Best lines summing up my week

“I’ve always said that people should enjoy baseball the way they want to enjoy baseball. It is a sport, and it is meant to be loved, and if you love it by doing spreadsheets, if you love it by sitting down the third base line with a beer and without even knowing the players names, if you love it for its history, for its pace, for its drama, for its familiarity, for its connection to spring, for its apparent simplicity, for its apparent complexities, for the way the game reveals character, for the way the game reveals talent, for the way the game rewards consistency, for batting average and wins and RBIs, for UZR and Runs Created and FIP, for whatever … that’s great. Love the game your own way.”

Joe Posnanski

Best legal information you may need to know line of the day

“In 12 states—California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington—all parties involved need to consent before one of them can record the conversation.”

Christopher Beam – Slate Magazine

Up to 3-years in prison in Illinois for a first offense of recording a conversation with a police officer. It’s a crime in Boston, too.

That’s what I’d like to know line of the day

… Newt Gingrich explains why he dumped wife #1 while she was in the hospital after cancer surgery, and wife #2 soon after she was diagnosed with MS. It was because of his love of country:

There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.

How did people like this end up running America?

Paul Krugman


Related best line:

“Gingrich planning May presidential announcement, but if nation takes turn for worse he’ll probably lose interest in us.”

Twitter / @pourmecoffee

Most memorable line of the day

“When forming images, it helps to have a dirty mind. Evolution has programmed our brains to find two things particularly interesting, and therefore memorable: jokes and sex — and especially, it seems, jokes about sex.”

Joshua Foer, author of “Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything,” as quoted by Maureen Dowd.

Perhaps evangelicals are repressed about sex because they don’t believe in evolution. Or vice versa.

Best line of the day that will not be heeded by any policy makers

It really is worth repeating: no matter how much the right-wingers may like to claim that the US government is “broke”, it’s not, in any normal sense of the term. Investors, putting real money on the line, are willing to lend funds to the Feds long-term at an inflation-adjusted interest rate of only 1 percent. There is nothing in the markets or the cash flow requiring immediate austerity.

Yes, there is a long-run problem — but this requires long-run solutions. Slashing spending now now now is neither necessary nor helpful.

Paul Krugman

Best line of the day

“On Monday, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a terrorism warning, asking all Americans to be on high alert this week…. I think I speak for all Americans when I say, ‘Bitch, I can’t be any more alert than I already am. O.K.? I’m opening my mail with salad tongs. I take my passport in the shower with me. I am watching so much CNN I am having sex dreams about Wolf Blitzer.”

Tina Fey on SNL in late 2001, from a brief profile in The New Yorker.

In another article, The New Yorker has lined up some vintage Tina Fey videos.