Quotes and Links

A week in review

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks on CNN, Wednesday, February 14.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “Tennessee has a long-standing law that says prostitutes cannot knowingly transmit HIV. Biden’s DOJ is suing the state, claiming it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.” — Breaking911 News

• “This is epic. This is monumental. If things are going in the direction we think, Fani Willis lied to the court, it’s game over for her. She will be disqualified. If they had a relationship prior to when they represented truth to the court, it’s a huge deal. I can’t overstate.” — MSNBC legal analyst Caroline Polisi. A friend of Willis revealed on Thursday that Willis has had a relationship with Nathan Wade since 2019 (contradicting the filings of Willis and Wade). It was also revealed that Wade used his business card to pay for the vacations he took with Willis, and that she reimbursed him with cash—during the time when Wade was getting paid by Willis for the prosecution of Trump.

• “Fani Willis is such a train wreck that there’s no chance Pete Buttigieg will ever visit her.” — Ben Shapiro

• “Why the Case Against Fani Willis Feels Familiar to Black Women” — Headline from The New York Times

• “That the NYT published an article earnestly depicting the hearing on Fani Willis as a by-product of racism that all black woman experience — when it’s [a] clear and egregious case of prosecutorial corruption — vividly shows liberal racist condescension.” — Glenn Greenwald

• “If Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, we do not know if there would be a verifiable next election that has integrity.” — Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, during an interview on CNN

• “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” — Headline of a story written by The Cut’s financial-advice columnist

• “I thought when writers get scammed out of 50k was just called ‘going to journalism school.’” — The Wall Street Journal’s Lindsey Adler

• “Clarence Thomas Is Not a Black Hero—He’s an Enemy of Black People” — Headline from Newsweek

• “Why don’t they just round us up and shoot us? It would be more honest.” — Dr. Jamie Weisman, regarding the CDC dropping its five-day covid isolation guidelines

• “We’re going to defend women in this state. That means if you’re a man on Friday night and all of the sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you.” — North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson

• “Reminder that the funding bill the Senate just passed requires that a ‘strategy’ for Ukraine be produced within 45 days. Which suggests there is no existing strategy for US policy in Ukraine, and none was demanded before they passed another $60 billion.” — Independent journalist Michael Tracey

• “‘Free Palestine’ written on gun in shooting at Lakewood Church, but motive a mystery: Sources” — Headline from ABC News

• “It’s also important to remember what this generation of leaders inherited: the world at America’s feet after the fall of the USSR, a Russia eating out of our hand, a China w/a GDP less than 7% of America’s (in 1991). And then, any mistakes we made in the ‘90s were wiped away by 9/11, when the whole world — Russia, China, even Iran — was offering genuine sympathy and ready to renew relations. An even halfway competent leadership class could’ve firmly established America’s leadership position for the next hundred years just by picking the lowest hanging fruit, but instead ours squandered it all in a few decades.” — Podcaster Darryl Cooper

• “It really captures what I call ‘the soul of Chicago.’ It’s who we are.” — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, touting a program in which black-owned businesses were given $17 million to feed illegal aliens, while white-owned businesses didn’t qualify

• “Well, if [Biden is] controlled by advisers, is that unacceptable? If the advisers are making good decisions?” — New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait

• “But seems like memory loss is not necessarily a factor in being able to do the job of president.” — MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen

• “[Biden] finally fulfilled one campaign promise. He unified the country.” — Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld, on 86% of Americans agreeing that Biden is too old to be president

• “More Than 30 Harvard Students Hunger Strike for 12 Hours in Solidarity With Brown Protesters” — Headline from The Harvard Crimson

• “I truly don’t understand how and why anyone can see that this guy is a viable candidate. We are talking about someone that LITERALLY may start World War III.” — Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett, (regarding Trump) during an interview on MSNBC

• “So much of the so-called ‘Science™’ was poorly disguised neuroticism married to political activism.” — Dr. Shiven Chabria

• “The Lottery Hackers,” from The Huffington Post.

• “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” by David Foster Wallace (favorite writer of yours truly).

• A piece from The Atlantic on how “Too much aloneness is creating a crisis of social fitness.”

• Commentary magazine: What ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Have in Common

• A Scraps From the Loft story on the famous “Falling Man” photograph taken on 9/11.

• “How Your Family Tree Could Catch a Killer,” from The New Yorker.