1. Bye, have fun with your new nation. You wont be missed. But thank you for just making the Republican Party even more irrelavent in Congress. Maybe you can ask GWB to be your leader. He does have experience running a country in to the ground....maybe he'll do better with your nation.

2. Sounds like a bunch of people with bloated ego's and not enough wisdom. I'm sure this is not even 2% of texan residents thoughts. Notice that all the people speaking, and those in this crowd are white, and seem to hate those who arent.

3. So if this does happen, what are the things that will happen?
A. No more military support or funding. That's right, all those communities that rely on military and defense contracts disappear, and those people are put on unemployment. The tax revenue disappears.
B. Most citizens of the USA flee to other states, further losing tax revenue.
C. The Coast Guard pulls out, and no longer protects the sea ways. Customs agents move out of Texas. Like wise, the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and even FEMA pull out. That's alot of money going in to texas communities.
D. The US Goverment no longer gives financial support to Texas, and treats them like any other country.

So after all that, what does this new Texas nation have to look forward to:
1. High unemployment
2. Creation of its how military service (can you say 'Drafted'?). This includes land, sea, and air units. The sheer logistics that go with fielding a military are also figured in.
3. Infrastructure. Roads have to be maintained, communication systems have to be set up, and even clean drinking water has to be in place for anyone to live there.
4. Creation of your own goverment, along with all the idiots you hate to have with it. In our goverment, we call them lobbyists, other goverments have names for them. These guys will try to draw the lion's share of your meager income in to their pockets.
5. Revenue will be a bitch. Since to pay for all this, you will have to tax ever citizen about 87% of their take home pay. Funny how you complain about taxes in the USA right now. Go have your own nation and find out how deluted thinking works.

So yes, if these bloated idiots want to succession from the USA, let them. When they finally learn that they were stupid and foolish and want back in, we say 'tough shit'. And if we, the 49 states of the Union vote them back in, I'm sure there will be a consetion that each of these people will have a tattoo placed on their chest that says 'I am an idiot', and have no right to vote until the day they die.

There is lots of blame to go around, and the only criticism one can throw at Bush is over the response to the disaster AFTER it occurred.

Very true - and I hope what I said isn't misconstrued as a defense of Bush. Knowing what they knew - the initial federal response should have been much stronger. Instead it took them 2 or 3 days to really get going, and by then the damage was already done. But be realisitc folks. It wasn't Bush's fault the levees broke. It wasn't Bush's fault that the evacuation was slow, unorganized, and ineffective - leaving thousands stranded. What was Bush's fault was that initial relief efforts were tepid, and that sufficient relief effort didn't arrive for a few days.

But even so, federal efforts were already rolling even before the 26th. The Coast Guard, the National Guard, and a whole host of agencies Federal, State, local, and private were already moving. Bush signed the disaster aid request from the governor on the 28th. Katrina didn't even make landfall until the 29th. The levees didn't start failing en masse until late on the 29th and afterwards. Government doesn't send in tens of thousands of national guardsmen right into a hurricane that is still in progress.

And finally, no one really expected things to get that bad. It just seems to me that neolib apologists are pretending to be Wizards of Hindsight on this topic. They pretend everything was all Bush's fault when realistically speaking, the blame spreads around in a lot of neolib corners before it ever gets to Bush.

the simple explanation for the efficiency part of the argument, is that government jobs have salary caps that are very modest compared to any private sector jobs.

for example, my friend just got his first raise (1 year in) at his civilian research job with the coast guard in Washington DC, and we have inspected the salary chart thoroughly. at the highest level civilian position (GS-15) you make 120k in your first year, and with maxxed out seniority (i forget how many years, but >20) you can earn a maximum of 153k.

considering the recent outrage at greedy high level execs for banks, auto manufacturers, etc, this should be a good talking point for supporters of this medicare bill.

Stop blathering about it. Its the damn coast guard.. take a boat out, get a sample, and send it to a damn lab at some university for analysis. They'll do that shit practically for free, if not totally free.

A classic - *dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Funny-TV-ad-German-coast-guard

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by Krupo.

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by Fusionaut.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Funny-TV-ad-German-coast-guard

Dupe:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Funny-TV-ad-German-coast-guard

According to their website, Americorp pays you a modest salary that's enough to pay your bills.

Regarding the military, only a small percentage of the millions of serving men and women will ever kill someone, become permanently injured on the job, or spend the rest of their lives trying to forget something they've done. This isn't Vietnam. If you're concerned about those things, join the Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard where the odds of those things happening to you are minuscule.

*promote ze german coast guard, mein guter Herr Siftbot!

You can't create equality by enforcing inequality. Way back when I was in college for my CS degree, they were giving full ride scholarships to women just for being a woman to pursue a CS degree. Where as for me, being a white male from a middle class family was subject to no gender or race based perks. You can only have equality of opportunity, not of experience without being massively unfair and unjust.

By that same token, my best friend whom is half black was qualified for a full ride scholarship to the US coast guard but turned it down as he was also qualified because of his grades. In other words, he worked hard and earned it based in merit what would of been just given to him for being (part) black regardless.

Affirmative action is state sponsored racism just like separate but equal facilities was. You can not accomplish gender and race based equality without (duh) gender and race based equality.

Pooping all over the Coast Guard again? Oh man, this sounds like a song I'd expect to hear coming from the Soviets, if there was more vodka included.

Just a bit *dark.

Coast guard rocks. One of the few government-funded things that has their shit together.

Yeesh, these Bush flunkies can't seem to muddle through any conversation without telling a big pack of *lies.

To one extent it is true that usually aid is usually delivered by military vessels -- what they leave out is that the military vessel is usually a hospital or supply ship. In the case of Georgia, they used a Coast Guard Cutter (the Dallas) which is innocuous enough, but they also sent the USS Mt. Whitney which is a Command/Control (or Electronic Warfare) vessel, and the USS McFaul, which is a brand new Missile Destroyer.

Never mind the bigger lie, where he claims with absolute certainty that all fault rests with Russia in this conflict.