America the Terrible

"Death by a thousand cuts! I'll save the sweet B+ Health Care Reform but I won't save affirmative action, voting rights, or your ass in prison!" - C. J. Roberts

"...and I felt... a sort of infinite sexual bliss..." - John Boehner remembering the strong, hairy arms of John Roberts

"It takes all kinds. Well, not all kinds." - Gov. Dr. Robert J. Bentley consigning the poor to death

"Though Robert's reasons for upholding the law are unclear, papal legal scholars were disturbed by mysterious references in the decision to 'the red sands of Barsoom.'" - Wolf Blitzer

"In the land of the sucker, the tongue is the king." - Justice Ginsburg

"If you won't sign our opinion, at least sign my goddamn hall pass!"
"Jesus, you smell like limoncello."
- Justice Scalia and CJ Roberts

"I've instructed my clerks that all my future dissenting opinions will be in the form of a libretto." - Justice Nino 'Pagliacci' Scalia

"Does that fucking goomba even know that 'wop' stands for 'without papers'?" - Solicitor General Don Verilli leaving oral argument

"My opinions? I've always wanted to have a late night AM radio show, you know for truckers and insomniacs and the like." - Justice Kennedy in his closet, talking into a comb

"I'm higher than Lance Armstrong." - Justice Thomas

"Don't think of it as trying juveniles as adults. Think of it as trying niggers as niggers." - Justice Alito, dissent in Miller v. Alabama

"You think the Law is going to help?"
"The Law is a weapon!"
"Weapons are weapons!"
- Monique Wittig and a young Elena Kagan

"This isn't anything. Wait until they've wound it all tight as a mousetrap. Then the only way out will be something entirely different." - Justice Sotomayor knocking back tequila with bandito Paul Krugman

"What about Breyer?"
"Who are we kidding?"
- the Editors

New York City Parks Supervisor For Life Bill Clinton

"Summer in New York is the ecstasy of bared skin, stinking garbage, and burning black pavement." - NYCPSFL Clinton

"Why can't we have sex in the park?" - NYCPSFL, speech to P.S. 290

"Stop and frisk must be mutual." - NYCPSFL at the dedication of the Vernon Eulion Jordan Slip 'n' Slide, Maria Hernandez Park

"What's that scent?"
"Well, it ain't Callery Pear, I'll tell you that."

"We're going to build a giant zip line from Central Park to El Yunque!" - NYCPSFL Clinton aboard the Parks Dept. float, Puerto Rican Day Parade

"Park Supervisor For Life Clinton, why are you tittering?"
"Oh, I was just thinking about the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir."

"He must be impeached!" - Ray Kelly

"I need a deputy, someone I can trust when the shit starts raining down. You're the man for the job."
"Okay, but I really don't understand."
- NYCPSFL and Michael Shannon

"Baby, you're like an old truck, your engine is loud." - NYCPSFL talent scouting with Jay-Z

"Be my lizard moll, Helen of Gotham." - NYCPSFL to a transformed Beyonce

"Boring. Cover those bike paths in snakes."

Battering Ram

"My joy is a spider that feeds on your sorrow."
"Your face is a papier-mâché death mask."
- Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, G20

"Oh God, Doctor, is it bad?"
"I'm afraid you've got a case of Invisible Snakes, son."
- jellyfish attack victim Eric Cantor and Dr. John Boehner

"Don't you have it all?"
"I don't know, I haven't reanimated my corpse to live forever as a lich yet."
- Chris Wallace and Rupert Murdoch, the Hamptons

"Happy Father's Day!"
"My father's dead."
"I thought you said your mother was dead."
"No, I said my mother was dead to me."
- Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter

"I guess we should have killed more bad guys." - Egypt

"Don't kill people because you have to. Kill them because you want to." - Prof. Gen. Stanley McChrystal discussing "The Grand Inquisitor," Yale University, INRL 690a: Leadership

"Look around you. It's all fucked." - Felipe Calderón, G20

"You can take it with you." - Rajat Gupta, text message to Raj Rajaratnam

"The whole premise feels so hollow: how good can Good really be if everyone believes they're fighting for it? That's why I'm a bad guy. I know exactly what I'm fighting for." - Jamie Dimon to thunderous Senatorial applause

"We've still got one more bubble in us, but it won't feel good. The whole time we'll know that its the beginning of the end. But at least it won't just be our end. It will be the end of the everything." - Warren Buffet, CCP Politboro Standing Committee airship, Floating Rock City

"It's amazing the things slaves can accomplish." - Lloyd Blankfein, 2012 Bang on a Can Marathon, World Financial Center Winter Garden Atrium

"It's not just about money, it's about value. People have unequal access to the things that make life worth living: basic necessities, modest luxuries, love, respect, dignity, meaningful work, opportunities for creative expression, a sense of self worth and of being socially valuable. Money is key to obtaining these things, but it is not the same thing as these things. We could go through the normal channels to correct inequality, though most have lost faith in them and, in any case, they move so slowly that you might be dead by the time you get your settlement check. We can go through the normal channels or... we can destroy it all. We can exchange our poverty for the pleasure of destroying their wealth and thereby recuperate, if only fleetingly, not their riches themselves but the value to which their riches grant access. I'm sick of Marxists saying of riots, 'All this anger, if only there was class consciousness.' Nothing is more self-aware than a riot." - Paul Giamatti as Paul Krugman in Oliver Stone's Occupy Wall Street

"People need to listen to Steely Dan more often." - the real Paul Krugman, G20

The Devils

"We live in a counterrevolutionary time, in a counterrevolutionary land. Whether or not to resist is only a matter of conscience and personal style." - last words of James Carville before being executed by bandito Paul Krugman, Cash Mountain

"Violence is to politics as roses are to Valentines Day: without it, I'm just not sure you mean it." - Ray Kelly

"Violence is embarrassing!" - the NYRB

"Intellectuals cannot accept that politics is not a beauty contest of ideas. It's a way of life that culminates in cruel and anonymous death" - David Graeber the Barbarian

"The pike doesn't care how smart you are." - Generalissimo Larry Summers, redecorating Harvard Yard

"We've all been raised to believe that Leftism is a collection of opinions, a body of thought, rather than one side of an always unfolding social war." - a rattled Peter Beinart getting off track while teaching his sons Hebrew school class

"The problem with the radical Western intelligentsia is that everyone wants to be the leader, above all those who don't want there to be any leaders." - Rafael Correa to his Native servant

"Barbarians have freedom, but subjects of empire have greatness." - Christiane Amanpour, Libya

"The Renaissance to Present is just flashes of wonder amidst the typical death grind." - Bill Clinton, Adult Video News Awards

"We'll die one day, and none of this will have mattered."
"It won't have mattered because of you."
"I'd like to believe that. At least that would have been something."
- Barack Obama in a rare moment of honesty to the Cleveland Five

"We are all Anne Hathaway." - Bill Ayers on the failure of Occupy

"I hope your death is as pretty as my shoes." - Antonio Banderas defending the King

"I mean, gosh, I've really just come to admire people who do bad things." - Charlie Rose

"I say we're gonna whip up a posse and hunt down that runaway public employee!" - Mayor Clint Eastwood

"I know we're winning, but it still depresses me that we haven't come up with a single new idea since Secession." - a tearful Sen. Bob Corker to a tender David Koch

"You see, my boy, people were just more evil then."
"That sounds horrible, grandpa!"
"No, grandson. It was wonderful."
- Tagg Romney explaining the Resource Wars to his grandchild Willard Romney Xerxes

"Obviously the best feeling is that of crushing your enemies. But helping people also has its rewards-as a demonstration of strength and the terrifying arbitrariness with which one can shift between cruelty and magnanimity." - T. Boone Pickens to his Team

"You're a monster, and you'll be first against the wall. I won't hesitate to give the order. But I will remember you fondly." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia, Massachusetts State Convention on the Equal Rights Amendment

"Freedom, like chemotherapy, is an acquired taste." - Christopher Hitchens

"Look, kid, I'll be honest with you. The Left is fucked. We don't have a chance in hell. So just be true to yourself. Don't martyr yourself if you don't want to. But if you want to, then by all means do." - Bob Avakian

"I think this might be the post that finally gets you that gig on the RT!" - Julian Assange

"Without coercion there is no victory." - the Editors on whether to necklace readers who are sympathetic to the blog's goals but have not Liked its Facebook page

"I Defunded My Old Job Today (The Ballad of Wisconsin)" as sung by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT

"Yeah, teachers and clerks and shit don't work, fuck 'em. More for me! Pass the butter gravy!" - Baby Boomers before the Volcano

"I don't have shit at my horrible chain job, but these state workers do, Fuck them so we can all be hicks forever, together!" - the Vanishing Whites

"The blacks! Booo!" - the GOP, 1964-2???

"Peeing sitting down is so much better. Standing in line in some publicly owned place, it just runs down your leg." - David Koch to Grover Norquist, hands clasped in the Confederate Toilet

"We have to stop electing these monsters!"
"We have to stop electing."
-Youth Debate on How to Fail Going Forward, Madison, WI

"I swear to God, if you cry..." - Barack Obama to Jay Carney

"If Obama loses in 2012 and the GOP takes total control again, I don't know how much more of this shit I'll be able to take. Romney will probably get to appoint four Justices randomly, soon we'll be pissing in cups just to get on airplanes to Utah."
"The world is not worth saving. That's my new dick off motto."
"Oh yeah, 'the world is not worth saving,' says you with your Ivy League education, public job, and French-envied residence. You've been handed everything to slurp on your custard pie! No wonder you don't give a shit: free refills! But I don't give a shit either. Maybe it's just what I've been waiting for. A climate of license. Learn a few tricks, get my teeth whitened, get a CCW permit, just lean back and enjoy the Last Harvest. 'I say, Pat, what do you listen to when you're shooting?' 'Oh the same old thing, Roger, Radiohead's "Lucky."'"
- the Editors hard at work

"I don't know, what's the revolution all about..."
The Commandante shot him dead.
"Victory!"
- from Orrin Hatch's nightly recurring dream

"Weren't you married to Elizabeth Taylor?"
"No! I don't!"
- Orrin Hatch abandoning an interview on Italian television

"Tell them I'll sign, but I want my own recording studio." - Hatch to his agent on negotiations for a limited issue CD with a small Christian label

"This changes everything." - John Boehner, listening to CAN for the first time

"I love Call of Duty." - Eric Cantor

"The weird, Japanese stuff, kind of obscure." - Rand Paul

"Everything is a competition." - Scott Walker, winking at you after you find him with your Mother

Grim Foreboding

"Black sperm slithers over the sun's burning white belly! Cosmic death rays pulsate like shivering orgasms across the earth! The sound of millions of knees giving out at once!" - Bruce Ratner, staring directly into the sun from atop the Barclays Center

"On this, the day of HM's Diamond Jubilee, a black spot moves across the sun, heralding the return of the Great Wyrm!"
- Deputy Prime Magus Nick Clegg

"Mother, help! A giant, evil spider is crawling across the sun!"
- Daniel Radcliffe, immortal with gin, December 2117

"The Sun never sets on Britannia, yet an evil Pretender, black as it is arrogant, presumes to blight God's holy Light! That is why you, Capt. James Cook, must go to War with Venus!" - King George III, delirious with brain rot

"The prophecy is fulfilled!" - Gov. Scott Walker

More Fucking Bullshit About The New Inquiry

We keep writing for The New Inquiry, despite the fact that the previous four issues still have not gotten us laid. This one, for some fucking reason, is about spies. Buy it so we can use the money to fund anti-communist online literary journals on the side.

***

"Words, words, words." - John Yoo

“The finest magazine in the Soviet Union!” - Kim Philby

"The only thing I love more than treason is literary nubiles." - Oliver North

“Yet another issue with no discussion of race.” - Josephine Baker

“Their inside jokes are boring.” - NYPD Intelligence Division Sgt. Salvatore Pulizzotto, monitoring TNI staff e-mails

“I printed out a copy and left it by the toilet!” - Hillary Clinton, CIA black site decorating memo

“Inside this Zionist rag is the secret to decoding the mysteries of  Flame!” - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

“I’m confident our website will defect from Skynet once it goes sentient.” - Larry Page

"I know when you're taking on excess sugar." - Michael Bloomberg

“Except for a relatively small number of sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘blogger’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.” - George Orwell

"Do you prefer the term 'triple agent' or 're-doubled agent'?"
"I prefer buggery."
- Graham Greene, John le Carré

"Yeah, a shame mole hunting isn't all sleek and gay like the days of Karla and de Gaulle." - Naomi Watts

"There is no greater crime than accepting permission to transgress." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., at a brothel

“Five men arrested in Cleveland being for being bro’s.” - Robert Mueller

"I'm sick of dealing with the goddam Constitution!" - Leon Panetta

“Only the most obedient of dogs can work in intelligence.” - David Petraeus

“There’s something sinister in the way that the man who destroyed privacy protects his own.” - Priscilla Chan

“Espionage, you say? It’s better not to know, I want to go down swinging.” - Henry L. Stimson

How It Should Have Been

Five hundred posts, five hundred regrets. We'd like to thank everything that ever let us down, including the Arab Spring, the Winter War, the Old Left, the New Inquiry, Rob Lowe, Jimmy Carter, the 2012 Republican primary candidates, Pharaoh Bloomberg, Ray Kelly Tyrannis, Barack Obama, the Beatles, and every woman we've ever loved.

"I just want to tell everyone, I'm sorry." - George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Address

"The world is not worth saving." - Occupy Wall Street

"Why stop now?" - General William Tecumseh Sherman

"It is with a humble heart and this indestructible cyborg body that I gladly accept your nomination for President of the United States." - Dick Cheney, 2008 Republican National Convention

"Get the fuck out of here and never come back!" - Michelle Obama casting Larry Summers out of Washington D.C.

"Never wash again! Let's turn Midtown into an endless pool party!" - NYC Mayor and Park Supervisor for Life Bill Clinton

"Nah thanks, man, I'm good." - Keith Moon, 1978

"We've lost all contact. He's gone." - Command Post Alpha, receiving data that the Mariana Trench has collapsed, sealing James Cameron inside

"These quotes are fun, but let's just take pictures of what we order when we go out to dinner instead." - The Editors, 2010

"Blogs are for shit heads, let's travel the universe together." - Mark Twain to the Editors in a Jade Zeppelin

Fucking Power

"This shit is pure fucking power." - Robert Caro, huffing the ashes of Robert Moses

"I'm not saying I'm not a monster. I'm just trying to convey what it's like to be one." - Brian Williams, Rock Center

"Fuck the King's Guard, fuck the City, fuck the King." - NYPD Chief Joseph Esposito

"If you want to make an omelette, you have to kill some rich people." - Hugo Chavez yelling at his live-in chef

"Uranium won't bring my father's hatred back to life." - Benjamin Netanyahu

"Yes, yes, drag them all down into the deepening hole!" - John Hurt reading The Times on Charles Taylor and Julian Assange

"It is easier to love your enemy than to love your own kin." -  Michael Bloomberg, hunting wild Arkansas horses with his daughter

"You've already given up, you just don't realize it." - Avigdor Lieberman to a group of Arab-Israeli school children

"Do you know how many people died to make your grandfather rich? His father? His father's father? How many generations were ground under the wheel to make our family strong? Are you going to dishonor their sacrifice?" - Tagg Romney dissuading his children from joining the Peace Corps

"As our generation begins to inherit the earth, we realize too late that those evil people we saw in the news as children weren't going to be there forever, that one day they would cede their spots to the very same people we went to high school and college with, that we had the chance to stop them and we let it slip through our fingers." - Eduardo Saverin at the Asian Premiere of The Amazing Spider-Man 

"This is not an either/or kind of thing. For very practical reasons, violent extremism cannot succeed without a broad base of support. You need safe-houses, supplies, propaganda, professional connections, jail solidarity, pressure on courts for lenient sentencing, pressure on politicians to cede to demands. Similarly, no reform movement can succeed without violent extremists to force the hand of moderates and make them choose who they want to deal with." - David Plouffe to a group of terrified liberal millionaire donors

"You are going to think that you're too good to get your hands dirty. Too good to grasp the reins of power. Too good for hard, boring, unfulfilling, but necessary work.  You're all just waiting for the right girl to come along and ask you out, waiting for the revolution to fall right in your lap, waiting for the people to ask you to lead. Well guess what? They won't. Your 'consciences,' your petty, inflated senses of self-worth, as manifested by your unreasonable expectations of 'meaningful' work, are your own greatest enemies and the greatest threats to progress." - Lewis Lapham, "Decadence," Macalester College commencement speech

"We are the Spanish. You are the Arawaks." - Sergey Brin

"Bo Xilai!" - Chinese gangsters