….hell, especially the stupid.
Exhibit ∞: A top Texas official just announced that the state plans both to sue the EPA over its new carbon rules, and just because nullification has always worked out so well, ignore the hell out of them too [vie The Hill]:
The top environmental regulator in Texas said the state may choose not to follow the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rules limiting carbon pollution from power plants.
At a policy event Thursday, Bryan Shaw said he is concerned the rules “are only the camel’s nose under the tent,” according to the Texas Tribune.
There are any number of ways to plumb the pure cretinism on display here, but if Mr. Shaw is really concerned about a camel proboscis poking across the line, he might want to think on this:
If Texas ignores the rules and refuses to write a plan to implement them, the EPA would have to step in and write a plan for the state.
IOW: stupid has consequences, as Texans have reason (if not apparently the willingness) to know:
Texas also ignored a 2010 federal rule requiring new industrial plants to obtain greenhouse gas permits. The EPA took over, leading to years-long delays for permits, which caused industrial interests to blame the state for its decision.
If they had Darwin awards for states…
Image: Edward Lear, Camel Study, 1867
Bonus camel image after the jump:
Sydney William Carline, Three Sopwith Camels in Flight, 1918 (Sorry — couldn’t resist. At least I didn’t link to this.)
BGinCHI
Given the prevailing winds, Louisiana and Mississippi should sue them peremptorily.
But then again, the small stupid that reigns there would probably nip that in the bud.
burnspbesq
Just fucking secede already, Texas. We’ll help you pack.
KG
@burnspbesq: they would freak the fuck out as soon as the federal cash stopped rolling into the state… and again when all the military bases were shut down and equipment was rolled out of the new Texan Republic.
honestly, there are times when i think having a constitutional convention would be a grand idea, if only because it would give both side a chance to get away from the other… like a mediated divorce.
Cervantes
Shaw has a Ph. D. from UIUC. Whatever he is, he’s not a cretin. He just knows on which side his bread is buttered and the devil take the hind-most.
Calouste
It makes sense if you realize that the job title is about environment regulation, but the job description in Texas is about environment deregulation.
Tom Levenson
@Cervantes: Fair enough. Take it as referring to the sin, not the sinner.
Belafon
@KG: Texas doesn’t want to be on its own, and it never did. It had a war with Mexico so 1) it could keep it’s slaves, and 2) so it could join the US. They like to bluster here in Texas, but they wouldn’t last a couple of years without the US covering their fuckups.
Amir Khalid
I understand that, among officials in many Republican-held states, a belief persists in state nullification of federal law/regulation, even though 200+ years of legal precedent says there’s no such thing. And in this case, a precedent only four years old involves Mr Shaw’s own agency. I guess he didn’t check with the state’s legal counsel or his agency staff before taking this boneheaded step.
jheartney
@KG: One of the problems with all this secession talk is that the remaining states would be left with all the debt piled up by Texan presidents. I always say if they want out, they have to buy out their part of the debt. Since they’d have to issue their own debt to pay it off, it’d be funny to see what sort of interest terms they’d get offered (if any).
rikyrah
McDonnell gifts list
What they received from Jonnie
By Denise Lu, Rachel Weiner, Rosalind S. Helderman, Matt Zapotosky and Laura Vozzella
Published: August 6, 2014
Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) and his wife Maureen are on trial for lending the prestige of the governor’s office to a wealthy Richmond businessman, Jonnie R. Williams Sr., in return for more than $150,000 in loans, vacations, golf outings and luxury goods. Williams, who was then executive of a dietary supplement company, Star Scientific, testified he wanted help
promoting a new product. Here are some of the gifts given to the couple and their children by Williams from 2011 to 2012.
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/mcdonnell-gifts/
BGinCHI
@Cervantes: That was one of Tom’s safe schools.
Comrade Dread
@jheartney: If we could convince all of the libertarians and wingnuts to move there and then build a giant border wall to keep them from coming back to the US, I’d be willing to call it even.
BGinCHI
@Comrade Dread: Maybe the wall could also surround OK and KS?
danielx
Any place where the electorate is dumb enough to elect Rick Perry as governor three times…we’re way past stupid and into the realm of willful ignorance.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: Nah. My ginormous midwestern public university safe school was Michigan. WOLVERINES!
catclub
@BGinCHI: Once you get started on that, you get large parts of Louisiana, Miss, Alabama, South Carolina,… it just goes on and on. So don’t even get started.
Partition ends up very ugly. Ask the Indians and Pakistanis.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
It looks like the prosecutors have the McDonnells dead to rights.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: There are people who still think the Civil War isn’t over because God would not let His side lose. If I wasn’t at work I would find you a link. So, yes, lots of people still believe in nullification because it’s in the 10th amendment somewhere.
SatanicPanic
@catclub: And I don’t want to abandon all of the decent people who live there.
libarbarian
HA! Thine errant system of belief!
catclub
@jheartney:
Paid in Ameros?
Mnemosyne
And here I was expecting a link to this. I haz a disappoint.
japa21
Nothing new here. IIRC (don’t have time to do the search) Bush told most of the oil industry to ignore the Fed requirements when he was Gov.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: That makes two of us. I just don’t look good in maize and blue.
Berial
Every year here in my state a State Politician will put up a bill to get rid of the DEQ(State level version of the EPA), and every year the businessmen (whom said State Politician thought he was pandering to) of the state have to tell him to go stuff that idea where the sun don’t shine because they know it’s 1000x better to deal with the State about violation and regulations than with the FEDS about the same thing. The State will work with them, the Feds will just padlock their business and tell them to pound sand till they fix shit.
BGinCHI
@catclub: Let’s try it before we dismiss it out of hand….
NCSteve
@Cervantes: Ted Cruz has a J.D. from Harvard. Doesn’t mean he’s not a cretin. Just means his cretinousness is a choice rather than an organic condition.
NCSteve
So, what, he’s just going let those refineries down Galveston way shut down rather than issue them permits and blame Obama tyranny? That may play among the shitheels, but the oil barons who write the checks are going to know better.
Lee
Here is one interesting thing about Texas: by one measure it is the greenist state.
We are setting up huge wind farms here as well.
Iowa Old Lady
@Comrade Dread: You mean we should build a dang fence?
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
And I was expecting Rocky and Bullwinkle. Except Bullwinkle is ….
uh, a moose. Never mind.
Lurking Canadian
@NCSteve: I prefer to think in spectral terms. In the frequency domain, Cruz’s cretinousness just has a notch filter labeled “law” and another labeled “debate tactics”. Otherwise, white.
srv
@catclub: Nation-states are passe, time to face the inertia. Fortunately, we have a gov’t that waits until it’s too late, so the future is bright.
The idea of burbinstans in Texas with walls and concertina wire around them is very appealing to me.
terraformer
@burnspbesq:
Damn straight. I’m sick of these states; Texas, Florida, SC, GA, Mississippi, Alabama – all the usual suspects. Just fucking secede, live how you proclaim you want to. We’ll even build a wall for you – the one that keeps you out of the North. Wallow in your “beliefs”, have your “states rights”, get your fill.
I’m thinking pretty much a line from the northern border of (sadly, my home state) NC, straight across and up to and including Iowa (I’ve lived here for long enough to recognize that the derp is strong in this one; there’s a reason the caucus is always in this herpy-derp state. Indeed, I used to think Iowa was part of the progressive upper Midwest until I moved here – it has to go too), then across the northern part of south dakota – then, not sure. But that’d be a start.
Citizen_X
Fuck all y’all. We’re not the ones looking at getting fluoride out of the water supply. That would be that capitol of American academia, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lee
@Citizen_X: Actually Midland Texas removes fluoride from its water supply (because it is naturally occurring there and too high as it can stain kid’s teeth)
Belafon
@Lee: It’s a bit complex on that front. We do a lot of things with wind and solar, but we use more electricity than any other state, even California. So, we’re using a lot more per person than many other states (I don’t know if our per capita use is greater than ever other state, but it’s definitely greater than CA).
KG
@Belafon: of course none of them really want out. but it’d be a nice way of calling their bluff and then telling them to kindly stfu.
@jheartney: well, i suppose it depends on whether the US federal government would continue to exist or if several smaller nation states would take its place. talk about destablizing the world economy…
scav
Only thing that belongs in TX water is chemical by-products from fracking and other unregulated commerical activities, the way Ten-Gallonn Free-Market Jebus intended in his Ten Drawled UnCommandments.
srv
I can see the Republic of Texas flying those. Ted could be machine gunning the invaders on the border.
KG
@srv: high walls meant nothing for Harren the Black.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mnemosyne: I was hoping for Shep from George of the Jungle…–the original cartoon…who of course is an ephelant…
Tom Levenson
@Citizen_X: Oy. Fortunately, in the IGMFY sense of the term, I and my family do not live in Cambridge.
Chyron HR
You should have also posted some rockin’ Camel songs, if any.
srv
For you people that don’t think we’re going there, even Obama sees the future:
Cervantes
@Citizen_X:
Funny, so long as you aren’t misconstruing the nature of politics in Our Fair City!
BGinCHI
@srv: What, the Newsmax server was down?
Cervantes
@Lee: Right. Staining is one issue but more important is ingestion in excess, if it happens.
Cervantes
@NCSteve:
And an undergraduate degree from Princeton, I hasten to add.
Anyhow, when Cruz, or Shaw above, does stupid things, I’m quite happy to say so — but otherwise I’m not a big fan of calling people stupid simply for disagreeing with me.
Cervantes
@rikyrah: Tacky.
Roger Moore
@KG:
They don’t want a divorce. They want that bitch to come crawling back on hands and knees, admitting she was wrong and begging to be let back in.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Paid in gold and silver, which the Texas Republican platform says is how all debts are supposed to be paid.
Citizen_X
@srv: Srsly? You’re going to drop that Infowars-worthy pile of dogshit paranoia on us?
Well, what’s the government’s explanation?
I think I’m going to trust the guy who seriously reduced the deficit on this one, instead.
catclub
@srv:
Chevrolet Caprice and Impala taxi models? FWD Cadillac ElDorado?
catclub
@Citizen_X: I think I heard about it on the radio (NPR), and it sounded like the National Guard was losing its favorite toys – and whining about it.
EriktheRed
Wanna see some more Texas stupid?
Here:
theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/meet-the-new-rick-perryis-he-the-same-as-the-old-rick-perry…
Sterling
If Texas ignores the rules and refuses to write a plan to implement them, the EPA would have to step in and write a plan for the state.
Isn’t that the preferred outcome for Texas right-wingers? They have enough power in D.C. to make sure the federal rules aren’t too onerous and come with some kind of energy subsidy or tax credit as a sweetener. Meanwhile, they can pretend to be rebelling against D.C. bureaucrats and the power of the federal government. There’s not much downside for them here.
Glocksman
@catclub:
Shit, let the RA have the Apaches, so long as the USAF is required to parcel out the A-10 Thunderbolt II’s being retired to state ANG units.
Retiring the A-10 because it’s not sexy enough for the zoomies will haunt the US armed forces for decades
ifwhen we get involved in another land war.SiubhanDuinne
Wow. Edward “The Owl and the Pu55y-Cat” Lear?
(Checks Wikipedia.)
Yup, guess so.
Cool.
Doug Gardner
@Belafon:
I read that as “10th commandment” – perhaps that’s true as well.
Calouste
@NCSteve:
Glocksman
@Belafon:
If Texas could confine the results of its shit policies on the environment to Texas, I’d say let them stew in their own juices.
That said, air, water and ground pollution isn’t confined to the borders of the state that produced it.
Hence their 10th amendment argument isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Otherwise, New York would have sent their National Guard to attack the states burning coal for power that created the acid rain that was devastating their forests.
Never mind what the Canadians may have thought.
While I don’t agree with everything the EPA does, I do recognize the need for the agency and the mission it performs.
wilfred
You betray your ignorance about Arab and Sufi traditions. He’s actually making a reference to a well known Sufi story. Whether or not it’s applicable in this case is open to debate but it’s an impressive attempt at a cross-cultural reference which you ignorantly deride.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
Just remember that you can always tell a Harvard man. You just can’t tell him very much.
Glocksman
What, no Joe Camel graphics?
I thought that BJ’ers would have remembered ‘Camel Cash’ and the controversy surrounding Joe Camel.
tybee
@Chyron HR:
best i could do for you: youtube.com/watch?v=VlrKETxwRvM
1st gen girl
@Chyron HR:
Midnight @ the Oasis.
Phantom 309
@Comrade Dread: Don’t forget to mine the Gulf Coast waters!
SiubhanDuinne
@wilfred:
Grateful if you would indicate to whom you’re responding.
wilfred
@SiubhanDuinne: Author of the post.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@wilfred: If you’re talking about the camel’s nose, the best I have found is Geoffrey Nunberg’s comment that he can’t find an Arab source for the story and that it may be a Victorian invention. It’s been a part of English idiom since at least 1858. Perhaps you would share your source?
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: An oldie but a goodie!
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
Seriously, though; is there a better embodiment of that joke today than Ted Cruz?
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Well, I hope not!
SiubhanDuinne
@wilfred:
Opinions differ, of course, but “ignorant” is the last word I’d throw around in regard to Tom Levenson. Not that Tom needs my help, and I’m sure there are some things about which he is relatively uninformed, but to say that he “ignorantly derides” a “cross-cultural reference” is just unnecessarily offensive to one of this blog’s finest minds.
Cervantes
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
The story can be traced to a seventh-century Sufi sheik in Mecca [*] by the name of Abdul Aziz. In his telling, however, there is a different ending (and somewhat different meaning): The camel is not slyly trying to take over the tent; but as it pushes more and more of its cold body into the tent, it just sort of happens that the tent ends up on the camel’s hump so that both the man and the camel are pretty much exposed to the elements. Punch-line: “Where has the tent gone? asked the very confused camel.”
Or as another Sufi proverb has it: Life — sometimes the man on the saddle, sometimes the saddle on the man.
[*] Some sources indicate that this Abdul Aziz was a Qalandari Sufi dervish who traveled in what we now call South Asia. Based on that and other indications, one might conclude that the story is from Afghanistan, Pakistan, or north-west India. Personally, I’m happy to credit Sheik Abdul Aziz and leave it at that.
SectarianSofa
@terraformer:
and Tom, burns, KG, etc, etc.
This shit again? Really?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know much of anything about Texas, you’ll talk out your ass about secession, broad-brush a state as if the moment of reflection that allows you to write is so brief and sputtering that it fails as soon as the shape of a desirable confection, a cartoonish diabolical villain, appears. You suffered long enough in thought, so let a twitch of electrical activity, a caricature of meaning, swell up to take the space instead.
I guess it’s human nature. Half the world wants the USA to secede from Earth, too. Why? Because we have a bunch of jackasses who are in power, or who make a lot of noise, or act like the worst of us all in public. Sociopaths rise to the top, but instead of criticizing them, just give a big fuck you to all the people who live anywhere where a government and its resident plutocrats are assholes or dumb fucking freaks.
Fuck all the people who live or were born in the arbitrary borders of some geographic entity, arbitrary and incidental, whether they’re in Texas, the US, Gaza, Greece….
Can we really not separate people from policies?
This is so patently superficial, lazy, and fatuous … For my sanity, I’ll just chalk it up to glib bullshiting on balloon-juice instead of actual lack of interest in human welfare, the environment, peace or progress or whatever it is you purport to give a shit about.
Or just go ahead and fuck off. You are as parochial, incurious, self-satisfied, happily ignorant as the ones you despise on the right, and just as easily suckered in by messaging and bravado and falsehoods and overgeneralizations.
You are trivially provably wrong on too many points to count, and you don’t care, as long as you can laugh at someone less lucky. As long as your facile bullshit has just enough meretricious sparkle to be propelled, if barely, to the ear of another self-satisfied troll just waiting to laugh and turn their back on the wrong tribe and wrong side of the Mason-Dixon.
It’s pathetic.
“Don’t mess with Texas” is from an anti-littering campaign. It’s not a battle cry.
You think Canadians aren’t fracking, polluting and selling out the have-nots with any less zeal?
“Everything’s bigger in Texas” — who, from Texas, has said this in the last 30 years, unless they’re trying to sell you something or make a news segment with fake local bullshit color? Everything isn’t bigger in Texas. It’s crap. It’s a line.
Never say it again, if you give the least fuck about things that mean anything in the universe. It doesn’t register. You’re wrong if you think anyone believes it.
Beating anyone with that straw man is inane, predictable, effortless. You have heard cliches and can repeat them. Congratulations.
The history of the United States regarding race, violence, arrogation of power, property, and wealth, expulsion of the weak, smothering of the powerless, etc. etc. is a fucking disgrace no matter in what state you live. Through what metaphysical convenience are others guilty of everything you despise, and you are not? Or are we all *not* damned, as the Unitarians had it?
Liberals live in Texas, and these “other” places, as do conservatives, whack-jobs, start-up hustlers, artists, techno-glibtards, heroes…. And a bunch of motherfuckers who bathe in received wisdom as blissfully as you do. They were unlucky enough to be born where a lot of the received wisdom is wrong. You aren’t any smarter — you’re just luckier. You didn’t have to dig out of as much bullshit.
Most of the people in Texas live in the cities, and most of those people vote for Democrats, and no one has a fucking cowboy hat. If they do, they’re selling cars.
Are you so blinkered, deficient in metacognitive ability, or so soft from years of having run your mouth without anyone in your agreeable fellowship calling you out on your bullshit, that you can so happily and unreflectively spout this crap?
Whatever. Texas should secede. Government revenues and taxes and military spending — humpty-dumptied or not, damning. Culture is what you see on TV. Everything heard and seen is to be believed. You wear your pride so well because you’re right.
Cervantes
@SectarianSofa:
I agree.
wilfred
@SiubhanDuinne: A more current reference can be found in Idries Shah’s Caravan of Dreams. It’s a teaching story in a certain tradition of which you are equally ignorant.
I stopped posting here years ago – thanks for reminding me why.
Cervantes
@wilfred:
Wait — you’re suggesting that when Brian Shaw said that the EPA’s rules “are only the camel’s nose under the tent,” he’s “actually making a reference to a well known Sufi story”? And that it’s “an impressive attempt at a cross-cultural reference”?
Why do you think this? How do we know Brian Shaw is even aware of the Sufi tale?
I’m curious: how do you reconcile the version found in Caravan of Dreams with what Brian Shaw said?
Hobbes
@tybee: Camel song: Where is my mind.
Gwangung
@wilfred: I think we are enriched by that action.
Fred
@jheartney: Let ’em buy their way out. I like it. Alamo Bonds! See if Dubbaya will sink his good old US bucks into those worthless IOUs.
delosgatos
A Rickroll? May the sweat of a thousand camels grace your coffee!
SectarianSofa
@efgoldman:
Well! I had to drive several hours to a funeral after my post, so I didn’t have to chance to respond….
Anyway. No, I don’t want you to have a better opinion about Texas. I live here, and I don’t have a high opinion of it.
What I want is for people to shut the fuck up about things they don’t know anything about. Especially when they are suggesting that some people should be forgotten, dumped, disregarded, actively maligned, sided against in any case whatsoever.
That, and I want people to at least try *sometimes* to be consistent with regards to alleged interests — progressive or otherwise — and things that matter, and things that they say.
‘California managed to do it.’ Your analogy is, at best, half-assed.
It’s not worthy of a more thoughtful response than what it took for you to write it.
Have I ever heard ‘People get the government they deserve’? Who here hasn’t? Have you ever been told you’re being a fool, by someone you trust? If not, you deserved better friends.
Does it relate, somehow, to what I was saying, except in the sense that it is the exact thing I was slagging? Or are you some superstitious Original Sin type? People get the Hell they deserve. People get the neighborhoods they deserve? People get the reservations they deserve? People get the trust funds they deserve? People get the track and field results they deserve? Kids get the school lunches they deserve? Ebola getters get the ebola they deserve? (Well, they should get organized and practice some common sense hygiene! Of course!)
It’s a dumb game.
And stop it with the “y’all” shit. Who the fuck in Texas says that? Have you met them?
Or did you see it in writing? Was it by people who didn’t say “y’all” *ever* in their lives until it was flagged and waved about as a supposed “Texas-ism”, one that had a reasonable amount of utility, was fun to say, made fun of and also gave a nod to their geographical roots?
I don’t know. Are you in the South? Maybe you say ‘y’all’. If you do, stop. If it’s an attempt at a reference to something related to hick-ville, you probably want Georgia in 1864 or so.
Despite the fact you (severally) are being asinine with regard to Texas, I’m sure I’m not any better in cases where I don’t have a clue that I don’t have a clue. That previous post was a rant, not a thesis.
And personally I’ll try to stop maligning Florida, even if it’s only because I know at least one sensible person lives there.