Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

It is becoming increasingly clear that regardless of who wins the election in 2008, the United States government is not going to withdraw from Iraq. It is just not going to happen. This is the awful, gut-wrenching, frightening truth we must face. The only way that American forces will ever leave Iraq is the same way they left Vietnam: at gunpoint, forced into a precipitous and catastrophic retreat. And how many thousands upon thousands of needless deaths we will see before that terrible denouement?

-- CHRIS FLOYD

Paul Rieckhoff looked across the crowded restaurant, which was not far from Times Square.

"During World War II," he said, "we could be in this place and there would be a guy sitting at that table who was in the war, or the bartender had been in the war. Everybody you saw would have had a stake in the war. But right now you could walk around New York for blocks and not find anybody who has been in Iraq.

"The president can say we’re a country at war all he wants. We’re not. The military is at war. And the military families are at war. Everybody else is shopping."

-- JURRASICPORK

If George W. Bush vetoes the just-passed hate-crimes law approved by the House, as expected, it will be only the third such veto he's issued since becoming president. The first two were the stem-cell research bill and the Iraq appropriations bill. It gives us, if nothing else, a clear window into his priorities: feeding the base comes first.

-- DAVE

For some reason watching Paul Wolfowitz go down for a nepotism scandal rather than for spearheading a galactic disaster of a war feels like seeing Al Capone go down for tax evasion. You get the punishment but somehow it lacks justice.

-- TIM F.

Months after a politically embarrassing $1 billion shortfall that put veterans’ health care in peril, Veterans Affairs officials involved in the foul-up got hefty bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

-- HOPE YEN

As I watched the gaggle of Republican Presidential pretenders (for the most part – there are two who I could see with their hand on the bible taking the oath on the Capitol steps in January, 2009), I was struck by how truly bereft the GOP is of political talent at the national level.

-- RICK MORAN

I don’t know if you all remember AutoAdmit, the racist, misogynist back of one-handed typing law-school wankers. If you don’t remember them, let me refresh your memory: they had a fine old time posting pictures, lies, and contact information about the women they went to school with. They talked about when one woman went to the gym, and encouraged each other to take cell-phone photos of her.

They did this anonymously, while posting the names and contact info of these women. When confronted with this crap, Anthony Ciolli, one of the founders of the site, chalked it off to freedom of speech.

Now, apparently, when other people exercise their freedom of speech and complain about Ciolli, it’s terribly oppressive. He blames Jill [Filipovic] for the fact that his job offer was rescinded. It had nothing to do with, oh, creating a site where anonymous commenters could post the private contact information about women, lie about them, and encourage each other to take photos of them. Nope. Not at all.

-- SHEELZEBUB

Cardinals relief pitcher Josh Hancock was legally drunk last Sunday when he plowed his car into the back of a tow truck parked on Highway 40.

One of the great mysteries of the universe is why wealthy people are unwilling to just hire drivers.

-- ATRIOS