Lubbock Left

Between Gov. Perry making a fool of himself on the national stage and the usual crazies feeling emboldened to speak their minds, Texas Secession is being talked about a lot lately.

I have only a few things to say about it, so I’ll be brief:

(1) American States don’t have the right to secede in general.

(2) Secession is not a right guaranteed to Texas in particular by our State Constitution, the Texas-U.S. annexation treaty Congressional resolution, or any other legal document.

(3) Secession is, by definition, unpatriotic.

Republicans in general and Texas Republicans in particular have a serious problem with their Party if issues like secession are talked about seriously in the light of day by their leaders.

Read more at:
www.texassecede.com (a website for the crazies)
US Secession on wikipedia
Discussion thread on the LubbockOnline forums
Congressional resolution annexing Texas (1845)
That Texas Magazine article with some good history

Media treatment of the whole pirate+hostage situation over the last week is funny to me because right-wing blowhards have been trying to politicize it from the start. It’s not a political situation. It’s a tactical military and law enforcement situation.

But, misconceptions like that never stop the right-wing punditocracy from putting their feet (peglegs?) in their mouths…

The video above summarizes the doom and gloom that right-wing talking heads were predicting up to the point that Navy SEAL snipers took out three pirates, freeing their hostage — actions approved by the President himself.

I’m not surprised that the pundits are way off course. Look who’s steering this conservative ship of fools:

“This is the administration which keeps trying to find some kind of magical solution that doesn’t involve effort, that doesn’t involve risk, that doesn’t involve making hard decisions.”

_____________/

Captain Newt

“We’ve become so politically correct that no one would even dare think about sending the marines to fight pirates.”

_____________/

First Mate Beck

(What can I say — I finally found an excuse to photoshop a pirate eyepatch onto Newt Gingrich, fulfilling one of my childhood dreams. No way was I gonna pass that up!)

The right is desperate for any issue — no matter how inherently apolitical — that they can latch on to and be correct about. That’s why they talked up this pirate hostage episode so much this week. Unfortunately for them, they got it completely, hilariously wrong.

Fortunately for America, we got to see how a strong President handles a delicate situation, letting our military and law enforcement professionals do their jobs.

Exercising their freedom to assemble and make fools of themselves, literally dozens of misguided folks will converge at the courthouse to wave teabags around and listen to windbags talk on tax day.

As near as I can make out, the guiding principles of the teabaggers seem to be a strange conflation of hard-line Christianity and selective outrage over fiscal policy. They don’t know what they want, but they’ve been told by FOX and friends to show up and protest for it. Never mind that most Americans will get a tax cut under Obama, or that President Obama has already implemented higher standards of transparency and accountability than we have seen in decades, or that the President has reached out to Republican leaders only to be attacked by them for it. But, reality will not get in the way of this GOP fundraiser.

Teabaggers, I know I sound like a mean ol’ liberal, but it’s for your own good. The hard truth is that nobody cares about protests anymore. I learned that through first-hand experience, and the whole world learned it when the largest global protest of all time did nothing to slow America’s nearly-unilateral march to war in Iraq. Moreover, the conservative media has worked hard over 4 decades to make protesting seem uncool and boring.

Congratulations, you will be reaping what you have sown with your uncool, boring protest.

Enjoy.

Lone Star Project brings us the good news that “Democrats in Texas now have a slight advantage in party identification, 43% to 41%, a clear reversal from the recent past.”

From LSP:

LSP goes on to point out that we’ve closed the gap in the TX House to 2 seats and defeated an incumbent Republican State Senator for the first time in a decade.

2010 is our year to turn Texas blue!

History will remember that zero Congressional Republicans voted for the economic stimulus package that passed the House today.

Zero.

Zero, even after President Obama met with a delegation of Republican Congressmen.

Zero, even after several items that the Republicans objected to were removed from the bill.

So much for the bipartisanship that Republicans were calling for a week ago.

The Republican solution? More tax cuts for the rich, because that’s worked so well the past six years. (Thankfully, that version failed 266-170.)

Lubbock’s own Randy Neugebauer got in on the act:

Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, sought to strip out all the spending from the legislation before final passage, arguing that the entire cost of the bill would merely add to soaring federal deficits. “Where are we going to get the money,” he asked, but his attempt failed overwhelmingly, 302-134.

Obey had a ready retort. “They don’t look like Herbert Hoover, I guess, but there are an awful lot of people in this chamber who think like Herbert Hoover,” he said, referring to the president whose term is forever linked in history with the Great Depression.

Randy’s sudden concern for spending too much money is particularly galling, now that it might actually do some good to do so. I guess Congressional Republicans only want to spend taxpayer money to enrich their big business friends.

The Republican Party is out of ideas, and Congressional Republicans just made fools of themselves on the national stage. If the economic stimulus package works at all, then even the most outlandish gerrymandering (as with our own TX-19 Congressional District) won’t save House Republicans in 2010.

Be warned — the following videos are not easy to watch.

Outside a Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio, one guy with a camera asks attendees “Is Barack Obama a terrorist?”

And insults are the order of the day outside a McCain/Palin rally in Bethlehem, PA:

These videos are scary.

If this is what the Republican base is like across the nation, then I worry even more for this country. How can they be so hateful?

How have we gotten to a point in our political discourse where people who are engaged in the political process actually believe that a major Party presidential candidate could be a terrorist?

“He’s got the bloodlines.”

“Just look at his name!”

How have we gotten to a point in our political discourse where one candidate’s supporters shout epithets at another candidate’s supporters like it’s 1950?

“Commie faggots!”

“Get a job!”

“Go to Russia!”

The Republican Party has a serious problem: they have let hatred and intolerance into their national platform and into their national leadership.

I urge Republicans of conscience to oppose this kind of behavior in their own Party. I know there are reasonable Republicans out there, and this election is making it clear that they need to reassert themselves before it’s too late.

Remarks of the Palin apologists ring hollow exactly because the GOP and its surrogates have been employing every kind of attack they can come up with for a year and a half already.

After nearly a week of getting to know who Sarah Palin is through research, I’m almost ready to spell out exactly why she’s a poor choice for VP in one big honking mega-post.

It must be so easy and so fun to make these videos. I mean no offense to the BNF crew — y’all do great work as always — but there are so very very many McCain gaffes out there to work with. He’s got flip-flops on major issues, deer-in-the-headlights looks, outright lies, and enough just-plain-wrong statements to make 2008 the biggest landslide Republican loss in decades.

But the thumping that the Republicans will receive does not mean we Democrats can rest on our laurels. Spread this video around so everyone can see how McCain and the Republican Party have lost their way.

Onward!

Sometimes one picture says it all.

I was driving to work this morning, and I noticed a funny sign-cube that said “Republican” on it. Later in the day I saw a second one, and I stopped to get a closer look:

Turns out these borg cube things are Chris Winn’s signs. Chris is a former Lubbock radio personality who is running for Republican County Chair.

I got to wondering who is supporting Chris, and who is the “establishment candidate” for the Republican Party this time around. I got my answer by noticing which empty lot in which bulldozed neighborhood held the sign:

Yup.