Yep, that's what's left of a block of homes after the wildfires in Texas ripped through Bastrop a little over a week ago. In Washington, DC, despite extra disaster funding having passed the Senate, the bespectacled goblin known as Eric Cantor is holding it up in the House.
And despite Gov. Rick Perry saying that he wants all but two counties in Texas declared federal disaster areas and that "I full well expect the federal government to come in to do their part" (which is just another way of saying, "My anti-Washington rhetoric is jim dandy until a drought wrecks the fuck out of my state and we can't afford to take care of it ourselves, like when I cut firefighers' budgets. Y'all see that?"), both Texas senators and some Republican representatives say that no more money should go to FEMA unless "offsets" can be found elsewhere.
As one Republican congressman jawed, "I strongly maintain that our government must stop spending money we simply do not have, and equal cuts and offsets in our budget should be made to provide federal relief to those facing the devastation of this horrific natural disaster."
Or perhaps Texans can just wallow in the dust and ash of their disintegrating state, comforted in knowing they didn't cost Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty and Exxon one more penny. But at least their ideology stayed pure.
