Verbatim

‘Either we reach agreement [or] a new phase of the arms race will begin.’

DMITRI MEDVEDEV, Russian President, urging the West to iron out an accord with his country for a joint European missile-defense program

‘I’m going to make him cook and clean.’

ARVIN WEST, sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, on how country singer Willie Nelson–who was arrested after border-patrol agents found 6 oz. (170 g) of marijuana on his tour bus–will be treated in jail if convicted of drug possession

‘I was thinking, If he gets hit, I can’t go to work. It’s Sunday. I can’t miss out. It’s a time-and-a-half day.’

CARLOS FLORES, a New Yorker who, in order to prevent a train delay, jumped onto subway tracks to save a man who had fainted

‘I unfortunately have never in my life been to a wild party.’

SILVIO BERLUSCONI, Italian Prime Minister, insisting, amid a scandal stemming from alleged sex parties at his estate, that he throws only elegant, dignified soirees at his villas

‘There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation, I thank you.’

ROWAN SOMERVILLE, a novelist, who won the Bad Sex in Fiction prize for a scene in his book The Shape of Her

‘We are what we are: sad, distrustful … We have a natural lack of trust.’

ALAN GARCIA, Peruvian President, blaming a natural melancholy among Peruvians for his low approval rating of 34% despite a booming economy. By and large, the nation’s impoverished majority has not benefited from such gains

‘I am not searching for a job. I am begging for one.’

FELICIA ROBBINS, a 30-year-old unemployed American, after learning that she, along with 2 million other people, would stop receiving unemployment checks on Dec. 1, when the benefits began to expire. Congress could take weeks to decide whether to approve another extension

TALKING HEADS

Glenn Greenwald

Parsing the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Oregon teen Mohamed Mohamud for an alleged bomb plot, on Salon:

“It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal … But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI [created] a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join … and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a ‘Terrorist plot’ which … was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.”

–11/28/10

Neal Gabler

Writing about the dangers of social media, in the Los Angeles Times:

“Print’s uniformity, its immutability, its rigidity, its logic led to a number of social transformations, among which were the rise of rationalism and of the scientific method … [The] more we text and Twitter and ‘friend,’ abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.”

–11/28/10

Halima Gellman

Explaining the biggest threat to security in Yemen, in the Christian Science Monitor:

“With all [its] problems, the most severe threat to Yemen’s future is its water crisis … Experts say that Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, is likely to run out of water by 2020. [If] the U.S. really wants to fight terror in Yemen, it must address its water shortage … As the crisis progresses, Yemen stands to become even more violent and desperate–a situation that directly affects U.S. national security.”

–11/30/10

Sources: Reuters; Rolling Stone; New York Daily News; AP; BBC; AP (2)

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