QuoteLog

“I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.”

“The hardest thing to understand is why haven’t we put this guy away a long time ago.”

“I don’t watch the national news, and I don’t read the paper. I haven’t done that for the last six weeks. I watch Fox News to get my information.”

“Al Qaeda ... no longer exerts centralized control over a network of operational cells. It has rather become the inspirational hub of a global movement, fomenting terrorism that it neither funds nor directs. Internal government assessments describe this change with a disquieting metaphor: They say jihadist terrorism is metastasizing.’”

“Had conservatives spoken up loudly a year ago and said what both of Mr. Bush’s senior Iraq envoys, Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, have now said (and what many of us who believed in the importance of Iraq were saying) — that we never had enough troops to control Iraq’s borders, keep the terrorists out, prevent looting and establish authority — the president might have changed course. Instead, they served as a Greek chorus, applauding Mr. Bush’s missteps and mocking anyone who challenged them.”

“Mr. Stewart’s Howard Beal (of “Network”) outburst stood out because he said what a lot of viewers feel helpless to correct: that news programs, particularly on cable, have become echo chambers for political attacks, amplifying the noise instead of parsing the misinformation.”

“It is an achingly difficult decision to not endorse a candidate in the presidential contest, and we do not reach this decision lightly.”

“First, we did not have enough troops to conduct combat patrols in sufficient numbers to gain solid intelligence and paint a good picture of the enemy on the ground. Secondly, we needed more troops to act on the intelligence we generated. They took advantage of our limited numbers.”

“They just keep on recruiting. And I don’t mind saying it: we don’t have enough people for what we’re doing.”

“We haven’t seen anything good from Democrats.”

“At times, it felt as though whole swathes of America had suffered an epidemic of Tourette syndrome.”

“The Bush doctrine died on the outskirts of Baghdad.”

“We paid a big price for not stopping (the looting) because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness”

“I should just sit down, confident in the fact that I just cleaned the president’s clock, and not say anything else. But I’m not going to do that. No, I’m gonna keep on talking. Why? Because I can’t help myself.”

“While I’m still not going to vote for either one of these clowns, I guess I don’t really hope Kerry wins. Honestly, I don’t think it makes much difference. I think we’re pretty much screwed either way.”

“The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman.”

“We don’t give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?”

“Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not — not ever — to the thing we as humans so very much want ... Easy certainty.”

“History’s a troublesome thing for presidents. Even though most voters don’t take much of a historical perspective into the voting booth with them, true conservatives do. Hmmm. Who’s the Libertarian candidate again?”

“The gist of Bush’s argument seems to be, John Kerry will raise your taxes; I’ll just keep ballooning the deficit.”

“Need some wood?”

“I hear there’s rumors on the Internets...”

“The government has to borrow an average of more than $1.1 billion a day to pay its bills, and it spends more on interest payments on the federal debt each year — about $159 billion — than it does on education, homeland security, justice and law enforcement, veterans, international aid, and space exploration combined.”

“Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren’t working.”

“Let it be noted that Vice President Dick Cheney never actually used the word ‘whippersnapper’ on Tuesday night. And Senator John Edwards never said ‘ogre.’ But they may as well have.”

“For the last month or so, the election seemed reminiscent to me of ads for the film Alien vs. Predator, the tag line of which goes, ‘Whoever wins, we lose.’”

“It is we who have not succeeded in giving their existence value and meaning, and have not made life better for them than death. We have incited them to die for the sake of Allah, and have not taught them how to live for the sake of Allah. How long will we make life hell for our young people?”

“Still here, ready to bathe in the frothy spume of my bull-headed ignorance? Well, I warned you.”

“Lack of skill dictates economy of style.”

“The way I figure it, if my penis enlarged even one percent as much as each email claimed each time I got one of those spams, by now I could write my name on the Moon.”

“Early in the program, Mr. Hemmer interviewed three undecided Florida voters about their hopes for last night’s debate. The fact that at least two of the three seemed to be fairly intelligent made me wonder just how undecided they really were — after all, you’d have to be a complete idiot to be unable to choose between one of the candidates by now.”

“Content management isn’t a software problem at all. It’s a process problem. By solving process problems, you often find you don’t even need software. Many companies buy software thinking that it will fix their process problems. But that’s like buying Microsoft Word hoping that it will make you a better writer.”

“Washington forgot historical rule number one about getting enemies to surrender and acquiesce: You must first beat them. They must see clearly that they have no hope. In a Middle Eastern context, your hayba, the awe that comes with indomitable power, must overwhelm them. This has not happened in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.”

“I thought Kerry did very, very well; and I thought Bush did poorly — much worse than he is capable of doing. Listen: If I were just a normal guy — not Joe Political Junkie — I would vote for Kerry. On the basis of that debate, I would. If I were just a normal, fairly conservative, war-supporting guy: I would vote for Kerry. On the basis of that debate. And I promise you that no one wants this president reelected more than I. I think that he may want it less.”

“Out on the stump where he can get away with it, Bush often campaigns against a caricatured version of John Kerry, a straw man who takes all sorts of radical positions. Bush’s problem last night was that he continued to debate that straw man instead of the person who actually showed up on stage.”

“Karl Rove must have known things didn’t go well when the New York Post asked him whether this was the worst debate of President Bush’s life. No, Rove insisted. This was one of the president’s best debates, and one of John Kerry’s worst. ‘Really?’ asked the reporter, Vince Morris. ‘You can say that with a straight face?’”

“I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.”