People do not want to be disillusioned by the new president [Barak Obama]. The liberals felt, finally, this is our time. Now they're worried. Now what they see is more business as usual. We all want to give him the benefit of the doubt, we know it's a tough job and he inherited a mess, but at the end of the day, is it really change we can believe in when there's no public options and Wall Street reform has no teeth in it? It really looks a lot like we just changed the color.

They're talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that's used by ten or more people in a week, which, I guess, means that Madonna can't even smoke in bed.

In New York now, they have Harvey Milk High School for gay students. They don't have much of a football team, but the half-time show . . .

People have romantic notions about television. In the highest realms they think it's some sort of art medium, and it's not. Others think it's an entertainment medium, it's not that either. It's an advertising medium. It's a method to deliver advertising like a cigarette is a method to deliver nicotine.

I think I know now why we are occupying Iraq. In case we have to sell America and move to a smaller country.

Being politicians, they all got to sharing their personal stories. Obama talked about his mother's battle with cancer. Harry Reid talked about a kid with a cleft palate. And John McCain told how he once carried a brain dead woman through an entire campaign.

Even when [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke said the recession was over ... you think that would have been a bigger boom somewhere, but it seems we just take everything in stride.