Best whole paragraph of the day, so far

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment – all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

Robert Reich.

Reich wrote seven paragraphs in all when he posted this yesterday. Go read the other six.

Best most of a paragraph of the day, so far

I was away from the Intertubes for several days and, therefore, I am just now catching up to the whole “Bittergate” controversy. (I actually heard a TV drone say that.) I also am just now catching up with the fact that the president of the United States is proud to have hosted meetings in which specific techniques of torture were discussed in the presidential mansion. Forgive me if I am not yet up to speed on the two stories, but having a candidate for the presidency say something that virually anyone who’s spent any time in the region in question knows to be true — which, I will admit, leaves out almost all of the people covering national politics these days — seems to me rather less of a story than the fact that a giggling unemployable spent time pretending to be Henry VIII down the hall from a gathering of bloodsoaked, pathetic wannabe tough guys.

Charles Pierce

Pierce also reminds us that Charlton Heston did march with Dr. King back in 1963, when it wasn’t a safe play.

Best line of the day, so far

“TIME magazine points out that no matter how flawed Obama is, Hillary still couldn’t win a national election against Hitler’s dog”

FARK.com

Woof.

Best line to keep in mind on Jefferson’s birthday

“There is no longer the shadow of a doubt that the torture of prisoners was planned at the highest levels of the US government with the explicit knowledge and approval of the president. How do we know this? Bush himself admitted it.”

tristero

Worst. President. Ever.

They may be taking our jobs, but . . .

“A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.”

BBC NEWS

Headline of the night

“Physicists say Europe’s $8-billion atom-smasher, to be activated within months, almost certainly won’t create a black hole that swallows Earth.”

Los Angeles Times

Almost. Certainly.

Pretty good line of the day

“If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’”

Bill Maher via Crooks and Liars.

Best line of the day

. . . But then Vonnegut starts coughing, clearing his throat of phlegm, grasping for a half-smoked pack of Pall Malls lying on a coffee table. He quickly lights up. His wheezing ceases. I ask him whether he worries that cigarettes are killing him. “Oh, yes,” he answers, in what is clearly a set-piece gag. “I’ve been smoking Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes since I was twelve or fourteen. So I’m going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, who manufactured them. And do you know why?”

“Lung cancer?” I offer.

“No. No. Because I’m eighty-three years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn’t work. Now I’m forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, ‘Colon.’”. . . .

From an article in the August 2006 Rolling Stone.

Best line of the morning, so far

“ABC: Bush admits he authorized torture. Believe it or not, it gets worse from there”

FARK.com

Here’s the worse from ABC News:

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Worst. President. Ever.

Most important line of the day, so far

“And by the way, liberals and independents wouldn’t impute to McCain a liberalness that isn’t there if the press stopped partying with the man long enough to report on him honestly.”

digby

All kinds of people NewMexiKen knows and likes and respects tell me that McCain at least is better than Bush because he’s OK on the environment or stem cells or the homeless.

But McCain would continue the war, keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and appoint 17th century thinkers to the courts. Keep your eye on the important things. He’s a crotchety old warrior.

Best line of the day, so far

“An investigation conducted by senators has been compared to a court run by kangaroos, and the analogy is not unfair, except possibly to the kangaroos.”

Louis Menand, who continues:

“The normal rules of evidence do not apply in congressional hearings: badgering is appreciated; the verdict has frequently been arrived at in advance. Perry Mason, swatting away objections like flies as he sweated the truth out of guilty witnesses, faced more stringent procedural constraints.”

Best line of the day, so far

“One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: ‘the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . .’ ”

History News Network report on historians’ poll.

I like this one too:

“‘Bush does only two things well,’ said one of the most distinguished historians. ‘He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.’”

And that’s the bright side.

Best line of the night, so far

“Poll of historians shows 60% of them think Bush is the worst president ever, 98% think he is a ‘failure’. Poll results show he did keep one campaign promise: he is a uniter, not a divider”

FARK.com

Here’s the background on the poll from History News Network.

Best astronomy line of the day

“A crescent moon of perilous beauty is about to appear in the evening sky.”

NASA

The item continues: “The best night to look is Tuesday, April 8th, when the moon joins the Pleiades star cluster for a must-see conjunction.”

Best line last night

“The other night, Barbara Walters had a special called ‘Live to be 150.’ And she showed people who are over 100 years old, leading active lives: jogging, hiking; one guy even running for president in the Republican Party.”

Jay Leno

Meanwhile, Letterman’s McCain is old joke of the night:

“And John McCain has one of those 3:00 a.m. campaign commercials. In this one, it is 3 a.m. and he just gets up to go to the bathroom.”

Best line of the day, so far

“While the media obsess over bowling scores, the ability to understand and explain basic concepts of domestic and foreign policy is not up for question in the narrow political debate.”

dday — Hullabaloo

Best bracket lines of the day, so far

Courtesy of Sideline Chatter (where my “sports movies” got mentioned, too):

• Memphis coach John Calipari, to FSN, on star freshman Derrick Rose and the lure of the NBA: “If he wants to do what’s right for him and his family, he’ll go pro … If he wants to do what’s right for me and my family, he’ll stay.”

• Larry Stewart of the Los Angeles Times, on why TV Land executives are pulling for a North Carolina-West Virginia title game: “Andy Griffith’s alma mater versus Don Knotts’ alma mater.”

• Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on predicting Georgetown would be in the Final Four: “Like I said: North Carolina-Memphis-UCLA-Davidson.”

Best line Monday night

“Oh, did you hear about this? Two State Department employees were fired – this is a bit of a scandal – because they were looking at Barack Obama’s passport file. Not only that, but the same person was also looking at John McCain’s Civil War records.”

David Letterman

Best line of the day that tells you about the real John McCain

“John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, according to spending reports filed last week by the campaign.”

The Boston Globe

Because he’s as bad as the rest, only he acts like he’s holier.

John McCain, a third Bush term.

Best line of the day, so far

“President George W. Bush confirmed today that his gutting of the Endangered Species Act is part of a broader plan to phase out the environment entirely by the time he leaves office in January of 2009.”

Andy Borowitz

Best line of the day, so far

“Hillary ████████ to release █████████ of when she was a █████████ lady”

FARK.com

Exactly!

“Today, Barack Obama addressed some of the more controversial comments made by his longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright. The guy said some crazy stuff, like, gays caused 9/11, Hurricane Katrina was God’s revenge for our sins. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s Pat Robertson. That’s the other side’s nutball minister.”

Jay Leno

Best line of the day

“Molly Ivins once wrote that she didn’t support gun control because she hated guns, but because she just liked to see knife fights.”

About sums it up

“And does anybody have the new redesigned $5 bill? It’s out, and it has several new features. One of the new features, it’s only worth $3.”

Jay Leno

Yet another good line

“If the cost of milk had risen as fast as college since 1980, as Grassley has noted, a gallon would be $15.”

Timothy Egan in an op-ed on elite college endowments.

Even better best line of the day

It is reported that after the second time that a mobile phone had rung in the public gallery the Judge put down his pen, and glared across at the flustered-looking owner of the phone. “If that happens again” said His Honour, “you may discover why they are known as cell phones”.

The Magistrate’s Blog

Link via Discourse.net, which also had this:

Best line of the day, so far

“This little girl’s nanny care is going to be so superlative she will literally have, as her nanny, Julie Andrews.”

Joel Achenbach speaking of Beatrice, daughter of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.

When is it over?

With apologies to the Sage of St. Louis, there comes a time when it ain’t over, but … it’s over. There comes a time in a relationship when a woman will still answer your phone calls, but you’re wasting your money buying flowers; you know what I’m saying? There comes a moment during a job interview when you’re still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes. There is a time in an illness when you’re not dead yet, but you might as well stop taking that nasty medicine.

Bill James in an article discussing his means of calculating when a basketball games is out of reach. Interesting.

Best understated line of the day, so far

“Man, that guy is good.”

Bart Bryant, who lost when Tiger Woods made a 25-foot birdie putt on 18 to defeat him.

Here’s the putt:

Neither rhyme nor reason

I’m starting to think that Obama
Could rescue us all from the trauma
That W started
With Cheney, whole-hearted
Cause Hillary’s way too much drama.

Among the limericks at the 2008 San Patricio Limerick Festival at Fluency.

Link via Bitch Ph.D.

A pretty good line from four years ago

From Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times:

New England might never have won a Super Bowl, let alone two, had not Gen. George Custer decided to leave Felix Vinatieri — his bandleader and the great-great-grandfather of Pats kicker Adam — back at the fort with his band when the troops embarked for the battle of Little Big Horn.

Added Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Those guys were the luckiest musicians in the world, not counting Ringo.”

Most insightful line so far about Spitzer

“Men such as those in Spitzer’s position do not so much pay for women to have sex with them; they pay for women to go away AFTER having sex with them.”

Psychologist David Buss quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A lesson Bill Clinton never learned.

Best line of the morning, so far

“Gold futures hit $1,000 an ounce for the first time on news that the dollar ain’t worth the oil it’s printed for”

FARK.com

Best line of the day, so far

“The price of oil rose to the point where it’s now sold exclusively through the Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog.”

Bill in Portland Maine reporting on things that happened while he was away — many good lines.

Including:

“Eliot Spitzer thought he could get away with the kind of financial shennanigans that he used to bust people for as a prosecutor. He was—how you say—utterly, terribly and unbelievably wrong. If you, dear reader, take away one lesson from this whole sorry spectacle, remember this: if you’re gonna hire prostitutes, never pay cash. Barter barter barter! (Hint: the sexiest words in the English language to a hooker are, ‘Hey…how ’bout I go back to your place and clean your gutters?’)”

Scariest photo of the day, so far

Most Stunning View in Town Is the One at the Pump

One good best line deserves another

“Spitzer is simply the latest married politician caught with his pants down, a group so large that ‘pretty soon there will be enough of them to do a scientific study’.”

Texas psychologist Brian Gladue quoted at Newsweek.com

Best line of the day, so far

“Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle.”

Comment at Daily Kos

A pretty good line

First posted here three years ago today:

“A college class was told they had to write a short story in as few words as possible. The story must contain three components: (1) Religion, (2) Sexuality, and (3) Mystery. There was only one A paper in the entire class. In full: ‘Good God! I’m pregnant. I wonder who did it.’”

Pretty good lines of the day

“Just in case, John McCain has already written a first sentence for his concession speech in November: ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’”

— Some Guy

“And how about Ralph Nader, running for president? I like Ralph Nader. He looks like the doctor you go to and have the bullet removed.”

— David Letterman

Best line of the day, so far

“I’m a part of that dwindling demographic: a newspaper reader. I grew up with a morning paper, an afternoon paper and a local paper every day. . . . Hell, I even enjoy reading the Albuquerque Journal every day, which is like someone claiming to be a connoisseur of wine while nursing a bottle of Ripple.”

mjh’s blog

Mjh has a great illustration of the problem.