And the #1 quote of the year is: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

It's the 11th annual "Yale Book of Quotations" list, compiled by Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro. Here's the whole list.

I blogged the "shoot somebody" quote back in January. I said it wasn't crazy, but: "a colorful way of referring to polls that say people have definitely decided to vote for him and they're not going to change their mind. It's some comic hyperbole."

Here's the rest of the Yale list, with links to posts of mine blogging those quotes. You can see that I didn't blog them all:

2. "When they go low, we go high." — Michelle Obama, commencement speech at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, April 23.

3. "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables.'" — Hillary Clinton, remarks at a fundraiser, New York, Sept. 9.

4. "And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside." — Lin-Manuel Miranda, poem about Orlando massacre read at Tony Awards ceremony, New York, June 12. [Poem blogged here, but with different quotes.]

5. "(In politics) you need both a public and a private position." — Hillary Clinton, speech to National Multi-Housing Council released by WikiLeaks, Oct. 7.

6. "I alone can fix it." — Donald Trump, speech at Republican National Convention, Cleveland, July 21.

7. "Have you even read the United States Constitution? ... You have sacrificed nothing and no one." — Khizr Khan, addressing Donald Trump in speech at Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, July 28.

8. "Lucifer in the flesh. ... I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." — Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, describing Ted Cruz during talk at Stanford University, April 27.

9. "His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life." — Dan Turner, letter to judge prior to sentencing of his son, Brock Turner, after Brock's conviction for sexual assault of an unconscious woman, June [sic — it must be the date written incompletely, not the name of the unconscious woman].

10. "I'm not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I'm the first Simone Biles." — Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, interview, Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 11.

I didn't blog #2, which is a reprise of an old Obama campaign quote, referred to as "our motto" by Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention. Who said it first? I don't know, but I've always associated it with a very similar and very different quote that came from Barack Obama in 2008: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." The 2 quotes can be harmonized if you think a knife is low and a gun is high.

I don't know why I didn't blog ##3, 9, and 10. They're all good quotes that would have prompted me to blog if I'd seen them at a time when I was looking for bloggables and if I'd found them before too many other people were talking about them.

I wonder how Shapiro went about deciding what to put at #1 and whether I'd have picked that rather than the competition, which I consider to be ##3 and 6. ##1 and 3 are beautifully equivalent: The candidate says something with some weird words that's outrageous and damagingly revealing. You might say, but Hillary's quote actually damaged her to death. It was perhaps the most momentous quote we've ever heard from a candidate. But you might say Trump deserved the #1 spot because he won, and that bore out the truth of his statement — bigly. In fact, I'm just noticing what's not on Shapiro's list — "... Grab them by the pussy...." Perhaps the 5th Avenue shooting stands in for the not-fit-for-the-Yale-Library "pussy" remark.

You know, I used to have a blog tradition of picking out my favorite quotes from what I'd blogged over the course of the year. I've got a Michelle Obama quote on my 2007 list: "He still didn't put the butter up... I was like, 'You're just asking for it, you know I'm giving a speech. Why don't you just put the butter up?'"

That has one from Barack Obama too: "Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it."

And here's one from Hillary Clinton: "I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially...."

Here's my list from 2008. That was a year! Full of Barack Obama: "Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?' If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible'"/"I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low"/"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"/"It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can...."/"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Oh, good lord, that was only Part 1 of my 2008 list! That post ends with: "And this is the moment when I hit the wall. This gets us through the first half of the year. You'll have to wait for Part 2." The first half! Ha! No wonder I abandoned the tradition. The tradition was overpowering me. And then, there in the comments, the third one done is Meade, quoting my "And this is the moment when I hit the wall" and saying: "Know your limit; stay within it. Breath. Rehydrate. Have a bite of energy bar. You'll be fine. You went a little anaerobic there, that's all."

The new year came. In the first half of that year, I met Meade. In the second half, I married him. That changed some traditions around here.

ADDED: Meade reads this post and says: "You need a tag 'Meade the personal trainer.'" He restates it: "Meade the personal trainer who sometimes gets a little too personal."

Ted Cruz is "Lucifer in the flesh," said John Boehner.

"I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

ADDED: He also said: "Don’t be shocked … if two weeks before the convention, here comes Joe Biden parachuting in and Barack Obama fanning the flames to make it all happen."

"If we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the above," said John Boehner.

"They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."

And a Ryan spokesman said: "The speaker is grateful for the support, but he is not interested. He will not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year."

That puts it more strongly than what I've seen from Ryan. Yesterday, for example: "I'm not running for president. I made that decision, consciously, not to. I don't see that happening. I'm not thinking about it. I'm happy where I am, so no."

That seems to leave the door ajar. I say "seems" because I don't know the precise question that's getting the "so no."

"Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin was elected the 62nd speaker of the House on Thursday..."

"... taking the gavel that he never sought to wield from John A. Boehner, who relinquished it under fire," says the NYT.

Mr. Ryan received 236 votes, a comfortable margin that included several of the hardline conservatives who had worked to oust Mr. Boehner.

"How John Boehner could stay Speaker."

His resignation is contingent on the election of a new Speaker, so he stays until somebody wins a majority vote in the House.

"Boehner’s departure *not* bigger than Cantor loss. Cantor a terrifying vote of the people."

 Says Mickey Kaus, disagreeing with a CNN piece that says: "Boehner's departure might be the conservative right's most famous get yet -- even bigger than the coup against his former lieutenant Eric Cantor in a primary election in 2014."

"Let's See What Republicans Learn From Losing Boehner."

A Megan McArdle column that ends:

But maybe the only way Republicans will learn their limits is by crashing into them, as the Greeks did. Maybe they need to elect someone who will try what they’ve been longing for: a full throated, take-no-prisoners approach that doesn’t bother with compromise or concession. Like the Greeks, they’ll discover that this leaves them worse off, not better. If Republicans can't see that coming -- if they can't learn from Syriza's mistake -- then they will very likely learn their lesson from President Hillary Clinton.

ADDED: McArdle did something I wouldn't do — submit to a cross-examination on the "meaning of life":

"Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, will resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October..."

"... throwing Congress into chaos as it tries to avert a government shutdown. Mr. Boehner made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning...."

IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley said:

From altar boy and Jesuit college to meeting the Jesuit Pope in the House. Crying allowed. 

Yes, that was my first thought: The Pope made that happen.

AND: There I was yesterday mocking the so-called "breaking news" of the Pope's meeting with John Boehner as "the height of banality."

ADDED: I'm watching Newt Gingrich on FoxNews, asked why is this happening now: "John had been thinking about doing it... probably a month later. But I think the emotional impact of the Pope coming, John's a very devout Catholic, this is something he'd always wanted to see happen. Yesterday, in many ways, is the high point of his speakership, and in that sense, I think, it kind of makes sense to say: I want to go out with something that he will treasure the rest of his life."

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan said...

I thank him for his service -- it can't be an easy job -- and I thank him for leaving. I'm not sorry to see him go. It's too bad he was re-elected so many times.

I wonder what the real story is. He's ignored the Conservatives base for so long...what's different now? 

And Bobby said:

I'm wondering the same thing. A colleague (rating: B3) has suggested that Boehner and the conservatives cut a deal on the Planned Parenthood funding to avert the government shutdown -- i.e., the conservatives will let Boehner fund the government, and he will be forced out so they have their own victory to celebrate. Theory is the Planned Parenthood battle has gotten so large that the conservatives now need to get something tangible for losing that battle, and shooting Boehner out of the saddle is a very convenient win for them.

"The Pope has arrived at the U.S. Capitol and met with House Speaker John Boehner."

Some of these breaking-news alerts I'm getting in my email are the height of banality.

ADDED: I'm going to catch hell for saying this, but shouldn't you wear white underpants with a white outfit?



That's a screen grab from the AP photo of Pope Francis shaking hands with John Boehner, the 5th photograph here.

The full text of the speech to Congress is there too, so feel free to discuss loftier topics. Excerpt:

A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to "dream" of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.

In these remarks I have sought to present some of the richness of your cultural heritage, of the spirit of the American people. It is my desire that this spirit continue to develop and grow, so that as many young people as possible can inherit and dwell in a land which has inspired so many people to dream.

Hillary's confidante Sidney Blumenthal called John Boehner "louche, alcoholic, and lazy."

Louche! That really hurts.

Blumenthal went on to compare Boehner unflatteringly with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, saying that while Gingrich was "the natural leader of a 'revolution'", Boehner was "careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty."

Hillary's response was just "Thx, as always, for your insights," which is perfectly opaque and boring.

"Louche" is a great word. It means — according to the (unlinkable) OED) — "Oblique, not straightforward. Also, dubious, shifty, disreputable." Sounds like everyone in government, no?

The etymology is: It's French for squinting and comes from the Latin word "lusca," which is the feminine form of the word for one-eyed.

One of the historical examples at the OED comes from George Bernard Shaw, a 1905 letter to Granville Barker: "You could play Snobby. I want a slim, louche, servant-girl-bigamist, half-handsome sort of rascal."

ADDED: For fun, I wanted to add a picture of Hillary squinting. I ran across a bit of Think Progress nonsense from 2008: "Drudge Posts A Picture of Hillary Clinton With Squinted Eyes, Says She’s ‘Feeling Japanese.'" ("Drudge seems to have deliberately chosen a picture of Hillary that hints at Asian stereotypes — slanted eyes, arched eyebrows, and prominent teeth — to pair with the caption that she’s 'feeling Japanese.'")



Oh, that's not Japanese, it's just louche. Here's a better louche Hillary picture...



... with louche Bill as a bonus.

Maria Cardona, the Democratic Party strategist, who said "Jesus!" on "Face the Nation" yesterday.

Here's how it looks in the transcript:

[JOHN] DICKERSON: But Maria, Democrats seem quite happy to have this crack up and seem to be a in posture to not really deal with anybody. So, how does that affect...

CARDONA: I wouldn't say happy about it. I would say that Democrats are underscoring the message that they have said frankly very long time that the conservative ideologues in John Boehner's caucus are a problem because they're not interested in governing. And so what Democrats are using this is to underscore that they are not even willing to put Jesus (ph) -- the funding of DHS at a moment when we need it the most, first as opposed to some ideologues who are trying to prove a point because they don't like something that the president did.

The "(ph)" is a nice touch. Just going by how it sounded. It sounded like "Jesus." Who would just blurt out the name of Jesus as an expletive in the middle of a "Face the Nation" panel?  Watch it at 4:16 in the video:



I'm glad I'm not the only one who objected to that kind of talk in that setting. Here she is defending herself on Twitter:

Been getting critiqued 4 saying "Jesus!" @FaceTheNation. Am normally in church at that time, Spirit moved me in my pts re imp of DHS! Sorry!
— Maria Cardona (@MariaTCardona) March 1, 2015

So... the Spirit moved her. And she's usually in church on Sunday. What a ballsy explanation. She stands by the expletive. Lest you think it was just a momentary slip by a woman under pressure and at a loss for words, she'd like to you to believe that the outrage withholding funding to DHS makes a devout Christian cry out to the Lord.

"Boehner’s allies have thirsted for this kind of action from the speaker, saying he’s let people walk all over him for too long and is too nice to people who are eager to stab him in the back."

"The removal of Florida Reps. Daniel Webster and Richard Nugent from Rules was meant as a clear demonstration that what Boehner and other party leaders accepted during the previous Congress is no longer acceptable, not with the House’s biggest GOP majority in decades."

"The House GOP Should Man Up Instead of Resorting to Political Theater in the Courts."

Writes Erick Erickson at Red State, and I don't have to read beyond that headline to know I want to blog this. I too think the lawsuit is political theater — bad political theater — but I think I'd forgo the masculinity disparagement (which continues with "I realize John Boehner and the House Republicans may lack the testicular fortitude to fight President Obama...").

You might remember that we were just talking about the phrase "man up," in a post titled "Is America's dominant 'man up' ethos a hypermasculine cultural construct, a tenet rooted in biological gender difference or something in between?" The post title isn't something I wrote, but something some NPR guy said. I questioned whether America had a "dominant 'man up' ethos," and in the comments, I wrote about the origins of the phrase "man up":

For what it's worth: The Oxford English Dictionary finds this as the earliest use of "man up" (to mean "To demonstrate manliness, toughness, or courage when faced with a difficult situation"):

1996 Palm Beach (Florida) Post 2 Mar. c1/2 He made a commitment, and to his credit, he manned up to it.

And I quoted from Ben Zimmer's "The Meaning of ‘Man Up'":

"One notable forerunner of man up as we know it today is cowboy up, a phrase that has been used in rodeo circles for decades.... Cowboy up wasn’t much known outside of rodeo country until 2003, when it became the rallying cry for the Boston Red Sox.... Man up owes its early popularization to another American sport: football, where it originally had a more technical meaning relating to man-to-man pass defense...."

Note that the earlier meaning of "man up" was not act like a man, but (to quote the OED again) "To supply with the full number of workers required" — that is, to get all the men you need on the the job, which actually would fit the idea Erickson presses on Boehner better than the "testicular fortitude"/masculinity notion.

By the way, the OED, on that older meaning of "man up," quotes some British writer in 1947 complaining about the unnecessary "up":

Must industries be fully ‘manned up’ rather than ‘manned’? Must the strong, simple transitive verb..become as obsolete in England as it appears to be in America?

We Americans do like adding "up" to verbs that might do without it. We don't just fill the glass, we fill the glass up, and we don't just drink the drink, we drink it up. We don't just build our self-esteem, we build it up. I'm calling that optimism, but maybe it's more of the phallocracy that dominates the ethos around here.

Speaker John Boehner says he's planning some sort of lawsuit against Obama over his use of executive action.

It's hard to picture this as a lawsuit (other than a lawsuit as a form of political expression):

"You know the constitution makes it clear that the president’s job is to faithfully execute the laws and in my view the President has not faithfully executed the laws," Boehner said at a news conference on Capitol Hill....

"This is about defending the institution in which we serve. If you look back over the past 235 years of our history there's been movement between the inherent powers of the executive branch vs the inherent powers of the legislative branch and what we've seen clearly over the past 5 years is an effort to erode the power of the legislative branch"...

Exploiting the Boehner/boner pun...

... is that a good idea?



That ad for J.D. Winteregg cost him his teaching job at a Baptist university.

WaPo Fact Checker gives 2 Pinocchios to the claim that "more Americans have lost health insurance than gained it under Obamacare."

Glenn Kessler checks the accuracy of a GOP talking point that's put in various different ways. The quote in this post title is the way Marco Rubio phrased it, but there's also the really bad version that The Daily Caller put up, saying that Obamacare has "left more Americans without coverage than before the law was passed." See the difference? Rubio compares the set of persons who lost health insurance they had (even though they may have been able to replace it with some other health insurance) and those who had no health insurance and got health insurance. The Daily Caller is comparing the total number of persons who have "coverage" at 2 different time points: before and after Obamacare.

The Daily Caller's formulation — using the word "coverage" — is vulnerable to the interpretation that we're not just talking about people losing and buying health insurance but we're also referring to everyone who enrolls in Medicaid. Also, the way Rubio put it, people who lost insurance they had but replaced it with something else are counted in the loser group but excluded from the winner group. In The Daily Caller version, these people, who had their plan replaced by something else, cannot fit the set of persons "left... without coverage."

Too bad The Daily Caller is so bad at putting words together accurately. If you have a set of facts that you want to present to make a political point, you have to frame your words carefully, so that your grasping for strength of expression doesn't result in any inaccuracy. The Daily Caller is in desperate need of quality control, and you might say that it's not fair for Kessler to pin the Daily Caller's defective writing on the Republican Party, but John Boehner tweeted a link to that article. Boehner opened up that channel.

Though Boehner’s tweet had the same wording as the headline for the Daily Caller’s wrong-headed article, spokesman Brendan Buck says the speaker’s main point is that there were “more private plans canceled than private plans enrolled in Obamacare.”

Message to Buck and Boehner: Get control of your message. Watch what you tweet. And be especially careful when what enthuses your tweeting fingers appears in The Daily Caller. Refine your talking point into a powerful and scrupulously accurate form and adhere to it.

This is one of those cases where the exact phrasing could make a big difference in the Pinocchio rating. The Daily Caller article by itself would merit Four Pinocchios, while the actual phrasing of Boehner’s tweet is technically correct but a misleading accounting of apples and oranges. In linking to an obviously mistaken article, Boehner compounds any misunderstandings about the point of his tweet.

Shape up, Obamacare opponents. Get some brains and some good writers. You people are making dumb mistakes of the sort that any properly trained lawyer would know not to make. Pathetic.

How will this shutdown end?

A stalemate in a game that cannot end.

"Once the government reopens and we get the debt ceiling settled, we’ll be happy to talk to them about anything they want to talk about." (Reid.)

"This isn’t some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion." (Boehner.)

Okay, so it's not a game. But "game" is at least an apt metaphor. Or, no, it's not, because in games, where there is a true stalemate, a rule ends the game, and the players can stop playing. They don't continue to sit at the chessboard until someone concedes.

Talking and having a discussion is also a metaphor. The 2 parties in Congress are not a couple on a date that's turned into a staring contest. Or maybe Boehner is the woman endlessly imploring her man to talk about their relationship, and Reid is the taciturn man who's waiting for her to give up and do what the junior partner in a marriage is supposed to do: what he says.

Alternatively, Boehner is the man who relentlessly pursues his ex-girlfriend asking only for a chance to talk to her, and the woman — Reid — curtly informs him that there's nothing to talk about.

We instinctively turn away. And yet, the 2 sides are, it seems, waiting for Us the People to assign blame to one side or another. We're supposed to decide, and when we've conveyed our feelings, the party that anticipates losing in future elections will cave so our loathing for it doesn't grow any deeper.

But are we still watching? They need us to watch. It's their only way out. They're trying to make it interesting, with war monuments and children dying of cancer, but... look: gigantic hornets are killing the Chinese and Sandra Bullock is floating in outer space!

Drudge at his best: "Wanna Come to Russia?"

That links to a Guardian story with the far less ominous heading: "Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request/Vladimir Putin's spokesman says any appeal for asylum from whistleblower who fled US will be looked at 'according to facts.'"

Drudge's attitude is shown by other links at the top right now.

Above Putin's image: "Democrats Love Gov't Surveillance -- As Long As It's Obama, Not Bush..." (which is about the same WaPo-Pew poll that we're talking about here).

At the top of the left-hand column is: "Plan B: In latenight announcement, Obama allows morning-after abortion pill for under-17s..." (which makes it look like Obama is trying to woo us over into women's issues), "UPDATE: Soldier Who Read Conservative Books Faces Charges..." (more political bias in the exercise of power), and "US Ambassador to Belgium 'Solicited Prostitutes, Including Minors': State Dept IG..." (the new scandal).

The middle column begins with 3 headlines about terrorism in airports, and then another story about  political bias in the exercise of power: "Audio: IRS agent tells pro-life group: 'Keep your faith to yourself'..."

The right-hand column is devoted to the NSA story, pairing a Republican — "Boehner: NSA Leaker a 'Traitor'..." — with a Democrat — "AL FRANKEN: 'There Are Certain Things Appropriate For Me To Know That Is Not Appropriate For Bad Guys To Know'..."

"Still, Cruz and Christie possess a key similarity: an abundance of old-school manliness."

"Sure, one is a twangy Texan with that shit-kicking, boot-wearing thing going on (despite being a double-ivied, cosmopolitan kind of guy). The other is a Jersey bruiser, with a (much-discussed) physique reminiscent of Tony Soprano after a doughnut bender. But both are delivering a booster shot of testosterone to the GOP in a way few have managed to pull off of late...."

Writes Michelle Cottle in The Daily Beast (erasing Cruz's Hispanicity and Christie's stomach surgery).

Despite the centrality of this image to the GOP, however, precious few of its high-profile players now are apt salesmen for the manly brand....

As for the current team ... Mitt Romney: too much of a doofus. Paul Ryan: ditto, despite the washboard abs. Eric Cantor: too twitchy (manly men do not visibly vibrate with nervous energy). Marco Rubio: too boyish. Jeb Bush: too soft and measured. With his retro Mad Men groove, John Boehner has the potential to be a Don Draper kind of manly man, but he’s too darn weepy.

ADDED: I looked up "shit-kicking" in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. It means, "In early use: worthless, contemptible. Later: designating or characteristic of an unsophisticated person from a rural area; (also) tough, belligerent; cf."

1953   J. Harvey Salt in our Wounds vi. 87   You low-life..shit-kicking..useless bastard.
1972   J. Thomson in J. Malley & H. Tokay Contemporaries 189   A beer drinkin finger poppin shit kickin red neck.
1978   Jrnl. Folklore Inst. 15 264   Shit-kicking villagers wearing whatever it is that villagers actually wear these days.
1987   W. Styron Tidewater Morning in Esquire Aug. 88/2,   I, a shit-kicking Carolina yokel who, when I first met you, suspected you of being a neo-abolitionist.
1992   Playboy Nov. 111/1   He told me not to worry, in that shit-kicking drawl of his.
1998   Esquire May 42/1   This woman is one hot, shit-kicking feminist babe.
2002   L. Coady Strange Heaven i. 6   A pack of g.d. shit-kicking yahoos.

How does that relate in any way to Cruz?

What a "very frank and candid exchange of ideas" actually looks like.

The quote is from Boehner, whom you can see in this twitpic from Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz:



Will they ever see eye to eye? Unlikely!