“No color commentator — not in the long history of professional football on television — ever made professional football games as much fun as Dandy Don Meredith.”
From a terrific tribute to Don Meredith by Joe Posnanski
Category: Best Line of the Day
Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
Line of the day
News item: “Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July …”
“‘Struggling to find a way to indict’ is not the situation in which the government is at its best.”
D’oh line of the day
“Many Americans have come to the conclusion that nobody represents them in Washington anymore. They are right.”
Best line of the day
“President Obama has struck a deal to give Congressional Republicans everything they wanted because that’s how you get things done in Washington. You cave to Republicans.”
Best line of the day
“WASHINGTON … – In his latest effort to find common ground with Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama said today that he was willing to agree that he is a Muslim.”
“Place of Birth ‘Negotiable,’ President Says”
Best line about the deal, so far
“Getting Republicans to agree to more tax cuts in return for preserving existing tax cuts is roughly equivalent to getting crack addicts to agree to try a different brand of cocaine in return for allowing them to keep their existing stash.”
Best list of the day
*The conversation chart around my life looks a bit like this:
33% Weather
25% How stuff is too expensive
15% General hotness level of various people.
12% Pop Culture
5% Sports (overall)
5% Sports specific to Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods and LeBron James
3% “The coach/manager/server at this restaurant/neighbor/pilot/doctor/anyone else suck at what they do.”
1% Religion and politics and family and science and current events and stuff like that.
1% Justin Bieber
Joe Posnanski, from a blog post about things that are too expensive.
Best line of the day about sports TV
“This Blog would like to believe that the current MNF crew will lock Chris Berman in a closet so as to keep him from marring tonight’s broadcast with a boneheaded and self-indulgent ‘tribute’ to Meredith, complete with a lame Cosell imitation and a Gilbert and Sullivan Texas accent with which he’ll sing a few bars of ‘Turn Out The Lights,’ but This Blog is not optimistic.”
Best silly line of the day
“72,000 pounds of chicken salad has been recalled. Apparently, the egg salad was supposed to come first.”
Line of the day
“Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”
Don Meredith, who died yesterday in Santa Fe, age 72.
Best line of the day
“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
Steven Wright, 55 today.
Best line of the day
“Social Security is crucial to most Americans — but not at all to the elite.”
He’s got the chart. Social Security income is 83.2% of the income for the elderly bottom one-fifth; 81.8% for the next fifth, 64.4% for the middle fifth, 43.6% for the fourth of the five groups. For the top fifth, Social Security income is just 17.9%.
Do you suppose there’s anyone in Washington’s in-crowd that isn’t in that top fifth?
Best line of the day
“First of all, in Texas a Governor cannot commute a sentence. To even cut [Delay’s] sentence time, they have to have the recommendation of the DA, the judge, the sheriff, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and six members of the Baptist church.”
She admits she’s making up the Baptist church part.
Arizona line of the evening
“And because of loose restrictions on weapons here, Arizona is now considered a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.”
Best phrase of the day
“[T]he Incredible Shrinking President”
Best line of the day
“It’s hard to give Arizona the benefit of the doubt on anything these days, what with the state’s dubious performances in matters like illegal immigrant hysteria, the selling of the State Capitol to help balance the budget, and the electing of Jan Brewer. However, let’s accept that given their economic problems, it would be natural for the Legislature to want to try to cut the Medicaid budget. Although preferably in some saner, less brutal manner.
“But try to imagine what the Republicans would have said if someone in the Obama administration proposed cutting off liver transplants for Medicare recipients.”
Gail Collins writing about Arizona cutting Medicaid funding.
What he said (which is just another way of saying best line of the day)
“[The President] did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying ‘Kick me,’ although he might as well have.”
Paul Krugman in reference to President Obama’s meeting Wednesday with Republicans.
Best line of the day
“This song makes me feel like I want to be a bad boy.”
4-year-old Reid to his mother while listening to Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie.”
From Jill’s comment.
Best line of the day
“Congress has been working on this legislation since 2008, when a big food-poisoning epidemic reminded everyone that the Food and Drug Administration is currently working with laws written during the Great Depression. It survived endless delays by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who believes the free market is your last, best defense against E. coli.”
Most amazing line of the day
“There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars.”
Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University quoted by ABC News. Van Dokkum was reacting to new research which shows there may be three times as many stars as previously thought.
Best Juanita line of the day
“Every time Mitch McConnell opens his mouth, I hear a spoon being pounded on a high chair tray.”
Best line of the day
“I once had to sit in the middle of a three-seat row all the way to wherever I was flying and various parts of my body kept falling asleep and it was hard to get comfortable and it was right when they quit giving you meals. So I know what Aron Ralston went through, pretty much.”
Dan at Shoebox reviewing 127 Hours.
Best line of the day, so far
“Right now we have a retirement system that has the great virtue of not being intrusive: Social Security doesn’t demand that you prove you need it, doesn’t ask about your personal life, doesn’t make you feel like a beggar. And now we’re going to replace that with a system in which large numbers of Americans have to plead for special dispensation, on the grounds that they’re too feeble to work for a living. Freedom!”
Best ‘get a grip’ line of yesterday
“Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: ‘How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel.’
“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.
“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.
“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’
Best line of the day
“[A]s usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.
“First we have the group demanding that Julian Assange be murdered without any charges, trial or due process. . . .
“The way in which so many political commentators so routinely and casually call for the eradication of human beings without a shred of due process is nothing short of demented. . . .
“Then, with some exceptions, we have the group which — so very revealingly — is the angriest and most offended about the WikiLeaks disclosures: the American media, Our Watchdogs over the Powerful and Crusaders for Transparency. On CNN last night, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the U.S. Government had failed to keep all these things secret from him . . .”