"Tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me are criminal... I put my tax cut in my sock and buried it away. In November, let's sock it to them."
-- Paul Newman, at a fund-raiser for Kerry-Edwards, yesterday.


Photo by Ohio Veterans

Money will buy a pretty good dog but it won't buy the wag of his tail.
-- Josh Billings

"Noel Coward always said, 'I read the obituaries every day to see who's not coming to lunch."
-- Elaine Stritch, At Liberty, HBO

"A man who has shown guts and determination and political skill in his own race for the presidency of the United States. A man whose life has prepared him for leadership and whose character brings him to exercise it. I am pleased to announce that with your help, the next vice president of the United States will be Senator John Edwards of North Carolina..."
-- Senator John Kerry, today.

There is still no cure for the common birthday.
-- John Glenn

"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest."
-- President Thomas Jefferson

"It's like the prostitute once said, 'It's not the work, it's the stairs'."
-- Elaine Stritch, At Liberty

"To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication."

"The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money."

"I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed."

-- Marlon Brando, 1924-2004

"Exercise daily. Eat wisely. Die anyway."
-- Anonymous, as quoted by Liz Smith

"They dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever..."
-- Al Gore

"I have nothing to do, and I'm doing it tomorrow."
-- Elaine Stritch, At Liberty, HBO

"Whether I'm speaking, I'll leave that up to them. If they're smart, they'll have me obviously in prime time."
-- Arnold Schwartzenegger, on plans for the Republican National Convention, as quoted in The New York Times.

"Once you've reached an age of accountability and you make a mistake, you don't have any excuses. But, there are explanations and only a fool does not seek to understand why he or she makes a mistake... Whenever I am angry, or exhausted, or under great stress I was more likely to make a mistake, to run into the dark alley of my parallel lives... That is not an excuse, but it is a partial explanation."
-- Former President Bill Clinton, on Oprah yesterday. (Photo from the Oprah site).

"I'm a huge homo. Which means, of course, that I can't be married ­not now, not in the United States. Allowing me to marry my boyfriend would imperil lasting, stable heterosexual marriages like the one Britney Spears enjoyed for 55 hours earlier this [year]. Still, I've been with the same guy for nine years now (78,840 hours so far, but who's counting?); he stays at home and looks after our kid, and I go to work and sort through e-mail from freaks like you. We act pretty married for a couple of non-married threats to the sacred institution. Oh, if only we lived in Canada, where gay people can get married, despite the damage gay marriage does to lasting, stable heterosexual unions! Canadian pop star Celine Dion recently fled to Las Vegas to save her marriage from marauding gay married couples in Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver."
-- Dan Savage in Savage Love.

"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty."
-- Georgia O'Keeffe

"The Clinton alpha instinct on Monica, fueled by a heady cocktail of testosterone and opportunism, was the same one that led W. into his march of folly with Iraq... But one thing you can say for Bill Clinton: His 'Who's gonna stop me?' Oval Office power surge produced a much lower body count."
-- Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

"The United States should never go to war because we want to. We should only go to war because we have to."
-- Senator John Kerry

"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-- Jim Dodge

"There is one energy in the Universe. Everything is derived from this one energy. This energy is love. Under the principle of free will, we may use this energy -- love -- any way we wish. Everything we think, feel, say or do is love transformed by each of us into the precise experience our soul wishes us to have. And in a miraculous way, into the precise experience everyone else's soul wishes them to have... Since each of us is just an entity of love, our capacity to love is limitless. In fact, our most basic purpose is to feel love under every conceivable circumstance... This love that we are derives from our divinity. We are each a God Presence exploring new ways of feeling and expressing our love. When we are willing to step back and see our lives and the lives of others from this broader perspective, we become eager to enjoy the richness and fullness of generously sharing our unlimited supply of unconditional love."
-- Arnold Patent, ArnoldPatent.com

"I've always loved rap music...Don't we all? It's downright American."
-- Carol Channing, quoted backstage after the 2004 Tony Awards

"The years have done a lot to clarify the strengths of this man. As a candidate for any office, whether it be the state attorney general or the president, Bill Clinton showed incredible energy and great personal appeal. As chief executive, he showed a deep and far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great compassion for people in need, and the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president... [Clinton] could always see a better day ahead, and Americans knew he was working hard to bring that day closer. Over eight years it was clear that Bill Clinton loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy. He's a man of enthusiasm and warmth, who could make a compelling case and effectively advance the causes that drew him to public service."
-- President George W. Bush

(Photo from b0x0rz)

"Jesus' burial only lasted three days. Ronnie, a whole week. It proves our glorious country is starved for heroes."
-- Cindy Adams, New York Post

"... No one has more strenuously tried to emulate the 40th president in both style and substance than George W. Bush. Reagan's body was barely cold when Ed Gillespie, the Republican chairman, said: "The parallels are there. I don't know how you miss them." Yes, the parallels are there — hammered in by Mr. Bush's packagers so we can never miss them. But Karl Rove and company may have overplayed their hand. The orgiastic celebration of Reagan's presidency over the past week, an upbeat Hollywood epic that has glided past Iran-contra, Bitburg and the retreat from Lebanon with impressive ease, has brought into clear focus the size of the gap between the two men. To say that difference in stature is merely a function of an actor's practiced skill at performance is both to understate the character of Ronald Reagan and to impugn the art of acting."
-- Frank Rich, First Reagan, Now His Stunt Double, The New York Times

"People disqualify alcoholics sometimes and that's not fair. It's not something you get a kick out of. It's something that can kill you... It can steal the life right out from under you... You don't know it's a disease. You don't know you have it. So you just suddenly feel better than you ever felt, and you just go along - until it's running you, you're not running it."
-- Liza Minnelli

"I remember one of the things they tried to save my sight for as long as they could was to have my mama keep me away from too much light. It took me about two years to completely lose all sight, but by the time I was seven, I was completely blind. That's when I went to St. Augustine's school for the blind... Strangely enough, losing my sight wasn't quite as bad as you'd think, because my mom conditioned me for the day that I would be totally blind. When the doctors told her that I was gradually losing my sight, and that I wasn't going to get any better, she started helping me deal with it by showing me how to get around, how to find things. That made it a little bit easier to deal with. My mother was awful smart, even though she'd only gotten to fourth grade. She had knowledge all her own; knowledge of human nature, plus plenty of common sense."
-- Ray Charles, 1930-2004, Autobiograpy, in Newsday.

"He'd probably have hosted 'Unsolved Mysteries,' and Robert Stack would have finished out his own career, still making movies."
-- Ron Reagan, Jr., on what might have happened if his father had not become president of the United States.

"I knew these long legs would come in handy,"
-- Hugh Jackman, at the 2004, Tony Awards, after performing in a kickline with the Rockettes.


(Photo from theboyfromoztickets.com)

"Often I've wondered what does it take for this to happen. And now I know. It takes effort and grace, tremendous self-effort and amazing grace. And in my life that grace has taken numerous forms."
-- Phylicia Rashad, on accepting the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

"Sixty years ago the soldiers of freedom landed here, rising up from the sea under a deluge of iron and fire to liberate France. Every one of these brothers in arms who fell on the field of honor will remain in our hearts for eternity."
--President Jacques Chirac, of France, at D-Day ceremonies over the weekend.

"Sixty years ago today, the free world held its breath. In America, daily life paused almost completely, subdued by the news that the invasion of Europe — D-Day — had begun... This is a day to respect the memory of 60 years ago and, perhaps, to wonder what we might rise to if only we asked it of ourselves."
-- Editorial, The New York Times

"Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears: to your confidence rather than your doubts."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

"When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future... I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

"Who in this administration will be the next to go? It is time for the President to come clean with the American people about how he is going to hold his administration accountable for the mistakes it has made."
-- Terry McAuliffe, Chairman, Democratic National Committee

"If you blog it, they will read."
-- Mr. Hell's Kitchen, Blogging 101, Postcards from Hell's Kitchen

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by.
And that has made all the difference”.
-- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.

“Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? There are still five - because there’s a difference between deciding and doing”.
-- Mark L. Feldman & Michael F. Spratt, Five Frogs on a Log

"It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election... That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year..."
-- Paul Krugman, The New York Times

"We're in the middle of nowhere - like 45 minutes away from, like, civilization and it's, like, all real. It's, like, really cold and last night we were shooting at this sugar mill and it really smelled bad. And I didn't wear shoes, like, I don't know. We're in the middle of nowhere and there's bugs everywhere. Everything's real - I'm actually running through a forest with bare feet - it hurts. I've done my own stunts, like falling. I hurt my knee - it was bleeding. But it looks good, so it's worth it."
-- Paris Hilton, as told to Entertainment Tonight.

"I figured this would be the last time to wear a uniform."
-- William Ryan, 80, a retired colonel, who fought in France and Germany with the Army's 3rd Infantry, at the newly opened WWII Memorial in Washington DC, yesterday. As told to reporter Aly Sujo in the New York Post.

"It's rare to find even one person who completely understands you in life, and it's because you don't allow people to know you - how can you get help if you don't ask for it?"
-- Elaine Stritch, in an interview with Elisabeth Vincentelli, in Time Out New York. Photo from ElaineStritch.com.

“Our feelings of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, loss of hope and so forth are in fact related to all phenomena. If we do not adopt the right outlook, it is possible that anything and everything could cause us frustration. Yet phenomena are part of reality and we are subject to the laws of existence. So this leaves us only one option: to change our own attitude. By bringing about a change in our outlook towards things and events, all phenomena can become friends or sources of happiness, instead of becoming enemies or sources of frustration”.
-- Dalai Lama, The Dalai Lama’s Book Of Wisdom

"Dear Friends,

All over the AP wires last night were reports that Al-Qaida is in the country, planning to 'hit us hard' sometime this summer.

I'm sure all of us who read the report had the same reaction of revulsion and fear. On a purely human level, it's terrifying to even begin to contemplate what that might mean.

But I'm reminded of the first sentence in A Course in Miracles, that 'There is no order of difficulty in miracles.' The Course teaches that the effects of love are maximal, and natural in the presence of love. If and when we find our spiritual center, a miracle will automatically occur.

Finding our spiritual center as a nation means we atone for our own errors and apologize for our own transgressions - against the Native Americans, the Vietnamese, etc. It means we ask God to forgive us as a nation for having so much, and giving so comparatively little away to those who have less. It means we ask God to forgive us for our sins, come into our hearts and turn us into the nation He would have us be.

Thought is the level of cause, while the world is the level of effects. Our greatest power to change the world is our power to think about it differently. Our greatest hope lies not in our military might, but in our power to change our consciousness.

This is the eleventh hour, that is true, but it is not yet midnight. As enough of us humble ourselves and ask God's forgiveness, expressing our willingness to both forgive and serve at a profound new level, then we will have our miracle. And before it is too late.

Dear God,
Please save America
In this, our hour of danger.
Forgive us for
our selfish,
our greed,
our transgressions against others,
our lack of love.
Return our nation
To the thoughts of righteousness,
That we might live Your light once more.
Deliver us
From danger
Now and forever
Please make us new
and keep us safe.
Thank you, God.
Amen"

-- Marianne Williamson, in an e-mail, and posted on Marianne.com

"President Bush is going to establish elections there in Iraq. He's going to rebuild the infrastructure. He's going to create jobs. He said if it works there, he'll try it here."

"President Bush announced he has a five-point strategy for getting out of Iraq. Points six through 10 will be handled by the Kerry administration."

-- David Letterman, Late Show with David Letterman

"I hate Los Angeles. It's a mass of sprawling mediocrity."
--Tony Randall, as told to Cindy Adams.

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis reserve their neutrality."
--Dante

"New York City has already been targeted by terrorists six times since 1993. Yet inexplicably, today New York state ranks 49th among the 50 states in per capita homeland security funding... This is pork-barrel politics at its worse. It's the kind of shortsighted 'me-first' nonsense that gives Washington a bad name... It also, unfortunately, has the effect of aiding and abetting those who hate us and plot against us."
-- Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of the City of New York, to the 911 Commission last week, as quoted in the New York Post.

"With America's image torn internationally and literally ripped apart in the Arab world, we've now got to decide where we go from here. To do that, however, we have to understand what got us here in the first place. Where and why did the tear begin?

I believe the first small tear occurred early in the Bush administration, with the abandonment of the Kyoto negotiations on climate change and U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Those events announced the beginning of a new, unilateralist foreign policy -- one long advocated by conservatives who distrusted international cooperation and agreements as limitations on America's pursuit of its own interests. The American colossus, the greatest power on Earth, was throwing its weight around, and it made people in other countries nervous.

Then came Sept. 11, and the one curious thing was that the events of that horrific day seemed instantly to knit up the tear. In cities around the world, people gathered in throngs to express not just sympathy but a genuine affection for America and Americans. I was in Italy at the time, and perfect strangers, learning that I was an American, came up and shook my hand with tears in their eyes. NATO voted, for the first time in its history, to invoke Article V of its charter calling for collective defense of any member attacked. Ironically, Sept. 11 was a high point of international regard for this country. When we attacked al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, we insisted on fighting that war by ourselves. But NATO members, including Germany and France, offered both money and troops to help with the reconstruction.

But some other things were happening, as well. President Bush soon would announce America's right and intention to launch "pre-emptive" war against "imminent" threats to the United States. Sept. 11 had "changed the world," and the administration decided that the rules of warfare had to be changed -- unilaterally.

The secretary of defense claimed that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

We began writing our own rules for the treatment of terrorist suspects and prisoners of war -- rules that included the now-infamous elements of "stress and duress."

We began "rendering" suspects to other countries so they could be tortured.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice still forbade the use of torture by American forces. But practices that, at the very least, bordered on torture were authorized. In Iraq, chronic troop shortages meant that soldiers untrained for the role were assigned as prison guards. The new rules created a disaster just waiting to happen.

It seems to me that, in the appalling abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and the international outrage it has caused, we are reaping what we have so carelessly sown.

In this and so many other ways, our unilateralism and the arrogance that accompanies it have cost us dearly.

So where do we go from here? Well, we might already have made a small start. In the backwash of this scandal, the new rules have been at least partly rescinded in Iraq, and the Geneva Convention seems to have a new respectability in Washington.

But more importantly, we need to go back to a foreign policy that genuinely embraces international cooperation. Right now, we are eating humble pie, welcoming U.N. participation in Iraq after having scornfully denied the United Nations any meaningful role before we bogged down going it alone.

It still is immediately important for this nation that its invasion of Iraq should result in a free and functioning Iraqi democracy. It also is clear now that we cannot accomplish that by ourselves.

We have, so to speak, run (or fallen) to the end of our unilateral rope.

Beyond Iraq, we need to restore America's image as a preserver and defender of the peace and prove to the world that the change is more than cosmetic.

But here one has to ask, as others have, whether we can convince the world of our sincerity without regime change here at home."

-- Walter Cronkite, in the AM New York newspaper, yesterday.

"They made a huge faux pas in letting Rudy Giuliani polish his crown."
-- Monica Gabrielle, a widow from September 11, 2001, on the 911 Hearings as quoted in the New York Post, yesterday.

"Ultimately the (vampire) shows were cult shows; we didn't make Friends, so nobody is going to use us as a financial model. And the financial models are what changed television. If I had created reality television I would have had a much greater influence, but then I would have had to KILL MYSELF."
-- Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the Toronto Star.

"In the nineties, as a result of a major push by feminists and the Clinton administration, women were admitted to combat zones. Remember that debate? Opponents said women would cower and shrink - that they couldn't engage as equals with men in war's cruelty and degradations. If only."
-- Naomi Wolf, New York Magazine

"So many people have won Emmys, so many people have won multiple Emmys that I think it's a degraded award. You mustn't take any award so seriously. Awards are only a publicity gimmick. That's all they are. Awards sell tickets, and they're a clever publicity stunt. But anyone who believes them, believes in Santa Claus."
-- Tony Randall, 1920-2004, in an interview with Theresa Hyde, March 2000.

"Oblivious of the consequences, the impetuous black sheep of a ruling family starts a war triggered by a personal grudge... The father, a respected veteran of his own wars, suppresses his unease and graciously supports his son, even though it will end up destroying his legacy and the world order he envisioned... The ferocious battle in the far-off sands spirals out of control, with many brave soldiers killed, with symbols of divinity damaged, with graphic scenes showing physical abuse of the conquered, and with devastatingly surreptitious guerrilla tactics."
-- Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

"We have a duty to ensure that our troops are sent into battle only as a last resort... This nation should never go to war because it wants to, but only because it has to."
-- Senator John Kerry, The Melbourne Herald Sun

"...This manipulative attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the gruesome execution of Mr. Berg and the torture of Iraqi prisoners is now being mimicked by some hard-core supporters of the American war in Iraq. They are cynically trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe away the images of Abu Ghraib, turning the abhorrence for the murderers into an excuse for demonizing Arabs and Muslims, or for sanctioning their torture."
-- Editorial, The New York Times

“I wouldn’t like to have lived without ever having disturbed anyone”.
-- Father Charles Urnick

"I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing has caused... I don't think this administration is committed to democracy."
-- Michael Berg, father of the slain Nick Berg.

“The are only two ways to handle tense situations: you can change them, or you can change the way you look at them. There is enlightenment to be had in changing the way you look at things".
-- Paul Wilson, The Little Book Of Calm

"What's the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mother? Eventually the Rottweiler lets go."
-- Alan King, 1927-2004

"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
-- Mark Twain

"You don't have a second chance to make a first impression."
-- Kyan Douglas, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

"The world is waiting now for a sign that President Bush understands the seriousness of what has happened. It needs to be more than his repeated statements that he is sorry the rest of the world does not "understand the true nature and heart of America." Mr. Bush should start showing the state of his own heart by demanding the resignation of his secretary of defense."
-- Editorial, The New York Times

“Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
-- Mary Schmich, The Sunscreen Speech

“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer”.
-- Dean Acheson

"The art of love? It's knowing how to join the temperament of a vampire to the discretion of an anemone."
-- E.M. Cioran

"Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again."
-- Anonymous

"One year ago, on the deck of the USS Lincoln, under a banner reading 'Mission Accomplished,' President Bush told America that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended.'... In April 2004, more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq than during the entire period that Bush considered 'major combat.'... We now know that President Bush misled the American people in the run up to war. We know that he had no plan for post-war Iraq. We know that, thanks to the arrogance and incompetence of this administration, our mission is not accomplished."
-- Democratic National Committee

“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer”.
-- Dean Acheson

“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer”.
-- Dean Acheson

"It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous... The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")... Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president."
-- Editorial, The New York Times, yesterday.

"Communing with the Higher Father and the Almighty, President Bush has either stumbled into a Holy War or swaggered into one... In their new book, 'The Bushes,' Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, who interviewed many Bushes, including the president's father and his brother Jeb, quote one unnamed relative as saying that W. sees the war on terror 'as a religious war': 'He doesn't have a P.C. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.'... Bush strategists seem to believe that the worse Mr. Bush makes things, the better off he is, because nervous Americans will cling to the obstinate president they know over the vacillating challenger they don't know."
-- Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

"It behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence, neither bothering nor upsetting it."
-- François Rabelais, as quoted by Free Will Astrology.

"I don't care if the whole world is against you or teasing you or saying you're not gonna make it. Believe in yourself. No matter what. They laughed at the Wright brothers. They laughed at Thomas Edison. They laughed at Disney. . . . Study the greats and become greater."
-- Michael Jackson, Interview magazine.

“Make a point of connecting with someone new every day. And re-acquaint yourself with anyone you have not spoken to for some time by going through your address book”.
-- Roy Sheppard, Your Personal Survival Guide To The 21st Century

“When a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it into something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting".
-- H.G. Wells, The History Of Mr. Polly

“Enthusiastic people are the ones who actually get things done in this world. Enthusiasm is what turns any idea into reality. And enthusiasm is linked closely with happiness”.
-- Roy Sheppard, Your Personal Survival Guide To The 21st Century

"I should confess that I always felt a little sorry for people who didn't work for newspapers."
-- Mary McGrory, 1918-2004

"Take the mayor. Please. Talk about dreary! Don't smoke, don't get fat, don't breathe, don't curse, don't dance on tables, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. Who the hell would want to come here for a good time - John Ashcroft?"
-- Linda Stasi, New York Post.

"This president not only misleads America about my record, he misleads his own administration. He misleads his security adviser. He misleads his secretary of state about his own planning for a war..."
-- Senator John Kerry on Face the Nation on Sunday.

"It may well be that we need a new president, a breath of fresh air, to re-establish credibility with the rest of the world, so that we can have a believable administration as to how we proceed."
-- Senator John Kerry on Face the Nation, yesterday.

"I love my life. I regret my life. After a while the lines blur and all it is is my life."
-- Stephen Belber, words spoken by Frank Langella as Tobi in the comic drama Match on Broadway.

"With campaigning you can't be particular about hours. I just missed two doctors' appointments. And there's not much rest. I like to sleep, but often I can be up all night because there's so much to catch up on and I have to prep. To decompress I do crosswords, games or I'll pray or meditate. TV isn't calming for me. If it's bad, I get angry. If good, I'm caught up in it and get no sleep. I prefer what I can control."
-- Teresa Heinz Kerry, as told to Cindy Adams, New York Post

“Two men look out through the same bars; One sees the mud and one sees the stars”.
-- Frederick Langbridge

"George Bush is giving sons of Presidents a bad name."
-- Chip Carter, son of President Jimmy Carter, as quoted by Page Six.

"I can almost bend steel with my mind. I can bend anything if I try hard enough. I can make myself do almost anything. But you can get too strong like that, so you have to be careful. You have to temper your strength."
-- Martha Stewart

"In his Saturday radio address, George Bush described Iraqi insurgents as a 'small faction.' Meanwhile, people actually on the scene described a rebellion with widespread support... Isn't it amazing? A year after the occupation of Iraq began, Mr. Bush and his inner circle seem more divorced from reality than ever... Events should have cured the Bush team of its illusions. After all, before the invasion Tim Russert asked Dick Cheney about the possibility that we would be seen as conquerors, not liberators, and would be faced with 'a long, costly and bloody battle.' Mr. Cheney replied, 'Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.' Uh-huh... Again and again, administration officials have insisted that some particular evildoer is causing all our problems. Last July they confidently predicted an end to the insurgency after Saddam's sons were killed. In December, they predicted an end to the insurgency after capturing Saddam himself. Six weeks ago,­ was it only six weeks? ­ Al Qaeda was orchestrating the insurgency, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the root of all evil. The obvious point that we're facing widespread religious and nationalist resentment in Iraq, which is exploited but not caused by the bad guy du jour, never seems to sink in... And now we have a new villain. Yesterday Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez declared that 'the mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moktada al-Sadr.' If and when they do, we'll hear once again that we've turned the corner. Does anyone believe it?... When will we learn that we're not going to end the mess in Iraq by getting bad guys? There are always new bad guys to take their place. And let's can the rhetoric about staying the course. In fact, we desperately need a change in course."
-- Paul Krugman, Snares and Delusions, op-ed, The New York Times

"The screeching chatter in the spring and summer of 2001 — 'There will be attacks in the near future' — did not yank Mr. Bush and his team from their Iraq fixation. 'But they don't tell us when,' Ms. Rice protested. 'They don't tell us where, they don't tell us who, and they don't tell us how.' Paging Nancy Drew... Inconclusive intelligence did not bother the Bush team when it wanted to be "actionable" on Iraq, or engage in 'tit for tat' with Saddam... The Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing — remarkably headlined 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States' — mentioned Al Qaeda's wanting to hijack planes and the 70 F.B.I. field investigations into suspected Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the U.S... The briefing had three-month-old information that Al Qaeda was trying to sneak into the country for an explosives attack. No wonder the C.I.A. chief and counterterrorism czar were running around with their hair on fire... What should have made Condi hysterical, she deemed 'historical'... W. kept fishing and denouncing Saddam, while Condi sat for a glam Vogue photo shoot and interview."
-- Maureen Dowd, Our New No-Can-Do Nation, op-ed, The New York Times.

"Easter is not a passport to another world; it is a quality of perception for this one."
-- W. P. Lemon

"President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday... The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford... The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was 'historical' in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders."
-- Eric Lichtblau and David E. Sanger, Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says, The New York Times.

"Ms. Rice was at her weakest in her testimony before the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks when she attempted to portray Mr. Bush himself as a hands-on administrator with a particular concern about terror threats. Her description of the president as tired of "swatting flies" and spoiling for a real fight with Osama bin Laden was especially poorly chosen. "Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11?" asked former Senator Bob Kerrey... If Ms. Rice were not set on burnishing the commander in chief's image as the hero of 9/11, she might have been able to admit that Mr. Bush is a hierarchical manager who expects his immediate underlings to run things, and who guessed wrong about what deserved the administration's most immediate and intense attention... The real challenge came after the Afghan invasion, when Mr. Bush had to decide what to do next ? rethink the outdated world view his advisers had brought into office, or snap back into old reflexes and go after Iraq, the enemy of the last generation. It was then that he chose the wrong path."
-- Editorial, The Rice Version, The New York Times

"Jewish activists are trying to unseat an anti-Semitic site that has taken top placement on Google during the eight days of Passover. Type 'Jew' into the search engine, and the first result is 'Jew Watch,' a newsletter that promotes conspiracy theories and Holocaust deniers... After Google refused to remove the listing, Daniel Sieradski, who runs a blog called Jewschool, started a campaign to replace the top entry with an encyclopedia entry defining 'Jew.' ... Jewish activists are trying to unseat an anti-Semitic site that has taken top placement on Google during the eight days of Passover. '... The company said it wasn't going to excise sites based on their content... So instead, Sieradski is encouraging blogs and other sites to link [the word Jew] to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.... Since the campaign started, his chosen site has jumped to the second spot on Google's ranking. He was confident Jew Watch will drop in the rankings. "There's tons of anti-Semitic [junk] on the Internet," Sieradski said. They're ranked so high, 'because they all link to each other and need to support each others' delusions.'"
-- Stephen Lynch, Group says Google's not Kosher. New York Post, today.

"It's a little bit obnoxious, a little bit in your face, but it's something you can never forget. It's a crazy, manic version of a town square... This is an opportunity to celebrate Times Square's unique role in shaping and reflecting modern America."
-- Tim Tompkins, head of the Times Square Alliance, regarding the 100th birthday of Times Square tomorrow.

"How can anyone legislate who you can love?"
-- Barbra Streisand, on the the concept of a Constitutional Ammendment to ban gay marriage.

"Case in point, it’s hard to pin down exactly what constitutes the neighborhood’s boundaries. According to the New York City government, Clinton (as Hell’s Kitchen is officially designated) is the area from 34th Street to 59th Street and Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River... Hell’s Kitchen has long existed in the collective psyche of New Yorkers as both a microcosm of the city’s ills and a breeding ground for the unlawful. It has captured the imaginations of artists and writers, and has been the backdrop for many hard-edged films, including “State of Grace,” “Sleepers,” and the recent critically acclaimed “In America.”... Considering its history, that brutal reputation is well deserved... Although originally a district of streams and meadows, the area’s fortunes changed in the mid-1800s with the construction of slaughterhouses and factories. Immigrant workers soon flooded the area to take advantage of the newly created jobs and row after row of low-rent tenement houses were built to house them... Unpleasant working and living conditions contributed to an atmosphere conducive to riots and the formation of neighborhood gangs. Rough times there continued as Hell’s Kitchen became a favorite stomping ground for the City’s most notorious criminals and a refuge for the homeless in the days of the Great Depression... More recently, the area was known as a haunt for drug deals and prostitution. The infamous Westie’s, an Irish-American gang, terrorized the neighborhood well into the 1960s...
Efforts in the 1990s to clean up the area have been largely successful. Today, Hell’s Kitchen bears little resemblance to its infernal moniker... With the change in the neighborhood’s fortunes has also come a new willingness to live there..."
-- Ettore Toppi, Hotter than … Chelsea?: How Hell’s Kitchen went from gangland to the city’s ‘gay ghetto’
Friday, January 30, 2004, New York Blade

"By holding back documents, officials, information, images and the sight of returning military coffins, by twisting and exaggerating facts to fit story lines, by demonizing anyone who disagrees with its version of reality, this administration strives to create an optical delusion."
-- Maureen Dowd, Mired in a Mirage, The New York Times.

“When everyone agrees, someone is not thinking”.
-- General George S. Patton

"Quickly, I discovered that men exaggerating their penis size on the Internet have nothing on real-estate agents advertising the size of their units. The term '800 square feet' had as much meaning as 'nine inches'.”
-- Steve Weinstein, The great search: Forget a lover. Finding a decent-sized, affordable apartment in New York is the real challenge! New York Blade.

"I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say thank you for your loyalty and goodbye."
-- Allistair Cooke, 1908-2004

"I may have to retire involuntarily. Why should I do it voluntarily?"
-- Peter Ustinov, 1921-2004

"If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do '60 Minutes' on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath."
-- Sen. John Kerry

"The scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?... When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?"
-- Senator John Kerry, quoting James, 2:14.