"Just to get us started on the North Korea question, here's an apt interchange in an interview which CNN's Miles O'Brien did with Newsweek's foreign affairs correspondent Roy Gutman on Monday ... "

Josh Marshall's keeping an eye on the North Korea situation and Bush's botching of it

"On Sunday Secretary of State Colin Powell took to the airwaves to explain why the situation in North Korea, "grave" and "serious" though it may be, does not rise to the level of a crisis. Powell argued that while a country which just expelled weapons inspectors in anticipation of building a half-dozen nuclear bombs by summer may seem like an imminent threat to the naked eye, North Korea is actually considerably less threatening than, say, Iraq. "This is a country that's in desperate condition," Powell said of North Korea. "What are they going to do with another two or three more nuclear weapons when they're starving, when they have no energy, when they have no economy that's functioning?"

Um, plenty. What follows is a point-by-point comparison of the relative threats presented by Iraq and North Korea. Any honest reading suggests North Korea represents every bit the crisis Iraq does, if not more. "

TNR breaks down why North Korea is at least as serious a threat as Iraq.

"Worried that their party has been outgunned in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television personalities, influential Democrats are scouring the nation for a liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh and the many others on the deep bench of Republican friends.

For years, Democrats have groused about their inability to balance what they see as the increasing influence over the electorate by advocates of Republican policies.

But they say their concerns have taken on a new urgency because of the rise to the top of the cable news ratings by the Fox News Channel, considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the loss of the Senate to the Republicans in November. Some Democrats say the election outcome enhanced the influence of Fox News and personalities like Mr. Limbaugh."

Another NY Times article along the lines of the one I commented on here a few weeks back.  While I don't like the idea of stooping to the same level, I'll readily admit that the Democrats are losing the mouth-breathing talk-radio listening masses to the Right and its really too large a group to ignore.  In the article, the Right, in the personage of Sean Hannity, claim that the Democrat's problem isn't the lack of media figures to hype their ideas, its the lack of ideas: "The public isn't interested in the kind of liberalism that the Democratic party has come to represent."  I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this search turns up a Rush Lib-baugh.  Sorry, that was unnecessary.

Slate weighs in with their collection of critics favorite movies of 2002.  I won't summarize them all here, since its a fairly long list, but a few movies that were not mentioned by Salon that are on my list of things to see once they hit dvd are brought up:

• Bloody Sunday
• About Schmidt
• Minority Report
• The Fast Runner

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Let's hope this year is better than the last, and that there's many more to come!