Quotes of the day

There are some things you learn best in calm, some in storm.--Willa Cather

Having financed several of America’s largest home builders, I know a few things about the housing industry. What happened to housing was not a failure of securitization, but rather a disastrous lowering of underwriting standards and other unfortunate practices.--Michael Milken

Look, it’s really quite simple: If there were a significant population of undecided gray aliens in Pennsylvania, right now Hillary Clinton would be talking fondly about her abduction by aliens and all the life lessons learned on that space ship. She’d be scolding Barack Obama for the way he demeans them. Obama, in turn, would say that he understands their bitterness when the US government has spent decades promising change but instead dissecting their kin in Area 51. But if all the gray aliens lived in states like California, Texas, South Dakota, or Vermont, i.e. states that aren’t even close and don’t matter for the nomination? Then we’d never hear a peep (or telepathic signal) about them. If anything, we’d hear about the need to build a big fence and hope that the aliens don’t learn how to fly over it.--"Thoreau", via Virginia Postrel