line to get gas for .76/gal during the oil embargo. When I started smoking, .65/pk. When I quit I had paid up to $13 for one pack.

[Zeb]

We're just practicing for when we're old like you.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

And then there is the buck I paid for 1 contraband loosie when I was in basic training. The only smoke I had for 8 wks.

[Gadfly]

Well, due to inflation $2 in real value is actually close to the norm.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

I bet @NKorKim isn't ready for this mode of War.

[Stormy Dragon]

Chicago Aviation police are upset they have to resort to beating up passengers when they could be just shooting them:

Viral video hurts chance Chicago aviation officers will be armed

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

The city currently spends $19 million a year for 292 aviation security cops, with annual salaries ranging from $50,000 to $88,000 after undergoing four months of training. They are not permitted to carry weapons.

Prior to Sunday's embarrassment, that made no sense to Zalewski. "I'm not against people making a decent salary. But if you're not gonna put a gun on them, we should get somebody cheaper," he told the Chicago Sun-Times last month.

What the fuck do they do?

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

These Chinchillas' Butts Are So Round, They Look Fake

What you're seeing is not a work of Photoshop, these chinchillas actually do have perfectly round butts! They may seem too fluffy to be true, but(t) in fact, they're real!

[Citizen X - #6]

New roommates?

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Only if you and I can come to an agreement.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

A Burning Girls Question: Is Hannah Horvath a Good Writer?

It's a challenging question to answer, primarily because we see so little of Hannah's work.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Is this art imitates life, or life imitates art?

[Meh.]

Wait, Girls is almost over? Hopefully, this won't impact the daily Dunham articles.