2000s American satirical TV shows

"Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

"The Jews celebrate Passover by eating unpalatable food to remind them what will happen to their people if they ever leave New York City. The traditional meal often includes gefilte fish. For those of you who don't know what gefilte fish is, it strongly resembles a ball of tuna fish that has been passed nasally. It's not good. During Passover, the angel of death passed over the Jews—an event that, up until the late 1950s, was re-enacted every year by Ivy League colleges and suburban country clubs."

"Big election tomorrow! But y'know, I was thinking this weekend, as I was running the New York Marathon, um, how much like an election it is. This 22.6 mile, grueling race through all five boroughs—many, many cultures—and, uh, much like our own elections, always won by either a Kenyan or a Moroccan."

"What we've been telling [young people] for the last ten years, I think, is: "Buy Coke." [...] But I do think that the message of this country has been over the past ten years, it's been—not just Play, but Buy. And Consume. And it has been Consume, and I think in the corporate oligarchy that we've established that is—that was what we were dealing with. We were dealing with trying to raise a generation of people who would like to buy our products. [...] Can I tell you something though? Spending time at colleges and spending time with these people—I never thought that this was an apathetic generation, and I never thought that this was a group of people that would not answer a call to arms. And I personally feel extremely hopeful about that because of the experiences I've had with them. They're a smart group and there's a hell of a lot of 'em."

"I keep seeing, over these past couple of weeks, people trying to make cultural pronouncements about what these terrible events will mean for our culture. The one I keep seeing is that Irony has passed. That it is The Death of Irony. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair—one of the foremost, by the way, magazine authorities on irony. I don't know if you've seen their Young Hollywood issue, but they don't mean it. Uh, but I was thinking... maybe we should wait to make pronouncements about what will happen to us culturally until the fire [at Ground Zero] is completely put out—don't you think? I mean, it's still smoking down there. Maybe we shouldn't necessarily decide what's the rest of History of Man going to be. No? And why did Irony have to die? Why couldn't puns have died? Or would that have been too devastating for Mr. Al Yankovic? No, no... apparently, only the kind of humor I'm fond of is dead. Thanks, Graydon."

"If, god forbid, some coordinated terrorist attack leads to the deaths of the first seven people in line to succeed the President—the Vice President, Speaker of the House, the President pro tem of the Senate, the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, and the Attorney General—if, god forbid, that were to happen, would you really want the guy who took over to be the one who was in charge of their security? And that's tonight's "Nnnggehhh...!""

"Yes, Yes. All rise for the honorable Justice Chick with Dick!"

"So to all those naked prisoners out there: Unpile!"

"So, to sum up, it'll take two thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states to approve an amendment saying that two straight parents are better than one straight parent, which is still better than two gay parents, which is equal to a guy screwing a turtle."

"On a personal note, I'm a comedian who makes fun of what I believe to be the absurdities of our government. Tomorrow when you go to the polls, make my life difficult. Make the next four years really hard, so that every morning all we can do is come in and go, "Madonna is doing some Kaballah thing, you wanna do that?" I'd like that. I'm tired."

"The show in general we feel like is a privilege. Even the idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wise cracks... which is really what we do. We sit in the back and throw spitballs—but never forgetting that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is, a country that allows for open satire, and I know that sounds basic and it sounds like it goes without saying. But that’s really what this whole situation is about. It’s the difference between closed and open. The difference between free and... burdened. And we don’t take that for granted here, by any stretch of the imagination."

"And our show has changed. I don’t doubt that. And what it has become I don’t know."

"I just wanted to tell you why I grieve—but why I don’t despair."

"One of my first memories was of Martin Luther King being shot. I was five and if you wonder if this feeling will pass... [choked up]... When I was five and he was shot, here's what I remember about it: I was in school in Trenton and they turned the lights off and we got to sit under our desks... and we thought that was really cool. And they gave us cottage cheese, which was a cold lunch because there were riots, but we didn’t know that. We just thought, "My God! We get to sit under our desks and eat cottage cheese!" And that’s what I remember about it. And that was a tremendous test of this country's fabric and this country has had many tests before that and after that."

"The reason I don’t despair is that... this attack happened. It's not a dream. But the aftermath of it, the recovery, is a dream realized. And that is Martin Luther King's dream."

"Whatever barriers we put up are gone. Even if it's just momentary. We are judging people by not the color of their skin, but the content of their character. You know, all this talk about "These guys are criminal masterminds. They've gotten together and their extraordinary guile and their wit and their skill..." It's, it's—it's a lie. Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these firefighters and these policemen and people from all over the country, literally with buckets, rebuilding... that’s extraordinary. And that's why we have already won... they can't... it's light. It's democracy. They can't shut that down."

"The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of... of American ingenuity and strength... and labor and imagination and commerce and it's gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that."

"Like, the Afghanistan war, man did I dig that. I'd like to go again."

"Please stop calling people "Hitler" when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans your opponent, and, to be honest, it demeans Hitler. That guy worked too many years, too hard, to be that evil, to have any Tom, Dick, and Harry come along and say, "hey, you're bein' Hitler." No, you know who was Hitler? Hitler!"

"By the way, if that baby in there turns out to be Jesus... somebody owes somebody an apology."

"But apparently, we liberal, secular fags here at Comedy Central have fired a devastating year-old, six-second-long joke that doesn't barely even make any sense to us anymore across the bow of Christianity. When you think of liberals, your thoughts naturally turn to others who are fighting against Christmas, like the Puritans, the first white Americans, who banned Christmas celebrations for twenty-two years in Boston because they deemed all of them unseemly. Godless pricks. Mr. O'Reilly also objects, obviously, to the use of the phrase "happy holidays" as anti-Christian -- although for some people, there is also a celebration of the New Year, so Christmas and the New Year are actually two holidays, so there is a plural, which in the English language necessitates the use of the letter S. Now I suppose you could say, "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, but YOU PROBABLY HAVE SHIT TO DO! You shorten it to "happy holidays"! Not everyone who says that is anti-Christian! But -- for those of you who don't feel like you want to be idiots walking around starting on November 27th saying "Merry Christmas" to people -- ehhh, knock yourself out. But you know what, it's okay. If Bill O'Reilly needs to have an enemy, needs to feel persecuted, you know what? Here's my Kwanzaa gift to him. You ready? All right. [a festive Christmas border appears around the frame] I'm your enemy. Make me your enemy. I, Jon Stewart, hate Christmas. Christians. Jews. Morality! And I will not rest until every year, families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's Homobortionpot'n'commiejizzporium. [border disappears] You're welcome."

"[whispering] Thank you, Jesus!"

"Now, this situation certainly has its humorous aspects... very easy to make fun of an incident such as this, very easy... unbelievably easy... the kind of easy that makes you want to return your check..."

"Mr. Whittington is doing fine, but based on this development, we're gonna downgrade the condition of the story from "Incredibly hilarious" to "Still funny, but, mmm, a little sad.""

"Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."

"Divorce isn't caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness."

"So this weekend, I'm home, it's Saturday night, I'm spending my Saturday night as I spend all my Saturday nights — I'm just flipping through the C-SPANs. C-SPAN 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 'cause I'm trying to find this show on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that I wanted to watch. Did you know that it was almost called the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? It's really quite an interesting story. Anyway, I come across this horribly frightening image. [picture of President Bush standing next to impersonator Steve Bridges] The President of the United States of America, who is now apparently reproducing asexually. He is somehow cloning himself via spores in an effort to create a mammoth, 10,000-strong Bush army, and, uh, I was scared to death. Turns out it's a bit at what's called the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It's the dinner where the White House press corps and the government consummate their loveless marriage. So anyway, it's the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life, the two Bushes dueling and making the jokes like, "I'm stupid!" "No, you're stupid!" — very very amusing... but then I see this young fella on the screen. [picture of Stephen Colbert, greeted with huge applause] Captivating. Captivating. Delivered a twenty-minute keynote address that I can only describe as "ballsalicious." Uh... it really was something to behold. Apparently he was under the impression that they'd hired him to do the thing he does on television every night! Anyway, I'm sure he'll be talking about it at 11:30, but boy, we've never been prouder of our Mr. Colbert, and, uh... holy shit."

"Six, six, oh six... Day of the devil? Or regular numerical sequence?! [thunder claps and lightning flashes ominously] Here's the thing about all the hype on the news and the marketing tie-ins, etc.: it's not 6/6/6, it's 6/6/06. It's not even 6/6/06, it's 6/06/2006. You think god's gonna send the Four Horsemen based on a typo?! It's not happening. Forty years ago was 6/6/66, then you might have had something right there. That would've been the time. The only it was really 6/6/6 was June 6 in the year 6, which, at the time, wasn't even called 6. All I'm saying is if you think we're all going to Hell today, I can't even imagine where you think we're going on July 11th. Yes, yes, it is prophesied in the Book of Leviticus that the beefs shall be jerkied and the gulps shall be big."

"In their bathrobes! Gambling in their bathrobes! Yes, because casinos have such high standards. Ever been to a casino? You can play naked if you want. You can masturbate at the roulette table. Just keep giving them money."

"Well, I don't like this bad blood between us, Robert. If you're watching -- and I know you're not -- I think it's time we buried the hatchet. We need to get together and talk. We'll meet on neutral ground. You're on Fox, I'm on Comedy Central; how 'bout the Food Network? This Rachael Ray seems like a peacemaker. We can work this out, because I know that you're a good person, deep down in your... [gestures wordlessly at his chest] the thing that they replaced your heart with that pumps the... I know you have redeeming qualities! I see your redeeming qualities. For example, when you're on television, you let others shine while you generously absorb all light and oxygen. When you leave an area, it stops raining. And I know that in the past I've referred to you as a douchebag. But that's not an "air of grandeur," that's just mean! And sophomoric! [earnestly] And I only said those things to you because I sincerely believe... you are a terrible person."

"Jon Stewart: I'm joined now by Senior Comparative Presidential Historian, John Oliver. Uh, Bush and Lincoln? Clearly the pundits are trying to make that comparison. Is this a fair comparison? John Oliver: It's not a comparison at all, Jon. It's an opening bid. The first salvo by the President in the negotiation over where he'll rank among his predecessors. Obviously, he's starting high. He knows he's not going to GET Lincoln; it's just part of the game. Bush opens with Lincoln; America comes back with "Harding." Bush says, "Harding? You're killing me here! I'm at least Eisenhower!" America says, "I'm sorry, we can't go any higher than Hoover." And so on and so forth, until we all settle on something in the low "Van Buren" range. Jon Stewart: Are there any similarities, historically, between Bush and Lincoln? John Oliver: There are some, Jon. Both men presided over civil wars. One ours and historically inevitable; one someone else's and ridiculously evitable. Both men suspended the writ of habeas corpus, although Lincoln did mention it publicly. And, of course, both weren't afraid of the grand gesture: we all remember Lincoln on the deck of the USS Monitor hailing the end of Civil War combat operations three years before the South actually surrendered."

"Jon Stewart: But John, pardon me but that sounds like Bullshit! John Oliver: Bullshit? Or is it Bull-fact?"

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear to you: this is not writing. I have absolutely no idea how this sentence I'm currently saying is going to finish. When and if it does, I can only hope it makes some kind of coherent ceramic pineapple."

"You know, I'm sorry. Normally we have all the writers. We've got a big group of people kicking that soundbite around, but right now it's just me. So... let me see if I can, just quickly, whip something up here; erm... erm... ooh! I've got something. FUCK YOU!"

"These guys are the '27 Yankees of dodging questions. The '55 Dodgers of yanking Congress' chain. [...] Jon, this is once in a generation bullshit."

"[ Michelle Obama ]'s a Democrat. She must prove she loves America. As opposed to Republicans, who everyone knows love America—they just hate half the people living in it! [audience applauds] Apparently they're all here tonight."

"Nineteen people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn't want to do harm to us. So it seems like we have to rethink a strategy that is less military-based."

"I think that's our biggest problem right there."

"Guantanamo Bay isn't a prison, it's a leadership camp!"

"See, all of this "real America" and "fake America" can get a little hard to figure out. For instance, you may live in a small town, where they make good people, but you live in a gay state, like Massachusetts—are you real or are you fake? Or you may live in a big city, but still have a healthy mistrust of Muslims. So for those of you who are confused as to whether or not you're a real American, it's actually quite simple. Let me see if I can help you out here. [pulls out a dry-erase board and writes the following equation] Just multiply your town's population (P) by the average price of a local cup of coffee (picture of coffee cup), plus its number of art-house movie theaters (house), times the number of streets named for Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK); then divide by the number of pieces of identification you need to buy a Sudafed in your town (pill), times the number of people who wear trucker hats in your town minus the actual number of truckers (trucker hat), multiply that by 1 over the houses of worship—not counting synagogues, of course (cross)—minus the number of bars in your town. That's supposed to be a bottle. If the answer equals less than 10, congratulations, odds are very good that you're a real American."

"I kinda had just read the statement that Sarah Palin had made about the Pro-America parts of the country and I think I might have said, in response to that, I think I might have said, uhh, FUCK YOU and uhh that's just my way of saying it's a profanity to say and I was answering with a profanity. But it's not really fair, and it makes it seem like I'm just addressing Governor Palin about this and I'm not. It's really this whole theme, that there is more American areas or some people love the country and some people don't. So I guess what I meant to say was Fuck all y'all!"

"[in response to John McCain's use of air quotes with regards to women's health in the third presidential debate] Thank you, John McCain, for finally exposing the seedy underbelly of the women’s "health" scam… Let’s face it: women loooove abortions, and will do anything to get one – the later the better. "Hemorrhages," "severe uterine infections," "dying," blah blah blah blah. And while we’re at it, enough with the whining about “rape,” “incest,” and "incest rape." We’re on to you, ladies. Those aren’t the golden ticket to the Abortion Factory, okay? Listen, John McCain has finally put the concerns of women where they belong: in derisive air quotes! And this transcends politics, Jon. Reasonable people can disagree about abortion, but still agree on the unimportance of women's health. It's about equality. And I'm sure if John McCain was raped, and has a baby growing in his penis, he would want it publicly discussed in the same level of abstraction without concern for his specific "life." Or..."penis.""

"I have great fondness and affection for John McCain, I would have voted for him, if he had made it, against Gore, quite frankly, in 2000. The guy that I see now, putting air quotes around women's health, and doing all the things that he does, I don't know what that is. And if that's a strategy that's disingenuous from how he really thinks, then my opinion of him is even lower."

"If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values—they're hobbies. You know, one of the genius moves of The Founders was not writing The Bill of Rights on the back window of a dusty van."

"Jon Stewart: It's a new era, Gitmo. We, in America, are done sacrificing civil liberties to fight the War on Terror. President Obama said so. Gitmo: Yay! Gitmo love President Obama! Gitmo finally see Promise of America! It's a new beginning for all of us! Yay! [...] You know Gitmo and all of Gitmo's friends still want to kill you—you know that, right? We want to destroy your way of life. Jon Stewart: Yeah, we get it, Gitmo. But with these abuses we're doing that for you. Gitmo: You're not safe. Don't you want to be safe? Jon Stewart: Gitmo, there is no safe! No matter what we do, there is no guarantee of our safety. That is the price of a free society. So—finally—we're going to do what's right. Gitmo: I'm very scary. Jon Stewart: Gitmo, this has nothing to do with you! You can't define us. It's about not letting fear do that. [...] We can safeguard ourselves well using smart and legal tactics."

"It's nice to see that even in retirement Dick Cheney is still making the time to scare the shit out of people. So many people retire and just stop doing the thing they love. But not him. Yes, apparently less than two weeks after riding off into the sunset—which he has to do, because he's allergic to sun—Dick Cheney wanted to make clear that if anything happens now, it's the new guy's fault. [...] Ooh, I have a question. What if we're hit again by a guy who's really sad because his whole family was killed in Iraq—who's responsible for that? Or what if someone got pissed off at us because his brother was potato sacked and bound and kept in a cage without a lawyer for seven years on an island in the Caribbean—who's responsible for that? Or! If Al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border had time to reconstitute and devise another attack because we pulled all our resources into invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11—who's responsible for that? I'm gonna go with, hold on... who's responsible for that? I'm gonna have to go with... Obama. Y'know, over the years we have tried very hard to make Dick Cheney look evil, but in kind of a cute way. Y'know, kinda funny, cartoonish, lot of Darth Vader jokes, funny pictures, man-sized safe, then we did that funny wheelchair mock-up. It was all really funny and we called the segment You Don't Know Dick; it was kinda light-hearted and all that, but you know what? Fuck it. He no longer deserves any satirical protection, any glib patina of sugar-coating. We are now officially changing the name of his segment. [New animated titles for Why Are You Such a Dick? play.]"

"People always talk to me about, "Who are your influences? What makes you do what you do?" I can say, I draw a line—I do what I do because of Bruce Springsteen, and I'll tell you why: You introduced me to the concept of The Other Side. You introduced me to the concept of: you go through the tunnel and you take a chance, and you can work to get away from your circumstance. And by working to get away from your circumstance you can make something better of yourself, but there's no guarantee. [...] But you know what? The joy of it is chasing that dream, and that was my inspiration for leaving New Jersey and goin' to New York. And bless you, my friend. You're the Man. So I just wanted to thank you personally from the bottom of my heart for giving me something to put into the dashboard as I drove a U-Haul van through the Holland Tunnel."

"[quietly] I guess there's one more thing I want to say to him... uh, if you're heading out from uptown, take 42nd Street west to 9th Avenue, make a left, go down four blocks, Lincoln Tunnel's on your right, and you know what? [taking E-ZPass out of his pocket] Here's my E-ZPass, get the fuck out of here."

"IOWA?! Iowa says banning gay marriage is unconstitutional? This was last year's Iowa Gay Pride parade. [Shows clip from "The Straight Story", with Alvin Straight riding a lawn mower on a country road] They are the aortic valve of the heartland of America. They are now officially more progressive than California."

"Michelle Bachmann (clip): We're gonna fight for our freedom. Sean Hannity (clip): Absolutely. Against tyranny. Jon Stewart: Yes, "tyranny". A/k/a our democratically elected President. You know what guys, meet me at camera 3 for a second — I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you because ah... I've been there. A few times. In fact, one of them was a bit of a nailbiter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government's oversight capability, invade a country that you thought should not be invaded, but that's not tyranny. That's democracy. See, now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco. And by the way, if I remember correctly when disagreement was expressed about that president's actions when y'all were in power I believe the response was "why do you hate America?", "watch what you say", "love it or leave it", "suck on my truck nuts"."

"To say that comedians have to decide whether they're comedians or social commentators, uh… comedians do social commentary, through comedy. That’s how it’s worked for thousands of years. I have not moved out of the comedians box, into the news box. The news box is moving towards me."

"Sarcasm - I get it now! See at the time I thought your jokey manner was just the way you were sublimating your shame over the discomfort you feel deep in your soul after extinguishing the last smoldering embers of any of your program’s journalistic bona fides!"

"However you felt about the man, whatever your opinions are, I believe we—as a people—should make a rule that once you die … whatever derisive nickname that we used for you, it dies with you. So can we stop calling him 'Jacko' now? … After you die, can a brother get a 'Mr. Jackson'?"

"I guess it's an efficiency thing. You don't want to waste tax-payer money giving it to someone who advises fake prostitutes how to commit imaginary crimes, you want to give it to Halliburton because they're committing real gang rape."

"This gets to the crux of it. I think it's the difference between what you think gay people are and what I do. And I live in New York City, so I'm going to make a supposition that I have more experience being around them. And I'll tell you this: Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. [...] We protect religion and talk about a lifestyle choice. That is absolutely a lifestyle choice. Gay people do not choose to be gay. At what age did you decide not to be gay?"

"You talk about the Pro-Life movement being one of the great shames of our nation. I think, if you want number two, I think—I think it's that. I think it's absolute—it's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights."

"You keep talking about it would be redefining a word. And it feels like semantics is cold comfort when it comes to humanity."

"I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week."

"If I’d only followed CNBC’s advice, I’d have a million dollars today. Provided I’d started with a hundred million dollars.... That is amazing! I mean these CEOs saying their own businesses are doing OK! I mean, it makes sense to take these CEOs word for it. For instance, I know O.J. Simpson. He told me he didn't kill anyone and he should know, he was there!"

"Between the two of them, I can't decide which one I'd rather see in jail."

"Isn’t the Dow Jones Industrial Average just a short twitch numerical representation of a bunch of guesses about other people’s assumptions about the financial well-being of an arbitrarily chosen group of 30 out of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF POSSIBLE COMPANIES? NO! YOU’RE WRONG! It is a real-time cause-and-effect precision barometer of how the President is doing! It’s been that way for years!"

"You don't have to make comedian sound like a venereal disease. He's a comedian. He's gonorrhea. [...] And variety show? You make me sound like some kind of buffoon, just flapping my arms to crazy sound effects. [Montage of sound effects from Mad Money plays.] Yeah! Like that guy! Whoever he is."

"I don't know about the markets. That's why I don't make the claim to any authority. That's why my network doesn't have the slogan "In Stewart We Trust." They don't want people to think I'm God. Now of course, I probably wouldn't have a problem if Cramer's slogan was Cramer: He's right sometimes or He's like a dartboard that talks or You feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?"

"Although to be fair, cherry picking isn't quite what we do. Cherries are sweet and delicious. What we do is more turd mining. And I'll thank you to give our work the respect it deserves!"

"Dora: Doesn't Jim Cramer understand that it's not about individual mistakes he's made, it's about him creating a false sense of urgency that helped hyperinflate the bubble! Stewart: I mean, that was kinda the point. Boots: Do you want me to throw feces on him? Stewart: No, Boots. That's OK. [...] Dora: And Joe Scarborough is accusing you of being a cherry-picking ideologue? [...] Why is everyone being such a pendejo? [...] It means jackass in Spanish. [...] Stewart: Hooray for the pendejos!"

"It's the inevitable consummation of this largely manufactured battle between a man who makes people laugh for a living and whatever people think I do. In a televised, two-part hatefuck that is, by all measure, bound to disappoint anyone that's been following it. Catch the fever!"

"Mr. Cramer, don't you destroy enough dough on your own show? Boom goes the dynamite! [Laughs.] How weird is our world when Jim Cramer's on TV baking pie and Martha Stewart is the one who went to jail for Securities fraud? That's weird."

"CNBC sells itself as financial experts. And they have the access to the CEOs. And yet, they didn't catch any of this. And here they are blaming people who don't have the financial expertise and saying that they're part of the problem. [...] It seems like the banks and those that cheerlead them turned an arithmetic problem into a geometric one. They took a linear debt issue and by turning it into derivatives and securities and all that, now it's a gigantic problem. So, shouldn't we yell at them?"

"So, let me tell you why I think this thing has caught some attention. It's the gap between what CNBC advertises itself as and what it is. And the help that people need to discern this."

"Look, we're both snake oil salesman to a certain extent, but we do label the show as snake oil here. Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as vitamin tonic?"

"I want the Jim Cramer on CNBC to protect me from that Jim Cramer."

"When you talk about the regulators [going after market manipulation], why not the financial news networks? That's the whole point of this. CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people that believe that there are two markets. One that has been sold to us as long-term: Put your money in 401Ks, put your money in pensions and just leave it there, don't worry about it, it's all doing fine. And then there's this other market, this real market that's occurring in a back room where giant piles of money are going in and out, and people are trading them, and it's transactional, and it's fast but it's dangerous, it's ethically dubious and it's hurting that long-term market. And so what it feels like—and I'm speaking purely as a layman—it feels like we are capitalizing your adventure by our pension, and our hard-earned—and that it is a game that you know, that you know is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn't happening."

"I can't rationalize the brilliance and knowledge that you have about the intricacies of the market with the crazy bullshit I see you do each night."

"I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a fucking game. And I, I—when I watch that, I get—I can't tell you how angry it makes me. 'Cause what it says to me is: You all know. You all know what's going on and you can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the all that stuff that was being pulled at Bear, and at AIG. And all of this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side bet. [...] You knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months. The entire network was. So now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that no one could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

"The CEO of a company lied to you. But isn't that financial reporting?"

"It's very easy to get on this after the fact. The measure of the network and the measure of the man is—CNBC could act as [...] nobody's asking for them to be a regulatory agency. But whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile: is their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day, short-term—these guys at these companies were on a Sherman's March through their companies, financed by our 401Ks, and all the incentives of their companies were for short-term profit. And they burned the fucking house down with our money and they walked away rich as hell. And you guys knew that that was going on."

"As Carly Simon would say, this song ain't about you."

"Honest or not, in what world is a 35:1 leveraged position sane?"

"When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work? That we're workers, and by selling this idea of, "Hey man, I'll teach you how to be rich"—how is that any different than an infomercial?"

"There's a market for cocaine and hookers!"

"What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? Who are you responsible to? The people with the 401Ks and the pensions and the general public or the Wall Street traders—and by the way, this casts aspersion on all of Wall Street when that's unfair, as well! The majority of those guys are good guys. They're working their asses off, they're really bright guys. I know a lot of 'em, they're just trying to do the right thing and they're gettin' fucked in this thing, too!"

"I'm under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try to figure it out. So, I again—you now become the face of this and that is incredibly unfortunate. Because you are not the face of it, you shouldn't be the face of it. You are the person that was I-don't-know-what enough to stand up and go, "Hey, that's wasn't fair!" Which, it's not because this show isn't fair. And you can tell Doucheborough that it's not supposed to be fair. [...] That's not our job."

"Stewart: As is very clear from the tape that you have on the internet, there is the letter of the law and the intent of the law. And I think, clearly, that it would be a great service to the American public if there was an organization out there—not just the SEC, but a news organization that was trying to maintain the intent of this and force companies to still have growth and profit, but not in a way that burns down the entire field. Y'know, my mother is 75. And she bought into the idea that long-term investing was the way to go. And guess what? Cramer: It didn't work. Stewart: [nods] So maybe we could remove the "financial expert" and In Cramer We Trust and get back to the fundamentals in reporting, as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces. Cramer: I think we make that deal right here. [Stewart and Cramer shake hands.]"

"That was our show! [...] I hope that was as uncomfortable to watch as it was to do."

"Jessica: What does the word "tyrant" mean to you as opposed to what it means to everybody else? Larry Kilgore: "Tyrant" means to me somebody like Hitler or Lincoln who comes in and murders the people for their own political gain. Jessica: You think Lincoln's a tyrant? Larry: Yes, ma'am. Jessica: That's not something you normally hear. Larry: No it is not, but Lincoln and Hitler are very similar, but most Americans aren't aware of it. Jessica: I'm sorry, I'm confused. Larry: Hitler was the one that killed six million Jews. Lincoln was the one that killed six hundred thousand Americans. Jessica: Was Lincoln the one that gave a lot of liberties to people as well? Larry: [long pause] Not that I know of. Jessica: "[who is African American]" No liberties that you can think of? Larry: No, ma'am."

"So now, instead of being spied on by the Executive Branch, it turns out we're being spied on by all the branches. I think— I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying that you broke any laws. We're just saying, it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."

"You shouldn't have talking points about a person before that person can talk!"

"So what I'm getting from Fox is this: Exploiting government largess, while reprehensive and morally corrupting for an individual, is A-OK for corporations. So, maybe this'll help: Don't think about food stamps, and Head Start, and programs like that as feeding and helping a small child. Think about it as investing in a promising start-up with a liquidity problem."

"I think we drum good people out of politics who are defined by the single worst thing they've ever done, as opposed to the context of their public lives, and I think we make it much, much easier for people who have no business holding office to enter the process, because when you're not talking about ideas and world views and agendas, when you're talking about character and personality, it makes it very easy for someone to float through the process without ever having to explain themselves or demonstrate what they know."

"If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time. But I would really settle for less fucking tragedy."

"Maybe a more nuanced alert system could allow for more productive intervention beyond “You have ten seconds to disperse”. Or we can agree to keep ignoring the roots of how systemically, historically disenfranchised many African American communities still are, only paying attention to them when we fear their periodic, fiery ball of anger threatens to enter our airspace, and once again breathing a blissful sigh of forgetful relief when it’s another near miss."

"What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves. If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our… We invaded two countries, and spent trillions of dollars and thousand of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over, like, five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can, we’ll torture people. We got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. Nine people, shot in a church, what about that? “Hey what are you gonna do? Crazy is crazy, right?” That’s the part that I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around."

"I heard someone on the news say, well, "tragedy has visited this church”. This wasn’t a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. You know, I hate to even use this pun, but this one is black and white. There’s no nuance here. And we’re gonna keep pretending like “I don’t get it, what happened, there’s one guy who lost his mind”, but we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it."

"The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for Confederate generals, and the white guy is the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing, Al-Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS, they’re not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis."

"The stakes of this election don't make Donald Trump's opponent less subject to less scrutiny; it actually makes him more subject to scrutiny. If the barbarians are at the gate, you want Conan standing on the ramparts, not chocolate chip cookie guy."

"I've learned one thing over these last nine years, and I was glib at best and probably dismissive at worst about this -- the work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail fucking job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart, and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues 'til they get a positive result, and even then, have to stay on to make sure that result holds. So the good news is, I'm not saying you don't have worry about who wins the election. I'm saying you have to worry about every day before it, and every day after it, forever. Although... on the plus side, I am told that, at some point, the sun will run out of hydrogen."

"Jon: Professor! Tell me, what is step one in delivering world-class fealty to power? Tucker Carlson: [recording] Here's why we're doing it: First, because it's our job. We're in journalism. Jon: "Lie about what your job is." Tucker Carlson: [recording] Our duty is to inform people. Jon: "Lie about what your duty is." Tucker Carlson: [recording] Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in; freedom of speech is our birthright -- we were born with the right to say what we believe. Jon: Oh, shit... Kudos, sensei! That was deep -- I have much to learn. "Disguise your deception and capitulation to power as noble and moral and based in freedom." Yes, master..."

"Your plan to eliminate Hamas by destroying all of Gaza... Uh... doesn’t that just make more Hamases? Is that the plural of Hamas? Hamassi? I mean, Palestinian liberation is an idea, unless you have a bomb that kills ideas — do you have a bomb that kills ideas? I mean, how long would it even take to bomb the shit out of an idea?"

"Yes, it turns out in the age-old battle between values and fear, values never had a fucking chance!"

"So this is the terrible cycle America is caught in: Democrats whose high-minded principles and values did not survive a contact-high with reality, and Republicans whose desire to solve the problem isn't nearly as strong as their desire to exploit it. And no one wins."

"Look, if you wanna love Trump, love him. Go to the rallies, buy the sneakers. You want to give him absolute power? You want him to be the leader über alles? You want him to have the right of kings? You do you. But stop framing it as patriotism."

"The fuck are we doing here? The subtext of all this is, America knows this is wrong. But it apparently doesn't have the courage to say it in a straightforward manner. America and Israel both know that you cannot bomb your way into safety. We learned that lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. They learned it in Southern Lebanon. They laid seige there, occupied the southern area for 20 years, all it did was birth and strengthen Hezbollah. And they're about to do it all over again, and we are letting them. Real friends take the fucking keys, because friends don't let friends... bomb that much."

"Whether it's globalization or industrialization or now Artificial Intelligence, the way of life that you are accustomed to is no match for the promise of more profits and new markets, which sounds brutal! ...if you're a human."

"Kudos to the United States and to Israel! It shows just how effective a military defense system can be when you funnel American dollars away from healthcare and education."

"Listen, I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but when we in the West drew your region's borders and set you up with perfectly functioning dictatorships, um... we expected a little better."

"Look, at some point in this trial, something important and revelatory is going to happen. But none of us are going to notice, because [of] the hours spent on his speculative facial tics -- if the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bullshit is earth-shattering, we won't believe you when it's really interesting!"

"There are no participation trophies in end-game democracy! Oh yeah, I remember FDR saying "Well, if the Nazis take over Europe, at least both teams had fun.""

"Authoritarianism and Donald Trump aren't the only threats our democracy faces -- an arthritic status quo, unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters who just received new and urgent information about their candidate also erodes confidence and faith in the system of government. […] Honestly, though, "Get on board or shut the fuck up" is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker."

"I am in no way saying Biden's gotta drop out, but can't we stress-test this candidacy? Can't we open up the conversation? Do you understand the opportunity here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership and a release from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy. It is crushing our fucking spirits! Do you have any idea what could be ahead of you?! All we want is for someone to keep it 100. The percentage, not the age. That's all we want!"

"Wow! What a terrible fucking week. "Hey, Jon! Come back to The Daily Show, just for the election. It'll be fun! You'll do one day a week, it'll be a laurgh. What could go wrong?""

"Yes, apparently, Republicans are pro-worker now and pro-union! I hope somebody tells all the Republican governors who passed right-to-work anti-union laws in their states, and all the Republican-appointed judges who made it easier to break unions, and Donald Trump himself, who helped kill a bill that would have protected unions so they're gonna be so embarrassed at their hypocrisy!"

"How are you supposed to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric if you're not allowed to mention the rhetoric?!"

"[imitating Joe Biden] Let me-- Let me ask you something, Lester. Let me ask you this... Who's got two thumbs, Lester? An-- And is about to beat your ass?"

"I have a slight confession to make, and I am not proud of this in any way, shape, or form... but I'm following social media during all this to find out who did it because it's this pattern I feel like we now have in the country when we hear about a horrific event. You're on pins-and-needles in this sort of reverse-demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn't belong to one of your teams. [...] And we're all doing it! We're all doing it because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy. Will it be a haughty "I told you!" or perhaps a circumspect "Well, let's not rush to judgement. We shouldn't generalize." And then it ends up being someone we can't even fucking figure out in the first place! [...] It's a jump ball! We don't know yet who's got dibs, who wins, and none of us knows what's gonna happen next, other than, there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted, by us, to us. And then we'll have this feeling again. I remember it on 9/11, this disorienting "Holy shit, stop the world, I would like to get off" feeling. And in that moment, there will be some incredible Americans who, in the midst of it, for some unknown reason, rush towards it and get us back to some sort of equilibrium. And we'll count on those folks to hold us together again. And it does remind us that, by a hair's breadth, we dodged a catastrophe. But it was still a tragedy, because one of those first responders lost his life. His name was Corey Comperatore. He was a retired fire chief in the area. He had given his life in service to his community, and he died literally shielding his family. He's a reminder that, in those moments of crisis, there are helpers. And we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people."

"19 years old and the world's already beat the shit outta ya. Innt that--? It's always the young dudes that are like, "I have a- A quick question, I'm 19 years old… When hope is gone. When the darkness slowly creeps down…""

"Part of the issue is, you just want someone to talk to you like you're a human. Like you're an adult. Not like it's work, not like they're spinning you."

"In the span of a week! Democrats have gone from a certain Trump Presidency to the joy… of a statistical tie. Which, right now, that feels like victory!"

"So sexist, saying Kamala Harris slept her way to the top! Joe Biden and Donald Trump literally slept their way to the top, and we never heard a fucking peep about it!"

"Why aren't you doing the thing that they told us that you were going to do?! With the hammer and the sickle and the bandolero shots?!"

"I swear to god, the guy running for President on the Republican ticket has morphed into a poor man's Catturd."

"Wait. She calls you on her birthday?! That is very [censored]. On her birthday, she calls you?! "Hey, girl! It's Kamala. Anything you have to say to me that you should've said hours ago?""

"They had black Americans! Hispanic Americans! Asian Americans! Gay Americans! Jewish Americans! Palestinian Ame-- Oh. Now, to be fair, it was only four nights, eight hours a night. But really, it's best not to think about the consequences of our actions over there, especially given the theme of the week."

"Whatever you're feeling? Go with it. Whether that feeling is joy, or perhaps relief at having a chance when you had none is exhilarating."

"Oh, so which is it? Do the vibes fatten you up, or are they emotional Ozempic, which one? But I guess you're right. You can't feed your family on vibes. You can only feed your family on immigration fearmongering. You can't eat good vibes! I think you might be confusing vibes with the tomato-infused soup-adjacent fondue, the weapon of mass lactation that this city calls fucking pizza! I'll tell you that much! Yeah, that's right, motherfuckers! C'mon! C'mon! You want a piece?! You want a piece?! "Ey, ey. I wanna order a pizza." "Oh, yeah, you want a personal or a backyard pool size?""

"You spent two months riling up your base that our country had literally been stolen from them through fraudulent means, that you could never even get a whiff of in a court of law, and let—let yourself just abuse them. You pressed on. You abused their trust. You showed up for a speech? You fucking tweeted ‘Join me on Jan. 6. It will be wild.’ But suddenly now: ‘I was just a hired magician to do the bar mitzvah! I didn’t do anything. I showed up with a hat and a rabbit and then the whole party went out of control!’One thing will always be true, and it is the quality of the former president I respect the least: Whenever he is cornered and forced to face even the smallest of consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he reverts to the greatest refuge of scoundrels. As Shaggy would say, ‘It wasn’t me!’"

"I just wanna point out, just as a matter of perspective, that the lessons that our pundits take away from these results, that they will pronounce with certainty, will be wrong. And we have to remember that!"

"My point is this: FUCK! But this isn't the end! I promise you, this is not the end. And we have to regroup, and we have to continue to fight and continue to work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country, that we know is possible. It's possible."

"Honestly, I don't care why she lost; I care why he won. We have spent so much time diagnosing Donald Trump and what his actions say about him. He's a dictator, he's a fascist, he's a malignant narcissist whose blood type is fryer oil. But it's pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis, because whatever's wrong with him, we fucking love it. In this moment, Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people and it might be time to make a good fucking hard look."

"The election that we just had was a repudiation of the status quo: an overly-regulated system that is no longer responsive, or delivering, for the needs of The People... government is theoretically a constitutional system of checks and balances between equally powerful branches. But what government actually is, is an overly-complicated, byzantine, bureaucratic maze of rules, loopholes to those rules, and norms; complex enough that 🄐 if you want to find a rule that keeps you from doing something, you'll find it; and 🄑 if you actually want to do something, you can find a loophole to get around said rule. And then the norms are just how often you've had to pull any of this shit."

"She doesn't know anyone who wakes up and think they want to bomb Iran. I don't know if she knows anyone who wakes up and thinks."

"It does say something about the ubiquity of Donald Trump in our lives that we don't hear from him for 20 minutes and we think..."he's dead!""

"[in response to Markwayne Mullin's saying that "speaking his mind" is what America loves about Donald Trump] No, that's what America loves about Dolly Parton! Transparent, speaks her mind...yet Dolly rarely jails her political enemies! I mean, Senator Markwayne...do you want to know how embarrassing your weak-kneed rationalizations for jailing political opponents ring? I'm gonna play you a clip of a fellow Senator. A fellow Republican Senator. Now, Ted Cruz has supported this President through insults to his own wife's looks and to his own father's loyalties. And yet still manages to maintain a modicum of self-respect when it comes to this President trampling all over our Constitution. Sir, it brings me no pleasure to have to play this.[clip of Ted Cruz saying that Brendan Carr's threats against free speech are "dangerous as hell"]FANTASTIC. Fantastic! Senator Ted Cruz boldly stating that the FCC Chairman threatening the licenses of broadcast networks is dangerous.I just want to say this to Trump's defenders: you don't have to bend over backwards to try to make Trump's authoritarian power grabs seem like the rule of law! He does not give a fuck anymore! He's saying it straight up! Trump is saying "people like dictators"! Trump is saying "I hate my opponents and I want them punished"! And Trump is saying "I'll use all the levers of government possible to accomplish that goal!" So you can get on board with THAT and say "I'm with that," or you can join the rest of us and you can fight like hell for this Constitution because let me tell you something, it is a form of representational government worth preserving and defending!"

"Jon: Perhaps we need to look back at our founders, and through their infinite wisdom, designed and operated a more mature system, with checks and balances, and a respect for all, that prevented this kind of corrosive infighting and radicalisation."

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"A second term we can all agree on."

"Trevor Noah — Host (2015–2022)"

"Jon Stewart — Host (1999–2015, 2024)"

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"Samantha Bee — Correspondent (2003–present)"

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"Rob Corddry — Correspondent (2002–2006)"

"Ed Helms — Correspondent (2002–present)"

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"Lewis Black — Contributor, 'Back in Black' (1996–present)"

"Frank DeCaro — Contributor, 'Out at the Movies' (1996–2003)"

"Dave Attell — Contributor, 'The Ugly American' (1999–2002)"

"Michael Blieden — Contributor (1996–1999)"

"John Bloom — Contributor, 'God Stuff' (1996–1998) (as Joe Bob Briggs)"

"A. Whitney Brown — Correspondent (1996–1998)"

"Rich Brown — Contributor, 'Public Excess' (1999–2000)"

"Demetri Martin — Contributor, 'Trendspotting' (2005–present)"

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"Judging solely by the amount of media attention it got, you'd think The Daily Show, when the vaunted Jon Stewart was host, was the most-watched show of the 21st Century. You'd be wrong. It rarely made the top 100 rated shows of the week. Yes, you heard that right. The Daily Show, even with Jon Stewart as host, routinely garnered fewer viewers than reruns of Family Guy on the Cartoon Network. Yet when Stuart spoke, the media listened, even though the people didn't."

"I think Stewart’s show demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy. I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark… I find nothing incisive in his work. As for his influence, if he helped produce the hackneyed polarization of moral liberals versus evil conservatives, then he’s partly at fault for the political stalemate in the United States."

"The hardest thing about doing The Daily Show is the fact that it's daily. It really is, it's the hardest thing about it. And Jon and I would always talk, and we would be like "Man, if only there was a way you could just do, like, a day of the show. And then, like, now-- I literally messaged him and I was like "You son of a bitch, you figured it out! You figured it out, God-dammit, Godspeed, Jon Stewart!""

"Jason Bateman - Michael Bluth"

"Portia de Rossi - Lindsay Fünke"

"Will Arnett - George Oscar "Gob" Bluth II"

"Michael Cera - George Michael Bluth"

"Alia Shawkat - Mae "Maeby" Fünke"

"Tony Hale - Byron "Buster" Bluth"

"David Cross - Tobias Fünke"

"Jessica Walter - Lucille Bluth"

"Jeffrey Tambor - George Bluth Sr. / Oscar Bluth"

"Ron Howard - Narrator"

"Henry Winkler - Barry Zuckerkorn"

"Liza Minnelli - Lucille Austero (Lucille 2)"

"Judy Greer - Kitty Sanchez"

"Patricia Velasquez - Marta"

"Justin Lee - Annyong Bluth"

"He's a journalist with gravitas, with dignity, with balls."

"It's French. Bitch."

"America's most described journalist."

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"If this were Venezuela, they'd nationalize him."

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"Multi-grain."

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"Stephen Colbert - Stephen Colbert"

"Paul Dinello - Tad"

"Eric Drysdale - Bobby"

"David Cross - Russ Lieber"

"Kurt McNally: Reverend Al Sharpton claims that Paris Hilton's early release from jail smacks of "racial favoritism". Paris Hilton's two-letter response was "O.J.""

"Jennifer Lang: Hillary Clinton said that her faith got her through her marriage crisis. Bill Clinton said that Faith also got him through his marriage crisis, although he can't remember Faith's last name."

"Dennis Miller: Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in, and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. And that's why I drive an SUV -- so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself to be at the vanguard of the environmental movement. And I think individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dilemma, and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about Mother Earth?"

"Kurt McNally: After weeks of heated negotiations, the House finally abandoned the idea to a time line and agreed to President Bush's war funding bill. This is considered the biggest Democratic collapse since Nancy Pelosi's face lift gave out."

"Lorenzo Lamas: ...I'm saying that Muslim terrorists destroyed the Trade centers"

"Hank Moody: He used to call you a walking penis!"

"Hank Moody (after being punched): Ow! Your pimp hand is strong!"

"Trixy: No! Not in the face. He's too cute."

"Al Moody: "Your mother was into all of that catholic guilt shit, not me. Life's too short to dance with fat chicks.""

"Charlie Runkle: "I love the condom, keeps me in the game...""

"Hank Moody: "All my fucking life, people have been telling me I do things wrong. I’m always the fucking asshole. I look around and I see everybody else is infinitely more fucked up than I am.""

"Peter Krause — Nick George"

"Donald Sutherland — Patrick "Tripp" Darling III"

"William Baldwin — Patrick Darling IV"

"Natalie Zea — Karen Darling"

"Glenn Fitzgerald — Brian Darling, Sr."

"Samaire Armstrong — Juliet Darling"

"Seth Gabel — Jeremy Darling"

"Zoe McLellan — Lisa George"

"Blair Underwood — Simon Elder"

"Jill Clayburgh — Letitia "Tish" Darling"

"Lucy Liu — Nola Lyons"

"Kristin Bauer — Rebecca Colfax"

"Roxana Brusso — Maria"

"Candis Cayne — Carmelita"

"Daniel Cosgrove — Freddy Mason"

"Tamara Feldman — Natalie Kimpton"

"Michelle Krusiec — Mei Ling Hwa Darling"

"Sheryl Lee — Andrea Smithson"

"Laura Margolis — Daisy"

"Chloë Grace Moretz — Kiki George"

"Shawn Michael Patrick — Clark"

"Will Shadley — Brian Darling, Jr."

"Sofía Vergara — Sofia"

"Bellamy Young — Ellen Darling"

"He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do?"

"I was watching Andrea Mitchell… talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a frigging day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who — it's what the media pick — the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.'"

"But my question about that whole flap — the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, 'I'm an angry father.' If it's not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean… Right? They talk about her like she's some retarded monster they have chained in the attic. You know, if being gay is not that, why is it a controversy to bring her up? … It's an issue in this election. Don't talk about my daughter, who we're trying to discriminate against, in a constitutional amendment."

"And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?"

"I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night… She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch.' …And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush — because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band."

"The key lesson to me of Vietnam is that you cannot outlast insurgents in their own country. This idea that when Bush says, 'Well, we can't say we're going to pull out in six months because they'll only have to wait six months and a day.' They'll wait a hundred frigging years if they have to!"

"Let's be honest - this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the '80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it… Let's examine what 'moral values' are. Because I don't think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me — and they're very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying, 'I have integrity.' That's different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values."

"Politically, it's always been advantageous to divide people, to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal size penises. The only problem is, it's not true. Hollywood isn't your cesspool, America. It's your mirror."

"I didn't like that he [George W. Bush] lied to get us into this war. I certainly didn't like that it was conducted in such an incompetent way. But now that he's morphed the script from what it was in 2003 to 'I'm the Johnny Appleseed of democracy and we want to bring freedom to the world.' I like that script better, I have to say. I know it was bullshit how we got there. But this script I like better. And it sounds exactly like the script that Carter used to say: human rights, remember that? You can't love it when they said it and hate it when Bush says it. It's the same thing."

"It seems to me like nowadays there's two kinds of issues in America. There's the kind that's too Byzantine and boring for the average Joe to even know what's going on. You know, the environment and the filibusters and the gerrymandering and what did Tom DeLay do on vacation. And then the really stupid issues that they can understand like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And it seems to me the American people have become completely irrelevant."

"Well, the American public always wanted to vote for a guy — and Bush was the perfect guy — who they'd want to have over for pot-roast. And George Bush is that guy. He does that well. You'd like to have him over for pot-roast. He reminds you of yourself. Okay. Well, now he's been over, he's had the pot-roast. But he's getting drunk and now he's talking about stem cells and Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And now he's the guest that won't leave."

"It's been over a year since they graduated, but neither of the Bush twins has been able to find work. Why don't they sign up [for the army]? Do they hate America or just freedom in general?"

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky! I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint.""

"New Rule: Stop introducing a new iPod every month. First came the original, then the Mini, then the Shuffle, now the Nano. It's so slim Kate Moss uses it to cut her cocaine."

"On the third day, when they still hadn't done anything, uh, Fidel Castro — this is not a joke! — stepped forward to offer aid. Fidel Castro had to call a news conference to say, "Some President in this hemisphere must do something." Now, what do you think Rush Limbaugh would have said if Bill Clinton had been President when that happened? He would have said, "This country has been brought so low by Bill Clinton, that Fidel Castro, a Mexican, has had to come forward… And, and by the way, Mexico did send us — another not-joke — bottled water. When you are getting clean water from Mexico, you might be a red-neck President…"

"New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain."

"New Rule: Paula Abdul must go back on drugs. "American Idol" will always have a place in my heart. It's where I met Clay. And what could be more exciting than televised karaoke? But everyone knows the show is most entertaining when Paula is thick-tongued and sleepy-eyed and poised on the brink of yelling, "Who wants to do me?!""

"New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin."

"I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the "greatness" of a country can, to a large extent, be measured. Here are some numbers: infant mortality rate, America ranks 48th in the world; overall health, 72nd; freedom of the press, 44; literacy, 55th. Do you realize there are twelve-year-old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?....In most of the industrialized world nearly everyone has healthcare; and hardly anyone doubts evolution; and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell research, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning."

"When they [Republicans] say "They're going to raise taxes", you say "We have to, because someone spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama Bin Laden.""

"New Rule: You can't send the National Guard to Iraq and then claim it's still here. The helicopters, the humvees, the men...like Dorothy and Toto, they're not in Kansas anymore. Sorry, Mr. President, but the last documented case of a National Guardsman able to be in two places at one time... was you."

"iPhone's price reduction wasn't a price cut, it was a reduction of the nerd tax."

"We won't stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick. Because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can't help you. They can't outlaw unhealthy food, or alcohol, or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly. Because, you see, the government is not your nanny; they're your dealer. And they've subsidized illness in this country. They have to, there's too much money in it. You see, there's no money in healthy people, and there's no money in dead people. The money is in the middle: people who are alive, sort of, but with one or more chronic conditions that puts them in need of Celebrex, or Nasinex, or Valtrex, or Lunesta. Fifty years ago, children didn't even get Type-2 diabetes. Now it's an emerging epidemic, as are a long list of ailments that used to be rare, and have now been...mainstreamed. Things like asthma, and autism, and acid reflux, and arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder. And that's just the A's. Doesn't anybody wonder why we live with all this illness?"

"In Hillary Clinton's health plan the words "diet" and "exercise" appear once. The word "drugs"? Fourteen times. Just like the pharmaceutical companies wanted. You know, their add weasels like to say "When diet and exercise fail..." Well, diet and exercise don't fail, a fact brought home last week by a new Duke University study that shows exercise – yes, exercise – is just as effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So ask your doctor if getting off your ass is right for you!"

"If you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into "idiocracy," and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," then you don't have values, you have issues."

"I'm sure if you asked "What would Jesus veto?", it wouldn't be health care for sick kids."

"Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe – if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different – so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?"

"They believe in the free market for profit but they want to socialize losses."

"Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion, and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's gonna be some child fucking going on."

"If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope."

"If you think Democrats are going to take away your Bible, you're an idiot. If you think they are going to take away your gun, you're an armed idiot. If you think they're going to take away your gun and give it to a Mexican to kill your God, you're Bill O'Reilly."

"You know who's bitter in America? I am, because shit-kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with and everybody else had to suffer the consequences."

"I think they need to move the date of Earth Day because anybody who cares about the earth is still high from 4/20."

"Now, of course, there's the oft-heard refrain that she's behind in states, behind in the popular vote, and behind in the delegate count. But, I don't buy that, because I'm an American, damn it! And if there are three things I don't believe in, it's quitting and math."

"Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEO's of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But, what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way. It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business. They never learned the value of doing real, actual work. And the first step to fixing that is better role models so kids growing up white today don't think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime. Or a government handout. Or sailing."

"She takes the Old Testament literally, too. And in that one, God is an insecure, rage-filled hybrid of Bobby Knight and Suge Knight. He's been alive forever and he has anger issues. He's like John McCain if McCain could fart hail. He's pro-slavery, pro-polygamy, and homophobic, and he'll kill you for masturbating. More people get stoned in the Old Testament than in my Jacuzzi....If there was a video of Barack Obama standing in front of his congregation being healed by a black witch doctor, this election would be over. But there is that video of Sarah Palin. So, ask your witch doctor if exorcism is right for you. And I don't say "witch doctor" because he's black. I say it because when you're rebuking witches, you're a witch doctor. Witch doctor, folks! This is our country. We've got to get it back from the forces of organized superstition!"

"And if there is such a thing as karma, let's hope that Sarah Palin comes back as a wolf being shot at from a plane."

"How is it that in the information age, it's almost impossible to get actual information to the public? That Barack Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. It's not an opinion, or a controversy. It's an easily verifiable fact. But in the darkness of ignorance there are no facts anymore. Evolution is just a theory. Global warming needs more study. Saddam might have been behind 9/11 and the surge is working! What can't you convince people of just by saying it? John McCain is a cyborg. He's a cyborg made from the spare parts of Freddie Mercury and the stem cells of aborted fetuses. There. I said it. It's true. And you know its true because when I wrote it on the Internet I didn't add 'LOL.' You know, it used to be kind of forgivable to not know anything. Maybe you went to high school in America. Or you watch alot of reality TV. Or you're a Baptist. But, now there's the Internet. And Google. Information is everywhere. You know that computer thing that the Nigerians keep using to get your PIN number? You can also use it to find out stuff! If you think Obama is a Muslim or John McCain has an illegitimate black baby or Obama is that baby ... That's not an opinion. You're just stubbornly uninformed. So let me spell a few things out for you. Is Obama a Muslim? No. He. Isn't. Was Saddam behind September 11th? No. He. Wasn't. And while we're at it: Neither. Was. Bush. How do we know Bush wasn't behind September 11th? Because it worked. AND, it involved: PLANNING."

"New Rule: When you say you're not comparing someone to Hitler, you're comparing them to Hitler. This week, a Georgia congressman said, "I'm not comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there's the potential of going down that road." Well, Congressman, I'm not comparing your head to a butt-plug, but it does seem to spend a lot of time up your ass."

"New Rule: Bacon, egg, and cheese between two waffles isn't breakfast, it's a suicide attempt. This is Dunkin' Donuts' new waffle sandwich. You could wait in line for yours or, if you're in a hurry, just snatch the pistol from the cop sitting at the counter and shoot yourself in the head."

"Since viruses like swine flu get to be potentially deadly because they evolved, if you don't believe in evolution and you get it, you have to pray it away. You can't crap all over Darwin, and stem cell research and global warming, and then come crawling back to science when you want Tamiflu. That's for us sinners....Folks, there is a lot that is not yet known about this swine flu, but there is one thing we do know: the process that brought us the new flu is called evolution. It's not rocket science, but it is science. A virus is Darwinian behavior we can see happening in real time. We can see that it jumps on a host, procreates until the host is exhausted, and then jumps on something new. Like Mel Gibson."

"If conservatives get to call universal healthcare "socialized medicine", I get to call private, for-profit healthcare "soul-less vampire bastards making money off human pain.""

"If you look at any cult, whether it be the Hale-Bopp comet people, Scientologists, or Oprah's Book Club, you'll find several common elements, the primary one being cult members are taught to quickly withdraw into the group and distrust the outside world. Teabaggers distrust everything. They think people are coming for their guns and they shouldn't pay taxes. They're like Wesley Snipes crossed with a fat old white guy who runs a landfill. Folks, no one is coming for your guns, your Bibles, or your fishing poles. And that's not a monster under your bed, it's the Ab-Lounger you bought last year and never use. Cults are also always driven by some ridiculous, unattainable goal, like a fiery apocalypse ringing in paradise, or deficit reduction by way of giant tax cuts. You know someone has fallen into a cult if you see these signs: 1) Cults have their own vocabulary. Now I don't speak shit-kicker, but I know in their world "freedom" means guns, "diplomacy" means weakness, "elitist" means reader, and "socialist" means black; 2) Cults tend to populate from within, encouraging members to have huge broods of children and to give them strange names like Moonbeam and Trig; and 3) Cult members always attribute all their problems to one simple explanation. [shows poster of Obama with Hitler mustache]"

"Here's an amazing statistic. In a recent poll, 90% of Teabaggers said that they thought taxes had either gone up or stayed the same under Obama. Only 2% thought they went down. But the reality is taxes have gone down. For 95% of working families taxes went down. Think about that – Only two percent of people in a movement about taxes, named after a tax revolt, have the slightest idea what's going on with taxes."

"The "life sucks and then you die" philosophy was useful when Buddha came up with it around 500 B.C. because, back then, life sucked and then you died. But now we have medicine, and Pinkberry, and Tivo...Our life isn't all about suffering anymore."

"There are some bad teachers out there; they don't know the material; they don't make things interesting; they have sex with the same student every day instead of spreading the love around. But every school has crappy teachers. Harvard has crappy teachers. They must, they gave us George Bush. But according to all the studies, it doesn't matter what teachers do – although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number one predictor of a child's academic success is parental involvement. It doesn't even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards. It's been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child's development. If your home is adorned with nothing but Hummel dolls, DVDs, and pictures of bleeding Jesuses, congratulations! You've just given your child the gift of "Duh"."

"[after passage of PPACA] And yet, before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap, they were being warned not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats – do a shot. And then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do."

"I'm very glad that Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, and I know Muslim living in America and Europe want their way of life to be assimilated more. But the Western world needs to make it clear, some things about our culture are not negotiable and can't change. And one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another – not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here and you can't beat them – not negotiable. This is how we roll!"

"Instead of confronting real problems like the debt, or the environment, or Utah, we pick out the poorest, most defenseless kid on the block – illegal immigrants – and say, "What're you looking at?!" But I'll tell you something, you anti-immigrant hoopies – as usual you're mad at the wrong people. It was corporate America that busted your unions and didn't keep your pay up to the cost of living, causing your wife to have to go back to work, and Esmerelda having to come in and watch the kids."

"That's the problem with our obsessions: to always see two sides of every issue equally, especially when one side has a lot of money. It means we have to pretend there are always two two truths, and the side that doesn't know anything has something to say. On this side of the debate: every scientist in the world. On the other: Mr. Potato-Head. There is no debate here; it's just scientists and non-scientists, and since the topic is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote. We shouldn't decide everything by polling the masses. This is the fallacy argumentum ad numerum, the idea that something is true because great numbers believe it, as in "Eat shit. 20 trillion flies can't be wrong.""

"The last decade, year, and month are all the hottest on record. And then there's the floods, the killing of the oceans, Category 5 hurricanes, giant wildfires, the vanishing water supply; you know, the little things. And yet deniers say "It's just a theory." As is gravity. Y'know, for progress to happen, certain things have to become not an issue anymore so we can go on to the next issue. Evolutions was an issue until overwhelming support among scientists made it not an issue. Devastating worldwide climate change is happening, whether you phone in for it or not. You can't vote for rain. What's real is what's real, and, like it or not, no one can change the nature of reality. Except with mushrooms and Pabst Blue Ribbon."

"I think people get hung up on the word "religion." Hitlerism, Stalinism, Maoism were state religions. Hirohito in Japan was a god-like figure. The real crux of it is, anytime people give up on logic and put their faith in someone– Kim Jong-il in North Korea, the mythology around him...they said the first time he played golf he had eleven holes-in-one. That's religion!"

"If you think Michelle Obama is after your freedom because she merely suggests our kids should exercise more and eat a little broccoli along with their lard, you don't deserve a place in the free market of ideas, you belong at The Cheesecake Factory. She's not Stalin because she notices your kids sweat Mountain Dew....Now I'm not saying the right objects to Mrs. Obama's efforts because the Teabaggers are stupid, or their hysterical, or because they hate black people, though all of that is true...but what does it say about America when even a First Lady's suggestion has to be controversial? Especially when she picked something no one could disagree with – maybe we should send our kids outside to play."

"We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same; like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode, and that the candy will rain down on the rest of us; like they're some kind of piñata of benevolence. But here's the thing about a piñata – it doesn't open on its own, you have to beat it with a stick."

"Now that it's become clear that Republicans, the fiscally-conservative, strong-on-defense party are neither fiscally conservative nor strong on defense, they have to tell us what exactly it is they're good at. Because it's not defense: 9/11 happened on your watch; and you retaliated by attacking the wrong country; and you lost a ten-year game of hide-and-seek with Osama bin Laden; and you're responsible for running up most of the debt, which more than anything makes us weak. You're supposed to be the party with the killer instinct. But it was a Democrat who put a bomb in Gaddafi's bedroom and a bullet in bin Laden's eye like Moe Green."

"[the perfect Republican candidate] A candidate who will meet these criteria: a) Never compromise on anything or ever work with the Democrats; b) Always treat Obama like he's some mysterious black guy who showed up uninvited at your country club...President Bagger Vance; and c) Never admit that government is useful for anything; the government is always like Snooky's vagina – it's too big, it services too many people, and nothing good will ever come out of it."

"Every election roughly half the population votes Democrat and the other half votes Republican. Now I understand why the Republicans get one percent of the vote – the richest one percent. That other 49% someone will have to explain to me. The facts about what the Republicans have done to the middle class are beyond reasonable doubt, and yet their base refuses to see it. The monied elite in America are dragging a bag filled with your future down the steps, and your reaction is "Hold on there, that looks heavy. Let me give you a hand getting it into your trunk.""

"Is it really that radical to suggest slightly trimming the tax break on corporate jets? It seems like a reasonable idea, given that, a) people who buy corporate jets are filthy rich, and b) I DON'T NEED A B!"

"Bush said his tax cut for the rich would create jobs. They didn't. We're now being told that if multinational corporations bring home their current overseas profits of $1.4 trillion, they'll only be taxed 5% on it...because we're told it will create jobs. It won't, just like it didn't the last time we tried it in 2004. Companies took the savings and paid it out to themselves in dividends. Yes, Republican base, you are just like that jury – it is pathetically clear who is killing the middle class, but you keep letting them get away with murder."

"We can't throw around the word "sexist" just to stop people like me from pointing out that Michelle Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, isn't a dangerous nincompoop. And when I point out that Sarah Palin is a vainglorious braggart, a liar, a whiner, a professional victim, a scold, a know-it-all, a chisler; a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos straight out of The Hills Have Eyes...that's not sexist. I'm saying it because it's true, not because it's true of a woman."

"I'm not really rich. I'm something far more noble I'm a job creator. [Heavenly chorus] Sort of the same way Patagonian tooth-fish became Chilean sea-bass. [chorus] But y'know what, just by suggesting, just by bringing it up, that he is going to tax me more, Comrade Obama has created an atmosphere of uncertainty that makes me skittish about creating more jobs, yeah, I have been so freaked out that today at breakfast I could barely butter my gold. You see, you poor people, you don't get how much "uncertainty" gives us job creators the willies. It's terrifying...like when you find out your private island has natives; or when your wife notices the maid's kid looks just like you; or when the limo driver tries to start a conversation. So tax me at a higher rate if you like, you're practically firing yourselves. Because I'll tell you something, I have been so shitting in my pants about this uncertainty thing, that yesterday I let go a dozen essential workers at my compound, including my Tivo programmer, my manscaper, the liposuctionist, my gardener's personal trainer, my dog whisperer, the lookalike I hired to foil assassination attempts, my private farmer, the lady who dispenses hand sanitizer after our pre-show prayer circle, the girl I pay to mistake me for Jon Hamm, and the guy who takes care of the shark tank. Which reminds me, I'm gonna have to let go two sharks!"

"Since the economy won't come back until we start buying stuff, and the only stuff Americans buy is anything from Apple or guns...Apple has to make a gun. Call it the iKillyou. Although if you want to get it to NRA members you probably can't sell it at the Genius Bar."

"Blacks who kill whites are sixteen times more likely to be executed than whites who kill blacks; black unemployment is 17%, white unemployment is 8%; the median wealth of white households is twenty times that of black households; 39% of black children live in poverty, and the rest with Angelina Jolie. And what is the Republican solution to these outrageous inequalities? There isn't one, and that's the point. Denying racism is the new racism. To not acknowledge those statistics; to think of that as a black problem and not an American problem; to believe, as a majority of Fox viewers do, that reverse racism is a bigger problem than racism racism – that's racist!"

"Mormonism is just the silly end of a larger problem, which is that religion itself is a con, and it's a con that you pull on your own mind. It's not unfair to ask serious candidate Mitt Romney if he really believes that Joseph Smith received golden plates from an angel in 1823 and translated them into "scripture" that contains not a single person or place name that has been shown to ever exist. Are you too gullible to be president if you believe in a world full of characters who appear in the historical record exactly as often as leprechauns?"

"I get it, you're bitter because we fought a culture war in the '60s and the right lost. Rick Santorum is like that Japanese soldier on the island who doesn't know the war is over, so he's still fighting against birth control and butt sex. Plus, Republicans are now mostly a southern party, and if there's one thing southerners don't do well it's lose a war and get over it."

"The kids are on drugs all right, the problem is they're on the wrong drugs. They're on a combination of processed sugar so they can be mini coke fiends, and mind-narrowing pharmaceutical crap like Ritalin that doesn't open up their minds, it levels and controls them. These drugs are all about keeping rowdy children in check, or, as we used to call it, parenting."

"Adderall is the drug of choice these days on campus. Oh, what fun! I don't know what I'd enjoy more – the extremely focused parties, or the highly detail-oriented sex."

"When Steve Jobs was young, the drug of choice was acid. And Jobs told his biographer that dropping acid as a young man was one of the best things he ever did, because, when he took it with his girlfriend, the wheat fields started playing Bach. Which is pretty unbelievable. A computer nerd had a girlfriend?! Now maybe there is no connection between LSD and genius, but it's something no great American ever said about a Kit-Kat bar. If it weren't for acid, you might not have an iPod, and you definitely wouldn't have some of the best music in your iPod."

"In a study from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine last month, scientists found that a single dose of psilocybin, which is the drug in magic mushrooms, created a "long-term positive personality change in most patients." People improved in the areas of sensitivity, imagination, and broad-minded tolerance of others. In pharmaceutical speak, psilocybin is known an "asshole inhibitor.""

"Some one needs to explain to the Republicans that Ebeneezer Scrooge is supposed to be the bad guy. And before conservatives start whining about another "war on Christmas", they must admit they hate everything about Christmas; because brotherhood, good will toward men, and especially charity make their skin crawl. This week Michelle Bachmann proposed cutting huge holes in the federal safety net, demonstrating a total misunderstanding of the concept of a net. Here's what she said:"

"The other big political event that happened in December was there was a big fight in Washington over the payroll tax. After protecting hedge fund managers, oil companies and heiresses, Republicans proudly found a group they were willing to tax – employees. And somehow Obama was the one fighting to lower taxes, and the insanely anti-tax Republicans were the ones fighting to raise them, because, no matter what the issue, the prime directive is they can never agree with Obama. But Democrats swelled with pride when the president put his foot down and told Republicans, "It's your way or the highway.""

"There is a growing trend in this country that needs to be called out, and that is to label any evidence-based belief a religion. Many conservatives now say that belief in man-made climate change is a religion, and Darwinism is a religion, and, of course, atheism, the complete lack of religion, is somehow a religion too, according to the always reliable Encyclopedia Moronica. Now it's a dodge of course, straight out of the grand intellectual tradition of "I know you are, but what am I?" It's a way of saying, "Hey, we all believe in some sort of faith-based malarkey, so let's call it a push." No. No-no-no-no-no. It's not fair that people who can't defend their own nonsense get to create a fake fair-and-balanced argument, the way they do when asserting that evolution and creationism are equally valid. I'm not saying atheists are perfect thinkers; everyone has blind spots. I'm sure there are atheists who think a ponytail looks good on a man, and pineapple belongs on a pizza, and Ayn Rand was an important thinker; but when it comes to religion, we're not two sides of the same coin, and you don't get to put your un-reason up on the same shelf as my reason. Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus and Thor and the Kraken."

"[to Mitt Romney] There are not many issues where you have seen eye-to-eye with you. I mean, you like you as a person, but on policy it's gonna be kind of hard to bridge the gap between you and your stance on health care, immigration, gun control, abortion, climate change, campaign finance, Afghanistan, gay rights, space exploration, The Treaty of the Sea, Meghan's Law, the infield fly rule..."

"Could there ever be a better argument for a woman President than the fact that the members of the other party are arguing over their dick size?"

"But we owe ourselves, and the United States that we will pass off to our children, to re-learn the tools of reason, logic, clarity, dissent, civility, and debate. And those things are the non-partisan basis of democracy, and without them you can kiss this thing goodbye."

"Do you remember the '60s and '70s? You didn't have to go more than a week before there was an article in Life magazine – "The Home of Tomorrow", "The City of Tomorrow", "Transportation of Tomorrow". All that ended. In the 1970s, after we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming. And so I worry that decisions that Congress makes doesn't factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. Tomorrow's gone."

"There is no logical pathway that would lead you from atheism to do those terrible things. There is a logical pathway that would lead to that from a Christian religion or something like that, or from one of the state religions like Nazism, like Stalinism, and so on. You really can justify doing those awful things if you believe in something as strongly as religious people do. But nobody is going to go and kill for the sake of atheism. Why on Earth would you?"

"I like a good ass-fuck as much as the next guy. But that makes me gay? Come on!"

"We have to understand that we're fighting a war against people who think that they are engaged in a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. They believe that this is not an Earthly battle; this is a war between the forces of Christianity and the forces of Islam. We cannot legitimize that viewpoint by saying the exact same thing. We're not going to out-fanaticize these fanatics."

"The only voices...religious voices...that we hear often in the media are the voices of condemnation and separation. And if religion is not a bridge instead of a wedge; if it isn't about inclusiveness of other people's views, not just that they have our view, it's gonna separate us, and it's going to destroy us."

"Jay Harrington - Ted Crisp"

"Portia de Rossi - Veronica Palmer"

"Andrea Anders - Linda Zwordling"

"Jonathan Slavin - Phil Myman"

"Malcolm Barrett - Lem Hewitt"

"Isabella Acres - Rose Crisp"

"Bottoms up!"

"Get vertical!"

"Straighten your spines!"

"Stand, ye rand!"

"Raise your rumps!"

"Make with the rising!"

"Court dismissed! Bring in the Dancing Lobsters!"

"My name's Amanda, and...'."

"Stick around; we'll be back in a second to do stuff!"

"Well, that's our show. I gotta go...'. See ya!"

"My name is Penelope Paynt. I'm Amanda's number one fan. I have my very own Amanda website: www.AmandaPlease.com."

"Where's Amanda?"

"From his garage, it's Totally Kyle!"

"That was Totally Kyle!"

"Debbie: I like eggs!"

"Judge Trudy: ' Court dismissed! Bring in the Dancing Lobsters!"

"Tina: Hi, and welcome back to "So You Wanna Win $5?""

"Tony's assistant: Tony! It's the Al Dente Brothers!"