Mr Clegg is Westminster roadkill; his net personal approval rating is minus 52.
One of Pol Pot's favourite sayings was, tuk min chamnen, dak chenh ka, min kat — "to keep you is no gain, to kill you no loss".
Arguably, the Founding Fathers favored a system in which one foot stayed permanently on the accelerator and the other on the brake. Hasn't America got what they wanted?
We're all Americuns, greatest race in the world!
Letting in dynamic immigrants, revamping the tax code and reforming entitlements would make the Great Society safe for another generation. Not enough to get Mr Obama's face carved on Mount Rushmore, but not bad.
Jurgen Habermas, the German philosopher who thought up the concept of the "public sphere", has always been in two minds about the internet. Digital communication, he wrote a few years ago, has unequivocal democratic merits only in authoritarian countries, where it undermines the government's information monopoly. Yet in liberal regimes, online media, with their millions of forums for debate on a vast range of topics, could lead to a "fragmentation of the public" and a "liquefaction of politics", which would be harmful to democracy.
Being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once.
One of the most popular sports in Washington is the partisan flip.
If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.
North Korea is the world's most rational despotic regime: a highly successful Communist absolute monarchy.
Bushism is Reaganism minus the passion for freedom.
For all its faults socialism is manifestly superior to capitalism in one area: the making of myths.
Every nation knows what is right and how everyone else is wrong.
Romania, a country where governments have the longevity of mayflies.
The queen understands that she is a symbol, and that symbols are "better off mostly keeping quiet".
Three highly dysfunctional institutions: the state of California, the European Union and the G20.
Leticia Van de Putte, a Texas state senator from San Antonio with relatives on both sides of the border, points out that "our family was there when it was Spain, when it was France, when it was Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, the Confederacy. Our family's always been in the same place; it was the damn government that kept changing."
Abraham Lincoln observed that "nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
The Newark mayor has long been a man of action. He once chased down a robbery suspect. He shovelled snow during a 2010 blizzard. In April he suffered burns when rescuing a neighbour from her burning house. Earlier this month he directed traffic away from an accident he came across.
For many years Northern Ireland was a large net importer of advice on how to end its troubles.
Neanderthal dictatorship.
The prime minister should stop being the custodian of vaginas.
It could almost be a question in a political-science exam. Three groups, A, B and C each lack the necessary parliamentary majority; A will not form a coalition with B; C will not support either. How do you form a government.
Short of taking bribes or fornicating in a public park, there is no surer way to detonate a career in British politics than to accept a job as home secretary.
A cartoon of a fully clothed, bespectacled Mr Zuma, virtually unrecognisable save for the characteristic bump at the back of his shaven head, in a heroic Leninesque pose, but with his genitals hanging out of his trousers.
Joe Biden, the American vice-president, stood beside Mr Hol- lande in Paris and applauded his "decisiveness" and "the incredible competence and capability" of France's military forces. For a politician whom members of his own party compared variously to a marshmallow, a woodland strawberry and a caramel pudding, this was bliss indeed.
In a short story called "Franchise", Isaac Asimov dreamed up a computer that saved Americans from going to the polls. The machine was fed data, and interviewed one representative voter, before announcing a result that perfectly reflected what would have happened had the election been held.
Mr Obama's problems were partly structural. An incumbent must defend the realities and compromises of government, while a challenger is freer to promise the earth, details to follow.
Old regimes fall to revolutions not when they resist change, but when they attempt reform yet dash the raised expectations they have evoked.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
George Bush senior picked Dan Quayle, whom many treated harshly as a figure of fun who could not spell "potato".
The Senate, so George Washington is reputed to have told Thomas Jefferson, is a saucer into which legislation is poured to cool it down. But the Founding Fathers, alas, did not specify just how cold they wanted their tea or their laws to be.
The biggest number (15%) went to the Five-Star "movement" of a comedian, Beppe Grillo, whose web-fired campaign denounces all parties and promises not to ally with any of them. Mr Grillo is alarmingly thin on policies and wants a referendum on leaving the euro. Some call his movement the "anti-party"; others the "Fuck Off party". We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we have done it.
Democracy in America does not come cheap. The election cycle that has just limped to its exhausted conclusion cost around $6 billion — a new record, as in every new presidential cycle.
America's vice-presidency, one of its occupants once asserted in an oft- bowdlerised remark, is "not worth a bucket of warm piss".
"Latinos are Republicans," Ronald Reagan is supposed to have said. "They just don't know it yet."
Plato warned that democratic leaders would "rob the rich, keep as much of the proceeds as they can for themselves and distribute the rest to the people".
Officials would prefer you to be born, live, work, pay taxes, draw benefits and die in the same place, travel on one passport only, and bequeath only one nationality to your offspring.
Otto von Hasburg, 97, liberated from court etiquette, can call someone an "idiot" if he wants, instead of "your excellency". He was a technicolour politician in a monochrome landscape.
Public urinators rule the London streets.
CASA-CE, a new group headed by Abel Chivukuvuku, a former Unita man, is one of several being allowed to run for the first time, and may take votes from Unita.
Gerge McGovern promised swingeing cuts in the defence budget, an end to the war in Vietnam, an amnesty for draft-evaders, universal health care, a guaranteed job for every American and an income above the poverty line for every American household. Bright- eyed young volunteers stuffed envelopes for him; Hollywood stars turned out for him; Simon and Garfunkel sang. To no avail. Richard
Nixon won 49 states; he won Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. His name became a byword for Democratic disaster.
Air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the longstanding Democratic lock on southern politics. America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything.
In 2008, we changed the guard. This year we must guard the change.
America comes to believe that it has wings. Then, Icarus-like, it soars too close to the sun and the wings melt.
The world is a competitive place. Britain is trying to run with its shoelaces tied together.
Houston was elected president of Texas five months later and in 1845 it became the 28th and largest of the United States of America. Alaska, the 49th state, is even larger. But, as some say in Texas, just wait 'til the ice melts.
If one compares Castro's lodgings with the White House, Buckingham Palace or the Elysee Palace, it would be fair to conclude that their residences are unpretentious.
Dr Gloor has found that, in Western countries at least, non-violent protest movements begin to burn out when the upbeat tweets turn negative, with "not", "never", "lame", "I hate", "idiot" and so on becoming more frequent. Abundant complaints about idiots in the government or in an ideologically opposed group are a good signal of a movement's decline. Complaints about idiots in one's own movement or such infelicities as the theft of beer by a fellow demonstrator suggest the whole thing is almost over. Condor, then, is good at forecasting the course of existing protests. Even better, from the politicians' point of view, would be to predict such protests before they occur.