Kim jong-Il Apes Harry Reid

Having apparently concluded that he can't bully, bluster, or bamboozle George W. Bush the way he did Bill Clinton, the pot-bellied North Korean kingpin has decided to stall until the latter's ball & chain can take his place.

A top North Korean official said over the weekend that it was pointless for Kim Jong Il to continue to negotiate with the U.S. "as long as [President] Bush stays in power," explaining that Pyongyang would be better off waiting for a friendlier administration in Washington.

Just think about that last part - a "friendlier administration in Washington. As in "friendlier to a murderous psychopath brandishing nuclear weapons who can't be trusted as far as he can spit."

And we know just who he really means, don't we? Namely, the same people who are supplying Pyongyang's "diplomatic" rhetoric:

"Because Bush is, indeed, a world dictator whose hands are stained with the blood shed by innocent civilians, peace can never settle in the world as long as Bush stays in power," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman said that since the president's first inauguration, North Korea has shown the "utmost magnanimity and patience," but that Bush "is a half-baked man in terms of morality and a philistine whom we can never deal with."

Tell me that couldn't have been plucked off of Daily Kos or Democrat Underground on a day of quasi-lucidity. These are the people who would eagerly buy into openly blatant repeat-swindles like this:

Last June, Pyongyang said it wanted to return to the Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration, which gave North Korea two plutonium-producing light water nuclear reactors and turned the country into the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region.

In exchange for a return to the 1994 deal, Pyongyang said it would make the plutonium it had produced in violation of the Agreed Framework available for inspection and promised not to give it to terrorists. [my emphasis]

It strains credulity to suggest that any American administration could get snookered into such foolishness a second time. It would have to be in cahoots with the NKComms on some level.

Quite obviously the Bush White House is not such an administration.

But a Rodham administration would be. That's what Kim - and if my suspicions are correct, the ChiComms as well - are counting on.

And they'll probably get their wish.