Jimmy is just a poor white boy trying to make it in a black man's world.

To which the black men, some of them anyway, react with unbridled hostility. As depicted in the compelling new movie "8 Mile," they brand him with names one can't repeat in a daily newspaper. But for all that, perhaps the harshest thing they say about him isn't a curse word at all. They call him Elvis.

Black folks have always had this thing about Elvis.

On the one hand, we loved him ...

"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented.... The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors.

Marxists used to vow that capitalism's "internal contradictions" would reach the point when the system would implode. "That's when we make our move!" said the coffeehouse strategists.

Struggling Democrats face a less easily parodied but more consequential contradiction as the debate on economic stimulus heats up.

VANCOUVER, B.C. - While the United States has been focused on the midterm elections and Iraq for the past several months, Canadians have been focused intently on the question of whether or not Canada should ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

The firestorm of debate erupted in September at the Johannesburg "Earth Summit," where Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien pledged to ratify the Kyoto Protocol by Christmas.

I'm sure you're just as relieved as I am at the news that Winona Ryder probably won't be going to jail. I'll bet you've lost sleep and appetite at the thought of her being traded around the prison yard for smokes.

Well, we can all breathe a little easier. Though Ryder was convicted of one count each of grand theft and vandalism for walking out of a swanky Beverly Hills store with more than $5,500 in stolen goods, prosecutors say they won't be seeking jail time for the 31-year-old actress. And there's more good news.

During the Vietnam War, Vice President Dick Cheney finagled five draft deferments. "I had other priorities," says the man who would send your boy to die in Baghdad.

How nice.

Thousands of other boys, the draftees whose names are etched on that granite wall in Washington, D.C., never got the chance to enjoy those "other priorities." Uncle Sam showed up and explained its priority: dying face down in a rice paddy on the other side of the planet.

If Cheney's escape from service for "other priorities" seems unfair and unjust, it is.

Back in April, George W. Bush pledged a reconstruction program for Afghanistan on the order of the Marshall Plan.

Nothing of the kind happened, as U.S. efforts focused mainly on boosting warlords who might help chase down remnants of al-Qaeda. Rebuilding has barely started, and the lag has undermined the central government of Hamid Karzai.

Things have reached such a point that top U.S. military commander Gen.

I understand the reasoning. I'll even admit that it's practical in a certain sense. Small-town police chiefs, their budgets constrained by a tight economy, find themselves in a bind: not enough patrol cars for their officers.

So, Government Acquisitions LLC, a company in Charlotte, N.C., has come to the rescue with an extraordinary offer to donate cars to those departments.

For the GOP, Washington, D.C., is now Shangri-La.

Never before have so many been so clamorous to bury so big a snout in so big a public trough.

There will be lots to digest about the 2002 election - from Democratic incoherence to President Bush's savvy to the odds of early war in Iraq - but the most consequential domestic question ahead can already be identified: Is there any limit to the tax cuts Republicans will support? How the GOP answers this question will go far to shape the prospects for both justice and growth in America.

For all the hoopla over the Republican "sweep," the White House knows its freedom of action remains limited.

So it's parents' night at school and I'm there on behalf of my youngest son. I look at him sometimes and see a toddler with a gap in his grin and a penchant for gnawing his toes.

But that's just a memory lie. The toddler is a teen-ager 2 inches taller than I am, a youngster on the cusp of manhood.

It hasn't been a fun passage. Last year, we went through a phase where he felt compelled to challenge everything I said, down to and including, "Hello."

These days, he doesn't so much challenge me as endure me.

"If we don't ... reaffirm our commitment to fiscal responsibility, years of hard work could be squandered," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently told Congress. Considering the ever-climbing spending levels on Capitol Hill these days, his warning makes perfect sense.

It didn't used to be this way. In the mid-1990s, politicians began cutting wasteful government spending to balance the budget and bring relief to overtaxed families.

Howard Phillips, the Constitution Party presidential candidate, once averred a compelling metaphor for American politics. It involves a locomotive heading for a cliff.

With the Democrats, he says, you're chugging for the cliff at 80 mph. With the Republicans, you're chugging along at 50. Either way, you're going off the cliff.

That is why conservatives such as Howard and I have dumped the GOP and struck out on our own. The undeniable metaphor explains yesterday's election.