"George W. Bush and the Republicans hijacked the 2000 election with the help of their discredited accomplices on the U.S. Supreme Court. They have no right to traditional forms of democratic deference, particularly when pursuing an unpopular extremist agenda. An honest media ought do everything possible to insure that no one loses sight of the astonishing circumstances through which Bush acceded to the presidency. Get over that."

"The first six months of the Bush presidency seemed almost calculated to poke its proverbial finger in Europe’s eye on issue after issue, from global warming to missile defense, to peace efforts in Iraq, the Balkans, the Middle East and the Koreas, to steel imports, to food additives, even to tax cheating."
Eric Alterman

"Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop bin Laden ...
I didn't detect that kind of focus from the Bush adminsitration."
Two Star General Donald Kerrick

"Doesn't a man who asks for public power and public trust have a moral obligation to be intelligent about public issues?
In Texas, after all, Bush's lack of understanding of, or engagement with, the substance of governance has had unmistakable moral effects."
Editorial,

"Bush is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."
Christopher Hitchens

Eight Nobel laureates top economic experts in America have reviewed George W. Bush's plans. Bush promises the same $1 trillion of Social Security to younger workers and the elderly at the same time. He uses the surplus on a tax cut promise, half going to those making over $300,000. Eight Nobel laureates conclude :
"George W. Bush's promises more than exhaust the surplus, increasing interest rates and the deficit. The Bush plan does not add up."
Eight Nobel laureates

"Republicans are ... mounting a frontal assault that equates public service with corruption, diversity with lowered standards, public schools with race wars, private schools with free enterprise, free enterprise with civil liberty, choice with self-segregation and the segregation of whites from blacks with opportunity. In the end, Pat Buchanan represents very little threat to George Bush because the right is smart enough to know which side its bread is buttered on. This is one heck of a moment for what's left of the left to allow itself to be divided and conquered by wasting a vote."
Patricia Williams

"George W. Bush is emptiness personified, formed of vacuous phrases to hide his life. He is a picture which the news media, blindfolded and foolish, never broke open. He is being completely handled. He delegates everything, including the fight for his political life. His daddy's team is fending for him."
Jane Prettyman

"They're just ultra-conservatives soaked in big oil money."

"Everybody here is in massive denial that they have anything to do with politics. It's almost like to be here, to be a Republican, is to deny you are a Republican.
A good Republican is one who doesn't want anybody to know it.

"In the Clinton administration we worried the president would open his zipper.
In the Bush administration, they worry the president will open his mouth."
James Carville,   Carville Sites

"The Bush operation reminds me of North Korea. You have a group of insanely loyal, fiercely committed lunatics, devoting their lives to slavish devotion of a moron whose only claim to power is that his father used to run the country. George W. Bush is Kim Jong II with better hair.

Why is Junior so comfortable with being so ignorant?

We know W. was born on third base. The question now is, can he steal home?

You can just hear Jim Baker screaming at Austin :
Just lock that idiot kid up on the ranch somewhere, we'll tell him what to say and when to say it. Every time he speaks, it looks like a damn hostage video Ollie North smuggled out of Tehran and every time he's under stress, he breaks out in a boil. He lost the election. We'll deliver him the White House.

It's simply impossible to take junior seriously. Whether it's his hostage-tape performances on television, his spurious and hypocritical legal claims, or his thuggish political tactics, Bush has pursued power in such a way as to prove himself unworthy of it."

"Other than raising their own pay, the GOP can't pass anything --
they can't even pass the salt without the permission of the Salt Lobby."

"Bush IS just like McDonald's : pre-packaged, filled with empty calories and controlled by corporate interests."

"If you don't think it's a gamble to put a man in the White House who believes we should have guns in church, who thinks the Taliban is a rock band, who was such a failure as businessman that his company was nicknamed "El-Busto," who wants to turn our Social Security system into a Wall Street boiler room, who can't name a single thing he disagrees with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on, who smeared a bona fide hero named John McCain, and whose principle policy proposal is to give America's surplus to the idle rich in the form of a $1.3 trillion tax cut, you're either nuts or a Republican."
Paul Begala, Begala Shoots The Bull
Is our children learning? - The case against George W. Bush

"I don't know how you vote against Head Start. I don't know how you vote not to free Nelson Mandela from prison. I don't know how you vote against the Superfund and the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act."
John Kerry

"This is a guy who could not find oil in Texas."
Al Franken, Salon Interview

"He's probably the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party. Yes, he was elected governor of Texas, and before that he ran a baseball team and lost a lot of other people's money in the oil business. But what has happened in the intervening five years to make people believe that George W. Bush would be a good president?
What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"
Ron Reagan Jr.

"Here's a guy who never really did anything without the help of Daddy's contacts, the money from Daddy's friends, and now he's won, and he looks more than slightly bewildered.

Thanks Dad; whaddo I do now?"
David Nyhan

"We risk our lives to form this great nation and
you wanna let George W. Bush run it?!"
( What would the Founding Fathers say if they were alive today )

"Supreme Court Justices Given Bitchin' Ferraris By Anonymous Texas Governor"

"President Comes Away Empty-Handed From 'Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire'"
( Top Ten Headlines We're Likely To See In The Next Four Years )

According to plaque, "When Bush gives order, nod politely, wait to hear what Cheney says"
( Top Ten Things The Chinese Have Learned By Examining Our Spy Plane )

"Even if he has a hundred more scandals, George W. will still be the embarrassing one in the family."
( Top Ten Little-Known Facts About Jeb Bush )

Describes George W. Bush as the 'greatest president in the history of the United States of America'.
( Top Ten Signs Your Senator Has Lost it )

He lost to George W. Bush in Trivial Pursuit
( Top Ten Signs Your Neighbor Is The Monkey Man )

"Move to Mexico because I'm gonna run this country into the ground"
( Top Ten Pieces Of Advice George W. Bush Gave To Graduates )

Odds are you have a job in President Bush's cabinet"
( Top Ten Good Things About Being The Oldest Person In The World )

Become President -- ignore the problem completely
( Top Ten Dumb Guy Ways To Conserve Energy )

Quoted in interview as saying, "This George W. Bush has some good ideas"
( Top Ten Other Signs That Castro Is Not Well )

"George Bush is in Europe and the mission while he's there -- the objective -- is to assure Europeans that he is competent. And I'm thinking, 'Wait a minute. What about assuring us first?'"

"Have you have seen Lara Croft Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie? It is very exciting. In the final scene she raids a tomb and finds another 5,000 ballots for Al Gore."

Today is 'take your daughter to work day'. President Bush took his daughters to work and let them dismantle 12 environmental regulations.

"President Bush's daughter was cited for underage drinking. That's too bad, when you see something like that happen. She was apparently slurring words, couldn't remember the alphabet. Oh, wait a minute. That's her father."

Today George W. Bush visited New York City. He said the first thing he wanted to do when he got here was to meet the guy who voted for him.

George W. Bush says that since becomming president, he prays every day. I'm thinking to myself, same goes for us. Then I thought, hell, this isn't the first time there has been kneeling in the Oval Office.

Now I don't get this : George W. Bush is in Europe again. Wasn't he just there? This is all part of his second 'I'm In Over My Head' tour. He's in Europe for the G8 Summit. When asked if George W. could name any of the members of the G 8, he said, "Why sure! Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman ..."

The big G-8 Summit is taking place in Italy this week. President Bush and the queen are going to have lunch together. They both have a lot in common. They both are conservative, they both are heads of state, and neither of them has won an election!

Everybody is saying Condit knows more than he is saying. That's the great thing about President Bush. With George W. Bush, you never have to worry about that.

President Bush says he needs a month off to unwind. Unwind? When the hell does this guy wind?

President Bush is still on his working vacation.
I believe the vacation will end on January 20, 2005.

Today is August 24. We are now entering the autumn portion of the George W. Bush vacation
David Letterman   Dave's Dubya Lists

"It is 24 hours after the last polls closed and America is confused and unsure of what is happening.
The Bush era has begun."

"If George Bush was anymore retarded, he'd be on death row in Texas."

"If Martin Luther King, Jr. were to come back today, he wouldn't recognize the country it's changed so much ... unless he tried to vote in Florida."

"Did I mention that Bush is a lying bag of crap?"

"The SC has ruled out medical marijuana. First they installed Bush as President. Now they are refusing any help to reduce the pain and suffering of the public."

"Hey Bush, why don't you cut the middleman and write a check directly to Exxon?"
- on Bush's proposal to use the taxcuts to pay for the increase in oil prices.

"The USSC denied the right to smoke little dope for sick people. But they retained their right to put a big dope in the WH."

"In a press conference today, Florida Governor Jeb Bush denied rumors that he's had sex outside his marriage ... Unless you count that screwing he gave Al Gore."

"Have you heard this? The rumors are ripe that John McCain is poised to leave the GOP, and I think it says a lot when a guy can take being locked in a box and tortured by the North Vietnamese for 5 1/2 years but not one more minute of Trent Lott."

"Well, President Bush ordered the Navy, finally, to stop their bombing exercises of Vieques Island.
Bush said : "We've been bombing this place for 50 years. If they haven't surrendered by now ..."
Bill Maher   Politically Incorrect

"George W. Bush is like a bad comic working the crowd.
A moron - if you'll pardon the expression."

"He is a thug. He is dull and dangerous
Martin Sheen aka President Bartlet

"If George W. Bush is a reformer, I'm an astronaut!"
John McCain, March 1, 2000.

"The selection of attorney general of Ashcroft, whose politically expedient ambush of Judge Ronnie White on the senate floor is legendary in civil rights circles, suggests Bush welcomed a fight with those most aggrieved by the Florida vote count.
It was the equivalent of rubbing salt in their open wounds
Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute

"You have to go back to Coolidge to find a president with a resumé so short, a presence so uninspiring, an intelligence so difficult to locate".

"Let me put it this way. I really, really liked Frank Sinatra,
but I wouldn't hire Frank Sinatra Jr. to sing at my party."
Judith Regan

"When it comes to the Bush tax plan, you can't just lead everyone to believe they have a benefit until they read the fine print. They may be trying to do to the country what they did to Florida."
Charlie Rangle ( D-ny )

"He is YOUR problem now."
( In his skit about slogans on the new quarters - this is on Texas quarter

Bush : "This is nothing. 300 professors signed a letter of protest when I graduated."
( regarding the letter of protest signed by 177 professors protesting the honorary degree given to Bush.

President Bush is in trouble. His approval rating has never been lower. Bush says that he hasn't seen numbers this low since he took his SATs.

Sad news here. The inventor of Cliff Notes died yesterday. He was 83. When President Bush heard about this he said, "That's too bad, he was my favorite author."

President George W. Bush says he'll do whatever it takes to defend Taiwan, but first he said he needs to find out just where the hell Taiwan is! It's where most of his toys come from.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is considering running for Congress. She says that she knows she can win, "Especially if they let me count the votes!"

President Bush is in the news. He's on his working-vacation in Texas. He's spending his time jogging, golfing and fishing. He also says that when he gets back to Washington in September he's going to spend his time jogging, golfing and fishing.

President Bush, everyone's talking about his month-long vacation that he's taking right now. The President's taking a month-long vacation, and it's controversial. And yesterday, President Bush defended his month-long vacation by saying, 'Being outdoors keeps my mind sharp.' ... That's what he said. Yeah, and apparently this is the first time he's been outdoors in forty years
Conan O' Brien   Conan O' Brien

"Bush and company give the unfortunate impression of glee at the thought of an economic downturn, as if it were a lucky break.
It's like a child hoping to be sick so he can take that yummy medicine."
Mike Kinsley

"I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans were running the country, which is turning out to be like shooting yourself in the head to stop your headache."
Jack Mayberry

"Turning back the clock is their specialty. Standing up and fighting for constitutional rights is ours."
Ralph G. Neas, PFAW

"George Bush says he's for election reform.
"Reform this! I say park the state police cars, take down the roadblocks, stop asking people of color for multiple forms of ID, print readable ballots, open the polling places, count all the votes
and start practicing democracy in America again!"

"Yesterday, Bush claimed that the economy is to blame for his broken promise on the environment. Now, Bush is vowing to protect Medicare from his tax-cutting zeal. But what happens when projected 10-year budget surpluses fail to materialize? Seniors in America may discover one day that the Medicare trust fund is as empty as a Bush promise."

"There is nothing we can do about the last election. We won that election, and they stole that election.
President Bush tells us to get over it. Well, we're not getting over it."

"It's very unfortunate, we now have an administration that is more concerned about big oil companies making record profits than worrying about average American working families and their bottom-line budget."

"If you were a voter hoping for a government that promised to fight for working families, health care and a stronger economy, would you trust the Bush Administration and Republicans in the Congress to keep that promise? If you were an ally, negotiating an agreement on trade or the environment or arms reduction - would you trust the Bush Administration and the Republicans in the Congress to honor America's commitment? If you were a parent, and your child asked for a glass of water in the middle of the night, would you trust the Bush Administration and the Republicans in the Congress to keep that water safe?"
Terry McAuliffe,   DNC

"Watching Republicans trying to spin the results in Florida is like watching 10 cats with one litter box.
So much shit, so little sand."
Grace Newton

"End social promotion. Defeat Bush."

"We have a saying that he's so lucky, if you tried to hang him, the rope would break.
Let me say to you, the rope broke in Florida."

"OK, here's what I think the problem is with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. After the 36-day post-election war, the R's kept saying to the D's, get over it. Although not kindly intended, this happened to be very good advice. The problem now is not that the D's can't get over it -- the problem is that the R's are in denial. They are in total denial of the fact that they not only lost the popular vote by fairly spectacular numbers, but they also lost Florida."

"You can't govern from the right of where you ran, if you didn't win in the first place. What is the point of behaving as though you have a mandate when you don't have a mandate?"

"Everyone knows the man has no clue, but no one there has the courage to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been : barely adequate."

Miss-proof missile defense! "What is so charmingly called the 'kill vehicle' managed to hit the target missile because the target had a radar beacon telling the other guy exactly where it was located. This is known as a 'cooperating target,' and even the Spice Girls could hit one."

"I know : 'Guns Don't Kill People.' But I suspect that they have something to do with it. If you point your finger at someone and say, 'Bang, bang, you're dead,' not much actually happens."

"Bush has now blown the entire budget surplus on this huge tax cut for the rich. The silliest line of commentary is this phony wringing of hands and wailing, 'If only we had known three months ago what we know today!' Of course we knew three months ago there was going to be no surplus. We were quite regularly told so by an enormous array of experts. Bush went from saying we needed a tax cut because times were so good to saying we needed a tax cut because times were so bad."
Molly Ivins

"The Supreme Court held that there should be a recount, but there is not time enough to do it. That leaves Bush as president not so much by the will of the electorate, but by default."

"Bush : "I ask you to pray for this country."
Jon Stewart : "We are way ahead of you, Mr.President."

"The shift in power in the Senate means that Trent Lott will become the minority leader. Funny, you rarely hear a sentence with the words Trent Lott and minority that doesn't also include the words 'no appeal to' and 'hates'."
Jon Stewart

"A round of repugnance ... Attorney General John Ashcroft, having anointed his head with a squirt of Pam, now turning his attention to banning fetal tissue research, so that diabetics and Alzheimer's sufferers can die just as quickly and painfully as Jesus Our King intended them to ... The Bush brothers' transcendental arrogance on election night. To be that sure you did not lose Florida, you either had total confidence in the power of your message of inclusion or total confidence that every black in the state would have to endure construction detours and police-run-ID-checks before using a voting machine that last worked successfully when the Stutz Bearcat was a late model car or total confidence that you were going to steal the vote regardless. "
Jerry Long,

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans
-- unless they have too much education and vote Democratic,
which proves there can be too much of a good thing."
apparantly they are proud of less educated people voting for them!
Karl Rove, co-president

"And now a new administration takes office, with the narrowest political base in memory, consisting of no more than corporate power, the professional military, and the Christian Right."
James K. Galbraith

"With less than 30 days in 'office' he has had 27 workouts, 27 naps, numerous photo-ops,
but NO White House press conferences.
Could he be reinventing the game of Duck & Cover?"
Jenny Backus, Democratic Press Secretary

"The president apparently does not realize the damage he is doing to confidence by trash talking the economy. It is simply unheard-of for such a high elected official to accentuate the negative."
Irwin Kellner,   CBS market watch

"If we don't even have the brains to count votes in Florida correctly, why do they think they can build a system to intercept incoming nuclear missles?"
Jake Johannssen

"Bush is the kind of businessman that can create a multi-million dollar company - just so long as someone gives him a multi-billion dollar company."
Brian Sweat

"Isn't it a sad time we live in?
After Columbine, everyone was so shaken by that terrible tragedy.
People were so outraged, the Senate passed new gun laws.
But after the Santana School shooting, there are just hushed whispers in Washington.
Every one knows that gun violence is no longer an issue.
The gun lobby has won, and I think that's sad."
Bob Schieffer,  CBS news

Who's in charge?
"Among those attending [a White House lunch several hours before the president spoke to a joint session of Congress] was CNN's Bernard Shaw, who was seated beside Bush and across from Cheney.

As questions were put to the president, the veteran newsman observed that Cheney seemed to be providing cues to Bush.

"I noticed that the president kept looking at you," Shaw told Cheney in an on-air interview the next day. "And you were indicating your attitude, your feelings, about questions being asked," using body language, facial expressions and "your eyes."

Apparently caught off-guard, Cheney stammered that 'we're - we're both Westerners. I know he's from Texas. I'm from Wyoming. There can be some connection there.'"
Paul West

"Don't tell me you're a Christian. Let me figure it out."

Christian fundamentalists lend credence to the Buddhist belief that one is born again due to ignorance.
Dumbell B is a "born-again" christian

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I look forward to all sorts of amusement as snake-handling fundamentalists of West Virginia distribute free rattlers to drug addicts."
P.J. O'Rourke, ridiculing Smirk's faith-based thievery of tax funds.
He called this idea "Bush's mindless brainstorm."

"A promise made and a promise broken. After eight weeks in office, President Bush has gone from C02 to see you later."

We do not need to be deploying unproven technology. I don't think Saddam Hussein is going to say, 'Let's put a beacon in our missile.'
Hillary Clinton  Senator Clinton

"He's embarrassing. He's not my president. He will never be my president."

"We all need to take a deep breath and think about being a Bush daughter and having that cross to bear. I'd go out and have a couple of drinks too."
Julia Roberts

"Transparent" Presidency
"To the extent the Bush administration is transparent, it is mostly in the old sense of the word : It is transparently interested in reversing the Clinton-era policies that shifted the tax burden toward wealthier Americans; transparently eager to reward business donors who gave most generously; transparently more conservative than the presidency described by that pleasant, moderate-seeming fellow who ran last fall.

But in his talk of transparency, as in so much else, Bush shows his canny grasp of the way soothing language can conceal what is in plain sight."
Marjorie Williams

"President Bush's budget will propose deep cuts in a variety of health programs for people without health insurance."

"Mr. Bush arrived in the White House just as the nation was plunging into a stock market dive and the California utility crisis. Since he is a guy known for setting priorities, nobody was surprised when he immediately honed in on taxes and energy.
Then we began noticing that while the country needed to quickly stimulate consumer spending, Mr. Bush was fixated on eliminating taxes on the wealthy in 2011. The California crisis is mainly about natural gas, and Mr. Bush keeps talking about drilling for oil in a wildlife preserve.
The president seems to be governing some other country."
Gail Collins

"I'm not sure he really understands a lot of issues.
He seems to be given his lines by other people."
Sting

"If poor children wish to gain any help from the GOP, they had best crawl back into the womb."

"For eight years the only thing standing between us and the Right-wing trying to run this country into the ground was Bill Clinton. He did the job better than anyone else could have, he had the charisma, the brains and right ideas. I sure miss him."

The Supreme Court controlled by a little Italian fascist. The Senate run by a Neo-Confederate Right-wing Christian dickhead. The House run by two Neo-Confederate Right-wing Dickheads (Hassert is just their puppet). The White House with a Right-wing Christian dim bulb (Reagan without the charisma) doing whatever the conservative powers that be tell him to do. And the media, whom for some reason is giving this guy a free ride, even the advent of passing the 100 days generated nothing from them. Oops. Almost forgot. They also have God. It抯 really depressing."
Rack Jite,   Conservatively Incorrect

"Bush is the worst president for the environment since Ronald Reagan."
Denis Hayes, Earth Day Founder

"Since taking office, the President has treated the big polluters to an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of environmental giveaways. When it comes to the public's health and the environment, President Bush and the Republicans are willing to let the big polluters have their way."

"When the matters the country is discussing are not subjects the president is willing to address, a vital element of democratic leadership is missing. One hopes he will enlarge his concept of his job and let his voice be heard."
David Bonior

President George dWi Bush's motto :
EARTH FIRST! We'll stripmine the other planets later.

"Stupid us. We just didn't realize that "leave no child behind" was merely a corollary to "take no prisoners"."
Winston Barclay

"I think that if you are the leader of planet Earth, you should be smarter than me. You just get the feeling, don't you, in the Oval Office that Dick Cheney is working behind the big desk. And then off to the right there is a little collapsible card table where George has like airplanes and stuff. Then every once in a while he looks up and says, 'I've discovered that if I shut my eyes, I can disappear.'"
SNL's Darrel Hammond

"President Bush is back from that big trade summit up in Canada, but he said the water tastes funny up there without the arsenic in it."

"This Monday President Bush will be celebrating his 100th day in office. When asked about it, Bush said, 'Gosh, 100 days? Has it been a year already?'"

How many power executives does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, they are too busy screwing consumers!

Governor Gray Davis testified about the power crisis in Washington, D.C. We know what D.C. stands for : "Don't Care"!

"President Bush is in Italy at the G-8 Summit. Today the seven smaller leaders told Bush he was the weakest link, goodbye!"

President Bush was in England this week. He and the queen hit it off pretty good. At one point the queen said to Bush, "How much do you know about the U.K.?" Bush replied, "Well, I know how to spell it."

Bush is now in Genoa, Italy. He arrived to protesters that threw bottles and cans. In fact, Bush was surrounded by so many empties he was homesick for the girls.

Next Monday Bush will meet with the pope. He's going to tell the pope that he believes in miracles. I think he does ... he graduated from Yale!

The United States has decided to ban the cloning of human beings. Apparently the great fear with cloning is if you clone a human being, the second generation will not have the same mental capacity as the first. You know, kind of like George Bush and his dad

President Bush is spending the whole month in Texas, then with all the time he has already spent in texas this year, and the time he has spent at his parents home in Maine, and the time it takes to fly back and forth to these places, someone has figured out he will have spent 42 percent of his presidency away from the office. See Bush will have to win another election in order to finish his first term!

Plans are being discussed as to who will replace Dick Cheney if he has to resign for health reasons. It's not easy for President Bush, he can't just name a replacement. He would first have to be confirmed by the oil, gas and power companies

All of Washington is shut down. Congress is in recess. Bush is gone. Cheney is gone. It is so lonely in DC the NRA and tobacco companies are just handing money to each other.

President Bush is continuing with the endless summer vacation he's on. We need a new holiday in the country, we need 'Take Your President to Work Day'

President Bush spent Labor Day giving a speech to the Teamsters in Detroit. He really is dyslexic. He is the only guy I know who takes a whole month off and works on Labor Day
Jay Leno

"The rest of America, however, might well prefer the new administration to abandon what can only be called raiding-party conservatism and to adopt the centrism and restraint shown by JFK."
Kevin Phillips

"By now, we should all know that being conservative means never having to say you're sorry."

In George W. Bush's parlance, Sound Science means anything that will please lobbyists and contributors.

Whatever [Rep. Dan Burton's] aims [in leaking Clinton-Barak conversations], however, the damage to diplomacy has been done. The truly guilty parties are those in the Bush White House who blithely handed such sensitive materials over to an irresponsible, grandstanding politician. So from now on, no foreign leader can depend upon the privacy of a conversation with the American President.
Joe Conason,    Salon Archive

"It's really hard to tell what he means and what his strategy really is,"
Sen. Joseph Biden, (D-de)

Embarrassing Moron
British teenage singer Charlotte Church told a London paper she found pResident Bush "kind of stupid" when she sang at his preinauguration celebration .
That's because when little Charlotte told Bush she was from Wales, she said he replied, "Uh, what state is that in"?
Is there any doubt that Bush Jr. is moron-in-chief ???

"He seems to be an idiot."
George Carlin   George Carlin Site

"Politically shrewd but ignorant, the president mistook a policy question [posed by CNN's John KIng] for a 'toughness' question. Good thing there's no real danger or the fool might suck us into World War III."

"A good way for the Bush twins to stay out of the tabloids would be to stay out of bars and quit getting busted. If Chelsea had ever gotten hauled downtown, they'd have had to take a fire hose to GOP moralist Bill Bennett to stop him ranting about the Clintons' permissive parenting."
Gene Lyons,   Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"You get a pretty clear pattern from these ballots.
Most of these people went to the polls to vote for Gore."
Anthony Salvanto,   University of California-Irvine

"There's going to be but a pittance for children and education, a pittance for health care, not anywhere near enough for affordable prescription drug coverage for our seniors. What happened to that campaign promise? This budget does not reflect what we call Minnesota values. I resist this budget and I vote against it."
Senator Paul Wellstone, (D-mn)

"Compassionate conservatism. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Probably looks good on a campaign banner. Whaddya think? It's got great alliteration. It rolls off the tongue. It gives off the image of shaking hands with elderly men and women, and kissing babies.
In other words, it's false.
In other words, it's transparent.
In other words, no such animal exists."
Chris Grant,   Online Journal

"No energy crisis exists now that equates in any way with those we faced in 1973 and 1979. World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful, and automobiles aren't waiting in line at service stations. Exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality."

"I have been disappointed in almost everything he has done. I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election, he would reach out to people of diverse views -- not just Democrats and Republicans, but others who had different points of view. I thought he would be a moderate leader, but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration, his vice president and his secretary of defense in particular."
Former President Jimmy Carter, from an Op-Ed article in the Washington Post, May 17, 2001

'Bush Publicly "Concerned" About Rising Gas Prices'
Privately, however, he’s "positively giddy."

'American Productivity Fell For 1st Time in Six Years' -
"It’s as if a bright workaholic were suddenly replaced by a lazy C-student," says one puzzled economist.
Ironic Times

Compassionate Conservatism is a HOAX. - P.A.
Ignorance breeds Conservatism. - P.A.

"A new direction without funding is no direction at all."
James Jeffords (I-vt),   Senator Jeffords

"The inability of the White House and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to keep Jeffords from going independent and switching his support to the Democratic leadership -- giving the Democrats an effective 51-49 edge -- is only the latest evidence that zealotry rather than pragmatism is guiding Bush's Republican team."
Bruce Shapiro,   Salon

"It is well past time for the republican party to grow up."
Sen.John McCain (R-az)

"Jim Jeffords represents a state that has a population of 600,000.
Al Gore won the election by 600,000 votes.
It is a small bit of poetic irony and it provides some consolation.
The best thing for America is for Bush to be banished. He should resign - or be impeached.
The illegal and corrupt circumstances surounding his installation should be exposed which would not only restore faith in our country but in our journalisitic standards as well. In his campaign and during the administration's early days, was that Bush was a moderate whose shifts to the right were meant to shore up his base. Now -- after his tax cut plan, his Cabinet appointments, and his environmental policy -- he is widely seen as a true conservative who moderates his message only when politically forced. That's a more damaging story line -- which is why the Bushies have worked so hard for more than a year to make sure the mainstream media doesn't adopt it. But now that it's becoming conventional wisdom, it's likely to stick. For one thing, it has the advantage of being true."
Lynne Rizza, The New Republic

George W. - you've just activated us all over again!"
Rep. Maxine Waters

"I think it's time that President Bush realize that he doesn't have a mandate."
Sen. Harry Reid, (D-nv),   Senator Harry Reid

"He's gonna do a lot of damage ... he's sort of like this great symbol of inversion to me -- the inverse of the truth. It's like the ethics of the new millBush means Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and all these [expletive deleted] crypto-fascists are gonna get in and start carving up the pie and handing in all their markers to the Republican Party that's been itching to get back into power."
John Cusack

"Jenna Bush was caught trying to buy a drink in Austin with a fake ID. It's her second alcohol incident in a month. She must be extra careful from now on, because under federal law, it's Three Strikes and You're President."
Comedian Argus Hamilton

"Let me get this straight. Jenna Bush, the 19-year-old daughter of President George W. Bush, a woman who has been all over TV, all over the newspapers, who appeared on the campaign trail, who danced with her father before a million flashbulbs, and who, outside the Dallas Cowboys, might be one of the most recognizable faces in Texas, tries to buy booze in Austin using a fake ID? It isn’t her liver we should be worrying about. It’s her brain."
Mitch Albom

“We see no alternatives to the Kyoto protocol. It took us 10 years to conclude this agreement. We can’t just start from scratch. We can negotiate on the climate, but we can’t negotiate with the climate.?
Sweden’s ambassador to the United States Jan Eliasson

“This was beyond hair-trigger. This is somebody who has such a visceral reaction to anybody questioning him that he just flattens you."
Rep.Ellen Tauscher(D) about Dick Cheney

"I didn't vote for Bush, I don't trust him, but even I think he's underachieving as president. The man's enemies almost always grant him one thing : He's a political master. So why is he stumbling around in these early months like a pledge at a DKE party?"
Joan Walsh,

"America can be saved -- one heart, one soul, one conscience at a time." - george dWi bush
Hey Dubya, how about starting with you and Dick Cheney??? or will the lack thereof (heart,soul,conscience) make it harder for you both???

"Dorothy was an ardent believer in social justice, the rights of workers and care of the disenfranchised. Her life's work was dedicated to picking up the pieces of human wreckage, the result of policies that continue to be perpetuated by the Bush administration. It is shameful to have her efforts associated with an administration that gives priority to corporate profiteering over human needs. Dorothy understood that a just system was as equally important as her ideal of personalism, where each takes individual responsibility for the well-being of all. The speechwriters for George Bush have distorted her message regarding the works of mercy by using her words in their arsenal of deceit."
Tamar and Martha Henness

"Consider the searing intellectual depth of the advice Bush says he offered Russian President Vladimir Putin during their recent summit : 'It's negative to think about blowing each other up. That's not a positive thought ... That's a thought when people were enemies with each other.' - Are these the pronouncements of a man maturing into the leader of the free world or a guy who's been watching way too much Barney?"
Arianna Huffington   Arianna Online

"President Bush threw out the first pitch last night at the World Series. He was wearing a firefighters jacket. Now think about this, he's throwing out the first pitch, wearing a firefighters jacket, and he's the president of the United States. He is living every 8-year-old's dream!
Jay Leno

Bush is doing the same thing to the nation he did to Texas, and in even less time. The same thing is, obviously, the endless Bush Jr. mantra : Tax cuts good, regulation bad; tax cuts good, regulation bad.
Texas Politician

"Having Justice Antonin Scalia speak on ethics is like having a prostitute speak on sexual abstinence."
Vincent Bugliosi

"Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state election laws."
The New York Times

"The administration is clueless about the sufferings of people."
Rep.Bob Filner,D-ca

"In terms of reaching out, I'm not a confidant. When I'm on the Sunday programs his press people call up and make sure I know what they're saying to the public, make sure I understand their talking points. So we have that kind of relationship."
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-ct)

"The last President we've had who was elected. And if we had our way, he'd be re-elected."
Rep.Charles Rangel (D-ny)

"Because of the flashy tax cut and a sluggish economy, we are poised to spend the Medicare surpluses, disrupt our debt-retirement efforts and dive right back into the deficit doldrums."
Senator Robert Byrd (D-wv)

"This body has morphed from a place where legislation is deliberated upon to the White House ATM Machine."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-ca)

"Of course, Al is in the ring. The way he sees it, he isn't starting all over. He is running for re-election — against a man he has already defeated. He just needs to evict the Occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania, the Scalia squatter. After all, W. is never there anyway. And even when he's there, he's not there."
Maureen Dowd

"The stakes are too high to base our strategic relationship on one man's assessment of another man's soul. It is not enough, as President Bush has suggested, simply to send U.S. officials to international meetings. ... Woody Allen wasn't talking about foreign policy when he said that '85 percent of life is just showing up. The chief threats today come from biological and chemical weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus or backpack."
Sen.Tom Daschle (D-sd)   Daschle site

"Due to consistently one-sided deviation from all other publicly released non-partisan polls, we have dropped all 2001 FOX News polls from our trend analysis."
Democracy Corps

"The sharp limitation of federal support may well close the door on some of the life-saving promise of embryonic stem cell research, which can be conducted consistent with basic ethical and legal principles that respect the value of human life."
Sen. Paul Wellstone, (D-mn)

"What's going on here? Why the reluctance on the part of the government to at least explain itself? Targeting journalists for simply doing there jobs. These secret police tactics are more appropriate for some Third World, fascist regime."
Houston Chronicle

"We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved ... Your guy's acting like he's king. His dad was at a 90 percent approval rating and he lost and the same thing can happen to him."
Rep. Dan Burton (R)

"You know, I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything.
I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business.
But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office."
george dWi bush in 1989

Which would you rather have, a president who lies about sex or a president who lies about the budget?

"Time and time again, when Enron came calling, Bush delivered. On economic policy, Enron wanted complete deregulation with no government interference. They got it. On energy policy, Enron wanted no caps on electricity prices in California. They got it. On tax policy, Enron wanted elimination of the corporate alternative minimum tax. They got it. Enron was Bush's best friend. Bush was Enron's best friend -- and look what happened. That's why the White House can't escape part of the blame for Enron. Enron is the poster child for the Bush economy.
Bill Press,  A-OK to IOU

"We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved ... Your guy's acting like he's king. His dad was at a 90 percent approval rating and he lost and the same thing can happen to him."
Rep. Dan Burton (R)

"The Bush budget, with all the lies in it and wrapped in a flag, that is flag desecration."

You know what Bush needs? A calculator!"

"I'm kind of unimpressed with the argument that an unelected president has the right to have people in the Cabinet who always agree with his philosophy. People rejected that philosophy at the polls."
James Carville,  Carville Sites

"Since it has lately become respectable to discuss his elevation to the nation's highest office as a matter of divine will, Mr. Bush’s deep determination to empty the Treasury into the pockets of friends and supporters may likewise signify the unknowable agenda of the Almighty ... The implications of all this are obviously profound. If the President is indeed guided by Providence in lavishing additional billions upon those who already enjoy so much material abundance -- even while the numbers of unemployed, uninsured and homeless soar -- then his ascension may represent a millennial reversal of heavenly policy."

"Two days before Christmas, Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced his own opinion that "there was some divine guidance in the President being elected." (Again, a skeptic might impiously wonder why the Lord didn’t simply bless Mr. Bush with the actual majority of votes. But faith is nothing without mystery.)"

"Despite Republican complaints about defense policy during the Clinton administration, the military that has prevailed so easily in Afghanistan was bequeathed to Mr. Bush by his predecessor in excellent condition."
Joe Conason

"The Bush administration is so busy turning back the clock on the environment, social programs and other government services, it can be hard to keep up."
Eye on Bush

"It's funny to watch this clueless man go through the motions. It would be even funnier, of course, if he turned out to be better than advertised, but this is a long shot."
Garrison Keillor

"Drill in the Uninterrupted Wilderness of Bush's Mind"
a sign carried by a demonstrator in Rocky Mountain National Park protesting Bush's environmental policies

"We're all entitled to grow up. George W. Bush had his problems with alcohol. I was a Republican. We both got over it."
North Carolina Superior Court Judge Ray Warren, conservative Republican turned Democrat

"The worst setup we could have is all these elderly oil men -- Cheney and so forth, the people who run the country -- in a way they are the last people we should have as our leadership right now. They are like the Bourbons -- they remember nothing and forget nothing. I don't know what we can do; truly, there are ways in which this government, or the country, has become so utterly devoid of community."
Robert Stone

"These guys -- Joe McCarthy, Bill O'Reilly -- die like everyone else. And when they do, their legacy is one of damaging the spirit of good things, and they become rather broken, pathetic figures. And that is going to happen to him."
Sean Penn

"Have you heard the news from Argentina? They have had five presidents in two weeks. Why don't they do it how we have elections here – count the votes and the guy that loses wins.
Craig Kilborn

*** "A promoter had O.J. Simpson make an appearance at a rap concert in Connecticut. But due to lack of interest, the event was canceled. The promoter doesn't know which was the worse mistake, hiring O.J. or thinking that there would be rap fans in Connecticut."

"More happening with this Enron scandal. Congress is going to subpoena Kenneth Lay and he’ll have to testify in front of Congress. This morning when he received the subpoena, out of habit he shredded it."

"Next week on 'Sesame Street,' they are going to air a series of shows to explain the war on terrorism to kids. That's a good idea. This also explains why Oscar the Grouch is being held in a trash can on Guantanamo Bay."
Conan O' Brien

"Under AOL Time Warner, GE, Viacom et al., the news is, with a few exceptions, yet another version of the entertainment that the cartel also vends nonstop."

"Resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime is a patriotic act."
Mark Crispin Miller

"Certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama Bin Laden, and John Ashcroft."
Anthony Lewis

"They were so good knocking out black voters they should hire this firm to knock out bin Laden. They were so good at ferreting out democratic voters and purging them from the voter rolls, we should have turned them on Al Qaeda and maybe that would have made a difference."
Greg Palast, Interview

"Certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama Bin Laden, and John Ashcroft."
Anthony Lewis

"One would like to hear from President Bush, regarding Enron's executives, the sort of anger he expressed over the possibility that the crybaby Secret Service agent whose behavior caused an American Airlines pilot to bar him from a flight might have been a victim of illegitimate profiling. Instead, we have heard Bush's slippery -- Clintonian, actually -- assertion that Enron's CEO, Ken Lay, 'was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994' for governor. Well, yes, but no. Lay contributed to Richards. And he contributed much more to Bush."
George Will

"George Bush attempted to taste the biscuit with his attention focused on a football game -- a combination of actions that, it appears, proved difficult."
Greek daily To Vima

"Though not to everyone's taste, they are not considered a health hazard."
London's Independent

"The incident proved Bush is "a man of the people". This is exactly the sort of accident that befalls Homer Simpson, night after night."
London's Daily Telegraph

"We've spent like $30 million on this war and dropped these thousand-pound bombs – and we've caught an American."

"Earlier today, Bush's cabinet told him that they had nothing to do with helping Enron ... and Bush had trouble swallowing that as well."

Two years ago today I underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery. Today I am running as smooth as an Enron document shredder."

"In defense of President Bush, that pretzel – it was one of the really twisty kind."

"President Bush plans to spend this weekend on the couch watching TV. He's hooked. Instead of pretzels, this time he's going to be eating soup. So we're all safe this time."

"His [GWB] dad, the former president, George Bush, to start with did the coin flip – much the same way his son's election was decided."

"The president’s niece, his brother’s daughter, was arrested on prescription fraud in Florida. So you can be arrested in Florida for prescription drug fraud, but not for election fraud."

"The government ran several anti-drug commercials. They ran right between the seventh and eighth Budweiser commericals."

"Many strategists think that Al Gore would be the best Democratic candidate for President in 2004. He is experienced, he knows Washington, has foreign policy understanding and he already beat Bush once!"
David Letterman,  Dave's Dubya Lists

"What I thought -- This sort of -- I think the reason they're so worried about it, whether or not they did anything illegal in the Bush administration, which I kind of doubt, is that it just sort of resonates with the whole -- They're for the fat cats. Cheney, when he was putting his energy policy together, met I guess six times with Enron, 'cause their advice, you know, was so good.
Al Franken

"I know it would be devastating to all of us but I wish we would get caught. We're such a crooked company."
Sherron Watkins in a memo to Enron boss Kenneth Lay, August 2001

"A Lay in the Oval Office is a hell of a lot worse than a blow job."
Barry Crimmins

"I'm tired of seeing the Republicans use the most sophisticated space-age technologies to peddle their Stone Age ideas. Now we will have the 21st century tools to match our 21st century ideas.
Terry McAuliffe, DNC

"If drilling in the refuge is the crown jewel of your energy plan, you actually have no energy plan at all."
Senator John Kerry, (D-MA)

"What's especially odd is that these attacks are coming even though I've been careful not to make any accusations about the president, the vice president or any of their staff. Having seen the mistakes of Republican investigations into the Clinton administration at close range, I have no interest in repeating the pattern of accuse first and investigate later. A better way is to ask for relevant information before reaching conclusions."
Henry Waxman, (D-CA)

"President Bush is slowly Enronizing the economy. Enronizing the budget. We are taking the same approach Enron used in sapping retirement funds and providing them to those at the very top. That's exactly what Enron did. And I'd sure hate to see the U.S. do that."
Senator Tom Daschle, (D-SD), Senate Majority Leader

"Bush asks us to swaller the idea that NOT giving another $300 million tax cut to the richest one percent of Americans 'would be a disaster for the American economy.' Someone tell him that the disaster has already happened, partly due to tax cuts. Enron, Bush's favorite tax cut beneficiary, had not paid any income tax in four of the past five years, and the IRS, under Bush's watch, is offering amnesty to 95 companies that illegally avoided paying taxes that could have potentially meant $16 billion in revenue. "Let's call this Republican 'pretzel logic.'"
Alan Bisbort, Hartford Advocate

"When I see an American flag flying, it's a joke. This present government in America I just find disgusting, the idea that George Bush could run a baseball team successfully -- he can't even speak! I just find him an embarrassment. I'd be very happy to stay in London. There's nothing in America that I would miss at all."
Director Robert Altman

"Enron is the September 11 of financial security—a wake-up call—but Levitt was sounding the alarm well beforehand. When he held the SEC job under President Clinton, he warned repeatedly that a “culture of gamesmanship” was rigging the system with phony numbers, hyped earnings and worthless stock analysis. His calls for reform were rebuffed by members of Congress legally bribed by Wall Street and the green-eyeshade lobby."
Jonathan Alter

"A senior official predicted to TIME that voters who care about Enron and its White House ties will lose interest after the next big bombing raid. If Bush has his way, investigating the Administration's links to Enron or challenging his plans for mending the economy will seem as unpatriotic as questioning the choice of bombing targets in Tora Bora."
Michael Duffy and John F. Dickerson, Time.com

"If they don't have anything to hide, they ought to let it out. If they want to be suspected, they ought to keep on hiding things."
Rep.John Dingell

"The big rumor going around is that we are going to bomb Iraq next. Or, as they call it at the White House, "Operation Keep Enron off the Front Page".

"Enron is now offically out of the energy business. They are now going into another business – the confetti industry."

"Pat Buchanan is making a stir again. In his new book he claims homosexuality is addictive – apparently, so are intolerance and stupidity."

"The president said he is going to put all the terrorist training facilities out of business. I believe him – there’s not many businesses that have stayed open while he’s been in charge."

"Next week on "Fear Factor" there will be a special episode where they lower Dick Cheney into a pit full of people asking questions about Enron."

"In Florida the governor announced that they have a new state holiday – Take Your Daughter to Jail Day!"

"Vice President Cheney is on his way to the Middle East. This is called "Operation Avoid Enron Subpoena."

"Tom Ridge has announced a new color code system for national defense. The colors are green, blue, yellow and red. The Republicans have been trying to get more color in the party."
Jay Leno,  The Tonight Show

"Peace, prosperity and a president smarter than his dog - already [the Clinton years] seem a golden age by comparison."
Arkansas Times

"We are not talking about the President's dick anymore. We are talking about a dick for President."
a caller to a talk show radio

"I believe that a government's legitimacy is based on the trust of its people, and when decisions are made on behalf of the American people, citizens eventually have to be able to see the process of how those decisions came to be."
The last TRULY elected President Bill Clinton

"The White House press corps is so cowed by Bush you can hear them moo."
Paul Begala

"Putting Enron in charge of America's energy policy is like putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank."
Mark Shields

"We've got an Enron government. I've never seen a better example of cash-and-carry government than this Bush administration and Enron."
Senator Fritz Hollings, (D-SC)

"Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop bin Laden ... I didn't detect that kind of focus from the Bush adminsitration."
Two Star General Donald Kerrick

"President Bush delivered his first State of the Union address, riding high on an 82-percent approval rating, and with Attorney General John Ashcroft dispatching agents to interview the other 18 percent."
Jon Stewart,  The Daily Show

"In his [address], President Bush made it clear that the war on evil is just the beginning. Afterwards, there will be the war on good, and - for what could be the long haul - the war on gray areas."

"Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says that things will get worse and worse and worse unless he gets $48 billion. Then things will only get worse and worse."
Michael Feldman,  Whad'Ya Know?

"Every worst tendency toward secrecy has come out of the woodwork of this Administration. The mentality is that of the intelligence agent whose only goal is to protect sources and methods. It is a mentality that does not understand the value of openness."
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive

"A few more votes in Florida, and we could have had the best environmental president we ever had. Now we've got an oil man. He (President Bush) is like another Julius Caesar. Just what we need."
Ted Turner

"This budget is about as credible as an Enron accounting statement."
Al Hunt

What I can tell you is that he [Bill Clinton] tripled the budget in terms of counter-terrorism between ‘95 and 2000, both the FBI and the CIA. Obviously interested. He signed orders to go out and get Bin Laden, to kill Bin Laden and I can’t, you know and the fact that he didn’t kill Bin Laden and we’ve had the entire United States military since September 11th, until we started the bombing in October, we haven’t been able to find him."
Greta Van Susteren,  Bill Clinton terrorism rumor debunked

"The international community thinks we have lost our minds."
Madeleine Albright"Sometimes watching Bush & Cheney reminds me forcibly of Pinky and the Brain."
Nina Katarina

"I have never seen a better example of cash-and-carry government than this Bush administration."
Senator Fritz Hollings, (D-SC)

"The bedrock principle of political conservatives has always been Money über alles."
Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

"When you hear somebody say, 'This is not a political scandal,' it's a political scandal."
???

Dubya Administration : "govt. of the rich, by the rich and for the rich"
P.A.

"Rarely has the world heard a more belligerent American president. His tone and substance have dismayed our allies as much as the targets he cites -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea."
Helen Thomas

"Having Dick Armey offer [a campaign finance reform bill] calls to mind the line about Doris Day : 'I knew her before she was a virgin.'"
Rep. Barney Frank

"As important as identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea for what they are, we must be equally bold in identifying other evils that confront us, for there is another axis of evil in the world : poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression."
The REAL victor in election 2000, Al Gore

"I'd say you were a carnival barker -- except that wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers! A carny will at least tell you up front that he's running a shell game!"
Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) to Kenneth Lay

"The whole country is broke and bogged down in some dubious foreign war that our children will be paying off for another 99 years. Our national economy is in ruins, Harvard-trained crooks have destroyed the roots of investor confidence , public-school systems from Maine to California are downsized to death by greedheads, our baseball-loving President comes back to work after a weekend of unspeakable football adventures with a nasty-looking puncture wound on his face. "Who needs that kind of berserk crap in this hour of national crisis? It is exactly the kind of sleazy , Third-world behavior that we have always denounced as 'unacceptably corrupt' when it happens in primitive banana republics like Haiti and South Texas."
Hunter S. Thompson

"What [Enrongate] is about, and what the public will get to hear and read about in wrenching detail over the coming months, is how business gets done down in Texas. How a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit. It will explain why Bush has locked up presidential records, locked out any voices opposed to his pro-business agenda and rammed through an expensive economic plan that wiped out the budget surplus but to date hasn't had any positive effect on the economy."
David Calloway,  CBS marketwatch

"I'm very disappointed. I know my president has lied."
Senator Harry Reid, (D-NV), regarding the nuclear dump in the Nevada backyard.

"A number of you have asked me if I had any interest in running for the most powerful office in the land. But I want to make it clear - I have no interest at all in being secretary of state of Florida."
Senator John Kerry, (D-MA)

"Enron is running the Bush administration's energy policy."
Ann Richards, the other former governor of Texas

"The campaign of character assassination waged [against President Clinton] by the right was a singular, unprecedented effort. Nothing like it exists on the left. What I object to on the right is the obsessive hatred, the bigotry, and the personal savaging of their opponents, all achieved through an echo chamber of talk radio, the Internet and Rupert Murdoch's media outlets. That kind of well-funded disinformation campaign has no analog on the left."
David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

"For Bush, who has done nothing at all so far except sign off on Ariel Sharon's failed hard-line policies, to blame Clinton for his tireless, 11th-hour efforts on behalf of peace is shameful. But the shameful, when it comes to the Bush administration's foreign policy, is becoming the expected."
Gary Kamiya, Salon

Blast  From  the  Past

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done."
Julius Caesar, nearly 2 millennia ago

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
Benjamin Franklin

"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."
Isaac Asimov

"We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan ...
In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."
Ralph Reed to Enron executives, October 23, 2000

"He who wins by injustice may dominate the present day, but history will always judge him to be a shameful loser."
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, December 10, 2000

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt

Looney Tune : "Civilized people — Muslims, Christians and Jews — all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator. Civilized people of all religious faiths are called to the defense of His creation. We are a nation called to defend freedom — a freedom that is not the grant of any government or document, but is our endowment from God." - John Ashcroft

GOP yesterday : "Clinton did nothing to resolve the unrest in the middle East."
GOP today : "What could Bush do that Clinton didn't try?"

Great  Left  Quotes

"If I wanted to see a bozo rant, make a fool of himself and try to impose his 17th-century philosophy on others, I'd just watch The O'Reilly Factor."
Frank Fitzpatrick

"It's not clear what the purpose of the report is other than to promote Robert Ray's senate campaign, Monica's HBO special and the Paula vs. Tonya boxing match"
Jennifer Palmieri, ex-Clinton spokesperson

"Journal editorialist John Fund, a close political adviser of house speaker Newt Gingrich, announced to the group that impeachment was not a matter of evidence of wrongdoing but of 'political will' by the right."
David Brock, Blinded by the Right : The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

"These are the guys who proclaim, 'We report. You decide.' I simply decided to let them report. The result wasn't real journalism, merely an incredible simulation."
Ray Richmond, Hollywood Pulse (As seen on Fox News Channel!)

Dumbya Yesterday : "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our Number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!" --- September 13, 2001 Dumbya Today : "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." --- March 13, 2002 Dead or Alive "There needs to be a focused, coalition effort in the region against peace ... I mean, against terror for peace." --- pResident Bush, April 4, 2002

Blast  From  The  Past

"As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
Senator Robert Taft (R-OH), December 19, 1941

"DeLay seemed to feel the issue applied personally to him, and perhaps it did. He had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong.

"He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention."
Tim Fleck, Houston Press, January 7, 1999

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Turn 'conservative' into a dirty word. It already is. So it won't take much effort."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Some  Interesting  Quotes

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."
Ronald Reagan

"It's high time people realized we conservatives aren't all Johnny Hatemongers, Charlie Bible Thumps or even -- God forbid -- George Bushes."

"No children have ever meddled with the Republican Party and lived to tell about it."
Sideshow Bob, Homer Simpson

"I think apocalyptic beliefs are the hallmark of fundamentalism, which in my opinion is about thought control, not spiritual growth."
David Neiwert

Classic 'The West Wing' Moment
"You all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said : 'Liberal means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on communism, soft on defense and we're going to tax you back to the stone age because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to.' And instead of saying : 'Well excuse me you right wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, leave-it-to-beaver, trip back to the fifties, we cowered in the corner and said 'Please, don't hurt me.'"
The West Wing

"The GE/Gates Net [MSNBC] actually features a show called Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. To whom? Moonies freebasing LSD?"
Barry Crimmins

"The television character Ally McBeal - an American lawyer as thin as a liberal judge's hope of election to the US supreme court ..."
Mark Lawson , The Guardian

"In this world of sin and sorrow one must search for reasons to be grateful. As for me I rejoice in that I am not a Republican."
H.L.Mencken

"Patriotism is voluntary. It is a feeling of loyalty and allegiance that is the result of knowledge and belief. No law will make a citizen a patriot."
Jesse Ventura

Old  Bush-Cheney  Campaign   Slogans

1. George W. Bush: Now With Adult Supervision
2. Bush/Cheney : We're the Ones Who Love Jesus!
3. Set the Wayback Machine for 1992, Mr. Peabody!
4. Because Ideas Are For Sissies
5. Like Your Bush Young?
6. The Party of Lincoln -- and Ford, GM, Exxon/Mobil, Shell, Texaco ...
7. Because Blue Skies Are Overrated
8. Dumb? Hey, You Didn't See *Us* Running Off to Vietnam!

"For those of you scoring at home, the Clintons have been cleared on Whitewater, cleared on the travel office, cleared on the file matter, cleared on the vandalism, cleared on Madison Guaranty. Cleared on Vince Foster's suicide. The right wing is zero-for-life going after the Clintons. They ought to get a life!" Paul Begala

"You're correct, Mr. Begala, President Bush is at his best when he's promoting exercise, hosting t-ball tournaments and entertaining foreign dignitaries. He would make an excellent first lady."
Deborah Coleman's letter to CrossFire

"Deborah, I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. George is no Hillary Clinton."
Paul Begala, Begala Shoots The Bull

"Trying to portray Mr. Bush as a serious scholar is about as believable as earlier efforts to paint him as a selfless statesman who heeds no polls, adheres always to principle, and indulges in nothing so base and "Clintonian" as political calculation. Citizens who wish to preserve such illusions should avoid reading the PowerPoint presentation by White House chief political adviser Karl Rove about Republican electoral strategies and prospects."
Joe Conason

"Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, you'll be able to use public money to send yours kids to General Beauregard Bigot Private Academy, Fundamentalist Football and Frequent Drug Tests. They have these religious schools that teach these kids insanity like the earth is 5,000 years old, where the pope is a demon. I don't want my tax money going to that kind of crap. You can practice religion until you fall out. I don't want to pay for somebody else's bigotry."
James Carville, Democrat with an attitude!

"President Junior has kept at least one campaign promise. He said he'd run the country like a business, and that he has surely done. The Bush administration looks more like Enron or WorldCom everyday : all smoke and mirrors economic projections, make-believe accounting, bigshots cashing in while everybody else's savings vanish, and zero accountability. Do you reckon this is what they teach down at the University of Mississippi's WorldCom-funded Trent Lott Leadership Institute?"
Gene Lyons

"Since Ashcroft became attorney general, the Justice Department has been three times more likely to seek death for black defendants accused of killing whites than for blacks alleged to have killed nonwhites, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which was established by the courts to monitor capital cases."
Dan Eggen, Washington Post

"I attribute [the dollar's slide] to lack of confidence in the management of affairs by the United States, its unilateralism, the pursuit of national self-interests and not living up to the responsibility of being the dominant financial power in the world, not taking care of the system."
George Soros

"This decision is profoundly misguided. Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of democracy."
Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the four sane justices about school vouchers.

"I'm a little disappointed in our chief executive -- who nobody ever accused of being a deep thinker -- for popping off."
Judge Alfred Goodwin, regarding PoA decision.

"We have a president who owes his election more to a dynasty than to democracy. Two years ago, President Bush "promised to enforce the civil rights laws". We knew he was in the oil business -- we just didn't know it was snake oil."
Julian Bond, NAACP chairman

"Bush's advisors discovered something that no one before had ever quite known : there are simply no limits to how much you can lie in American politics and get away with it."
Alan Wolfe

"This administration, all of a sudden, wants to go to war with Iraq. The polls are dropping, the domestic situation has problems. So all of a sudden we have this war talk, war fervor, the bugles of war, drums of war, clouds of war. Don’t tell me that things suddenly went wrong. Back in August, the president had no plans. Then all of a sudden this country is going to war. Are politicians talking about the domestic situation, the stock market, weaknesses in the economy, jobs that are being lost, housing problems? No. Congress will be putting itself on the sidelines. Nothing would please this president more than having such a blank check handed to him. But I am finding that the Constitution is irrelevant to people of this administration. I have not seen such executive arrogance and secrecy since the Nixon administration, and we all know what happened to that group."

"Shrouded in ambiguity and cloaked in deep secrecy, this administration continues to suddenly, and sometimes unexpectedly, drop its decisions upon the public and Congress, and expect obedient approval, without question, without debate and without opposition. As we learned all too well in Korea, Vietnam and Somalia, it is dangerous to present Congress and the American people with a fait accompli on important matters of foreign affairs. As Senator Gruening pointed out, it is the role of the Senate to advise and consent in foreign policy. As the War Powers Resolution points out, it is the role of Congress to be active participants in foreign policy. As the Constitution demands, it is the role of Congress to declare war. When the president is ready to present his case to Congress, I am ready to listen. But I am tired of trying to connect dots in the dark. Selling weapons to a terrorist nation in exchange for hostages, and using that money to finance an illegal war in Central America. What a great plan that was! I guess I can understand why the Reagan administration did not want to tell Congress about that foreign policy adventure."

"I recall all too well the nightmare of Vietnam. I recall too well the antiwar protests and demonstrations, the campus riots, and the tragic deaths at Kent State, as well as the resignation of a president. And I remember all too well the gruesome daily body counts in Vietnam. The United States was a deeply divided country. This saber-rattling prompted many questions for the American public, members of Congress and our allies. Will we invade Iraq? When will it happen? Will the United States go it alone? Military action against Iraq will be a serious undertaking. The American people deserve to hear why we may need to be an aggressor, risk the lives of their sons and daughters or to take pre-emptive action against Iraq. "This administration refuses to consult with anyone outside its own inner circle about what appears to be its plan for imminent hostilities. This administration convenes meetings of its trusted few in little underground rooms.

"We must consider and debate whether we should use military force against Saddam Hussein. And, barring the most exceptional of circumstances, Congress must vote to authorize the president to use military force against Iraq prior to the outbreak of hostilities. I am determined to do everything in my power to prevent this country from becoming involved in another Vietnam nightmare. This determination begins with Congress being fully and sufficiently informed on the undertakings of our government, especially if it involves a commitment to military action."
Senator Robert Byrd (D-wv), Senator Robert C. Byrd

Blast  from  the  Past

From The Daily Show :
"I was not elected to serve one party." — George W. Bush (video overlay)
"You were not elected." — Jon Stewart
"I have something else to ask you, to ask every American. I ask you to pray for this great nation." — George W. Bush
"We're way ahead of you." — Jon Stewart

"While our long national nightmare is over, our new national nightmare is set to begin. George W. Bush is the president-elect, and that feeling in the pit of your stomach should go away once you take a look at how your tobacco and pharmaceutical stocks are doing this morning."
Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

"It took his brother, his father, his father's friends, the Florida secretary of state and the Supreme Court to pull it off. His entire life gives fresh meaning to the phrase 'assisted living'."
Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury

"Due to a small but significant clause in the U.S. Constitution, I will be out of the office from January 21, 2001 until January 20, 2005."
Michael Feldman, Al Gore's senior advisor's message on his White House voicemail

"You can be Vice President in the most prosperous time in America, run against a dumb guy, get more votes and still lose."
Top Ten Things We've Learned From The Clinton Years, Dave's Dubya Lists

"W. does share some of Reagan's personal qualities. Problem is, they're the negative ones. Like Reagan, W. is -- and is perceived as -- distanced from the details of governing . He's a delegator, a vacation taker, an accomplished napper. (Of course, Reagan was 70 when he became president, and W. just 54. The sight of Dick Cheney burning the midnight oil while in intensive care, even as W. snoozes, is not the most reassuring image of our tax dollars in action.) But Reagan was also a big-picture guy with a clear (if Manichaean) worldview, an affable manner, and a genuine (if studied) air of patriarchal authority. W. seems as lost in the big picture as he is in the small and has no worldview to speak of--save a nervous provincialism. When it comes to authority and affability, he increasingly comes off as an uptight and querulous version of Mr. Rogers.

The Reagan administration may have signaled the first ascent of Sunbelt Republicanism, but Reagan's California was a pretty polyglot place and the leadership as a whole had a broadly national character.

Not so the GOP leadership in the age of W. Like President Bush, House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay are Texans; and Cheney is a Texan who had to repatriate himself to Wyoming just because of that damned Constitution, which says that the president and the vice president can't come from the same state. The Republican Senate delegation is led by a Mississippian and an Oklahoman; while hefty, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois is nonetheless weightless. This is anything but national leadership. Regionally, demographically, and culturally, this is government by southern white male philistines; and sectorally -- reinforcing those regional, demographic, and cultura characteristics -- it is government by the energy industry."
Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

"Does Mr. Dubya deserve a chance to be president? After all, after his DUI arrest (how many times?) he took a very courageous decision to stop drinking just 10 years after that. Plus, according Bush Sr. and mother Barbara, he was never an alcohol addict, he just "liked" to drink. Did he use drugs? (his silence presumes that, yes he did) So what? His use of drugs stopped 7 years ago, when he was a 47 year old adolescent ..."
bushisms.com

"If you don't think it's a gamble to put a man in the White House who believes we should have guns in church, who thinks the Taliban is a rock band, who was such a failure as a businessman that his company was nicknamed "El-Busto," who wants to turn our Social Security system into a Wall Street boiler room, who can't name a single thing he disagrees with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on, who smeared a bona fide hero named John McCain, and whose principle policy proposal is to give America's surplus to the idle rich in the form of a $1.3 trillion tax cut, you're either nuts or a Republican."
Paul Begala, Paul Begala shoots the Bull

So this old guy says, "You know, this Bush? What he is, is a post turtle." His friend says, "What the hell is a post turtle?" "Well, let’s say you’re driving down a country road and you see a turtle balanced on a fence post. That’s a post turtle. You know he didn’t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he cant get anything done while he’s up there, and you just want to help the poor thing down." The friend says, "Back in Texas, we’d just throw a rock at it."
Gary Goodrow

"They asked George Bush if he know what Roe vs. Wade was. He said it was the decision George Washington had to make when he wanted to cross the Delaware."
Various Sources

"I will say that naming Spencer Abraham as Secretary of Energy shows a sense of humor. In 1999, Abraham sponsored a bill to abolish the department."
Molly Ivins

"Nobody could have ever written the plot for this unbelievable election any more than they could have sold a script about a president, a 21-year-old White House intern and a stained dress.

But both came to pass, and of all the presidents-elect to be delegitimized by finishing second in the popular vote and squeaking in as a result of a dubious Florida vote count, George W. Bush is probably the one who can afford it least.

His inexperience is stipulated even by many who voted for him. If he's inaugurated, he'll take office pretested as the butt of late-evening talk-show humor. The other big joke -- except that it isn't one -- is that the Democrats should prove luckier to have lost the election than the GOP to have won it. The implications for the two parties could be enormous.

Sure, there's still time for the two parties to stand down and unfix bayonets, but there's also a good chance that we'll see two years of acrimony -- negative rather than benign gridlock in Washington -- right through the 2002 midterm elections, with the odds favoring the party that avoided gaining what will be a tarnished presidency.

Talk that Bush has no mandate is actually an understatement. It's not his own electoral embarrassment. The total vote for the center-left- -Vice President Al Gore and Green Party nominee Ralph Nader -- was 52%, its highest share since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 ..."

"... Bush is a post-Clinton impeachment fluke, as was Jimmy Carter a post-Watergate Richard M. Nixon fluke.

True, other presidents of the last 50 years have suffered some credibility loss as a result of entering the White House after winning less than 50% of the popular vote : John F. Kennedy in 1960, Nixon in 1968 and Clinton in 1992. What makes Bush's credibility problem so much worse is that he's apparently the first president-elect to have lost the popular vote and won the electoral college since Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and he's the first president-elect whose only real credential for nomination lay in being the son of his party's previous president, sort of an, American crypto-Prince of Wales or dauphin."
Kevin Phillips, Republican political author

"It is set, the Texas Toddler is going to Washington. Through a campaign of misinformation, over 100 million in corporate big bucks, generous treatment from the media, disenfranchising voters, special accommodations from GOP office holders (Jeb et al.), poorly designed ballots and finally the right wing faction of the SCOTUS selling out democracy, little Georgie Bush will be installed next January. There are no laws requiring us to like it. And there are no laws requiring us to refrain from mocking him."
GW Bush Art

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