I wish some interior state would secede so we would have that weird country-in-a-country thing South Africa has going on.

I wish this whole thing would calm down. I get the schadenfreude, but this division is ruining our country and destroying reasonable national conversations. The toxic propaganda from the Right has to end. I wish some conservative leaders would start stepping up and calling this insanity out.

I'm fine with not having heard from Bachmann.

"Destroying reasonable national conversations"?
With all due respect my friend, those reasonable conversations were destroyed quite some time ago. People are even using the same words with the same definitions. "Socialist", for just one outstanding example. "Debt/deficit", "war", "welfare", "taxes", and the list goes on. I wish we could all come to some agreement on what all those words and more actually mean.

This country is in a heavily dysfunctional relationship with itself, none of the partners are having the same conversation, yet all are talking at the same time. They are using fear and dramatic manipulations to attempt to control the yelling-"conversation", and while that is going on the oligarchs are winning at everything. :(

Time to stop mentioning Bachmann and Cain, though. And we should probably drop this blather about secession. It was funny yesterday, but today we have to pull on our boots and get some work done.

People are => People aren't even...
grr.

Not all of Texas is Perry-like: Obama did very well in Dallas (he won it 57% to 42%), Austin (he won it 60% to 36%), San Antonio (he won it 52% to 47%), and South Texas (along the border of Mexico, where most of the population is Hispanic -- Obama got 70%-80%+ of the vote in these counties). But in Houston (Harris County), Obama and Romney tied at 49%.

http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns…

The Republican pity party just goes on and on.

Remember, even here in the reddest of the Red States, at least a full quarter of us more or less pretty much agree with y'all up-out there in the Bluese of the Blue States. Secession would be a hellacious tragedy for those of us who make our homes down here and work to bring the rest up to the light. Don't abandon us. We're trying. And we are making progress. Right Wing crazy though she be, we elected a South Asian woman governor. Didn't think I'd live to see that.

Why the fuck is anyone talking like seccession is even close to being a remote possibility?

@4 You and I are talking about the same thing. I didn't mean to suggest that the national conversations we should be having have been destroyed recently. But I believe its destruction correlates pretty well to the rise of the toxic propaganda the Right has been spewing. People aren't just "haha" crazy out there, they are legitimately terrified because of what they hear and if it continues I can only imagine it will end in tragedy for this country.

@9 entertainment value, akin to previously discussing Sarah Palin being remotely possibly the Vice President.

This election turned into the best chance for the GOP to cleanse themselves from the tea party. It was fun for one cycle but now they've seen how unpopular extremists truly are. I imagine that we'll see a huge break in the GOP during the fiscal cliff talks. The GOP knows its better to alienate 20 percent of the voters (roughly the number of people who dig the tea party) than to ruin their name for the 80 percent who don't share the tea party's wrapped view on civic responsiblity.
I imagine we'll watch a hilarious 'civil war' among conservatives on the Internet, red state vs FreeRepublic, etc.i can't wait to see who can out patriot the patriots.
Besides, those tea party guys will come crawling back to the GOP in a few years anyways.

The whole thing seems preposterous. Somebody was boasting that the Texas petition had 30,000 signatures.

30,000 out of 25 million. As a measure of popular support its indistinguishable from 0.

Why exactly do we want them around? Let them go.

There is now a petition to the White House to revoke the citizenship of anyone who signs a secession petition. This could be fun.

@ 9, that's not why it's interesting. Of course it doesn't have a chance in hell of happening.

To me, it's the contrast to all the talk of emigrating to Canada you heard from liberals after Bush's elections. I haven't fully sussed out what it means, but it's interesting that liberals would leave America, but conservatives want to secede. Both are expressions of giving up, but one side would resort to something they have to know would never happen without violence. The petitions may request that they be allowed to leave peaceably, but I bet everyone signing them is imagining shooting up feds and liberals in a righteous rebellion.

But petitioning the White House directly is interesting, too. While I'm sure the number of people who took some actual tentative steps toward emigrating (which includes getting their passport in order as a direct result of the elections, or downloading whatever paperwork needed to be submitted for emigration, even if they didn't follow through) was in the tens or hundreds of thousands, they didn't make the news. Mostly they just made virtual noise online. But petitioning to secede... that's novel.

Anyway, the reaction we're experiencing isn't "Wow, this might really happen guys, what are we gonna do about it?" It's more like, "Wow, these people are bigger crybabies and assholes than I imagined." It's something to talk about for now, and will either get old as it dies out for lack of support from anyone of influence (like redstate.com or Rick Perry), or get new life if something new happens (like a bunch of idiots attacking an FBI office in a pathetic reenactment of the shelling of Fort Sumpter. (No, I don't consider that likely, but anything's possible.)

So they won't secede.... Can we eject them?

@1 for the win.

@6 - I always imagined Texas to be sparsely populated between cities. Are the metro areas infinitely sprawling like Phoenix? With Obama carrying Texas' big cities, I'm trying to imagine what else could account for it being so Red there.

@16 - The conservative analog for Canada as the proverbial liberal American's election refuge is (naively) Australia—but more recently, New Zealand. I didn't know it was a thing either until this election cycle, but that's what they say.

It's always just been hot air on both sides, but NZ is actually becoming a haven for right-leaning American billionaires.

21: I thought it was "Lord of the Rings" fans emigrating to NZ looking for Rivendell.

As for Texas, I'm sure there's more than a few urban archipelago residents signing those White House succession petetions.

@1: Wouldn't even have to be an entire state; how about just Bachmann's congressional district? It's on the Mississippi, so it would have an outlet to the sea. And this would finally be eradicated within the U.S.

@20 nope,just the panhandle and part of the western side of the state.

THIS WILL NOT GO AWAY AND I WILL NOT LEAVE AND WE WILL SECEDE AND YOU 20 OR SO STATES (IF YOU ARE LUCKY) CAN SWIM IN OBAMANATION SEWER and live in OBAMAVILLE and become COMMIE ZOBIES! We are too far apart and you evil lefties have to cheat to win and WE WILL TAKE BACK OUR GOD AND GUNS AND COUNTRY. My family fought in the Revolution War and created the Bills of Right and the Constitution and I WILL NOT LET YOU DESTROY WHAT MY FAMILY AND THE OTHER FOREFATHER GAVE US! WE SECEDED FROM ENGLAND AND WE WILL SECEDE FROM OBAMANATION AND KEEP OUR LAND! WE HAVE GOD ON OUR SIDE AND YOU DON'T!

Shut up, dumbass. BTW, if your family fought in the Revolutionary War, they were probably Yankees. How's that make you feel?