With all of the sexual misconduct scandals befalling the GOP, Steve Benen helps to remind us why it's so very different than if the same were to happen to the Dems: "The difference, however, is that only one side claims the moral high-ground, holds itself out as the arbiter of virtue, is quick to judge moral/sexual failings in others, and wants desperately to use the power of the state to regulate (and ban) some of the behavior they personally engage in." In other words, the GOP = the party of hypocrisy.

Be very, very, very afraid. Bush warns that Iran may be responsible for a "nuclear holocaust" if allowed to get atomic weapons and he states, "We will confront this danger before it is too late." In accordance with Cheney's 1% doctrine, get ready for Bush to attack Iran -- and yet leave the Iraq problem for the next president. Actually, he will have attacked both countries and will leave the fallout of both for the next president. Bush makes messes, big ones, he doesn't clean them up. BTW, with over one million Iraqi civilians killed since we invaded, does this count as a holocaust? Not via nuclear means, but still a mass slaughter I would say.

What a surprise. Ted Nugent threatens gun violence against two U.S. senators, and yet he too -- like Bush, Cheney, et al -- was a chicken-hawk. The Republican Party is a perfect home for him.

Regarding GW's amazingly ludicrous comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, Dan Froomkin writes, "The obvious lesson of Vietnam is not that leaving a quagmire leads to disaster, but that staying only makes things worse. (And oh yes: that we shouldn't get into them in the first place.)" And the LA Times has this: "Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. 'It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president....We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict....What is Bush suggesting? That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion....We've been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.'" Well put. Over 3700 American soldiers have died in Iraq, far short of Vietnam's figure. Does that mean we have tens of thousands more lives to spare?

From Kevin Drum, another great quote related to Bush's Iraq/Vietnam comparison: "Consider two other big counterinsurgency wars that were going badly after a few years: Vietnam in 1964 and Afghanistan in 1984. In both cases, the entangled superpower had the option of either pulling out and taking its lumps or extending the conflict, and in both cases it made the choice to extend the conflict. And both times that was the wrong decision. Staying in Vietnam did immense long-term damage to the national security of both Southeast Asia and the United States, and staying in Afghanistan was a leading cause of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union....So if you had to guess whether another five or ten years would be good or bad for the United States, the odds say it will be bad. Very, very bad." Also, recall that the Soviet/Afghan conflict made possible the rise of Osama bin Laden. I wonder what heinous figure(s) will rise from the ruin of Iraq?