This Week In Quotes: May 25 – May 31

01 Jun, 2012 by John Hawkins

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We’ve got to do something. Everybody is wringing their hands saying we’ve got to do something. Well, here is a concrete thing. You can still buy large bottles in stores. But in a restaurant, 16 ounces is the maximum that they would be able to serve in one cup. If you want to order two cups of the same time, that’s fine. It’s your choice. We’re not taking away anybody’s right to do things. We’re simply forcing you to understand that you have to make the conscious decision to go from one cup to another cup. — Micahel Bloomberg

Chris Hayes ‘Uncomfortable’ Calling Fallen Military ‘Heroes’ — Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate. — Ann Coulter

“Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke [sic, actually Beck], who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.” — Chris Hayes

“I’m the twoosh master!” — Barack Obama

(Mitt Romney’s) speech was more like a cowpie of distortion. — Barack Obama

That research acknowledges that large social trends other than entitlements contribute to the decline in fertility. People have fewer kids as infant-mortality rates drop. The shift away from farming has reduced the value of children as laborers. The development of financial markets has expanded the range of alternative investments. The growth of female participation in the market for paid labor has also reduced the fertility rate – although one has to be careful in analyzing this relationship, because causality runs in both directions. (A woman who expects to have one child is more likely to pursue a career than a woman who expects to have four.) A 2005 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by economists Michele Boldrin, Mariacristina De Nardi, and Larry E. Jones points out that “the size and timing of the growth in government pension systems” matches up nicely with fertility trends in the U.S. and Europe. They expanded on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and fertility fell on both sides, after World War II; and they expanded more in Europe, where fertility fell further. In their model, entitlements account for roughly half of the decline in fertility, and 60 percent of the difference between European and American fertility. When a pension system expands by 10 percent of GDP, the average number of children per woman drops by 0.7 to 1.6. “These findings are highly statistically significant and fairly robust to the inclusion of other possible explanatory variables.” — Ramesh Ponnuru

It is a sign of terminal desperation when regimes that can’t compete for talent focus their energies on ever more elaborate procedures to prevent freeborn individuals voting with their feet. — Mark Steyn

“They’re bottom feeders. I mean, my God, I didn’t think it was possible to get lower than Andrew Breitbart, but his spawn have gotten lower than Andrew Breitbart.” — Joan Walsh

“If you guys want to go back and talk about what happened nine years ago to me, lets talk about the President doing blow.” — Congressman Allen West