Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

Well, she could and she did and just typing did instead of does makes me so sad. Molly died from breast cancer yesterday. She started her cancer fight in 1999 with some good years between her initial diagnosis and ultimate death. I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person, she said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News in September of last year, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards. Amen.

What else did Molly have to say? In addition to naming our current President Shrub, here are a few of her bon mots.

Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed, she wrote in a column included in her 1998 collection, "You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You."

A couple of weeks ago, Molly wrote this about the Iraq War. Her pain obviously didn't get in the way of her biting commentary on the war.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war, Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!

The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point, she wrote in a 1997 column. Poor people do not shut down factories ... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits.

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? she wrote in a 2002 column.

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

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.

Good thing we've still got politics in Texas - finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's] office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.

Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.

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.

Former President Clinton had this to say about Molly in an Austin speech last year. He praised Molly as someone who was"good when she praised me and who was painfully good when she criticized me."