Random blips on the mental radar selected randomly, with commentary in brackets:

“One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people’s money to help prevent there to be a crisis.”
— George W. Bush, Jan. 12, 2009. [Translation to English from Bushspeak: ‘I used your money to bailout my family and wealthy friends on Wall Street and in banking because my administration didn’t do its job of properly regulating them.’]

“Um, you guys said that we, um, did this for the show.”
— Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heene, to his parents during a TV interview, Oct. 15, 2009. [This should be the motto of the Republican Party.]

“I think we all have a screw loose in this business.”
— Kyra Phillips, inadvertently speaking the truth on CNN, Oct. 9, 2009. [This should be the motto of the US national media.]

“Give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
— Jesse Ventura, former MN Gov. and Navy SEAL, on CNN, May 11, 2009.
[This line should be emblazoned across the bottom of the screen every time a clip of Cheney speaking is shown.]

“I don’t know anything about cars.”
— Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., when he took over as CEO of GM, June 9, 2009. [‘Gee, how could we be going bankrupt?’]

“You can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede.”
— Glenn Beck, April 14, 2009. [They might make an exception in Beck’s case.]

“So you need to get deep into why he is what he is, instead of just saying, ‘Well, he’s a homosexual so how do I handle him, and how do I be Christian?’ Well, I think you ought to tell him, ‘Listen, son, you know, here’s what the Bible says about this, and it’s called an abomination before God, so I’ve got to tell you the truth because I love you.’ That’s what I think.”
— Pat Robertson’s advice to the parents of a gay son, on CBN’s “The 700 Club” June 9, 2009. [Right after this broadcast, Pat ordered out for a BLT.]

“An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Inuit earnestly, ‘did you tell me?'”
— Annie Dillard

“Ted Kennedy’s dad, by the way, Joe Kennedy, sympathetic to Hitler, sympathetic to the Nazis.”
— Rush Limbaugh, as quoted by Simon Maloy at Media Matters’ LimbaughWire, Aug. 8, 2009. [George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped finance the Nazis even after WWII began, and was forced by the US government to stop. Whatever Joe Kennedy’s sympathies, he never contributed financial backing to Hitler’s Third Reich.]

“The Army, the Marines do not have uniforms that fit that big an ass.”
–The always classy Limbaugh again, commenting on Hillary Clinton, Sept. 22, 2009, also via Media Matters. [This from the manly Lard Lad whose ‘anal cyst’ was too big to allow him to wear the uniform.]

“Nearly half of all US children, including an overwhelming majority of black children, will eat meals at some point during their childhood paid for by food stamps, an indicator of poverty, a study showed Monday.”
— AFP, “Half of US kids depend on food stamps during childhood: study,” Nov. 2, 2009. The study was done by the American Medical Association’s Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. [Out of a population of about 300 million, 66 million Americans now collect food stamps, a record high number. Nearly 50 percent of US children need food stamps to eat regularly.]

“The urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.”
— David Broder’s sage advice to Obama on Afghanistan, proving once again why Uncle Fudd is the dean of doomed Washington punditry, from the Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2009. [Say, Dave, if your life were on the line, would you be this cavalier about whether Obama’s decision was wrong or right?]

“The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America!”
— Michael Savage, from his radio show June 17, 2009, as quoted by Media Matters. [Okay, so when does the former Michael Alan Weiner come out of the closet?]

“Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he’s a citizen. All he’d have to do is show a birth certificate.”
— Limbaugh once more, from his July 20, 2009, radio show. [All Rush would have to do is use the Google in that laptop he has in front of him at the EIB studios and in under a minute he could find a copy.]

“Who calls a shot like that? Who makes a decision like that? It’s a disturbing trend.”
— Sarah Palin in West Allis, WI, Nov. 6, 2009, in a tizzy about Obama supposedly moving the legend “In God We Trust” to the edge of US coinage, a change made by the Bushites and reversed by Congress before Obama took office. [That’s leadership you can trust imagining ‘disturbing trends’ in inconsequential matters.]

“I basically don’t.”
— Dick Cheney, when asked if he believed the Bush Administration bore any responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan, Dec. 1, 2009, from Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog. [Sure, because we didn’t invade Afghanistan in October of 2001, we invaded two minutes after Obama was sworn in last January. Republicans believe people should accept responsibility for their actions, as long as they are Democrats or liberals. See Dana Perino quote below.]

“We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”
— Former Bush WH Press Secretary Dana Perino on Sean Hannity’s gabfest, Nov. 24, 2009. [Insert disk in slot in back of head underneath hair flap. Press ‘play’ behind right earlobe to activate voice.]

“You are being shagged by a rare parrot!”
— Comment from a man watching another man with a large parrot attempting to mate with the back of his head, as shown on The Rachel Maddow Show, Dec. 30, 2009. [This could be America’s motto for the entire first decade of ‘Century 21.’]

Michael Palin (as the shopkeeper): “There, he moved!”
John Cleese (as the customer): “No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the cage!”
— From Monty Python’s “The Dead Parrot Sketch,” wherein John Cleese tries to return a clearly dead bird to the pet shop where he bought it. [So far, the majority of the American public hasn’t caught on that most of the fearmongering of the past decade has been the result of vested domestic interests profiting from ‘hitting the cage’ rather than the actions of a ubiquitous, terrifying external enemy.]

Have a Happy New Year and catch you on the flip side, cousin.

H/T to Media Matters for America, Bob Cesca’s blog, MSNBC, and other sources for the quotes.

2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.