Seventeen Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes in 2005

17) "If I would do another 'Terminator' movie I would have Terminator travel back in time and tell Arnold not to have a special election." --California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after all four of his ballot initiatives were roundly defeated in the special election he called,

16) "I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn't work." --President Bush, after being thwarted by locked doors when he tried to exit a news conference in Beijing in the face of hostile questioning from reporters

15) "If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.'" –FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, after San Francisco voted to ban military recruiters from city schools

14) "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" --President Bush, in a note to to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting,

13) "You are the best governor ever." --Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, writing to Texas Gov. George Bush in 1997 on his 51st birthday, adding that she found him "cool" and that he and his wife, Laura, were "the greatest" and telling him: "Keep up the great work. Texas is blessed."

12) "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." --George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y.

11) "I'm proud of George. He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse." --First Lady Laura Bush, at the White House Correspondents dinner,

10) "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." --Bill Bennett, former Education Secretary and author of "The Book of Virtues,"

8) "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --President Bush, to a divorced mother of three in Omaha, Nebraska,

7) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." --FEMA Director Michael Brown,

6) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." --President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept.

5) "What didn't go right?" --President Bush, as quoted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, after she urged him to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown "because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right" in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort

"Get some devastation in the back." --Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to a staff photographer as he posed for a photo op while visiting tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka,

3) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" --House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston

2) "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them." --Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston

1) "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office. She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." --Sen. Bill Frist, diagnosing Terri Schiavo's condition during a speech on the Senate floor,