There’s been some good commentary on the blogs about Dick Cheney’s speech to AIPAC the other night, which was apparently a warning that the United States must be prepared to wage merciless war against Eeeevil Islam until the lion lies down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them, but even then, we’ll have to arm the child, make sure the lamb isn’t wired with plastique, and be prepared to blast the lion with heavy ordnance if he looks at us sideways. Glenn Greenwald was, in his usual brilliant fashion, the best I’ve read on Cheney. He noted the parallels between Cheney’s apocalyptic language and that of Osama bin Laden, which is not a new notion, but it’s striking to see so clearly yet again. Greenwald also quotes Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” written in the early 60s, which nails Cheney’s worldview as if he’d been the subject of the essay to begin with.

But the Quote of the Day on Cheney belongs to the Rude Pundit who, in the midst of some intense rudeness on the subject, sums up the Vice President’s utter tone-deafness on the subject of War and Eeeevil:

In one of those statements that’s so ironic in so many directions you don’t know which way to look, Cheney extravasated, “President Bush understands, as Ronald Reagan did, that if history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.” So the dry drunk and the guy who had Alzheimer’s in the Oval Office are the people we need to learn historical context from. Seems about right for this country.

Hey, if anybody knows “self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts,” it’d be Dick. And if any country on Earth contains a significant percentage of people unable to know it when they see it, it’d be us. That the percentage seems to be shrinking is probably the best news of the day.