Dick Cheney insults sunlight

* SFChron:

"Ah, abstinence education. Could there be a more dizzy, glaring example of a first-rate BushCo failure? Could there be a more insulting, demeaning program the sole intention of which appears to be to deceive humanity and undermine every succulent human impulse and shove sexuality back into the 1850s and induce 10 million teens to resent and mistrust adults even more than they already do? Verily I say unto thee, there is not.

To be fair, the HHS says this new rule is just a guideline, not strict dogma. No one actually has to refrain from having sex until they're married or 30, because that would be, you know, silly. Draconian. Talibanian.
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In other words, will there ever be a time when we can honestly look to the United States government for valid and reasonable and healthy and truly informative, positive information about human sexuality, information that does not embarrass us and humiliate us and insult our libidos the same way Dick Cheney insults sunlight? Do you already know the answer?"

* cannon has another great impeachment post. he ends:

"If you want to kick Bush out of office prematurely -- if you want actually to DO that thing instead of just wishing for it -- then you must understand that Nancy Pelosi cannot seem to be a coup plotter. She must be the last person on this planet to use the I-word, and even then, she must make a big show of acting more in sorrow than in anger. Until then, don't get angry if she does not offer explicit support for the cause, because if she supports it, she will scuttle it. (If need be, repeat the previous two sentences fifty times until the message finally sinks in.)"

* tristero:

"It is not dogmatic to state that there was no genuine moral justification for Bush/Iraq, and that people as sensitive as Josh and far more influential failed to realize that, or did realize it, and failed to speak out. It is not dogmatic to state that even a cursory glance at the history of democracy demonstrates that it is nearly impossible (as well as immoral) to impose democracy by force of arms and that the specific factors that enabled the rare successes were conspicuously missing in Iraq. Finally, it is not dogmatic to state that it is totally absurd to think that "better leadership" would have led to a "better result" for Bush/Iraq. Better leadership would never have seriously considered invading and conquering Iraq in the first place.

Perhaps if there was even some hint of sanity in the mainstream American discourse about foreign policy I would be less insistent on this. But the truth is that the only people who have seriously good microphones are all those people who were wrong about Bush/Iraq from the start. Until there is, at the very least, some sense that this country's opinion leaders are prepared to listen carefully to those who got it right, I will continue to give those who got it wrong, and persist in getting matters of war and death wrong, a very hard time."

* digby:

"I'm sorry that these starry-eyed neocons who looked at George Bush and saw a genius are disappointed that the rest of the country didn't support their vision. They were given more of a chance to prove themselves than dreamers and fools usually are --- and they failed on a grand scale. This is what the Bushites deserve and what they should expect for ram-rodding through a war without real public support and then screwing it up royally. The families of all these dead and wounded soldiers, unfortunately, didn't deserve this and neither did the poor Iraqis who didn't know they were going to be guinea pigs in a 7th grade neocon thought experiment based on cartoons and psycho-babble."

* emptywheel on PatRoberts abandoning his Intelligence:

"There are, of course, a number of delectable possibilities. Like the guy knows some bad shit is going to go down on the committee, and he wants to be as far away as possible. Like he wants to pretend he hasn't been carrying the BushCo water for the past 4 years, preventing critical oversight into the war. Like he doesn't want to be treated in the same manner that he treated Democrats. Payback's a bitch, you know."

* laura:

"At this moment, it is not clear who leaked the Hadley memo and why. But one possibility is that it might have been a shot in a bureaucratic turf war aimed at making people talk about the futility of Option 1, national reconciliation, with the intention of accelerating Option 2 or 3. Even if that wasn't the intent of the leak, it may be the result: Hours after the memo was published, Bush's long-planned meeting with Maliki was delayed. Asked if the delay was due to the memo's revelations that the White House lacked confidence in Maliki, White House advisor Dan Bartlett was cited by the Washington Post saying, "Absolutely not." A rare public expression of certainty in an increasingly murky landscape."

* nyt-ed:

"Mr. Bush’s lack of curiosity was well known even before he became president, but as time has gone on and bad news has mounted, that disinterested quality has turned into a stubborn refusal to hear bad news. The country simply cannot afford it any longer. Three years of having Mr. Bush trust only his gut has plunged Iraq into bloody chaos and done untold damage to America. There needs to be an urgent change in policy."