The title of the article is Texas Wildfires: Is Rick Perry being hypocritical asking for federal aid? Gosh, ya think?

This week, the administration gave seven local disaster declarations to specific Texas counties, but Perry criticized the federal government for not making bulldozers at Fort Hood available to firefighters in nearby Bastrop County. This after the Republican-led Texas Legislature cut volunteer fire department “assistance grants” for equipment like bulldozers by 75 percent this summer to help balance the state budget. In Texas, volunteer firefighters do 80 percent of the wildland firefighting.

Umm, yeah, cutting equipment used by a volunteer fire department and then implying a political rival is causing the problem adds up to more than mere hypocrisy, it is full blown lying out of your ass duplicity. So yes, Perry is being a hypocritical liar, but then so are all the Teaparty darlings. Michelle Bachmann has personally and professionally made out like a bandit on one federal program after another. Previous GOP nominee front-runner Millard Romney grew up the privileged baby boy of a career politician serving in the Nixon cabinet. Even Dr. Ron Paul, the father of the Teaparty movement, enjoyed federal aid and the benefit of federal spending before and after Hurricane Ike did billions of dollars in damage to his home district in 2009, without which his constituents would probably have called for his head. What’s more is this is normal, this is how our system of government works.

When conservatives need trillions to bail out idiot investment bankers or dole out no-bid energy contracts or hand out truckloads of hundred bills to corrupt officials and mercenaries in Iraq, worries about deficit spending evaporate like morning dew. But when an actual American taxpayer asks for help suddenly it’s a national crisis. Deficit hysteria is simply a convenient smoke screen for conservatives to cower behind anytime We the People dare ask for a portion of our own tax dollars to help blunt the cutting edge of disastrous wingnut policies.