That Sinking Feeling

The Show tunes correspondent showed me this article about the sinkhole that ate a three-story building in Guatemala, and might still be growing. He asked where something goes when it drops into a sinkhole.

My guess is Texas.

A Win-Win Scenario

It’s hard to see understand the controversy over closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Those who want to play the fear card—which includes 90 senators—act like the Obama Administration is going to drop these guys off in Miami with bus tickets for the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. How placing a couple of hundred alleged terrorists into solitary confinement can endanger a nation of three hundred million seems to be a more relevant question than what Obama plans to do with them. (Shackle them and move them under heavy guard seems a reasonable answer to the latter.)

Here’s an idea that should please everyone: build a facility in Texas. I’m sure Crawford’s economy could use a lift, now that all the media and protesters are gone. It’s too bad Bush is gone, too, but his gated community in Dallas is close enough for him to feel a sense of accomplishment for creating this “all locked up with no place to go” scenario. (Funny how his “just folks” attachment to the ranch disappeared about the time it was no longer politically profitable.)

Here’s where we satisfy the Senate: If Rick Perry has his way, Texas will no longer be part of the United States by the time we get the detainees moved, so they won’t be coming to the United States after all.

I don’t know why they just don’t come to me to settle these things.

More Wacky Texans

Texas Governor Rick Perry says the day could come when Texans want to secede from the Union. ""I believe the federal government has become oppressive. It's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion in the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state."

Texans at the April 15 Tea Bag rally showed an interesting perception of reality. Thirty-eight-year-old Melva Fried said the forced ouster of General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner was the last straw for her -- a symbol the federal government was moving toward socialism. "When a president can fire the head of a company, that's too much," she said, holding a sign that read "Stop Rewarding Failure." She did not explain how firing Wagoner for his failure was rewarding him.

Kudos to Governor Perry for wanting the onerous heel of the federal boot to be removed from their necks. Texans are more than capable of taking care of Texas on their own, thank you very much. Except for last week, when Perry called for FEMA to help with some pesky wildfires. Or last month, when he called for troops to patrol the Mexican border. Oh, and there was that time last winter when asked for an eighteen month extension of federal aid for debris removal from Hurricane Ike.

It has to be frustrating for such an independent, strong willed man to have to go to the Great White Father on bended knee. I feel his pain, and have an idea for its cure. Secede. Really. Go ahead. And take Mississippi with you. Louisiana and Alabama. Arkanses, for sure. Georgia. Florida. Pretty much toe whole Confederacy, if you like. (Northern Virginia will probably take a page from history and secede from Virginia itself, just like West Virginia did in 1861.) Y’all have been nothing but trouble for a hundred and fifty years and your contributions to American culture have been pretty much limited to grits and Larry the Cable Guy. We promise there will be no war to keep you this time.

Those Wacky Texans

At first I thought it was an Onion parody: Texas Legislator Wants Asians to Americanize Names. But no, it’s true. At a hearing for pending legislation on voter identification, Rep. Betty Brown suggested to a witness that Asians should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

Brown has since apologized to Asians, but the jury has decided. Betty Brown, you are today’s winner of today’s Michele Bachmann Clueless Bitch Award.

Congratulations< betty. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’m sure Michele will do some stupid tea-bagging thing soon the wrest it away from you.