The last 3 to 4 mayors in Houston have been Democrats. But overall Tejas is a very diverse place.

Perry is a freakin’ choad with no sense of realism or civility. He just plain sucks!

@omen: i didn’t hear these guys screech when bush’s FEMA confiscated guns from law abiding citizens, post katrina.

They’re screeching about it now. Except in their narrative, Bush’s FEMA has retroactively transformed into blue-helmeted UN troops.

it doesn’t matter where the shit is refined

But it certainly does matter where it’s refined. Those refineries are certainly not fungible. Sure, a refinery is a refinery is a refinery – have you seen the list of capacity? Do you think your Canadian friends can ramp up to counteract the loss of 2,000,000 bbl/d? And that’s just from the Top 5 refineries in TX. I could be wrong but I don’t think anyone’s built one in the US in the last 30 yrs +/-. Or maybe you could have another country refine it for you and transport it? Our friends in South America or the ME would lurv to help us out.
So, the oil and it’s other products definitely are fungible. But the capacity to refine currently is not. I really don’t know what you’re arguing here.

we might cut the tariff in half for ya

do whatcha gotta do. tariff all ya like. but again, "fungible".

when you refine oil you get a bunch of other things. things like gasoline, kerosene and asphalt – all of which are, yes, fungible. it doesn’t matter where the shit is refined, the price remains the same. so go ahead, secede. it makes no difference to the energy market.

Poor naive cleek. When Texas makes its corporate paradise with a negative tax rate and you’re stuck with ever rising energy prices due to cap and trade, we might cut the tariff in half for ya. Wouldn’t want the grandmothers in Maine freezing to death because none of y’all want a refining plant in your back yard wouldja?

@Faux News:

Louisiana would never take Houston. Not after we took in all the Katrina victims.

Speaking of, how many citizens did your state feed and house after that catastrophe? Texas saved half a million lives. How’d you do?

No, just got a helluva lot of traffic from my conversion.

But oh yes, they are really pissed off at me.

Now what’re you going to do? Ship more from Lousyiana? Ha! Shove more outta LA? Double-ha!
I think we understand each other.

How about the USA bombs the shit out of the Republic of Texas sending that shit hole of a state/country back to the 19th century? I’m not worried about the Texas Air Force or Texas Rangers lasting too long in a new Shock & Awe campaign.

Of course the USA won’t bomb the port of Houston. We will just occupy it and annex it as part of the USA. Maybe LA would want it.

I think we DO understand each other now.

Here’s the problem with that argument – if the Courts were to somehow order that the Feds were putting some kind of undue burden on Texas’s (or any state’s) sovereignty by putting conditions on the money they hand out, Congress could respond by cutting off the funds entirely.

No, they probably couldn’t. They’d have to restrict funding in a way that is reasonably related to their problems with Texas. They couldn’t, for instance, punish Texas for refusing to comply with regulations of federally funded highways, by cutting off block grants to fund Aid to Women and Children (WIC). They could cut off highway funds or perhaps all transportation funds. See South Dakota v. Dole .