Quotulatiousness

August 4, 2010

QotD: Keyshawn keeps his priorities straight

Filed under: Football, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:30

For as much as the network has made fun of Favre over the last couple of years for his decision to keep playing, when he speaks — or texts — people listen, and ESPN became “All Favre All the Time” Tuesday. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., almost every minute of coverage was devoted to Favre and, considering that ESPN employs just about as many NFL people as the league itself, it had a variety of people to draw from.

Steve Young thought he would play three or four more years. Mike Golic said the Vikings are a borderline playoff team without Favre and not a Super Bowl contender. Trent Dilfer was “shocked.” Andy Reid said, “I’ve been asked that question once or twice.” Antonio Freeman said he won’t believe it until Sept. 9 when the Vikings play and Favre isn’t there. Mike Ditka said, “He’s a 40-year old 17-year old.” Jon Gruden said he is “one of the toughest human beings to ever walk the planet.” Keyshawn Johnson talked about himself.

John Holler, “With Favre, everyone has an opinion”, Viking Update, 2010-08-04

August 3, 2010

Your elected representatives demand tokens of your respect

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:44

You may have elected them (someone had to), but you must show deference and respect at all times:

Sources reported this week that the city council of Elmhurst, Ill., had asked its attorney to research various definitions of “disorderly conduct,” in the course of considering possible changes to rules of decorum in city council meetings. The move was prompted by an incident in June in which a frustrated citizen rolled her eyes and audibly sighed during a meeting, and was promptly ejected from the chamber.

Reportedly, Darlene Helsop had hoped to speak to the finance committee about its plan to hire a state lobbyist, but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so. She sighed and rolled her eyes, to the great irritation of committee chairman Stephen Hipskind. “Making faces behind the mayor’s back is disruptive, in my opinion,” he said, and he ordered Helsop to leave. To their credit, other council members objected and two left, ending the meeting for lack of a quorum. But the council still seems to have asked its attorney to look into the legal ramifications of a rule that would encompass eye-rolling and (presumably) face-making.

So remember, serfs citizens, show respect to your owners leaders . . . or else!

July 20, 2009

I look forward to Gordon Brown’s “Paul Martin” moment

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

For those of you who have already forgotten the premiership of Paul Martin, one of the most striking moments of his term in office was his leaving of it. His final speech, after the election results were in, was the best speech I think he ever made. There was a jauntiness, a cheerfulness in his voice that had been totally lacking at any point before that. After a successful term as Finance Minister under Jean Chrétien, Martin, like Gordon Brown, couldn’t wait to get the current PM out the door.

Martin, for all his faults, was not the ongoing disaster for his party and country that Brown has been. Martin also knew when to bow out. Brown has not been willing to go — and has been unwilling to risk the opinions of the electorate in a general election. Yet.

Christopher Hitchens looks at the wreckage:

Early this past June it became hard to distinguish among the resignation statements that were emanating almost daily from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Cabinet. The noise of collapsing scenery drowned out the individuality of the letters — one female minister, I remember, complained that she was being used as “window dressing” — but there was one missive from a departing comrade that caught my eye. It came from James Purnell, a man generally agreed to have done a more than respectable job as minister for work and pensions, and it began like this:

Dear Gordon,
We both love the Labour Party. I have worked for it for twenty years and you for far longer. We know we owe it everything and it owes us nothing . . .

I sat back in my chair. Yes, it’s true. One suddenly could recall a time when membership in the Labour Party (or “the Labour movement,” as it would call itself on great occasions) was a thing of pride. [. . .]

The true definition of corruption, it seems to me, is the diversion of public resources to private or politicized ends [. . .] There are other and lesser definitions, such as milking the public purse or abusing the public trust by “creative accounting.” The cloudburst of lurid detail about the expenses racket, which has made the current Parliament into an object of scorn and loathing, is a cloudburst that has soaked members of all parties equally. However, the Brownite style is by far the most culpable. It was Brown’s people who foisted a Speaker on the House of Commons who both indulged the scandal and obstructed a full ventilation of it. As if that weren’t bad enough, Gordon Brown still resists any call to dissolve this wretched Parliament — a Parliament that is almost audibly moaning to be put out of its misery and shame — because he still isn’t prepared to undergo the great test of being submitted to the electorate. Say what you will about Tony Blair, he took on all the other parties in three hard-fought general elections, and when it was considered time for him to give way or step down, he voluntarily did so while some people could still ask, “Why are you going?,” rather than “Why the hell don’t you go?” For the collapse of Britain’s formerly jaunty and spendthrift “financial sector,” everybody including Blair is to blame. But for the contempt in which Parliament is held, and in which a once great party now shares, it’s Blair’s successor who is the lugubrious villain.

H/T to Ghost of a Flea for the link.

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