Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
“The Geneva Conventions are there for a reason. I think that, number one, it’s consistent with our values. Number two, it’s consistent with our interests.”
— Bill Clinton on NPR
“But more often than not, it just gets people to lie to tell you whatever you want to hear to keep beatin’ the living daylights out of them.”
This really is an excellent discussion by President Clinton, well-worth a listen.
“However, if the parameters of our political life are now that we seriously discuss whether talking about torturing people is enough to blunt the political disadvantage of talking about an illegal war based on stovepiped intelligence and the messianic fantasies of a bunch of think-tank cowboys and war profiteers, we are well and truly lost in this country.”
“On the good side there has never been a better time to pick a fight with Popeye.”
— David Letterman
“In Louisiana federal agents raided Willie Nelson’s tour bus and found a pound and a half of marijuana. Looks like Willie is cutting back in his old age!”
— Jay Leno
“Dye cast as MVP candidate”
— San Francisco Chronicle referring to White Sox right fielder Jermaine Dye.
“The Geneva Convention is very important, and I don’t want to set a precedent that we change the Geneva Convention and then other countries will change theirs.”
— Senator George Allen, R-Moron, on Meet the Press
“Rocket scientists, long considered the gold standard in intelligence among all professionals, are not nearly as smart as originally thought, according to a controversial new study published today by the American Association of Brain Surgeons.”
“Last week the NFL on NBC was the highest rated program. You know what this means — next we’ll have NFL: Criminal Intent and NFL: Special Victims Unit.”
— Jay Leno
“George W. Bush is the right man to lead us in the era post whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next.”
— John Oliver, Senior White House Correspondent, The Daily Show
“While watching Olbermann, it occurred to me that George Bush is bad in all the ways Ronald Reagan was bad, but Bush is also bad in all the ways Reagan was good.
“If Reagan returned ‘Morning’ to America, what time of day has Bush brought us to?”
— Jill in comment
“If God didn’t want us to make a buck off of 9/11, he’d have made those planes hit something we don’t care about like New Orleans.”
“I hate to be so quaint as to defend reality. There’s not much point. It’s as dead as dial-up.”
“We’ve all become accustomed to a Congress that behaves as if it’s divided between Bloods and Crips rather than Republicans and Democrats….”
— Tim Rutten in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece titled ABC follows a path to shame. He also says:
“It’s well understood, of course, that docudramas are seldom documentary and only sporadically dramatic. As a rule, they’re basically devices to free unimaginative writers from the burden of having to make up characters’ names.”
“The scene reminds me of the old World War II joke about the worker in a defense plant who’s asked what he’s building. ‘The front ends of horses,’ he replies, ‘to be shipped to Washington for final assembly.’ ”
“I once sat in a car forever waiting for my mom to come out of a grocery store. I thought that was the definition of ‘interminable.’ I had no idea ‘The Path to 9/11’ was in my future.”
— Chicago Sun-Times critic Doug Elfman in a review titled: Accuracy aside, ABC’s “9/11” deserves to bomb.
He goes on to say:
Controversy could boost viewership, except “Path” is the dullest, worst-shot TV movie since ABC’s disastrous “Ten Commandments” remake. It substitutes shaky handheld cameras and dumb dialogue for craftsmanship. It could not be more amateurish or poorly constructed unless someone had forgotten to light the sets.
An appalling secondary concern is the tone makes almost every pre-9/11 American look like a fool.
NewMexiKen hopes ABC pulls the plug on this piece of propaganda, but the simple fact is that a large audience would be 30 million and that means nine out of ten Americans won’t be watching it anyway — and Scholastic has already replaced its supplemental material for schools, a more important development than whatever ABC chooses to do.
“The President of Iran is coming to the United States. How would you like to be behind him in airport security?”
— Jay Leno, who had this to say about Paris Hilton’s arrest:
“She was taken to a holding room and given one phone call. She called room service.”
Well, she hadn’t eaten all day.
“As with global warming and the handgun crisis, future generations will judge us harshly for not preventing Paris Hilton’s music career while there was still time.”
Poor thing, that on top of last night’s DUI arrest.
Other golfers wax and wane, suffer various injuries, battle mysterious slumps, deal with lapses of concentration, struggle to maintain a razor edge week after week, drop out of sight, struggle back. Tiger sits on top and stays there.
Oh, he has his troubles, too. After one recent round he said, “My posture was just terrible … It was just pitiful.”
“I have ‘the hand-eye coordination of a blind snake.'”
— Historian John Steele Gordon on why he doesn’t play golf (in an appreciation of Tiger Woods).
In NewMexiKen’s case it’s this quote from a college gym instructor while I was on a trampoline — “Have you ever heard of the word coordination?”
“Let me explain the government to you. There’s God, then there’s the president and then there’s my father.”
Jack Roberts, 6-year-old son of Chief Justice John Roberts, overheard speaking to one of his young peers on the last day of summer camp
Found at Abovethelaw.com. Thanks to Veronica for the link.
“He also told us about the green-yellow-red behavior system and said that he won’t get any reds but we should expect a few yellows.”
That’s Mack’s mom reporting on Mack’s first day of kindergarten.
It’s difficult to go through kindergarten, or any other part of life, without a few yellows.
Update: Mack says it’s not that he might purposefully break a rule, it’s that you don’t always know the rules. Indeed.
Mack’s dad told Mack that if he gets all the way through kindergarten with no yellows, he’ll get him a car.
“Rumsfeld is obviously unwilling to step down. Could he at least pipe down?”
From a Los Angeles Times Editorial
Tiger Woods, despite his dominance in golf’s majors, sports only a 7-11-2 record in Ryder Cup play.
“And no wonder,'” wrote Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. “He wasn’t wired for team play. He trusts nobody. Why should he buddy up with people he’s been trained to swallow in two bites or less? The hangman doesn’t play on the prison softball team.”
“I’m in a lower socioeconomic bracket than my children.”
Dental hygienist: What is your dissertation going to be on?
Grad student: The cultural barriers to health care for Mexican-born migrant farm workers.
Dental hygienist: How about the cultural barriers to health care for German-American dental hygienists with $2,500 deductables, instead?
–Hunter College