Saturday, August 30, 2008

Sarah Palin, I Don't Think So

Good Quotes on the Palin mess from left and right:

A potential vice president with the ideology of Dick Cheney and fewer qualifications than Dan Quayle should send arctic shivers up our spines.


Vice presidents matter. In our history, nine have become president when the sitting commander in chief unexpectedly died or resigned. McCain, a 72-year-old cancer survivor, may be rolling the dice to grab a chunk of Hillary Clinton's voters, but he is asking all of us to gamble on Sarah Palin if she were to become president at a time of national crisis.


John Podesta
Chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund

So this is the future of the Republican party you are looking at: a future in which national security has bumped down the list of priorities behind abortion politics, gender politics, and energy politics. Ms. Palin is a bold pick, and probably a shrewd one. It's not nearly so clear that she is a responsible pick, or a wise one.

David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush. Frum is widely cited as having authored the phrase "axis of evil". In fact, though, his original phrasing was "axis of hatred".

Monday, August 25, 2008

Don't Let Our Youth Go (to Waste)

I am rereading Dean Wareham's non fiction Black Postcards & thinking about Jonathan Lethem's novel, You Don't Love Me Yet.

Not ready to write a book review or an essay about the overlap between them... Maybe notes for a review, or just a late summer blog posting that both books have me digging back into Galaxie 500's catalog.

"My problem is that I don't know where the sentences come from anymore."

"The band's got something, and some of the something they've got is the allure of an enclave at odds within itself and yet impenetrable to others, its members exchanging small gestures of disaffection within their troupe that makes others crave to be included in the fond dissention"


Lethem

"Some of my best friends are crazy. But that's okay, because I don't have to ride in a van with them for five weeks."


Wareham