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Post by acptulsa on Oct 26, 2017 11:52:20 GMT -8
'I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were 'German dogs.' They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.'--Molly Ivins
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Post by acptulsa on Oct 26, 2017 12:15:15 GMT -8
All Molly Ivins:
• 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.
• There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.
• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
• 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.
• Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.
• I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.
• It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
• Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.
• 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.
• 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.
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Post by acptulsa on Oct 26, 2017 12:24:03 GMT -8
More Molly Ivins, with a tip of the hat to Jone Johnson Lewis.
• Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother? Oh, it's just that your life is at stake.
• 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.
• What is a teenager in San Francisco to rebel against, for pity's sake? Their parents are all so busy trying to be non-judgmental, it's no wonder they take to dyeing their hair green.
• 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 problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not with authority, but with ourselves.
• The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal hell where they have to kill each other forever.
• Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
• You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It's their job.
• ...Phil Gramm, the senator from Enron...
• ...you could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.
• Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists famed for their impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police. No less distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York Post editorial page and the Fox News Channel -- quite a bunch of Pulitzer winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that do actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.
• I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.
• If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin' rights on [Dick Armey]'s head.
• There is one area in which I think [Camille] Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole.
• Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.
• Everyone knows [George W. Bush] has no clue, but no one there has the courage to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely adequate.
• Last week, I began a sentence by saying, "If Bush had any imagination ..." and then I hit myself. Silly me.
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Post by acptulsa on Oct 26, 2017 13:21:27 GMT -8
'I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.'--Molly Ivins
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Post by acptulsa on Oct 28, 2017 8:09:59 GMT -8
'Anybody who plays the stock market not as an insider is like a man buying cows in the moonlight.'--Daniel Drew
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Post by acptulsa on Oct 28, 2017 8:24:13 GMT -8
'Passion will make you crazy, but is there any other way to live?'--Howard Hughes
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 3, 2017 16:16:41 GMT -8
'It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.'--Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 3, 2017 16:21:00 GMT -8
'I yield to no man in sympathy for the gallant men under my command; but I am obliged to sweat them tonight, so that I may save their blood tomorrow.'--Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 3, 2017 19:11:52 GMT -8
'Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.'--Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson's last words
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 6, 2017 17:37:55 GMT -8
'A great tradition is Will Rogers. He ought to be taught in the schools because of what he embodied of the best of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He was as homely as a mud fence and yet, as beautiful as a sunrise over an Oklahoma field of alfalfa.'--Carl Sandburg
Oh, wait. Am I allowed to post that Sandburg quote here?
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 8, 2017 5:57:53 GMT -8
'You buttered your bread, now lie in it!'--Gracie Allen
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 14, 2017 12:39:01 GMT -8
'The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.'--Margaret Thatcher
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 16, 2017 8:56:49 GMT -8
'Flattery is like perfume. Smell it, but don't swallow it.'--Douglas Heyes
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 16, 2017 14:46:09 GMT -8
“No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” – Gideon J. Tucker
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Post by acptulsa on Nov 18, 2017 19:08:48 GMT -8
'In the first instance, it is probably true that, in general, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and “common” instincts and tastes prevail.
'It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people.
'Here comes in the second negative principle of selection: he will be able to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party.'--Friedrich Hayek
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