I nominate Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for the dumbest remark of the young year:

“I often think we would have been better off if the terrorists had blown up our levees,” she said. “Maybe we’d have gotten more attention.”

Nevermind the offensiveness of the remark, her statement represents either grand ignorance or a disgusting sense of priorities.

Had terrorists blown up the levees, there would have been absolutely no evacuations prior to everybody being ten feet under water. Not only would no one have had time to leave, they wouldn't have had time to prepare. There'd have been no Superdome or convention center set up and that wouldn't matter nearly as much cause cars would be under water before anyone that had a car could drive there. There'd have been not the slightest inkling that the day would be any different than the day before. What emergency response there was would have taken much longer to arrive.

The death toll would have dwarfed both 9/11 and the hurricane's bodycount. Is Landrieu seriously saying that it might have been worth it for a little more attention after the fact? Would she be pleased to see the government dedicate the totality of its resources towards fishing tens of thousands of bodies out of the water? Does nothing matter so much as a bounty from the federal government? I guess I shouldn't chalk up to malice what can be attributed to gross stupidity.

So is she right that the government would be responding much more thoroughly if it had been a terrorist attack? Maybe. How's that Freedom Tower project going? Anyhow, even if she is right about that, we should all seriously be thanking God that the terrorists aren't creative to come up with such an attack.

"The Republican Party of 2006 is a tired, cranky shell of the aggressive, reformist movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change. I worked for them. They were friends of mine. These Republicans are not those Republicans." -Frank Luntz

"We have reached the antithesis of the asceticism of the Middle Ages. There is no tendency now to despise self-gratification or to hold what we call practical affairs in contempt. To adjust the balance of this age we must seek another remedy. We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. It is on that side of life that it is desirable to put the emphasis at the present time. If that side be strengthened, the other side will take care of itself…. The success or failure of liberal education, the justification of its protection and encouragement by the government, and of its support by society, will be measured by its ability to minister to this great cause, to perform the necessary services, to make the required redeeming sacrifices." -President Calvin Coolidge, 1923

"The young student loves to be informal because he feels uncomfortable with his limited knowledge of social customs and because he still clings to an impromptu adolescent chumminess. He behaves strangely and defies conventions mainly because he is insecure – his great dreams and great ambitions and general aura of impending great greatness are not quite matched by circumstances (and never will be); he still has to work at places like Virgin Megastore and Starbucks. Hence, the need to flout rules to show that they must be wrong about him. (His influence is seen especially in the workplace, where business casual is the leading indicator of a sloppy, immature, indulgent business culture, which reached its lowest point in the 90s at dot-coms staffed by people who spent most of the day running up and down the halls playing tag.)" -Udolpho

This is a particularly good quote if you just got finished reading Nation of Rebels.

"Standardized test scores track wealth and poverty with frightening precision. Even the call for “equal” education spending misses the point. If this society wants to fulfill its stated ideals, it must provide disproportionate talent and spending in the earliest years for those students whose family environment does not foster college preparation." -Oakland Mayor -Jerry Brown

"[I]n real life, we share polite aquaintanceship with all sorts of people who think all kinds of wrong and crazy stuff. We just don’t usually have to hear about those crazy things. At a party we will edge away from the crazy “let me tell you about my views on minarchy RIGHT NOW” guy. Then again, we might have a great time discussing the latest Italian election results, say, or poor draft choices recently made in the NFL, with someone who was, in fact, a crazy minarchist, but who didn’t go out of his way to tell you about it. Unfortunately, the blogosphere is like an extended drunken party in which the probability of you having to hear the crazy minarchist’s theories about government asymptotically approaches 1." -Belle Waring

"England’s national fallacy is probably the argumentum ad temperantiam, which is the supposition that a moderate middle course must be the superior option. A distaste for extremism has ingrained in the English a preference for standing in the middle of every alternative, and thus reaching only halfway to accuracy and virtue. If you see someone in a pub claiming that two plus two equals four, against another who says they equal six, just walk over and suggest that five is probably about right. Every Englishman in the pub will nod sagely in agreement with your moderation. Nonetheless, sometimes one of the extremes may be correct; there is no link between moderation and accuracy." -Madsen Pirie

"Cultural standards change all the time. Still, I think we're crossing a pretty significant threshold with the [vaginal area] waxing phenomenon, which is now so mainstream that it shows up in approved-for-all-audiences movie trailers. As with breast implants, it's another instance of modern women taking their sexual cues from pornography, and from the male fantasy of what Tom Wolfe calls "a boy with breasts," but which might be more accurately described as a prepubescent girl with breasts. Jennifer Aniston isn't a bad icon for this shift: When she started out on Friends, she was fetchingly adorable, with curves and baby fat to spare. Fifteen years later, she's exercised, smoked and plastic surgerized herself into a weird, porn-like parody of a beautiful women - skinny, over-tanned, and all angles except for her still-pneumatic breasts. The waxing is just a small part of the pantomime, a final insult to the "natural" body she gave up on long ago." -Ross Douthat

"Mr. Clooney was the fellow "brave" enough to make a movie about — cue drumroll as I open the envelope for Most Predictable Direction — the McCarthy era! How about that? I don't know about you but I was getting so sick of the sycophantic Joe McCarthy biopics churned out year in year out — Nathan Lane in McCarthy! The Musical was the final straw — that thank God someone finally had the "bravery" to exercise his "right to dissent." I only hope George Clooney isn't found dead in the street at the hands of some crazed nonagenarian HUAC member..." -Mark Steyn

"That is far from the customary image of a loner freshman zoning out in front of the screen in his dorm room. Ever since Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), media critics have believed that watching the boob tube "atomizes" individuals, so that even when viewing the news they have no real social engagement. The college ritual of The O.C., March Madness, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and other favorites reverses the process, and television watching isn't the only leisure habit shifting from "isolationist" to collective." -Mark Bauerline