Quote of the Day posts

This tweet yesterday, the bottom one, really hit home for me. The disconnect I feel listening to news coverage on NPR, say. It's like they‘re describing a monster rampaging through the city with the same tone in which they report a city council meeting. Then they quote an official who blames the taxicab driver for getting eaten by the monster: “The monster is the true victim here.” Then they bring in someone who disparages both sides for not being able to find common ground.

I’m constantly mad at media coverage in the Trump era because I desperately want a neutral observer to confirm that I'm not losing my mind. Nothing is more disorienting than watching the world burn while Wolf Blitzer calmly recites the day's headlines.

— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) October 24, 2018

What booger-eating moron would stumble out onto the internet to attempt a thoughtless but-Obama moment and not remember that 1) That president accurately assessed Kanye as a “jackass” and 2) invited Common to the White House, whereupon white America squibbed shit in its undies? https://t.co/BEcnnOgm1v

— David Simon (@AoDespair) October 12, 2018

“It's not just that the megaphones operated by 501(c)(3) groups and financed by a sliver of rich donors have gotten louder and louder, making it harder for ordinary citizens to be heard. It's that these citizens are helping foot the bill.”

— David Callahan, the founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, a website focusing on the good, bad and ugly of high-end giving. He's quoted in Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article on the history of foundations and modern philanthropy. Worth reading. Worth thinking about. Much in this country has gotten twisted—even giving.

“You can normally only do 10 percent of what he tells you to do. Ninety percent is fucking crazy.”

— a former West Wing official talking about Donald Trump, in Gabriel Sherman's Vanity Fair piece, “Everybody on the Inside Knows It's True”: Woodward's Reality Bomb Is Blowing Up the West Wing,“ about White House reactions to Bob Woodward's upcoming book, ”Fear." Yesterday, Trump tweeted fervent denials (from Sec. of Defense James Mattis and WH Chief of Staff John Kelly) to some of the scenes/quotes from the book that were previewed in The Washington Post.

“Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jumpsuit.”

— attorney John Dowd advising his client, Pres. Trump, to not testify before Special Counsel Robert Mueller, according to a Washington Post account of Bob Woodward's upcoming book, “Fear: Trump in the White House.” The Post story is startling both for Trump's vindictiveness and the amount of fear/contempt his advisers have for him and what he might do to the country. Put it this way: I‘ve long thought Trump is a disaster but (if this holds up) it’s worse than I imagined.