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When you feel all this power, and this much fun, and the Internet in your hands, you’ll never want to go back. …. If there’s going to be a third category of device, it’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise it has no reason for being.
— Apple CEO Steve Jobs, touting the newly released iPad device, which he implies has a reason for being — to make money for Steve Jobs.
Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.’s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.’s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.’s that they will hand power to people with M.B.A.’s. Members of the ruling class love populism because they think it will help their section of the elite gain power.
— Columnist David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, on the perceived political power of populism.
It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.
— Joe Klein, in Time magazine, on the CNN poll released today that found that nearly three-fourths of Americans thought the $787 billion stimulus package was wasted, even though the largest single item in the package — $288 billion — is tax relief for 95 percent of the American public, and $275 billion was in grants and loans to states to prevent teacher layoffs and keep fire stations open.
The things he wanted to do weren’t going to be natural for continued public life anyway. He honestly cares about poverty.
— Elizabeth Edwards, in an interview with Politico, on her husband’s sex scandal and volunteer work in Haiti and El Salvador.
It was a classic case of everybody getting caught napping.
— White House adviser David Axelrod, in an interview with the New York Times, in a stunning admission on why Democrats lost the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race.
It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out. I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest, and, you know, you can’t blame them. But frankly, the fact is we inherited this mess and it’s becoming ours.
— Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-MA), quoted by Politico.
I think you can make a pretty good argument that health care might be dead.
— Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, on the status of health care reform legislation if Republicans win today’s special election in Massachusetts.
We were never ready… no one was prepared to defend her. Nobody knew anything.
— McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace, quoted by Politico, on the pick of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate.
Maybe when his helicopter lands in Queens next I can ask him.
— Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), quoted by Politico, referring to potential Senate candidate Harold Ford’s revelation in a New York Times interview that he has only seen New York City’s five boroughs from a helicopter.
The Daily Beast said the Q and A wasn’t just a bad moment for politician’s nascent campaign, but it also presented “a dystopic vision of the political future, a future in which the American overclass dispatches its young into the provinces armed with so much money that it doesn’t matter that they know nothing about the place they’re supposed to represent.”
I have no regret over calling Greenspan a political hack. Because he was. The things you heard me say about George Bush? You never heard me apologize about any of them. Because he was. What was I supposed to say? I called him a liar twice. Because he lied to me twice.
— Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), quoted in the New York Times Magazine.
