January 2013
1 post
“Often… a book of 300 pages would have been a lot better at 120...”
– Susan Orlean.
December 2012
1 post
“Hey, look at that superficially amusing ‘viral’ video created by a...”
– Millennials.
Actually, Hamilton Nolan.
November 2012
2 posts
“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough...”
– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, saying that demographics would be the only reason for a hypothetical Mitt Romney loss Tuesday.
The best part is people are actually saying this.
h/t Scripting News.
October 2012
1 post
September 2012
1 post
“Well, the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the...”
– The Romney-Ryan tax plan, everybody!
Mitt Romney on Meet the Press this morning.
June 2012
1 post
“How is the money spent? [Mainly] an ever-increasing volume of negative,...”
– Steve Pearlstein, “Turned off from politics? That’s exactly what the politicians want.”
Forget about “undecided” voters. They don’t exist anyway (they’ve already decided). Follow the money instead. It’s all about the composition of the voter pool.
EDIT:...
April 2012
1 post
March 2012
3 posts
“Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so...”
– Annie Murphy Paul in a New York Times op-ed, “Your Brain on Fiction”.
This is why, as Martin Amis puts it, literature is a “war on cliche”; a war on heard words.
vicemag:
When I die, I hope people make off-color jokes about me on Twitter, and I hope some of those jokes (a lot of those jokes) are offensive. Because that’s what I did to people when they were alive. If you’re not comfortable with people saying shitty things about you when you die, then try not to be a despicable human being when you are alive. Like Andrew Breitbart was.
–- Michael Ian...
“You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them...”
– Banksy channels Fugazi. (via sirmitchell)
January 2012
1 post
“Life is unfair. Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative...”
– Unintentionally? Unintentionally? David Brooks should know better. He might start with this mea culpa by a congressional staffer who left the GOP after thirty years of service last year:
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method...
December 2011
4 posts
1 tag
“He’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”
– Christine O’Donnell, on why she endorsed Mitt Romney. (via think-progress)
“A banking system is supposed to serve society, not the other way around.”
– Economist Joseph Stiglitz, discussing a Great Depression reprisal. (via vanityfair)
November 2011
4 posts
1 tag
“I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and...”
– Former JPMorgan executive David Mooney.
This is the kind of thing George Bailey would disagree with.
(via occupywallstreet)
1 tag
“The world will snap back and it will be a surprise and it will be faster than...”
– Goldman’s Blankfein: Growth to ‘Snap Back’ - Bloomberg
What could possibly go wrong?
(via felixsalmon)
1 tag
“People who think of themselves as “good” did these things, which is...”
– A chastening reminder of the humanity of the Penn State sexual abuse case from James Fallows.
It’s disquieting to think that good people (or at least people who think that they’re good) can harbour sex criminals or be racist. But we would all do well to reflect on this insight and step...
“What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common...”
– The Guardian: Quote
October 2011
1 post
1 tag
“Square by square, town by town, country by country, the people have risen up to...”
– President Obama on the Middle East and North Africa, May 11, 2011.
(via Boing Boing)
1 tag
“How would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you...”
– Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, is concerned the due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality. (via newsweek)
August 2011
1 post
“I honestly don’t care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap...”
– As a child, Bill Keller believed in the literal truth of the eucharist. So, he reasons, it would be unfair to judge grown-up politicians on their own religious convictions.
A few thoughts:
Does Keller genuinely not care if Mitt Romney believes (even privately) that eternal truths of divine...
July 2011
1 post
“If you’re not reporting that the Republicans are ultimately to blame for the...”
– The Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum on the even-handed, ‘both sides are doing it’ coverage of the debt ceiling.
Update: The calls for a third party representing the “radical center” are coming from establishment scion Thomas Friedman.
June 2011
2 posts
“The sweet spot is a mistake that allows the press to prosecute the error without...”
– @jayrosen_nyu on #johnwaynegate, #paulreveregate, &c.
Here’s the way you’ve got to think about it: the press doesn’t obsess over these gaffes despite the fact that they’re so innocuous, but rather because of that fact. They’re lazy and petrified of being seen as...
“You wouldn’t be doing any of this if one of the objectives was not to increase...”
– Christopher Hitchens’ take on Spitzergate suddenly seems relevant again. Thanks for that, Anthony Weiner. (via motherjones)
April 2011
1 post
“The majority of political writers we know might […] be accused of centrist...”
– In an extraordinary post, Politico co-founders John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei candidly cop to the true bias of the village press: as Jay Rosen (h/t) puts it, “lazy-ass centrism”.
What’s most disturbing about this is the preference for civil, centrist process — as if those...
March 2011
1 post
“Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected...”
– Barack Obama, promising The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ in 2008.
WikiLeaks’ alleged source Bradley Manning is psychologically deteriorating as he endures solitary confinement for going on eight months.
In case there’s any doubt that Bradley Manning is a whistleblower (as...
January 2011
5 posts
“This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy...”
– President Barack [Obama] at Cairo University : June 4th, 2009 (via soupsoup)
4 tags
I'm listed in Tumblweeds under quotes, politics,...
I’m listed in Tumblweeds, a user-generated community directory that rates Tumblr bloggers by their number of followers. Find me listed in #quotes, #politics, #news
“The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American...”
– With Martin Luther King being invoked in support of the war on terror yesterday, it’s a good time to revisit what he actually stood for. This quote comes from his Massey Lecture of 1967.
h/t to my pal Andrew L’Orsa for the MLK quote and @jeremyscahill for the DOD link.
“What [Jay Rosen] sees as truth-in-advertising, I see as information that’s...”
– Contra Jay Rosen’s call for greater disclosure, reporters are above suspicion for Politics Daily Editor in Chief Melinda Henneberger. That is, despite the recent failure of the press and political institutions, the public is supposed to continue to trust reporters for the same reason it always...
“The media — or at least the editorial boards at the country’s major...”
– Corporate ownership of the mainstream media; the inertia of the status quo; the appeal of identifying oneself with power and prestige; the assumption that there are good reasons for the way things are: the factors that conspire to form the media’s true bias, identified here by Radley Balko,...
December 2010
5 posts
“In recent weeks, NPR hosts, reporters and guests have incorrectly said or...”
– NPR issues a long-overdue correction — among others, Glenn Greenwald has been calling out this myth for three weeks now — setting the record straight on a falsehood that has been propagated by virtually every single mainstream media outlet. One awaits further corrections…
“Terrorism” […] to the extent it means anything, its definition is...”
– Glenn Greenwald defines what “terrorism” — a word so manipulated toward political ends that it’s practically impossible to use in honest discourse at this point — actually means for US government officials.
“Sorry about the confusion. But of course it’s OK for us to sell books about...”
– Peter Kafka imagines Amazon’s response to charges that they’re profiting off the same WikiLeaks content that they refuse to host, and puts his finger on what Dave Winer calls the “huge glaring 800-pound-gorilla elephant-in-the-room size contradiction”: media organizations the...
“Q: True or not. There’s a headset in your suite at Autzen so you can...”
– The ultimate booster, Nike’s Phil Knight all but reveals he has a headset for listening in on Oregon Ducks playcalling.
h/t @benthistlewood
“Only when I was on my way home later, to sit down in front of a laptop and...”
– Mike Madden defines the Politico stance on politics: reveling without judging.
(h/t @ggreenwald)
November 2010
14 posts
“Perhaps rather than worrying that our children no longer know how to cut quill...”
– A reader, Joshua P. Hill, sums up how the New York Times’ much-circulated piece “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction” is guilty of what I call the nostalgic fallacy.
“We’re talking about a major political party, which will control much of...”
– Steve Benen on the GOP
“Kanye: How does it feel to know that you could have any man in the world. Or...”
– Kanye West interviews Rihana for Interview magazine
“The rich are always going to say that, you know, ‘Just give us more money,...”
– Warren Buffett
“The market” (the whole free-market system) must be distinguished from “the...”
– One of the only conservatives grappling with right wing orthodoxy, David Frum in the New York Times, “Post-Tea-Party Nation”
“A recurrent fixation of mine [is] the myth of the cultural canon. No matter how...”
– Anil Dash, “Nobody’s Read Everything”
“His sadness over Hurricane Katrina is not for the victims in New Orleans, as...”
– Matthew Norman on how George W. Bush comes off in his memoirs.
“We can’t repeal DADT until the Secretary of Defense says it’s a good...”
– The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen lays out John McCain’s (non)evolving excuses to oppose Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
h/t the Daily Dish
“It’s only in journalism where the fact of having opinions supposedly...”
– Ezra Klein on Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC
“I think people are sort of waking up to it now, how probably the biggest change...”
– Nick Denton, quoted in a New Yorker profile last month, “Search and Destroy” 