August 2012
12 posts
5 tags
Celestial Navigation (1.15)
Danny: Josh, your comments were that the continuing drop in unemployment will create increased pressure on wages, in effect, driving them up. Is the President worried that this could lead to a resurgence of inflation?
Josh: Let me emphasize the President is pleased that unemployment has dropped another point five percent as a result -
Danny: I'm sure we all join the President in his joy, but I'm wondering if the President has a plan to fight the resulting inflation.
Josh: The President will do everything in his power to maintain the robust economy that has created millions of new jobs, improved productivity, and kept a lid on inflation.
Katie: But he has no plan to address inflation specifically?
Josh: Twenty-four PhD's on the Counsel of Economic Advisors, Katie. They have a plan to fight inflation.
Danny: Is the reason you won't tell us about it that it's a secret?
Josh: Yeah, Danny. We have a secret inflation plan.
5 tags
Ways and Means (3.3)
Bartlet: I thought you don't oppose a tax cut in an election year?
Doug: Well, let's be clear. We're not talking about opposing a tax cut. We're talking about vetoing one. Your first veto ever. That's shooting the moon.
Bartlet: I'll say.
Doug: I like the bold gesture. I think you gotta get out the stamp.
Josh: You sign it. You don't do it with a stamp.
Doug: I thought it was a stamp.
Bartlet: Actually, you stamp it, then sign it.
Toby: Who gives a damn, sir? This is a tax cut that benefits only 4,500 families.
Bartlet: It doesn't matter if most voters don't benefit. They all believe that someday they will. That's the problem with the American dream. It makes everyone concerned for the day they're gonna be rich.
4 tags
Mandatory Minimums (1.20)
Toby: I met with Congresswoman Wyatt today.
Bartlet: When you were married to her, did you call her Congresswoman Wyatt?
Toby: No, sir.
Bartlet: Sometimes I call my wife Dr. Bartlet.
Toby: I call her Andy or, uh, Andrea.
Bartlet: Okay.
Toby: Mandatory minimums.
Bartlet: You're whipped, my friend.
Toby: Sir.
Bartlet: No, she's been talking to your for a year about mandatory minimums. You've been saying no. Looks like we know who wears the pants in the Ziegler family.
Toby: You call your wife Dr. Bartlet?
Bartlet: Just for the turn-on.
6 tags
Let Bartlet Be Bartlet (1.19)
Josh: Soft money contributions render the 1974 Campaign Reform Act toothless. Soft money contributions, which were ostensibly designed for party-building, whatever that might mean, do nothing but eviscerate any meaningful election controls. We are, by definition, corrupt.
Steve Onorato: I wouldn't say that.
Josh: I know you wouldn't, Steve. This money isn't coming in in 5's and 10's and 20's. It's coming in in denominations of 100, 200, 500 thousand dollars. It's coming from special interests. It's coming from special interests whose interests aren't the same as those who don't have a half a million bucks lying around, and it's not going to party-building. It's going to issue ads! It's going to candidates!
Steve: Yeah. It's called free speech, Josh.
Josh: If the insurance company wants to buy ad time from 64 major markets, they are free to do so. If the airplane manufacturing industry wants to back a candidate, they are free to shout from the rooftops. If big tobacco wants to wave a sign or put a bumper sticker on their cars, they are free to do so. That's free speech. Money isn't speech.
4 tags
The Black Vera Wang (3.19)
Media Director 1: We understand you have a counter offer.
Toby: Yeah. You broadcast all four nights of the convention.
Media Director 2: Why?
Toby: Cause the public owns the airwaves, not you. And you have a legal obligation to the public.
Media Director 3: The public could care less about the nominating conventions. So why?
Toby: You have an FCC public obligation.
Media Director 3: Show me a station that's lost its licence for not showing enough public interest programming.
Toby: I can't.
Media Director 3: So why?
Toby: Cause if you don't the Justice Department is going to investigate you for anti-trust violation.
Media Director 4: Anti-trust violation?
Toby: A joint decision not to compete for the best convention programming.
Media Director 2: You're accusing us of conspiring not to show money-losing programming?
Toby: Not me so much as the Justice Department. 15 U.S.C. section 1. "Every contract combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall engage in any combination -"
Media Director 3: All right, we get it. We all have lawyers that we'll have to talk to.
Toby: Yes. No, there isn't going to be a horse race to cover, either in New York or San Diego, but we gave you the air waves for free seventy years ago and 355 days a year you can say who's up and who's down, who won the West and who lost the South. But what's wrong with eight days, not every year but every four years, showing our leaders talking to us. Not a fraction of what they said but what they said. And then the balloons.
5 tags
Guns Not Butter (4.12)
Josh: So, if we're lucky, foreign aid's going to be funded for another 90 days at seventy-five cents on the dollar. No one who's ever said they wanted bipartisanship has ever meant it. But the people are speaking. Because 68% think we give too much in foreign aid, and 59% think it should be cut.
Will: You like that stat?
Josh: I do.
Will: Why?
Josh: Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for "I have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
5 tags
Hartsfield's Landing (3.14)
Toby: Abbey told me this story once. She said you were at a party once where you were bending the guy's ear. You were telling him that Ellie had mastered her multiplication tables, and she was in third grade reading at a fifth-grade level, and she loved books and she scored two goals for her soccer team the week before. You were going on and on. And what made that story remarkable was that the party you were at was in Stockholm and the man you were talking to was King Gustav, who two hours earlier had given you the Nobel Prize in Economics. I mean, my god, you just won the Nobel Prize and all you wanted to talk about to the King of Sweden was Ellie's multiplication tables!
Bartlet: What's your point?
Toby: You're a good father, you don't have to act like it. You're the President, you don't have to act like it. You're a good man, you don't have to act like it. You're not just folks, you're not plain-spoken. Do not, do not, do not act like it!
Bartlet: I don't want to be killed.
Toby: Then make this election about smart, and not. Make it about engaged, and not. Qualified, and not. Make it about a heavyweight. You're a heavyweight. And you've been holding me up for too many rounds.
8 tags
Ellie (2.15)
Donna: Josh, is there anything to suggest that there are a significant number of people who are inclined to smoke pot but don't because it's against the law?
Josh: No.
Donna: Then why do you think if it were decriminalized there would be a sudden stampede of people showing up to work stoned, dragging down the economy and clearing supermarket aisles of Pringles and Twinkies?
Josh: That's not a reason to make it legal.
Donna: In a free society, you don't need a reason to make something legal. You need a reason to make something illegal.
4 tags
Dead Irish Writers (3.15)
Amy: You're not hiring enough women in senior positions for the campaign.
Josh: How do you know?
Amy: It's my job to know.
Josh: We're in a dangerous area right now.
Amy: If women were the only voters, the Democrats would win in a landslide every time. If men were the only voters, the GOP would be the left-wing party.
4 tags
Ways and Means (3.3)
Sam: So listen, there's a fire in Yellowstone Park.
Josh: Well, put it out.
Sam: Technically, I'm not a professional firefighter, though there was a time I wanted to be.
Josh: When?
Sam: When I was four.
Josh: When I was four, I wanted to be a ballerina.
Sam: Yeah?
Josh: I don't like to talk about it.
Sam: There was a dry lightning strike in a lodgepole pine forest. Fire spread to 500 acres but it's all inside the resource benefit zone.
Josh: Is it all under control?
Sam: Well, as a matter of fact, last night the park's superintendent, in consultation with Bill Horton and several deputies from the Department of the Interior, decided to let it run its course.
Josh: They're letting it burn?
Sam: It's not necessarily our policy to put these things out.
Josh: Putting out fires isn't necessarily our policy?
Sam: Fire's good for the environment under certain circumstances. Forests have a natural cycle that requires purging burns to reinvigorate growth.
Josh: Someone just said that to you, right?
Sam: Yeah.
4 tags
4 tags
The Warfare of Genghis Khan
Josh: What's this?
NASA Administrator Moreau: "Mars or Bust". We want the government to commit to a manned mission to Mars.
Josh: There aren't 20 votes for it in Congress. You couldn't get funding for the buttons.
Moreau: The Republican Congress isn't the problem. It's liberals that killed the space program.
Josh: Yeah, cause we like to use government money to, I don't know, help people.
Moreau: Space travel's inspirational. You don't think that helps people?
Josh: Not like feeding them or getting them jobs.
Moreau: Well, you have to feed the soul, too.
