Old Fogey's Quotes for Friday

"Those payments have jumped almost 20 percent in 2006, to $220 billion, more than what is being spent on Medicaid or on the combined total for all federal income-support programs: unemployment compensation, food stamps, child nutrition programs and the earned-income tax credit."
Edmund Andrews, in NYT article, referring to interest payments on the national debt
Brighter ’06 Deficit Outlook, but Long Term Looks Grim
[Another great example of Republican economic logic. Much better to give our money to enriching Chinese investors than to enabling poor Americans to succeed]

''They will discuss the budget both as a short-term and as a long-term entitlement spending issue. And they will focus on financial markets and pro-growth tax policy.''
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, referring to the meeting of Bush with his economic advisers
Bush Huddles with Economic Team as Growth Slows
[Again those economic ideologues, uh, I mean geniuses are focusing on the real problem. See above]

''It's an obvious use of an insider position to further the best interest of a family member.''
Wendell Rawls Jr., acting executive director for the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, regarding Christopher Cannon, a Utah Republican, intervening on behalf of his lobbyist brother
Lawmaker Helped Brother's Lobby Clients
[When will reporters learn that this is a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists?]

"I was dumb."
Marylee McCallister, a mother of three who was a Republican for 42 years until this April, and voted for Bush because she believed his warnings that Kerry would weaken the nation.
Republicans Losing The 'Security Moms'
[Do I detect a new clarity on the public opinion horizon?]

"Would the product actually work? Would it help agents do their jobs? I don't think anyone on the SAIC side cared about that."
Matthew Patton, a programmer who worked on the contract for SAIC to provide a networked system for tracking criminal cases for the FBI
The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't: $170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System
[How many times does the government have to be ripped off before conservatives learn that contracting out the government is not the panacea they seem to believe? ]

"You know a politician is having a bad week when he spends it trying to convince people he's too unsophisticated to have possibly understood the racial slur he tossed at a man who happened to be armed with a video camera."
Eugene Robinson in WaPo editorial about Sen. Allen's macaca comment
The 'Real World' of Sen. Allen
[Republicans seem to be having a fair number of "bad weeks"]

"It's as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini 'Christian fascists,' implying that it is their religion, not resistance to transcendence, that is the root cause of the problem. "
David Ignatius, in WaPo editorial on Bush's reference to Islamic fascists
Are We Fighting 'Islamic Fascists'?
[For a nation of immigrants, we seem to resort to the us versus them mentality with regularity. See this and the above editorial for examples]