Glenn Beck and Texas Governor Rick Perry are floating trial balloons about secession. Three months into a pretty decent looking presidency and Texas looks like they have already had enough. Any bets on who's next? Alaska? South Carolina? Louisiana? I'm starting to feel pretty good about being safely in the North.
Meanwhile, I'm watching CNN's coverage of the tea parties. Clearly these people (not that many of them) have seceded from reality on planet Earth (Andrew Sullivan has pictures). At least Wolf Blitzer is not making the tired teabagging-equals-balls-in-the-mouth jokes that were fun at first, but were quickly played out. Still, every time Wolf comes back from a break he sounds giddy, like there's a big sporting event going on instead of a bunch of losers who don't get that their taxes are lower than they used to be. In fact, Nate Sliver writes, "Even today, US tax receipts as a proportion of GDP are generally lower that other large, industrialized countries, except perhaps Japan." SadButTrue weighs in with a look at how U.S.-style tax cuts are hurting Canada.
Pandagon blogger Jesse Taylor breaks it down (h/t Sullivan):
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks takes on Neil Cavuto's bullshit regarding Fox's coverage of high tea:Tea Partiers are hoping that if they mimic the energy of anti-war protests and the savvy of Obama’s new media operation, that at some point an actual movement will spawn. Getting together a bunch of pissed off middle-aged white people with no clue about how the tax system works in public areas will generate a coherent agenda designed to combat the stimulus; if it gets enough media coverage, they will DOMINATE THE AGENDA.
It’s like taping a horn to a horse and waiting for it to alight on a magic cloud of stardust and pixies.
Don't worry teabaggers, help is on the way--Newt's got his eyes on the Oval Office.
