Secession and Sensuality.

Part 1
Cesarean Secession. 

I have seen the petitions. I know that some people are thinking this is a sign of an oncoming civil war. Others look at it with disdain for the south and have no problem with certain states seceding from the union. I tend to chuckle at this myself.

The reason why any of this is getting attention at all is part of the post election fallout, and a sensationalist media attempting to stoke the fires of apocalypse that seemed to be the theme of this last presidential election. Basically, there have been petitions posted on the White House's web site, from private citizens, requesting the granting of separation from the United States. Now, there is no actual procedure in the U.S. Constitution, for a state to dissolve its affiliation with the union, nor is there anything in the constitution not allowing it to occur. That being said, private citizens, petitioning the White House for their state to be allowed to "peacefully leave the union" is probably not, nor should it ever be, considered a valid request.

What should be taken seriously is when a state legislature asks for the ties to be dissolved. There is nothing preventing a state, other than fear of repercussions that aren't even legislated federally, from choosing to hold a popular vote on a ballot that asks the voters in that state if they want to leave. Signing a petition to the White House, is kind of skipping a step. It's like going over your boss's head, and even though the Administration will have to answer petitions once they gain a certain amount of signatures, the answer will be, in not so few words, "no."

The reality is that none of these states will leave, and I'll show you why using, arguably, the most "independent" and "belligerent" of them all.

Part 2

How to Mess With Texas

Texas has had a decent secessionist movement since it was annexed by the U.S. in 1845. Unfortunately, since the end of the U.S. Civil War, that movement been divided into factions so many times, then factions dissolve, then the surviving factions fragment,  that there is no real unity behind it. Nonetheless it does have one of the most persistent and known secessionist movement(s).

Texas is projected to have a Gross State Product of about $1.3 trillion for 2012. To put that in prospective, Canada was10th the world in Gross National Product in 2011 with $1.5 trillion  If Texas were to become an independent republic, it would be 14th in GNP. Not bad, except for a couple of problems.

Texas receives nearly $300 billion in federal aid per year. That's $11,500 per capita in the state. This doesn't include the influx of revenue from it hosting nearly 125,000 members of the U.S. Military, that are garrisoned in 15 U.S. Military bases throughout the state. Included with these military bases is about 50,000 military civilians the companies of the defense industry and defense contractors. Now, just wait a second, I'm going to loop these back in here.

The Texas Military Force (their national guard and other forces) currently numbers at about 26,000 people. That's one soldier for every 1000 Texans. In contrast, the U.S. Military has 1.5 million active duty personnel, one soldier for every 205 Americans.  The force is sustained, in part, with federal funds.  So now let's get the ball rolling.

Right off the bat, Texas will say goodbye to the $300 billion in federal aid it gets per year. This doesn't include other things like stimulus money, federal disaster relief funds and what not that can add an additional $50 billion. That already hurts. Now since Texas would be no longer part of the union, it could see the end of the US military presence in the new republic. I mean, we can't have over one-third of our active duty military force in a country we aren't currently running a war in, so they go bye bye.  This means Texas will have to raise it's own army. 26,000 people aren't going to cut it when you've added an additional international border, and have a coast line that is no longer protected by the US Navy and Coast Guard.

With the US military gone, and most of it's equipment with it, US defense contractors find themselves in a foreign country with a significantly smaller force to service, that is financed with a significantly smaller defense budget (The US defense budget is more than GSP of Texas.)   So they will either downsize or leave. At current levels, the defense aerospace industry, alone, employs 200,000 people and that doesn't include other facets of the defense industry in Texas.

This leaves Texas in a quandary.  It is out $300 billion in federal funds, in addition to a portion of the federal paychecks that were going to 125,000 members of the military, 50,000 military civilians , and up to 300,000 residents, that are either employed by the defense industry or by military bases. Add to that the non military businesses surrounding these bases, and this bad dream expands to a horrific financial cataclysm, to many communities.

The losses would become like a domino effect. Texas does not have state income tax. It gains state revenue from property and sales taxes. With the loss of federal funding, the need to replace federal enforcement agencies that were supplementing the state's own institutions, along with the need to expand its own defense, Texans will find that, while they are no longer paying income tax to the U.S. government, they will not have more money in their pocket. If  up to 1,000,000 people move out of your state or are unemployed, and on top of that you have the need to create new services, you will find that you are under a budget short fall. The newly formed Republic of  Texas will have to either raise property taxes or raise income taxes.

With rise of taxes, many more leave. One of the reasons people moved there or claimed Texas residency was due to there being no state income tax. The more people leave, the more the new republic finds itself in a dismal financial depression. For all of the glory of their revolution, they end up just like Mexico.

This, of course, isn't the half of it. Much of this secession talk was fanned by the recent presidential election. The urbanized areas, like Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston (the places where the money is at),  and much of southwest Texas, voted in favor of Barak Obama. The Republic, once formed, could find itself in its own secession mess, with areas, wishing to remain with the U.S., breaking off and rejoining the union.  It could be feasible that the new Republic of Texas, would be landlocked, surrounded by the union it just left, with no port, or they find themselves asserting military might in order to maintain their territory. Hello Texas civil war.

To sum it all up, Texas secession could end up with the state losing above and beyond $1 trillion, a few million citizens, several hundred square miles of land, along with possibly ending up in a civil war. Otherwise it's not a complete disaster. So, with that looking like it will work out for them, let's go to the next secession candidate....

Part 3
What has Four Eyes but Cannot See?
Mississippi.

Do I even have to bother?

Now That You've Lost, What Next for The GOP..

It had to hurt. I know it did because I watched it play out on television with Karl Rove in emphatic denial of the election projections. I watched scores of my conservative friends and others ask themselves what is wrong with this country? I watchd Glenn Beck announce that "sometimes god sucks," and that there is a "sickness" in this country.

While the pundits, experts and blowhards attempt to rationalize the outcome of this election, I tend to sit back and think about the future.

I made it no secret what I wanted the outcome to be, and yes, I am pleased, so far, with the result. You see there is more that needs to happen. The reasons why the Republicans lost this presidential election have been touted to everything from being out of touch with younger voters, women and minorities, to Mitt Romney picking the wrong running mate, to Romney himself being either too centrist, or too right wing.

To start with Romney's problem wasn't that he wasn't right wing enough. Basically this would state that more extreme right wingers on the presidential ballot, in particular Virgil Goode (Constitution Party) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), took the votes that Mitt Romney needed to win. This isn't the case. Statistically speaking, the math doesn't work out like that. If you add their totals to Mitt Romney's total, you still end up with Barack Obama winning the election. In all of the battle ground states Obama won the majority of the vote (that's more than 50% for those of you not mathematically inclined), therefore it was impossible for Romney to win those states if he garnered the votes he supposedly lost to far right opponents. I might add that Obama didn't need Florida, and at the time of this writing they are still tallying votes. In New Mexico, the state in which Gary Johnson was governor, Johnson only posted 4% of the popular vote. Obama won a majority of the popular vote there so even with Johnson's votes Romney would not have won. The bottom line is, Romney would not have won even if he was more right wing. It may have been something that chipped away at his final tally though.

There is the idea that the "gimme stuff" crowd, or those on government assistance, of some form or another, ended up being the majority of the voting block, and therefore, won the election. The problem is that even with the most generous of math, meaning you total everyone on welfare, then add everyone on food stamps, then add everyone on SSI, and or Social Security, then assume none of these demographics intersect (which they do quite a bit), then assume that they are all voting (which didn't happen), and voting unanimously for Obama (which also didn't happen), you can, incorrectly I might add, come up with a voting block that is %37 of the population, about 115 million.

Here's the problem. about 121 million people voted. That block of 115 million, if it were accurate, would have been about 95% of the total popular vote. Obama only won the popular vote by a scant 3%, so that rules out the idea that those on public assistance voted unanimously for the President. According to most exit polls, about 40% to 41% of those that voted made below $50,000 per year. Despite the old welfare queen urban legend no, you cannot make 50k on public assistance, so our public assistance demographic is in the lower end of that range. 60% of that 41% voted for Obama, meaning out of the entire electorate,  not even 25% both made under $50,000 and voted for Obama. Add to that, of  those making less than $30,000 per year, Obama won 61% of the vote. To put it in perspective, if you assume, very generously, that Obama's main vote came from 20% of voters and assume that they are even exclusively a demographic who live on hand outs, then factor in the percentage of the electorate who cannot possibly live on handouts (those who make more than 50k), those who voted for Romney, about 31%, of the 50k plus block  would have nullified the generously overestimated 20%  of the electorate that was the Obama "free loader" vote. Basically, you are stating that 20% of the vote won the election for Obama, with 80% of the vote to play with. What?

Romney  lost significantly among women, minorities, and voters under 40 years old. He lost with significantly with non protestant voters, 60% of whom voted in favor of Obama, thus neutralizing the Evangelical vote.  Basically the core of Romney's votes came from white males over the age of 40.  This sort of trend was repeated in other races through out the country. To say the least, in a society, that is being ruled less by  so called "old white guys," and is seeing the increasing influence of empowered women and empowered minority groups, the Republican party is seeing its demographic shrink.

Many in the GOP continue to point the blame to the electorate. The data I see says something quite different. It shows a party that is out of touch, that has dated rhetoric, and, above all, attempted to put forth a candidate, that it didn't wholly believe in, in order to perform the already daunting task of unseating an incumbent president.

I consider myself a conservative. I believe in limited government and self accountability. The problem for me is that the party I used to belong to has focused more on attracting a fringe element, such as the religious right, racists, and homophobes, that have no place in a party that is supposed to be for those who seek individual sovereignty, and limited government. The party has sought more to counter act the left under the guise of serving their constituents, then actually serving those who elected them.  True Republicanism doesn't have to be the antithesis of the Democratic Party ideology.

One of the results of this election may be the eventual splintering of the GOP. There are many, like me, who want to escape the will of the Tea Party faction, and the religious right, in order to steer the party more toward the center. Many of us want to get away from the bile these extremists and obstructionists.

We have allowed the liberals to be the signal barers for issues of personal liberty that should have been ours to sponsor from the get go. We've allowed them to champion issues of individual sovereignty, such as reproductive freedom, civil rights, sexual preference, anti-prohibition, and anti-censorship, in the name of courting a religious fanaticism, and fighting off a red menace, that doesn't exist. We've allowed these factions to make us look out of touch, belligerent, and like buffoons to the press.

We've created enemy lines in our own nation by allowing incorrect usage of terms such as communism, socialism and fascism, in order to castigate well meaning opponents as enemies of the state in which they serve for their support of issues that aide our aims in enhancing personal sovereignty. We've become, not so much the vanguard of limiting government interference in the personal lives of the electorate, but the proponents of institutional abandonment.

The key to Republican success is simple. We embrace the ideals of individual and personal sovereignty.  We ditch the religious right, for their ideals about sexual freedom, abortion, censorship, prohibition and what not fly in the face of personal sovereignty, and limited government. They also alienate a good portion of voters. We distance and disassociate ourselves from right wing media, who are not as much true conservatives as they are anti-liberal, and divisive.  As always, we also speak for fiscal rationality, and attempt to eliminate the idea of running under budget deficits.

The idea is that Republicanism, supports individual freedom and liberty. Any legislation would either enhance those freedoms or would be voted down. One's personal liberty should not interfere with another's. For this we use the idea our nation was built on, majority rule, with minority rights protected.  For instance, one's health enhances one's personal liberty in that one is not tied down with medical bills.Therefor legislation to reduce pollutants, would in fact be an enhancement of the majority's personal liberty. Education creates freedom of opportunity and personal independence,  therefore legislation to improve education, enhances personal sovereignty.  Civil rights isn't a matter of big government interference, it's a matter of enhancing personal sovereignty, just as ending slavery of all kinds was at the inception of the party.

The idea is something that crosses the divides of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference. It creates a diversity of a opinion within our own party, and refocuses us back on the core principles that Republicanism was founded on.  It doesn't put us in direct opposition to everything the Democrats stand for, it just makes us different. It changes our coalition, makes it stronger, and encompasses the will of those who seek freedom. It will attract a new breed of Republican that will supplant the irrational tea party/evangelical coalition. In due time, it would change the face of a party that is in dire need of diversity and thus change its reception by the public. Most of all, it would help to grab the demographic that did determine the election, that being 35% of voters who consider themselves conservative or moderate, that ended up voting for Obama.

Now the question is, who am I fucking kidding?

The Typical Introduction

Hi. My name is Joe. Yes, Joe. I am your typical cynic, who can be found in the wild residing in many of the subdivisions of suburban sprawl. Now that we've weeded out anyone looking for inside information on Snookie's bra size, I will continue.

Truth be told I don't know why you want to read this blog. I may be just another faceless voice, screaming my frustrations at an apathetic world. Truth is, I've dabbled with this before and I really didn't get anything from it, but, as it turns out, I need to keep my opinions off my facebook page, because I'm starting to upset people, or make them block me, and honestly, I have so much to share there .I mean it, I do. My mom is on facebook and I've blocked her from half of the shit I post.

Truth be told,  some of my friends bring up stupid shit so this is a place where I can express my opinion without attacking them directly. In essence though, ff you think that anything posted on here is a direct response or attack to something you said, you are incorrect. The only reason I post anything is because I see it as a train of thought from a group of people or even humanity in general, so don't take it personally.

I invite discussion and respectable discourse. Address others as if you are inviting discussion, rather then pontificating. I will do my best to moderate, but keep in mind I'm not impartial. Please attempt to use some form of respectable grammar and spelling, write as if you deserve to be heard and not as if you demand it.