Getting shot at really wasn't that bad.

It's the getting shot part that sucked.

Jacques Chirac says France will not authorize a U.N. resolution allowing the United States and Britain to administer postwar Iraq.

The new study, carried out by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates the present value of the revenue that will be lost because of the Bush tax cuts -- those that have already taken place, together with those that have been proposed -- using the same economic assumptions that underlie those Medicare and Social Security projections. The total comes to $12 trillion to $14 trillion -- more than the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls combined. What this means is that the revenue that will be sacrificed because of those tax cuts is not a minor concern. On the contrary, that revenue would have been more than enough to "top up" Social Security and Medicare, allowing them to operate without benefit cuts for the next 75 years.

Social Security is going bankrupt. The federal government's largest spending program, accounting for nearly 22 percent of all federal spending, faces irresistible demographic and fiscal pressures that threaten the future retirement security of today's young workers. According to the 2000 report of the Social Security system's Board of Trustees, in 2015, just 15 years from now, the Social Security system will begin to run a deficit. [Editor's note: If you follow the link above to my post last year, you'll note that the 2002 figures had actually pushed the date back to 2017.] That is, it will begin to spend more on benefits than it brings in through taxes. Anyone who has ever run a business--or balanced a checkbook--understands that when you are spending more than you bring in, something has to give--you need to start either earning more money or spending less to keep things balanced. For Social Security, that means either higher taxes or lower benefits.

In a unique form of opposition, some protesters at the Federal Building staged a "vomit in,'' by heaving on the sidewalks and plaza areas in the back and front of the building to show that the war in Iraq made them sick, according to a spokesman.

For instance, Ted Kennedy does not appear on the [meaning television] news with much frequency, but during the first six months of 2001, when he did, it was almost always accompanied by the word "liberal."

Clearly, Goldberg was totally wrong in his statement to Grossman. He implied that network newscasts never call Ted a lib, and that is plainly false. Do they identify Kennedy more or less often than they do with conservative solons? That question we simply can’t answer. We don’t plan to do all Bernie’s research for him?but that is a question he should have studied before he published his laughable book, and before he went all over the country making pleasing but flagrant misstatements.

As the economist/pundit Paul Krugman observes of Republican efforts to bully the media into accepting the party's Orwellian arguments about Social Security privatization: "The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla, much of the media -- fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of 'balance' -- won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown."

Hoy states on his web page that he was trained as a journalist and he works for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Yet he doesn’t care about Slander’s sourcing issues, only Alterman’s less important critiques of it. What’s wrong with that picture? First, Coulter’s sourcing issues were the main point of Alterman’s critique?that Coulter’s mendacity and bile refute the very premise of her book: that the decline in political discourse is ?all liberals’ fault.? Also, Alterman go [sic] beyond writing that ?her footnotes don't support her claims.? Alterman illustrated that Coulter is a lying sack of **** [expletive deleted] (though he put it much more delicately). Yet in Hoy’s world, since he doesn’t care about the point, it is irrelevant and should be ignored. Shouldn’t that be a journalist’s primary concern?

Somewhat more troubling is that Alterman brings to the debate ideological baggage of his own. Bias is of course a relative question, dictated largely by an observer’s own place on the political spectrum.

About this Alterman leaves little doubt. Look at how he identifies some of the people he writes about: The Democratic Leadership Council is “neoconservative,” New York Gov. George Pataki (R) is “conservative,” radio shock jock Howard Stern is lumped in with “movement conservatives.” Michel Martin, the liberal foil for George Will on ABC’s “This Week,” is “nonpartisan,” while The Wall Street Journal’s token liberal Al Hunt is a “token moderate.”

The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.

Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court - all in just two years.

People who really know what they are talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program, and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war, or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.

Subject: All I can do is laugh
You call yourself a journalist?

While my fellow American's [sic] are eating freedom fries, dumping Champagne down the toilet and belching war whoops, there's one guy who sees clearly and speaks for me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you William Jefferson Clinton:

"The U.S. should be strengthening the UN and other "'mechanisms of cooperation,'" Clinton said. "We need to be creating a world that we would like to live in when we're not the biggest power on the block."

"I'm the just the latest victim of crime," he quipped. "Crime has gone up under George W. Bush's watch."

As reported by Dr. Michel F. Levesque to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the California neurosurgeon had treated Turner for his progressing Parkinson's with (Californian Dennis) Turner's own neural stem cells. First, a pea-sized sample of tissue was removed from Turner's brain. Then, stem cells in the tissue were isolated and cultured into the millions. Finally, the cells were injected back into Turner's brain. One year after the procedure, the patient's symptoms were reduced by more than 80 percent ? even though Turner was treated in only one brain lobe.

Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There's a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush's policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job.

You have declared yourselves to be shocked, appalled, startled, puzzled and above all disappointed by what you thought was a defection to the hawk side. "I'm Persuaded," said the headline, which went a little beyond the story.

But it was my fault. I did not make it clear enough that while I believed what Colin Powell told me about Saddam Hussein's poison collection, I was not convinced that war was the answer. I guess I took it for granted that you would know what I meant.

A little more than a month ago I set to work on an article about how attacking Iraq -- once a hobbyhorse of right-wing think tank intellectuals -- had moved to the center of the American foreign policy debate. Clearly, President Bush's election and 9/11 had a lot to do with the change. But neither development completely explained the shift to my satisfaction. So I launched into the project eager to skewer the various propagandists and ideologues who've used all manner of underhanded methods and cheap media ploys to hustle the country into a second war against Saddam Hussein.

But along the way I came to an unexpected and for me troubling conclusion. I decided that the hawks were right. By that I mean that containment isn't working and that what the right-wingers like to call 'regime change' really should be our national policy. And, if necessary, we should do it by overwhelming military force.

Need I point out that North Korea, not Iraq, is the clear and present danger? Kim Jong Il's nuclear program isn't a rumor or a forgery; it's an incipient bomb assembly line. Yet the administration insists that it's a mere "regional" crisis, and refuses even to talk to Mr. Kim.

President Clinton readies troops for invasion of Afghanistan

Claims Taliban, Osama bin Laden threat to U.S.

Actor Mike Farrell, best known for his role as Trapper John's replacement in "M*A*S*H," has emerged as a leading antiwar activist. This month, he even engaged in a surreal debate on geopolitics with former senator Fred Thompson on "Meet the Press." "It is inappropriate," Farrell declared, "for the administration to trump up a case in which we are ballyhooed into war."

But in 1999, Mr. Farrell defended the Clinton administration's rationale for war in Kosovo: "I think it's appropriate for the international community in situations like this to intervene. I am in favor of an intervention." To avoid casualties, the Clinton administration had bombers fly at such high altitudes that "collateral damage" to civilians was bound to increase.

For Christ's sake, in 1991 the Iraqi army deflated like a pricked balloon. It disintegrated so quickly, so easily, that even I captured four of its soldiers. I was behind a dune in the Saudi desert, all alone. Four skeletal creatures in ragged uniforms came toward me with arms raised, and whispered: "Bush, Bush." Meaning: "Please take me prisoner. I am so thirsty, so hungry." So I took them prisoner. I delivered them to the Marine in charge, and instead of congratulating me he grumbled: "Dammit! Some more?!?" Yet the Americans did not get to Baghdad, did not remove Saddam. And, to thank them, Saddam tried to kill their president. The same president who had left him in power.

But while some conservatives actually believe their own grumbles, the smart ones don't. [emphasis added]

"There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media].... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."

Coulter joked about how wonderful it would it would have been if Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building and murdered all of its inhabitants... For such comments she is celebrated and rewarded."

The motley band of a dozen troops waved the white flag as British paratroopers tested their weapons during a routine exercise.

The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender.

The "human shields" are leaving Iraq, disenchanted after discovering that their Iraqi "co-ordinators" wanted to deploy them not at "humanitarian" facilities but at military bases. One fellow said he was used to working with young children and would have preferred to be deployed at an orphanage. Pity the poor Iraqi official who had to explain to the guy that the orphanage has already got all the human shields it needs: they're called "orphans".

Due to its location between the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan has long been mentioned as a potential pipeline route, though in the near term, several obstacles will likely prevent Afghanistan from becoming an energy transit corridor. Unocal had pursued a possible natural gas pipeline from Turmenistan to Pakistan in the mid-1990s, but pulled out after the U.S. missile strikes against Afghanistan in August 1998. The new Afghan government under President Karzai has tried to revive the pipeline plan, and talks have been held between the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan in 2002 on the issue, but a signing ceremony for a framework agreement between the governments has been delayed until at least December 2002.

Given the obstacles to development of a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that such an idea will make any progress in the near future, and no major Western companies have expressed interest in reviving the project. The security situation in Afghanistan is one obvious major risk, and the tensions between India and Pakistan make it unlikely that such a pipeline could be extended into India, which unlike Pakistan has sufficient immediate demand for imported natural gas to justify a project of such magnitude. Financial problems in the utility sector in India, which would be the major consumer of the natural gas, also could pose a problem.

Being friends with sons-of-bitches in order to spread freedom and fight tyranny is entirely defensible; being friends with SOBs because it's convenient is immoral.

But Mexico's seat on the U.N. Security Council gives it a vote on the question of Iraq -- and the threats the Bush administration has made to get that vote are quickly destroying any semblance of good will.

Last week The Economist quoted an American diplomat who warned that if Mexico didn't vote for a U.S. resolution it could "stir up feelings" against Mexicans in the United States. He compared the situation to that of Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wondered whether Mexico "wants to stir the fires of jingoism during a war."

Incredible stuff, but easy to dismiss as long as the diplomat was unidentified. Then came President Bush's Monday interview with Copley News Service. He alluded to the possibility of reprisals if Mexico didn't vote America's way, saying, "I don't expect there to be significant retribution from the government" ? emphasizing the word "government." He then went on to suggest that there might, however, be a reaction from other quarters, citing "an interesting phenomena taking place here in America about the French . . . a backlash against the French, not stirred up by anybody except the people."

And Mr. Bush then said that if Mexico or other countries oppose the United States, "there will be a certain sense of discipline."

These remarks went virtually unreported by the ever-protective U.S. media, but they created a political firestorm in Mexico. The White House has been frantically backpedaling, claiming that when Mr. Bush talked of "discipline" he wasn't making a threat. But in the context of the rest of the interview, it's clear that he was.

If Mexico -- or other countries -- oppose the United States, he said, "There will be a certain sense of discipline." But he quickly added, "I expect Mexico to be with us."

He joked about a comment in yesterday's New York Times suggesting that Bush "does keep score" when countries oppose him. "I wouldn't believe everything you read," he said with a laugh.

Moreover, Mr. Bush was disingenuous when he described the backlash against the French as "not stirred up by anybody except the people." On the same day that the report of his interview appeared, The Financial Times carried the headline, "Hastert Orchestrates Tirade Against the French." That's Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House of Representatives. In fact, anti-French feeling has been carefully fomented by Republican officials, Rupert Murdoch's media empire and other administration allies. Can you blame Mexicans for interpreting Mr. Bush's remarks as a threat to do the same to them?

So oderint dum metuant it is. I could talk about the foolishness of such blatant bullying ? or about the incredible risks, in a multiethnic, multiracial society, of even hinting that one might encourage a backlash against Hispanics. And yes, I mean Hispanics, not Mexicans: once feelings are running high, do you really think people will politely ask a brown-skinned guy with an accent whether he is a citizen or, if not, which country he comes from?

But my most intense reaction to this story isn't anger over the administration's stupidity and irresponsibility, or even dismay over the casual destruction of hard-won friendships. No, when I read an interview in which the U.S. president sounds for all the world like a B-movie villain ? "You have relatives in Texas, yes?" ? what I feel, above all, is shame.

ROYAL OAK, Michigan (AP) -- Doctors said Wednesday they are attempting an experimental procedure to heal a teenage patient's heart by infusing it with the boy's own blood stem cells. It could take months to know whether it works, but doctors say they are already seeing encouraging results.

Gentlemen, if today’s terrorism is not an outgrowth of Islam and if it gives Islam a "bad name", and therefore even defames Islam, why isn’t the outcry from the Muslim world much more vehement? Where are all of the mass demonstrations of angry Muslims shouting and denouncing Bin Laden for slandering Islam?

As'ad AbuKhalil: Why should Arabs and Muslims always dance to US tunes? So Arabs and Muslims are only humans if they respond to US orders for demonstrations only on issues that the US decides on? In the Middle East, people widely and uniformly condemn the Sep. 11 attacks, so they do not feel the need to keep reiterating their stance to appease anti-Muslim bigots like Falwell, Robertson, and F. Graham.

Some Republicans have been taking a quote out of context from Senator Leahy from June 1998 about judicial nominations, replacing his actual words with an ellipse, then distributing it widely and misusing it.

Here is what Republicans keep quoting: "I have stated over and over again ... [ELLIPSE] that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported."

What the Republican talking points omit with their ellipse is the essential context of that quote. Senator Leahy’s actual comment was made during floor discussion about AN ANONYMOUS REPUBLICAN HOLD on yet another of President Clinton’s nominees. Here was his actual comment:

?I have stated over and over again on this floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge; that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should do its duty.?

The process of the anonymous holds with which Republicans prevented action on Clinton judicial nominees required NOT JUST A MAJORITY or a SUPERMAJORITY for the Senate to proceed to votes; Republicans were killing Clinton nominees by requiring UNANIMITY. And they were doing it ANONYMOUSLY, without accountability to the public. In the case of the Estrada nomination, Senate Democrats are using their leverage to PUBLICLY seek the Justice Department memoranda that the Judiciary Committee began requesting NEARLY A YEAR AGO, before proceeding to a vote.

Senate Democrats have raised serious and legitimate concerns about the Senate proceeding to a final vote, concerning the incompleteness of the record, the lack of responsive answers to basic questions and the refusal to turn over memos equivalent to memos provided to the Senate in other nominations.

The filibuster rule (part of Congress's Constitutional right to organize) prevents Congress from carrying out its Constitutional mandate to advise and consent (Terry Eastland, Filibustering Miguel).

Is it not reasonable to assume Congress cannot establish rules that prevent it from carrying out its duty to advice and consent? Therefore, filibuster of judicial nominee is unconstitutional and Republican leadership should seek court relief. After all, the Senate was not able to filibuster impeachment, so some Senate functions can't be filibustered.

--Charles Rayner

George W. Bush's Iraq war will be America's first religious war, one inspired by groups of Christian fundamentalists and Jewish neoconservatives, a coalition whose zeal for war is as great as that of the original crusaders.

The origin of the crusades was a 1095 meeting in Autun, France, where 36 bishops made the first vows to "go to Jerusalem." Four years later, the crusaders took Jerusalem, only to see it recaptured by Saladin. The First Crusade launched centuries of war between crusaders and indigenous peoples from North Africa to Russia.

Today, the idea is to "go to Baghdad," but is rooted in a the same desire: to serve Jerusalem (Israel) and remake the Middle East. Like the crusaders, the new coalition represents the wedding of religious zeal and military power, always a fatal connection.

I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.

In the late 1980s, when AIDS first came to Uganda, the Kampala government realized that it was being transmitted through sexual behavior. Authorities rallied religious leaders and others behind a massive campaign to convince the population to change its sexual behavior. "Zero grazing outside of your own field," was the slogan the government used to promote its "ABC." initiative. The message to the Ugandan people: Abstain from sex if you can, Be faithful to your partner, and if this doesn't work, use a Condom.

It worked brilliantly. Unlike most other African nations, the HIV infection rate peaked in 1991, and has been steadily dropping since. Studies show that Ugandans dramatically reduced their risky sexual activity. And this successful program, which was devised wholly by the Ugandans themselves, could be implemented with little money.

"It will be a story with a moral," said Majorie Scardino, the chief executive of Penguin's parent company Pearson.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just ask one final question. If the United States goes forward anyway and in a month, two months, they go into Baghdad, they go into Iraq, and discover thousands of tons of chemical/biological weapons, what would you think then?

DE VILLEPIN: Well I think that we should have gave more time to the inspectors to make sure that this was going to happen. You see if the army is going to find it, don't you think the inspectors are in the position to find it? I think, and that's why we said we are ready to reinforce the inspectors, to give more hundreds of inspectors on the ground. We have the possibility everyday to know more about these programs. We should use this possibility. Every day we know more about these programs. [emphasis added]

STEPHANOPOULOS: France and Iraq have a long and complicated history on nuclear cooperation. France provided the original nuclear reactors to Iraq. Given what Saddam Hussein has said in the past, he has said the only mistake he made in 1991 was invading Kuwait before he had nuclear weapons. Do you now believe that Israel was right to bomb the Osaraq(sp?) reactor and France was wrong to help build it?

DE VILLEPIN: I think you cannot remake history. You can take lessons. You can imagine different scenarios. I don't think it's possible today definite answers. I think that the idea of preemptive strike might be a possibility. Have it as a doctrine, as a theory, I don't think it is really useful. Sometimes by using force preemptively we might create more violence and we have to be always thinking to what are the consequences.