EVERYTHING'S CRAZIER IN TEXAS?

Just ran across this story from late last week about gold lunacy in Texas:

Call it the Rick Perry gold rush: The governor wants to bring the state's gold reserves back from a New York vault to Texas.

And he may have legislative support to do it. Freshman Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, is carrying a bill that would establish the Texas Bullion Depository, a secure state-based bank to house $1 billion worth of gold bars owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Company, or UTIMCO, and currently stored by the Federal Reserve.

There'd be nothing wrong with Texas having physical possession of its own gold -- but, um, what's wrong with the status quo? Well, what's wrong with it is the usual right-wing fear/craving of apocalypse combined with the unscratchable Texas/Confederate itch for secession. The implication seems to be that the Civil War might start up again, or Texas might get an urge for goin', or Cyprus/Greece/Spain might happen in America (paranoid right-wingers are going crazy these days waiting for that shoe to drop -- they're like an economic doomsday cult). Um, frankly, if a meltdown that awful ever did come to America, the federal government might screw all kinds of people, but it sure as hell would protect the investment of Texas. But it's pleasing to crazy right-wingers to believe otherwise.

Ron Paul shows up in this story, of course:

... "If you think gold is a hedge, or a protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as possible," [Ron] Paul told the Tribune on Thursday. "Texas is better served if it knows exactly where the gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve."

Right -- you wouldn't want to trust the security of a podunk outfit like the Federal Reserve in New York.

America's other high-profile fruitcake gold bug also shows up in this story -- Governor Perry discussed this last Tuesday on Glenn Beck's radio show.

But you know who else wants this? Bidnessmen:

"Something on the scorecards of a lot of these businesses in deciding whether they want to come to Texas is stability and gold as being one of those items," Capriglione said.

Seriously? You're running a large corporation and you're as paranoid as a crank in Mom's basement listening to Beck and Alex Jones with Fox News blaring in the background? Is that why I'm not a wealthy entrepreneur -- I'm not paranoid enough?

Someday history will reckon with how right-wing media made a significant portion of this country clinically insane for decades. For now, the rest of us just have to live with the consequences.