The only sour note in Greg Mitchell's snarky take on the secessionists in Texas is his repeated violation of the spelling rule ("i before e, except after c") that would merit penal errors in the stylebook at the Collegium Excellens. Sorry, Greg: it's receive, not recieve. This blogger removed the egregious offenses from today's post. However, neither penal errors nor penile errors shall not keep this blogger from his daily rounds of the best damn writing in cyberspace. If this is a (fair & balanced) sacred oath, so be it.
[x The Nation]
Right-Wing Media Love Those "Secede From US" Petitions—Plus, Proposed Obama Reply To Texans
By Greg Mitchell
Tag Cloud of the following article
It’s been vastly entertaining to watch Fox News and other right-wing news outlets focus attention on those official petitions to the White House (via the web) from citizens in numerous states calling for a hasty exit (for their states) from these United States after the re-election of President Obama. Apparently the Foxers think this shows wide disapproval of the president—who just won a smashing victory—rather than an alternate interpretation: These people (probably many of them viewers of Fox) are anti-American nut jobs or racists.
Whatever. In the wake of the hubbub this week over petitions to the White House calling for numerous states to secede I’ve been charting some of the other serious/fun proposals at the White House site. Remember, they only need to get 25,000 endorsers to require an official response from the president.
Buzzfeed has its own Top 10 collection, and several are very close to passing 25,000. One favorite, calls everyone to be allowed to punch Grover Norquist once “in the dick." Others includes forcing the president to attend a Fark.com party—and deporting everyone who signed one of the many “secede” petitions.
Now check out this proposed letter from the president to the new secessionist state of Texas.
Dear Texas,
I have received your petition to secede from The United States and have forwarded it to Congress who will act on it with their usual speed.
All military bases in Texas will be closed and personnel relocated to bases in the United States, except of a contingency force left to guard the Texas-U.S. border.
Any Texas citizen holding a U.S. passport is required to surrender it immediately. Entry into the U.S. will require a valid Texas passport. Anyone staying longer than two weeks will have to obtain a visa.
Funding for highways, transportation, bridges, infrastructure, education, and medical facilities will cease immediately.
Your representatives to the U.S. Congress are ordered to leave Washington as soon as possible.
All licenses to do business within the U.S. are revoked.
The FAA will no longer operate at your airports and all air traffic controllers are terminated.
The FCC will no longer operate in Texas, so you will be responsible for licensing your own telephone, radio, television, and Internet providers.
Anyone receiving payments from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Disability will have to reapply. Congress will have to decide whether foreigners will be eligible to receive payments from the U.S. government.
The Coast Guard will no longer operate in Texas waters so we suggest you form your own Navy immediately to protect your borders against foreign invaders, drug smugglers, terrorists, and illegal aliens.
Good luck.
P.S. - Attached is the bill for your portion of the U.S. debt.
/s/ Barack Obama Ω
[Greg Mitchell writes the popular Media Fix blog at The Nation and is the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books. His latest books are Atomic Cover-Up (2012), The Age of WikiLeaks (2011), and Bradley Manning (2011). He was the longtime editor of Editor & Publisher and, much earlier, executive editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.]
Copyright © 2012 The Nation
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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
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