The year in quotes, first half

"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill." Bayard Marin

"My daughter was born on a tragic day, and she went out on a tragic day," John Green

"We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." Paul Krugman, who continued to blame the Tea Party even as he admitted that the shooter was a madman.


"There's everything to connect this to partisan politics and talk radio and cable TV except evidence. There's just none of that." James Carville

“I can’t be remorseful for something I don’t think I did.” Tom Delay

"Why don't you leave this to the boys, sweet cakes?" Ron Frankin

"You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House, we have a Senate, we have a President." Chuck Schumer

“I’d like another glass of wine.” Valerie Jarrett

“I know her very well, and she would be very comfortable with the decision that I made. I have every intention that she’ll be there for launch. I’ve talked to her doctors about that. I obviously weighed time I could spend with her over time I could spend with NASA and my crew.” Mark Kelly, who has become one of my favorite guys.

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” Robert Gates

"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon" Barack Obama

"Listen, all these rights are legislatively created. They didn't come down on tablets from the top of a mountain." Chris Christie

"As the Recovery Act funds that saw through many states over the last two years are phasing out and it is undeniable that the Recovery Act helped every single state represented in this room manage your budgets, whether you admit it or not." Barack Obama,

“I always use the word extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” Chuck Schumer

"Now some of you may be thinking about Ron Paul – I promise you his followers are the biggest a-holes of them all." Mark Levin

"There’s just no other word for her." Bill Maher I can think of plenty of words for him.

“That’s the question. How we got from Antigone on her knees crying over the loss of her dead brother to Snooki, crying over the loss of her cellphone.” Colin Quinn

"I thought I was gonna have plenty of cool phones and stuff." Barack Obama

“Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven — as we have sometimes pretended.” Raul Castro

"... most conservatives are wildly stupid." Keith Olbermannwho went to the ag school at Cornell so that he could claim to be an Ivy Leaguer

"Well, it's a falsifiable prediction." Glenn Reynolds. Well, I hope that my death falsifies it to my satisfaction.

"The robots can only do so much. Eventually, people will have to enter the buildings." Takeshi Makigami

"And yeah, I hear that she wants to now engage in more multi-dimensional storytelling, versus, I guess, just the straight-on reading-into-that-teleprompter-screen storytelling. So more power to her. I wish her well with her multi-dimensional storytelling." Sarah Palin

"It looks like an atomic bomb went off in a straight line." Brian White

"Anti-immigrant is one thing, anti-illegal-immigrant is quite another. It's like saying that because you don't like people breaking into your home, you are anti-guest." "Voltaire"

“To twerps demanding I cover Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal: Whole thing appears to be faked. Sometimes it pays to wait for the facts.” Howard Kurtz. He says he meant "tweeps"

"Congressman Anthony Weiner was stalked, set up, smeared, and this was coordinated to protect Clarence Thomas from scrutiny." Somebody at the Daily Kos called "Stranded Wind"

"The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: 'This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don't know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That's it.'" Anthony Weiner

“So, I was with some doctors last night and one of them said and ‘You know, we keep saying, why did he do it?' He has a lovely wife. Why is he doing it? This is not my theory. That it is a result of Viagra and what is the other one?” Barbara Walters

"He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him. This man doesn't take a day off." Mrs. You-Know-Who

"The other thing that happened though, this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. If you see it when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate." Barack Obama, in response to a question from Ann Curry about why unemployment remains stubbornly high.

“He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled healthcare, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the State of Israel. All he’s got to run on is being a Democrat and indicting the other fellow.” David Mamet

"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously." Barack Obama Jared Monti was killed in action.

"I guess the joke is on him." Chris Wallace

About introverts. All true.

Everybody knew that the Taliban was originally an instrument for Pakistani colonization of Afghanistan. Everybody knew that al-Qaeda forces were being sheltered in the Pakistani frontier town of Quetta, and that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was found hiding in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani Army. Bernard-Henri Lévy once even produced a damning time line showing that every Pakistani “capture” of a wanted jihadist had occurred the week immediately preceding a vote in Congress on subventions to the government in Islamabad. But not even I was cynical enough to believe that Osama bin Laden himself would be given a villa in a Pakistani garrison town on Islamabad’s periphery.

Christopher Hitchens.

This should be it for my congressional representative, Anthony Weiner. He won't even tell the truth when he claims to be coming clean. This is what he said between crocodile tears at yesterday's confessional press conference in response to a mostly-inaudible question about whether he coached one of the young women involved in Weinergate to lie:

"At no time did I or any member of my staff try to do anything to cover anything up. She did reach out to me and express what — how she’d been set upon, and I expressed my apologies to her. But there was no coaching of any sort going on. And it was basically me saying what I’ve said here today, which is how deeply sorry I am for what happened."

No coaching going on, huh? Check out TMZ's report:

Weiner put on a full court press, urging [porn star Ginger] Lee to lie about their relationship. On June 1, he emailed her: "The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: 'This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don't know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That's it.'"

No matter who the 'she' was in Weiner's response to that question, his answer was a lie. He tried to cover something up. There was "coaching" of some sort going on. How can anyone be foolish enough to take Weiner's word for anything anymore?

Once again, this time on the issue of Paul Revere, Sarah Palin proves more knowledgeable than her smug, elitist critics. Remember 1773!