Quotes and Links

A week in review

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg sat down for an interview with MSNBC, April 7, 2024.

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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• “Repeat after us: Weaponizing womanhood against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work. Making people believe there isn’t enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work.” — A tweet from the National Organization for Women (NOW).

• “Men punching random women in NYC: A desperate last gasp of the male rage fueling MAGA” — Headline from Salon

• “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.” — Uri Berliner, a senior business editor and reporter at NPR who has been with the outlet for 25 years now.

• “I know Uri [Berliner]. He’s not wrong.” — Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman.

• “Woke is among other things a business model based on raiding the public treasury through moral extortion -- it exacerbates and radicalizes all the problems it purports to solve and damages the fabric of society in order to enrich a class of grifter[s]. It introduces a friend-enemy dynamic into ordinary bourgeois life, largely for the purpose of satisfying a lust for power and precedence among disordered personalities ensconced in bourgeois life.” — Wesley Yang

• “Despite all the good news in the stock market over the last year or so, once you factor in inflation it really hasn’t gone anywhere since late 2021. Money illusion — the common human failure to pierce the veil imposed by inflation — has obscured that reality.” — Jeff Sommer, who covers financial and economic issues for The New York Times.

• “This is nothing like a progressive triumph —– in fact, a policy more conducive to boosting Trump’s chances of a return to the White House can scarcely be imagined.” — Former CIA analyst Martin Gurri, in a New York Post article about Biden opening the migrant floodgates.

• “How ‘Do Your Own Research’ Might Have Doomed Democracy” — Headline from GQ

• “We made the change that if you wanted to be considered for promotion at the Department of State, you must be able to document what you are doing to support diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility. This is how you are judged for promotion.” — Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, Obama’s former Malta ambassador, who was appointed as “chief diversity and inclusion officer” at the State Department in April 2021.

• “O.J. Simpson was an abusive liar who abandoned his community long before he killed two people in cold blood. His acquittal for murder was the correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system.” — CUNY Presidential Professor Marc Lamont Hill

• “If we have a close election and Biden loses, questioning elections will become the most patriotic thing a person can do.” — Walter Kirn, co-host of America This Week with Matt Taibbi.

• “But the simple facts and the simple reality are right here staring us in the face, including the fact I can safely walk my dog to the Capitol today in a way you couldn’t do when we all got here.” — U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, during an interview on MSNBC. Later that same day, two people walking their dogs in Washington, D.C., were mugged, with one of the victims being stabbed. Last year, D.C. had its deadliest year in 20+ years and saw the largest violent crime spike of any major U.S. city.

• “As an actual gender studies major (courtesy of the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department Oberlin College Class of 2011) with pink hair (courtesy of a cool chick named Emmy at Indigo salon in Denver) who has benefitted from state loan repayment, I am LOLing.” — Dr. Sarah Axelrath, who apparently got into medical school with a gender studies degree.

• “And when we misuse pronouns, and when we intentionally or deliberately misuse them or choose not to be careful, we’re sending messages to our kids also that we don’t care how they’re seeing the world and we are willing to do them harm, and the very act of doing that is an act of disrespect and violence against people, regardless of who they are.” — Minnesota State Rep. Liz Reyer (D), during a House hearing on gender-affirming care.

• “If the campaign of stalking, abuse and speech-disruption being used against Democrats was coming from the right rather than the left, liberals would all agree that it’s fascism.” — New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, regarding Pro-Palestinian activists who have become “Left-Wing Authoritarians.”

• “I’m on the opinion of if you are a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you wanna play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play.” — Dawn Staley, head coach of the South Carolina women’s basketball team (national champions), when asked if biological males should play in women’s sports.

• “An entire generation has been raised on the fraudulent notion that ‘lol’ suffices for an argument. We cannot be sure this was not a decades-long scheme designed to ensure job security for the rest of us.” — National Review’s Noah Rothman

• “He was just riding around in his car and they killed him!” — Nicole Banks, mother of Dexter Reed, who was shot and killed by Chicago police this week. Reed, who was awaiting trial on a gun case, was wearing a ski mask in his car. He refused to comply with officers’ demands that he roll his tinted windows down. He refused to comply with their demand that he not lock his door. And then he fired eleven shots at the police before they returned fire. All of this is on camera.

• “A full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases How could we as humans, live on the moon?” — Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), during remarks made at a high school solar eclipse event on Monday. She also said that there are solar systems “smaller than the Earth,” that the Moon is a planet, and that an eclipse happens when “they shut the light down.”

• “Sheila Jackson Lee Named Head Of Harvard Astronomy Department” — Headline from The Babylon Bee

• “Because Joe Biden is a serious person who tells the truth, the press holds him to an exponentially higher standard than Trump.” — Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America, one of the most popular podcasts in the country.

• “I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real.” — Christina Amira Khalil, who is running for Senate.

• A Washington Post piece on “The man who built the biggest match-fixing ring in tennis.”

• N.S. Lyons: “‘Democracy’ Means Never Having to Hear ‘You’re Fired!’”

• “Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever,” from The Atlantic.

• A New Yorker story about “The Really Big One,” an impending earthquake along the Pacific coast that will spell the worst natural disaster the continent has ever seen.

• “The Heartrending Tale of Kitt the Police Dog and His Human Partner,” from Boston Magazine.

• Foreign Policy: “America’s Next Soldiers Will Be Machines”

• “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” from The American Scholar.