Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
“[W]inning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.”
Stephen Colbert writing Maureen Dowd’s column.
“Democrats determined to override Bush’s veto on children’s health bill, failing to realize that crayon is really hard to erase[.]”
“What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply.”
Al Gore quoted by Bob Herbert, who also writes:
Mr. Bush came to mind because, for all of the obvious vulnerabilities he exhibited in 2000, it was not him but Mr. Gore who was mocked unmercifully by the national media. And the mockery had nothing to do with the former vice president’s positions on important policy issues. He was mocked because of his personality.
In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds.
Speaking of T-shirts.
“for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”
Al Gore has an Emmy, an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize and all my country got was George W. Bush.
“A new study shows that salmonella germs that were sent into space aboard the shuttle Atlantis came back three times meaner and stronger. Memo to congressional Democrats: report to Cape Canaveral at 0700…you’re going on a trip.”
On October 10, 2002, Congress said “Okely Dokely!” to letting President Bush go to war with Iraq without actually, y’know, declaring war. Five years later Iraq is a U.S.-made disaster and Congress is pouring blood and treasure into Bush’s abyss just as fast as it can. But they have a very good reason: they’re idiots.
“In American political commentary we often pick on the candidates but the voter is always sacrosanct. He’s usually portrayed as a noble innocent who may be betrayed but whose mistakes are always honest ones. But sometimes the voter is just plain stupid. He’s a guy you wouldn’t trust to mow your lawn, much less chose the leader of the free world.”
Tiger Woods missed the baptism of his 3 ½-month-old daughter Sam in Stockholm on Sunday because he was attending a charity tournament in Anaheim, Calif., the London Times reported.
Apparently he couldn’t bear to see his offspring headed for the water.
Sideline Chatter in an item titled “Amen Corner.”
“We gave up 24 points there in the blink of an eye, but we’ve had losses worse than this one.”
University of Arizona linebacker Spencer Larsen quoted by Greg Hansen in his Arizona Daily Star column after the Wildcats lost to Oregon State 31-16.
Hansen himself has a pretty foolish line:
“A week ago you might have bought stock in the UA football program. Today you would probably sell at a deficit. If the Wildcats get to something like 5-7, winning three more games, [Coach] Stoops would be a miracle worker.”
So, if I understand that correctly, Stoops would be responsible for the 5, but not the 7 in his fourth season as head coach?
But some of us can’t help ourselves. Nearly as common as the abandoned blog is the “final comments before I reclaim my life” post. Followed by “an update to something I said in my final comments.” And, “Well, I couldn’t let this story go by.” And on it goes.
Christianity Today explaining why some of us can’t quit blogging. Via Andrew Sullivan.
“If you watch bad television because you think it’s good, you’re screwed up. But if you watch bad television because you like the feeling of watching bad television, you’re OK.”
“32% said it’s time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.”
And why is that a best line of the day? Because it’s the Wall Street Journal citing a poll of REPUBLICANS.
Oh, and: “By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy.”
“They simply do not believe that they have to adhere to the rule of law — it’s awe-inspiring in its pathology.”
— Digby on the latest torture revelations.
“There is no doubt – no doubt at all – that these tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes.”
“And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
— Rick Atkinson in The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“There was a comment made tonight that [Mayor Chavez] was offering an olive branch. He needs to bring the whole tree.”
Councilman Brad Winter quoted in the Albuquerque Tribune.
The Daily Show is calling its continuing coverage of next year’s presidential election “Clusterf@#k to the White House.”
“The presidential campaign ritual in this country has obviously devolved into a deeply flawed phenomenon, one that tends to produce incompetent or inappropriate leaders and fails to really touch the population on any level anymore beyond disgust and resentment.”
Matt Taibbi in his campaign blog: “Year of the Rat.”
“Bush 33 – Congress 29 — It’s not GOLF people, you want a higher score.”
FARK.com commenting on newest polls.
Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx was born on this date in 1890.
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”
“I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”
“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”
“Room service? Send up a larger room.”
“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them — well, I have others.”
“Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”
Tom Friedman in yesterday’s column arguing that we need “our old habits and sense of openness” — we need a 9/12 candidate, not a 9/11 one.
“You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.”
“A month ago, Craig promised the people of Idaho that he intended to resign by Sept. 30. As we begin a new fiscal year, he seems to have voted himself a continuing resolution.”
Arizona football coach Mike Stoops spent several hours at University Medical Center in Tucson last Friday getting treatment for kidney stones.
Which might explain why his Wildcats had no problems passing against Washington State.