There’s more talk about Texas seceding from the union again, this time not just some extremist nut jobs but the GOP itself (although to be fair it’s getting pretty hard to tell the difference).

Let’s let ’em do it. There’s some whining about all the federal money that Texas will lose but Texas is actually one of the only red states that carries its own water. So they’d need to do some juggling but they could pay for everything from state funds and more since they wouldn’t need to carry other red states.

But the big upside is the GOP would lose a significant number of GOP seats in the Senate and House, making the country basically a Democratic country for the foreseeable.

So while it’s technically “illegal” for them to secede under current law, let’s give it a tweak and green light succession.

But gas prices!!

There are folks right now who are trying to hang high gas prices on the Democrats. Here’s why that’s goofy.

First off, there’s this time stuff. The Trump economic policies (if you can call them that) are only now just starting to take effect. You didn’t think it would be instant, did you? There’s a lot of inertia built into the system so things held together more or less during the Trump presidency in spite of some heinous policy changes. Now tariffs are biting, the effects of the “look the other way” approach to COVID, and the huge increase in federal deficit and the attendant printing of money are all contributing to inflation and gas prices.

Plus there’s the funny multiplicative effect from the oil companies who have decided “we’ll drive up prices so they’ll elect GOP and they’ll get us more tax breaks.” Crude oil is about 70% of it maximum price but price at the pump is breaking records.

So, yeah, sure, it makes the Dems look bad but you can’t blame the guy you hired to fix things for the mess he needs to fix.

Side note on gas prices

No, opening the new Keystone pipeline additions wouldn’t help gas prices. A large amount of the Keystone pipeline is currently operational and it carries Canadian tar sands which can’t be used to make gas. Opening more would just help Canadian oil companies get their tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico to sell across the sea. It would however take over a large amount of US land which does not make the current US citizens who own that land very happy.