Verbatim

'We dodged a bullet, but just barely.'

BARACK OBAMA, addressing senior security officials, on intelligence lapses that allowed the foiled Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner

'I was the CEO. I was in charge. I'm really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.'

GERALD LEVIN, former Time Warner chairman, taking the blame for the 2000 merger with AOL--"the worst deal of the century, apparently"--which cost shareholders billions of dollars

'We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.'

RAMY ZAMZAM, one of five Americans arrested in Pakistan in December on suspicion of plotting acts of terrorism

'The scientific research ... suggests that dolphins are "nonhuman persons" who qualify for moral standing as individuals.'

THOMAS WHITE, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, on a recent series of behavioral studies that suggest dolphins may be smarter than chimpanzees

'It's his right as a Zulu. But he only took one wife to Italy to meet the Pope.'

JEREMY GORDIN, biographer of South African President Jacob Zuma, a polygamist, who on Jan. 4 married for the fifth time

'Some of them created this mess, and they are making a killing undoing it.'

MICHAEL SCHLACHTER, managing director at a California investment-consulting firm, on banks that are using a government program designed to help them get rid of debt to make enormous profits trading defaulted home loans

'Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model.'

ROBERT HINTZE, founder of the dating site BeautifulPeople.com which dropped 5,000 of its members who appeared in photos to have gained weight over the holidays

TALKING HEADS

Mona Charen

Discussing air safety in the National Review Online:

"It may not be President Obama's fault that our multibillion-dollar homeland-security apparatus is more Keystone Kops than 24 ... The Federal Government is (alas) a vast, ungovernable enterprise. And the bigger it gets, the less effective it will become ... [Still,] the President is in thrall to the illusion of a skilled, paternalistic government ... Could the new New Deal just get airplane safety right first?"

--1/1/10

Nicole LaPorte

Revealing the hidden feminism of MTV's widely criticized reality show Jersey Shore on the Daily Beast:

"The show is actually undoing age-old stereotypes and replacing them, for better or worse, with a progressive, and even revolutionary, model of prima donna that is more Lady Gaga than Victoria Gotti ... The trash-talking, overly tanned ladies of Jersey Shore pick fistfights, refuse to cook or clean up and shuffle around in slippers and sweats while the guys in the house preen and put on lip gloss."

--1/3/10

Eboo Patel