[9.18.2001] - "Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage." - David Letterman 09.17.01 [07:38]
[9.16.2001] - "If you’ve got a nation out there now that has provided a base, training facilities, a sanctuary, as has been true, for example, in this case, probably with Afghanistan, then they have to understand, and others like them around the world have to understand, that if you provide sanctuary to terrorists, you face the full wrath of the United States of America. And that we will, in fact, aggressively go after these nations to make certain that they cease and desist from providing support for these kinds of organizations." - Vice President Dick Cheney, 16 September, Meet The Press [23:58]
[9.15.2001] - "War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. " --H.L.Mencken [18:44]
[9.14.2001] - "Terrorism is the cancer of our age. For the past decade, a lot of countries wanted to deny that, or make excuses for why they could go on dealing with terrorists. But after what's happened in New York and Washington, now everyone knows. This is a cancer. It's a danger to us all. So every country must now decide whether it wants to be... a country that supports terrorism or one that doesn't." - Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres [20:28]
"I have found some comfort in knowing that so many around the world share this sorrow." – Kim Lang, New Hampshire Your Voices, washingtonpost.com [09:50]
[9.11.2001] - "I tried to help them but they didn't want anyone to touch them. The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered." - Donald Burns, who had been at a meeting on the 82nd floor of one of the towers and saw four severely burned people on the stairwell [18:10]
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended." - President George W. Bush on today's air attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon [18:08]
"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it." - Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-NE on today's air attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon [18:06]
"These attacks clearly constitute an act of war." - U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) on today's air attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon [18:05]
[9.9.2001] - "With $6 million in state money already in its coffers, the project has united farmers, environmentalists and university professors against business and political interests." - Louisville Courier-Journal website on Bowling Green's embattled Transpark attraction, 09.09.01 [15:55]
"I think Green Acres is too avant-garde for Paducah."
- Mike Adams talking about his hometown [15:38]
[9.6.2001] - "Being single that long is exhausting. Think about 26 years of dating. That is a lot of years of acting fascinated." -- Jerry Seinfeld, on marrying at 45 [21:18]
"I have a most peaceable disposition. My desires are for a modest hut, a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, very fresh milk and butter, flowers in front of my window and a few pretty trees by my door. And should the good Lord wish to make me really happy, he will allow me the pleasure of seeing about six or seven of my enemies hanged upon those trees." - Heinrich Heine [12:37]
"Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them." - Ed Howe [12:34]
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche [12:29]
"I have learned this at least by my experiment: if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau [12:23]
[9.5.2001] - "If low wages were the chief magnet for industry, Haiti would be the manufacturing hub of the world. Jobs stay in America because of our workers' high productivity, not their low wages." - Fareed Zakaria [15:53]
[9.3.2001] - "He's wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a shithead and we're glad to be rid of him. And I'm not talking about his sexual exploits. I think we have a chance to do something about education, very important. We should have done it years ago. It doesn't matter who does it -- Democrats or Republicans -- but it's long overdue. Our education system is a monstrosity." - science fiction writer Ray Bradbury to Salon.com when asked what he thinks of President Bush [09:14]
[8.30.2001] - "No one ever said political rhetoric over economic policy would edify the public, we have reached a new low. The plain fact is that the economy has slowed faster than anyone predicted, so tax receipts are shrinking faster than anyone projected." - Robert Reich, Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor [23:24]
[8.27.2001] - "...the Citizen Kane of moronic road comedies."
- Tor Thorsen's glowing review of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back on Reel.com [18:16]
"I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals... the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists." - Roland Barthes [16:27]
[8.24.2001] - "The National Organization for Women plans to raise money for Andrea Yates' defense fund. She's the Texas woman accused of drowning her five children. Meantime, some e-mails to a local prosecutor blame the father for leaving his kids alone with his reportedly depressed wife." - Associated Press 08/24/01 [08:59]
[8.23.2001] - "There was one point today when I was talking to an irate customer... I thought to myself, 'If only I knew if I had won the lottery.' The conversation would have gone much differently." - Gary Quick [13:55]
[8.22.2001] - "One of the ways a good university becomes a great university is with more federal funding." - U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell on an eleven million dollar federal grant to the University of Kentucky's agricultural programs 08/21/01 [08:07]
"I did... some research into the connections between adult films and the early works of Shakespeare. As it turns out, the most common line of dialogue heard in porn movies of the late eighties is actually written in iambic pentameter. Examine it for yourself:
'Take it baby, take it baby, take it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby, come on and take it.'" - Dave Pell in the 21 August edition of NextDraft. [00:27]
[8.19.2001] - "No school should ever be branded as a failure." - U.S. Rep. David Bonior (D-MI), during a gubernatorial campaign speech 08/15/01 [22:49]
[8.17.2001] - "In the world of hardcore editorial cartoons, there's a small, unpleasant fellow with a very little penis, the result of a sneeze during circumcision, named Pat Oliphant - himself a Pulitzer winner - who threatened a boycott when my prize was announced in 1987." - Berkeley Breathed on winning a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. [22:33]
[8.16.2001] - "To think I turned to a cult for mindless happiness when I had beer all along." - Homer Simpson [19:28]
[8.13.2001] - "We don't want our schools to be open to the market," Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary of Education International (a Brussels-based worldwide coalition of labor organizations). [13:26]
[8.12.2001] - "In an effort to improve his network's image with conservative leaders, new CNNchief Walter Isaacson huddled with House and Senate GOP leaders last week to seek advice on how to attract more right-leaning viewers to the sagging network. Isaacson met with Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House GOP Conference Chairman J.C. Watts (Okla.), Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to talk about CNN's image with conservatives and how it can be improved. Isaacson confirmed that he also reached out to senior White House officials, but he denied that he was seeking counsel on how to boost CNN's ratings with conservative viewers." - RollCall.com, August 6, 2001 [12:55]
[8.7.2001] - "I am just naturally suspicious. Maybe I should have been a cop. No, I'm too honest for that, I think I will be a lawyer." - Alyx Parker [15:17]
[8.6.2001] - "Don't call me nice. It means I don't have a penis." -- Dodd Harris [11:43]
[8.3.2001] - "I was an asshole for two weeks and then it was overwith." - Tony Cruise on his experience quitting smoking [14:24]
[7.31.2001] - "Let me tell you something. I'm glad we did what was right in 1993, and I'll do it again because I believe in being fiscally responsible with the taxpayers' money." House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) referring to the '93 tax hike and what a Democrat-controlled House would do if confronted with budget deficits. [12:40]
[7.27.2001] - "Though I grew up and live in the East, I attended the University of California in the 1960s, so I'm not unaware of the roots of this phenomenon. It's what could be called the California Fallacy: that high moral authority derives from living in a beautiful place. When you're up in the eucalyptus groves above Berkeley, gazing at a panorama of the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond, it's easy to believe that your thoughts are as wonderful as the view. This isn't true, but it has one major advantage from my point of view: Practitioners of the California Fallacy rarely show up where I live, just outside Philadelphia." -- Paul Munshine, "Free Mumia?" [11:30]
"If we ever go to war with Poland, I bet they'll bomb our Target department stores." - Mike Adams [02:23]
[7.25.2001] - "[I]n the original [18th Century] coffeehouses nearly everyone smoked, and nicotine also has a distinctive physiological effect. It moderates mood and extends attention, and, more important, it doubles the rate of caffeine metabolism: it allows you to drink twice as much coffee as you could otherwise. In other words, the original coffeehouse was a place where men of all types could sit all day; the tobacco they smoked made it possible to drink coffee all day; and the coffee they drank inspired them to talk all day. Out of this came the Enlightenment. (The next time we so perfectly married pharmacology and place, we got Joan Baez.)" - Malcolm Gladwell [19:25]
"As head of the Food and Drug Administration under the first President Bush and then President Clinton, David Kessler was guardian of the national nutrition. But yesterday at Reagan National Airport, our Post colleague David Segal spotted the good doctor chowing down at a Ranch 1 fast-food counter, ordering fries and a Coke and giving his quick assent when asked if he'd like to 'supersize it' for an extra 49 cents." -- Lloyd Grove, Washington Post, July 24, 2001. [17:18]
"We are the only country in the whole world without dominant state-controlled media." - Activist Michael Moore on the roots of what he calls an American cultural landscape currently in "the dark ages." [17:15]
[7.23.2001] - "Mr. Government does not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Bums, bootleggers and non-producers do. In other words, a government is not a physical entity that eats, breathes, or sleeps. It does not exist. It is a mental concoction by insecure leeches that need to work on their boundaries." - Tim Swanson [23:27]