Does Limbaugh Ever Get Tired of Being Wrong?

Rush Limbaugh today railed against the Obama administration and their plans to be able to alert you via the FCC of disasters through your cell phone. There's only one problem:

This plan was authored by Tea Party poster boy, Jim DeMint in 2006 and passed by Congress and also supported by an executive order signed by President Bush. In 2006 the GOP controlled all of Congress and the White House. This is a GOP plan, not a Democratic one.

Did he actually read about this other than from his faxed talking points? Or did he purposely omit the fact that this national emergency alert system has been in the works for five years?

He's such a funny jester.

(H/T Intoxination)

Feeding Frenzy

There's good ol' Mitt Romney taking a leisurely paddle out on the Republican Presidential Nomination Sea on his surfboard. But there are sharks in the water below him and they're confused (as is the case with most GOP sharks) and his silhouette looks like a seal. They go in for the kill. There's blood in the water. Health care blood.

Yesterday, it was the news that Jim DeMint won’t support Mitt Romney unless Romney repudiates RomneyCare.

Now it’s Mike Huckabee’s turn. Speaking on Fox early Friday afternoon, the former Arkansas Governor said that RomneyCare is a “real problem for Mitt Romney” and that the reform plan is Romney’s “Achilles’ heel.”

Huckabee said he was advising Romney to repudiate his health care plan “because it is the model for ObamaCare, and now we have it 50 states, and not one.” Romney, however, is standing by his plan, saying he’s got no apologies for signing it into law despite its similarities to President Obama’s health care reform plan.

A New Wave of Crazy

I understand the calculations in the current political climate that cause some to tack to the right simply in an attempt to save their jobs. But in cases like this, the pushback after President Obama took office has given the excuse for current office holders to display their full wingnuttia and expose what most likely have been their true feelings all along with the added arrogance of thinking they have nothing to fear in showing their true colors.

In addition to reiterating anti-choice talking points on abortion and backing "traditional marriage," according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, [Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C.] went further and "said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

So now DeMint's expanding his discrimination to single pregnant women as well as gays. ...Nice.

Who's Waterloo?

Much was made, and rightly so, of Senator Jim DeMint's comment about the failure of health care reform as President Obama's Waterloo. They wanted to "break him," proving that the defeat of the administration was first and foremost on the minds of the GOP, and not about the welfare of the American people.

Well, someone on their side happens to disagree. Just as the failure of health care reform may have been Obama's Waterloo, the passage of it may signal the Republican Party's own demise.

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. [...]

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. [...]

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

Boehner and McConnell bet 'NO' and lost. Instead of being part of the process, they put their hopes on fringiest of the fringe and a Tea Party revolt, preferring to let Michele Bachmann and Steve King lead. They delayed for a year and it still passed.

And as David Frum notes, the only winners here are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.

(H/T HuffPo)

It's Not About Knitting Needles

Every airline trip is an adventure for me. Having a similar name to someone on the "No Fly" list, I never know what I'm going to encounter from trip to trip. Sometimes, I check in and print my boarding pass at home, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I zip right through TSA security, sometimes I get pulled out of the queue.

I suppose I've learned to deal with the inconvenience of it all. I greet the TSA agent with a friendly salutation and a smile, obediently take my shoes off and empty my pockets, deposit anything metallic in their requisite rectangular, plastic gray bin, pull out my laptop from the bag that's going to get scanned anyway. I don't find the whole process any less asinine. I've just learned to deal with it. I must admit that appeasing my wife on these travel trips instead of showing my displeasure about being scrutinized it is part of the reason. But still, I deal with it.

Then comes the Scrotum Bomber. Seriously?

I sat in wonderment in the middle of Cincinnati when I heard about the attempted bombing of a plane in Detroit by a Fruit of the Loom freakazoid and thought I would wind up being strip searched in the airport just to get home after the holidays. I heard about new "restrictions" while flying such as not being able to access carry-on baggage, not being able to leave your seat and not being able to use a blanket during the last hour of a flight. And I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

And this is the crux of the problem with airline safety. We live in a world of reaction, not prevention, hence the ridiculous rules and restrictions. We have to take our shoes off because some idiot tried to blow his shoes up on a plane. What are the chances that method will be used again? We can't pack liquids of more than 3 ounces. Who made that arbitrary decision? Why not 4 ounces? Or 3½ ounces? If I can only find a 3½ oz travel size bottle of hair gel or toothpaste, will TSA take it away because it's a half ounce over the limit? And why do we have to put it in a separate plastic bag and unpack it for inspection when the baggage is being X-rayed anyway? Please don't insult my intelligence by telling me that your friendly, neighborhood TSA agent is specially trained in detecting the difference between hair product and ignitable chemicals with the naked eye. And why do I have to remove my laptop from my bag when they eventually scan the now empty bag as well?

But this show is what passes for security. And in the latest case of the would be terrorist who dared set his nutsac on fire, the problem in the security lapse had nothing to do with TSA, at least not in any of the US airports. His name was on a watch list after the government was warned, yet never made it on to the no fly list. So they watched him get on a plane. Twice. This has nothing to do with removing my shoes at the TSA security gate.

And we're not even thinking of our incredibly porous port security. We may as well shut down everything coming in and out through our borders if we want to begin thinking about safety. But that's not what we do. That would affect our bottom line. Gotta keep those lead laden children's toys coming in from China. Instead we stand in a booth and get little blasts of air shot at us. Boy, do I feel safer after that. And the show continues.

And of course, there's nothing like politicizing the situation and playing the blame game. US Representatives Pete Hoekstra (yes, the same Hoekstra who compromises our security every time opens his mouth) and Peter King were pretty quick to blame the Obama administration for this security lapse. Maybe they should talk to their own party's Senator Jim DeMint who has personally blocked the confirmation of Obama's nomination for head of the TSA for the last four months. Or maybe we should ask why the nomination of Tara O'Toole for DHS Undersecretary of Science and Technology was blocked by GOP members for six months. So quick to accuse, these Republican hacks, while blocking literally hundreds of nominations for posts in the Obama administration. That's the equivalent of bitching that your quarterback gets sacked when you refuse to let the offensive line on the field.

The thing is, that if they're angry enough, and crazy enough, no matter what we can do to try and deter terrorists, there will always be a way to get around the security. Because it's not about looking for weapons. It's not about profiling. It's about proper training to distinguish suspicious behavior. And that takes a little more time than 10 weeks of training just to shine a little blue light on driver's license or confiscate bottled water.

It's not about box cutters or pocket knives or knitting needles. It never was. It's all reaction.

Our Nation's Leaders

Senator Jim DeMint thinks he knows what's happ'nin' in da DC 'hoods.

Think Progress: Yesterday, at a news conference promoting a Republican amendment to continue D.C.’s school voucher program, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — a longtime cheerleader for vouchers — suggested that students in D.C. public schools are more likely to join gangs than graduate. “If you send a kid to [public] school in D.C., chances are that they will end up in a gang rather than graduating,” he said. City officials were quick to respond, noting that “gross misjudgments like that one” bolster the argument for giving D.C. full voting rights in the House. In fact, nearly 70 percent of D.C. students graduated last year, putting the District “in line with the national average,” while Sen. DeMint’s home state of South Carolina had a graduation rate of “almost 56 percent,” the fourth worst in the nation.

Way to go, DeMint! More Republican awesomeness!