Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Texas Republicans turn up the crazy

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Could somebody please explain Texas pride to me? Isn’t Ted Cruz still one of their senators? That loathsome, cowardly, sniveling, whining, lying, wriggling invertebrate human excrescence? I’m embarrassed to belong to the same species as Ted Cruz. It’s like finding out you’re related to a worm. “And that’s a photo of your great-grandfather, who was a sipuncula, or peanutworm ...”
     Sharing the same state would be unbearable. It’s bad enough that Bruce Rauner is here, somewhere, hiding in one of his homes.
     Yes, Texas is an economic powerhouse — the 9th-largest economy in the world. And what are its chief economic products? Agriculture, energy and ... tourism. Which is what makes one particular line in the draft Texas Republican Party platform — “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.” — so curious.
     The Texas GOP is taking pains to remind everybody that they find mainstream American values — diversity, public education, free elections — so odious they must officially give a big middle finger to the other 49 states. There’s a tourism slogan for you: “Texas: We hate America so much we might quit at any time ... until then, yeehaw, c’mon down for some down-home cowboy fun!”
     Good luck with that one.
     Of course, lack of bone-deep Republican hypocrisy forbids me from casting shade on anyone’s tourism slogan without pointing out that Chicago has perhaps the worst advertising line devised by humankind: “When you GO you know,” with the “GO” in yellow, lest the connection to micturition be overlooked. Can you imagine the gathering of talent that produced that one? And the bar was already set very high with the previous slogan, “Chicago Not Chicago” which, with a little punctuation, becomes the thought process that accompanies the suggestion of visiting our troubled city. “Chicago? Not Chicago!”
     These slogans have to be intentionally lousy, right? I can only assume it’s some kind of long game by chessmaster Lori Lightfoot, trying to tamp down the inevitable stories about visitors being shot at Chicago tourist destinations this summer by encouraging them to never arrive in the first place. Our next tourism campaign will be “See beautiful Milwaukee.”
      Back to Texas. Yes, secede, by all means. The state gets back $1.20 for every dollar it sends to Washington, and 17.5% of its state budget comes from the rest of the country’s taxes. Illinois meanwhile gets 94 cents back on each dollar we send, after six cents is snatched by Texas. So leave, parasite. Don’t let the door ...

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8 comments:

  1. I thought Rauner had moved out of Illinois after Pritzker creamed him in the election.
    Notice how no one misses that jerk!

    As for Texas, most people don't know that the governor has little power, it's the Lt. governor who has the real power, lives in a luxury apartment in the Texas Capitol Building in Austin, which most Texans & most people don't know was paid for by a bunch of rich Chicagoans, who bought a few million acres of land from the state, called the XIT Ranch, long since broken up. XIT was the largest ranch ever owned, bigger than even the million acre King Ranch in far southern Texas.

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  2. At his next debate, Ted Cruz should be made to answer these questions: "Are you loyal to the United States of America, yes or no? Do you believe that Texas or any other state has the right to unilaterally secede from the United States, yes or no?"

    I notice that Neil didn't have room to even mention that the Texas Republicans have proclaimed Biden to be an illegitimate usurper. I guess that's such standard Republican orthodoxy now that it barely even merits attention.

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  3. Yes, secede. Please do. It'd be great fun watching Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Teodoro Cruz fight over who can be the most vicious latter day Jefferson Davis. And "no holds barred," given that there would be no precedents whatsoever. Too many Democrats in El Paso: a slight surveying adjustment would put the whole city in Mexico. Why not? Tourism? Well, if we can ban people from going to Cuba, why not include Texas as a likeminded foreign state. I suppose the happenings in the one star country might be a bit more consequential for the rest of us that those in Cuba, Colombia or France, but what the hell, it would be a real unreal reality show for sure.

    John

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  4. Let them secede. I would welcome it. Then America could find a pretext to invade that breakaway country, crush it, pacify it, and civilize it. In a way, Texans are like America's Ukrainians. They would fight like hell for quite a while, but they would eventually be defeated, just as the brave and heroic Ukrainians will eventually be defeated. I hate typing that. It saddens me a great deal. But that's the reality.

    The big difference here is this: the breakaway state is the fascist one. There's nothing brave and heroic about Texas anymore. That notion died along with the defenders of the Alamo. Too many of them are haters, bigots, racists, and misogynists.

    Who else still remembers them saying: "Let the Yankee bastards freeze in the dark!" decades ago? I have always had a long memory, and I don't easily forgive or forget. Am I ready for them to go? Hell, yeah! Damn betcha! I even have a 49-star flag.

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    1. Don't forget, Mexico had outlawed slavery & the defenders of the Alamo wanted the return of slavery to Texas & they got that, when Texas became first an independent country & then a slave state, which ended when they lost the Civil War 20 years later!
      As for letting us Yankees freeze in the dark, it was the Texans freezing last winter when their independent electric grid failed, because the dimbulbs running the Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT], which runs Texas's independent electric grid, that has no connections to the massive Eastern US grid, didn't require them to winterize the system's transformers & generators & then they insanely blamed the windmills, for the problem, which the windmills had nothing to do with the freezing of transformers.
      Texans are so stupid, they make Mississippi & Alabama look intelligent!

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    2. Speaking of 49 states... When I was in grade school, my teacher told the class that Texas raised quite a stink over the proposal to introduce Alaska as the 49th state. They didn't want to lose their status as "the largest state". (The BIGGEST!) . To them, it was a valid reason to exclude Alaska. Some Alaskans responded with the proposal to split Alaska into TWO new states, which would make Texas the THIRD largest state."
      Makes me think Texan "specialness" has always been there.

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  5. I have friends living there who no longer try to defend Texas politics and politicians. But Civil War General Philip Sheridan's long-ago judgement still seems sound. "If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell."
    Tom

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