Waterboarding, U.S.A.

Great Political Quotes

"In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes." Adlai Stevenson

"The President has kept all the promises he intended to keep." Clinton aide George Stephanopolous

"The Internet is a gateway to get on the net." Bob Dole

"I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming." Jimmy Carter

"I have orders to be awakened at any time in the case of a national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting." Ronald Reagan

"It's no exaggeration to say that the undecided could go one way or another." George Bush

"I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say." Richard Nixon

"I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them." George Bush

"Politics is supposed be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." Ronald Reagan

"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans." Ronald Reagan

"I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon." Ronald Reagan

"When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." Richard Nixon

"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law." David Dinkins, New York City Mayor

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." Hillary Clinton

"You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." Al Capone

"You'll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks." Robin Williams

"Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in." Harry S. Truman

"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago." Dan Quayle

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese." Charles de Gaulle

"Traditionally most of Australia's imports come from overseas." Keppel Enderbery

"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice." Otto Von Bismark

"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed." Lenin

"The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people." James Rado

"We expect the Salvadorean officials to work towards the extermination of human rights." Dan Quayle

"Chamberlain seemed such a nice old gentleman that I thought I would give him my autograph." Adolf Hitler

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied." Otto Von Bismark

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." Robert Byrne

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people." Oscar Wilde

"I do not belong to any organized political party: I'm a democrat." Will Rogers

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." John Galbraith

"A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism in to dogmatism is an inability to respect those who disagree." Dr. Leonard George

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." Justice William O. Douglas

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too." Heinrich Heine, a German-Jewish poet

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination." Mark Twain

"Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'" Lenny Bruce

A Guide To Politics

Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

Pure socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

Bureaucratic socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

Pure communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

Russian communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

Singaporean democracy: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

Pure democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

Representative democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

American democracy: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate."

British democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Hong Kong capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the fung shiu is bad.

Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

Feminism: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

Political correctness: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

Counter culture: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Libertarianism: You have two cows. One has actually read the constitution, believes in it, and has some really good ideas about government. The cow runs for office, and while most people agree that the cow is the best candidate, nobody except the other cow votes for her because they think it would be "throwing their vote away."