Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday pointed to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as fresh evidence of the ongoing battle against terrorism that underscores the need to keep President Bush's Republican allies in control of Congress.

"This conflict is a long way from over," Cheney said at a fundraising appearance for a GOP congressional candidate. "It's going to be a battle that will last for a very long time. It is absolutely essential that we stay the course."

"Gus is going to remember that the first order of business is to protect the American people and to support the men and women who defend us in time of war," Cheney told the audience at a $500-a-ticket fundraising reception. "There's still hard work ahead in the war on terror."

Cheney said that as Republicans make their case to voters in the midterm elections, "it's vital that we keep issues of national security at the top of the agenda." He faulted Democrats in Congress who have pushed for a timetable for withdrawing Americans from Iraq, saying that would send the wrong message to terrorists.

"If anyone thinks the conflict is over or soon to be over, all they have to do is look at what's happening in the Middle East today," he said.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

[snip]

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

I reported in May that despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq, no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been produced on that country since the summer of 2004. The last NIE, a classified document that the CIA describes as “the most authoritative written judgment concerning a national security issue,” was rejected by the Bush Administration (after being leaked to the New York Times) as being too negative, though its grim assessment subsequently proved to be highly accurate.

The situation has gotten even darker since my initial story—a United Nations report cited in Wednesday's New York Times found that an average of more than 100 Iraqi civilians were killed each day in June—and I've learned from two sources that some senior figures at the CIA, along with a number of Iraq analysts, have been pushing to produce a new NIE. They've been stonewalled, however, by John Negroponte, the administration's Director of National Intelligence, who knows that any honest take on the situation would produce an NIE even more pessimistic than the 2004 version. That could create problems on the Hill and, if it is leaked as the last one was, with the public as well.

“What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.”

I volunteer at BARC, where Hermes lives, and I know for a fact he's a pervert. He loves kittens and licks them clean. We give him kittens for company and he takes great care of them. He's a friendly, eccentric tub of a cat who really needs to move on from the shelter and be saluted in a home with other cats. Applicants to adopt him will be screened for fitness and purity at Kitler Boot Camp.

Hermes is the BARC Cat Loft's "biggest" attraction. He was a young street cat who elluded many rescuers before finally being trapped and brought to BARC. Originally on the second floor of the main building, Hermes became very ill and had to be quarantined. His eyes were so badly infected that we were sure he would be blind. Feisty and combative from the start, the many days and nights of intensive eye medications and treatments may have been what finally made him give in and allow us to handle him...carefully! When Hermes made the move to the Cat Loft, someone discovered that he was a natural at nurturing orphan kittens, especially the fearful feral ones, and that has been his role ever since. That and getting a good meal in now and then!

I too am a BARC volunteer and have grown to love Hermes. He's like a bowling ball with legs who also resembles Oliver Hardy. He waddles over when he's called and loves being petted and brushed. When he's had enough, he looks up at you with his paw raised in a Seig Heil-like salute (I kid you not!) and holds it that way until you back off. But I've never seen him being the least bit aggressive...he's 18 pounds of pure mush and Science Diet!

We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.

KRISTOL: We have to be ready to use military force against Iran, if it comes to that. Think what this crisis would be like given what we now know about the Islamic Republic of Iran, its regime, its recklessness, its close, close ties to terrorist groups... the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power. There are even moderates – they are not wonderful people — but people in the government itself who are probably nervous about Ahmadinejad’s recklessness.

This is why standing up to Iran right now is so important. They’re overreached. They and Hezbollah have recklessly overreached. They got cocky. This is the moment to set them back. I think a setback to Hezbollah could trigger changes in Iran. People can say, wait a second, what is Ahmadinejad doing to us. We’re alone. The Arab world is even against us. The Muslim world is against us. Let’s reconsider this reckless path that we’re on.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it...Each of these children was still adopted while still an embryo and has been blessed with a chance to grow, to grow up in a loving family. These boys and girls are not spare parts...They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. The remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals."

QUESTION: The United States is not that helpless. It could have stopped the bombardments of Lebanon. We have that much control with the Israelis.

SNOW: I don't think so.

QUESTION: We have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine. And what's happening -- and that's the perception of the United States.

SNOW: Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view, but I would encourage you...

QUESTION: Nobody's accepting your explanation. What is it say, to call for...

SNOW: I'll tell you, what's interesting is people have. The G-8 was completely united on this. And as you know when it comes to issues of...

The amazing Pew Internet Life project has just released a study on blogging in the USA -- it's full of really chunky stats compiled from phone interviews with bloggers: "most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression -- documenting individual experiences, sharing practical knowledge, or just keeping in touch with friends and family."

• The most distinguishing characteristic of bloggers is their youth. More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30. Like the internet population in general, however, bloggers are evenly divided between men and women, and more than half live in the suburbs. Another third live in urban areas and a scant 13% live in rural regions.
  
• Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race...
  
• 55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym, and 46% blog under their own name.
  
• 84% of bloggers describe their blog as either a “hobby” or just “something I do, but not something I spend a lot of time on.”
  
• 59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. One in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on their blog.

The open-microphone incident at the G-8 lunch in St. Petersburg on Monday illustrated once more that W. never made any effort to adapt. The president has enshrined his immaturity and insularity, turning every environment he inhabits — no matter how decorous or serious — into a comfortable frat house.

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.

Catching W. off-guard, the really weird thing is his sense of victimization. He’s strangely resentful about the actual core of his job. Even after the debacles of Iraq and Katrina, he continues to treat the presidency as a colossal interference with his desire to mountain bike and clear brush.

In snippets of overheard conversation, Mr. Bush says he has not bothered to prepare any closing remarks and grouses about having to listen to other world leaders talk too long. What did he think being president was about?

The world may be blowing up, and the president may have a rare opportunity to jaw-jaw about bang-bang with his peers, but that pales in comparison with his burning desire to return to his feather pillow and gym back at the White House.

“Gotta go home,’’ he tells the guy next to him. “Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home.” A White House spokesman said Mr. Bush had nothing on his schedule after he returned to Washington on Monday about 4 p.m.

When he began meandering about how big Russia was, you expected him to yell, “Yo, Condi!’’ and ask his secretary of state: “Hey, what’s the name of that other big country that has more people than any other country in the world? It begins with a ‘C.’ Dad spent some time there.’’

Perhaps it’s that anti-patrician chip on his shoulder, his rebellion against a family that prized manners and diplomacy above all. But when bored or frustrated, W. reserves the right to be boorish — no matter if the setting is a gilded palace or a Texas gorge.

He treated Tony “As It Were” Blair like the servant in “The Remains of the Day,’’ blowing off his offer to help with the Israel-Lebanon crisis, and changing the subject from substance to fluff at one point, noting about his 60th-birthday Burberry gift: “Thanks for the sweater. Awfully thoughtful of you.’’ Then he razzed the British prime minister, who was hovering and wheedling like an abused wife: “I know you picked it out yourself.”

After doing his best to undermine the U.N. and Kofi Annan, W. talked about the secretary general like a fraternity pledge he wanted to send out for more beer or a keg of Diet Coke: “I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen.’’

His loosey-goosey confidence that everything could be fixed with a phone call — and not even a phone call made by him, and not even a phone call made to the Iranians, who have more control over Hezbollah — was striking. He seems to have no clue that his own headlong, heedless actions in the Middle East have contributed to the deepening chaos there, and to Iran’s growing influence and America’s diminished leverage.

Mr. Bush may resent the sophistication required of a president. But when the world is going to hell, he should stop chewing and start thinking.

According to a published report, Ann Coulter has (in jest, we assume) claimed to have sent that mysterious white powder to The New York Times.

Reporter Jacob Bernstein, in a "Memo Pad" item in today's Women's Wear Daily, wrote that he received a message from a New York Times source saying that Friday's powder mailing -- which included an Xed-out Times editorial and what ended up being corn starch -- "makes all of Ann Coulter's comments a little less funny. I wonder if she considers herself at all responsible when lunatics read her columns and she says that we should be killed."

Coulter, whose column is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, has "joked" that maybe terrorist Timothy McVeigh should have blown up the Times building and that maybe Times Executive Editor Bill Keller should be executed.

"Memo Pad" sent an e-mail to Coulter's AOL account and according to Bernstein, received a reply claiming that she was the sender of the mysterious powder.

"'So glad to hear that The New York Times got my letter and that your friend at the Times thinks I'm funny,' she wrote back. 'Good luck in journalism and please send me your home address so we can stay in touch, too.

Often, Bush's joking is personal—it is aimed at you. The teasing can be flattering (the president gave me a nickname!), but it is intended, however so subtly, to put the listener on the defensive. It is a towel-snap that invites a retort. How many people dare to snap back at a president?

Every woman will recognize the guy who sidles up and starts "casually" giving you a backrub without even looking at you, because he wants to preserve deniability in case you freak out. Like any practiced groper, Bush stares right past Merkel as she recoils from his touch.

The play fails, but he just moves on, eyes averted, like it's her problem. ("Oh my God, there's a hysterical woman displaying inappropriate behavior! I'll just pretend I don't notice her egregious gaffe.")

Check out the look on his face. Does he look like he's "just having fun" or does he look like he's putting the uppity bitch in her place?

This woman is the Chancellor of Germany. What do you suppose you need to do to get treated with respect by this asshole?

The episode reminds me of Lakoff's criticism of Bush's "permission slip" line in the 2004 state of the union address. Lakoff:

Should the United States have consulted the United Nations and gotton its permission to invate Iraq? An adult does not "ask for a permission slip"! The phrase itself, PERMISSION SLIP puts you back in grammar school or high school, where you need a permission slip from an adult to go to the bathroom. You do not need to ask for a permission slip if you are the teacher, if you are the principal, if you are the person in power, the moral authority. The others should be asking YOU for permission. That is what the permission slip phrase in the 2004 State of the Union address was about.

Again, Bush uses a subtle gesture to try and create a sense of dominance over other nations. In the same way that the "permission slip" line characterized the rest of the world as children who need permission from us, the adults, to do anything, this gesture by Bush positions Germany as the low level female employee who the boss can harass and still get away with it. Female executives are not treated this way anymore, much less female heads of state.

The Bush administration says it plans sweeping changes in Medicare payments to hospitals that could cut payments by 20 percent to 30 percent for many complex treatments and new technologies.

The changes, the biggest since the current payment system was adopted in 1983, are meant to improve the accuracy of payment rates. But doctors, hospitals and patient groups say the effects could be devastating.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the new system would be more accurate because payments would be based on hospital costs, rather than on charges, and would be adjusted to reflect the severity of a patient’s illness. A hospital now receives the same amount for a patient with a particular condition, like pneumonia, regardless of whether the illness is mild or severe.

Medicare pays more than $125 billion a year to nearly 5,000 hospitals. The new plan is not expected to save money, but will shift around billions of dollars, creating clear winners and losers. The effects will ripple through the health care system because many private insurers and state Medicaid programs follow Medicare’s example.

Dr. Alan D. Guerci, president of St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N.Y., said the new formula would cut Medicare payments to his hospital by $21 million, or 12 percent. “It will significantly reduce payments for cardiac care and will force many hospitals to reduce the number of cardiac procedures they perform,” Dr. Guerci said.

A coalition of patient organizations, including the Parkinson’s Action Network and the Society for Women’s Health Research, told the government in a letter that the new system “could have a devastating impact on payment for critical treatments for seriously ill patients, with reimbursement for some essential procedures cut as much as 30 percent.”

The basic payment for surgery to open clogged arteries, by inserting a drug-coated wire mesh stent, would be cut by 33 percent, to $7,590. The payment for implanting a defibrillator, like the one used by Vice President Dick Cheney, would be cut 23 percent, to $22,000, while the payment for hip and knee replacements would be reduced 10 percent, to $14,500.

“This is a bit of a catastrophe,” said Dr. Herbert Pardes, president of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In its zeal to cut the profits of doctor-owned specialty hospitals, including cardiac hospitals, Dr. Pardes said, the government has inadvertently hit many nonprofit academic medical centers.

While President Bush's proposed $28.6 billion budget for the National Institutes of Health for fiscal 2007 is unchanged from last year, proposed funding for Alzheimer's research is $645 million, down from $652 million in fiscal 2006 and $658 million in 2003.

Such reductions are nothing less than devastating, says Sam Gandy, M.D., director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and chairman of the Alzheimer's Association's medical and scientific advisory council.

"The greatest progress we've enjoyed in the last 15 years is threatened," he says. During the past 20 years, researchers have been able to discover Alzheimer's genes and develop animal models that they believe will cure humans. Now, the treatments are being tested on humans, and the lowered funding means fewer treatments will be tested at the same time. "Instead of testing a number of drugs simultaneously," Gandy says, "we have to test some drugs this year, then other drugs the next."

Such delays could hamper Alzheimer's research just as new studies raise the prospect that its impact may not be limited to the elderly. The disease affects 4.5 million Americans, including 5 percent of Americans 65 to 74 and half of those over 85, according to the National Institute of Aging. A University of Michigan study also found that half a million Americans between 55 and 64 reported cognitive impairment. Another concern: Alzheimer's progresses so slowly that it often takes years to determine the efficacy of a drug, as opposed to some diseases where a drug's effectiveness is apparent within months.

After more than doubling from 1998 to 2005, NIH's overall budget for 2007 is flat for the second straight year. Funds are reduced for research into pre-emptive strikes against or treatments for some of the nation's most debilitating diseases, among them breast, prostate and lung cancer, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, stroke, macular degeneration and mental illness.

[snip]

NIH supports research into 6,600 rare and common diseases, employing more than 200,000 scientists at 3,000 research facilities around the world and on its campus in Bethesda, Md.

"Our message to Israel is defend yourself but be mindful of the consequences, so we are urging restraint."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had told Olmert her country was deeply concerned about civilian casualties in Lebanon and hoped Israel would exercise restraint.

U.S. President Clinton flew back to West Virginia on Friday to try again to get Israel and Syria moving forward in peace talks, which are in their fifth day.

"This is difficult stuff. This is very hard," Clinton said just before he left the White House. "They're working hard and they're trying to find ways to resolve their differences."

Clinton is making his fourth trip to rural Shepherdstown since the negotiations began Monday. He met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa on Thursday.

Clinton said he believed both sides were working in good faith and that he was "just trying to be helpful."

"I just try to get people together and identify what they have in common, identify what their differences are," Clinton said. He added he was trying to get the two sides "to keep in mind the big picture at the end ... what we hope and pray the Middle East will look like in five years or ten years from now."

A source close to the Syrian delegation says there will be a three-way meeting between Clinton, Barak and al-Sharaa on Friday, but there was no confirmation of that from Israeli or U.S. officials.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, acting as a facilitator in the Israeli-Syrian talks, recommended that Clinton visit Shepherdstown. It's hoped that Clinton's continued presence will get both sides "rolling up their sleeves," said U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin.

Albright held a lengthy morning meeting Thursday with al- Sharaa, who was reportedly displeased that there have been no talks over Syria's key demand: a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.