Good Golly, Miss Molly!

for the woefully heretofore unitiated, i'm afraid you'll only get to know molly's columns posthumously. you can check them out at www.texasobserver.org.
if you'd rather, though, here is a sort of beginner's course in molly-speak: erudite, cutting, dixie charm drips from her pen (yes, she started that long ago). here's a personal favorite to start off the batch:

"As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office."
Molly Ivins

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• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
• What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.
• Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
• You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
• It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.
• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.
• There's never been a law yet that didn't have a ridiculous consequence in some unusual situation; there's probably never been a government program that didn't accidentally benefit someone it wasn't intended to. Most people who work in government understand that what you do about it is fix the problem -- you don't just attack the whole government.
• I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.
• I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.
• One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either. OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad.
• It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.
• In the real world, there are only two ways to deal with corporate misbehavior: One is through government regulation and the other is by taking them to court. What has happened over 20 years of free-market proselytizing is that we have dangerously weakened both forms of restraint, first through the craze for "deregulation" and second through endless rounds of "tort reform," all of which have the effect of cutting off citizens' access to the courts. By legally bribing politicians with campaign contributions, the corporations have bought themselves immunity from lawsuits on many levels.
• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory.
• During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: "Look out! They're about to smack you around again!"
• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.
• I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing.
• The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.