Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Scuba diver celebrates Ocean Geographic launch at Sydney Aquarium

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 — almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history — that George W. Bush can “demand” that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply.

-- GLENN GREENWALD

The United States seems to have become the superpower that can't tie its own shoelaces. America is a nation of vast ingenuity and technological capabilities. Its bridges shouldn't fall down.

-- JOHN McQUAID

If Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney or Chief Justice John Roberts applied for private health insurance, they wouldn’t get it.

Neither would Michael Moore for his obesity or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went to the hospital in 2005 for rapid heartbeats.

An organization called the Medical Information Bureau would take a quick look at their histories and tell 470 companies they are hopelessly bad risks. Their work helps health insurers cherry-pick prospects to cover only those who are unlikely to get sick.

So much for universal coverage and the faith that Republicans, including President Bush, have in the marketplace. After the removal of his five polyps last month, he would have trouble getting health insurance himself.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Wouldn't you know it. The Weekly World News announces that it will cease publication (it will retain its presence on the Web), and within a week there surfaces irrefutable evidence that space aliens ate Tom Tancredo's brain.

-- TIMOTHY NOAH

Republican presidential contenders sparred over abortion on Sunday but generally agreed the United States must remain in Iraq as part of the war on terror.

"Just come home," countered Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the lone dissenter on a debate stage when it came to Iraq. He said there had never been a good reason to go to war in the first place.

"Has he forgotten about 9/11?" interjected former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

-- MIKE GLOVER

It's sort of obvious now that he said it. But I had not quite thought of it that way. The same people now continually raising the stakes on the price of redeployment from Iraq with increasingly lurid tales of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regional implosion are pretty much exactly the same people who gamed us into this mess in the first place with another bunch of fairy tales.

-- JOSH MARSHALL

Who would have guessed that the most compelling debate of the already too-long 2008 presidential slog would highlight probing questions from the likes of a guy named "John Pontificator"?

A most revealing thing emerged after 90 minutes of a presidential forum here at Yearly Kos -- the political convention attended by liberal bloggers and activists from across America . . . -- and that is that a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs like the pseudononymous blogger "Pontificator" can stage a more compelling debate than our paid professional news media.

-- WILL BUNCH

On the eve of his Camp David meeting with President Bush, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan painted a bleak picture of life in his country, saying that security had worsened and that the United States and its allies were no closer to catching Osama bin Laden than they were a few years ago.

-- SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Republicans express deep concern about sexual immorality, teenage pregnancy, drinking, drugs, contempt for religion, lawlessness, and treachery toward the nation. Considering that these ills are concentrated among their ranks, perhaps they have good reason for concern. I hereby propose that we place a stipulation in the Constitution that they can pass any laws that they like to suppress these evils, but the laws will only apply to them.

-- CHARLES

Few in South Africa took much notice when five sleeping teenage boys were shot by a military hit squad just days before the country's last white president, F.W. de Klerk, received his Nobel peace prize for ending apartheid.

Thirteen years later the deaths have returned to haunt Mr de Klerk after a decision to prosecute one of his former cabinet ministers for apartheid-era crimes prompted fresh scrutiny of what South Africa's last white president knew about the campaign of assassinations, bombings and torture against the regime's opponents.

-- CHRIS McGREAL

What kind of culture is it that tries to press everyone into a petrified sexuality devoid of spirit– which is the rhizome of sexuality. What kind of central trunk of culture never grows, develops, asks questions, reveals a deeper nature and doesn’t want us to either ask, tell, teach or know either?

What kind of culture says while corralling the very young, “Here, lie in state with coins over your eyes, coins of the kingdom inscribed against your eyeballs with the five approved sexual images the culture holds for profit, leaving out all the many, different and deeper. Repeat endlessly only what we show you. There’ll be no originality or creative life or consciousness through the lenses of your gender, your body, your sensual self, for you.”

-- DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS

Photograph by Agence France Presse