“Republicans ritually denounce Big Government and Democrats ritually denounce Big Business (even as both parties take money from Big Banking).”
Category: Best Line of the Day
Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
Stupidest line of the day yesterday
“Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book “America by Heart” from being leaked,but US Govt can’t stop Wikileaks’ treasonous act?”
Uh, excuse me, but Wikileaks is a non-state entity run by an Australian citizen. Treason is betrayal of one’s sovereign or nation.
BTW, no one has been convicted of treason in the United States since 1952. And only 16 in our entire history, including John Brown and the four Lincoln assassination conspirators. Three of the 16 were pardoned — two by Washington and one by Ford — and one verdict was annulled. Brown was convicted of treason against Virginia.
Well, duh, line of the day
“So the San Francisco Fed released a working paper in September in which three economists argue that the rich are happier than the less rich, that wealthy nations have higher levels of satisfaction than less wealthy ones, and that as national economies grow, citizens tend to become happier.”
Another paper found that the happiest places have the highest suicide rates. Possible reason: it hurts more to be unhappy in a happy place.
Best line of the day
“When the best that the children of a revolution can do for the defense of their inalienable protection against unwarranted search and seizure is to issue the pathetic moan, ‘Don’t touch my junk,’ a low point of humiliation has been reached.”
Shoe bomber; we take off our shoes. Toiletries bomber; we can’t carry on bottles. Printer toner cartridge bombs; we can’t ship certain quantities of toner. Underwear bomber; we are subject to having our privates viewed or handled.
As Hitchens points out, there has been at least one bomber with the explosives in his rectum. Now what?
Best line of the day
“Willie Nelson is 77 years old. He’s producing amazing music and touring almost constantly with acts a quarter his age. He raises more money for charity than anyone else in Texas. He has a black belt in taekwondo and plays pretty good golf. He’s on his fourth wife, having pooped-out all the other ones. He’s still making movies, and he won a Grammy last year. He’ll be 78 in three months.
“He is a walking advertisement for marijuana use.”
Juanita Jean’s commenting on Willie’s arrest.
The Border Patrol, keeping our homeland safe from Willie Nelson.
Best line of the day
“Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee is opposed to a D-I football playoff, he says, because ‘I think that’s a slippery slope to professionalism.’
“Earth to Gordo: That amateur football team of yours? You’re paying Jim Tressel $3.5 million a year to coach it.”
Best line of the day
“And he’s so honest that you could shoot dice with him over the phone.”
Juanita Jean’s referring to former Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle.
And celebrating the verdict today in the Tom DeLay trail. Guilty.
‘I’m shocked, shocked’ line of the day
“The companies with multimillion-dollar contracts to supply American airports with body-scanning machines more than doubled their spending on lobbying in the past five years and hired several high-profile former government officials to advance their causes in Washington, government records show.”
Best ‘Dancing with the Stars’ line of the day
“This season, the only reason most people are still watching is to see the O.J. Simpson-esque white bronco ride of Bristol Palin’s unlikely success, an unexpected spectacle which is confirming my long held fear that we have finally abandoned proficiency and talent in deference to something squishier — like ‘relatability,’ affinity, rewarding mild improvement or outright pity.”
Apparently the person who used to look like Jennifer Gray is doing well.
Best line of the week
“The entire cast of America’s Most Wanted and Cops were there.”
Amylynn of The Quill Sisters describing an early Thanksgiving gathering. Click to read the details.
Best headline of the day
“Is the TSA groping for a compromise?”
Best line of the day
“When you look at how much [Twain] wrote and the breadth of the subjects he wrote about, you know that if he were alive today, he would totally be a blogger.”
Rebecca Fitting, an owner of the Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in an article about the success of Twain’s autobiography.
Best line of yesterday
“My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point.
“That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics.”
One percent of Americans control about 24% of our income. One percent of Americans own 34% of our private net worth. The top 10 percent control more than 70% of our private net worth.
Best line of the day (but I haven’t had my coffee yet)
“A man released by pirates after nine days is going to be OK once he gets that stupid song about rum out of his head.”
Last lines that really weren’t necessary (because we knew)
“According to a police report posted on The Smoking Gun Web site, Cowan became so upset by the political implications of Bristol Palin’s continuing victories on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ that he shot the family television, precipitating a 15-hour standoff with local police. The complaint notes that Cowan did not think that Bristol ‘was a good dancer.’ Also, he had been drinking.”
Best line of the day
“If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone or something else. Sooner or later everyone meets their Homer.
. . .
“It could be anything. Scrap-booking, high-stakes poker, or the Santa Fe lifestyle. Just pick a dead end and chill out ’til you die.”
Home Simpson
Best line indicating need for what is asked
“You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”
Message sent to The Shadow Scholar as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Shadow Scholar writes college papers for other people.
I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.
Fascinating article. He claims he will make $66,000 this year.
She seems too smart to be this stupid line of the day
“[Eva] Longoria was ‘totally and completely blindsided’ by reports appearing this week of infidelity by her NBA star husband, the source says.”
“NBA star husband” is an oxymoron if I ever saw one.
Best line of the day
“Seriously, isn’t it just a matter of time before some industrious hooker starts offering a ’20-minute, pre-flight, deluxe pat-down’?”
Best line of the day
“Politicians say things that aren’t true all the time, but what you really need to worry about is when they start believing those things.
Best line of the day
“I considered being a stay-at-home mom, but then I found out the kids would be there too.”
Tina
I didn’t mean
. . . to sell Taibbi’s style short in my previous post. It’s there in Griftopia.
“The basic scan in the Internet age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out fiftieth-story windows, and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.”
Best line of the day
“We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it—who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum.”
Matt Taibbi in Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Taibbi’s latest book is very informative—eye-opening—though not written in his usual over-the-top, profane style. Or at least, written in a tamer version of it. If you’re interested in what is going on in our economy and how little politics matters, I recommend the book. The chapter on commodities futures, from which the above quotation is taken, is worth the price of the book by itself.
Did you know BTW, that all the parking meters in Chicago are owned by a consortium that includes the United Arab Emirates? Or that so are parking meters in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and other cities? Or that Pennsylvania Governor Rendell tried to sell the Pennsylvania Turnpike?
When you’re trying to sell a highway that was once considered one of your nation’s great engineering marvels—532 miles of hard-built road that required tons of dynamite, wood, and steel and the labor of thousands to bore seven mighty tunnels through the Allegheny Mountains—when you’re offering that up to petro-despots just so you can keep the lights on in the state house into the next fiscal year, you’ve entered a new stage in your societal development.
Best line of the day
“As you know, [Representative] Louie Gohmert is as worthless as a four card flush. He’s a rightwing rolling ball of butcher knives about the ‘guvmint’ doing anything besides climbing in my uterus and roundin’ up Mexicans.”
Best line of the Stewart-Maddow interview
“I always wonder, I think to myself, how would they handle the moon landing, ’cause could they give it more coverage than they gave balloon boy.”
Jon Stewart talking about the “proportionality” of the 24-hour news networks.