Weekend quotables

Obama: "That's not the world we live in..."

“If there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easier negotiation. But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.” (ANI)

Al Sharpton at the National Action Project conference

"We formed this group before mayoral control was even on the landscape," Sharpton said. "I'm not for mayoral control." (Joanna Malloy, Daily News).

Do you believe in magic?

“We have this magical opportunity to invest significantly in these best practices and scale up what works,” says Arne Duncan of aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (Edweek)

AFT prez Randi Weingarten at UFT breakfast

What binds all AFT affiliates, she said, is "a dedication to the belief that we make a difference in the lives of people who need us most. "That includes confronting the lie that teacher unions block needed reform - a lie proclaimed by those "more interested in making educators and [their] unions … pariahs, not partners," she said. (NYSUT)

Review of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

Next “right-wing think tanks descended like a storm” and Bush “backed up their plans with tens of millions of dollars to convert (its) schools into ‘charter schools,’ publicly funded institutions run by private entities according to their own rules.” (Sylvia Mayuga, PhilStar.com)

Typo, or Freudian slip?

The wing-nuts at Olbermann Watch report that in 2006, "Rumsfeld was replaced by Bill Gates who continues to serve in the cabinet of the new administration." At first, I laughed--Robert Gates, you idiots. But on second thought...