"If you think there is a vast climate conspiracy out to silence you, corrupting science and public discourse in order to accrue power, then why accept the result of an election? Why accept the findings of the IPCC or CSIRO, or the authority of the UN? And by extension, why engage with any criticism, which is ideologically motivated to begin with? It’s the ultimate political and intellectual cul-de-sac"

"The moral is clear. Republicans don’t have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic."

"Discipline! Those careless poor people, frittering away taxpayer dollars on heat! Don’t they know these are tough economic times?"

"The protests were accelerated by the heavy use of social-media web sites like Facebook and Twitter by Tunisia’s large cohort of educated young people, who used the Internet to call for demonstrations and to circulate videos of each successive clash."

"Probably you have a lot of other things on your mind. Like money. Me, I spent last year working on a piecework contract rather than for a salary. That meant I got stuck carrying a big credit-card balance for several months, while my payment was in a very slow pipeline. People were not very quick about paying money for things last year. I bring this up because while I was carrying that balance, I mixed up my credit card with my ATM card one time, and so accidentally I took out a cash advance, which had a higher interest rate than the regular balance. When I called the credit-card company to tell them I wanted to pay off that high-interest balance first, they said I couldn’t. They had buried it at the bottom of the whole stack of other money I owed them, and the only way to get to it was to shovel away the entire low-interest balance first. So until I finally got enough cash to pay off the full balance, that cash advance just sat there, bleeding extra interest. But afterward, Congress—this crappy, infuriating, do-nothing Congress, this Congress that every single American despises—outlawed that scam. Credit-card companies now are required to pay down your highest-interest balances first. Maybe this is because Congress is a bunch of socialists trying to murder our free-enterprise system. Go ahead and vote for your Tea Party if you feel that way."

"Mr. Stewart also promised to supply the crowd with signs if they did not bring their own, including as examples, “I Disagree With You, But I’m Pretty Sure You’re Not Hitler,” and “Take It Down a Notch, America."

"THE polar bear idea, for example, was not totally facetious. As a result of global warming, a handful of polar bears have swum to Iceland in recent years and been shot. Better, Mr. Gnarr said, to capture them and put them in the zoo."

"What I don’t understand is how corporations were granted their immunity. How it is axiomatically understood that their interests come before those of people or even their governments? Why must they be defended against reform? How do they recruit their friends in politics and reward them? How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?"

"The difference is, Bush could have done more with Katrina, but I don’t see what Obama can do with the Spill. He’s instructed: “Take personal command!” Should the President be our go-to guy on oil spills? “Express more emotion!” What is he, a head of state like the Queen, delegated to going places and looking concerned? He can try to pass some energy legislation, but both parties are in the pockets of Big Oil. Those few legislators who work for meaningful federal solutions are pilloried as “socialists.” God help us if we should attempt to slow the eagerness of corporations to consume us."