QuoteLog

“…the shrinking percentage of people still on the fence about this election want to hear what a Kerry-led Democratic Party is for in the War on Terror, not just against. The answers are not just blowin’ in the wind — they’re out there. But not tonight.”

“All of Philadelphia was a squirming, fetid mass of lobbyists, protesters, caterers, delegates, hookers, reporters, teevee hosts and one guy running for president.”

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

“You’re a mouse studying to be a rat.”

“You know, when members of both houses go home for this recess, the folks back home are going to say: ‘Why are you home? Why aren’t you in Washington dealing with the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission?’ I’ve already heard this in a few conversations with people back in Connecticut, who said: ‘Get this done quickly. It’s our safety and well-being at stake.’”

“No longer is it going to be a sleepy quiet August around here. The American people expect us to act. This is a bipartisan commission that unanimously agreed on some very important recommendations. We need to respond to that, and we do not have the luxury of waiting months.”

“You aren’t conservatives and liberals, you’re Phobos and Deimos: Fear and Panic. One of you uses the fear of external threats to win elections, the other tries to frighten us with internal threats. You both serve the same Master and that is why your supposed differences are as illusory as the fears you try to frighten us with.”

“An operatic, performative commitment to decency, an over-the-top acknowledging of the legitimacy of potentially legitimate arguments, an attempt to reduce cheap shots, a showy constraint for saying only that which can be said based on strong evidence: these all function as powerful tools in political struggle within the American public sphere.”

“…Once the incivility starts — others will take it as an invitation to join in, and pretty soon there’s no limit to the incivility. And if you watch closely in that chat room, you’ll see something else happening. Watch the screen names of people who make civil comments. Some — a few — will join in the food fight. But most will log off. Their screen names just disappear. They leave because the atmosphere has turned hostile to anything approaching a civil exchange or a real dialogue.”

“Democrats like to ridicule him, a lot of them, just like the Republicans like to ridicule me. But my experience in life is that almost nobody gets where they are by accident. It’s a great mistake to underestimate him. I think he’s a very good politician. He has a great sense of how to relate to people. I think he has a high level of what is called emotional intelligence, you know?”

“After kicking and screaming over the long dormancy, I’ve come to accept that no matter what the IE team does now, it’s not going to actually make much difference in my day to day life for many years yet.”

“What’s most telling is that of the 15,000 members of the media expected to cram the Fleet Center — assuming they will clear security in time — 35 of them will be bloggers, a statistically insignificant 0.2 percent. There are a higher percentage of gays voting for Bush than that.”

“In modern-day two-party politics, hate’s a feature, not a bug...”

“Here’s how you can tell bloggers aren’t journalists — they almost never include a pretentious and utterly gratuitous middle initial in their bylines!”

“With a diary, the danger was that someone might sneak a peek at it or even steal it and expose one’s secrets. With a blog, the fear is that nobody might do so.”

“We did not see it coming. And we were not properly prepared and organized to deal with it ... Many of us got seduced by the Iraqi exiles in terms of what the outcome would be.”

“People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.”

“McKinney made herself such an outsider during her last term in Congress that her district might have well been on Mars for the attention and federal funds it received.”

“Still on the fence — but slowly getting more depressed about my choices.”

“The founders wisely made certain that the Constitution is difficult to amend and, as a practical political matter, can’t be done without overwhelming public approval. And thank God for that.”

“When I talk, you guys have something negative to say. When I don’t talk, you have something negative to say. I’d much rather not talk and spend time with my son. Have a good day.”

“I often write in margins of books and email authors all the little typos I found while reading their novel...”

“Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn’t the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it’s the offense that I take most personally.”

“I don’t really care about that kind of stuff anymore. I meet Christians who are passionate about following in the way of Christ. Some are more biblically conservative than others. If a person is trying to live the Christ life, and that person’s life is gentle and filled with love, then I don’t really care that much about how he or she interprets II Timothy, know what I mean?”

“Content truly is king, and as blogs draw more eyeballs away from mainstream news and topical sites, the dollars will follow the eyeballs.”

“No one can come and claim ownership of my work. I am the creator of it, and it lives within me.”

“Correctness, in a whole variety of ways, doesn’t pay.”

“Welcome to the social civil war, where we are all soldiers, all victims and all losers, no matter who wins the election.”

“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.”

“A camera gives you a reason to stare”

“So do not blame us for what will happen and we apologize to you in advance if you are among those killed.”

“We have a policy that we are not being hacked.”

“If the DP makes me cast a vote for a Kerry/Gephardt ticket I’m going to ... well, crap, just put out like a straight-ticket ho. They could put a can of processed cheese food on the ballot against Bush, and I would vote for it. But I’m not going to enjoy it!”

“The comment section of any post criticizing destructive political rhetoric ultimately provides more vivid examples thereof.”

“In the election between Bush and Anybody But Bush, reason and civility are now designated for wimps. But what happens to the country when the left only meets the right at the American jugular?”

“Ad hominem attacks, rumor-mongering, and character assassination qualify neither as political discourse nor as satire.”