Quotes, Quips, and Misstatements

Many voters decide who they hate or fear the most and then vote for the other candidate. It’s only logical that candidates give voters reasons to hate or fear their opponent the most.

How will Iraqis learn the finer points of capitalism if American businessmen don’t show them?

Manager: You sent for me, sir?
CEO: Sit down. Your budget is way to high. Every year you ask for more. You seem to want every last dollar this company has. You’ll have to learn to do more with less. If you can’t find a way, I’ll have someone else do it. Do you understand?
Manager: Yes sir.
CEO: Good. Now get out. I have a meeting with those environmental nuts. They just can’t understand how badly we need to develop those last 6 acres of the estuary.

What’s the point of letting them in if they can’t be exploited and forced to work for lower wages and under worse conditions than American workers would tolerate?

My next speech should stress the importance of character and values. We also need some new dirt on my opponent and a few more accusations to keep him on the defensive.

Many communities are finding dangerously high levels of pollutants in their drinking water. We need a program to convince people that it’s their patriotic duty to drink poisoned water for the good of the economy. Since there could be long term health consequences, we also need to ask congress to protect insurers by exempting them from paying for "self-inflicted" illnesses.

Let us make god in our own image. Let us give him our intolerance that he will hate all those whom we hate. Let us give him our ignorance that he will fear everything that we fear.

Do we really want to get in a long fight to legislate lower corporate taxes? There are already plenty of loopholes and overseas tax shelters. We just need better lawyers who can show their corporate clients how to reduce taxes using existing laws.

Requiring hospital emergency rooms to treat everyone, even those who can’t pay, increases costs for the rest of us. Those of us who can pay should always carry contact information for our next of kin or insurance company. If we’re worried about losing our wallets during a mugging and beating, we can tattoo the information in various places in case it’s not clearly visible on a swollen, mangled body part. Hospitals could then quickly verify our ability to pay for any life-saving procedure that might be needed. How could that not save money?