Cry now if you must, but the US and North Korea have settled their Macau problem. Really, all the whingeing coming from the collapsing big tent of the US Republican party is unseemly. It's like watching hyenas turn on their ageing leaders.

But don’t blame Treasury, which has been doing plenty in the way of financial pressure to try to stop everything from Kim’s counterfeiting rackets to his rogue nuclear program — and been slapped down for its pains. This payoff to Kim is what comes of the White House turning over all North Korea policy to the State Department, and Condi Rice turning over all State Department policy to Jimmy-Carter-wannabe Chris Hill, envoy to the Six-Party talks. Hill, who is also in Beijing right now, not only wants to make sure Kim Jong Il gets the frozen millions back, but on Monday told reporters “We want it to happen as soon as possible.� Clearly Hill prides himself on getting things done, but what he’s doing at this point is not diplomacy. It could better be described as doing Kim Jong Il’s dirty laundry.

But then, nothing has changed for the GOP. The Blues make internecine warfare look like a microcosm of the nation's politics; the Reds eat their own (via TMH).

Perhaps the most salient quote ever attributed to a senior Bush administration official was delivered to Ronald Suskind, who wrote the 2004 book “The Price of Loyalty.� “Guys like me,� Suskind said he was told by a Bush aide, “were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’� The aide told Suskind, “That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.�

The Bush empire is now creating an entirely new and uncomfortable reality ‑ that a toothless agreement to freeze North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and the apparent agreement that the bogus funds that exist in Banco Delta Asia are, well, maybe not so bogus, exemplifies the promotion of “freedom and democracyâ€?  across the world.

There's still a long ways to go from this baby step, but it's a sign that reality is no longer an American monopoly. But really, the big change comes from the answer to Kenn Fukuda's complaint: the US is no longer the sole judge of Pyongyang's compliance.