Molly Ivins Quotes
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Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman
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The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.
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California is now close to spending more on prisons than it does on higher education - surely the death warrant of a civilization.
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You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.
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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.
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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.
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We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion.
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I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.
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The Libertarians, of whom I'm rather fond, are running Harry Browne. Libertarians are, just as they claim, principled and consistent - they believe in individual liberty. Commendable as they are, and despite their reliability as allies in civil liberties struggles, you may notice that Libertarians sometimes prove that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and that there is a difference between logic and wisdom.
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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.
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On a personal note: I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I intend to recover. I don't need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.
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Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.
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The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us. ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid. ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency.
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Texas is a fine place for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses.
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So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.
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You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
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In city rooms and in the bars where newspeople drink, you can find out what's going on. You can't find it in the papers.
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Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.
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Anyone who thinks humans are not capable of so fouling their own nest that the land and the waters can no longer be productive just hasn't been paying attention.
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The advantage of being able to identify sin is that you can go out and do it, and enjoy it.
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Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.
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If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.
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Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history.
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Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build or you can use a hammer to destroy; there is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself. It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad.