RATTLING KIM JONG UN: Insulting a dictator’s “dignity” is a potentially valuable psychological weapon. And Trump uses it. He rattled Crooked Hillary, an arrogant banana republic tin pot if there ever was one. Now he’s working on Rocket Man. It appears even the MSM’s noticed the rattle. (bumped)

IS IT FINALLY TRUE? State Department claims China’s “making progress in enforcing sanctions” on North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korea expects more provocations from North Korea in mid-October.

KIM JONG UN IS RATTLED: Insulting a dictator’s “dignity” is a potentially valuable psychological weapon. And Trump uses it. He rattled Crooked Hillary, a banana republic tin pot if there ever was one. Now he’s working on Rocket Man.

VERY RELATED: It appears even the Washington Post acknowledges the rattle. ” Trump “might be irrational — or too smart,” the North Korean Pak Song Il told Osnos. “We don’t know.”

Heh.

NATIONALIST ASPIRATIONS IN KURDISTAN AND CATALONIA: My latest Creators Syndicate column. It was published yesterday.

INSULTING A DICTATOR’S “DIGNITY” IS A POTENTIALLY VALUABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPON: Trump’s nicknames, like Crooked Hillary and Rocket Man, are such damningly effective political caricatures they become psychological weapons. (Bumped)

BOMBER LINE ON GUAM: B-1Bs prepare for operations in Asia.

INSULTING A DICTATOR’S “DIGNITY” IS A POTENTIALLY VALUABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPON: Trump’s nicknames, like Crooked Hillary and Rocket Man, are such damningly effective political caricatures they become psychological weapons. (Bumped)

INSULTING A DICTATOR’S “DIGNITY” IS A POTENTIALLY VALUABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPON: Trump’s nicknames, like Crooked Hillary and Rocket Man, are such damningly effective political caricatures they become psychological weapons.

ROCKET MAN ACCUSES TRUMP OF DECLARING WAR: Is North Korea trying to put China in a “war trap?”

ROCKET MAN’S REGIME THREATENS TO SHOOT DOWN U.S. AIRCRAFT “ANYTIME”: That’s what North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said yesterday. Last Saturday North Korea said a missile attack on the U.S. mainland was inevitable because Trump had insulted North Korea’s “dignity.” That comment tells us Trump’s latest taunts struck their target: dictator Kim Jong Un.

SKY STREAK: An F/A-18E Super Hornet over the Philippine Sea. The jet is flying by the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76).

COUNTER-TERROR WARFARE IN MALI AND NIGER: France arms its Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with Hellfires.

France began using the Reaper UAV in Africa in 2014 but they were unarmed. The Reapers are built to handle hot and dusty conditions and have about twice the readiness and over five times the endurance of the Tigers. The French Reapers would often find Islamic terrorists in Mali but by the time a Tiger helicopter, a fixed wing warplane (equipped with smart bombs) or ground troops could arrive the Islamic terrorists were often no longer vulnerable to attack. Meanwhile the Americans had been using Hellfire armed Reapers and smaller Predators throughout Africa and the Middle East regularly for nearly two decades.

Finding them is good, finishing them quickly is better.

Here’s a photo of a Reaper taking off on a night mission in Afghanistan.

TRUMP HITS THE RIGHT NOTES ON CUBA AND VENEZUELA:

From The Miami Herald:

“The socialist dictatorship” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “is completely unacceptable,” Trump told the General Assembly. He added that “we cannot stand by and watch,” and that the international community’s goal should be to “recover freedom, restore the country, return to democracy.”

On Cuba, Trump called the Cuban regime “corrupt” and “destabilizing” and said he will not lift U.S. sanctions on the Cuban government until Cuba enacts “fundamental reforms.”

Indeed.

EMBRACE THE SUCK: Second Edition pre-order page at Amazon.

FABULOUS –AND EERIE– PHOTO FROM THE COCKPIT: An Air National Guard C-130J prepares to drop fire retardant on a fire southeast of Fresno, California.

U.S. PRESSURES KURDS TO HALT REFERENDUM:

The United States ramped up pressure Wednesday on Iraq’s Kurds to abandon a planned referendum on independence, threatening to withdraw international support for negotiations with Baghdad if the vote isn’t scrapped.

In a forceful warning, the Trump administration said the costs of holding the Sept. 25 vote would be high “for all Iraqis, including Kurds.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. was urging the Kurds to “accept the alternative” — talks between the northern Kurdish region and Iraq’s central government that the U.S. and United Nations would facilitate.

“If this referendum is conducted, it is highly unlikely that there will be negotiations with Baghdad, and the above international offer of support for negotiations will be foreclosed,” Nauert said.

We live in interesting times.

A “WHAT IF” NORTH KOREAN ATMOSPHERIC NUCLEAR TEST SCENARIO:

PJ Media contributor Charlie Martin asked me to consider the following “gray area” scenario:

What if a North Korean EMP (electromagentic pulse) is intended as a “demonstration”? Suppose the nuke explodes over the North Pacific in an area that, say, the geography- and technology-ignorant cable news talking heads swear is open water, thousands of miles from U.S. and Japanese territory? And they claim that the only danger at that point is Trump’s response?

My reply includes a map exercise.

RELATED: From 2013, a report that North Korea was seeking non-nuclear EMP weapons. See the October 23, 2013 post: “…South Korean intelligence also warns that North Korea is using Russian technology to develop EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapons.”

RUSSIA’S WAR IN UKRAINE AND WAR GAMES IN BELARUS: The RUBK connection.

EMBRACE THE SUCK ALERT: Second Edition pre-order page at Amazon. The new cover is fabulous.

A PHOTO TAKEN TODAY, SEPTEMBER 18, OVER THE KOREAN PENINSULA: A USAF B-1B strategic bomber in formation with South Korean fighter-bombers and USMC F-35Bs.

RELATED: Escalation is a two-way street.

Senior North Korean officials who have gotten out in the last few years all agree that Kim Jong Un is considered a failure by more and more North Koreans and that his days are numbered, even if China does not step in and take over beforehand. Yet these senior officials report that Kim Jong Un could keep his police state going into the late 2020s. But time is not on his side and the signs backing that up are increasingly obvious. Kim Jong Un has triggered a trend that will destroy him and nothing he does seems to fix the problem. He believes having workable nukes and a reliable delivery system (ballistic missiles) will enable him to extort the neighbors for enough goodies to bail him out. That is a high-risk strategy.

Read the whole thing.

THE ABACOS ISLANDS, NOT JURASSIC PARK: The plan to clone an extinct horse. (Here’s some background on the Abacos.)

STRIKE EAGLES OVER IRAQ: The photo was snapped September 6.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: THE MIDDLE CLASS MAKES A COMEBACK.

The middle class is back — or so it seems.

That’s the message from the Census Bureau’s latest report on “Income and Poverty in the United States.” The news is mostly good. The income of the median household (the one exactly in the middle) rose to a record $59,039; the two-year increase was a strong 8.5 percent. Meanwhile, 2.5 million fewer Americans were living beneath the government’s poverty line ($24,563 for a family of four). The poverty rate fell from 13.5 percent of the population in 2015 to 12.7 percent in 2016.

The Census report reinforces Gallup polls — reported here a few weeks ago — that Americans have re-embraced their middle-class identities.

But all is not well. Read the entire column.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TABASCO SAUCE AND THE U.S. MILITARY: Good read.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE ARABIAN GULF: Task Force 50 in formation. The USS Nimitz, USS Princeton, the French navy air defense destroyer FS Jean Bart and the Royal Australian Navy frigate HMAS Newcastle.