“He joked with them in Spanish, telling them that he had considered adding his mother’s name to his in the Spanish tradition, but that ‘Bill Richardson Lopez’ wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker.”
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, so far
“And a day I dreaded all my life has ended up being one of the best days I’ve ever had.”
Mike Penner, now Christine Daniels, on the reaction to his sex-change article published yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. The story drew 500,000 online visits and more than 1,000 comments.
“The responses posted on the message board were overwhelmingly positive.”
Best line of the day, so far
“It is our choices,…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore
Most revealing (yet obvious) line of the day, so far
“One of the great pressures we’re facing in journalism now is, it’s a lot cheaper to hire thumb-suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters.”
Former CNN president Walter Isaacson to Bill Moyers as quoted by Tom Shales.
Best line of the day, so far
“We have the best quality of life anyone could ask for on our farm. If I wanted to improve my quality of life, I’d invest in a new, more comfortable seat for my tractor.”
Best line of the day, so far
I would be quite content to go to their children’s bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to “respect” their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone.
Christopher Hitchens in an excerpt from his new book, God Is Not Great.
Best line of the day, so far
“The sound of this engine is breathtaking, biblical, deeply sinister, like a two-man logging team cutting down the Tree of Knowledge.”
Dan Neil describing the new Porsche 911 GT3 415-hp, 3.6-liter flat six engine.
Best line of the week, so far
“On Capitol Hill Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then everybody had a good laugh and went back to what they were doing.”
Jay Leno
Best line of the day, so far
“I defy you to take the performance of the Attorney General and put it up against any boardroom segment on the Donald Trump reality show The Apprentice and tell me if you see any difference in the plaintive, cloying arguments of Gonzales and the plaintive, cloying arguments of any of the contestants on that reality show when they are begging not to be fired.”
Reader TA at Talking Points Memo.
Best line of the day, so far
“NY Times writer bravely fights global warming by hanging a clothesline. Clothes dry that much faster in the wind generated by patting herself on the back.”
Here’s the actual article by Kathleen A. Hughes, or as Fark.com puts it “Some Windbag.”
Best line of the day, so far
“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”
Attributed to Marilyn Monroe.
Most significant line of the day, so far
“Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label ‘abortion doctor.'”
Justice Ginsburg in her dissent. She is referring to the majority opinion issued today in Gonzales v. Carhart.
Best line of the day, so far
“Am I the only one who wonders how a person who borrows money he can’t repay, buys a house he can’t afford, and then stiffs his creditors, is allowed to play the victim?”
Michael Lewis on who’s to blame for the default crisis.
Best line of the day, so far
“People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I’ve got nothing but loathing for them.”
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine speaking for many of us.
Better this: A Black Day in the Blue Ridge
Best silly line of the day, so far
“I was the kid next door’s imaginary friend.”
Emo Philips
Best line of the day, so far
“I tell you, it’s hard work remembering what Alberto Gonzales remembers and doesn’t remember.”
Paul Kiel at TPMmuckraker
Best line of the day, so far
“Gonzales has indeed crafted the parallel of the Fire Department that appears in Ray Bradbury’s famous Fahrenheit 451—which, of course, existed not to put out fires, but to start them.”
Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine) on the “Meltdown at the Department of Justice.”
Best line of the day, so far
“[B]ut it does remind us that whatever his flaws, Nixon was a giant of a man compared with the doofus currently occupying the White House.”
Atrios after seeing the play Frost Nixon.
Einstein really was a genius
From a set of household rules Einstein wrote for his first wife: “You will stop talking to me if I request it.”
As found in Janet Maslin’s review of Einstein: His Life and Universe
Best line of the day, so far
“Why you’re seeing all this dust thrown up about rap music is because people don’t want to concentrate on the kind of polite obscenity that white talk show hosts, particularly white conservative talk show hosts, have been trafficking in for fifteen years.”
Charles Pierce on NPR’s “It’s Only a Game,” as quoted at Daily Kos, which has more.
Most prescient line of the day, so far
“Bell said Domenici’s idea is not to respond [to Iglesias’s charges], and hopefully make this a one day story. Unfortunately, I do not think that they can make an allegation such as this goes away so easily.”
Special Assistant to the President J. Scott Jennings in an email to Karl Rove and others, February 28, 2007, regarding Steve Bell, Senator Domenici’s Chief of Staff.
Update: Also via TPM:
The day AFTER the above email, AP reported this:
In a brief interview Thursday, Domenici also denied the accusation. “I don’t have any comment,” he told The Associated Press. “I have no idea what he’s [Iglesias] talking about.”
So, best-case scenario Domenici lied; worst-case scenario, he’s senile.
Best line of the day, so far
“It’s not a First Amendment issue. The government didn’t force Imus off the air. CBS and MSNBC made business decisions. What you witnessed is the intersection of the marketplace of ideas and commerce.”
Best summary of Vonnegut’s books, so far
“His books were teenager books, really: To fully appreciate them, it probably helped to perceive yourself as an alien being, forced by Fate to survive on a completely demented planet. To be 16 years old, in other words.”
Joel Achenbach, in a nice tribute deserving your click.
Best line of the day, so far, not about Vonnegut
“The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?”
Lee Iacocca, quoted at kottke.org.
Best line of the day, so far
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
Kurt Vonnegut, commencement address, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1974.