Was It the Teabags Talking? Rick Perry, Gov. of Texas, Says Texas Might Secede

 by Teh Nutroots |  Man. What are they putting in that tea the wingnuts are all drinking, I wonder?   Even Sarah Palin was savvy enough to keep quiet about any sympathy she might have shown in the past toward her state's pro-secessionist movement.

The election of Barack Obama and the end of Republican rule has certainly sent the bats winging out of the various belfries.  It is kind of unsettling;  Ah say --Ah say it is KINDA UNSETTLING -- to hear the governor of the second largest American state even mentioning secession as a potential "scenario" (and getting that wrong, by the way). 

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede. Texas did secede in 1861, but the North's victory in the Civil War put an end to that.  (Huffington Post)

Such is the reasoned, temperate, rationally channeled political anger emerging from the teaparties, as the "movement" blows a big tea-flavored raspberry at Obama and his homosociafascialistic tax cuts. 

At first I thought it was kind of funny, but it's gone beyond a joke when you get the higher ups endorsing loonitude of this magnitude.  I mean, it ain't as if they don't have all the guns (as well as most of the money). 

Isn't an implied threat to break up the union enough to get you called out for sedition or something?  Honest to God, is there nothing a right winger won't do or say when in the grip of self-Right-eousness?  I mean, last month, we had Michele Bachmann telling her constituents she wants them "armed and dangerous" over cap-and-trade. 

In the midst of all this teabagging-inspired crazy-ass rhetoric, here's "sensible centrist" Marc Ambinder ambling in to try to convince us we can divide the baby in the middle, as always.  Does it matter, he wonders amiably, that the operatives in all this rhetorical warfare are being yanked into action by giant corporate interests whose ultimate goals in no way further the personal welfare of Joe Six-pack?  Couldn't it all end with a useful and meaningful channeling of all the blah dee blee blah into some sort of useful fal lal lal lal fiddle dee la dee dah dee?

I...think that we're too obsessed with the distinction between the top and the bottom of a blade of grass. At some point, critical mass is reached and astroturf campaigns can work -- they can catalyze genuine anger and channel it into meaningful political participation.  In the age of hyperconnectivity, just what would an organic grassroots movement look like, anyway?

DougJ:  "Predictably, Marc Ambinder is promoting the wonders of tea-bagging...[W]hy do we have to pay attention to 100K tea-baggers when 10 million anti-Iraq war protesters were considered a focus group?"

Wow.  As long as those with the big platforms are either complicit or asleep at the wheel, it's hard to believe in the possibility of any rational dialogue, which would first and foremost consist in sitting down the rank and file of the Teabagger movement, pulling their fingers out of their collective ear, and shrieking over their "LALALALALALALALA don't listen to the LIBTARDS!":  "Obama  JUST CUT YOUR TAXES, you pillocks!  Your governor just asked for a big heaping, steaming helping of stimulus cash!  What's the matter with you; are you really as stupid as the puppeteers seem to think you are?"

But as long as the The Atlantic and the rest of our useless media jaw-wagglers are there to lend some sort of credibility to the rhetoric of stupid, and to pretend that it isn't just as disingenuous and corrupt and suspect as it seems, the nonsense can go on seeming to have some sort of surface validity -- and anything, even if it's half the baby, will seem better to the puppets than any degree of prosperity Obama might earn on their behalf. 

Though I'm trying hard to control it, I find myself much angrier at people like Ambinder who stand off on the sidelines or drape themselves across the fence in the service of some sort of fake "detachment" that prevents them from ever conceding that it's possible that some positions have no, as in zero, merit.  Which is why the lock-step-marching jack-booted types always carry the day, I guess.

Meanwhile a Fox News anchor ranted a bit about fascism.  Who knows better than Fox how that's done, after all?

Like we keep on saying:  we've seen for eight years that you totally can fool some of the people all of the time.  Gavin M. at SN describes a couple of encounters with teabaggers that pretty much prove it.

In the first, a middle-aged woman was crossing the Charlestown bridge with a brown paper sign reading: “Who is John Galt?” I was hoping to tell her that he’s a character in a long-winded and pointless novel that isn’t really worth reading, but unfortunately one of us had not yet given up gainful employment, and was speeding past in our employer-provided transport. A shame, really. I could have saved her a lot of time.

My second TeaBagger sighting was a very rotund family decked out in the skins of dozens of ruthlessly slaughtered American flags, as they were about to enter the Charles T station. I wanted to ask them how they felt about taking taxpayer-subsidized public transportation to an anti-government rally, but they were so stupefied by the fare machines that it hardly seemed right to confuse them further. Besides, we were an entire T stop away from the protest site, and the Matterhorn-like Beacon Hill lay between us and their destination. It would have been cruel to expect them to stand by their principles and hoof it.

Where will it end?

For right now, as far as I am concerned, it ends with this pearl beyond price, this certain-to-be-immortal exchange between Gergen and Anderson Cooper.

Gergen: "They still haven't found their voice, Anderson. This happens to a minority party after it's lost a couple of bad elections, but they're searching for their voice."

Cooper: "It's hard to talk when you're teabagging."

Ah, if only!

RELATED BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mn) Wants Her Constituents "Armed and Dangerous" Over Cap-and-Trade

David Schuster & Others on Teabagging Day

Multiple Teabaggings Everywhere

The Mad Tea Party

Maddow on the Conservative Movement to "Teabag Obama"; Meanwhile, Sullivan Accuses the "Tea Tantrum Movement" of Petulance; & Organizers Get Free T-Shirts

Comments

[John]

What a piece of shit site. You have so much gloss you couldn't strip it with acid

[Ellen Welch]

Did you actually HEAR gov Perry say we should secede? Or that we had the constitutional right to secede?
Or are you reading what the biased media is publishing?
I was at the tea party in Austin Wednesday, were you?
Yes, there were a few somewhat extreme people in the crowd yelling "secede", but they were NOT in the majority. In a crowd of five to six THOUSAND your're gonna have a few.
What gov Perry did say is....
"that officials in Washington have abandoned the country's founding principles of limited government." He said "the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt."
There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."
HE NEVER SAID "when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out".
His point was that we Texans are unique in our independant nature! Not that we should be independant of the USA.
His words have been taken out of context to smear him and it should not be continued.
I encourage ALL AMERICANS to get engaged in defending our liberties before we LOSE them!