The Shrine

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 29,00.html

It is impossible to describe how angry this makes me, though it is the kind of anger that also provokes nearly hysterical laughter. What the ASS, man. Almost everybody BUT Texas had to sit through eight years of fundamentalist Texan asshattery, and we all paid our taxes anyway even if we grumbled and bitched about it, because we support our country if not all of its actions. (At least that's why I do it.)

Now Obama's been in office four whole months and the Republicans are teabagging and threatening tax protests and people in Texas want to secede?

I swear, my reaction is just short of "Fuck it!". Just short of "Fine! Go! Turn the nukes over to the Federal Gov't. and the IAEA, make sure you grant friends and relatives of Texans in the U.S. a Texan passport, and if you move so much as one troop battalion over the Mexican border on some new 'Remember The Alamo' shit the entire U.S. is going to come down and kick your ass and and party like it's 1865."

That isn't actually my reaction. The Governor in question has something like a 30% approval rating and the notion is absurd. I also hope fervently that I am not actually that much of an asshole. So, God Bless America and our Union, I guess, even the parts of it that throw bitchy massive temper tantrums when they don't get their way.

My friend's incomparable response to the question "why does Texas want to secede from the Union" via IM: "That's what they do."

It's nothing but grandstanding... for better or worse, the federal government has made each state so dependent upon federal aid that losing it would totally bankrupt them. There's also a million other reasons why they wouldn't survive on their own (or with Mexico) but that's the most obvious.

The fact that they do it just to whine pisses me off... when Bush won in '04 it was "If you don't like it get the fuck out of here" and now that there's a democratic president it's all wahhmbulances and "we're gonna secede and not pay taxes".

If we ignore them they'll shut up eventually

They won't shut up, but we can still ignore them. Jackoffs like Rush will continue to bitch and moan about some unimportant issue or blatant lying.

Think of Texas like Quebec. They want to secede, but they still want the benefits of federal attachment.

The only concern I would have with Quebec leaving is the fact that it would split the country and have an impact on Atlantic to Great Lakes trade. seperatism is fairly dead there now though.

Also, keep in mind that this is the same Governor that, after only a few weeks talking about seceding from the US, wanted federal money to support them with the swine flu.

The phrase "party like it's 1865" keeps running through my head. But I agree with Sine - they won't shut up and haven't since 1860, but we can still ignore them, for as we've all noted, it ain't gonna happen.

Natural Born Seeker wrote:The only concern I would have with Quebec leaving is the fact that it would split the country and have an impact on Atlantic to Great Lakes trade. seperatism is fairly dead there now though.

They'd never get the top 2/3rds of Quebec if they decided to leave. The Maritimes won't stand for it

Aha! I've found a clue, Sherlock.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/1 ... 87490.html

"Perry repeated his running theme that Texas' economy is in relatively good shape compared with other states and with the "federal budget mess.""

This is looking less like "Remember the Alamo" and more like "take the money and run". Texas is riding high on oil money still from the massive profit-taking during the boom times, and does not care one whit that Phil Gramm and other Republican deregulators more or less wrecked the economy of the entire rest of the world. So now they're talking about secession rather than paying taxes.

It is impossible to describe how badly this won't work. All that wealth they've earned is, like it always has been, tied to the stability and reputation of the American dollar and its acceptance worldwide as a reliable means of international tender.

If Texas left the Union, they'd have to issue their own currency. And, of course, like most other things that relate to the world outside of America, they have absolutely no idea that George W. Bush has more or less burned the Republican brand to ashes outside of the United States, and that he and the oil companies and several members of the Administration are inextricably linked to Texas.

As much support as the Republicans have lost here, I would say it is probably a dozen to a hundred times worse everywhere else in the world. Any currency Texas issued would flatline almost immediately relative to the worldwide markets, because there would be no confidence in it at all and nobody except maybe a few speculative Icelandic bankers would have ever touched the stuff. And the Icelandic bankers in question, with good reason, went broke. This would raise the price of all sorts of foreign goods in Texas dramatically, reducing the standard of living so far that it would more than wipe out the gains from the Bush years - to say nothing of American goods that Texans still rely on as well, which would probably go up in price too due to taxes or tariffs.

The only way they could EVER get away with it would be to secede but keep the currency, which is, as Robin Williams said about Quebec, "kind of like saying to your mom 'I want to leave home but will you please still send me money'". And I can guarantee you, rock solid and Ford tough, that if you asked American people at large right now whether or not Texas could secede and still keep the currency, the country would almost burn the entire state to ashes just with the force of its own outrage.

I think you can sum it up with this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_money . Granted, we wouldn't be blockading the ports this time around, but after what the Bush years did to the world economy at large, I don't think it would matter very much. Just a lack of understanding beyond words. I have to think that the oil companies at least have to know this is completely retarded, and are probably sending letters to Perry frantically warning him not to do this, or they're suddenly going to have some interesting explaining to do to the Russians and Indians about why they as oil trading partners will now be forced to transact in terms of shiny new Texan dollary-doos.
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EDIT: Some dude named Rick McLaren tried this secessionist thing and got about forty thousand people behind him back in the 1990s, I guess.

Rick McLaren wrote:"We don't have to put up with Washington," he said to about 50 followers and a few reporters. "We aren't part of the United States. We haven't been since the beginning of the Civil War. Why should we pay taxes? Look at what Washington is doing with our money and how they are meddling in our lives and we don't even belong."

So he founded the Republic of Texas Militia, which I guess was this movement that declared the state government in Austin defunct and took to the hills in trailers and shit to patrol the area with rifles, local-warlord style. You want to take this guy and shake him until he realizes that Washington is the entity that issued the money in the first place and is more or less the only reason that the money in question has stayed consistently in demand around the world as something to exchange for other somethings that are worth something. Only, you can't. Because he would shoot you.

Honestly, it's difficult to describe how angry this makes me. The high oil prices and defense contracts that have the state riding high coming into this recession were ALL a result of Federal contracts and/or legislating during the Bush years, including emissions standards crap in California that Bush had no right or reasonable authority to exercise. And now that other people could use Federal aid, it's "fuck you, we control the defense industry, don't fuck with us or we'll hurt you".

I really am starting to understand why the North went in and kicked the living shit out of these people a hundred and fifty years ago. You'd think they'd have learned...