Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff Speaks

“When I heard that there was a ‘crowd’ at the Convention Center, naturally I assumed that meant ‘three.’”

“You tell me how are we supposed to airlift supplies to the victims. By some sort of magic bird? Please…”

"Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible tragedy would be to distract ourselves by my spending time playing spin control on ‘Meet the Press’ rather than addressing the catastrophe. Oh, wait…”

“If these people are so ill then why do they all look a lot healthier than me?”

“As a conservative I’m all about returning power to the state, so the fact that Louisiana and Mississippi would be begging the government for help doesn’t jibe with my ideology.”

“Let’s see the terrorists attack Biloxi now.”

“I had actually Tivo’d the news, so I didn’t find out what was going on until Thursday night, after ‘The O.C.’”

“On a scale from one to ten I’d rate the Homeland Security Department’s response an A+.”

“As God is my witness, I thought New Orleans was just some sort of jazz.”

“I’m just going to say two things—One, the poor don’t vote Republican and two, let me rephrase that…”

“I know how it is to go without food for five days. But without water? Some of these people are just carrying things too far.”

“The Department of Homeland Security covers many areas, and one of those is ‘providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort’…apparently…”

“I thought I specifically invited Mallard Filmore to this press conference.”

“A broken levee doesn’t respond to threats. It doesn’t respond to demands. It doesn’t respond to bombing. So where does that leave us?”

“Federal help would come faster if we could attach a name to those in need. ‘Terri Schiavo’ is a good example. ‘The Entire Population of New Orleans’ is not.”

“How come CNN isn’t showing footage of how dry Michigan is right now, hmm?”

“Am I the only one who on Tuesday morning saw the headline ‘New Orleans Dodges the Bullet’? Wow, I thought Weekly World News had a bigger circulation than that.”