A New Twist on "Teabagging"

I only have to wonder how many Republicans felt the need to drive home their historically- and intellectually-bankrupt tea parties today by dressing up like Native Americans.

Well, until the results come dribbling in from Wingnuttia, we won't know but we know this: From the Lone Star state, Gov. Rick "My Hair Isn't as Good as Blago's But I'm Getting There" Perry is threatening to have Texas secede from the Union.

Number one, it's a delicious proposition but ultimately unworkable in theory. Contrary to popular belief, Texas cannot secede from the union. So, sadly, we will be stuck with this most brutal, barbaric and embarrassing in a We-Lock-Up-Our-Idiot-Child-In-The-Attic kind of way of our 50 states for the foreseeable future.

But that's not the thrust of this post. What's truly breathtaking is how willfully ignorant and stupid these Republicans are in inappropriately seizing the Boston Tea Party, which was about tea tariffs imposed by a largely absent British empire (taxation without representation, remember?).

This ain't about tea, our taxes are certainly represented by a central and visible government and didn't President Obama promise on the campaign trail to raise taxes only on those individuals and business who earn more than $250,000 a year?

I daresay most of the poor rednecks who partook of this teabagging ritual that was ignored by all but two members of Congress fall far short of the quarter million dollar threshhold.

But abolishing taxes entirely has long been a wet dream for Republicans and wingnut base for decades. These are people who praise with full throats and considerable emptier minds the odious likes of Grover Norquist, who'd love nothing more than to shrink government so that you could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in a bathtub, regardless of the fact that, under his proposal, we would no longer be able to fund certain things that are near and dear to the black truffle of the Republican heart.

Like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like a DoD that, at its peak during the years of George II, approached a trillion dollars a year. Like faith-based programs and abstinence initiatives, Wall St. bailouts, seemingly unlimited supplies of cash for war profiteers and a whole host of other things for which having a government, for a change, would be handy.

And, in the end, they, unlike their forebears in Boston, changed nothing. Which is only appropriate.