Whew! Just got back from a nightmare cruise you probably heard about. First, Andrew McCarthy was worrying that I might wrap my towel around my head. Then Karl Rove started a whisper campaign that I cheated in shuffleboard. Cal Thomas kept saying I was social list material, which I thought was the singles night on the cruise, then Phyllis Schlafly preached to me about having sex outside of marriage. Don't worry, lady, looking at you is birth control in itself.
When I complained that Jonah Goldberg was eating all the shrimp off the buffet, he started yelling about the nanny state, but ducking out I ran smack dab into Andrew Breitbart, who was videotaping the whole thing. I decided to skip Ramesh Ponmuru's party of death, and sat in my room and watched a Carrot Top DVD. Then the Breitbart video cuts in all edited, now I'm the guy taking all the shrimp. Tony Blankley and Ralph Reed beat on the door. I distract them with a Goldline pamphlet, run through the bar where Scott Rasmussen was getting pretty skewed, and jumped over the side.
I took my chances with the sharks.
I think she likes being a celebrity commentator for Fox and a speaker and being able to provide for her family. I think that life appeals to her. It's a lot easier to charge people up than to actually govern.
—Sen. Susan Collins (R, ME) about Sarah Palin.
That's right Decision Points has dropped and it is hefty! It's like War and Peace without all that peace.
—Stephen Colbert on George W. Bush's new book.
Could you resist?. It was just too funny. The flesh is weak.
—Tucker Carlson, who admitted last week he impersonated Keith Olbermann in scathing emails criticizing MSNBC.
Like Jon Stewart said: Dude, you wear a fucking bow tie.
One of [Davy] Crockett's sayings is 'be sure you're right, then go ahead." The right thing to do is repeal this bill...and we're gonna do it.
—Rep. Joe Barton (R, TX), about the healthcare bill.
Yeah, he was against the Indian Removal Act. My guess? Barton, not so much.
Every year Washington D.C. becomes a comedy Mecca. And we know how funny Mecca is.
—Steve Martin on the Mark Twain Prize for Political Humor, this year awarded to Tina Fey.
I disagree with what he did. I think it's un-American.
—Meghan McCain, about Wikileaks editor-in-chief and non-American Julian Assange.
Good lord, dude, IT IS THE LETTER "E." Many episodes of Sesame Street were sponsored by this letter.
—Jason Linkins on the Huffington Post, about Google's Veteran's Day image, which obscured the "e" with a flag and was considered by some to look like the crescent symbol of Islam.
No doubt they're against the free market.
Someone cue Alanis Morissette.
—Newsbusters Noel Sheppard talking about Rachel Maddow's interview with Jon Stewart.
It is ironic that someone would use the song "Ironic" as an example of what irony is.
Who's your lawyer, Jacoby and Aquaman?
—Jon Stewart, on George W. Bush's reasons for allowing waterboarding and not allowing federal help for people underwater because of Katrina: his lawyers told him what to do.
It's awkward when your President is a war criminal. It's awkward when you know that when you wrote that check to the IRS, you're paying for the murder, at the very least —the killing—of innocent civilians premised on a lie. That's awkward.
Sam Seder, on George W. Bush during his new Majority Report podcast.
Maybe the secret is I know how to satisfy a woman. Has that ever occurred to you?
—Chris Wallace to Mike Gallagher on his radio show as to how Wallace's wife puts up with him.
Eeeeew.
I changed my mind on the death penalty. Naïvely, I really didn’t think the government made mistakes.
—Governor Gary Johnson (R, NM)
Literally my exact same argument to conservatives I know.
The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been.
—Ted Koppel
Let me be the only liberal to agree.
No one who truly understands 'the sensitivity and sacred nature' of the Holocaust would deliberately and grotesquely mis-characterize the experience of a 13 year old Jew in Nazi-occupied Hungary whose father hid him with a non-Jewish family to keep him alive.
—Abe Foxman of the Anti Defamation League on Glenn Beck's attacks on George Soros.
This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way.
—Rush Limbaugh, railing against Fred Upton (R, MI) to be chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee because he supports curly q light bulbs.
Dude, chill. Take an Oxycontin.
So they interviewed 400,000 troops and 70% of them said it's okay, let them in, let them serve openly. Now the other 30% refused to answer because they said surveys are for fags. So they could be a problem.
—Bill Maher on Realtime on the leaked survey of troops on DADT.
I would like to say to him with all due respect, to please take off your pink tutu, because it's time to put on the boxing gloves and go fighting' for the people.
—Michael Moore, on President Obama on Realtime.
Right on.
Everybody in the military has healthcare. Not because we're socialist. Not because we're liberal. It's because we wanted healthy productive warriors.
—Rep. Joe Sestak (D. PA)
This is America. We don't have adult conversations. We have Twitter.
—Bill Maher.
I always have someone with me because I know how easy it is to set somebody up. I always have someone with me. Not only a security—at least one—but always another man.
—Glenn Beck.
Paranoid, much?
I wasn't a very good economic prognosticator. I did know we were in deep trouble. And that's why I made the decision I made.
—George W. Bush, on TARP.
George W. Bush, super genius.
Exxon Mobil paid no taxes last year. GE paid no taxes last year. And they're having a deficit commission tell us to make old people work until they are 70? Are you fucking crazy?
—Michael Moore again.
Yeah, he's back.
We’ve got time to do this, and it’s the right thing to do.
—Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I, CT) on the Senate repealing DADT during the lame duck session.
Gasp.
I want somebody that goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about how we're going to deal with our national security issues, how we're going to deal with our economy, how we're going to deal with providing better education or peace in the Middle East.
—Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R, AK), on Sarah Palin.
Amen, sister.
Boy, no wonder they have all those houses. They need them to keep all their beliefs in them.
—Jon Stewart, on the McCain's flip flopping on DADT and other things.
It's logical only if you're a terrorist who is trying to get America to become a more paranoid, less free place, which I think is the goal, one of the goals of these groups.
—The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, to Stephen Colbert, on the logicality of having one's ball sack felt up at the airport.
Quote the Ravin', a weekly roundup of quotes from around the internets, comes out every Tuesday around lunchtime. Except for today, because I really have my shit together.