Texas Talks About Splitting From The United States

"If Texas did secede from the union, we could then invade them for the oil!" — Jay Leno on the Tonight Show

"Texas is moving in circles he doesn't much care for.
Learned a lot of things he knows he ain't got no use for.
Texas is swimmin' in water way over his head.
Even a poor boy knows when he's better off dead." — Texas, Topaz

Yes, Texas is a state of mind. It's bad enough we've had to deal with our own internecine GLBT political controversy, but we're ever aware that even worse horse crap gets lobbed at us from our arch-conservative politicians. Yes, folks all think there was a moderating, progressive revolution in this country last November. Even in Texas we've seen some of that to a lesser level.

But make no mistake: Texas is chock full of nuts when it comes to its arch-conservativism. To that point, Texas' own Gov. Rick Perry dove into the nut bowl head first. He attended a number of Texas cities' Tea Party protests (oddly enough, named after a transgender convention – now defunct – that used to take place in Houston and San Antonio!) While there, he got carried away during his speaking gig and inferred that Texas could secede from the union to protest the government's heavy-handed policies!

We've had other groups, very, very conservative ones (read, right-wing extremists that even the conservative Republicans in Texas considered nutbags) who've developed even splinter political parties to address the need for Texas to once again become a republic. It's a notion popularized in school, where in our Texas history classes we learned that Texas (among other considerations upon ceding into the U.S.) could leave the U.S. without the approval needed by Congress to sanction it.

It turns out that's urban legend (damn inaccurate textbooks!). We can still divide into five states, but we can no longer secede whenever we feel like.

That said, nobody ever wanted to push this ... until now! We've got great Americans like Rush Limbaugh ("I want to see America fail!"), and Glenn Beck with all the stability of Jim Jones pushing everyone to far extremes for the recent measures by Obama on the bank bailouts!

"Texas is runnin' with people he don't like to look at." — Texas, Topaz

Now that over-extreme reaction is in vogue, even mainstream Republicans are finding the swimming fine in the nut bowl.

So besides Voter Photo ID, the next most vital bill the Texas Legislature has to address being fast-tracked at the moment is HCR 50, establishing Texas' right to its sovereignty. Basically it declares that anything the government mandates does not have to be followed by the state of Texas.

At first blush, this seems really bad. But then again, it means we can ignore a number of really bad, very intrustive legislation and orders passed by the Bush Administration!

Think of it: once passed into law, we can say "Hasta La Vista" to No Child Left Behind! It was an unfunded mandate, put hardships on the state in order to follow an arbitrary set of rules put forth by Washington, and did nothing but cause havoc. No Child Left Behind should be immediately terminated, and good riddance to bad Bush-baked bills of similar stripe as well!

The PATRIOT Act? Forget that too! It violates the Constitution on a number of fronts and has long been leaving Texas and numerous American citizens in fear. No to wiretaps, no to warrantless searches, no to illegal detainment and arrests without constitutional arraignment periods. It's time to end this immediately, if not sooner!

We can demand our money back from the banks immediately as well! Nothing in the Constitution says that we have to bail out over-large, revenue-drunken and arrogant businesses with taxpayer money! Whatever happened to that "free market principle" the Republicans used to repeat like a mantra? There's nothing free market about that!

Another bit of good news for folks along Texas' southern border: we should put an immediate halt to the Bush Wall along the Rio Grande! The government has been illegally seizing people's land, dividing and creating hardships for many of these landowners and spending money on a completely impotent boondoggle that's only success is the money it's bringing in for Bush-baby's no-bid contractor constructing it!

"Habits and debts, they don't wither away, they just grow." — Texas, Topaz

If Gov. Closet-Case Perry is serious about this sovereignty biz, then there's not going to be this hypocritical half-assed cherry-picking variety of only certain things. Nope. Pandora's box is flying open widely. Either overturn all the bad stuff, including Perry's buddy the Bush-baby's bills, or he faces backlash as nothing but a double-standard bearing, two-faced piece of garbage – and just in time for election season for 2010!

One more thought: America may just decide Texas has been more trouble than it's worth and give us our walking papers. We did spawn the likes of Enron, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, Bush-Baby & Daddy, and Karl Rove. Even Dick Cheney kept residence here for a time while heading Halliburton/KBR (whose headquarters is in Houston). And if we're not building the wall between Mexico and Texas any more ... maybe the Obama Administration will decide they need to put up a wall along the Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico border.

To keep the Texans out, ya know?

"I'm just not real sure you're a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, we're with you!" — Texas Gov. Rick Perry

"So pack up your bags, man, collect all your gear.
You'll never quite make it, not hangin' around here." — Texas, Topaz

"Let me tell you people that I found a new way
And I'm tired of all this talk about love,
And the same old story with a new set of words
About the good and the bad and the poor." — Space Cowboy, Steve Miller Band