Harumph! Harumph!
2006
"Clearly, in our judgment all five officers should have been shot -- should have been charged. Let me be clear. All five officers shot. All five officers shot. We do not endorse their being shot." -- Al Sharpton, reprising his role from Freddy's Fashion Mart ("Will no one rid me of this turbulent white interloper?").
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"There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, describing former president Bill Clinton, from the media's point-of-view.
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"I'm so sick of Southern guys with ranches running this country. I want a guy to run for president who doesn't have a [expletive deleted] ranch." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who would rather go back to Southern guys with bordellos running this country.
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"I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon -- but I want to stay alive." -- to nobody's surprise, Madonna.
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"There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment … just like in the days of Vietnam. The pressure will mount. -- Sen. Charles "Old Putzhead" Schumer (D, N.Y.), pining for the good old days.
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"I want to take those [oil] profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), planning to rob people, as usual.
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"Was 9-11 really that bad? The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting." -- the headline to a Los Angeles Times column by David Bell, who -- heaven help us -- teaches history at Johns Hopkins University.
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"[W]e face a lot of evil men, you know, people like Osama bin Laden come to mind, and what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), indirectly threatening to hit Osama with an ashtray.
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"I love you, John Kerry, and I am so sorry that things didn't work out for our country, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I will always care about you greatly and remember the times that we've spent together." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.), who left out, "Hey, nonny nonny."
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"Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos, but an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq." -- Sen. Jim Webb (D, Va.), getting tangled in a web of his own contradictions.
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"Do I think it's possible that the president could get us involved marginally or even more fully in Iran as a way of distracting us from the War on Terror? … I don't want to believe that, but … yes, I worry about it enormously." -- secret-spilling senator Jay Rockefeller (D, W. Va.), who is well on his way to declaring the entire Muslim world irrelevant to the War on Terror.
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"So, I'm running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this is great, but are we all gonna die?" -- Today show host Meredith Vieira, offering the kind of intense scrutiny of global warming theory as is ever heard from the network media.
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"I guess the pain of the hurricane is yesterday's news in Washington." -- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco (D), who wouldn't request aid when it was needed most urgently, but is demanding more money now.
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"I think Cheney's been at the center of cooking up farcical estimates of national risks, weapons of mass destruction and the 9-11 connection to Iraq." -- former vice president Walter Mondale, who wouldn't know a national risk if he saw it wallop a rabbit with an oar.
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"We are not anti-American. We want the real America, your America." -- European Socialist Party president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, to Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean.
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"Many European governments, not just Socialist ones, have above all been angered by Bush's war in Iraq and what has been seen as the U.S. failure to work with allies in international affairs." -- a seething left-wing editorial disguised as a paragraph in a news story by Reuters, the same wire service that refuses to use the word "terrorist," because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
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"We hope to have the big nuclear celebration by the end of the year." -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking from a place where people celebrate by recklessly firing weapons into the air.
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"It feels great to be back." -- Bill Clinton, in Vietnam, where he loves to go, now that he doesn't have to be surrounded by that loathsome American military.
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"It's a Constitution that protects a democratic system, basic liberties, a rule of law, a degree of equality, a division of powers -- state, federal -- so that no one gets too powerful." -- Justice Stephen Breyer, who did not explain how this philosophy applied to his decision in Kelo v. New London.
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"We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans." -- Michael Moore, who has gotten so big that he now thinks he's plural.
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"We hear very little about victory in Iraq these days. We hear a lot about how to manage the defeat." -- CBS News reporter Lara Logan, who only hears that because she keeps saying it.
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"It is not a war to be won but a situation to be solved." -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.), describing the Situation on Terror.
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"Don't fear the terrorists. They're mothers and fathers." -- Rosie O'Donnell, who forgot to add that they're mothers and fathers whose children explode.
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"God has given us free will. We're all responsible for our actions. If you don't want an abortion, you don't believe in it, don't have one. But don't tell somebody else what they can do in terms of honoring their responsibilities." -- prospective Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif), who doesn't believe in free will when it comes to gun ownership, school prayer or consumption of fossil fuels, but is willing to make an exception for the sake of killing unborn children.
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"What do you punch, little buttons and things?" -- CNN's Larry King, asking how to use the internet.
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"In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn't happening now, but I will tell you, there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq." -- anti-American journalist and therefore Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh.
"As a critic of the administration, I'll be damned if you can get away with calling me the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser. No one has the right to say that about any free-speaking American in this country." -- MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, whose copy of the First Amendment distinguishes between "free-speaking Americans" and their critics, who don't have the right to say things.
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"Dow climbs from depths: But slide still felt; S&P, Nasdaq lag" -- An Oct. 4th USA Today headline, trying its best to turn the stock market's record-high closing into bad news.
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"Can't you be honest at least once in your life, and admit that you are a deceitful liar who intentionally deceived your own nation when you drove them to war in Iraq?" -- al-Qaeda co-founder Ayman al-Zawahiri, perhaps campaigning to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in his latest installment of Afghanistan's Funniest Videos.
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"What's human sacrifice, if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?" -- Mel Gibson, trying to get back in Hollywood's good graces since he offended it by filming "The Passion of the Christ."
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"This war on Iraq is a disaster. I'm disgraced. I'm ashamed for my country. I'm also ashamed that America has attacked itself with its constitutional breakdowns. I'm deeply ashamed." -- film director Oliver Stone, who has been ashamed of his country since long before 2003, for whatever reason is handiest at the time.
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"Terrorism is a manageable action. It can be lived with." -- Oliver Stone, complaining that Americans are too intolerant of terrorism.
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"You were not a dictator." -- soon-to-be-dismissed Judge Abdullah al-Amiri, to Saddam Hussein during his trial for crimes against humanity.
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"Terrorism has no religion and no nationality." -- an official statement released by Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islamic terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
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"The Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the War on Terrorism, and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists." -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.), who failed to explain why the terrorists would find Iraq so relevant, when he does not.
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"I'm not really with Bush on wiretapping. I just understand this idiot does not know how to fight the War on Terror. He doesn't choose the same tools to fight that I would. I certainly wouldn't have attacked the wrong country, and started torturing people, and made the whole world against us, and turned homeland security into just another pork-barrel project." -- alleged comedian Bill Maher, who, when last the world heard from him, was telling us how courageous suicide bombers are.
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"I believe people really want perspective and I think there's a way to do that by explaining not just what's happened, but what it means to you." -- soon-to-be CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, trying to explain to viewers that they demand her bias.
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"... And you know, Cuba is known for its medical care. They actually export doctors throughout Latin America." -- NBC's Andrea Mitchell, perhaps auditioning to become Raul Castro's minister of information.
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"I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel." -- Rep. John Dingell (D,Mich.), demonstrating his party's characteristic "nuance."
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"This case is not worth the urine of an Iraqi child." -- Saddam Hussein, who's probably got barrels of the stuff stashed away somewhere.
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"Stem cell research is where the Democrats may have, on a moral issue and, you know, a societal issue, they seem to have the upper hand by, like, seven out of ten people think, all right, you're going to throw these stem cells, these embryos away. They're never going to be fertilized. These are not the ones that are going to be adopted. These are not the ones that are going to become people. These are the ones that are going out into the trash unless we do something with them, or we could, you know, maybe cure Alzheimer's with it." -- MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, telling as many lies about embryonic stem cell research as he could think of, while unwittingly admitting the Democrats' deficiencies on other moral issues.
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"You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not kidding." -- Sen. Joseph Biden (D, Del.), borrowing a page from Hillary Clinton's joke book.
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"I have never seen leaders that act with the contempt for the truth that I have witnessed in George Bush's administration." -- Al Gore, who has apparently dropped his "no controlling legal authority" defense, and instead will plead insanity to all future charges.
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"In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." -- an inadvertently released rough draft of a Greenpeace "fact sheet."
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"I had these strange things. I realized they were French fries." -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.), who has been in the San Francisco Bay area entirely too long.
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"Today, life on earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last. ... Earth's intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot." -- NBC's Matt Lauer, who probably believes this scripted hysteria from a Sci-Fi Channel special called "Countdown to Doomsday."
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"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country ... I don't see why people care about patriotism." -- Dixie Chicks' lead bubblehead, Natalie Maines.
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"Do you ever have a moment where you feel this just won't end well, that no matter how many Zarqawis are killed, the insurgents are just never going to give up?" -- Jim Axelrod of CBS News, begging President Bush to throw him a bone during a White House press conference.
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"The accused cannot just be eliminated. This barbarity cannot be done." -- Fidel Castro -- who somehow failed to get that same idea across to Che Guevara decades ago -- bemoaning the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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"I suspect it [the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] is going to make the insurgency in Iraq worse." -- Cindy Sheehan, who, if she believed her own words, would be happy about it.
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"I think the news of the loss of any human being is a tragedy. I think al-Zarqawi's death is a double tragedy. His death will incite a new wave of revenge. George Bush and al-Zarqawi are two men who believe in revenge." -- Michael Berg, whose son, Nicholas, was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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"We don't win militarily. Playing Whack-a-Mole in Anbar Province is not working. ... We kill one person, ten arise. That's just not the strategy that can work." -- Rep. Jane Harman (D, Calif.), buying her party's argument that killing the enemy ensures defeat. These remarks of hers recall The Shinbone's observation that the supposedly deep-thinking Democrats tend to "reduce the War on Terror to a game of Whack-a-Mole." [see She Can't Be Serious: Hillary's inane war analysis (2/17/06).]
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"You don't need [citizenship] papers for voting." -- congressional candidate Francine Busby (D, Calif.), describing her party's electoral strategy in terms too blunt for its own liking.
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"My vote against this misbegotten war is the best vote I have cast in the United States Senate since I was elected in 1962." -- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.), who might know a thing or two about misbegetting.
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"I really believe this amendment is racist." -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.), on a proposal to declare English our national language.
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"I am not a normal member of Congress." -- Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D, Ga.)
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"The gap between the economy from 40,000 feet and on the ground level just seems to get wider with every new report." -- liberal economist Jared Bernstein, whose fancy ciphering has concluded that 40,000 feet is wider than it used to be.
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"[Sen.] Arlen Specter says Congress should consider taxing windfall profits being reaped by the oil companies, which I think is a no-brainer. These guys aren't entrepreneurs, they're pirates." -- Fox News host Geraldo Rivera, who may himself be a no-brainer, since he injected his forehead with tissue from the other end.
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"No Illegals -- No Burritos (You Better Think Twice America) -- a sign held by a nincompoop at the May Day illegal alien demonstration.
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"Deport 12 Million Republicans!" -- a sign held by another nincompoop at the May Day illegal alien demonstration.
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"I wanted desperately to be an Olympic athlete. -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), who must be terribly disappointed that the IOC has never sanctioned the ashtray-throw.
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"Paranoia gripped Spanish society as the Inquisition coincided with a Christian war against the Muslims of southern Spain. Clandestine trials, secret prisons, rampant eavesdropping, torture, desecration of Islam's holy books, and gruesome public executions created an atmosphere of pervasive terror. Suspects were assumed to be guilty, with no recourse to a defense, to a jury, or to a legitimate court.
"In the chaos now roiling the Western world, does any of this sound familiar?" -- extremely paranoid author James Reston Jr., showing no sense of irony in an April 18th USA Today op-ed piece, in which he later worries America is "seized with paranoia" about Islamic terrorism.
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"Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second." -- a word problem in a math test, at Bellevue Community College, outside of Seattle.
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"If the disclosure is true, it's breathtaking. The president is revealed as the Leaker-in-Chief." -- Rep. Jane Harman (D, Calif.), whose brain is not getting enough breath if she, being a member of the House Intelligence Committee, doesn't understand that it's not a "leak" when the president releases his own National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
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"There should not have been any physical contact in this incident." -- Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D, Fla.), backhandedly blaming the Capitol police officer who stopped her from circumventing a metal detector, during her "apology" for subsequently assaulting him.
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"Think global warming isn't real? Ask Manny the Mammoth, Diego the Tiger or Sid the Sloth. They first met in the animated hit Ice Age, and they formed an unlikely herd. Now, in Ice Age: The Meltdown, they're fleeing floods of melting ice and the results are joyous. ... The herd's 88 happy minutes will melt away your out-of-theater cares while attesting that global warming is no snow job." -- NBC Today show movie reviewer Gene Shalit, accepting a cartoon as proof that mankind is responsible for prehistoric climate change.
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"I have wisdom. I feel love. ... There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war." -- musician Carlos Santana, doing his impression of L.S.D., from "The Producers."
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"The great generals are those who know how to retreat." -- Jean-Luc Parodi of France's National Foundation of Political Science, who might as well have completed the stereotype by laughing at Jerry Lewis.
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"The Prophet Mohammed, prayers be upon him, and Jesus Christ, prayers be upon him, are not sacred anymore, while Semites and the Holocaust and homosexuality have become sacred." -- Ayman al-Zawahiri, trying pathetically to drive a wedge between Christians and Jews in his latest audiotape.
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"Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt." -- Surgeon General Richard Carmona, warning about obesity.
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"All of us are feeling that we want to maintain the maximum control we can over our national security. This is one area where we have really failed." -- former president Bill Clinton, who should speak for himself.
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"My hope is that when the vote is taken, the other members will outvote the United States." -- former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of Cuba and other dictatorships around the world, in opposition to ambassador John Bolton's plan to reform the UN Human Rights Commission.
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"She's very highly regarded by the rank and file military for what she has done in support of the troops." -- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, talking about Hillary Clinton.
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"I'm pro-choice as far as a woman choosing, but I'm against abortion." -- Nevada senatorial candidate Jack Carter, son of the former president, showing that he's a real chip of the old empty shell.
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"Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought Harry Whittington would be the answer to America's prayers." -- actor Alec Baldwin, who thinks Vice President Cheney is evil for having accidentally shot his friend in a hunting accident, but sees nothing wrong with himself for having prayed for it to happen.
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"Count me among those who don't like them [the Winter Olympics] and don't watch them. ... So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." -- HBO RealSports host Bryant Gumbel, perhaps auditioning for a job at ESPN.
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"I didn't hear a lot of Republicans complaining when Arnold ran for governor, and I don't run around naked shooting guns, but I'm proud of my comedy." -- failed talk radio host, prospective Senate candidate and alleged comedian Al Franken, who would have gotten a lot more laughs running around naked shooting guns than he's gotten with any of his "comedy."
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"When Bill Clinton would deceive, he would throw in a semantic clue that let you know he was deceiving. 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' We knew what he meant by that. You know, about dope. 'I didn't break the laws of this country.' So it was sort of poignant and endearing." -- columnist Maureen Dowd, who, like everyone else at the New York Times, finds it cute when other liberals lie to her.
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"The rich white guy in this campaign is Lynn Swann." -- James Seif, who was summarily fired as campaign manager for Bill Scranton, Swann's opponent in the Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial primary.
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"Obviously, I support tracking down terrorists." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), who hasn't made it nearly as obvious as she thinks she has.
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"Many people surmise that one of the reasons we haven't been attacked here is because they have been so successful at doing what they need to do to attack us in Iraq and elsewhere." -- Sen. John Kerry (D, Mass.), acting as a mouthpiece for the enemy, as always.
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"Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression." -- Harry Belafonte, who could give more complete explanations if he'd ever looked any of those words up.
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"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country. Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves.
"It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans." -- Mayor Ray "Chocolate Blunder" Nagin of New Orleans.
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"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government." -- former vice president Al Gore, coming to that realization at least eight years too late.
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"When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.), whose mouth is run like a rusty chainsaw, during a Martin Luther King Day speech.
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"The world has enough for all, but it turned out that some minorities, descendents of those who crucified Christ ... took the world's riches for themselves." -- Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who will not be receiving the Mel Gibson treatment from the American Left for these remarks.
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"If every Libyan is booby-trapped, every car is booby-trapped, every house is booby-trapped, and every road is booby-trapped, the enemy will not be able to survive. The enemy will be unable to use their nuclear bombs, their airplane carriers or their intercontinental missiles. They will not be able to use them against people who booby-trap themselves, and fight the enemy." -- Mohammar Khadafi, who obviously has not yet tested this strategy, by trying to stop a nuclear bomb with it.
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"There's sort of an unwritten code in Washington among the underworld, the hustlers, and these other guys that I'm their friend." -- former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, expressing his disbelief after becoming the victim of an armed robbery.
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"Are we sometimes to blame for the hell that we've raised? That's all I'm asking. Is it always the other guy's fault, or do we do things that send signals that we are the enemies of those people?" -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, trying desperately to blame America for the acts of its terrorist enemies, as usual.
The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press