Yes, folks, all it takes is to be a loyal reader of Tiny Cat Pants and I will recount your exploits to the people in my office and then on the internet as if they are great victories for humanity. I will still get pissed at you on occasion, but I will cheer for you when you deserve it.
And today, Mike Turner deserves it. You may remember that we can’t have nice things in Tennessee because of Susan Lynn and her 10th Amendment fetish and now she’s threatening to write into our state constitution a law that would let Tennessee declare any federal law it wants null and void. I will wait here while you finish laughing.
Done? Okay, and this is in an effort to, and I am not even making this up, keep Tennesseans from participating in the upcoming healthcare reform. Lynn is saying “Voters, I want to make it so the Federal Government will take your tax dollars and use it to implement healthcare reform in every other state but ours. I want to forbid them from using your tax money in your own state.” Ha, unless her next act is to encourage the citizens of Tennessee to stop paying our federal income tax? I don’t know. But it’s hilarious.
So, anyway, in response to this, Turner responds thusly:
“Susan Lynn is yearning for times gone by,” Turner said. “Maybe we could put the poor people back to sharecropping and slavery and let the people up at the big house have all the nice things. We’ve already had that fight about states’ rights.
“I’m probably against everything that Susan Lynn’s for. I know people in her district without health care insurance. I know people in her district without jobs. These people are suffering. I’m just not sure she lives in the same world as everybody else.”
Lynn responded, “I can’t even imagine that’s a serious comment.”
Right. Her desire to nullify laws she doesn’t like through the magic of the 10th Amendment is serious, but she can’t imagine Turner is serious? Hilarious.
Seriously, when I think that some of y’all don’t get to have this much fun watching these clowns do their acts, I feel bad for you.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I have quite a bit of fun – especially when it’s Turner calling someone out and reducing their argument to absurdity because, even with the foot-in-mouth instances, when he gets it right he gets it right as above – until it hits me that some of these folks aren’t engaging in luchador-mask political theatre.
They mean it.
Elected officials, when reminded that an attempt to use nullification once led to civil war, aren’t batting an eyelash. Secession seems to be what some folks – not necessarily Rep. Lynn, but definitely some commenters in the blogosphere – are hoping for.
Maybe, even after twenty years here and marrying a nice West Tennessee boy, I’m still too much of a damn Yankee because the only thing approaching a coherent reaction I can have to that is, “Are you bullshitting me?” (That, and, “I’m agreeing with Campfield on something?” See reaction one.)
There’s many of these nullification/secession acts floating around in the former Confederate states. I’m not exactly sure what the people who are waving that sword think they’re doing — their states typically get a hell of a lot more federal money than they throw in the kitty and typically that’s allowed these so-called “recipient states” to avoid putting state taxes in place to provide services that their citizens need, expect, and demand. I guess if they want to take on the full burden of their own support, I as a resident of a “contributor state” say knock yourself out, Bubba.
Here’s a table that lists the ranking of states in relation to how much money they’ve received from the fed versus how much money they’ve paid into the fed for the years 1981-2005 — I think you can see what I’m talking about.