ALBION MONITOR: QUOTE OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

"There's a reason you've never heard of 'Bus Rage'"

-- Former Greyhound slogan, which was dropped after a passenger stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized a fellow traveler on a bus in Canada

"That breast, that little nipple, ends up right in the shots that TVs make during press conferences"

-- Paolo Bonaiuti, Italy government spokesman, after a reproduction of a 18th-century painting was retouched to hide the woman's nipple. The painting, "The Truth Unveiled by Time," often appears in the background at news conferences. The prime minister, Berlusconi, owns Italy's 3 largest TV stations, where full nudity is common. New York Times, August 5, 2008

"I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country"

"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant"

-- Barack Obama, August 5, 2008, on the McCain's campaign attempt to ridicule him for suggesting that proper tire inflation could save fuel. McCain dropped the theme after it was widely pointed out that AAA, NASCAR, and every auto owner's manual agreed with Obama. "They think it's funny that they're making fun of something that is actually true"

"They're not going to like this downtown"

-- Then-CIA Director George Tenet in February 2003, worried about the White House reaction to learning on the eve of the Iraq invasion that Saddam definitely had no WMDs. On learning that the head of Iraqi intelligence was cooperating with the British, Bush reportedly asked, "Why don't they ask him to give us something we can use to help make our case?" Quotes from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind's new book, "The Way of the World"

"People will ask where they've been and 'What have you been doing with them?' They'll all get lawyers"

-- Dick Cheney at a 2005 White House meeting, fighting the release of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere because it could lead to prosecution of Bush administration officials. Excerpt from Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side

"A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming"

-- Texas Gov. George W. Bush acceptance speech at the GOP National Convention, August 3, 2000. "Behind every goal I've talked about tonight is a great hope for our country. A hundred years from now this must not be remembered as an age rich in possession and poor in ideals....We are now the party of ideas and innovation, the party of idealism and inclusion, the party of a simple and powerful hope. My fellow citizens, we can begin again"

"I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote"

-- A Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri, among the thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads that have been recently summoned to mandatory meetings and told that voting for Obama would be tantamount to unionizing the company. "The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" the employee told the Wall St. Journal, August 1, 2008

"We have an epidemic here. Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq"

-- Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), after visiting a VA hospital and learning that at least 2 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while in the military. CNN, July 31, 2008

"There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war... [including plans to] build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing Americans"

-- Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on a meeting held in Cheney's office following the January incident in the Strait of Hormuz when Iranian speedboats approached a U.S. Navy ship. The White House believed that the incident showed there was public support for "retaliation" against Iran if attacked. Hersh remarks from a Q&A session at a journalism conference, July 9, 2008

"They don't need more money, but they are having a difficult time, apparently, spending the money that they have"

-- Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen, whose quarterly report says Iraq is supposed to contributing over $50 billion to rebuild the country, but no data is available on how much has been spent. The July 30, 2008, report says Iraqis have refused to accept U.S. transfer of hundreds of infrastructure projects

"I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet"

-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi interview with Politico, July 29, 2008, on her refusal to compromise with House Republicans on offshore oil and gas exploration

"But she's pro-choice"

-- Former DoJ White House liaison Monica Goodling, showing dismay when a job applicant stated he admired Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A July 28, 2008 Justice Dept. report charges she broke federal law by asking politicized questions, such as, "Why are you a Republican?" or "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?"

"It's not the reason why I'm running for president of the United States"

-- John McCain, at the beginning of a Olympics-class double backflip-flop. In less than ten seconds of an interview on ABC News' "This Week," July 27, 2008, McCain said that gay adoption wasn't a campaign issue, followed by, "it is important for us to emphasize family values...families that are of parents that are the traditional family," followed by, "I'm running for president of the United States because I want to help with family values"

"For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice. God bless America; it's been great living here. That's all"

-- Last words of Dale Leo Bishop, executed by the state of Mississippi, July 23, 2008

"Tell the governor he just lost my vote"

-- Last words of Christopher Scott Emmett, executed by the state of Virginia, July 24, 2008. Emmett's attorneys unsuccessfully asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the state's method of lethal injection because it appears that 1 in 7 inmates were not fully unconscious when the heart stopping drug was administered. "Y'all hurry this along, I'm dying to get out of here," he also said

"It would be natural that a large percentage of them would watch Fox. There's the sense that Fox covers the war in Iraq and the situation in Iraq in a more balanced way"

-- Rudy Giuliani, after Obama remarked that TVs at army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan were always tuned to Fox News. The only U.S. news channel available continuously on the Pentagon's satellite system is Fox News. A study also found that Fox News offered significantly less coverage of Iraq than other networks. Giuliani quote from "Fox & Friends," July 24, 2008

"Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state that is unstable. In Saudi Arabia, the fight between the ruling famliy and the clerical class has yet to play itself out. The clerical class' theological frame is essentially Osama bin Laden's ideology"

-- General John Abizaid (ret), CENTCOM commander 2003-2007, identifying key threats in the War on Terror. As for Iraq, he told the Pacific Council, July 22, 2008, "We can't be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there"

"There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up "

-- George W. Bush at a Texas fundraiser, July 18, 2008. Bush did not explain why he wanted the Houston audience to turn off cameras before he revealed his insightful economic analysis

"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change"

-- Al Gore, July 16, 2008

"Here's a thing about innovation: Nobody has ever predicted the next innovation"

-- Sir Harold Evans, author of the definitive 5-volume series on newspapering, "Editing and Design," and editor of The London Sunday Times, 1967- 1981. Quote from an interview in the Independent/UK, July, 2008

"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot"

"You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject"

-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on CNN, July 17, 2008, responding to Bush criticism of the Democratic-led Congress

"OK, listen up. Viagra is used to help a medical condition. That's why it's covered. Birth control is not a medical condition. It is a choice. Why should I or anybody else have to pay for other people's choices? Do I have to buy you dinner before you use the birth control?"

-- The indefatigable Bill O'Reilly, July 17, 2008

"I must admit, it's been difficult for me sometimes to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others"

-- John Ashcroft, making the remarkable admission that a former Attorney General of the United States cannot be trusted as a witness. House Judiciary Committee hearings, July 17, 2008

"It doesn't say naked...removal of clothing is different from naked"

-- Doug Feith at the July 15, 2008, House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on torture, defending the Rumsfeld-approved guidelines for military interrogations. "I imagine you can apply them in a humane fashion"

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself"

-- John McCain, telling the New York Times, July 13, 2008, that "I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need." The following day, conservative talk show host Michael Smerconish asked, "Where does he get his porn? That's what I want to know"

"It's just lampooning all the crazy ignorance out there"

"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter"

-- President Bush at his final meeting of the G8 summit in Japan. According to the Telegraph/UK, July 10, 2008, Bush said it while grinning and punching the air, as Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and other world leaders looked on in shock

"Their mood is that of the fatally ill patient who says 'Let's get this over with'"

-- Right-wing ideologue Richard Viguerie, saying at FreedomFest, July 11, 2008, "...some conservatives who are considering voting for Barack Obama, because they fear McCain as president would destroy what's left of the Republican brand"

"It appears that they're cooking the books in regards to the value of life"

-- S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, on news that the EPA has changed the "value of a statistical life" to $6.9 million, $1 million less than five years ago. By devaluating the "value," the Bush administration can claim statistically there is less proven harm from pollution, and thus no need for tighter regulations. AP, July 11, 2008

"Phil Gramm does not speak for me"

-- John McCain, distancing himself from his top economic adviser after Gramm was quoted as saying, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners...[suffering from only a] mental recession." At the same time that McCain was distancing himself, Gramm was meeting with the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board on McCain's economic policies. July 10, 2008

"I don't recall ever saying that experience as a bomber pilot equipped me to be very strong on how to run a war, how to command the armed forces"

-- Former presidential nominee and WWII hero George McGovern, Boston Globe, July 9, 2008

"I'm not out to get the telephone companies... the American people ought to know who in the White House said, 'go break the law"

-- Senator Patrick Leahy (D - Vermont) on telcom immunity for warrentless wiretapping, July 8, 2008

"At this rate, by 2050 the world will be cooked"

"If you know anybody who was a P.O.W. for any time, they can be going on for years and all of a sudden something will happen that will trigger all those bad memories"

-- Bill Clinton on lifelong emotional problems of ex-POWs, but not naming names. Aspen Ideas Festival, July 5, 2008

"The man is Ted Baxter"

-- Rush Limbaugh, comparing Bill O'Reilly to the pompous and ignorant windbag on the old Mary Tyler Moore show. "Somebody's got to say it," Limbaugh told the New York Times, July 6, 2008

"If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap. He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel"

-- Petroleum industry consultant Roger Diwan, quoted by the New York Times, October 14, 2001. On July 3rd, oil hit a new record of $146.69 a barrel. The bin Laden quote is from a book, "Bin Laden, Al-Jazeera - And I," by Jamal Abdul Latif Ismail, which includes a transcription of a bin Laden interview from 1998, when oil averaged $11 a barrel

"Helms has been anti-black, anti-gay, anti-woman and anti-progress. He was perfectly willing to use his power for partisan nastiness and for petty provincial politics. His main claim to fame is that he protected Big Tobacco and his home-state textile industry. I have liked a lot of outspoken conservatives over the years. Helms is not one"

"It would be ridiculous to name the destructive forces one by one"

-- Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, making the customary disclaimer of a new leader of a nuclear superpower that he isn't worried about being murdered by foes. "I am not an adherent of conspiracy theories. In real life, everything is so much simpler, if not banal," he told the New York Times, July 3, 2008

"Everyone has a nice watch, a nice car. It's not enough to just have a Ferrari anymore"

-- Abdullah Al-Mannaei, who organizes the monthly auction of low-digit license plate numbers for status-seeking men in Abu Dhabi. The number "5" recently sold for $9 million, which was a bargain compared to the $14 million his cousin paid for "1." Wall St. Journal, July 1, 2008

"It's really more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp...They get up to 12-hours of exercise time a day and they have all kinds of activities. They can play ping-pong, basketball, soccer. They have their own garden. They can check out library books"

"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 - 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,