WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Vallas/Solomon/Synesi connection was ignored when he ran with Quinn. 

The Watch Dogs

In a series of letters to Louisiana officials who oversaw the New Orleans district, Vallas vouched for Synesi Associates, an education consulting firm that recently had been started in Chicago by a former high school teacher named Gary Solomon.

“This out-of-state provider has a record of demonstrated effectiveness,” Vallas wrote in 2007, citing the “unique experience” of the firm’s staff.  -- Sun-Times

Rev. Jesse Jackson: 

Latinos building the border wall is like blacks building slave ships...If they were going to build slave ships to take blacks back to Africa, I hope blacks would not try to get the contracts. -- USA Today

Glenn Greenwald

Mocking “the instant elevation of Trump into a serious and respected war leader,” Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept recalled John Jay, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, who wrote more than 200 years ago: “However disgraceful it may be to human nature . . . nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it.”

In fact, Jay wrote, “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it” — except, of course, to scratch that eternal itch for military glory, revenge or self-aggrandizement. -- Washington Post

Rex Tillerson 

Tillerson said that once the threat of the Islamic state "has been reduced or eliminated," the U.S. can focus on stabilizing Syria. -- Politico