New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Thomas “Tommy Two-Tone” Friedman, who in his column “Too Many Hamburgers?” writes:

There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

Think you might have contradicted yourself, there, Tommy.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Paul “The Little Professor” Krugman, who in his column “The Angry Rich,” highlights the anger of the top one percent of American earners who may have to pay slightly higher taxes and concludes:

Sacrifice is for the little people.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Paul “The Little Professor” Krugman, who in his column “Things Could Be Worse,” writes:

So I find myself almost envying the Japanese.

Great Moments in Campaign History: From the South, Not For the South

In 1968 and 1972, Richard Nixon’s campaign had hedged a challenge from the racial right embodied by George Wallace by employing the so-called “Southern Strategy:” a series of policies with coded racial undertones (think “states rights” versus “civil rights”). However, Ford’s more amiable demeanor didn’t take well to that type of campaign, and with the nomination of folksy Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, he found himself against the wall in the South. While this ad only featured Strom Thurmond’s talking head saying that Carter may be from the South, but wasn’t for the South, in the context of South Carolina’s right-to-work laws, it was an pretty obvious nod to Southern segregationists that Ford may be more sympathetic to their frustrations.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from David “Yawny-Pants” Brooks, who in his column “The Gospel of Wealth,” writes:

The Tea Party movement is militantly bourgeois. It uses Abbie Hoffman means to get back to Norman Rockwell ends.

The New Republic Editor Martin Peretz is a bigoted asshole

I mean, at least Fox News couches their hysterical Islamophobia in polite-speak. Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, on the other hand, eschews propriety and lets the bile just roll out:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

It really isn’t hyperbole here to suggest that the next line in this “logic” is rounding them up.

New York Times Columnist of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Roger “Life of the Party” Cohen, who in his column “Obama’s Post-Iraq World,” writes:

But logic does not win elections.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, who in his column “Cleaning the Henhouse,” takes on industrial agriculture:

Industrial operations — essentially factories of meat and eggs — excel at manufacturing cheap food for the supermarket. But there is evidence that this model is economically viable only because it passes on health costs to the public — in the form of occasional salmonella, antibiotic-resistant diseases, polluted waters, food poisoning and possibly certain cancers.

Great Moments in Campaign Advertising: What has Nixon done for me?

Since you may have never seen a Hubert Humphrey advertisement. For a little background, most of Humphrey’s advertising was negative, since he was in the uncomfortable position of being the sitting vice president in a terribly unpopular administration (and had been nominated above other Democrats who were far more popular, despite winning zero primaries). So, the general aim of the campaign was the paint Nixon as out of the loop and untrustworthy.

Here, we see a tactic that pre-dated Karl Rove by decades. Nixon’s biggest strength, at least in his last run in 1960, was his experience. But, eight years out of office, and Humphrey’s campaign could paint this as a weakness: If he was so experienced, what has he ever done? However, Humphrey’s weakness, being part of the Johnson administration, which oversaw the escalation of the unpopular war in Vietnam, was too much to overcome, and Nixon won handily, enough so that George Wallace (American Independent Party) winning the South had no effect.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from David “Yawny-Pants” Brooks, who in his column “Nation Building Works,” actually encapsulates the fragile and tenuous victory in Iraq very well in one line:

Guns have been put in closets, but not destroyed.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Ross “Do That Thing” Douthat, who in his column “Mr. Beck Goes to Washington,” writes:

To this rally-goer, though, the most striking thing about “Restoring Honor” was the way the pageant effortlessly tapped into the same rich vein of identity politics that has given us figures as diverse as Palin and Howard Dean, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — but did so, somehow, without advancing any explicitly political agenda.

No political agenda. Right.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Paul “The Little Professor” Krugman, who in his column “This Is Not a Recovery,” writes:

Will the economy actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Gail “The Colander” Collins, who in her column “The Trends of August,” writes:

This makes sense, since the Republicans are looking for a way to show they’re angry, angry, angry while the Democrats are too terrified of the Republicans to do anything but hunker down.

What it would be like in your backyard

Sometimes I find it hard to know exactly how large a country is without looking at a globe (When I was a kid, I was convinced Germany was the size of New York. Oops.). Sometimes, even after looking at a globe, it isn’t so clear. So, when big events happen, it’s really hard to know how big the event is, exactly. Dimensions, a new project from the BBC, looks at helping with that problem. Above, you can see how big that major flooding in Pakistan (where there are reports of 8,000-10,000 victims sleeping in mud in 118-degree heat) is relative to the eastern seaboard (centered on Washington, D.C., the home to me and a few of my fellow co-bloggers). There are a bunch of disasters and events ready for you to enter your location and put it in perspective.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from David “Yawny Pants” Brooks, who in his column “A Case of Mental Courage,” writes:

Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

Great Moments in Campaign Advertising: Not truthful

From the 1996 Republican presidential primaries. Candidate Steve Forbes went on to attack the front-runner, and Bob Dole (the eventual nominee) fights back. Republicans are just better at negative advertising than anybody else.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Paul “The Little Professor” Krugman, who in his column “Now That’s Rich,” writes:

[I]t’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

New York Times Columnst Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Paul “The Little Professor” Krugman, who in his column “Appeasing the Bond Gods,” writes:

You see, then, why I find myself thinking in terms of strange and savage cults, demanding human sacrifices to appease unseen forces.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Gail “The Colander” Collins who, in her column “Rich Man, Bad Yacht,” writes:

Once again, voters are being asked to decide whether the cure for their problems lies in a person who is long on money and short on listening skills.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Maureen “The Refrigerator” Dowd who, in her column “Our Mosque Madness,” writes:

Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero.

Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood.

Tommy’s is actually pretty solid today too.