Quotes of Note, 2002

It's all about political calculation! "White House officials have told Republicans that Bush is willing to accept the consequences if Lott loses the majority leader position, quits the Senate and allows Mississippi's Democratic governor to replace him, GOP officials say."
-- AP (posted and removed quickly), Dec. 16, 2002

"Trent Lott is the Republican party's Monica Lewinsky."
-- Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL 2), Dec. 14, 2002

"As we know, Democrats have had plenty of harsh words about Trent Lott's remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. But Bill Clinton got in a more lighthearted dig. Our Jonathan Karl reports that the former president offered this line at a benefit last night at the Robert Kennedy Memorial -- quote. Mr. Clinton, he said: "When Robert Kennedy ran for president, we supported him. We're proud of it. And if he had lived and been elected, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years!'"
-- Judy Woodruff, CNN Inside Politics, Dec. 13, 2002

"Trent Lott: The gift that just keeps on giving. "
-- Eric Alterman, Altercation, Dec. 12, 2002

"A lesser breed was sliming Dems. And no one did it like the Fox & Friends crew -- the gang who run the worst 'news' show in the history of American television. A three-hour reading of con agit-prop, the program is a daily reminder of how low our 'press corps' has fallen."
-- Daily Howler, Dec. 12, 2002

"[T]he Mississippian with the styrene plastic hair-helmet has long specialized in racially ambiguous remarks. On his 'Talking Points' website, Josh Marshall posted an interview Lott once gave arguing that Jefferson Davis would have approved of the Republican platform. He's given speeches to one of those 'Southern Heritage' outfits calling itself the Kouncil of Konservative Kitizens, or something similar. Remember how upset GOP moralists got when a handful of immature mourners booed Lott at Sen. Paul Wellstone's funeral? Well, that's the kind of thing they were booing about."
-- Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Dec. 11, 2002

Re. Trent Lott: "Cheerleaders ain't traditionally known for their brains."
-- "dead", posted to Free Republic Dec. 10, 2002 (thanks to Atrios)

"It is of course hideously disgusting that anyone would turn a BIRTHDAY PARTY into a partisan political rally."
-- Atrios, Eschaton, Dec. 7, 2002

"A good kid is shot to death. Tell Chuck Heston that he can pry this child's promise from his cold dead hands."
-- Hesiod, Counterspin Central, Dec. 2, 2002

"It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
-- John DiIulio, The New York Times, Dec. 2, 2002

"The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, an otherwise respectable newspaper, consists of a group of people who take their economic guidance from Ayn Rand, their political guidance from Newt Gingrich, and their moral guidance from John Fund."
-- Bryan Zepp Jamieson, Rich White Trash, Nov. 30, 2002

"They're selling a hybrid product now that's news plus news-helper; whether it's entertainment or attitude or news that's marbled with opinion, it's different. Now, especially in the cable-TV market, it has become good economics once again to go back to a party-oriented approach to attract a hard-core following that appreciates the predictability of a right-wing point of view, but then to make aggressive and constant efforts to deny that's what they're doing in order to avoid offending the broader audience that mass advertisers want. Thus the Fox slogan 'We Report, You Decide,' or whatever the current version of their ritual denial is."
-- President-elect Al Gore, quoted in New York Observer, Nov. 27, 2002

How should [Daschle] have replied [to Limbaugh's whining about Daschle's critique]? He could have noted how odd it is for Mr. Limbaugh, who avoided the Vietnam draft, to question the patriotism of an Air Force veteran like himself. Or he could have adopted the strategy of Senator John McCain, another frequent target of the radio demagogue's bombast. After comparing Mr. Limbaugh to a 'circus clown,' the Arizona Republican apologized. 'I regret that statement,' he told an interviewer on Fox News the other night, 'because my office has been flooded with angry phone calls from circus clowns all over America. They resent that comparison, and so I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty.'"
-- Joe Conason, New York Observer, Nov. 27, 2002

"Mr. Starr was particularly exercised about liberals' being result-oriented, abandoning their principles to reach the outcomes they favor. But he would have made a more compelling case if he had not proceeded to abandon his — and the Federalist Society's — own oft-repeated commitment to judicial restraint to praise the Supreme Court for striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Violence Against Women Act in a burst of conservative activism."
-- Adam Cohen, The New York Times, Nov. 24, 2002

"In the aftermath of the election, I received hundreds of e-mails from readers suggesting what Democrats might stand for today after standing for nothing brought them their Nov. 5 debacle. 'It need not be such a complicated question,'wrote one correspondent, cutting to the chase for many others. 'Stand up honestly and courageously for workers, consumers, voters, investors, people who breathe air and drink water and eat food. Do what's best for them. Big business can take care of itself.'

"That traditional party ethic is embryonically reflected in the domestic policy staples emerging so far among pundits and most Democrats running for president, Mr. Gore included: some kind of universal health insurance (bothersome details and price tags to come during primary season), a fast Democratic tax cut for the non-rich in lieu of the slo-mo Bush windfall for the upper brackets, fights for the environment and civil liberties and against hard-right judicial appointments and corporate malfeasance."
-- Frank Rich, The New York Times, Nov. 23, 2002

"Defenders of Ailes are coming out and say that Ailes was simply being a patriotic American who was offering Mr. Bush some advice during some troubling times.

"Fine. I'm willing to cut Ailes some slack (something he would never do for the left) were it not for the way he treated Bill Clinton at times America was facing some troubling times.

• "In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Ailes was spreading his smears about Vince Foster's death being caused by the Clintons (to date, no apologies to the Clinton or Foster family).
• "In the aftermath of the tragedy in Somalia, the television show he produced had a segment in which Limbaugh showed footage of a US soldier being dragged through the street to which Limbaugh said something to the effect of 'They [the Clinton administration] wanted this to happen.'
• "Ailes stood by when Limbaugh spread the Gore/Monticello hoax (click here and scroll down to 7/5).
• "Let's not forget that Ailes was executive producer of the show that had the host mentioned the White House dog and put up a picture of 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton (The riotous laughter by the mouthbreathers in studio audience wasn't exactly Nuremberg 1934, but it was a loathsome and nauseating spectacle).
• "Ailes also stood by Limbaugh when he lied and said it was an accident.

"Even before Woodward uncovered this advice giving, there were some in the mainstream media who gave Ailes the benefit of the doubt when he said that his alleged news channel would be 'fair and balanced.'However, for those of us familiar with this man's past, the 'fair and balanced'label is just another weapon in his ideological arsenal."
-- Scoobie Davis, Nov. 21, 2002

" I am at a loss to understand how a man who has attended Andover and Yale, and grown up in a patrician environment, can still project an image of a guy running a gas station in Texas. It scares me to believe that he is the ultimate decision maker for our country."
-- a Washington Post reader to Bob Woodward, Nov. 19, 2002

"One of the best ways to judge someone's moral and intellectual seriousness -- perhaps also their moral and intellectual caliber, but at least their seriousness -- is to see who they pick as their enemies, who they choose to pick fights with. Someone like David Horowitz is a great example of effectiveness of this method -- a sorry sort of guy, bubbling on churning rapids of cash, constantly casting about for some new lefty freak to mount a new crusade against, all mixed-up with aggrieved passion and outrage. The whole enterprise is about as grave and righteous as tricking retarded grade-schoolers out of their lunch money."
-- Joshua Micah Marshall, Talking Points Memo, Nov. 18, 2002

"Two days ago, I listed a couple sentences of cloying praise of George Chucklehead Bush by Michael Kelly as the howler of the month. I wrote this a bit too early.
"Matt Drudge in writing about Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, Bush At War: 'Woodward's BUSH AT WAR follows on the heels of Bill Sammon's NYT Bestseller FIGHTING BACK, THE WAR ON TERRORISM FROM INSIDE THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE, intensifying the cross-town rivalry between The WASHINGTON TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST.'"
" Rivalry? I'm no big fan of much of the Post's reporting (Steno Sue Schmidt and Ceci Connolly come to mind) but at least it's a real newspaper. Despite Moon's dumping of over a billion dollars into the Times, it is still a journalistic monstrosity with a circulation less than the Tacoma News Tribune."
-- Scoobie Davis, Nov. 15, 2002

"Did Rove mastermind a timely bait and switch, substituting Saddam Hussein for Osama bin Laden as Public Enemy #1? He did. Did the White House market what CNN bills as 'Showdown in Iraq' like an action/adventure film for political purposes? Absolutely."
-- Gene Lyons, Nov. 13, 2002

"Leaving aside all of the other debating points about 'partial birth abortions,' in the end it wasn't signed into law by Clinton. Why? Because he demanded that there be an exception for the health and life of the mother and the Republicans wouldn't put one in there. Now we know how they feel about women and the fetuses they claimed to care so much about. They were unconcerned about the lives of both."
-- Atrios, Eschaton, Nov. 12, 2002

"Yes, sleaze has a bad name. It also has a new name: Bush. Shame on him."
--Paul Begala, Crossfire, November 7, 2002

"Everyone Bill Clinton campaigned for was defeated."
-- Peggy Noonan on MSNBC, conveniently forgetting about Bill Richardson, Gray Davis, etc. etc.,

The three Bush "accomplishments" that account for last night's Democratic losses:
1) The theft of the 2000 election by Bush and the Scalia Five
2) Bush the squatter illegitimately occupied the people's White House on the morning of 9/11/01
3) In order to drown out all other issues of importance and the Democrats' messages, the corrupt regime, with the help of the media whores, further abused their ill-gotten power, maintaining the fear and crisis level at a fever pitch by squandering US credibility around the world with a manufactured Iraq emergency.
-- Media Whores Online, Nov. 6, 2002

"In Bush's nation, government at home would exist only to punish, to prohibit, to confine and to execute; elsewhere it would exist to smite, to punish, to seize--and to execute. Should that nation really come to be, many people who now think of themselves as American citizens, including many who voted on Bush's side and those who convinced themselves nothing worth bothering themselves about was at stake, will find that they are not."
-- Greil Marcus, Salon, Nov. 6, 2002

"The party is in its worst shape since 1928, and there's no FDR even remotely in sight. "
-- Sean Wilentz, Salon, Nov. 6, 2002

"Even a short-timer like me -- the span between my dive-in at the deep end of the TV news pool and my escape through the filter system was just 15 months -- quickly learned that 'election reform' is the equivalent of Fox's already-canceled 'Girls Club.'"
-- Keith Olbermann, Salon, Nov. 5, 2002

"George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan.
"First of all, he couldn't even get more votes than Al Gore, whereas Reagan won two landslides.
"Second, his favorability is slightly lower than Bill Clinton's was in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
"So I think it's time that Democrats stood up and fought back. There's no need for my party to fear this guy. He's campaigning all over the country like a chicken with his head cut off, and I promise you his party is going to lose seats in the governors' mansions, and in the Senate, and perhaps even in the House.
"That doesn't look like Reagan to me."
-- Paul Begala, USA Today, Nov. 4, 2002

"If Leona Hemsley was the queen of mean, Peggy [Noonan] is its princess."
-- Leah H., letter to Atrios, Nov. 1, 2002

"Oh well. Better ranting on Free Republic than perched on the roof, thinning out the neighborhood with a high powered rifle..."
-- blogger TBogg, Oct. 30, 2002 (thanks to Atrios)

"Just to hear Gingrich holding forth in that familiar old confident tone should have been a clue that he either didn't know what he was talking about or was lying."
-- Joe Conason, Salon, Oct. 29, 2002

"The political veteran in me knows that lying about a long-past drunken driving conviction -- or an affair -- is understandable, if not excusable. What is not excusable is misleading the country -- repeatedly, as The Post and others have noted -- about going to war. There is something odd about a White House that thinks misleading people about sex is a crime, but misleading us about war is good public policy."
-- Paul Begala

"Trade, aid, tourism and pirated Hollywood movies are the proven weapons of mass destruction against totalitarianism, much more effective than sanctions and war, which only enshrine dictators and terrorists as the protectors of a people or nation's virtue. Inviting it to the table is still the best weapon for stuffing a mouse that roars."
-- Robert Scheer, Salon, Oct. 24, 2002

"The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors."
-- Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark. Oct. 10, 2002

"Is Mr. Bush any more committed to a workable inspection regime than Saddam himself? It isn't easy to assess the intentions of an administration in which the State Department indicates one attitude and the Defense Department suggests the opposite, while the White House occupies a vague middle."
-- Joe Conason, New York Observer, Oct. 9, 2002

"The 'strict adherence' to the 'letter of the law' trumpeted by indignant Republicans is, in practice, about as strict as Newt Gingrich's monogamy. For them it isn't good enough that a Republican-dominated court voted unanimously to permit Lautenberg on the ballot. (Apparently Republicans appointed by Christie Whitman aren't Republican enough for Princeton legal scholar Robert George, whose bitter screed about their pro-choice views is posted on Forrester's Web site.) Petty consistency is all that matters."
-- Joe Conason, Salon, Oct. 4, 2002

September 2002

"Do voters remember that when Saddam actually used 'weapons of mass destruction,'spraying nerve gas on Iranian soldiers and Kurdish rebels 15 years ago, the Reagan-Bush administration reacted by selling him more helicopters?
-- Gene Lyons, Sept. 24, 2002

"Based upon the hard evidence I have seen, I do not believe the administration has yet made a compelling case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq."
-- Jack Kemp, Town Hall, Sept. 24, 2002

"So if Raines and the Times were leading journalistic jihad against the Bush Administration’s war on Iraq, dontcha think they might have put Gore’s speech in the lead on the front page? And what about the testimony of these three generals?"
-- Eric Alterman, Altercation, Sept. 24, 2002

"What is the penalty for putting false information on a driver's license application? My own brief look at Scottish Common Law tells me it amounts to Treason, but I'm no lawyer.
" Our own investigation revealed that:
- [Ann] Coulter's Connecticut driver's license lists her birth as December 1961.
- Her D.C. driver's license, acquired many years later, says she was born in December 1963.
- The birth date on file at the New Canaan, Conn., voter registration office is Dec. 8, 1961"
-- Atrios, Eschaton, Sept. 6, 2002

August 2002

"On TV, Coulter conveys all the feminine warmth of a water moccasin, if you can imagine a pit viper with silicone implants."
-- Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 28, 2002

"I think we should give John Ashcroft a big hand -- (pause) -- right in the mouth!.... The way things are going I'll probably be thrown in jail tomorrow for saying that, so I hope y'all will bail me out!"
--Merle Haggard, Kansas City, August 25, 2002

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
-- Ann Coulter to George Gurley, New York Observer, August 21, 2002

"People in these mosques in THIS country that are praying, that are working, that are good Americans, that pay taxes here -- they're NOT evil people! They're good people -- and for YOU [Sandy Rios, spokesperson for right wing front group Concerned Women of America] to suggest that and Franklin Graham to suggest that is JUST WRONG, GODDAMNIT, IT IS WRONG!"
-- James Carville, CNN Crossfire, August 20, 2002

July 2002

"It will never occur to [Ann] Coulter that in the vast crowd of us who appeared on television news in 1998, and focused entirely on the itinerary of President Clinton's genitalia, she was up near the front. It's a big crowd, and some of us tried to disperse it. But we're all there -- I'm including myself -- and as we head to purgatory for our sins, if not hell, we should all solemnly acknowledge that in fact there most obviously was something else to which we should have been paying attention, and didn't."
-- Keith Olbermann, Salon, July 30, 2002

"It's especially flattering that several Freepers took the trouble to write. For many of them, completing a coherent sentence is no small challenge."
-- Joe Conason, Salon, July 29, 2002

"When the Washington Times acknowledges that Republicans are worried about November, they are very, very worried about November."
-- Joe Conason, Salon, July 25, 2002

"The White House is insisting on a Homeland Security bill with virtually all the civil service and collective bargaining rights of federal employees stripped out of it?... What [Mr. Bush is] doing here is just using the crushed, maimed and devastated of 9/11 to prop up Grover Norquist's federal workplace policy agenda."
-- Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, July 25, 2002

"This regime-change stuff can be tricky. Apparently Georgie Porgie took a whack at it a couple of months ago in Venezuela and succeeded so well that he maintained in office a president so unpopular that he probably would have been forced out had it not been for the botched attempt at regime change. To make matters worse, a few of your more cheeky 'Ayrabs' are going around talking about a regime change in Washington, D.C. Is there anything more against the peace process than that?
"Perhaps George should consider something a little less drastic, something that he could call 'regime switch.'Saddam Hussein could be sent to run the Palestine entity or whatever the hell name you want to give that mess. Yasir would be dispatched to rule Iraq or maybe Afghanistan, with Hamid Karzai put in charge of things on the West Bank. The way things are proceeding in Afghanistan, Hamid may be begging for a little regime change, even though Mr. Bush just put him in there in the top job."
-- NIcholas von Hoffman, New York Observer, Juny 24, 2002

"Coulter is appearing on TV shows now to peddle her book, and her hosts are too lazy, too incompetent, too bought-off and scared to challenge her crackpot dissembling. Last night, Bill O'Reilly's worthless performance qualified him for a spot down the row from Ted Williams. At Slate, meanwhile, Mickey Kaus—too lazy and indifferent to the public interest to dirty his hands with actual research—says that a certain part of Coulter's book 'appears to be completely accurate. 'In fact, the part of the book to which Kaus refers is also absurdly misleading and bogus. We'll look at the topic in question next week (sneak preview offered below).
"We're reminded of the hoary old joke about Moses playing golf. (Easily offended people, stop reading.) In Heaven, the Holy Trinity invites Moses to fill out a foursome. Needless to say, God the Father has the honors; Jesus and the Holy Spirit tee off next. Moses watches as they hit a succession of Biblically-themed, perfect hole-in-one trick-shots. After the Dove of Peace takes the Holy Spirit's ball in his mouth and drops it neatly into the hole, Moses can't hold it in any longer. 'Are we here to play golf,' Moses asks, 'or are we really just here to f**k around?'
" Coulter is a crackpot, a clown—and a balls-out dissembler. Her procedures are an insult to the American public interest. And so we have a simple question for lazy O'Reilly and worthless Kaus. Nobody made you host a TV show. Nobody forced you to go on the web. But boys, are you here to perform your actual duties? Or are you really just here to f**k around?"
-- Bob Somerby, The Daily Howler, July 12, 2002

"On the topic of [Ann] Coulter, I do not think it impossible — or necessarily unlikely — that were she a leftist, Mr. Ashcroft would seek to imprison her for regular endorsements of mass violence and even political assassination. (She may be joking, but I can't tell and I doubt Ashcroft could either.) Were she an immigrant, there is no question that she would be jailed and probably held incommunicado and in solitary confinement. That she is taken seriously by anyone with access to a television camera or a printing press is one of the most shaming scandals of American public life in recent memory."
-- Eric Alterman, Altercation, July 11, 2002

"Ms. Coulter argues that the point of my cartoon "was simply to convey all the proper prejudices of elitist liberals against ordinary Americans." Actually it was exactly the opposite. The vast majority of people who read my cartoon live in places like Dayton and Austin and Athens and Des Moines and Missoula and Milwaukee and Buffalo and Savannah and Springfield, and while they may not believe that twenty-first century Americans are God's chosen people, and while they may find cause to disagree with Republican policies and priorities, I think they'd be very surprised to learn that they are anything but ordinary Americans."
-- Tom Tomorrow responds to Ann Coulter, July 7, 2002

"President Junior has kept at least one campaign promise. He said he'd run
the country like a business, and that he has surely done. The Bush administration
looks more like Enron or WorldCom everyday: all smoke and mirrors economic
projections, make-believe accounting, bigshots cashing in while everybody else's
savings vanish, and zero accountability. Do you reckon this is what they teach down
at the University of Mississippi's WorldCom-funded Trent Lott Leadership Institute?"
-- Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 3, 2002

"Since Ashcroft became attorney general, the Justice Department has been three times more likely to seek death for black defendants accused of killing whites than for blacks alleged to have killed nonwhites, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which was established by the courts to monitor capital cases."
-- Dan Eggen, "Ashcroft Aggressively Pursues Death Penalty", Washington Post, July 1, 2002
(And some people complain when we cal him AssKKKroft!)

June 2002

"I attribute [the dollar's slide] to lack of confidence in the management of affairs by the United States, its unilateralism, the pursuit of national self-interests and not living up to the responsibility of being the dominant financial power in the world, not taking care of the system."
-- George Soros, June 2002

"Coulter could probably have a day much more to her liking by skipping the TV and heading straight for the radio, tuning in to hear Rush Limbaugh talking about 'feminazis' or G. Gordon Liddy giving instruction on the most effective way to kill federal agents ('aim for the head'). She could pick up the Washington Times or the Op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. She could change channels to Fox News and listen to the headlines of the day from Brit Hume. Or tune in to Alan Keyes on MSNBC or Bill O'Reilly (though, Coulter tells us, he's not really a conservative since he's against the death penalty)."
-- Charles Taylor, Salon, June 27, 2002

"None of this would be happening if Colin Powell were still around."
-- Eric Alterman, June 26, 2002

"Trying to portray Mr. Bush as a serious scholar is about as believable as earlier efforts to paint him as a selfless statesman who heeds no polls, adheres always to principle, and indulges in nothing so base and "Clintonian" as political calculation. Citizens who wish to preserve such illusions should avoid reading the PowerPoint presentation by White House chief political adviser Karl Rove about Republican electoral strategies and prospects."
-- Joe Conason, New York Observer, June 19, 2002

"President Bush wants to change the Department of Defense back into a War Department.... Who is this guy, Napoleon?"
-- Chris Matthews, SFGate.com, June 9, 2002

May 2002

"He's as purposeful as a wind-up toy boat with a bent rudder doing circular putt-putts in the bathtub."
-- Nicholas von Hoffman on George W. Bush, New York Observer

"[Bush] did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism.... His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama. His presidency was going nowhere.... This guy is a joke...sleazy and contemptible."
-- patriot and soldier, US Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Butler

"This Bush administration believes that it is not accountable to the American people, and that it is above scrutiny if not the law. It has a 'Father Knows Best'(and let's hope the father is not Bush Sr.) view of government. And, for political reasons, not the least of which deals with the congressional elections this fall -- where Republicans hope to re-capture control of the Senate and retain control of the House -- Bush and his colleagues do not want the full truth to be known."
-- the usually-insane Larry Klayman, showing unusual acuity and intelligence, May 24, 2002

"On cue, Vice-president Cheney entered stage right with his now familiar bluster, insisting upon secrecy and insinuating that to doubt George W. Bush is to doubt America. Well, it's not going to play this time."
-- Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 22, 2002

"We have a real problem with [the 'Phoenix' memo not reaching Bush and Mohammad Atta acquiring a student visa]...  these are real screw-ups, real foul-ups... Are they being covered up by these generalized warnings?"
-- Chris Matthews, Hardball, May 21, 2002

"I think it's shameful that they didn't warn the American people. It appears the government has placed the financial interests of the airline industry above the survival of the citizens"
-- Steven Push, husband of murdered passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, on CNN, May 16, 2002 (thanks to mediawhoresonline.com)

"Three photos of Bush for $150.00 donation to Freepers -- kinda like hittin' the trifecta!"
-- Media Whores Online, May 15, 2002

"He's such a good liar, he could walk in right now and he could convince me in five minutes he never hit me. He is the best liar I've ever seen."
-- Morgan Pillsbury on John Fund, quoted in Cynthia Cotts' "Press Clips", Village Voice, web published May 14, 2002

April 2002

"Of today's 25 news stories [in the hard-right neophyte New York Sun], 18 came from the AP, one from the Daily Telegraph and one from Bloomberg News. Of the five Sun originals, one was a three-graph anonymous brief. This is not what those in the business world call a 'value-added product.' "
-- The Smarter Sun, April 25, 2002

"And so, in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- er, State -- my speech to the nation -- whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation -- I asked Americans to give 4,000 years -- 4,000 hours over the next -- the rest of your life -- of service to America. That's what I asked -- 4,000 hours."
-- former Texas governor George W. Bush, uncensored, April, 2002

"The single-minded commitment to framing the debate ('It's the economy, stupid') and the 'instant response' counterpunching methods developed in James Carville's war room during the first Clinton campaign need to become part of the Democrats' DNA."
-- David Talbot, Salon, April 17, 2002

"Maybe one day soon a li'l ol' steel magnolia will march up the White House steps, brush aside those Secret Service hunks, sweep into the Oval Office, dump tomes on that glistening desk, and lecture Georgie on the dangers of being such a pompous dunce. Hopefully, one of those books will be a copy of the US Constitution, now under siege by both terrorists and the protectors of the people. Maybe Georgie, now that he’s in between sophomoric speeches, could be stirred into studying the real things that make his country great --like the belief that all men (and nations) are created equal, despite differences in color, creed, facial hair, or per capita incomes."
-- Inday Espina-Verona, Manila Times, April 16, 2002

"This is a message from a Fox News senior vice president to staff, dated November 28, 2001: 'Let's not get sidetracked worrying about the plight of Afghans this winter, or how many children are undernourished. We can help that country as soon as they cough up the guys who killed 5,000 Americans. When in doubt, take a look at the WTC collapsing.'"
-- Todd Gitlin, Salon, April 15, 2002

"I'm tired of this right-wing sidewind! I've had it! America's economy is suffering unnecessarily. Important American values are being trampled.
Special interests are calling the shots. And it sometimes seems as if, in the words of the poet, 'The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.' If you agree with me, then stand up with conviction for what we believe in -- and fight for it."
-- President-elect Al Gore, April 13, 2002

"Mr. Bush doesn't seem to know that since the routing of the Taliban his moral clarity has atrophied into simplistic, often hypocritical sloganeering. He has let his infatuation with his own rectitude metastasize into hubris....Even then, the 180-degree reversal from the administration's previous inertia was not motivated by the bloody imperatives of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians but by their inconvenient disruption of Mr. Bush's plans to finish his father's job in Iraq. A cynic might go so far as to say that 'Saddam Hussein is driving U.S. foreign policy' --which, as it happens, is what Benjamin Netanyahu did tell The New York Post on Tuesday."
-- Frank Rich, The New York Times, April 13, 2002

"The President's politics are so fundamentally immature that when confronted with a real world of hard choices he is floundering. So George Bush ends up caught in the crossfire between the wise -- Colin Powell and Condolleeza Rice -- and the dangerous -- Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. The latter are an arrogant, angry crew and God help us all if they triumph."
Fergal Keane, The Independent, published on the Web April 12, 2002

"If we assess the foreign policy accomplishments of the Bush administration since Sept. 11, the scorecard is quite dismal. There are some people in the Bush administration who have the same mentality as Arafat or Sharon. I can name names, like Ashcroft, Cheney and Rumsfeld, although that is considered impolite....Although the terrorist threat is real, and we must defend against it, we are going about it the wrong way. What makes the situation so dangerous is that nobody dares to say so. The nation is endangered, therefore it is unpatriotic to criticize our leader. That is not what has made this country great. The strength of this country lies in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the freedom of speech and thought."
-- George Soros, April 8, 2002

"Last weekend, the A.P. reported Bush aides saying on background that our president was 'frustrated' after his telephone call to Sharon. I asked another 'senior administration official' about that, and was firmly told 'no such thing.' Such staff doubletalk ill serves the president and the press."
-- Bill Safire, revealing the unraveling of the Lock-Step Smirk Team in The New York Times, April 11, 2002

"Watching FOX [News Channel]? That's like watching the Cartoon Network! FOX is nuts."
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, April 9, 2002

"Don't you think it would be more important to go to Jerusalem first?"
-- Morocco's king to Colin Powell during a photo-op, April 8, 2002

"The GE/Gates Net [MSNBC ] actually features a show called Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. To whom? Moonies freebasing LSD?"
--Barry Crimmins, April 5, 2002

On Smirk's Clinton-bashing: "He'll learn at some point that you have to face problems rather than to blame others -- and the only thing more glaring here than his lack of leadership is his lack of knowledge."
-- Joe Lockhart, April 5, 2002

BLAST FROM THE PAST! Chickenhawks in review:
"DeLay seemed to feel the issue applied personally to him, and perhaps it did. He had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong."He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention."
-- Tim Fleck, Houston Press, January 7, 1999 (a tip of the hat to Dana Westbrook Moore)

"President Bush is facing angry Arab nations, angry Middle East combatants, angry European allies, and angry terrorists bent on destroying America. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he asks Florida for another recount – 'Let's give this sucker to Al Gore.' "
-- Bill O'Reilly (who still can't bring himself to admit we would not be in this mess if Gore were president all along), ScaifeNetDaily, April 4, 2002

"There needs to be a focused, coalition effort in the region
against peace -- ...I mean, against terror for peace."
-- Cmdr. George W. Bunnypants, Crawford, Texas, April 4, 2002
(tip of the hat to BartCop)

"In a little over a year in office, Bush has allowed the Israeli-Palestinian crisis to explode from a small brush fire to a raging conflagration; squandered the global goodwill toward the United States after Sept. 11; set back the cause of moderates in Iran with a comic-book invocation of "evil"; endangered key allies in South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; failed to pursue vital peacekeeping and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan; clumsily pushed the Arab world into greater solidarity with Saddam Hussein; put forward a potentially dangerous new first-use nuclear doctrine; and filled our European allies with contempt and rage at our heavy-handed unilateralism."
-- Gary Kamiya, Salon, April 2, 2002

WHAT WAS HE SMOKING? "You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists!"
-- then-President Richard Nixon, May 26, 1971, quoted in the Mar. 21 Washington Post

March 2002

BLAST FROM THE PAST:"As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
-- Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH), Dec. 19, 1941
(a tip of the hat to Salon's Michael Tomasky -- read his article on Taft here)

"When Ted Olson got in front of Congress during his confirmation for Solicitor General, and gave extremely misleading answers to questions about his involvement in the Arkansas Project, he was doing precisely what he had tried to trap Clinton into doing for years. I mean, that level of hypocrisy was really astounding."
-- David Brock, Buzzflash, March 17, 2002

"Journal editorialist John Fund, a close political adviser of house speaker Newt Gingrich, announced to the group that impeachment was not a matter of evidence of wrongdoing but of 'political will' by the right."
-- David Brock, The Guardian, March 12, 2002

"These are the guys who proclaim, 'We report. You decide.' I simply decided to let them report. The result wasn't real journalism, merely an incredible simulation."
Ray Richmond on FOX News Channel, LA Times, Mar. 9, 2002

"You've been a drunk, a thief, a possible felon, an unconvicted deserter and a cry baby... for the sake of all that is decent and sacred take leave immediately and bring some honor to your all-important family name."
-- Michael Moore,  Stupid White Men

"The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists."
--William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United State of America

Ari's big mouth: "Press secretary blunders don't get much more colossal than that. Three baddies.
" - Number 1, you don't criticize former presidents -- ever. It's bad form. 
" - Number 2, you don't blame peacemakers, even if they fail. 
" - Number 3, you don't blame Americans -- especially when there are objectionable foreigners available."
-- Gary Kamiya, Salon, March 1, 2002

February 2002

"The campaign of character assassination waged [against President Clinton] by the right was a singular, unprecedented effort. Nothing like it exists on the left. What I object to on the right is the obsessive hatred, the bigotry, and the personal savaging of their opponents, all achieved through an echo chamber of talk radio, the Internet and Rupert Murdoch's media outlets. That kind of well-funded disinformation campaign has no analog on the left. "
-- David Brock, The Washington Post, Feb. 26, 2002

HELEN THOMAS: Ari, why would this administration choose a man for couter-terrorism who is so associated with the dark side of the Iran-Contra scandal, Admiral Poindexter? 
ARI FLEISCHER:  When you say choose him for counter-terrorism, can you be more specific? 
MS. THOMAS: He's in the Pentagon. He's been appointed head of DARPA -- which is a counter-terrorist office -- developing plans, demonstrations with information. 
MR. FLEISCHER:  I'm not aware of any appointment. 
MS. THOMAS: Yet!
MR. FLEISCHER:  Let me just say about Admiral Poindexter. Admiral Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American and an outstanding citizen who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving in the military. 
MS. THOMAS: How can you say that when he told Colonel North to lie? 
MR. FLEISCHER:  Helen, I think your views on Iran Contra are well-known, but the President does believe that Admiral Poindexter served... 
MS. THOMAS: ...It isn't my view. This is the prosecutor for the United States. 
MR. FLEISCHER:  I understand.  The President thinks that Admiral Poindexter has served our nation very well. 
MS. THOMAS: Really? 
MR. FLEISCHER:  That's the President's thoughts. 
MS. THOMAS: Do you know his record? 
MR. FLEISCHER:  I'm sure you will inform me. 
MS. THOMAS: I don't have to, all you have to do is look it up! 
-- Daily White House briefing, Feb. 25, 2002

"They stand with us in this incredibly important crusade to defend freedom, this campaign to do what is right for our children and our grandchildren."
-- "President" Incompetent and Stupid, to US troops in Alaska, Feb. 16, 2002

BLAST FROM THE PAST! "We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan...In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."
-- Ralph Reed to Enron executives, Oct. 23, 2000, quoted in the Washington Post , Feb. 17, 2002

"Having Dick Armey offer [a campaign finance reform bill] calls to mind the line about Doris Day: 'I knew her before she was a virgin.' "
-- Rep. Barney Frank, Feb. 13, 2001 

"As important as identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea for what they are, we must be equally bold in identifying other evils that confront us, for there is another axis of evil in the world: poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression."
-- President-Elect Al Gore, Feb. 12, 2002

"I'd say you were a carnival barker -- except that wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers!  A carny will at least tell you up front that he's running a shell game!"
-- Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) to Kenneth Lay, Feb. 12, 2002 

"The whole country is broke and bogged down in some dubious foreign war that our children will be paying off for another 99 years. Our national economy is in ruins, Harvard-trained crooks have destroyed the roots of investor confidence, public-school systems from Maine to California are downsized to death by greedheads, our baseball-loving President comes back to work after a weekend of unspeakable football adventures with a nasty-looking puncture wound on his face.
"Who needs that kind of berserk crap in this hour of national crisis? It is exactly the kind of sleazy, Third-world behavior that we have always denounced as 'unacceptably corrupt' when it happens in primitive banana republics like Haiti and South Texas."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Feb. 11, 2001

"What [Enrongate] is about, and what the public will get to hear and read about in wrenching detail over the coming months, is how business gets done down in Texas. How a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit. It will explain why Bush has locked up presidential records, locked out any voices opposed to his pro-business agenda and rammed through an expensive economic plan that wiped out the budget surplus but to date hasn't had any positive effect on the economy." 
-- David Calloway, CBS.Marketwatch.com
Feb. 10, 2002

BLAST FROM THE PAST! Henry Kissinger to then-President Nixon, who suggested George H. Bush as a secret emissary to China: "Absolutely not. He is too soft and not sophisticated enough.  Bush would be too weak."
Nixon's reply: "I thought so too, but I was trying to think of somebody with a title."
-- April 27, 1971

"I've been in this town 50 years. I've seen many secretaries of the treasury.... With all due respect to you, you're not Alexander Hamilton."
-- Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) to Paul O'Neill, Feb. 7, 2002

BLAST FROM THE PAST! "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done." 
-- Julius Caesar, nearly 2 millennia ago
(a tip of the hat to Cactus Pat)

"There's a culture of government corruption.  I've never seen a better example of cash-and-carry government than this Bush administration and Enron.... We have an Enron government."
-- Sen.  Fritz Hollings, Feb. 4, 2002

"[Florida governor Jeb Bush] came up in a little black convertible sports car.... He was wearing a baseball cap, he drove into the parking lot of the Sheridan, stuck his arm straight up in the air with his middle finger up and his back to us. It was a bird, he shot us a bird, Mad Grandmothers, Young Democrats and a child!"
-- Mari Anderson, Feb. 2, 2002

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
-- American Nazi Ann Coulter, Feb. 2002

January 2002

"Mr. Duncan, Enron robbed the bank, Andersen provided the getaway car, and they say you were at the wheel."
-- Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-PA) to fired AA auditor David Duncan

"Bush asks us to swaller the idea that NOT giving another $300 million tax cut to the richest one percent of Americans 'would be a disaster for the American economy.' Someone tell him that the disaster has already happened, partly due to tax cuts. Enron, Bush's favorite tax cut beneficiary, had not paid any income tax in four of the past five years, and the IRS, under Bush's watch, is offering amnesty to 95 companies that illegally avoided paying taxes that could have potentially meant $16 billion in revenue.
"Let's call this Republican 'pretzel logic.'"
-- Alan Bisbort, Hartford Advocate, Jan. 24, 2002

"Despite Republican complaints about defense policy during the Clinton administration, the military that has prevailed so easily in Afghanistan was bequeathed to Mr. Bush by his predecessor in excellent condition."
-- Joe Conason, New York Observer, Jan. 24, 2002

"I don't want to Enron the people of the United States."
-- Sen. Tom Daschle, Jan. 23, 2001

BLAST FROM THE PAST! "I know it would be devastating to all of us but I wish we would get caught. We're such a crooked company."
-- Sherron Watkins in a memo to Enron boss Kenneth Lay, August 2001

"Since it has lately become respectable to discuss his elevation to the nation's highest office as a matter of divine will, Mr. Bush’s deep determination to empty the Treasury into the pockets of friends and supporters may likewise signify the unknowable agenda of the Almighty...The implications of all this are obviously profound. If the President is indeed guided by Providence in lavishing additional billions upon those who already enjoy so much material abundance -- even while the numbers of unemployed, uninsured and homeless soar -- then his ascension may represent a millennial reversal of heavenly policy."
-- Joe Conason, Jan. 9, 2001 

"...a cruise missile is more important than Head Start."
-- plagiarist and fascist Ann Coulter argues for stripping poor kids of the ability to read in a Nov. 2001 speech recently rebroadcast by C-SPAN

These guys -- Joe McCarthy, Bill O'Reilly -- die like everyone else. And when they do, their legacy is one of damaging the spirit of good things, and they become rather broken, pathetic figures. And that is going to happen to him."
-- Sean Penn, Talk interview quoted in the Daily News, Jan. 2, 2002

"I will give our new president the same level of support and encouragement that was given to the current administration by such luminaries as Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Rush Limbaugh, Richard [Mellon] Scaife, Ted Olson, [Paul Greenberg] and, of course, George W. himself. In other words, I will badmouth the president daily, I will work in whatever small way I can to defeat and undermine his programs and agenda, I will believe every scurrilous lie told about him and I will criticize and ridicule his wife and children at every opportunity." 
-- Paul Kirkpatrick

Click here for "Quotes of Note" for 2001

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