Talking Points: Did You See What They Said?

"To prove you're being poisoned from a uniform is a little insane. All I know is when I put on the uniform I feel bad, and I've never felt that before."-- Heather Poole, an American Airlines flight attendant who has chronicled her issues with the uniform to her 100,000 followers on social media. (dallasnews.com, Monday)"I am, to a large extent, an environmentalist. But it's out of control, and we're going to make a very short process, and we're going to either give you your permits or we're not going to give you your permits. But you're going to know very quickly."-- President Donald Trump, as he signed executive memos that could revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects (dallasnews, Tuesday)"Oh, there's Jim, he's become more famous than me."-- President Donald Trump, after noticing FBI director James Comey in the audience at an event to honor law enforcement officers (New York Times, Tuesday)"The president can sign whatever executive orders he likes, but the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America."-- Arizona Senator John McCain responding to a New York Times report that Trump has drafted an executive order that would allow for harsher treatment of detainees (Politico.com, Wednesday)"The U.S. has been teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8." --statement from the Economist Intelligence Unit, citing declining trust in government, elected representatives, and political parties for its decision to demote the U.S from a full democracy to a flawed democracy (CNBC.com, Wednesday)"It's the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that's incredibly difficult to replicate. Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions, in particular, are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector."-- David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, on the mass firings of senior State Department officials (Washingtonpost.com, Thursday)"I've got to say, I was impressed. I was meeting with a CEO. It was obvious. And the president had a very specific agenda in terms of what he thought was critical and that was tax reform and regulatory reform. ...I left with a degree of optimism that this could actually be pulled off this year."--AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson, telling analysts on an earnings call that he is optimistic about the company's outlook under the Trump administration (dallasnews.com, Wednesday)There is no sugarcoating last session's ethics reform failures. However, it did provide the Legislature with a clear road map for ethics reform. Votes were cast, and politicians were on the record. There is no excuse to cheat the voters out of meaningful ethics reform."— State Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, introducing a new ethics and disclosure bill this session (Austin American-Statesman, Wednesday) "This decision didn't happen in a vacuum. My decision to pull back these charges was something that I thought was right, something that we owed the community and the Craig family in particular."— Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, on his decision to drop criminal charges stemming from an altercation Jacqueline Craig and family members, had with a Fort Worth officer had responded to her complaint that a neighbor had choked her 8-year-old son because he had allegedly littered.(dallasnews.com, Thursday) "You became numb to it. It became pretty normal."— Ivan Rodriguez, a former branch banker at Wells Fargo, explaining how employees were tipped of pending internal audits and were expected to destroy or falsify documents that could have indicated that accounts were opened without authorization (Wall Street Journal, Tuesday) 'These are the same ideals I hope to live up to as a representative of San Jose. Plus, I had this really cool shield I wanted to show off." — San Jose City Councilman Lan Diep, who held a Captain America shield during his swearing-in ceremony (Dailymail.com, Wednesday)"Some of the companies that were originally involved with the development of the AAC are some of the neighbors that are creating difficulties for us. I don't know if there are any caveats in the agreements that allow us to contest the lease. I don't expect to find anything, but we'll look at it."—Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, on why the team wants to leave the American Airlines Center for a new arena in the Design District (dallasnews.com, Wednesday) "Mary Tyler Moore deserves a spot in the pantheon of great comic actresses like Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, and it is for this that she will be most remembered."—TV historian Robert Thompson of Syracuse University, on the death of Mary Tyler Moore, a television cultural and feminist pioneer. (washingtonpost.com, Wednesday)  Continue reading...

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