Quotes, Who By Fire Edition
I'm not going to be around much between now and the 11th, so have a memorial quotes post a bit early. -- ?!
Wife: Have you got anything without racism?
Waitress: Well, there's racism, tax cuts, Bible-thumping and racism, that's not got much racism in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY racism!
Man: Why can't she have nationalism, racism and tax cuts?
Wife: THAT'S got racism in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much racism in it as racism, tax cuts, Bible-thumping and racism, has it?
Waitress: Urgghh!
Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like racism !
Republicans: Lovely racism ! Wonderful racism !
Waitress: Shut up!
-- cleek, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Ruth Badass Ginsburg
...I may have that middle name wrong.
-- Jeff Williamson, Facebook, comments
He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.
-- former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, quoted in Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
[T]enders of a 23-Cent Heart Miracle seem to work just fine on the readers of the magazine where Ann Coulter began her journalistic ascent in the late nineties by pimping the notion that liberals are all gullible rubes. In an alternate universe where Coulter would be capable of rational self-reflection, it would be fascinating to ask her what she thinks about, say, the layout of HumanEvents.com on the day it featured an article headlined “Ideas Will Drive Conservatives’ Revival.” Two inches beneath that bold pronouncement, a box headed “Health News” included the headlines “Reverse Crippling Arthritis in 2 Days,” “Clear Clogged Arteries Safely & Easily-without drugs, without surgery, and without a radical diet,” and “High Blood Pressure Cured in 3 Minutes . . . Drop Measurement 60 Points.” It would be interesting, that is, to ask Coulter about the reflex of lying that’s now sutured into the modern conservative movement’s DNA-and to get her candid assessment of why conservative leaders treat their constituents like suckers.
-- Rick Perlstein, "The Long Con," The Baffler (2012)
When the scales fall from your eyes, make sure they don't hit you in the feet.
-- Charles P. Pierce, "Just Shut Up and Quit," Esquire
“September 11” has a different resonance in Santiago.
-- Rand Carega, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
In a fire, what you can't carry isn't yours.
-- Naamon Fox, quoted in Alyssa Greenberg, "The Things They Lost in the Fire," Pacific Standard
We all tend to think that the [London] Underground works on electricity. It doesn't. The thing that makes the Underground work...is tea.
-- opening narration from "Going Underground: Tales from the Tube"
You cant spell buttsex without subtext.
-- Christopher J. Malec, Facebook, comments
After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
A good point I heard made in late 2016 was that this wasn't Hillary Clinton's nightmare so much as the nightmare (or reality) of every remotely competent woman - working your ass off your entire life to be qualified for a position that will instead be given to the dumbest motherfucker on Earth, just because he's a guy.
-- CP, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
The formula by which Arafat and the terrorists of the Palestine Liberation Organization were to be transformed into the responsible bureaucrats and peacemakers of the Palestinian Authority promised an end to violence and the war that Arabs had been waging on the Jews, as well as their return to their ancient homeland since the early 20th century.
Rabin had a clear idea of what would happen. There would be a border, he liked to say. On the one side would be Israel. On the other would be Arafat and his P.A., which would fight Hamas and any other terrorists and, as Rabin never tired of pointing out, without interference from the Israeli Supreme Court and the human-rights groups that sought to hamper his security services.
But Arafat had no intention of fighting terrorists. He was, in fact, fomenting, planning and paying for terrorism. All he had done was to sign a piece of paper and pocketed extensive Israeli concessions that set the Palestinians on the path to statehood. The foreign-policy experts-both in the United States and Israel-were wrong. But it took years before some of them would admit it, and even then they sought to evade blame for the slaughter that came in Oslo’s wake by claiming that Israel hadn’t been forthcoming enough.
-- Jonathan S. Tobin, "25 Years of Illusions About Oslo," Jewish News Syndicate
Libertarians seemed to me then, and now, wrapped up in the notion that only the government can deprive individuals of their civil liberties. From my early experience onward, I have always known better. Their fellow citizens are in fact far more likely to do so.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
[Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald has grown accustomed to Toronto’s strange love-hate relationship with the creatures we affectionately call urban trash pandas. While she may, occasionally, roll her eyes at our human behaviour - our reeling between disgust and affection, frustration and concern - she can relate. MacDonald marvels at the curious antics of raccoons caught on camera, but she also swears at the ones who wreak havoc in her backyard.
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
Woodward recounts an expletive-laden altercation between Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and senior adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, then the chief White House strategist.
“You’re a goddamn staffer!” Bannon screamed at her, telling her that she had to work through Priebus like other aides. “You walk around this place and act like you’re in charge, and you’re not. You’re on staff!”
Ivanka Trump, who had special access to the president and worked around Priebus, replied: “I’m not a staffer! I’ll never be a staffer. I’m the first daughter.”
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
There is a reason that poison has, historically, been thought to be a woman's weapon: it is covert. Because none of the ways of vindicating one's honor are permitted to women--they are only permitted to high status men. Slaves and women both have no right to self defense--owner class women (white women) in a slave society may have a right to have their honor vindicated by their spouses or male family members. An "honor society" is one in which just a few people have honor, and the right to defend their honor. Everyone else is shit out of luck and will be arrested and tried for a crime when they resist attack by favored members of society.
-- Aimai, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
'twas a sad day on the Inntertoobs when TimeCube went dark. R.I.P., Gene Ray. There will never be another like you!
-- basenjibrian, Alicublog, comments
I was once asked whether my forebears in Russia lived like they did in “Fiddler on the Roof”. I replied that they could stand the pogroms, the discrimination and the epidemics, but not the choreography
-- Simon Philip Jackson, Facebook, comments
The Palestinians can complain about Israeli settlements, but a clear majority of Israelis understand that what they had done in 1993 was to trade land for more terror, not peace. That conclusion was reinforced in 2005 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza. That set in motion the chain of events that created an independent Palestinian terrorist state ruled by Hamas. These events convinced Israel’s voters, who have elected Oslo skeptic Benjamin Netanyahu prime minister three times in the last decade, not to make the same mistake again.
-- Jonathan S. Tobin, "25 Years of Illusions About Oslo," Jewish News Syndicate
there is nothing like the sweet freedom of complete nihilism experienced at a 7/11 at 2am, God lives in church, the randomness of the unfeeling universe lives at aisle 9 of CVS
-- insomniac-arrest, Tumblr
"asylum fraud" is the new "welfare fraud" with similar racial and ethnic connotations.
-- FlipYrWhig, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
[T]he defining trait of authoritarian personalities, both followers and leaders, is also a defining trait of libertarians: A contempt for the principles of equality, and a prevailing belief that inequality is the natural state of things, which should not be undermined.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
A couple minutes later, she screams “Don’t grab me!” At this point, I’m getting nervous. I instantly start thinking about what this will look like when and if the police arrive. Will the other passengers believe that I haven’t done anything? What if they don’t? And who will the police believe: America’s favorite victim, the white woman, or me, the black guy. I try to step as far away from her as I can on a crowded Max [light rail car]. I noticeably make it clear that I’m holding the brief in my left hand (the side closest to her) and my right hand is in my pocket, so there’s no way I could have grabbed her.
Her latest outburst is followed with several more uses of n****r, and she then starts telling the man who intervened that a n****r grabbed her on the shoulder. I truly don’t know how to respond so I just continue to ignore her. She then turns to me and calls me a n****r to my face.
“You need to calm down.” I say. “You can’t tell me what to do n****r.” She answers. “You need. To watch. Your mouth.” I finally say, through gritted teeth, struggling to stay calm. She then snatches my hand asking if that was the hand I touched her with. “Don’t touch me,” I say, pushing her hand away. Even as I push her hand away, I’m hyper concerned about what the other passengers are thinking.
-- Admin, "To The Non-Racist White People, Please Just Be The First," My Mixed Thoughts
I really don't give a damn what Noreen Gosch has to say. I really don't give a damn what she thinks. I'm interested in the boy and what we can do to find him. I'm kind of sick of her.
-- former Des Moines police chief Orval Cooney, from a recollection by a Des Moines Tribune reporter, in "The Disappearance of Paperboy Johnny Gosch" In the same documentary, Cooney is shown in archival footage from the time saying "I'm very optimistic. I think that we will find the boy, and he will be alive." Gosch has never been found, and was 12 at the time at his kidnapping.
“I think the urban environment selects for certain types of raccoons, ones that are less afraid of people, more likely to investigate new things,” [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald said. “They don’t give up right away like rural ones do, they keep at it. And I think we’re probably responsible for that, selecting these kinds of behaviours in our urbans and turning them into a different kind of animal.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
I’ve said this before, but leaving aside malicious interference on his behalf (not to mention voter suppression), Trump’s election comes down to an unconscionable number of men in positions of power abdicating their responsibilities in the belief that it doesn’t matter how badly they shit on a woman, she’ll always be there to clean up the mess. And in fact, they wanted her to clean it up. They just also wanted to be sure she didn’t, for one minute, get the idea that she deserved any respect or deference.
-- Abigail_Nussbaum, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
And...and they had a vicar there, and, um, I told him what to do with his God, basically.
-- mother of Hillsborough stadium disaster victims Victoria and Stephanie Hicks, Jenny Hicks, interviewed in "Hillsborough: The Search for Truth"
Cohn, a Wall Street veteran, tried to tamp down Trump’s strident nationalism regarding trade. According to Woodward, Cohn “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” that the president was intending to sign to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea. Cohn later told an associate that he removed the letter to protect national security and that Trump did not notice that it was missing.
Cohn made a similar play to prevent Trump from pulling the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, something the president has long threatened to do. In spring 2017, Trump was eager to withdraw from NAFTA and told Porter: “Why aren’t we getting this done? Do your job. It’s tap, tap, tap. You’re just tapping me along. I want to do this.”
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post ["You're just tapping me along"?! WTF does that even mean? -- ?!]
The marketplace of ideas operates exactly like our free market. Lots of protectionism, tariffs, and odd advantages being given to the already powerful
-- Grouchy Medievalist, Alicublog, comments
The raccoons don’t know they’re winning. “They don’t even know there’s a war,” [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald said. “They don’t go, ‘I saw [Toronto mayor] John Tory on the news, I checked Twitter, and it seems like there’s a war on us!’ They’re not doing that at all.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
[Trump] really does seem to have a long-held belief that America is being played for chumps by its allies. He was saying stuff like this back in the '80s.
-- stepped pyramids, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
We have a generation of young men lining up to fanatically defend an authoritarian ideologue like Jordan Peterson, who claims on the one hand to be all about individual rights but promotes the values of male patriarchy. eterson’s recent rants about how “it is only the individual who suffers” are a case in point. It’s abject nonsense. Families suffer, especially when one of their members do. Communities can suffer. Whole nations suffer during wartime.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
[S]he told him about the little boy who was thrown out of a fourth-story window by a nun. She told him about a day when the nuns sent her into the fire pit to retrieve a ball and her snow pants caught on fire, and about how weeks later, as the nuns pulled blackened skin off her arms and her legs with tweezers and she cried out in pain, they told her it was happening because she was a real bad girl. She told Widman about a boy who went under the surface of Lake Champlain and did not come up again, and a very sad and very frightening story of a little boy who was electrocuted, whom the nuns made her kiss in his coffin.
-- Christine Kinneally, "We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph's Orphanage," Buzzfeed News
We're in love with the narrative that even the worst chud on the planet has some redeeming factor or can be tearfully turned back to the light. The fact that some people are truly ethical cancer cells is too much for them to handle. They'll prove there's a plus side. They're doing it with W now. "Oh his early onset dementia makes him act cute and paint and shit. I guess a million Iraqis will now find peace."
-- Grouchy Medievalist, Alicublog, comments
The Labour Party is currently debating how to define anti-Semitism. Whatever definition it ultimately chooses, it probably won’t be the one favored by many Jews: An anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. In Jewish hands, this quip means, “Of course we can be annoying, but let’s not get carried away.”
-- Deborah Lipstadt, "Jeremy Corbyn’s Ironically Ahistorical Anti-Semitism," The Atlantic
Liberals are the people who won't take their own side in an argument.
-- Steve LaBonne, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Imagine the implications of such a “one-state” solution and what would happen to Israel’s 6.5 million Jews under any realistic version of such a scenario: that is why anti-Zionism is such a shocking ideology ... Anti-Zionism of the sort propounded by the hard Left is racism of the worst kind: obsessed with delegitimising the world’s only Jewish country (and no other), in the full knowledge that its existence is what protects its people from persecution, misery and even death. How is that not anti-Semitic?
Jewish minorities in North Africa and the Middle East suffered immensely over the past 100 years, and are only safe today because of Israel’s existence. There were regular riots and outbreaks of murderous violence long before the rise of fascism in Europe, and it got much worse during the Second World War and its aftermath.
In Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Civilisation in the Arab World Vanished Overnight, Lyn Julius recounts how almost the entire Jewish populations of North Africa and the Middle East were ethnically cleansed, partly in retaliation for the creation of Israel, even though they had been settled for thousands of years. Some 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews were forced to leave, with the vast majority moving to Israel. So much for the idea that Israel is racist and that Jewish Israelis are all “white colonial settlers”, a claim that is hideously offensive as well as wrong on all counts.
-- Allister Heath, "It's time to expose the horrifying logic of hard-Left anti-Zionism," The Telegraph
Twelve months before the rollout of the new bins in Toronto’s west end, [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald had started logging the body mass index of raccoons killed in traffic. “Very glamorous work,” she called it. Her goal was to find out whether the loss of a steady food source would make our famously fat raccoons leaner. MacDonald said I was welcome to join her for the next weigh-in. I put the appointment in my calendar: “Measuring dead raccoons.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
I can't understand why anyone thinks it's necessary to "debate" genocide with nazis, any more than it's necessary to the Search for Pure Truth to have flat-earthers debate Neil DeGrasse Tyson on scientific topics. It's a living caricature of the liberal who was so fair-minded, he wouldn't take his own side in an argument.
-- mgmonklewis, Alicublog, comments
Two planes? Get the fuck out.
-- unnamed Northeast Air Defense Sector staffer, audio in "9/11 The Lost Tapes"
We really are living in the era of, "You're making that up, right? Did I miss something?"
-- BiloSagdiyev, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
American libertarians are simply people who never grew up and are looking for a place where their moms can't tell them to clean their rooms. I have yet to find a counterexample.
-- Michael Roberts, Facebook, comments
I think people today would be shocked at what the real situation was in 1982. Police were required to wait 72 hours before they could start investigating a missing child case. The FBI would track your stolen car across state lines, but it would not track your stolen child across state lines. There was absolutely no national infrastructure to support the hunt for missing children.
-- former America's Most Wanted executive producer Paul Sparrow, interviewed in "The Disappearance of Paperboy Johnny Gosch"
white men often get a “presumption of competence” which is almost never afforded women or people of color. The presumption of competence & resulting overconfidence leads to worse actual outcomes (unqualified, insecure people in over their heads).
-- @jenmayersf, Twitter
F-16 jet fighters appeared off the wings. In fact, I remember Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, running back to us to say, "Look! Look! Look out here!" How stunned he was!
-- Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, interviewed in "Clear the Skies" [This is the most humanizing thing I've ever heard about Ari Fleischer. -- ?!]
It occurred to me tonight that when "civility" and "political incorrectness" not only coexist in unison but are the two highest social values, the result is a caste system.
-- nick056, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
[Susanne] MacDonald is also a volunteer animal behaviourist for the Toronto Zoo, where she once used a vial of Calvin Klein’s Obsession perfume to put Sumatran tigers in an amorous mood, an intervention that resulted in three tiger cubs. “It works for leopards, too,” she told me. “It’s like catnip.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
The only problem I have with his candy bowl is that those appear to be peppermints, which are objectively the most disgusting kind of candy. Come on my dude, you run a civilized, sanitary establishment; nobody wants to be reminded of Pizza Hut. You can do better.
-- Braden MacBeth, "Bad Documentary Review: Cancer Can Be Killed," Science-Based Medicine
You could see all kinds of stuff hanging out of the trees, like socks, and pieces of suitcase, and luggage, and seat covers, seat belts. ... Nothing to indicate that there was even anybody on the plane.
-- former Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller, interviewed in "Behind the Scenes of 9/11," on the crash of Flight 93
Bodies, burnt to a crisp. Worst thing I ever seen.
-- eyewitness/survivor of Air Canada Flight 797, archival footage, "Air Crash Confidential: Fire On Board" [This is the flight in which Stan Rogers, of "Barrett's Prvateers" fame, perished. He asphyxiated on toxic smoke. -- ?!]
Horton Hears a Tim. Read in all Canadian elementary schools.
-- Davis X. Machina, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Since our neighbourhood borders Scarborough, where raccoon breaches were reported in the fall of 2017, I began to wonder if there was some kind of migration of enlightened raccoons taking place; the spreading of raccoon knowledge across neighbourhoods. I imagined meetings led by genius raccoons like ours who had successfully broken into green bins and now enjoyed prestige in the raccoon community. They were armed with diagrams and spreadsheets, and they were showing each other the way.
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
Let's land the sons of bitches. You know, let's land everybody. Get everybody out of the sky! Sort of like separating the wheat from the chaff, if I land everyone who takes the orders and lands, then, uh, what's left is other bad guys. But I had no historical precedent for that!
-- former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, on his first day on the job, interviewed in "9/11: State of Emergency"
Neither of these guys seems stupid so I'm pretty sure that they understand that in no way do they deserve the prestigious position they've been given Knowing that what really chafes my ass is it that they don't give a shit. Cheating to win is just fine. The only thing that matters is you win.
-- Worriedman, Alicublog, comments
The people on 91, to a person, the people on 91 were able to get out. Everybody from 91 got out. Nobody from 92 got out.
-- New York Times reporter, interviewed in "Anatomy of September 11"
One person's immigration is another person's settler colonialism.
-- LeeEsq, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers...a huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us. [yelling] We'd better get out of the way!
-- ABC news anchor, archival footage, 9:59AM, in "Behind the Scenes of 9/11," on the collapse of the south tower of the WTC
Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.
-- Cira Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum, full post at All Things Linguistic
Oh my God, it's a suicide mission.
-- Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett, as retold by his wife Deena, on the phone from the airplane, in "9/11: State of Emergency"
Wife: Have you got anything without racism?
Waitress: Well, there's racism, tax cuts, Bible-thumping and racism, that's not got much racism in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY racism!
Man: Why can't she have nationalism, racism and tax cuts?
Wife: THAT'S got racism in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much racism in it as racism, tax cuts, Bible-thumping and racism, has it?
Waitress: Urgghh!
Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like racism !
Republicans: Lovely racism ! Wonderful racism !
Waitress: Shut up!
-- cleek, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Ruth Badass Ginsburg
...I may have that middle name wrong.
-- Jeff Williamson, Facebook, comments
He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.
-- former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, quoted in Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
[T]enders of a 23-Cent Heart Miracle seem to work just fine on the readers of the magazine where Ann Coulter began her journalistic ascent in the late nineties by pimping the notion that liberals are all gullible rubes. In an alternate universe where Coulter would be capable of rational self-reflection, it would be fascinating to ask her what she thinks about, say, the layout of HumanEvents.com on the day it featured an article headlined “Ideas Will Drive Conservatives’ Revival.” Two inches beneath that bold pronouncement, a box headed “Health News” included the headlines “Reverse Crippling Arthritis in 2 Days,” “Clear Clogged Arteries Safely & Easily-without drugs, without surgery, and without a radical diet,” and “High Blood Pressure Cured in 3 Minutes . . . Drop Measurement 60 Points.” It would be interesting, that is, to ask Coulter about the reflex of lying that’s now sutured into the modern conservative movement’s DNA-and to get her candid assessment of why conservative leaders treat their constituents like suckers.
-- Rick Perlstein, "The Long Con," The Baffler (2012)
When the scales fall from your eyes, make sure they don't hit you in the feet.
-- Charles P. Pierce, "Just Shut Up and Quit," Esquire
“September 11” has a different resonance in Santiago.
-- Rand Carega, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
In a fire, what you can't carry isn't yours.
-- Naamon Fox, quoted in Alyssa Greenberg, "The Things They Lost in the Fire," Pacific Standard
We all tend to think that the [London] Underground works on electricity. It doesn't. The thing that makes the Underground work...is tea.
-- opening narration from "Going Underground: Tales from the Tube"
You cant spell buttsex without subtext.
-- Christopher J. Malec, Facebook, comments
After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
A good point I heard made in late 2016 was that this wasn't Hillary Clinton's nightmare so much as the nightmare (or reality) of every remotely competent woman - working your ass off your entire life to be qualified for a position that will instead be given to the dumbest motherfucker on Earth, just because he's a guy.
-- CP, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
The formula by which Arafat and the terrorists of the Palestine Liberation Organization were to be transformed into the responsible bureaucrats and peacemakers of the Palestinian Authority promised an end to violence and the war that Arabs had been waging on the Jews, as well as their return to their ancient homeland since the early 20th century.
Rabin had a clear idea of what would happen. There would be a border, he liked to say. On the one side would be Israel. On the other would be Arafat and his P.A., which would fight Hamas and any other terrorists and, as Rabin never tired of pointing out, without interference from the Israeli Supreme Court and the human-rights groups that sought to hamper his security services.
But Arafat had no intention of fighting terrorists. He was, in fact, fomenting, planning and paying for terrorism. All he had done was to sign a piece of paper and pocketed extensive Israeli concessions that set the Palestinians on the path to statehood. The foreign-policy experts-both in the United States and Israel-were wrong. But it took years before some of them would admit it, and even then they sought to evade blame for the slaughter that came in Oslo’s wake by claiming that Israel hadn’t been forthcoming enough.
-- Jonathan S. Tobin, "25 Years of Illusions About Oslo," Jewish News Syndicate
Libertarians seemed to me then, and now, wrapped up in the notion that only the government can deprive individuals of their civil liberties. From my early experience onward, I have always known better. Their fellow citizens are in fact far more likely to do so.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
[Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald has grown accustomed to Toronto’s strange love-hate relationship with the creatures we affectionately call urban trash pandas. While she may, occasionally, roll her eyes at our human behaviour - our reeling between disgust and affection, frustration and concern - she can relate. MacDonald marvels at the curious antics of raccoons caught on camera, but she also swears at the ones who wreak havoc in her backyard.
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
Woodward recounts an expletive-laden altercation between Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and senior adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, then the chief White House strategist.
“You’re a goddamn staffer!” Bannon screamed at her, telling her that she had to work through Priebus like other aides. “You walk around this place and act like you’re in charge, and you’re not. You’re on staff!”
Ivanka Trump, who had special access to the president and worked around Priebus, replied: “I’m not a staffer! I’ll never be a staffer. I’m the first daughter.”
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post
There is a reason that poison has, historically, been thought to be a woman's weapon: it is covert. Because none of the ways of vindicating one's honor are permitted to women--they are only permitted to high status men. Slaves and women both have no right to self defense--owner class women (white women) in a slave society may have a right to have their honor vindicated by their spouses or male family members. An "honor society" is one in which just a few people have honor, and the right to defend their honor. Everyone else is shit out of luck and will be arrested and tried for a crime when they resist attack by favored members of society.
-- Aimai, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
'twas a sad day on the Inntertoobs when TimeCube went dark. R.I.P., Gene Ray. There will never be another like you!
-- basenjibrian, Alicublog, comments
I was once asked whether my forebears in Russia lived like they did in “Fiddler on the Roof”. I replied that they could stand the pogroms, the discrimination and the epidemics, but not the choreography
-- Simon Philip Jackson, Facebook, comments
The Palestinians can complain about Israeli settlements, but a clear majority of Israelis understand that what they had done in 1993 was to trade land for more terror, not peace. That conclusion was reinforced in 2005 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza. That set in motion the chain of events that created an independent Palestinian terrorist state ruled by Hamas. These events convinced Israel’s voters, who have elected Oslo skeptic Benjamin Netanyahu prime minister three times in the last decade, not to make the same mistake again.
-- Jonathan S. Tobin, "25 Years of Illusions About Oslo," Jewish News Syndicate
there is nothing like the sweet freedom of complete nihilism experienced at a 7/11 at 2am, God lives in church, the randomness of the unfeeling universe lives at aisle 9 of CVS
-- insomniac-arrest, Tumblr
"asylum fraud" is the new "welfare fraud" with similar racial and ethnic connotations.
-- FlipYrWhig, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
[T]he defining trait of authoritarian personalities, both followers and leaders, is also a defining trait of libertarians: A contempt for the principles of equality, and a prevailing belief that inequality is the natural state of things, which should not be undermined.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
A couple minutes later, she screams “Don’t grab me!” At this point, I’m getting nervous. I instantly start thinking about what this will look like when and if the police arrive. Will the other passengers believe that I haven’t done anything? What if they don’t? And who will the police believe: America’s favorite victim, the white woman, or me, the black guy. I try to step as far away from her as I can on a crowded Max [light rail car]. I noticeably make it clear that I’m holding the brief in my left hand (the side closest to her) and my right hand is in my pocket, so there’s no way I could have grabbed her.
Her latest outburst is followed with several more uses of n****r, and she then starts telling the man who intervened that a n****r grabbed her on the shoulder. I truly don’t know how to respond so I just continue to ignore her. She then turns to me and calls me a n****r to my face.
“You need to calm down.” I say. “You can’t tell me what to do n****r.” She answers. “You need. To watch. Your mouth.” I finally say, through gritted teeth, struggling to stay calm. She then snatches my hand asking if that was the hand I touched her with. “Don’t touch me,” I say, pushing her hand away. Even as I push her hand away, I’m hyper concerned about what the other passengers are thinking.
-- Admin, "To The Non-Racist White People, Please Just Be The First," My Mixed Thoughts
I really don't give a damn what Noreen Gosch has to say. I really don't give a damn what she thinks. I'm interested in the boy and what we can do to find him. I'm kind of sick of her.
-- former Des Moines police chief Orval Cooney, from a recollection by a Des Moines Tribune reporter, in "The Disappearance of Paperboy Johnny Gosch" In the same documentary, Cooney is shown in archival footage from the time saying "I'm very optimistic. I think that we will find the boy, and he will be alive." Gosch has never been found, and was 12 at the time at his kidnapping.
“I think the urban environment selects for certain types of raccoons, ones that are less afraid of people, more likely to investigate new things,” [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald said. “They don’t give up right away like rural ones do, they keep at it. And I think we’re probably responsible for that, selecting these kinds of behaviours in our urbans and turning them into a different kind of animal.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
I’ve said this before, but leaving aside malicious interference on his behalf (not to mention voter suppression), Trump’s election comes down to an unconscionable number of men in positions of power abdicating their responsibilities in the belief that it doesn’t matter how badly they shit on a woman, she’ll always be there to clean up the mess. And in fact, they wanted her to clean it up. They just also wanted to be sure she didn’t, for one minute, get the idea that she deserved any respect or deference.
-- Abigail_Nussbaum, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
And...and they had a vicar there, and, um, I told him what to do with his God, basically.
-- mother of Hillsborough stadium disaster victims Victoria and Stephanie Hicks, Jenny Hicks, interviewed in "Hillsborough: The Search for Truth"
Cohn, a Wall Street veteran, tried to tamp down Trump’s strident nationalism regarding trade. According to Woodward, Cohn “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” that the president was intending to sign to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea. Cohn later told an associate that he removed the letter to protect national security and that Trump did not notice that it was missing.
Cohn made a similar play to prevent Trump from pulling the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, something the president has long threatened to do. In spring 2017, Trump was eager to withdraw from NAFTA and told Porter: “Why aren’t we getting this done? Do your job. It’s tap, tap, tap. You’re just tapping me along. I want to do this.”
-- Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency," The Washington Post ["You're just tapping me along"?! WTF does that even mean? -- ?!]
The marketplace of ideas operates exactly like our free market. Lots of protectionism, tariffs, and odd advantages being given to the already powerful
-- Grouchy Medievalist, Alicublog, comments
The raccoons don’t know they’re winning. “They don’t even know there’s a war,” [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald said. “They don’t go, ‘I saw [Toronto mayor] John Tory on the news, I checked Twitter, and it seems like there’s a war on us!’ They’re not doing that at all.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
[Trump] really does seem to have a long-held belief that America is being played for chumps by its allies. He was saying stuff like this back in the '80s.
-- stepped pyramids, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
We have a generation of young men lining up to fanatically defend an authoritarian ideologue like Jordan Peterson, who claims on the one hand to be all about individual rights but promotes the values of male patriarchy. eterson’s recent rants about how “it is only the individual who suffers” are a case in point. It’s abject nonsense. Families suffer, especially when one of their members do. Communities can suffer. Whole nations suffer during wartime.
-- @DavidNeiwert, Twitter
[S]he told him about the little boy who was thrown out of a fourth-story window by a nun. She told him about a day when the nuns sent her into the fire pit to retrieve a ball and her snow pants caught on fire, and about how weeks later, as the nuns pulled blackened skin off her arms and her legs with tweezers and she cried out in pain, they told her it was happening because she was a real bad girl. She told Widman about a boy who went under the surface of Lake Champlain and did not come up again, and a very sad and very frightening story of a little boy who was electrocuted, whom the nuns made her kiss in his coffin.
-- Christine Kinneally, "We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph's Orphanage," Buzzfeed News
We're in love with the narrative that even the worst chud on the planet has some redeeming factor or can be tearfully turned back to the light. The fact that some people are truly ethical cancer cells is too much for them to handle. They'll prove there's a plus side. They're doing it with W now. "Oh his early onset dementia makes him act cute and paint and shit. I guess a million Iraqis will now find peace."
-- Grouchy Medievalist, Alicublog, comments
The Labour Party is currently debating how to define anti-Semitism. Whatever definition it ultimately chooses, it probably won’t be the one favored by many Jews: An anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. In Jewish hands, this quip means, “Of course we can be annoying, but let’s not get carried away.”
-- Deborah Lipstadt, "Jeremy Corbyn’s Ironically Ahistorical Anti-Semitism," The Atlantic
Liberals are the people who won't take their own side in an argument.
-- Steve LaBonne, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Imagine the implications of such a “one-state” solution and what would happen to Israel’s 6.5 million Jews under any realistic version of such a scenario: that is why anti-Zionism is such a shocking ideology ... Anti-Zionism of the sort propounded by the hard Left is racism of the worst kind: obsessed with delegitimising the world’s only Jewish country (and no other), in the full knowledge that its existence is what protects its people from persecution, misery and even death. How is that not anti-Semitic?
Jewish minorities in North Africa and the Middle East suffered immensely over the past 100 years, and are only safe today because of Israel’s existence. There were regular riots and outbreaks of murderous violence long before the rise of fascism in Europe, and it got much worse during the Second World War and its aftermath.
In Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Civilisation in the Arab World Vanished Overnight, Lyn Julius recounts how almost the entire Jewish populations of North Africa and the Middle East were ethnically cleansed, partly in retaliation for the creation of Israel, even though they had been settled for thousands of years. Some 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews were forced to leave, with the vast majority moving to Israel. So much for the idea that Israel is racist and that Jewish Israelis are all “white colonial settlers”, a claim that is hideously offensive as well as wrong on all counts.
-- Allister Heath, "It's time to expose the horrifying logic of hard-Left anti-Zionism," The Telegraph
Twelve months before the rollout of the new bins in Toronto’s west end, [Animal behaviourist Susanne] MacDonald had started logging the body mass index of raccoons killed in traffic. “Very glamorous work,” she called it. Her goal was to find out whether the loss of a steady food source would make our famously fat raccoons leaner. MacDonald said I was welcome to join her for the next weigh-in. I put the appointment in my calendar: “Measuring dead raccoons.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
I can't understand why anyone thinks it's necessary to "debate" genocide with nazis, any more than it's necessary to the Search for Pure Truth to have flat-earthers debate Neil DeGrasse Tyson on scientific topics. It's a living caricature of the liberal who was so fair-minded, he wouldn't take his own side in an argument.
-- mgmonklewis, Alicublog, comments
Two planes? Get the fuck out.
-- unnamed Northeast Air Defense Sector staffer, audio in "9/11 The Lost Tapes"
We really are living in the era of, "You're making that up, right? Did I miss something?"
-- BiloSagdiyev, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
American libertarians are simply people who never grew up and are looking for a place where their moms can't tell them to clean their rooms. I have yet to find a counterexample.
-- Michael Roberts, Facebook, comments
I think people today would be shocked at what the real situation was in 1982. Police were required to wait 72 hours before they could start investigating a missing child case. The FBI would track your stolen car across state lines, but it would not track your stolen child across state lines. There was absolutely no national infrastructure to support the hunt for missing children.
-- former America's Most Wanted executive producer Paul Sparrow, interviewed in "The Disappearance of Paperboy Johnny Gosch"
white men often get a “presumption of competence” which is almost never afforded women or people of color. The presumption of competence & resulting overconfidence leads to worse actual outcomes (unqualified, insecure people in over their heads).
-- @jenmayersf, Twitter
F-16 jet fighters appeared off the wings. In fact, I remember Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, running back to us to say, "Look! Look! Look out here!" How stunned he was!
-- Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, interviewed in "Clear the Skies" [This is the most humanizing thing I've ever heard about Ari Fleischer. -- ?!]
It occurred to me tonight that when "civility" and "political incorrectness" not only coexist in unison but are the two highest social values, the result is a caste system.
-- nick056, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
[Susanne] MacDonald is also a volunteer animal behaviourist for the Toronto Zoo, where she once used a vial of Calvin Klein’s Obsession perfume to put Sumatran tigers in an amorous mood, an intervention that resulted in three tiger cubs. “It works for leopards, too,” she told me. “It’s like catnip.”
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
The only problem I have with his candy bowl is that those appear to be peppermints, which are objectively the most disgusting kind of candy. Come on my dude, you run a civilized, sanitary establishment; nobody wants to be reminded of Pizza Hut. You can do better.
-- Braden MacBeth, "Bad Documentary Review: Cancer Can Be Killed," Science-Based Medicine
You could see all kinds of stuff hanging out of the trees, like socks, and pieces of suitcase, and luggage, and seat covers, seat belts. ... Nothing to indicate that there was even anybody on the plane.
-- former Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller, interviewed in "Behind the Scenes of 9/11," on the crash of Flight 93
Bodies, burnt to a crisp. Worst thing I ever seen.
-- eyewitness/survivor of Air Canada Flight 797, archival footage, "Air Crash Confidential: Fire On Board" [This is the flight in which Stan Rogers, of "Barrett's Prvateers" fame, perished. He asphyxiated on toxic smoke. -- ?!]
Horton Hears a Tim. Read in all Canadian elementary schools.
-- Davis X. Machina, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
Since our neighbourhood borders Scarborough, where raccoon breaches were reported in the fall of 2017, I began to wonder if there was some kind of migration of enlightened raccoons taking place; the spreading of raccoon knowledge across neighbourhoods. I imagined meetings led by genius raccoons like ours who had successfully broken into green bins and now enjoyed prestige in the raccoon community. They were armed with diagrams and spreadsheets, and they were showing each other the way.
-- Amy Dempsey, "Toronto built a better green bin and - oops - maybe a smarter raccoon," The Toronto Star
Let's land the sons of bitches. You know, let's land everybody. Get everybody out of the sky! Sort of like separating the wheat from the chaff, if I land everyone who takes the orders and lands, then, uh, what's left is other bad guys. But I had no historical precedent for that!
-- former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, on his first day on the job, interviewed in "9/11: State of Emergency"
Neither of these guys seems stupid so I'm pretty sure that they understand that in no way do they deserve the prestigious position they've been given Knowing that what really chafes my ass is it that they don't give a shit. Cheating to win is just fine. The only thing that matters is you win.
-- Worriedman, Alicublog, comments
The people on 91, to a person, the people on 91 were able to get out. Everybody from 91 got out. Nobody from 92 got out.
-- New York Times reporter, interviewed in "Anatomy of September 11"
One person's immigration is another person's settler colonialism.
-- LeeEsq, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments
You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers...a huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us. [yelling] We'd better get out of the way!
-- ABC news anchor, archival footage, 9:59AM, in "Behind the Scenes of 9/11," on the collapse of the south tower of the WTC
Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.
-- Cira Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum, full post at All Things Linguistic
Oh my God, it's a suicide mission.
-- Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett, as retold by his wife Deena, on the phone from the airplane, in "9/11: State of Emergency"