“Should I decide to change my politics and become a conservative now that I’m exactly the middle-aged bourgeois/suburban tool I used to rail against, I can always vote Republican by voting Democratic. The new Democratic Party is an excellent substitute for the old Nixon/Ford Republican Party. They even passed Nixon’s vision of a health care plan.”
Category: Best Line of the Day
Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
Best line of the day
“I watched the House debate and vote on C-Span last night and found it clarifying (in the moments of prolonged silence when nothing was happening I switched to the yammer-fests on cable news and couldn’t stand it for more than a minute).”
George Packer : The New Yorker
Packer adds this among his many other acute observations.
“The implied or explicit premise of every Republican I heard is that any involvement of government in our lives is an arrogant abrogation of freedom. The kinds of arguments only a few hard-liners made against Medicare forty-five years ago are today the overwhelming—the smothering—ideology of just about every Republican official.”
Those of you whose political awareness originated in the past 30 years (since Reagan, in other words) perhaps cannot fully comprehend how the context has changed. Politics has always been charged, but railing against government — as so many politicians do — has fundamentally changed the nature of the debate. It used to be the argument was what and how government should act. The discussion now sees to be about whether government should exist.
Best line of the day, so far
“Now that the bill has passed, repealing it (which I presume is what Republicans campaigning in the fall will call for) will mean, literally, voting for allowing insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, voting to permit rescissions, and voting to make it much harder for people who lose their jobs to stay insured. I have a hard time believing that advocating these things will be a political winner.”
James Surowiecki : The New Yorker
Republicans voted 178-0 against the bill.
Best line of the day
“It was a hideous display…”
Dana Milbank referring to “Republican members of Congress … on the balcony of the people’s House [stirring] an unruly crowd.”
Best line of the day
Have you seen their latest TV spot? The one in which some dedicated shopper with pageant hair reassures us that prices at Stein Mart are so low we won’t have to (and I quote) HIDE OUR PURCHASES FROM OUR HUSBANDS?
No, seriously!!! We can show them the tacky crap we’ve bought without fear of, I don’t know, a stern talking-to!!! Or, um, being grounded!!! Or something equally inappropriate and infantile!!!
Because, apparently, it’s 1954, and we’re all Lucy fucking Ricardo.
SinPantalones in a post titled Since I’ve never cared for be-sequinned holiday sweatshirts and ugly shoes, I’ve never been a big fan of Stein Mart.
Best line of the day
“It [health care reform] may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney’s, but hopefully by Easter.”
Bill Clinton
Best line of the day
“Crazy day. Reid’s birthday party (20 kids) was great. We did crafts, pizza, cake and Destroy the Basement.”
Jill
That would be 20 four-year-olds, more or less.
Best line of the day, so far
“There are five billion people on the planet. Major league athletes all over the planet total less than 10,000 people. They are all freaks.”
Bill Russell quoted in an article about Baylor’s Brittney Griner. She is 6-foot-8 and can slam (and punch).
The best rule of the day
Farhad Manjoo at Slate Magazine asked readers to propose “a concise, easy-to-remember rule that we could all consult when deciding whether to reach for our phones.”
And his readers responded.
If you’re in a situation where you’d excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, you should also excuse yourself before reaching for your phone. Otherwise, go ahead without asking. Either way, don’t play with your phone longer than you’d stay in the bathroom.
Follow the link above to read all about it. And to discover the “one area where readers were in absolute agreement.”
Thanks to Nora for sending the link.
Nora knows an individual who is confused. That individual uses the cell phone IN THE BATHROOM.
Best line of the day that may well surprise you
“The early consensus among the well-informed is that [Nancy Pelosi] is the most effective Speaker since Tip [O’Neill] and potentially one of the three or four greatest ever. (There have been sixty. She’s the first woman.)”
Best line of the day
“That the N.C.A.A. would consider tinkering with its gem of a format in pursuit of the mirage of more television money is the real March Madness. Just think, a 96-team tournament might have included all 16 teams from a horrendously overrated Big East.”
Best line of the day, so far
“Obama may not yet have the defining legislation of his presidency on his desk, but he’s already pulled off a small miracle: getting the holier-than-thou purists of his party to realize that they have to govern every now and then.
“No such problems on the Republican side.”
Best line of the day
“The usual suspects have been attacking Obama for ‘demonizing’ insurance companies; but saying that people do terrible things isn’t demonization if they do, in fact, do terrible things.”
Second best Tiger line of the day
“We don’t know about you, but we’re ready to quit gossiping and watch golf as it’s meant to be watched—focusing on Tiger Woods 99.999% of the time and totally ignoring the rest of the field.”
Best Tiger line of the day
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Tiger Woods couldn’t have picked a more appropriate spot for his comeback than Augusta National Golf Club. After all, that place’s attitude toward women is even more retrograde than his is — or was, prior to his ongoing rehabilitation.”
Best line of the day, so far
“No Republican Senator is ever going to vote for the health care bill under any circumstances. It could have a rider in it mandating biblical readings up through the junior college level and you still couldn’t get even a very God-fearing Republican like Tom Coburn to vote for an Obama health care bill.”
Best line of the day
“[Kentucky Coach John] Calipari is the only coach in NCAA history to bring to the Final Four two programs so utterly corrupt that neither of them officially exists in the tournament records any more.”
UMass had its 4-1 1996 NCAA Tournament record vacated.
Memphis had to vacate the entire 2007-08 season, including the NCAA Tournament and its standing as runner-up.
Best line of the day
“But isn’t it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn’t us, and the fix is something that doesn’t require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It’s so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we’re at it let’s cut taxes more. It’s the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people.”
Best Sweetie line of the day
Veronica, tucking 6-year-old Sofie into bed after a loooong weekend: “I love you. You are my princess.”
Sofie: “I love you, too. You are my servant.”
Best line of the day
“Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’ (formerly known as the Inquisition).”
But tell us what you really think, Hitch:
“Ratzinger himself may be banal, but his whole career has the stench of evil …”.
Best line of the day, so far
“College basketball fans have been waiting for this week, working on theatrical little coughs and performing Method actor-y massages of their temples in preparation to catch ‘the thing that’s going around’ in time for Thursday’s tip-off of the NCAA tournament’s first round. The first two rounds of the tournament remain one of the greatest and most sustained fan-rushes in sports.”
When I was working I often took Thursday and Friday afternoons of March Madness off — but vacation-time, of course, not “sick” leave.
Best line of the day
“But trying to demonstrate facts to reporters is a waste of time.”
The Ad Contrarian in an blog post about some of the recent FALSE news reports about Toyota titled “The Prius Balloon Boy.”
Thanks to SinPantalones who had this on Twitter.
Best line of the day
ALBUQUERQUE — With the season on the line in the final minute of one of the most thrilling, intense and improbable come-from-behind victories of the 2010 Girls State Basketball Championships, there was no time for jokes.
Unless you’re Lakeshia Padilla.
With around 8,000 screaming fans on the edge of their seats and eyes transfixed on The Pit floor, the imposing 6-foot-1 post presence of the second-seeded Santa Fe Indian School Lady Braves walked up to junior point guard Jenine Coriz and whispered something in her ear before a critical free throw with 58 seconds remaining in a Class AAA semifinal with No. 6 Lovington.
“I just told her to call 1-800-Everytime,” Padilla said. “Then she’ll make them every time.”
Coriz made the free throw and the Lady Braves went on to come from a 15-point deficit to defeat Lovington in the state 3AAA semi-final game. Last night SFIS defeated West Las Vegas in OT to win the 3AAA state championship.
Most interesting history line of the day
“Although the Roman Catholic Church allowed Africans to be enslaved because they were presumed to have rejected Christianity, it forbade enslaving Indians because they were believed never to have heard of Christ. Nevertheless, the Spanish were allowed to enslave Indians who attacked them.”
From an article in The Santa Fe New Mexican exploring the book The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact
Best line of the day, so far
“Off to kid’s Honors Breakfast. Why is it never an Honors Happy Hour?”