Ownership Society quotables

Competition?

Upon hearing that N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg will bail out his failed Brooklyn Catholic schools by allowing them to become publicly financed charters:

Bishop DiMarzio said he was eager to support the proposal, saying he believed competition was the best way to improve schools. (NYT)

Students and teachers could still be selected by the church and church-hired teachers given short-cut certification.

The “rebuilding” of Iraq-- bribes in pizza boxes

Business associates of Dale Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004:

“Fifty thousand dollars delivered in pizza boxes to secure contracts,” said the former associate, a consultant in the arms business with whom Mr. Stoffel sometimes worked in the former Eastern bloc. “Of course, it just looked like a pizza delivery.” (NYT)

Frank Rich on the Limbaugh Party’s self-denial

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt. (NYT)

Head of the GOP says, “don’t trust us…”

RNC Chairman Michael Steele on FOX tells voters, “"You have absolutely no reason, none, to trust our word or our actions at this point." (Huffington)