QUOTE OF THE YEAR AWARD

After much consultation, the quote of the year had so many votes behind it that no other quote is even close. So even with a couple of days left in the year, I feel confident in awarding the QUOTE OF THE YEAR AWARD to George Bush for

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!

2005 Notable Quotables

Here are a few words to remember 2005 by.

BUSH AND THE CONSEQUENCES
If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
George W. Bush

You are the best governor ever.
Harriet Miers to George Bush in 1997

You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.
Bush to a divorced mother of three in Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. They're a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same, and they all look the same.
Howard Dean

George Bush doesn't care about black people.
Kanye West

I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office. She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.
Bill Frist, diagnosing Terri Schiavo's condition during a speech on the Senate floor, March 17, 2005


KATRINA AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS
If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god… Anything specific I need to do or tweak? Do you know of anyone who dog-sits? … Can I quit now? Can I come home? … I'm trapped now, please rescue me.
FEMA fashion god Michael Brown

Get some devastation in the back.
Majority Leader Frist, to a staff photographer as he posed for a photo op in Sri Lanka after the tsunami.

Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
Michael Brown

What didn't go right?
Bush, as quoted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, after she urged him to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown "because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right" in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Sept. 6, 2005

Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?
Tom Delay to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005

Go f*ck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go f*ck yourself.
Heckler to Cheney in Gulfport, Mississippi


THE WAR AND OTHER UNNATURAL DISASTERS
This is killing us around the world.
John McCain on the Administration's torture policy

He's said that my son—and the other children we've lost—died for a noble cause. I want to find out what the noble cause is.
Cindy Sheehan

I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work.
Rumsfeld's response to Congressional request for an estimate of Iraqi insurgents, Feb. 16, 2005

I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
Cheney, June 20, 2005

If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.
FOX's Bill O'Reilly, after San Francisco voted to ban military recruiters from city schools, Nov. 8, 2005

It's the first time we've ever listed an entire country in danger.
Bonnie Burnham, World Monuments Fund - on placing Iraq on a list of 100 most endangered cultural sites.

INTERNATIONAL
No Froot Loops!
Saddam Hussein to his guards at breakfast.

You are giving us bullshit.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov on weather forecasters


IN THE MEDIA
We were able to flood the zone immediately.
CNN President Jonathan Klein describing tsunami coverage

We can't right all the wrongs of the Civil War; we've got to quit hiring all these black people.
Former Meredith Broadcasting President Kevin O'Brien, March 11
and -
Black people are a lost race. It can't be said publicly, but it should be. They don't listen.
Kevin O'Brien, April 25

My ambition is to have Stone Phillips’s neck and Geraldo Rivera’s sense of mission.
Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, July 9

I can say unequivocally that interviewing with Stephen Colbert was the worst experience of my life.
Mark Udall (D-CO), November 17

I'm a warrior-journalist.
Geraldo Rivera, September 16

And one last word from Anna Quindlen's Newsweek Column, "The Last Word"
It is hard for me to figure out how a snub by a home-improvement center can diminish Christmas one iota. . . .O ye of little faith, who believe that somehow the birth of Christ is dependent upon acknowledgment in a circular from OfficeMax!

Do We Have Stealth Senators & Representatives?

Back in April, Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick was quoted as saying among the differences between the Texas legislature and the U.S. Congress was that the U.S. Congress had:

454 Members on the House Side and 60 in the Senate.

Rumsfeld Mutterings

Just a few Rumsfeld duds

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
-on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said.

Well, um, you know, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose, as Shakespeare said.

I Don't Even Know Where to Begin on This One

After 9/11, I told the American people I would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the law, and that's exactly how I conduct my presidency.
Bush in an interview Jim Lehrer, December 16, 2005

Liberal and Proud - Sing it Long, Sing it Loud

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Martin Luther King Jr.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
Leonard Bernstein

Uh, Duh?

I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.
George W. Bush, defending Cheney's pre-war assertion that the US would be welcomed as liberators on NBC Nightly News interview
Dec. 12, 2005

How Fast Can a Republican Back Pedal?

Responding to Murtha's statement, House Speaker Hastert said: "Rep. Murtha and Democratic leaders have adopted a policy of cut and run. . . . We must not cower like European nations who are now fighting terrorists on their soil."

Then, after Bush declined to go after Murtha, saying only that he disagreed with his position, Hastert put himself into full reverse, saying that with respect to the world "cower", he ""did not use the term directly about Mr. Murtha."

Man, you can almost see the brakes on that one as he hit reverse, can't you.

You Go, Murtha

A flawed policy wrapped in illusion. It is time for a change in direction [in Iraq]. The Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

Congressman John Murtha on the war in Iraq.

Uh John, What About the Message You're Sending Us?

Commenting on the killing yesterday by air marshals of a passenger who claimed to have a bomb.

This shows that the program has worked beyond our expectations. This should send a message to a terrorist or anyone else who is considering disrupting an aircraft with a threat.

Personally, I just got the message that if I'm mentally ill the odds are good that I'll be shot. Oh well, it would save all those endless days/nights as a bag lady.

Hiding in Plain Site

When asked yesterday how he accounted for the intelligence failures regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the National Press Club, Paul Wolfowitz answered:
"Well," he said after a long pause, "I don't have to."

Let's not forget Neo-Con Paulie's pre-war predictions. That:

It would be"wildly off the mark" to think hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq.

The Iraqis "are going to welcome us as liberators."

"It is just wrong" to assume that the United States would have to fund the Iraq war.

And When I Call Bush a Moron . . . oh heck, I really mean he's a moron

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.
June 18, 2002

Finally Bush Said Something I Can Believe

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
August 5, 2004

No Fair, Lots of Us Were Saying it Back Then!

Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war.
-- Bush, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, Nov. 11, 2005

Uh ... Ok, So Where Were They? Or, Where Are They Now?

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.
Bush in interivew TVP, Poland, (5/29/2003).

Maybe George Has All Those Extra Jobs?

Although I don't think he's working three minimum wage shifts to pay his mortgage.

The economy is booming. Why do people not think so?
George Will on This Week (12/4/05).

And We Don't Use Torture Either

We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I can't imagine why you'd even ask the question.
Donald Rumsfeld, questioned by an al-Jazeera correspondent, April 29, 2003

Fiction vs. Non Fiction

by Michael Moore
We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

It's the Vision Thing

We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you.
George W. Bush, Gulfport, Miss., Sept. 20, 2005

Ricky Owns up to Things He Never Said

The fact it hasn't turned up in print doesn't mean I haven't said it.
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), insisting he's questioned the Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq war. Except nobody's been able to find evidence of anything like that.

Brownie Thinks He's Doing a Heck of a Job too

Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

Barbara Feels Their Pain

So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckles) is working very well for them.
Barbara Bush on the evacuees in the Houston Astrodome.

Brownie Blows His Horn

I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it.
FEMA former director Michael Brown on the hill, defending his (in)action.

Pat Channels His Inner Moron

Yes, Pat Robertson has certainly earned an entire blog devoted to his moronic utterings, but here he'll have to share with others.

I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for his help because he might not be there.
(After Dover dared to vote out the creationists school board.)

Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

That was never in the Constitution, however much the liberals laugh at me for saying it, they know good and well it was never in the Constitution! Such language only appeared in the constitution of the Communist Soviet Union.
(apparently Pat hasn't actually read the US Constitution - but hey, give him credit for reading the Soviet one!)

The Great Communicator Himself

Facts are stupid things.
Ronny Raygun

Still Waiting ... and waiting

And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.
Richard N. Perle, Pentagon policy adviser, 9/22/2003

Uh, say that again Orrin?

Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
Orrin Hatch - Utah

Yeah, That Should Do it Ricky

Now we are forced to do something that societies often do when people can't control their desires. We have to pass laws to stop their desires.
Rich Santorum, 2005

Tom DeLay on Parenting

Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.

Wait a second here. Working mothers who take birth control pills don't create kids, and yet they're getting the blame for juvenile violence? Okely dokely Tom. If you say so.

PJ O'Rourke on Money & Govt.

Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.