WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Venezuela is blowing debt payments ahead of a huge, make-or-break bill.

The nation’s state-owned oil giant, Petroleos de Venezuela, SA, has two major bond payments totaling about $2 billion coming due in the next two weeks. While the market expects the company, better known as PDVSA, to avoid default, the missed payments have rattled investors and raised fresh questions about how long embattled President Nicolas Maduro’s regime might last.

“You’re cutting close to the edge of not enough money in the checking account to pay the bills,” said Ray Zucaro, chief investment officer at RVX Asset Management, an asset manager specializing in emerging and frontier markets.

Last week, Venezuela missed five coupon payments totaling nearly $350 million tied to the debt of PDVSA, the government and the utility Electricidad de Caracas. That stoked a minor sell-off in a number of outstanding bonds.

This news comes after a report two weeks ago that inflation in Venezuela is expected to hit 2,300% next year. If Caracas runs the printing presses even faster to make these bond payments, inflation will go even higher. But if they don’t make the payments, Venezuela’s foreign trade trade takes a big hit.

Which is a serious problem, because under Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela’s only reliable domestic products are zeros and misery.

YES, AUSTIN BAY HAS BEEN POINTING THIS OUT FOR A WHILE: ‘Rhetoric’ on North Korean nukes a message to China, not Pyongyang, says David Petraeus.

David Petraeus interprets all of the “rhetoric” about the North Korea nuclear threat as being directed at China, rather than Pyongyang, to convince Beijing to get tough in negotiations as it could have the ability to strike a U.S. city “on this president’s watch.”

“I think there’s still an opportunity here,” Petreaus said Sunday morning on CNN, responding to a fellow former CIA director’s warning that there is a 20 to 25 percent chance of an armed conflict with North Korea.

Comments like these, Petraeus said, are aimed at getting Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attention. China “has the ability to bring North Korea to its senses but doesn’t want to bring it to its knees,” the former Army general added.

Asked if China is unable to sway a belligerent North Korea, Petraeus said Beijing needs to understand “the new strategic reality that would result, which is very uncomfortable to them,” and listed off number of consequences, including the possibility of returning nuclear weapons to South Korea.

Maybe Taiwan, too.

POLITICO: DNC Enters 2018 In A Cash Panic.

HAVING SOLVED ALL OF MANHATTAN’S OTHER PROBLEMS, Bill de Blasio, Populist, Unleashes Police Power on Take-Out Delivery Guys.

HAVE YOU NO DECENCY? Democrat attacks ‘very private’ wedding of Pence’s Marine son.

An extremely private and intimate wedding ceremony at an Indiana state park Saturday for Vice President Mike Pence’s son has come under attack by a state Democrat who on Facebook identified the venue and wrongly warned that the whole area would be shut down.

The post from Sue Wanzer, a Democratic activist and local school board member, drew many angry responses like this: “Pence ruins everything!”

Her October 18 post read, “Heads up: If you’re planning a trip to Nashville (Ind.) this weekend, you should probably scrap that. Pence’s kid is getting married in Brown County State Park. It’s going to be an utter mess and a lot of areas (like the state park) will be shut down in large portions. This is unpublished, but reports from state park staff and things like flight restrictions over Nashville seem to confirm.”

Actually, the park has said that the park will remain open except for the wedding area. “The fact that the vice president will be here will not impact our regular visitors,” property manager Doug Baird told the Bloomington, Ind., Herald-Times.

No decency — and no facts, either.

JON GABRIEL: Harvey Weinstein outrage proves hypocrisy rules the day. “America knows that the same culture that enabled Weinstein spends much of its time scolding us about our sexism, racism and retrograde morality.”

Related: The Left-Wing Heroes Who Treat Women Like Garbage. “From hard-lefties like Black Panthers and the ‘Dirtbag Left’ to liberals named Clinton and Kennedy and Weinstein, the long line of men who talk one way but behave another.”

Plus: “Ted Kennedy was the Lion of the Senate: He mated without limit and killed without remorse.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: More Frederica Wilson, Hollywood Perverts, Jimmah Carter and Much, Much More.

PEAK SALON REACHED. “My liberal white male rage: What should I do about it?”

I’m a left-wing white guy. And a Jew. Since Charlottesville, I’ve noticed some strange changes in myself.

At work, I’ve spaced out for 20 minutes at a time during meetings, daydreaming about committing violence, always righteously, in overly dramatic, obnoxiously heroic ways, with a very troubling overtone of white saviorism. In addition to saving the girls from a male predator with my brute strength and righteous rage, I’ve had another recurring fantasy of saving the passengers on a plane hijacked by “911-esque” terrorists. I tackle an armed hijacker, turn his gun on him, immediately inspire the other passengers to team up to distract the terrorists, and then deftly fire bullets into all three terrorists’ heads. Dark blood drips down their noses from the wounds on their foreheads. If the meeting is particularly boring, I’ll concoct permutations, new endings. Because it just feels so damn good. Like the dopamine rush of a sex fantasy.

The Bernie tattoo on the arm of the man-bun coiffed Resistance-T-shirt guy atop the article adds a particularly creepy touch considering the ideology of the attempted assassin Of Steve Scalise.

CHANGE? GOP Senate hopefuls reluctant to back McConnell as leader.

The Hill asked nearly two dozen Senate candidates this week if they would support McConnell as leader if elected. Not one campaign said outright that they would support him, although two candidates appear to have expressed support in the past.

Several candidates declared their opposition to McConnell and attacked their GOP primary opponents for not taking a stance on the question. Other candidates deflected, or spoke on background about the bind they’re in over the question of McConnell’s leadership. Most candidates were eager to avoid the question entirely, and ignored multiple requests for comment.

The candidate survey underscores the tricky balancing act facing Republican Senate candidates in 2018, which is shaping up to be a proxy war between the party establishment and its grass-roots base.

Part of the reason the Democrats are in such bad shape is the huge number of Obama-to-Trump Democrats, who seem to be mostly sticking with the GOP in the 2017-18 cycle. Those voters are reshaping the Republican party in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways, but at a best guess, the GOP has maybe two election cycles to deliver to their new constituents before they start looking elsewhere — again.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Why are you ‘broken’ and ‘violated’ if you walk away from bad pick-up lines like that? This kind of post-Weinstein pile-on is going to dilute the righteous fury and end up boring us. There are so many people with so many stories, so many would-be actresses who never got to live out their dreams that nothing’s going to stop the chatter. It’s a good time to hurt and embarrass every unattractive guy who got a pretty woman to give him some time by portraying himself as a useful contact. How could he even think he could have her if he didn’t give some major career advancement in exchange!”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE OF CORRUPTION EDITION: How UNC changed its story — and lost its voice on college sports.

Related, from IowaHawk:

CHINA HAS NO ONE TO BLAME BUT THEMSELVES: Abe to push reform of Japan’s pacifist constitution after election win.

The U.S.-drafted constitution’s Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense.

Backers of Abe’s proposal to clarify the military’s ambiguous status say it would codify the status quo. Critics fear it would allow an expanded role overseas for the military.

“Now that pro-constitutional change parties occupy more than two-thirds of the parliament, the constitution will be the most important political issue next year,” said Hidenori Suezawa, a financial market and fiscal analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities.

If China had dealt with North Korea when and as they should have, then there wouldn’t even be any talk about amending or abolishing Japan’s Article 9.

“UNEXPECTEDLY,” AFTER AN EIGHT YEAR ABSENCE, ASSASSINATION PORN IS BACK. NYT Reporter: Thumbs Up for ‘Trenchant Satire’ ‘To Kill the President’, Excuses Lefty Hate.

Michelle Malkin needs to update her Assassination Chic archives. Also, I eagerly await Paul Krugman denouncing his fellow Timesman for approving such eliminationist rhetoric.

HE’S BACK: Jimmy Carter Volunteers to Negotiate End to North Korea Crisis.

WHY ARE LEFTY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF WORKER EXPLOITATION? Photographer sues New York Times over age discrimination and ‘full-time freelancer’ status.

The New York Times and its photography director Michele McNally have been hit with a lawsuit by former Times’ photographer Robert Stolarik. The lawsuit claims that Stolarik, age 48, was discriminated against due to his age, and was also misclassified as a ‘full-time freelancer’ for nearly a decade.

According to the complaint—which was filed on July 6th in New York and covered at that time by Bloomberg BNA—Stolarik began working for the Times as a photographer in Colombia in 2000, followed by additional work in Venezuela until 2002. Stolarik then resumed working for the Times in 2004, the legal document explains, ultimately resulting in nearly a decade of full-time work.

However, despite working full-time, the lawsuit claims that Stolarik was paid under a 1099-MISC form as a freelancer—a classification that deprived Stolarik of the benefits that would have come with full-time employment, including health insurance.

I’m not actually shocked by this.