The Fun's in the Fight

Molly Ivins (photo from Mother Jones Magazine)

Molly Ivins died 6 years ago today. This is an anniversary that many people, like Pat Buchanan, probably celebrate with glee, a celebration that would, or course, sound better in the original German (PDF).

Anyone who's happy that Molly Ivins is dead can suck it. The reason they are happy? They could never argue with her when she was alive. They didn't stand a chance. And, to add insult to injury, she really enjoyed giving them shit. That is the trick to a happy life. Stand up to the assholes, and have fun doing it. Here's how she put it in 1993:

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. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

Ironically, with John McCain trying to give Chuck Hagel the business over the Iraq surge today, Molly's last column was an exhortation to stand up against the war mongers who wanted to waste more American and Iraqi lives on a war that we should have never allowed ourselves to be lied into in the first place.

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. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.

Raise hell, indeed. Damn fine advice. If you're not out there making the ridiculous look ridiculous, then you're just wasting your limited time here. So, in memory of Molly, get out there and keep the wingnuts talking!

Annihilation Offense

Still got your guns? Still illegal?

"Yesterday we had to get rid of our guns. Today we gotta grant amnesty... They're running the no-huddle offense on us. We don't even have time to catch our breath. They're running play after play after play."--Rush Limbaugh

So, then, we can all agree that Rush is a liar? So is Speaker Boehner when he says Obama wants to annihilate the GOP. Because if running a 32 Dive on 3rd and 10, in the third quarter of a tie game means we've got you on your heels and moving backwards, then either you don't know football, or you're just lying. And anyone who listened to Wayne LaPierre before congress knows damn well the right wing will never be out of breath.

I'll be surprised if the Republican house passes any kind of sensible regulations on deadly high speed metal. We're talking tea-baggers, here--they want a Randian Autotopia of Mad Max cars with a mounted 50 cal machine guns, Praise the Lord.

It's just not the same without Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin being paid to whine about all this. Rush is getting lonely, Fox's ratings have fallen through the floor, and even sociopaths are getting sick of Glenn Beck. Isn't it time for Ted "Pants Crapper" Nugent to say something excrutiatingly stupid? Oh, right, he's supposed to be dead, or in prison by now.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

This is the kind of thing that would have gotten Gomer kicked out of the USMC.

Jim Nabors, the Hawaii resident well known for his starring role in the 1960s television sitcom "Gomer Pyle, USMC," married his longtime male partner early this month, he told Hawaii News Now Tuesday. 

[...] 

"I'm 82 and he's in his 60s and so we've been together for 38 years and I'm not ashamed of people knowing, it's just that it was such a personal thing, I didn't tell anybody," Nabors said. "I'm very happy that I've had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed.  And, what can I tell you, I'm just very happy."

I can't wait to hear the wingnutteratti tell us how wrong his happiness is.

Signed, Noisemaker

I had no idea Pauline Phillips was still alive a few days ago when I started learning John Prine's Dear Abby. Ms. Phillips died yesterday, at the age of 94. My Dad used to say that things only seemed like one in a million to us because we don't live a billion years. But still, that's just weird.

Gonzo Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben:

Obama versus physics: Why climate change won't wait for the president

"In fact, he didn't even appear to notice those phenomena, campaigning for a second term as if from an air-conditioned bubble, even as people in the crowds greeting him were fainting en masse from the heat. Throughout campaign 2012, he kept declaring his love for an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, where apparently oil and natural gas were exactly as virtuous as sun and wind."

Reminds me of one of The Great Hunter S. Thompson quotes:

"I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from."
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)

I blame the air conditioners! Up here at this latitude, we still just use the basement (geothermal heat pump).