ALBION MONITOR: QUOTE OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

"They did a lot wrong, but they also did a few things right. I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers"

-- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai interview with Der Spiegel, June 2, 2008. Karzai said "foreign allies" brought back Afghans that were under their control, which made it difficult for him "to find a way that can enable Afghanistan's administration to function"

"We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is"

-- Rep. Charlie Rangel (NY - D), New York Times, June 5, 2008

"Who will be ready to take back the White House and take charge as commander in chief and lead our country to better tomorrows? ...on election day after Election Day, you came out in record numbers to cast your ballots. Nearly 18 million of you cast your votes for our campaign"

-- Hillary Clinton, still refusing to actually concede to Obama, June 3, 2008

"You can say those things when you're not running for re-election"

-- Dick Cheney, noting that he head had ancestors on both sides of his family named Cheney, even though "we don't even live in West Virginia." Later on June 2, 2008, he apologzied for making an incest "joke"

"Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them!"

-- President Bush in a 2004 videoconference on Iraq with his national security team and generals, as quoted by retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, in his new memoirs. Calling Bush's pep talk "confused," Sanchez writes that the president continued, "There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

"This is the stupidity of Blackberry politics. They get caught in this day to day. No one's going to care what John McCain says about the fact levels"

-- New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks on ABC's "This Week," June 1, 2008

"How in the world can we attract new business when the workforce just wants to grow or harvest pot?"

-- Ross Liberty, a Mendocino County welding shop owner seeking to repeal the county's Y2000 measure easing limits on pot growing, that now results in an annual $1.5 billion marijuana crop. "I see them driving $50,000 tricked-up trucks all over town," he told the San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 2008, "I can't compete with that. Nobody can"

"It's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us"

-- Newt Gingrich, telling a bookstor audience, April 29, 2008, that "one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration" was that they were just too good at "intercepting and stopping bad guys." Except for the (unsolved) anthrax case, there is no evidence of any attempted domestic terror attack since 9/11

"[Hillary Clinton] is the drunk party guest who won't go home, the cab's idling out front, and she's opening a new bottle of wine"

-- MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson, who also compared Sen. Clinton to a screeching cat fighting being placed inside a carrier. May 27, 2008 appearance on "Morning Joe"

"The higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives...to put on positive stories about the president"

-- Jessica Yellin, on her experience as White House correspondent at MSNBC, 2002-2003. "[T]hey would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical," she told CNN, May 28, 2008

"Being evasive is not the same as lying in Bush's mind"

-- Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." A 1999 ancedote has Bush telling him that he was at "pretty wild parties back in the day" but didn't remember whether he used cocaine or not. "I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," McClellan wrote. "And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious - political convenience"

"The 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served"

-- Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." McClellan writes that the media shouldn't have been surprised when the excuses for invading Iraq turned out to be false. "If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington"

"They had already invited O'Reilly, and they didn't want the embarrassment of uninviting him because they're scared of him. He's a thug"

-- Barry Nolan, a veteran TV news anchor who was fired by Comcast's CN8 network for protesting a local Emmy Award given to Bill O'Reilly. Nolan told ABC News, May 23, 2008. "We've been through an awful dark time in our history where there are a lot of people telling you to sit down and shut up. From Dick Cheney to Bill O'Reilly, I'm done with bullies"

"The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets"

-- Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) editorial in the Wall St. Journal, May 23, 2008. "Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control"

"By 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there"

-- Sen. John McCain on PBS' "News Hour," August 1, 2000

"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California"

-- Sen. Hillary Clinton offering an example of why she continues to seek the nomination. Clinton soon apologized for the May 23, 2008 remark, explaining that she was just using that as an example of a situation where a party presidential candidate was not chosen until June, and happened to be thinking of Sen. Ted Kennedy because of his medical diagnosis. However, she said the same thing in a March interview with Time magazine

"[You have] just a litany of complaints that you're all just hapless victims of a system, yet you rack up record profits ... quarter after quarter after quarter"

-- Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to the oil industry executives testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 21, 2008. Exxon Mobil executive J. Stephen Simon conceded that profits have been huge "in absolute terms," but claimed they need big profits "in the current up cycle" to tide them over in lean times

"There was a bucket of water. And they stick my head in it and at the same time, punch me into my stomach"

-- Former Gitmo prisoner Murat Kurnaz, revealing that U.S. interrogators used "water treatment" on him and others. The CIA maintains only 3 prisoners were "waterboarded." Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs' Oversight Subcommittee, May 20, 2008

"When the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America"

-- Barack Obama, May 19, 2008. "What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of?"

"This has been the most slanted press coverage in American history"

-- Bill Clinton, May 19, 2008

"Books on Iraq don't sell. Over and over, when I was shopping it around, editors would say, 'Gee, it's about Iraq'"

-- CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, on the troubles she had finding a publisher for a book on her experiences in Iraq, which included a near fatal injury in a blast that killed two of her CBS colleagues. Dozier also told the Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2008, "When we put Iraq on TV, people are changing the channel... Every chance we get, it seems like we turn away from Iraq"

"That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor"

-- GOP yuckster Mike Huckabee, as his NRA speech was interrupted by a loud noise offstage. Later on May 16, 2008, Huckabee apologized for the assassination "joke"

"What people don't understand about Appalachia is that we've heard all this 'hope' and 'change' stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We're 'hoped' out. Nothing ever changes out here"

-- Virginia Democratic strategist Dave "Mudcat" Saunders on Obama's poor showing in West Virginia. The Politico blog, May 12, 2008

"This is bullshit, this is malarkey, this is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement"

-- Sen. Joe Biden, on Bush's comments in Israel, dismissing "some people" who want to talk with enemies as "appeasers," May 15, 2008. "We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939"

" It's almost like she's the Al Sharpton of white people"

-- The unfiltered mouth of Chris Matthews, May 13, 2008

" I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal"

-- President Bush, who doesn't want "some mom whose son may have recently died" to see a picture of him on a golf course. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as Ñ to be in solidarity as best as I can with them." Interview with The Politico blog, May 13, 2008

"Wouldn't taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?"

-- Obama press secretary Bill Burton, on Karl Rove's recent nuggets of campaign advice he's offered on Fox News programs. New York Times, May 12, 2008

"I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife's an atheist"

-- Leonard Simpson. a lifelong Democrat and retired W Virginia coalminer to The Financial Times, May 11, 2008. None of the Democrats interviewed by the paper at a Clinton rally said they would vote for Obama if he were the nominee, several repeating the Muslim rumor and others citing his ex-pastor as a reason

"It's a bit like dropping off a lot of orchestra instruments on the ground, and then expecting a symphony to come out of that"

-- Eric John, U.S. ambassador to Thailand, on Burma's refusal to allow outsiders to distribute emergency relief aid to cyclone victims. The junta relabeled boxes of supplies with the names of army generals. TIME, May, 9, 2008

"Our government...tells us that democracy and Islam are compatible. But Islam is less compatible with democracy than is Christianity"

-- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), bristling at new government guidelines advising against the use of terms such as "Islamo-fascism" as offensive. Santorum seems unaware that Indonesia is both the world's largest Muslim majority country and third-largest democracy. Philadelphia Inquirer, May. 8, 2008

"It's still early"

-- Hillary Clinton, May 7, 2008, adding that Bill didn't secure the nomination in 1992 until June. But on this date in 1992, there were 14 state primaries remaining, including California. In 2008, there are only five state primaries left, and none with a large population

"We don't know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don't need an 'October Surprise,' and (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote"

-- Harold Ickes, one of the top Clinton strategists, revealing his main argument to superdelegates as well as the ethical basement that her campaign has reached. TIME magazine blog "The Page," May 6, 2008

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that'"

-- Sister Julie McGuire, who had to tell 12 fellow nuns that they would have to get a state or federal ID with a photograph in order to vote. On April 28, the Supreme Court refused to strike down Indiana's voter ID laws. All of the nuns are 80 or older and none of them drives. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts," Sister McGuire told AP, May 6, 2008, turning the nuns away from a polling place

"Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans"

-- Hillary Clinton on ABC's "This Week" program, May 4, 2008, defending the "gas tax vacation," although no economist endorses the idea. "I'm not going to put in my lot with economists"

"When you're in national politics, it's always good to pull the Band-aid off quick, but life's messy sometimes"

-- Barack Obama on Meet the Press, May 4, 2008, on why he did not repudiate Wright completely until last week

"Presidency of a woman in a country that boasts its gunmanship is unlikely"

-- The always undelightful President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also predicted, "We don't think Mr. Obama will be allowed to become the U.S. president." April 29, 2008 press conference

"When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president"

-- Dick Cheney at the Oklahoma Republican Party convention, May 2, 2008

"If the campaign's surrogates called Governor Bill Richardson, a respected former member of President Clinton's cabinet, a 'Judas' for endorsing Senator Obama, we can all imagine how they will treat somebody like me"

-- Joe Andrew, DNC head under Bill Clinton, who edorsed Hillary last year but now endorses Obama. "They are the best practitioners of the old politics, so they will no doubt call me a traitor, an opportunist and a hypocrite," he wrote in a May 1, 2008 statement. "I will be branded as disloyal, power-hungry, but most importantly, they will use the exact words that Republicans used to attack me when I was defending President Clinton"

"You're like me"

-- Bill O'Reilly to Hillary Clinton, April 30, 2008. "You're a more polarizing personality. You're like I am -- and I hate to say that, with all due respect. But you are"

"I think we're making good progress. I do, yes"

-- President Bush, answering an April 29, 2008 press conference questionon whether he thought we were winning the war in Afghanistan. The following day, the State Dept. released a report showing last year was the bloodiest since 2001, and admitting al-Qaeda has "reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities" and expanded "affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe"

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals, we've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions'"

-- Air Force Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Gitmo and now a defense witness, testifying to pressure from the Pentagon's top lawyer, April 28, 2008. Davis also told the court that top Pentagon officials made it clear that there was "strategic political value" in bringing some prisoners to trial before the Nov. elections

"Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so"

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia insisting torture doesn't violated the 8th Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" on 60 Minutes, April 27, 2008. "When he's hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn't say he's punishing you. What is he punishing you for?"

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic principles"

-- Rev. Jeremiah Wright speaking before the National Press Club, April 28, 2008

"Is this 1955 Alabama?"

"It's obvious our economy is in a slowdown. Fortunately, we recognized the signs early and took action"

-- President Bush, April 25, 2008.

"Just this week, he spouted off again -- I can't imagine why he does this"

-- Debbie Crane, a North Carolina PR consultant who told the Wall St. Journal, April 26, 2008, that Bill Clinton was "more of a liability than an asset" to his wife's campaign. Five days before, Clinton charged that critics "played the race card on me" by criticizing his comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary, then cut off the interview saying, "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that"

"There are African-Americans who have reached the decision that the Clintons know that she can't win this, but they're hell-bound to make it impossible for Obama to win"

-- Rep. James Clyburn (D-South Carolina), House Majority Whip to Reuters, April 24, 2008. The same day, he told the NY Times that he thought Bill Clinton's Apr. 21 comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson was "bizarre"

"There is a sense at times that we are always joining Chris Matthews already in progress, and he has no idea when it stops and starts. My responsibility sometimes is to grab the wheel when he doesn't hold it"

-- Keith Olbermann on his co-anchor in MSNBC's political coverage. According to New York Times Magazine, April 13, 2008, sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews boasts of having restrained himself during the prior segment. "And I reward him with a grape," Olbermann said

"I'm thrilled to be anywhere with high ratings these days"

-- President Bush, making a guest appearance on NBC's "Deal or No Deal" game show, April 22, 2008. As it turned out, that broadcast matched the lowest ratings in the show's history, down 27% from the season average

"The army is very good at what they do, they just have a problem with sleeping in"

-- Lt. Col. William Zemp, leading a platoon of U.S. soldiers on patrol near the town of Mahmudiya because the Iraqi platoon expected to guard the area overslept. Sheikh Amash Saray, head of the Mahmudiya local council, said that the Iraqi soldiers need more equipment and support. "I need [American forces] here until 2015," he told the New York Times, April 21, 2008

"We can calculate and poll-test our positions and tell everyone exactly what they want to hear. Or we can be the party that doesn't just focus on how to win, but why we should"

-- Barack Obama, April 22, 2008, concession speech after losing the Pennsylvania primary

"It was them [the Bush administration] saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you'"

-- Robert Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, regretting his participation as a media military analyst recruited by the Pentagon in a secret propaganda program. Participants - almost all with jobs representing defense contractors - were given access to classified materials, high level briefings, and VIP tours of Gitmo and Iraq. New York Times, April 20, 2008

"It's salty and it has butter and you don't know you're eating dirt"

-- Olwich Louis Jeune, among the many destitute Haitians now eating a mixture of mud, oil and sugar. "It makes your stomach quiet down," Jeune told the New York Times, April 18, 2008

"A lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological -- the confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, ability to keep our own home"

-- John McCain on Fox News' Your World, April 16, 2008. Over 400,000 families last year had the psychological problem of losing their homes to foreclosure

"They went off the rails. That's it. They took a majority that took 16 years to build and they destroyed it"

-- Newt Gingrich, explaining the collapse of the GOP to GQ, April 16, 2008. "There was a fundamental misunderstanding about how to govern. The concept of red versus blue is a tactic, not a strategy. In the long run, in order to mobilize your base, you tend to become more intense and your positions become more vitriolic, and you drive away the independents. Then you are no longer a majority"

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq"

-- Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli leader of the right-wing Likud party, telling the newspaper Ma'ariv, , April 16, 2008, that terrorism "swung American public opinion in our favor"

"You weren't told that by the administration. Absolutely not"

-- Doug Feith, one of the Iraq war architects, insisting that the public was never misled into believing that the Iraq war would be a "cakewalk." When challenged on the whopping lie by WNYC talk show host Brian Lehrer, April 15, 2008, Feith still maintained, "the initial reaction of many of the Iraqis was to greet us as liberators"

"The rest of the military did a pretty good job"

-- John McCain, putting the best possible spin on news that 1,000+ Iraqi soldiers and policemen deserted during the recent combat in Basra. "Maybe I'm digging for the pony here," McCain added in his MSNBC appearance, April 15, 2008

"Candidates just can't do enough. They'll promise you anything. They'll give you a long list of proposals and even come around with TV crews in tow and throw back a shot and a beer"

-- Barack Obama, April 14, 2008, snarking at Clinton for tossing back Canadian whiskey and a beer in a Penn. bar. Two weeks earlier, TV crews filmed Obama at a Penn. bowling alley. "My economic plan is better than my bowling," he promised other bowlers, March 30

"Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved"

-- President Bush to ABC News, April 11, 2008, admitting that he and other top administration officials approved specific CIA torture in 2002

"I was loyal, but I don't think that loyalty is transferable to his wife. ... You don't transfer loyalty to a dynasty"

-- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, telling the LA Times, April 12, 2008, that the Clinton camp "really ticked me off" with calls telling him that he "owed" Hillary his endorsement

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not"

-- Barack Obama, April 6, 2008. "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations"

"This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people. Barack Obama's campaign doesn't pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don't put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won't stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won't come out with the numbers that he needs"

-- Carol Ann Campbell, a Philadelphia ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, explaining that his campaign would have to hand out $400,000-500,000 in "street money" to win the Pennsylvania election. In 2004, Kerry's campaign paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Philadelphia's Democratic Party apparatus. LA Times, April 11, 2008

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly"

-- Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, at one of the autumn 2002 National Security Council's Principals Committee meetings where CIA torture were specifically approved. ABC News, April 9, 2008

"We are in the throes of a recession"

-- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on CNBC, April 8, 2008. "I have no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve policies that we initiated back then...our anticipations of what would happen as a consequence of those policies were off, but there's no way of avoiding that"

"We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible"

-- Gen. David Petraeus at Congressional hearings on Iraq, April 8, 2008

"I have advocated conditions-based reductions, not a timetable. War is not a linear phenomenon; it's a calculus, not arithmetic"

-- Gen. David Petraeus at Congressional hearings on Iraq, April 8, 2008. Petraeus said nothing at the hearings about milestones that were established last year and have been missed. Lacking data on such important variables makes any equation unsolvable

"The Chinese have made sure that for a few hours, Paris will look like Tiananmen Square"

-- Robert Menard, head of Reporters Without Borders, on efforts by French police to protect the Olympic torch relay from disruption. BBC, April 7, 2008

"The paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover... God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics"

-- One of the 109 professional historians surveyed by George Mason University in March, 2008, on the Bush presidency, where 98% said it was a failure and 61% believe it is the worst in the nation's history. Another historian surveyed remarked, "[Bush's] denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly"

"Laura Bush intimidates me. All the Bushes -- well, most of the Bush men marry incredibly strong women, and they all intimidate me. Barbara Bush I've lived in fear of for 37 years"

-- Karl Rove GQ interview, April 2, 2008

"Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals"

-- Former media mogul Ted Turner looking "30 or 40 years" into the future. PBS interview, April 1, 2008

"I have to ask why... the firefighters who went there and everyone in the City of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus, quite frankly, this being primarily a state consideration"

-- Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), calling for an end to funding for emergency responders who became ill after working at Ground Zero. The victims weren't sickened by a dirty bomb or chemical weapon, Issa continued, April 1, 2008, "It simply was an aircraft, residue of the aircraft and residue of the materials used to build this building"

"The problem with moral authority [is] people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely"

-- Doug Feith, who views asking questions about torture a greater threat to America's moral authority than violations of the Geneva Conventions. Vanity Fair, May 2008 issue

"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe"

-- Colin Powell, announcing the founding of America's Promise Alliance, a drop-out prevention group, March 31, 2008

"I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today, and it's a very favorable one indeed"

-- Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the billionaire who funded "the Arkansas Project" in the 1990s to smear the Clintons. Among the rumors spread by Scaife's group was that Hillary ordered Vincent Foster murdered. Scaife quoted in the New York Times March 31, 2008, the day hell froze over

"It's like one of those movies where you think you know the end, but then you watch with your fingers over your eyes"

-- A "leading Democrat" on the Hillary Clinton campaign quoted in the Maureen Dowd column, March 23, 2008. "It's impossible to imagine The Terminator, as a former aide calls her, giving up. Unless every circuit is out, she'll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave, crawl through the Rezko Memorial Lawn and up Obama's wall, hurl her torso into the house and brutally haunt his dreams"

"We have no intention of prosecuting Rush Limbaugh because lying through your teeth and being stupid isn't a crime"

-- Leo Jennings, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who isn't bringing charges against Limbaugh for encouraging listeners to vote for Clinton and disrupt the presidential primary. Columbus Dispatch March 28, 2008

"I thought it would be tough, but I didn't think it would be this tough"

-- Condoleezza Rice on Iraq, March 27, 2008

"[General Odierno] said he flew over Baghdad 15 months ago and he couldn't see a single soccer game. On his final flight last month, he counted more than 180. It is a sign normalcy is returning back to Iraq"

-- President Bush, March 27, 2008. The same day 2 U.S. soldiers were gunned down in Baghdad, another was killed by an IED, one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines was blown up in the first attack since 2004, combat raged in Basra, Kut, and Baghdad, where Iraqi forces were reported surrendering to the Mahdi Army as U.S. embassy workers were ordered to "remain under hard cover"

"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground"

-- John McCain, March 24, 2008, the same day that four U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad. Over the following three days, at least 62 Iraqis were killed and over 300 wounded just in combat between government forces and Shiite militias. "In a minute, in a second, just like that... we can fall into hell again," Iraq parliament member and Green Zone resident Mithal Alusi told TIME the same day as McCain's quote

"Occasionally, I am a human being like everybody else"

-- Senator Hillary Clinton, excusing herself for falsely claiming that she faced danger in a 1996 visit to Bosnia. "for the first time in 12 or so years, I misspoke," she added. March 25, 2008, KDKA Pittsburgh radio interview

"America has been the best country on earth for black folks"

-- Pat Buchanan, doing his part to sustain the cliche of old, white men being utterly clueless on race. "It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known," he wrote in his syndicated March 21, 2008 column. "[Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah] Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American"

"If they don't have anything to hide, then why are they making foreign journalists leave?"

-- Vincent Brossel, who heads Reporters Without Borders' Asia desk, on China expelling the last two foreign reporters from Tibet . "It's clear that they don't want any witnesses," he told AP, March 21, 2008

"Let me tell you: we've had better conversations"

-- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on his phone call to Hillary Clinton to inform her that he would be endorsing Obama for president. "Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic," Clinton adviser James Carville told the New York Times, March 22, 2008

"The American people have input every four years and that's the way our system is set up"

-- White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, asserting that the American people have no say in the Iraq war because they reelected George W. Bush in 2004. Press briefing, March 20, 2008

"He might have pulled off something that seemed almost impossible: He not only ventured into the minefield of race and made it back alive, but he also marked a path for the rest of us to follow"

-- Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on the Obama speech on race, March 19, 2008

"So?"

-- Dick Cheney's response to news that 2 out of 3 Americans say the Iraq war is not worth fighting. The monosyllabic Dick also replied "no" when asked if he cared what the American people think. ABC's Good Morning America interview, March 19, 2008

"They would do anything to win, and that means anything. There is a frenetic energy around them to commandeer this election in any way they can"

-- David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, to politico.com, March 17, 2008. "She is the ultimate Washington inside player. She is always asking, 'How do we wire the vote? How do we wire the system to get the results we want?'"

"We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time'"

-- Barack Obama, March 18, 2008

"The most pressing question on investors' minds: who's next?"

-- Jeffrey Rosenberg, head of credit strategy at Bank of America Securities. Financial Times, March 16, 2008

"The United States is on top of the situation"

-- President Bush, assuring the nation, March 17, 2008, that his administration knows what it's doing in the economic crisis

"I don't know. You're going to have to ask the experts that. I'm just a simple president"

-- George W. Bush, Harvard MBA, uncertain if an increased oil supply would bring down petroleum prices. PBS interview, March 12, 2008

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger"

-- President Bush in a March 13, 2008 videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel serving in Afghanistan. "I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"

-- Dick Cheney on the upcoming invasion of Iraq, March 16, 2003

"Anyone who had the misfortune of watching it will know how hard it is to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan"

-- John McCain on the Senate's failure to pass his moratorium on pork-barrel spending. Springfield, Pennsylvania campaign appearance, March 14, 2008

"The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they'd take it off the shelf"

-- Retiring Virginia Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, who chaired the NRCC for 4 years. Washington Post, March 13, 2008

"I think when people take a look back at this moment in our economic history, they'll recognize tax cuts work. They have made a difference"

-- President Bush to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 12, 2008. The same day, a survey of economists agreed that the U.S. economy had ground to a halt and was probably in recession. The next day, gold passeed $1,000 an ounce for the first time and the dollar hit a 12 year low against the Yen

"The best job I ever had in preparation for running for office was a job I had sliming fish"

-- Hillary Clinton campaigning in Cheyenne Wyoming, March 7, 2008

"She's going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different"

-- Bill Bradley, former senator and Obama supporter, accusing the Clintons of ruthless campaign tactics. "The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they've got. That's been their whole approach," he told the London Sunday Times, March 9, 2008

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position"

-- Geraldine Ferraro, Clinton advisor and 1984 VP candidate, complaining to the dailybreeze.com, March 7, 2008, that the "sexist" media has been "uniquely hard on her." When critics called for Hillary to denounce or reject the comment, Ferraro dug in deeper by saying on Mar. 11, "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

"If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?"

-- Barack Obama, March 10, 2008. "With all due respect, I've won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place"

"I don't know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around"

-- David Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland on Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience claim, "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland." Trimble told the Telegraph/UK March 8, 2008, "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on... being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player"

"Please keep running those 3:00AM ads about who you want to answer the phone, because we like those"

-- Randy Scheunemann, foreign policy advisor to McCain, March 7, 2008

"I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president"

-- Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, March 6, 2008, oddly comparing the special prosecutor who probed Bill's sexual peccadilloes to Obama's demand that Hillary release her tax returns. In 2000, Wolfson attacked Hillary's senate race opponent for delaying release of his taxes for 3 months

"It's a bad thing to do. But not everything that is bad is unconstitutional"

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on torture. University of Central Missouri, March 4, 2008

"If Hillary ekes out close wins, stays alive, gains the nomination and the White House, will Rush hold the Bible at her Inauguration?"

-- Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, March 4, 2008. Limbaugh told listeners to vote for Clinton in the primaries to "sustain this soap opera," and Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes. According to the exit polls, about 618,000 Hillary voters were conservatives

"I'd be interested to know how is this any different from the series of complaints that you've registered against every caucus that you lose"

-- Obama campaign lawyer Bob Bauer, confronting Clinton's campaign communications director as he was charging Texas caucus irregularities in a conference call to reporters. Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told ABC News that it was a sign that the Obama campaign is distraught. "They are unhinged. Seriously." March 4, 2008

"I'm not making a 'read my lips' statement, in that I will not raise taxes. But I'm not saying I can envision a scenario where I would, OK?"

-- John McCain, envisionary. The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2008

"We've had a 'red phone' moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer"

-- Barack Obama, February 29, 2008, on the controversial Clinton "red phone at 3AM" ad. The ad was designed by Roy Spense, and is virtually identical to an ad he designed for Walter Mondale in 1984

"This is a positive ad. Very soft images"

-- Mark Penn, chief strategist for Hillary Clinton, on their controversial "red phone at 3AM" ad. When a reporter compared it to the infamous LBJ "daisy" commercial with a nuclear war theme, Penn said, "It poses a question to people -- who do they want to pick up the phone? Let them make their own judgment. This is a spot that puts [the question] in the hands of voters." February 29, 2008

"It can hire fit and competent people"

-- Jeffrey Fisher, attorney for the Alaskans seeking damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, after Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts asked, "what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" The audience laughed at his answer; Roberts did not. February 27, 2008

"That's interesting, I hadn't heard that"

-- President Bush, expressing surprise over a reporter's comment that fuel prices are approaching $4/gallon. A few minutes later, Bush ducked a question by saying, "I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices." The average cost of diesel fuel in the Washington D.C. area was $3.69 on the day of the February 28, 2008 press conference

"It's very hard to criticize Senator Obama without being accused of playing the race card"

-- Lanny Davis, who frequently appears as a TV commentator supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton, on MSNBC, February 27, 2008. In 2006, Davis wrote a Wall St Journal op/ed charging that many Democrats opposed to Sen. Joe Lieberman were anti-semitic bigots

"She has essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years. Every good thing that happened she says she was a part of, and so the notion that you can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn't politically convenient, that doesn't make sense"

-- Barack Obama, February 24, 2008

"If I may, I'd like to retract 'I'll lose'"

-- John McCain, February 25, 2008, after he told reporters that if he can't convince Americans that the troop surge is working, "then I lose. I lose"

"[Obama's] riding a wave of euphoria. She needs to puncture it. The way you puncture euphoria is reality, or to be more blunt, fear. I recommend to Senator Clinton the politics of fear"

-- New York Times columnist Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday, February 24, 2008

"It's a largely unscientific hoax. And it's a political concoction"

-- Mary Matalin, Republican consultant and former advisor to Fred Thompson explaining that McCain is out of step with conservatives because he believes the scientific consensus on global warming. CNN, February 20, 2008

"It's almost as if they went to a camp where these black geniuses got together and figured out how to beat the political system"

-- Geraldo Rivera on Senator Barack Obama and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. "Let's reference the civil rights movement, let's talk about change, it's almost formulaic," Rivera said on Fox News' Fox & Friends, February 22, 2008

"I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit"

-- Bill O'Reilly on the Radio Factor, February 20, 2008. O'Reilly invoked lynching the wife of a black Presidential candidate after she told supporters, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change." O'Reilly's executive producer later made matters worse by insisting that he was defending Mrs. Obama

"If you want to call it 'significant undercounting,' I guess that's a euphemism for fraud"

-- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on NYC primary results that initially gave Obama no votes at all in 78 election districts. Recounts in the Harlem 94th district changed from a 141-0 Clinton victory to 261-136. NY Post, February 20, 2008

"You don't want to pile up money"

-- Mark Dybul, White House global AIDS coordinator, explaining why Bush is contributing $500 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, although Congress had approved $841 million. Bush is currently in Africa and touting his good works in fighting AIDS and malaria. Washington Post, February 18, 2008

"Hillary is a candidate; Obama is a movement"

-- Bob Gardner, a veteran political ad man and Republican who has worked for Gerald Ford and Dick Cheney. San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 2008

"I think it's funny"

-- Ann Coulter, explaining why she referred to Barack Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" or "President Hussein" five times in two minutes on Hannity & Colmes, February 14, 2008. Contest: Can you think of a "funny" middle name for Ann Coulter?

"As a minimum, a state official must at least have a head"

-- Russian President Putin, responding to the comment from Senator Clinton that he "has no soul" because of his career in the KGB. New York Times, February 15, 2008

"It is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological"

-- Senator Joe Lieberman in praise of waterboarding, February 14, 2008

"When I was here, I didn't take any courses at all on international law, and frankly I don't think I missed a thing"

-- Former UN ambassador John Bolton to Yale law students, February 14, 2008. A poll of ambassadors released a day earlier found 97% said Bolton undermined UN reforms

"The feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech, my, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often"

-- MSNBC's Chris Matthews during coverage of the February 12, 2008 presidential primaries. A few minutes later, network anchor Brian Williams quipped, "Let's talk about that feeling Chris gets up his leg when Obama talks ... That seems to be the headline of this half hour"

"Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution? It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, unclear on the whole "slippery slope" thing. BBC interview, February 12, 2008

"Terrorists kill people. Weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill an enormous amount of people, [but] global warming in the long term has the potential to kill everybody"

-- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reporters after his address to the UN General Assembly, February 11, 2008

"Everybody was telling him, 'You're crazy, don't do this.' You get the chills. He's really unafraid to take the hits if he thinks he's doing the right thing"

-- Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, February 10, 2008, revealing that 4 out of 5 of Bush advisors opposed the Iraq troop 'surge.' In his national address last January, Bush promised the nation that "Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan ...[and] report that this plan can work"

"I have nothing else to do"

-- Mike Huckabee, on why he hasn't dropped out of the race. He also told reporters, February 9, 2008, he wasn't concerned that it was statistically impossible for him to win the nomination. "I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles," said Huckabee, a Baptist minister

"The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it's fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He's not Bambi, he's bulletproof"

-- Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, February 8, 2008. "The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell"

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror"

-- Mitt Romney, February 7, 2008. Search results for "uniter" on the Romney campaign website: 0

"This is the first time we've covered her for a long time"

-- CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, defending his upcoming program on Britney Spears. Cooper was promoting his show on "Larry King Live," February 6, 2008, when guest Michael Moore interrupted to comment, "it would be less sad if we just left her alone. Why don't we just leave her alone and let her go on with her life?" Cooper further claimed "we haven't been following it much," although his show had broadcast a Spears segment just five days before

"We hope and pray every night to run against Hillary Clinton"

-- Ari Fleischer on CNN, February 5, 2008

"When I was the age of a lot of the young people in this audience, in 1968, I supported Robert Kennedy for president. And a lot of people said, a lot of people on the other side, they say, 'Oh, but the other guy was against the Vietnam war longer, and he's better, and we like him better, he gives us a better feeling.' And I said, 'Robert Kennedy cares about people like the people I grew up with. He cares about people without regard to race. He cares about people nobody is fighting for'"

-- Bill Clinton, staking his own claim to the magic of Camelot, February 4, 2008. Awkwardly, Clinton made his remarks on the eve of the California primary, which was when RFK was assassinated 40 years ago

"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women... White women are a problem, that's, you know -- we all live with that"

-- NY Times columnist Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday, February 3, 2008. "For the record, I like white women," volunteered Fox News anchor Brit Hume

"I always get asked the God questions"

-- Mike Huckabee, sulky Baptist minister, who followed by telling the MTV audience that his religion "helps me to understand what is right." February 3, 2008

"If you've got a Hillary and McCain race, you've got a third option: That's the pistol on the bed table"

-- The irrepressible Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, February 2, 2008

"I'm confident I'll get her votes if I win the nomination. It's not clear that she would get the votes I'd get if she wins it. And that's a fundamental difference"

-- Barack Obama, February 1, 2008

"I mean, which of your kids do you like best?"

-- Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, refusing to answer Senate questions about prioritizing between Afghanistan or Iraq, January 31, 2008

"Rudy didn't even care enough about conservatives to lie to us"

-- GOP consultant Nelson Warfield on Giuliani. New York Times, January 30, 2008

"Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal"

-- The National Organization for Women's New York chapter on Senator Ted Kennedy's endorsement of "Hillary Clinton's opponent." The January 28, 2008 press release also denounced Howard Dean and his brother Jim, "Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women's money, say they'll do feminist and women's rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America's future or whatever"

"How do you separate the sheep from the wool? There's no fingerprints, no DNA. You don't know if you have Osama bin Laden or Joe Shit the rag-man"

-- A former senior intelligence official who helped set up the CIA's interrogation program, admitting U.S. interrogators are still in the dark about the background and information of most prisoners. Washington Independent, January 28, 2008

"They may not have existed. But simply saying 'we didn't find them so therefore they didn't exist' is a bit of an overreach"

-- Mike Huckabee, man of faith to a fault. Fox News Sunday, January 27, 2008

"Over the years, I've been deeply moved by the people who've told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president"

-- Caroline Kennedy, NY Times op/ed, January 27, 2008. "That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama"

"The Clintons are in the process of doing the impossible: making the 2008 election a referendum on them, rather than on the Republicans"

-- The Economist editorial, January 24, 2008. "If what ought to be a stroll in the park in November becomes a real fight, then the Democrats will know who to blame"

"I don't need to go back and live in the White House. I've done that"

-- Hillary Clinton, vowing in a January 25, 2008 South Carolina campaign speech to be America's first nomadic president

"I know you think it's crazy, but I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight"

-- Bill Clinton, January 22, 2008, failing to note his tag-team role in the attacks on Obama. The same day, John Edwards told reporters, "While Senator Clinton and Senator Obama were hurling charges and countercharges at each other, I was thinking, 'I'm John Edwards and I represent the grown-up wing of the Democratic Party'"

"Hey buddy! How's it going? What's happening? You got some bling bling here"

-- Mitt Romney to an African-American child, January 21, 2008. According to Fox News, Romney held up a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Florida when he "jumped off the Mitt Mobile to greet a waiting crowd, took a picture with some kids and young adults and awkwardly quipped, 'Who let the dogs out? Who who'"

"I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes"

-- Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton at the January 21, 2008 debate complaining, to loud applause, about the recent attacks on him by Bill Clinton

"I want to ride a pace car. Will you let me ride a pace car? Do I need a license for that?"

-- Rudy Giuliani, begging NASCAR officials to let him drive a car at the Daytona International Speedway, January 18, 2008. "One time. Boys, one time. We're all little boys, don't you know that?" They finally agreed to let his bus circle the track once while he sat in a passenger seat

"It's historically preposterous. It is ridiculous. The majority of military bases in this country are named after Confederate officers: Eisenhower, Nimitz. The list of southerners in our military is legion. That is what it stands for"

-- Ann Coulter, insisting that there's nothing controversial about the Confederate flag on Hannity & Colmes, January 18, 2008. President Eisenhower was born in 1890 and Admiral Nimitz was born in 1885

"Because I'm like, an ordinary person, I thought that they meant 'what's your biggest weakness?' So I said, 'Well, I don't handle paper that well. You know, my desk is a mess. I need somebody to help me file and stuff all the time.' So the other two they say uh, they say well my biggest weakness is 'I'm just too passionate about helping poor people. I am just too impatient to bring about change in America'"

-- Barack Obama, joking January 17, 2008 that he shouldn't have taken the debate question about 'your biggest weakness' so literally. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. I could have said, 'Well you know, I like to help old ladies across the street'"

"We may parse it legally, [but] they are not in Europe or Canada or Great Britain. They call it for what it is, torture"

-- Former JAG lawyer, Lieutenant Commander (Ret.) Charles Swift, on Canada placing the U.S. on its watch list of countries where prisoners could be tortured. MSNBC's Countdown, January 17, 2008

"I don't have lobbyists running my campaign"

-- Mitt Romney, who has three registered lobbyists on his senior staff. Romney later bickered with an AP reporter over what the word "running" meant. January 17, 2008

"If millions of people are trying to sneak into the U.S., we don't exactly have an image problem overseas"

-- Newt Gingrich, unclear either on the location of Mexico or the oceans. Fox News, January 15, 2008

"What we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards"

-- Mike Huckabee at a Michigan campaign stop, January 14, 2008

"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent"

-- President Bush, seeming to offer a manifesto for Mideast peace, January 10, 2008. In the same speech, however, Bush indicated that "current realities" don't include closing or shrinking "authorized" Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and a White House spokesman said the president didn't mean that Israel should pull out of East Jerusalem or Golan Heights

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture"

-- Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, who nonetheless refused to admit waterboarding is torture. New Yorker interview, January 13, 2008

"We treat these problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when ... they both go together"

-- Sen. Clinton at a Mexican restaurant, finalist for the oddest campaign analogy by comparing subprime mortgage loans and foreclosures to appetizers. Clinton also qualified for offering the strangest non-sequitir, as a man told her that his wife was an illegal immigrant and the Senator responded, "No woman is illegal." Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 11, 2008

"It's one group where going back to the past really works. All you need to say in focus groups is 'Let's go back to the nineties'"

-- Sergio Bendixen, Clinton campaign pollster specializing in the Hispanic vote, explaining in the January 21, 2008 issue of The New Yorker that Clinton was counting on Latino voters to be her 'firewall' in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries. "The Hispanic voter -- and I want to say this very carefully -- has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates"

"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool"

-- A "Clinton adviser" quoted by the Guardian/UK, January 10, 2008

"To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail -- but not when they say the check is in the mail"

-- Michael German, the ACLU's national security policy counsel and a former FBI agent, on telco companies shutting down over half of the FBI wiretaps because the Bureau didn't pay their phone bills. AP, January 10, 2008.

"The reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it"

-- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, January 9, 2008. "She didn't win there on her merits. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened. That's how it happened"

"Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice"

-- Hillary Clinton at January 8, 2008 New Hampshire primary victory celebration. "It's the tears. She pretended to cry. The women felt sorry for her, and she won," charged neo-con NY Times columnist Bill Kristol on Fox News

"I can't make her younger, taller, [or] male. There's lots of things I can't do"

-- Bill Clinton at a January 7, 2008 campaign stop in New Hampshire. "If you want a president and need one, she would be, by far, the best." At another appearance Jan. 4, he whipped the voters into a yawn by repeatedly assuring them "Hillary's got good plans"

"I find the manner in which they've been running their campaign sort of depressing, lately. It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying 'don't feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check, you know?' I mean, you can picture JFK saying, 'we can't go to the moon, it's a false hope. Let's get a reality check'"

-- Barack Obama "Good Morning America" interview, January 7, 2008

"Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys"

-- Mitt Romney at the January 5, 2008 GOP debate. "Well, they are," shot back Sen. McCain. Romney blames the health care crisis entirely on the uninsured; McCain pointed out the widespread Medicare fraud by the industry and denounced "the power of the pharmaceutical companies" for blocking importation of drugs from Canada

"Nobody would be happier to see all this go away than us. But you can't ask somebody who is at a breathtaking disadvantage in the information coming to the voters to ignore that disadvantage and basically agree to put bullets in their brains"

-- Bill Clinton, apparently blaming the media for Hillary's negative campaigning to a woman who asked if it wasn't time to "change the game" and end the "meanness" in politics. "Nobody would like it better than us if you could get that personal vilification out of there, because nobody's been vilified more than we have," he told a University of New Hampshire/Durham forum, January 4, 2008

"None of this worries me - September 11, there were times I was worried"

-- Rudy Giuliani, telling the NY Daily News, January 4, 2008, that he's not concerned about his sixth place showing in the Iowa caucuses. Current Google hits for "Giuliani 9/11 tourette's syndrome": about 12,100

"This feels good. It's just like I imagined it when I was talking to my Kindergarten teacher"

-- Barack Obama on his Iowa caucus victory, also taking a jab at the Clinton campaign's attempts to discredit him for being overly ambitious since childhood. January 4, 2008

"I haven't decided on my second choice, but I'm definitely not going to vote for Hillary"

-- Iowa caucus participant Patty Ryan quoted by the Des Moines Register, January 3, 2008

"On the campaign trail, nobody's going to be able, if they've been campaigning as hard as we have been, to keep up with every single thing, from what happened to Britney last night to who won 'Dancing with the Stars'"

-- Mike Huckabee, forgiving himself for recent foreign policy gaffes, including ignorance of the NIE report on Iran. He was, however, able to offer same-day opinions on Britney Spears' 16 year-old sister's pregnancy. Quote from Quad-City Times, December 31, 2007

"My mother always said democracy is the best revenge"

-- Bilawal Zardari, son of the late Benazir Bhutto. The 19 year-old student was named symbolic leader of her political party. AP, December 30, 2007

"We will run only ads that talk about why I should be president, and not why Mitt Romney should not"

-- Mike Huckabee, calling a press conference to show the negative campaign ad he wouldn't show. December 31, 2007

"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly. I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly"

-- Fred Thompson, apparently willing to consider the presidency if it's not too much trouble and if we ask nicely. "I'm not particularly interested in running for president," he also told an Iowa town hall meeting, December 29, 2007

"It's gone. The breakup of what was the Reagan coalition -- social conservatives, defense conservatives, anti-tax conservatives -- it doesn't mean a whole lot to people anymore"

-- Ed Rollins, former Reagan campaign director and now chairman of Huckabee's national campaign. The NY Times, December 30, 2007, also quoted Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and one of the most influential Republicans in the country. "My fantasy out of this race is that Huckabee will create another Christian Coalition," he said

"I know it's very, very difficult, but we continue to work. I think it always has significance, but honestly it's how the media to a large degree portrays winners and losers and expectations and comeback kids and all that. So I would ask you: How am I doing?"

-- Sen. John McCain, breathless in Iowa, CNN December 26, 2007. Two days later, he told reporters, "I've been declared dead in this campaign on five or six occasions. I won't refer to a recent movie I saw, but I think I am legend"

"Just wanted u to know if it does in addition to the names in my letter to Musharaf of Oct 16nth, I wld hold Musharaf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me ... cld happen without him"

-- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto e-mail to her U.S. spokesman Mark Siegel, sent about two months before her assassination. "She basically asked for all that was required for someone of the standing of a former prime minister," Siegel told CNN, December 26, 2007. "All of that was denied to her ... She got some police protection, but it was sporadic and erratic"

"See, that's what happens if you get in my way"

-- GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, joking about the pheasants he had killed in an Iowa hunting photo-op, December 26, 2007. Huckabee also wisecracked that he and his fellow hunters were thinking of the pheasants as competing candidates. "It gives us a real incentive"

"Of course, we'd like to see Guantanamo closed. There's only one problem: What are you going to do with the bad people who are there...release them again on an unsuspecting population? I don't think so"

-- Condoleezza Rice, December 20, 2007 BBC interview. Fewer than 1% of the 305 "bad people" currently held have been actually charged with any crime

"Were not moving toward Hitler-type fascism, but we're moving toward a softer fascism. Loss of civil liberties, corporations running the show, big government in bed with big business"

-- Rep. Ron Paul on Meet the Press, December 23, 2007. "We have more corporatism and more abuse of our civil liberties, more loss of our privacy, national ID cards, all this stuff coming has a fascist tone to it. And the country's moving in that direction"

"If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described"

-- Mitt Romney, 2007 winner of the "What The Meaning Of 'Is' Is" award. Romney has repeatedly claimed that he watched his father, Michigan's Governor George Romney, march with Martin Luther King Jr. and has claimed on at least one occasion that he himself was a participant in a 1963 march. A search of the MLK archives found that neither Romney participated. "I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort," Mitt told the Boston Globe, December 21, 2007

"If a tape is not safe in the CIA, in the office of the Director of the CIA, we're in trouble"

-- John Radsan, former CIA Assistant General Counsel, telling the House Judiciary Committee, December 20, 2007, that he doesn't buy the CIA's excuse that the torture tapes had to be destroyed . "It doesn't make sense to me that the tapes needed to be destroyed to protect identities...the CIA protects a lot of classified information. If you have tapes in an overseas location, then have the tapes moved back to headquarters"

"It's what I do during my presidency. I go around spreading good will"

-- President Bush, December 20, 2007 press conference. A recent global poll found a negative view of U.S. influence by nearly a 2:1 margin

"There's not much that entices about the job. There's no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me"

-- Supreme Ct. Justice Clarence Thomas, suffering through his lifetime sinecure as one of the most powerful individuals in the world. "I like sports," Thomas said. "I like to drive a motor home." Orange County Register, December 18, 2007

"After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal"

-- Allen Raymond, who ran the 2002 New Hampshire state Republican party phone-jamming operation to sabotage Democratic party get-out-the-vote efforts. Quote from Raymond's book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative"

"They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world"

"We have fabulous health care in America...compare it with other systems around the world"

-- President Bush, December 17, 2007. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. health system ranks 37th, just ahead of Slovenia

"We're in Constitutional crisis because of the arrogant view of some in this administration that they can decide what the policy is, write the legal opinions to justify that policy and be accountable to no one"

-- Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, on the destroyed CIA tapes. "And by the way, when we're talking about leadership, it is the White House that believes the Constitution starts with Article II, the power of the executive. It ignores Article I, the Congress, and Article III, the courts. We have a system of checks and balances and it's broken." Fox News Sunday, December 16, 2007

"We seek your leadership, but if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way"

"When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running? In theory, we could find someone who is a gifted television commentator and let them run"

-- Bill Clinton, taking swipes at Sen. Barack Obama on PBS, December 14, 2007. "When I was 20 points down, they all thought I was a wonderful guy. Obviously things have changed," Obama responded the next day

"Our main focus, militarily, in the region and in the world right now is rightly and firmly in Iraq. It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity. In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must"

-- Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, on the priorities and state of the U.S. military. House Armed Services Committee testimony, December 11, 2007

"Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well"

-- Sen. Barack Obama at the December 13, 2007 presidential debate, asked about former members of the Clinton administration advising him on foreign policy. Obama's comeback was directed at Hillary after she interrupted his answer with a laugh and remark, "I want to hear that"

"I think attacking someone's religion is really going too far"

-- GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, ducking a question about Mike Huckabee's comment, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" Although a central tenet of LDS theology indeed holds that Jesus was Lucifer's older brother, Romney further evaded comment on NBC's "Today" show, December 12, 2007, by helpfully adding, "Actually, we prefer the name 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints'"

"Each one of these had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific, and the bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the agency got after 9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard. So it was extremely deliberate"

-- Retired CIA officer John Kiriakou on the use of "extreme interrorgation." ABC News, December 10, 2007.

"The strategy is to lay low and then blame them for not getting anything done"

-- Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Illinois) on GOP bipartisanship. "The truth is, we all lose. We trash each other and end up making the institution look bad," LaHood told AP, December 7, 2007. "That's why Congress' approval ratings are so low"

"Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge"

-- Lee Hamilton, former co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, on the CIA's destruction of waterboarding videotapes. "The CIA certainly knew of our interest in getting all the information we could on the detainees, and they never indicated to us there were any videotapes," he told the NY Times, December 7, 2007

"We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that 'l'etat c'est moi' and 'The King can do no wrong.' Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the 'supreme leader'"

-- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D - Rhode Island) remarks to the Senate, December 7, 2007, regarding highly classified secret legal opinions from the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel that give the president unlimited power of surveillance, as well as making any presidential executive order enforceable law

"I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It's a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we've cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on"

-- Former Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett on the White House's use of right-wing blogs. Quote from Texas Monthly interview, December 5, 2007

"When W.'s history is written, he will be seen as the rebellious teenager crashing the family station wagon into his father's three most cherished spots - diplomacy, intelligence and the Gulf"

-- NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd, December 5, 2007

"If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he's one of the most incompetent Presidents in modern American history"

-- Sen. Joe Biden on Bush's claim that he wasn't told until last week that Iran dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003

"It wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public...nobody ever told me"

"I'm older than Frankenstein and have a few scars"

-- Sen. John McCain, muffing his standard joke, "I'm older than dirt and got more scars than Frankenstein," at a December 3, 2007 MTV/MySpace forum

"I want a long term relationship. I don't want to just have a one night stand with all of you"

-- Sen. Hillary Clinton, early front-runner in the competition for the Most Cringeworthy Statement by a Presidential Candidate. Quoted by ABC News to a crowd in Iowa, December 3, 2007

"I don't care about his personal life - it's not shocking to me that he wanted to visit his girlfriend. The part that's disturbing to me is that my organization or any government organization could be used to conceal from the public how their money was being spent "

-- Brendan Sexton, chair of the New York City Procurement Policy Board in 2000, when then-Mayor Giuliani took almost $30,000 from the agency budget to pay for security during his trysts in the Hamptions. "He didn't want anybody to know what he was doing. That's the truth," Sexton told the NY Post, December 2, 2007

"What is outraging about this case is that it is being used against the Saudi government and people "

-- Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, explaining to reporters, November 27, 2007, that the Kingdom is being victimized by criticism of its punishment for the "Girl of Qatif." The young woman who was gang-raped by 7 men was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her

"If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished "

-- Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, BBC, November 29, 2007

"I own a couple of guns, but I'm not going to tell you what they are or where they are"

-- GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson at the November 28, 2007 debate, a bit too eager to work in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" answer somewhere

"Shortly after the Vietnam War ended, [North Vietnamese] Colonel Tu and [U.S. Army Col. Harry] Summers met, and they were talking about this. And our -- and the American colonel said, 'You know, we never lost one battle.' And Colonel Tu, the Vietnamese says, 'Yes, but that's irrelevant'"

-- Rep. Ron Paul at the November 28, 2007 GOP debate, answering McCain and Thompson calling for "victory" in Iraq. McCain also compared the occupation of Iraq to fighting Hitler in WWII

"Mr. President, we should move from the podium so they will see us shaking hands"

-- Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, overheard on an open microphone, suggesting that the photo-op with Bush and Abbas might look ever so much better if the audience could see what the three men were vigorously doing with their hands in front of Bush's waist. November 27, 2007

"Senator Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it"

-- Sen. Barack Obama on ABC's Nightline, November 26, 2007

"This is not Dave Petraeus' war. This is George Bush's war"

-- A senior official at the Pentagon, distancing the U.S. military from Iraq war policy. LA Times, November 26, 2007

"I thought, 'Oh my goodness, Hamas won?'"

-- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, caught unawares as Hamas won an easy victory in last year's elections. Rice told the NY Times, November 26, 2007, she heard the news from a TV news crawl as she was exercising

"America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing"

-- GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee on CNN, November 25, 2007. "Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich, filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas that train the terrorists"

"When will politicians realize that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual?"

-- Derek Clark, British Member of the European Parliament, November 21, 2007. Clark was objecting to proposed questions on an EU census that would have asked women about their history of "consensual unions." The European Commission claimed they were seeking only data about "unmarried partnerships," and not sexual activity

"It was almost like a reflex mode. I actually remember saying to myself, 'If I was a person really deciding who should be president right now, I'd probably vote for Nixon, because I think the country would be safer with Nixon'"

-- Rudy Giuliani, clearly explaining why he voted for McGovern in 1972. Weekly Standard, November 26, 2007

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself"

-- Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, directly implicating Bush in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. From an excerpt of McClellan's book released by his publisher, November 20, 2007

"TV made him a hero, and we'll use TV to take him down"

-- New York Fire Chief Jim Riches, leader of the firefighters and 9/11 family members currently in New Hampshire to publicize Giuliani's "egregious" use of 9/11 for political gain. ABC News, November 17, 2007

"Now all these people who have built these $300,000, $400,000 homes [find out they] should be higher?"

-- Tommy Do, a homeowner in the New Orleans neighborhood of Lakeview, on learning that the drainage improvements made by the Army Corps of Engineers will only protect against 6 inches of flooding, not 5.5 feet. AP, November 17, 2007

"The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color) is truly a disservice to our country"

-- U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose, winning the grand championship for victimhood by claiming 5 (or is it 7?) persecutions from her co-workers, the media, and apparently lots of others. Paulose was reassigned to Washington three days later. National Review Online, November 16, 2007

"I was just forced to watch an MSNBC segment on going green by shopping at farmers markets. We need Fox back, stat"

-- A "clearly anguished Senate GOP aide" during a Fox News outage on Capitol Hill cable. Roll Call, November 12, 2007

"It's just absolutely amazing to me that there's actually an open discussion in the United States of America about what kind of torture will be tolerated "

-- John Edwards, November 15, 2007 presidential candidate debate

"Go to Revelations in the Bible and look at the prediction for the end of the world. It's fascinating, because it does involve the Middle East, and it does involve the clash of cultures... This was written, what? Five thousand years ago? "

-- Bill O'Reilly on The Radio Factor, November 13, 2007, unclear on the concept of this New Testament-thing

"People said to me afterwards, 'Governor, you'll do that for Keith Richards, but you wouldn't do that for an ordinary person.' And my answer to that is always, 'Hey, if you can play guitar like Keith Richards, I'll consider pardoning you, too'"

-- Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who tells the story of why he pardoned Richards and Ron Wood last year for a 1975 reckless driving conviction using a "surprisingly dead-on Pirates of the Caribbean-esque impersonation." Also while governor, Huckabee oversaw the execution of 15 convicts who presumably did not play guitar like Keith Richards, and thus weren't pardonworthy. Quote from Rolling Stone, November 14, 2007

"This extremely public kind of controversy certainly isn't of much help in winning contracts"

-- Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on the news that the FBI found Blackwater's September killing of 14 Iraqi civilians was unjustified. Blackwater is bidding for up to $15 billion in new contracts from the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program. Quote from the Wall St. Journal, November 13, 2007

"You people are really nuts. There's kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now - there's better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn't get a tip"

-- Anita Esterday, a waitress who said she did not see Clinton personally leave a tip after staffers had lunch at the Iowa diner Nov. 8. Clinton's campaign responded quickly that there was a $100 tip left on a $157 check, but within two days, over 25,000 Google hits could be found on the "controversy." Quote from NY Times, November 9, 2007

"They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran...It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down"

-- Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, who told The Guardian/UK, November 11, 2007 that he has to follow a list where 60-70% of the questions are about Iran. A military intelligence official also told the newspaper, "The message is, 'Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran.' It's sickening"

"We just don't have any idea how this is going to unfold"

-- A senior Bush administration official conceding they fear Pakistan could lose control over its nuclear arsenal of up to 115 bombs. NY Times, November 11, 2007

"How could this e-mail possibly have been sent? These journalists have sparked a major, major incident"

-- An official from Israel's Foreign Ministry on the snafu caused by a group of Israeli journalists who used babelfish.com to translate a list of questions sent to the Dutch Foreign Ministry. The website translated "Dome of the Rock" into "bandages of the knitted domes," and garbled several passages to insult the foreign minister's mother, including, "The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian." The journalist's visit was cancelled. Jerusalem Post, November 6, 2007

"We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous"

-- Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on a study that found vets now represent 1 in 4 homeless in the United States. AP, November 7, 2007

"I don't know if they go in crazy, but they all come out crazy. All of them"

-- NY Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, insisting that he has no intention of following in his father's footsteps and becoming executive editor. Rosenthal insisted to Radar magazine, November 2, 2007, that he wasn't joking and his father was "vastly" crazier at the end of his tenure

"If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you'd be saying: God, I love freedom"

-- President Bush, insisting "freedom's happening" in Iraq. November 7, 2007

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies"

-- House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D - California) to Yahoo executives testifying that they didn't know China would imprison a journalist for ten years after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities requested by Chinese authorities. November 6, 2007

"Here's a woman of great accomplishment with a Master's degree in international conflict resolution, and I hope that you're going to talk about more than a tongue stud"

-- Dennis Kucinich to CBS Early Show anchor Hannah Storm, after she pressed Elizabeth Kucinich on details about her decade-old piercing. Storm persevered: "would you remove it if you became first lady or leave it in?" November 6, 2007

"The bloggers are talkers, commentators, not reporters. The talk-show hosts are reactors, commentators, not reporters. The search engines can search but do not report. All of them, every single one of them, have to have the news in order to exist and thrive"

-- PBS' Jim Lehrer, telling career journalists to "calm down, please" at the University of Texas, November 5, 2007.

"Thank heavens for small favors. Iraq looks pretty good"

"There are still people who believe that the earth is flat. But when you're reporting on a story like the one you're covering today, where you have people all around the world, you don't search out for someone who still believes the earth is flat and give them equal time"

-- Al Gore on media inviting opposing opinions from global warming deniers. Today Show, November 5, 2007

"We tried to hide the cousin thing. Everybody has a black sheep in the family. The crazy uncle in the attic"

-- Sen. Barack Obama on being distantly related to Dick Cheney. November 3, 2007

"What does he have to show for his presidency? He is the President of the United States already talking about his library. What is he going to have in the library? A tax cut for the wealthiest people in the country at the expense of the middle class and a war without end that is a total failure?"

-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, November 1, 2007.

"Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists"

-- Rumsfeld April 2006 memo, after several retired generals called for his resignation. A selection of the 20-60 "snowflakes" that he wrote daily published by the Washington Post, November 1, 2007, also urged staffers to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" in support of the war

"The president and I saw Katrina as an opportunity to open a debate on race and poverty. Anti-government Republicans saw Katrina as an opportunity to cut off medicine to old people. It confirmed the worst image of Republicans as the party of shriveled hearts"

-- Former Bush senior adviser Michael Gerson in his book, "Heroic Conservatism." Gerson writes he often fought losing battles with Cheney's office over proposals to help the poor, sick, or incarcerated. Washington Post, October 31, 2007

"It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment"

-- Jack Crotty, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces, at an October 31, 2007 "town hall meeting" of State Dept. diplomats upset by the new policy requiring them to serve in Iraq. "I'm sorry, but basically that's a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded? You know that at any other [country] in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point," Crotty said to loud and sustained applause

"Rudy Giuliani is probably the most underqualified person since George Bush to run for president. He can only say 3 things in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11"

-- Senator Joseph Biden at the October 30, 2007 Democratic candidates debate

"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about [Bush's] mental health. There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact"

-- Rep. Dennis Kucinich in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board, October 30, 2007. "There's a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us"

"I believe that most countries are not taking this issue too seriously, including, unfortunately, Great Britain"

-- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who told the BBC October 29, 2007, that Britain failed to act on information provided by the Saudis that might have averted London's 2005 suicide attack. The same day, a new analysis found that 55% of foreign fighters in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia

"Both papers uncovered dishwashers, cooks and other suspect Hillary campaign contributors in New York's Chinatown, Flushing, the Bronx, and Brooklyn who were limited-income, limited-English-proficient and smellier than stinky tofu"

-- Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin on recent stories in the LA Times and NY Post on contributions from Asian-Americans. The October 24, 2007 column by Asian-American Malkin finished, "If it's 'ethnic profiling' to be extra-careful of Chinatown donors who can't speak English, live in dilapidated buildings, have never voted, can't tell Hillary Clinton from Hunan Chicken or simply can't be found, then 'ethnic profiling' should be the standard procedure of every responsible campaign"

"They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president of the United States. That's plain silly. That's silly"

-- Rudy Giuliani on torture at an October 24, 2007 town hall in Davenport, Iowa. Ten years ago, the UN ruled that sleep deprivation was torture and before 2003, the State Dept. explicitly described it as torture and condemned 12 nations, including Iraq, for using it. Giuliani also told Iowans that he wasn't sure waterboarding was torture, either. "It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it"

"I appreciate him being here, but they could have organized this better. I'd just as soon eat"

-- Danny Chandler, one of the firefighters in San Diego County who had been fighting blazes for 24 hours, but was kept from the showers and food tent by Bush's visit. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush's fly-ins similarly delayed rescue and relief missions repeatedly. Quote from the San Diego Union-Tribune, October 26, 2007

"I'm a prominent conservative but no one is inviting me to speak at their campuses. I had to create an event"

-- David Horowitz on efforts to stir interest in his "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." Horowitz interview in George Washington University student newspaper The Hatchet, October 25, 2007

"I took a city that was known for pornography and licked it to a large extent, so I have my own set of qualifications"

-- Rudy Giuliani on the campaign trail. NY Daily News, October 24, 2007. Also popular in the blogs is columnist Jimmy Breslin's old description of Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony"

"You know, torture is the method of choice of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo-tough. And that should not be the United States"

-- Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret) remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee, October 18, 2007. "Other than, perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, water-boarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It was devised, I believe, in the Spanish Inquisition. It has been repudiated for centuries. It's a little disconcerting to hear now that we're not quite sure where water-boarding fits in the scheme of things"

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today"

-- CNN's Glenn Beck on the October 22, 2007 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program. The Santa Ana fire is the greatest national disaster in America since Hurricane Katrina, with about one million people evacuated

"I don't know what [Bush] knew or when he knew it, but it was clear...that there was a conspiracy by a multitude of people within the White House to undermine and discredit Joe Wilson. And I was just sort of collateral damage"

-- Valerie Plame interview on the "Today Show, October 22, 2007. Plame also said that a Sept. 1 2006 Washington Post editorial blaming her husband, Ambassador Wilson, for the end of her career, "was like reading Pravda"

"Thompson's tendency to look down and read his remarks provided the audience with some of the most prolonged views of the top of a bald politician's head in recent history. When you feel compelled to use an index card for lines like, 'We must have good laws. We must do our best to stop bad laws,' you have been spending too much of your life filming 30-second bits of dialogue"

-- New York Times columnist Gail Collins on Fred Thompson's dismal showing at the October 20, 2007 "Values Voter Summit"

"All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

-- 1962 Nobel Prize winner and 2007 racist James Watson, explaining to the London Sunday Times Magazine October 14, 2007, why he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa." Watson also said he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true"

"You don't have money to fund the war or children, but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement"

-- Rep. Pete Stark (D-California) on House Republicans who refused to join the effort to override of Bush's SCHIP veto. October 18, 2007

"I want to make sure - and that's why, when I tell you I'm going to sprint to the finish, and finish this job strong, that's one way to ensure that I am relevant; that's one way to sure that I am in the process. And I intend to use the veto"

-- President Bush, explaining why a children's health insurance program is really all about him. October 17, 2007 press conference

"The truth is, I'm okay with it. Now, I don't want to be invited to the family hunting party"

-- Sen. Barack Obama on being distantly related to Dick Cheney. October 17, 2007 Tonight show appearance

"We found out who was writing it and made a couple phone calls to the person writing it. And we said, 'You know what? We're going to find out where your kids go to school. We're going to find out who you knocked up in high school. We're going to find out what drugs you used. We're going to find out where you go to drink and do -- we're gonna find out how you paid for your house. We're going to do -- and we're going to do exact -- and we're going to say that, you know what? You are no different than [former publisher of Screw magazine] Al Goldstein. You both masturbate'"

-- Rush Limbaugh broadcast of October 15, 2007, describing how he intimidated a reporter who was writing "a cover story on me coming out of one of the big news magazines." Limbaugh boasted that he "changed the tone of the story by about 60 percent, I would say, from what it was going to be"

"Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that"

-- Former CENTCOM head General John Abizaid (Ret), at a Stanford conference, October 13, 2007

"It's all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the Church with my psychoanalyst work"

-- Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, a high-ranking Vatican priest who was secretly filmed putting the moves on a young man by reporters from Italy's "La7" TV network as part of a program on gay priests. Stenico was quoted by AP, October 14, 2007, as telling an Italian newspaper that he's not gay and was only gathering info about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity"

"It's just stunning to me that after seven years of Republicans complaining that the president won't use his veto, [Bush and the GOP leadership] choose their big showdown to be over children's health care"

-- A veteran Republican strategist to Roll Call, October 11, 2007. " Good Lord, it probably polls at 80 percent!"

"There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight"

-- Former top commander in Iraq General Ricardo Sanchez, October 12, 2007 remarks to a convention of military journalists. "From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan, to the administration's latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize the political, economic and military power," Sanchez said, adding that military strategy alone will only "stave off defeat"

"When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching. Now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us"

-- A professional woman who watched the protesters from her Rangoon office. Independent/UK, October 11, 2007

"Minorities don't become elderly, the way white people do. They die first"

-- John Tanner, chief of the Justice Dept. Civil Rights Divisions' voting rights section, explaining why a Georgia law requiring voters to have photo ID mostly discriminates against elderly whites because they often don't have photo IDs. A day earlier, Tanner said it was a mistake to assume that the poor lack photo IDs. "When someone goes to a check cashing business God help them if they don't have a photo ID," he said. Quotes from a panel on voter disenfranchisement held by the National Latino Congreso in Los Angelest, October 5, 2007 and the Oct. 4 annual meeting of Georgia's NAACP

"Oh shit, he's dumb as hell. Fred Thompson. Who is he? He won't say anything"

-- Nixon in a May 1973 recording on the young Senate lawyer who represented Republicans on the Watergate committee. In a June 6 chat with White House counsel Fred Buzhardt, Nixon say of Thompson, "He isn't very smart, is he?" Buzhardt answered, "Not extremely so, but --" Nixon interrupted, "But he's friendly"

"I hope you get elected, cause it will make Rush Limbaugh really, really mad"

-- A voter in Maquoketa, Iowa to Hillary Clinton, October 7, 2007

"There will be no reconciliation as such. To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power"

-- Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, Washington Post, October 8, 2007. Political reconciliation was, of course, Bush's justification for the troop "surge"

"With [Blackwater] drivers honking at, cutting off, pelting with water bottles (a favorite tactic) and menacing with weapons anyone in their way, how many enemies were we creating?"

-- Janessa Gans, a U.S. official in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, on the behavior of Blackwater convoys that chauffeured her around Iraq. In her October 6, 2007 LA Times op/ed, Gans described her outrage as she watched a Blackwater vehicle push an "old, puttering sedan driven by an older man with a young woman and three children" into a barricade because the car was unable to get out of the way on a narrow road. "'Where do you all expect them to go?' I shrieked. 'It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?'"

"You know, and there are times that you just want to dash your brains out against the wall because, I mean, he's actually, he's a very funny guy"

-- Former White House press secretary Tony Snow, decrying that the world never gets the chance to see the real George W. Bush. October 4, 2007 appearance on The Dave Letterman Show

"The Administration can't have it both ways. I'm tired of these games. They can't say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program"

"We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer -- it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach"

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 4, 2007. "Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It's time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It's time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows"

"It was hard to read these e-mails and not come to the conclusion that the State Department is acting as Blackwater's enabler"

-- Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) at a October 2, 2007 House Oversight hearing. After a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed the guard of the Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24 last year, the State Dept. advised the company on how much to pay the slain man's family, then aided Blackwater with flying the shooter out of the country just 36 hours after the shooting. "If this had happened in the United States, the contractor would have been arrested and a criminal investigation launched," said Waxman. "If a drunken U.S. soldier had killed an Iraqi guard, the soldier would've faced a court martial. But all that has happened to the Blackwater contractor is that he has lost his job"

"We have sure moved away from the day when we called them Krauts and Nips"

-- Ann Coulter, remarking that the U.S. is at war and shouldn't be offended by her remarks calling all Arabs "camel jockeys" because "they killed 3,000 Americans." Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, October 1, 2007

"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I've seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas. And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment"

-- Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff to AP, October 1, 2007. The day before, the Washington Post reported that the EPA's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped by 70 percent under the Bush administration

"First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the President's willing to do something bad for the kids"

-- The dark humor of Bill Kristol, on Bush's vow to veto extend health coverage for 4 million uninsured children. Fox News Sunday, September 30, 2007

"Quite honestly, since Sept. 11, most of the time when we get on a plane, we talk to each othe