Say What? November 22, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Occupy Portland attendee: “F__ the police…The police are a government-run gang; they’re there to protect the hidden political interests of the politicians, period.”

Nancy Pelosi: “but the truth is what I said. I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it …but they have this conscience thing”

Say What? November 15, 2011 edition [Reader Post]

President Obama: “The way I think about it is, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.  We need to get back on track.”

President Obama: “Instead of working to boost our economy, they’re out there spending time trying to defund Planned Parenthood and prevent millions of women from getting basic health care that they desperately need – pap smears and breast exams.”

President Obama on retaining the Hispanic vote: “I don’t think it requires us to go negative in the sense of us running a bunch of ads that are false, or character assassinations.   We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim.  We won’t even comment on them, we’ll just run those in a loop on Univision and Telemundo, and people can make up their own minds,”

Say What? November 7, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “I think it’s really important to know that President Obama was a job creator from day one.  Now, was the ditch that we were in so deep that when you’re talking to people and they still don’t have a job, that that’s any consolation to them?  No.  But I’ll tell you this, if President Obama and the House congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment. Again, no consolation to those without a job, but an important point to make.”

Say What? October 12, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Vice President Joe Biden: “There’s a lot of people in Florida that have good reason to be upset because they’ve lost jobs, even though 50 some percent of the American people think the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is, we’re in charge. And right now, we are the ones in charge, and it’s gotten better but it hasn’t gotten good enough. And in states like Florida it’s even been more stagnant because of the real estate market. And so I don’t blame them for being mad. We’re in charge, so they’re angry.”

Joe Biden: “We are in charge. We have turned it [the economy] around.”

Joe Biden, answering a question to a class of 5th graders: “Because things got really bad before we came into office and an awful lot of companies said `there’s no more jobs for you here.'”

Say What? 8/24/2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Chris Matthews: “Aren’t you worried, though, that in a world where we have to compete with science, in science and technology with Chinese and Indian young geniuses, and some of them move here, and some that are still over in their countries around the world, we’re competing in a world of science and technology to be a country that might be led by someone who doesn’t believe in evolution? Who doesn’t believe in climate change? Who doesn’t believe in the scientific community of his own country, the National Academy of Science, for example, on climate change? Wouldn’t that be kind of scary to have somebody who is so anti-intellectual as president?”

Say What? June 28, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Attorney General Eric Holder:  “[the courts are the nation’s] most effective terror-fighting weapon.”

Van Jones (to Glenn Beck and FoxNews): “We see the effects of your cynicism and your disrespect and your hate-mongering and it’s not just immoral, it’s un-American to abuse the airwaves and to abuse the ears of our children with your lies and your filth and we’re tired of it….You’re not America.”

Say What? 3/29/2011 Edition [Reader Post]

Barbara Boxer, who (eventually) vehemently opposed us going to war in Iraq, recently said of Obama going into Libya: “This is different; you’re facing a dictator who vowed…to destroy his own people.”

Bill Moyers: “{NPR is] independent reporting that toes neither party nor ideological line. We’ve heard no NPR reporter — not a one — advocating on the air for more government spending (or less), for the right of abortion (or against it), for or against gay marriage, or for or against either political party, especially compared to what we hear from Fox News and talk radio on all of these issues and more.

Say What? 3/14/2011 edition [Reader Post]

News reporter Chris Matthews on the Japan disaster: “Was this sort of a good opportunity for the President to remind everybody that he grew up in the United States and Hawaii?  That’s the first thing that I thought of.”

Senate leader Harry Reid on the Republicans budget which cuts too much from the budget: “The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1, eliminates National Public Broadcasting.  It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

Say What? February 16, 2011 edition [Reader Post]

Chris Matthews: “You know, gentlemen, I’m a little bit jubilant right now, a little bit frisky so I’ll say something that will bother people…In a way it’s like it took Obama to have this [the revolution in Egypt] happen, or it’s just so serendipitous.”

Bill Maher: “I think he’s [Obama] a centrist the way he’s a Christian…he’s pretending to be a centrist.”