Old Fogey Is Back

I've been off on a world cruise (about which I will soon blog). We got home last week and had to battle illness and a ton of deferred duties, but I'm almost caught up and ready to blog. I’ve decided to do a daily post of my favorite quotes from online news sources. What follows is my first installment:

Bush has the charm to succeed, but the effort may require more candor than he can afford, more humility than he has, and more changes in policy than he will allow.!

Howard Fineman, MSNBC
Fineman: Can Bush win back the press?

For those in the tap-water brackets, the situation is a bit different. For many of the 39 million households making less than $30,000 a year, the difference between $2 gas and $3 gas is the difference between spending 10% of income on gas and 15%. In a word: Ouch!

Editorial, USA Today
$3 gas may change America

"Conservative talk radio has gone where it's never gone before -- to the briefing podium at the White House. . . ."Now for the first time, one of [pioneering syndicated talk show host Rush] Limbaugh's fellow broadcast partisans has been installed as the official public face, and voice, of a Republican administration."

Steve Gorman of Reuters as quoted in Dan Froomkin’s WaPo "White House Briefing"
White House Briefing

"If Tony Snow really does not think that George Bush has done enough to defend presidential powers and prerogatives, then he is a fine fit for this imperial presidency. He has not merely drunk the Kool-Aid, he has complained that the mix
is not strong enough."

John Nichols of The Nation, as quoted in Howard Kurtz’s WaPo "Blizzard of Criticism"
Blizzard of Criticism

House Republicans running as fiscal "hawks" (after years of cheerleading for the costly Bush tax cuts for the affluent) back the president's budget request; the Senate Republicans who are more concerned about popular spending programs opt for the add-ons. No one mentions the responsibility to find revenues to someday pay for all this, plus debt costs.

NYT editorial
Fiscal-Conservatives-Come-Lately

During my reporting days it was my experience that an official willing to bend the secrecy rules was usually someone using this last resort means to protest against the effort to hide an activity that the public needed to know about.

Daniel Schorr in Christian Science Monitor
Beware the culture of the polygraph

Yes, it’s important that women have the right to decide what happens inside their uteruses. But it’s just as important that we be able to support ourselves. When will we start to care passionately about whether women are treated fairly on the job?

E. J. Graff in American Prospect about SC case Burlington Northern v. White, about a woman forced out of a fork-lift job because it was a "man’s job"
Fighting for Fair Treatment