Pun Salad

■ Proverbs 27:6 is another could-have-been-written-yesterday bit of wisdom:

Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Trusted Wounds would be a pretty good song title.

■ Robby Soave at Reason works on the United Airlines brouhaha: United Did a Bad Thing, But the TSA Has ‘Re-Accommodated’ Airline Passengers for Years.

… [W]hile [U]nited's treatment of the passenger in the video was stunning and uniquely awful, let's not forget that the entire airport experience is oriented toward misery—and that's the fault of government policies that treat every passenger like a potential security threat. paying customers aren't people with rights and dignity, according to this model: they are nails to be hammered into place.

Surely there are better security models out there.

■ Power Line's John Hinderaker Democrats Lose Argument, Try to Burn Books. Well, not burn them. Recycle. Quoting a Daily Caller article::

Three senior House Democrats asked U.S. teachers Monday to destroy a book written by climate scientists challenging the environmentalist view of global warming.

The Children must only be exposed to the correct propaganda! Hinderaker further comments:

Why do you think our federal government has funded global warming alarmism to the tune of $40 billion? It is all about power and money. And if you blow the whistle on the liberals’ scam, your book should be thrown in the trash! We wouldn’t want America’s students to get a balanced view of the facts relating to climate, not when so much money is at stake.

"Indeed."

■ At the Federalist, Bethany Mandel takes on yet another MSM "story" that tries very hard to connect the dots. And those dots are Jews! Who Needs Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories About Jews When You Have Politico?

We’ve spent the better part of the last year being warned about the dangers of the rise of the alt-right. Even I doubted the power the alt-right apparently wields, which apparently includes the ability to convince a mainstream American publication to publish 4,000 words of anti-Semitic garbage on the eve of a major Jewish holiday. Can they silence the rest of the mainstream media, which reports breathlessly on every headline related to Jews at Breitbart?

I'm surprised Carol Shea-Porter hasn't breathlessly retweeted this yet.

■ Quotes from famous people are a funny thing. Specifically, people using such quotes to support their arguments. Who cares what Lincoln said about corporations? Or Jefferson about government schools? Maybe they got it wrong!

Still, there's a mini-industry around quote-mongering. A lot is careless about sourcing, especially if the quote sounds as if it could be valid. And so there's also a smaller, but significant, group deployed in debunking fake quotes.

If you hear that “Mark Twain said” something, the one thing you can be pretty sure of is that Mark Twain never said it. Famous quotations become famous because, for many people, they have an irresistible allure. Yet their wording, their meaning and, particularly, their origins have often been fictionalized by the popular mind or careless quoters or people with an ax to grind. We may be inspired, comforted, amused or educated by quotes, and if the quote is put into the mouth of a celebrated sage like Twain, so much the better. We impress ourselves or others with the borrowed wisdom of the sage.

Other victim of fake-quoting: Yogi Berra. And, oh yeah, according to the book title, Hemingway.