“But if you actually think that flip-flopping is a sign of flawed character, and not just a handy partisan cudgel, then, sure, Obama might be slightly cynical, but McCain must be a dangerous sociopath.”
Category: Best Line of the Day
Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
McCain — W’s third term
“Many voters are wondering whether a McCain presidency would be an extension of Mr. Bush’s two disastrous terms. If the way Mr. McCain is running his campaign these days is an indication, Americans don’t have to wait until next January for the answer to that one.”
What else is new line of the day
“For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell (Mrs. Alan Greenspan), who was with Obama, put it this way:
There was never an intention to make this political. But by tacking it on to the tail end of a political-the political leg of the trip, they opened themselves up they feared to the criticism, and if they’d gone, they’d be criticized and not going, they were criticized and the McCain commercial on this subject is completely wrong! Factually wrong.
Best line of the day
“Obama, it turns out, is a politician. In this respect, he resembles the forty-three Presidents he hopes to succeed, from the Father of His Country to the wayward son, Alpha George to Omega George. … They’re all politicians, yes—very much including Obama, … But that doesn’t mean they’re all the same.”
Best movie review in one-line of the day
“The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take “Mamma Mia!” to be a useful contribution to that debate.”
It took Leno a few more words:
“Here’s an amazing story of survival. Did you hear about this? This guy cut off his own arm using just a pocket-knife. What happened was — he had it around his girlfriend at a theater showing ‘Mamma Mia’ and he couldn’t take it anymore. He left the arm there. The arm is still there.”
Most difficult to challenge line of the day
“In our view, the dumbness of this year’s general-election coverage has been its defining feature.”
BTW, Somerby has a very good analysis today of a misreading of student scores in an article in last Sunday’s New York Times. Recommended.
Best late night line
Well, it was leaked yesterday that John McCain could be leaning towards Tim Pawlenty as a possible vice presidential running mate, and I know what you’re thinking — the Tim Pawlenty?
Apparently, McCain wants to lower his profile even more.
I’m not even sure who Pawlenty was, so I googled him and it said, “Who?”
— Jay Leno
Best line of the day, so far
“Gulianni’s son sues after getting kicked off golf team. Coach said he only was able to putt well on holes 9 and 11”
Best lines of late night
“You know, you’ve got to feel kind of sorry for McCain. I mean, all day on TV, they show nothing but footage of Barack Obama touring the Middle East, being with the troops in Afghanistan, meeting with troops in Iraq. The only time I saw McCain on TV was when Willard Scott wished him a happy birthday on the ‘Today’ show.”
“A lot of people think to take some of the spotlight off of Barack Obama, that John McCain will announce his vice presidential choice this week. And most people think it’s going to be Mitt Romney. See, I don’t know about that, because when Romney and McCain stand together, doesn’t it look like one of those slick Countrywide lenders trying to trick your grandfather into a reverse mortgage?”
Jay Leno
Saying more than he might have intended McCain line of the day
“My friends, we have to drill off shore. We have to do it. It’s out there and we can do it. And we can do that. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?”
John McCain, Tuesday
The oil executives have had their say for eight years. Let’s give someone else some undue influence.
Best line of the morning, so far
“Freddie Mac is preparing to issue stock for sale. You can get them in one-ply soft with 1,000 sheets or the two-ply super-soft with 650 sheets.”
Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt
“Tallying what the lenders have made off Ms. McLeod over the years is revealing. In 2007, when she earned $48,000 before taxes, she was charged more than $20,000 in interest on her various loans.”
From The Debt Trap, a The New York Times “series about the surge in consumer debt and the lenders who made it possible.”
Most outrageous line of the day, so far
“[F]ormer chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was ‘probably the most exploited worker in American history’ since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the ‘billions’ he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.”
Phil Gramm speaking on behalf of John McCain as reported by Frank Rich.
But the rest of us are a “nation of whiners” according to Gramm, rumored to be McCain’s odds-on-favorite to be Secretary of Treasury.
“On issues of economics and … family values, there’s nobody that I know that’s stronger,” Mr. McCain has said of Gramm.
That says more about who McCain knows than it does about Phil Gramm.
Best Starbucks line of the day, so far
“Starbucks has named its 600 stores to be closed. Affected employees may be transferred to the nearest locations. In other words, they’ll be able to keep the same parking spaces.”
Found Online
Best line of the day, so far
“What you have to realize is that the faith of modern conservatives in tax cuts and deregulation is absolute, not susceptible to refutation by evidence.”
Best line on the other network
“Well, according to the latest Zogby poll, 10% of Americans are giving President Bush’s economic policy the thumbs up. The other 90% using a different finger.”
Jay Leno
Best line of last night
“Yesterday down in the White House lawn President Bush and all the boys got together and had a T-ball game. … Everything was going well until Vice President Cheney water boarded the umpire.”
David Letterman
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
“If you ask me, there isn’t much suspense in this year’s election: barring some extraordinary mistakes, Mr. Obama will win. Assuming he wins, the real question is what he’ll make of his victory.”
Paul Krugman in Friday’s column.
Krugman also says “If the current housing slump runs on the same schedule, we won’t be seeing a recovery until 2011 or later.”
And he predicts a slow rebound from the current recession: “If the current slump follows the typical modern pattern, the economy will stay depressed well into 2010, if not beyond …”.
Truest line of the day, so far
“Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms.”
Best line of the day we can all use at times
“I must admit, it’s been difficult for me sometimes to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others.”
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to the House Judiciary Committee as reported by Talking Points Memo.
Most unsettling email subject line of the day
Amazing July Baby Sales
Guess who line of the day
“A guy gets up and quizzes me — it’s my fault for trying to answer — but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia (there’s a Czech Republic and a Slovakia), but yet it didn’t make the nightly national news. I’m not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up.”
That’s Firedoglake quoting none other than Governor George W. Bush in 2000. The subject comes up because twice in the past two days Senator McCain has referred to Czechoslovakia — a country that ceased to exist more than 15 years ago.
When even Bush knows you’re wrong — and it’s eight years later and you’re still wrong — there is something amiss. McCain’s own memoir, Faith of My Fathers, has a chapter “Fifth from the Bottom.” It refers to his class rank at the Naval Academy — 894th out of 899.
Do we want a president even more ignert than Bush?
Worst president ever line of the day
“This isn’t a bailout. The shareholders will still continue to own the company.”
George W. Bush via Atrios.
Best fake (I think) headline of the day
Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In
Best line of late night
“President Bush said 9/11 changed everything. And you know, he’s right. Because violating the Constitution, breaking the law, used to mean jail time.”
Jay Leno, Friday, July 11