quote/unquote

(Another in a continuing series from St. Louis, MO)

"The aim of this speech was to talk her own supporters into supporting Obama. Since I find it really hard to understand why anyone would have supported Clinton over Obama, I'm not the best judge of how it went down. The response on television from the crowd seems to have been everything Obama would have wanted. To my mind, however, it was an average performance, not a slashing attack on the Bush-Cheney record, nor a rousing rallying cry for Obama, nor a very insightful analysis of the country's problems. There was virtually nothing about foreign policy. She did what she had to do, tell her voters to back Obama. But she gave nothing more. So far, only Michelle Obama has rescued this convention from being dreary and distracted."
*------ Andrew Sullivan on Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday at the Democratic Convention

"How can you screw up Alabama? It's 40th in everything."
* native son Charles Barkley interviewed at the convention about how he might run for governor of Alabama

"Leave it as it is. Just add one line * 'As he grew older, he grew worse.'"
*- H.L. Mencken (pictured) in response to a Balitmore Sun reporter who asked in 1947 if he needed to update Mencken's obituary prepared in advance of his death, which happened in 1956.

"City planning involves so many skills and insights that it might be wondered why anyone would even attempt it. It might seem more practical simply to abandon the old city, as Mayan towns were turned back to the jungle when the surrounding soil had become too depleted to produce corn."
-- George McCue, reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 2, 1962 in a series of articles titled "Mill Creek Valley: Urban Opportunity and a Challenge."