It would be a fine thing if all the states whose representatives keep talking about secession would go ahead and do it. The Union has suffered a winner's curse ever since the civil war. Let the people in the red states go their own way and leave the (sane) rest of the country alone.

if arizona were to secede, we'd get a double bonus - we'd lose john mccain as well......

If it never occurred to you to connect "The Simpsons" to Weather Underground and '60s-era radicalism, then you're probably not watching Glenn Beck.

Thankfully I'm not.

Driving through liberal Newton, Massachusetts this afternoon, I was shocked to find myself at an intersection where about a dozen protesters were waving signs and banners to "Impeach Obama." On the largest of these a Hitler mustache had been drawn across Obama's upper lip. The smaller print revealed that the material came from Rachel Brown. On her website Brown declares herself a Democrat running for the 4th District in Masachusetts. Further scrutiny showed that she is one of the wacky LaRouche supporters. Still, it is disconcerting to see this type of thing spreading so far. I hope other people in my area will make it clear to the Brown campaign that they don't countenance this sort of trivialization of the Holocaust.

And outside the Fleetwood, PA post office the "Impeach Obama!" folks were also present. Almost most makes this confused old geezer to lose control of his ve-hicle and . . .

In the Politico article about EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases that you linked to, Sen Lisa Murkowski is quoted as saying (in order to stop EPA) “You attack it at all fronts,” Murkowski told POLITICO on Thursday. “You go the judicial route. You go the legislative route. I think this is important to make sure we are looking at all avenues.”

Well, just maybe she should try doing her job and developing and supporting legislation to address the problem, rather than wasting taxpayers' money to show up and vote no on everything. One more Republibot.

The secessionist rage is in high dudgeon, and more power to them. The last idiot was in Tennessee, before that Texas, and now Arizona. Let them all go, and the sooner the better. Having a place for all the right-wing lunatics to go is progress as far as I'm concerned since we've run out of continents like Australia to sent all all our rejects to. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee. Texas, Arizona. Maybe we can save New Mexico, but it would be better to have a continuous buffer between us and Mexico. Let the United Fascist States declare war on Mexico, and we can watch it on TV.

Perhaps Kuhner will add Texas to his list of states that should secede, and we can be done with both of them and shipping out so much money in federal tax dollars to states that scorn the money, eat it up, and -- while they're at it -- try to overthrow federal law.

Congressman Anthony Weiner smacks down Republicans on the floor of the house for blocking Health Care Bill for 9/11 First Responders:

HuffPo

Hell no, they're not seceding! After all the crap everyone else has had to put up with from the politicians they've sent to DC, they're staying in this country. It make take a few centuries, but sooner or later, they're going to learn that if they want to live in a civilized society, they have to act like civilized people.
Otherwise, they can grab their trusty shootin' irons, head for the hills and live like the independent, he-men they think they are.
I'm sure the Park rangers will do their best to notify the next of kin...

Ah, gee.. McCain doesn't seem to know what day it is. :-(

He said tomorrow (with John King on CNN late today) that tomorrow would be August 1.

Best "Letter to the editor" of the week

This one appeared in Tuesday's Arizona Daily Star. It is one of the most damning missives I've read in the Old Pueblo's broadsheet. Give it due pause, as it works on many levels...

Need to change Kyl's economics grade

Jon Kyl, currently a U.S. Senator, was a student of mine in a beginning economics course at the University of Arizona in 1962.

Is there any legal way for me to change his grade from an "A" to an "F," given his continuing display of ignorance on basic economic issues?

Lawrence A. DeLucia
Retired economist, Tucson

Slap! Can you imagine having a former professor call you out like that? What a snubbing out. Like rubbing a dog's nose in its duty. Someone needs to get in touch with the good professor and have him fire off all his economic ammo at point blank range. I suspect he is fully informed, spry, and ready to take aim...

Matt Groening was an underground cartoonist. There's your connection, in one degree.

"I can't think of very many TV shows where the dad is the smart one. Before the 1960s, these were the shows on television. This was Father Knows Best."

If Beck had ever watched Father Knows Best, he'd realize that the title was ironic.

A dear Republican friend of mine asked me if I listen to Glenn Beck. He said that while Beck sounds crazy, the show is factually sound.

I wanted to run to my faithful dictionary and reestablish the meaning of the word "fact" in my mind, but have suddenly become terrified that a photo of Glenn Beck will be next to teh definition.

About Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and his rant in Congress: on NBC Nightly, they framed it AFAICT as if Republicans had a right to tack on amendments and were sort of cheated out of something. That's an odd attitude considering that a Bill's authors should expect it to be left alone, and amenders should have the burden of proof and be considered interlopers. Watch on the web, send comments if you can.

Heck, the comic tradition of the clueless father is as old as ancient Roman comedy. The humor, of course, came from the inversion of the normal social order when the paterfamilias is manipulated by the women and slaves of his household.

Nice to know, however, that Glenn Beck, the man who ridiculed a woman on the air for having had a miscarriage, is such a staunch defender of the traditional family.

Somebody, please tell me again why we should keep AZ, or, for that matter, TX, OK, SC, AL, MS, TN etc. Could we offer them a buyout, maybe? The return on investment would be large and immediate.

Let Arizona secede. But remember, we get to take all of our military equipment from the military bases. And we will remove all those border patrol agents, too. Good luck defending your new country with no fucking army. Sheriff Joe thinks he's tough? Let's see him defeat the Mexican Army when they come to take their land back.

Further scrutiny showed that she is one of the wacky LaRouche supporters. Still, it is disconcerting to see this type of thing spreading so far.

The LaRouchies get around all over. At the health-care town hall in my district (DC suburbs) last summer, all the pre-printed Obama-as-Hitler signs had a LaRouche copyright at the bottom. (Thinking about it, if the TeePees had been smart enough to blame the racism on LaRouchies instead of "liberal infiltrators," it would have been a lot more credible.) Unfortunately, since Democratic organizations like to have an open process, they can be vulnerable to invasions by LaRouchies and other fringe groups.

File in the "open vein"; stress-relieving techniques:

So, yesterday, I received a "US Citizen Straw Poll" from something called "The Conservative Caucus". The whole "exercise" is a fund-raiser but, ostensibly, it's a poll to determine my (down to the specific voting district, ie definitely "targeted") stance vis-a-vis illegal aliens. Even if I, myself, had not been a fairly recent immigrant, who still remembers how her petition was hustled -- by St Ronnie -- after two years in limbo, just to get the votes for the second term, the poll would have been an offence. But, never mind. Offended as I was, I still filled it in, dutifully, answering every skewed question as best I could. And I shall send it off first thing tomorrow. Though I doubt anyone's gonna read it... In addition to not enclosing a check (the only thing all such "polls" and "questionnaires" are interested in), I allowed myself a little vent. The "poll" has a couple of paragraphs of "summary" on top -- warning us about the Obama's Administration attack on us -- just in case the skewing of the "questions" wasn't persuasive/hard right enough. So... I borrowed from Joe Wilson -- the guy who went to college in the town I live in -- and wrote, in all caps: YOU LIE!

Feel much better :)

Joe Friday, @7:34 PM;
Anthony Weiner's epic hissy fit against the "lesser King" (not the one from IA) -- so unlike the usual Dem behaviour, but ever so welcome -- has been chronicled, by Steve Benen, @8:25 this AM. No need to drag the HuffPo into this, as if it were some sort of revelation, ignored by everyone else.

I know it is a mistake to try to read too much into Glenn Beck's paranoid ramblings.

However, his inclusion of The Simpson's in his little universe of subversion is interesting. The Simpson's is, and has been since the beginning, a Fox Broadcasting show. In other words, Glenn Beck is accusing his boss, Rupert Murdoch, of being part of a conspiracy to destroy America. Which means that according to Glenn Beck's reasoning, Glenn Beck is part of a conspiracy to destroy America. In that at least, I can agree with him.

We need to stop treating these calls for session as just another political comment. They are calls for treason, and we need note them as such each time they are made. Today the Washington Times published a call for treason against the United States of America. After doing that, you no longer get to call yourselves "patriots".

Re: Fixing California's education "problem"

California's prison population exponentially went up from 25,000 to 175,000 from the early 90's to today despite a decrease in the crime rate, according to FBI statistics, over the same period. The state's get tough on crime attitude was influenced by union clout through the mystique of mandatory sentences and three strikes laws. About 10% of the state's budget goes to prisons and 6% to higher education.

Schwarzneggar's recent anouncements that he will provide more to money to higher education in the next budget is kind of like thanking somebody for only stealing your money and not beating you. Big Arnold, after all, has increased prison spending by 32% during his reign while higher education has taken a beating through reductions in staff, faculty furloughs, and services while charging students with disproportionate tuition and fee increases.

Democrat Jerry Brown can find savings in prison expenditures by restructuring the sentencing and prison housing guidelines. It will not be easy politically, but it's the right call and the only way he can get the prison costs under control and in line with other states' prison expenditures. He can hint at what he will do, but with Republican Meg Whitman's attack dog, sound byte, saturate the airwaves campaign style, specificity on this and many other matters, is not his ally. I do not expect him to privatize the prison system. It's just not in his dna.

On the other hand, Republican Meg Whitman has lots of silly ideas to fix California's budget problems. Her keynote budget fix is to eliminate the capital gains tax In California to stimulate growth, an idea that has already been shot down by experts, among others a UC Berkeley economics professor who studies California's tax system.

With a current budget deficit of $19 billion that is being haggled (and will likely still be unresolved when the next governor takes office), Whitman wants to eliminate somewhere between $2.6 billion and $10.8 billion in capital gains tax revenue, on a scheme that the experts say doesn't lead close to improved state revenue tax to make up its elimination. Of course, when her capital gains tax fails to deliver the desired results in revenue gains, those 40000 state workers will be history, just like she said they would, although not as a way to provide savings for the state university system.

"it's time for Arizona to consider secession"

Gee, I just read that the Air Force had decided to base the new F-35s in Arizona. Guess they'll have to rethink that.

Reading about Glenn Beck's expertise on the American family. people please take a moment to google Glenn Beck, in particular read about his early life. It is very sad, but He has no experience of the typical American family.

The idea of Arizona seceding is by far the most laughable. Tennessee has a lot of mountains and forested terrain that would be a bit tough to crack, and most of the stupid crazy rednecks carry enough weight that they could go without provisions for a long time. Texas would be time consuming because it's just plain big and god knows every idiot in the state has the equivalent of a National Guard armory in his home.

But Arizona? Flat desert (or "tank country" in Army parlance) defended by an idiot sheriff and a bunch of hateful, cane shaking dehydrated octogenarians? Right. Bring it, morons.

wouldn't arizona's secession leave them in a position where they could be reabsorbed into mexico?