Sunday, January 01, 2006

Quote for the Day, 1/1/2006   "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."   -President George W. Bush, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina   Brownie, of course, refers to Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, and the man who put the "disaster" in disaster relief.  It sort of sums up the quality of our beloved President's judgment in 2005...if not during his whole Presidency...if not during his whole life. Another thing:  "You can call me anything you want...but do not call me a racist," the President said about his (lack of) reaction to Hurricane Katrina.  I know a little something about insults.  The only insults that really get under your skin are those you either know or fear are true.  I'm not calling the President a racist.  I can't know his mind, nor would I feel safe wading through such murky waters.  But his own reaction suggested it. 11:13:48 PM    comment []

Ethics Reform   It is no secret that to a considerable extent, our government is for sale.  What's more surprising is just how affordable buying influence can be.  Something should be done.  As it happens, I have something in mind. Newt Gingrich, of all people, appeared on one of the Sunday shows this morning with a useful idea:  That fundraisers for federal politicians in Washington, D.C. be barred while Congress is in session.  Couple that with another idea from a Republican, New Jersey state Senator Tom Kean, Jr., that corporations that donate more than $400 to political campaigns not be eligible for government contracts.  Neither of those proposals would even be subject to judicial scrutiny; they do not even potentially limit free speech.  Then add this:  Any politician who accepts an illegal gift from a lobbyist, whether it be a meal or a vacation or a house, should be immediately impeached by the US House, convicted by the Senate, and then tried by the courts.  Any aide that violates the gift rules should be fired for cause and then referred to the courts.  This is really just enforcing laws already on the books which are routinely violated(there was an article in the Washington Post today about just how routine it is)and are ignored with a contemptuous disregard for, well, America. Pass these three proposals, and politics would become a whole lot cleaner than it is today.  That would be a Good Thing. 8:54:41 PM    comment []

The Year 2005 in Quotes:  January 2005   Just for fun, I have decided to list all the quotes for the day I used in my blog last year.  I should get them all in here over the next two or three days.   "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.  I don't want to sell anything bought or processed; or buy anything sold or processed; or process anything sold, bought, or processed; or repair anything sold, bought, or processed, you know, as a career."   -John Cusack, Say Anything   "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness of proportion."   -Sir Francis Bacon   I’m pretty sure I recycled that quote later in the year.  Whoops.   "In a world where Ambrosia artemisaefolia turns out to be common ragweed, you can't be too careful."   -Will Cuppy   "As for the Reagan legacy, what can you say about a President that cites the invasion of Grenada as the greatest accomplishment of his administration?  Except that, well, I agree with his assessment."   -A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture   "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still the quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered.  It was a willingness of the heart."   -F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Swimmers"   "Don't you have the feeling out friends really are better than other people's friends?"   -Alison Auber   "I was madly in love with the Countess de _______; I was twenty, and I was naïve; she cuckolded me, I protested, she deserted me.  I was naïve, I longed for her; I was twenty, she forgave me; and because I was twenty, was naïve, was still cuckolded but no longer deserted, I thought myself the best-beloved of her lovers, and thus the happiest man alive."   -Vivant Denon, No Tomorrow   "There comes a day in every man's life--and it's a hard day—there comes a day when he realizes he's never going to play professional basketball."   -Bradley Whitford, The West Wing, "The Red Mass"   "That's the insidious thing about drugs--you don't realize--uh...I mean, you're having such a good time, you don't realize what a bad time you're having."   -Eric Bogosian, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll   "nature shows us that a caterpillar just eats and loafs and sleeps and after a while without any effort it turns into a butterfly."   -Don Marquis, archyology   That last reflection still gives me comfort.   "You know, I have this awful paranoid thought that feminism was mostly invented by men so they could fool around a little more."   -Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise   I thought everyone knew that.   "The most expensive thing on this earth is to believe in something that is palpably not true."   -H. L. Mencken, Minority Report   "Love is something which dies and when dead it rots and becomes soil for a new love.  Then the dead love continues its secret life in the loving one, and thus in reality, there is no death in love."   -Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf   "Don't listen to anybody, don't copy anything.  Go after that twisted, deranged core of your being, wrench it into the light, and you will make one million dollars."   -Cynthia Heimel, A Girl's Guide to Chaos   "The past is not our favorite tense."   -Bill Moyers   "It has been, and still is, a matter of opinion whether, if you wish to kill your undesirable, it is better to let him die quietly in a concentration camp, flay him until he dies, hurl him over a precipice, burn, drown, or suffocate him; or entomb him alive in the silence of his grave; or asphyxiate him agonizingly in a lethal chamber, or press him to death or cut off his head; or produce a sort of coma by means of an electrical current that grills him in parts and then, in the name of autopsy, permit the doctors to finish him off--as they do in certain of the United States of North America; or break his neck in strangulation by hanging as the English [used to] do.  It is all a matter of taste, temperament, and fashion."   -Charles Duff, A Handbook on Hanging   "To be wicked on a small income is impossible.  The ruin of even the simplest of maidens costs money."   -Jerome K. Jerome, Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow   "I have glimpsed our future, and all I can say is, go back."   -Ione Skye, Say Anything   "Gibbons are noted for the number and variety of things they cannot do."   -Will Cuppy   "Love and gluttony justify everything."   -Oscar Wilde   "Life, friends, is boring.  We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you’re bored means you have no   Inner Resources.'  I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored."   -John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs   "Now if the bedroom is dirty to you, then you are a true atheist, because if...anyone...believes that God made his body, and your body is dirty, then the problem lies with the manufacturer."   -Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People   "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost."   -Henry James   "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook."   -William James   "I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn't know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don't know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end."   -Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past (1947)   "One of the things that keeps popping up is this about 'subtext'. Plays, novels, songs--they all have a 'subtext', which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So, subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?" "The text." "Okay, that's right, but they never talk about that."   -Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols, Barcelona   "In the beginning, all the world was America."   -John Locke, Second Treatise on Government   "Self-pity--it's the only pity that counts."   -Oscar Levant   "Give me enough hope and I'll hang myself."   -Delmore Schwartz   "A lot of people won't take no for an answer. I wanted you to know that I'm not one of them. I can be discouraged."   -Matt Keeslar, The Last Days of Disco   "There are worse things in this world than getting slapped by a beautiful woman.  You'll see."   -Brian McNamara, Mystery Date 12:58:32 PM    comment []