It's this week's <bronx cheer> Quote the Ravin'</bronx cheer>, featuring quotes culled from the period 8/10-8/16. Today marks my 10th week of unemployment, and while I haven't yet gotten on the dole, I am sitting here in my ivory tower, sending a message to all of you other elitists in all of your other ivory towers by way of this here superhighway, whilst I can still afford it and before Google/Verizon stops filling the potholes.
This week's selection is long, it's lengthy, and it's only just now sesquipedalian. But only just now, and certainly not the following, and really let's not. And why listen to me pontificate like Sarah Palin, when so many others can say it better? Or a whole lot worse. To wit:
Given where Republicans—and come November, maybe the country—are headed, I wanted to interview a well-known Republican of color. Rep. John Boehner was out of town, so I called former representative J. C. Watts of Oklahoma.
—Newsweek Columnist Howard Fineman, pwning the Orange One. I got soda up my nose.
These people took an oath to uphold the Constitution whether they agree with it or not. All of it, not part of it.
—Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News about some in Congress who want to change the 14th Amendment.
He asked me to marry him way too early. And he wasn't divorced yet. I should have known there was a problem.
—Marianne Gingrich, Newt's second wife, in Esquire.
Newt is so pro marriage he cannot stop doing it.
—Stephen Colbert
They chose a clodpoll for the democratic party and a idiot to win the Republican Party. O'well [sic] they want to be a bunch of faggots and idiots, you can't change what doesn't want to be changed.
—Tennessee Republican Congressional candidate Kenneth Millen, who lost the primary last Tuesday. Oh, Tennessee! And I made fun of Sharron Angle getting a new buffer communications director last week.
I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it's crazy.
—White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about some people on the left. What the hell is he smoking?
He needs to come over and have a hot dog and a Corona and just chill.
—Jersey Shorer Snooki Polizzi about NJ Governor Chris Christie, who said that the television program is a snapshot of negative for New Jersey. Really!
Why Sarah Palin decided to get in the race is beyond me. I don’t know why she feels compelled to get into primaries all over the country, but fortunately Georgia voters are doing their own thinking on things like this.
—Media gadfly Rep. Jack Kingston (R, GA), after Sarah Palin endorsed Karen Handel in the Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary. Apparently they did think for themselves as Nathan Deal squeaked it out. Handel previously called him "a corrupt relic of Washington."
And I don't know if that would be so fun. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the guy we have there now. But I think the last thing we needed was a progressive trying to wear a Republican cloth coat as president of the United States.
—Republican Senatorial candidate J. D. Hayworth speculating if Sen. John McCain (R, AZ) had won the last Presidential election, but he could have been talking about anybody. Yeah, Kossacks agree with J. D. Hayworth. You heard it here first.
Maybe that's why God put me here, to bring about much needed prison reform.
—Former Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham (R, CA) about prison time. God didn't put you there, Dukester, it was the Feds. And the $2 million+ in bribes you took.
Well, it doesn't sound like it is now. If you bring it up that way.
—Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, a Texas state representative, when asked if it was appropriate to bill taxpayers for thousands of dollars of travel expenses already covered by his campaign and pocket the money. I think the Dukester could use a roommate.
I personally led a filibuster on the House floor against my own party because I thought they were intending to bust the budget and spend too much money. The record is very clear.
—Former Rep.and current Senate candidate Pat Toomey (R-Pa) telling the story of how he filibustered a body that doesn't filibuster. Busted! What he really was saying? Party of No goes back at least to 2002.
It's the language of international commerce, science, and even the internet.
—Candidate Bill Binnie (R, NH) on English being the official language. orly?
We're going to find out that there's Saudi Arabian money behind that mosque at Ground Zero.
—Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association. Fischer must not know that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a 7% stakeholder in News Corp, the parent company of Fox News. Ruh-roh!
No less a theological thinker than Abraham Lincoln concluded that our Civil War might have been God’s judgment for America’s tolerance of slavery. If that were so, why should “the Almighty,” as Lincoln frequently referred to God, stay His hand in the face of our celebration of same-sex marriage?
—Columnist Cal Thomas. Because God might not be a fan of begging the question?
And as with all the other things Obama does, he is not placing his image everywhere by accident. Rather, he is doing so in order to saturate the minds of young Americans with a Hollywood-crafted caricature of “the messiah” who promises hope and change (but mainly change).
—Blogger AWR Hawkins on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood, protesting the President in a normal post-Superbowl meet-and-greet scene at the White House in the video game Madden NFL 11. Hawkins believes that the left is trying to take over young people's minds by making them press square-triangle-circle-triangle-start.
Paging the Church of Satan: Our founding principles demand Barack Obama support your rights to human sacrifice. Carry on.
—Red State's Erick Erickson. Hey, HEY! We got the Church Lady here!
I can’t think of any conservative more fun to headline our inaugural party then the self-professed ‘right-wing Judy Garland’—Ann Coulter. I can promise you, Homocon 2010 will be a hell of a lot more fun than chaining yourself to the White House fence.
—Christopher Barron, chairman of the gay conservative convention, where Ann Coulter will be a featured guest. I heard it ain't over until the rat lady sings.
No Muslim in his right mind, female or male, should deny the Holocaust. When you walk the walk of the people who have been taken to be gassed, to be killed, how can a person deny physical evidence, something that’s beyond doubt?
—Mohamed Magid, executive director of the 5000 family All Dulles Area Muslim Society in D.C. Some prominent American Muslims have recently challenged the rampant Holocaust denying in parts of the Islam world.
Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington.
—Newt Gingrich, on Park 51, doing his best to put the Nazi in Islam. You know how you malign Muslims, you compare them to a bunch of white guys.
And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.
—Eboo Patel, Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Corps, to CNN's Don Lemon when Lemon tried to change Patel's "back of the bus" analogy towards Park 51 by saying that black Americans hadn't flown planes into buildings.
My story has been consistent from day one.
—Congressional candidate Ben Quayle (R,AZ) on Fox News, whose story about his affiliation with the trash talk website Scottsdaledirty.com has changed from day one. That being said, Palin/Quayle '12.
Throw in the fact that his interests on his Facebook page include “fashion, interior decorating, spirituality and recovery,” and he hardly sounds like Kris Kristofferson in Convoy (Oh, how I used to love that movie!)
—Jonah Goldberg on National Review's The Corner on former Jetblue flight attendant Steven Slater, winning the award for Most Head Scratching Quote of the Week.
We don’t like illegals hiding under bushes when our kids wait for the school bus. This border needs to be secure.
—Cindy Kolb, a Tea Party activist at a rally near the Mexican border in Hereford, AZ. They're not hiding under them, they're trimming them.
I wouldn't recommend it to others.
—Writer Christopher Hitchens, to Charlie Rose, on his heavy smoking and drinking as part of his writing regimen and whether he regrets it (he doesn't).
I think the clearest thing is it's an affront to free speech and free markets.
—Jamie Radtke, chair of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots on net neutrality. No, no, she thinks net neutrality is an affront to free speech and free markets. No, I'm serious. She said this. Listen, I know it's stupid, but I don't have any more room to talk about it. See you next week.