The crazies all come out after a big natural disaster. Those who think the world is ending soon or those who think the New World Order has earthquake machines are only part of this circus, those who simply hate President Obama have joined in too.
I find using the pain of others to advance your agenda quite distasteful under the best circumstance, but the using this tragedy for political attacks is unbelievable. Then again, a lot that the Tea Partiers do is beyond my understanding.
The issues here are high speed trains (liberals are for them, thus they must be bad) and nuclear power (liberals against, thus good). See more below the fold.
While driving to work this morning I was listening to KCOL, a northern Colorado talk radio Fox “News” station that has Rush, Sean, Glenn and all the major anti-Obama players on it. The morning show is hosted by Gail and Al and when I tuned in they were talking about Japanese Bullet Trains going missing during the quake & tsunami. The gist of it was that not long after the new started coming out about the destruction, several trains were missing, possibly detailed or even washed out to sea if they were on tracks too close to the coast adjacent to the epicenter. Tragic, but to be expected. One train was rumored to be a Shinkansen, or bullet train, and they focused on that, telling their listeners that this proves how dangerous high speed trains can be. And, this Obama guy wants to put high speed trains on every streetcorner, making the US into a disaster waiting to happen.
My jaw was dropped in disbelief. I don’t care if you were on a regular train, high speed train, a car, a bus, or a fast mule, if you were by the coast when the tsunami rolled in, you were in trouble. There was no logical reason to make people afraid of trains, but they were flogging that horse none the less.
Then, less than a couple of minutes later, they started talking about nuclear power and a statement made by Rep. Ed Markey (D. Mass). They were outraged by what they characterized as anti-nuclear “hysteria.” I suppose they meant this:
"We just have to call a time out and examine whether or not those safety features necessary in the future are built into new nuclear power plants in our country."
Pretty heady stuff. In their rant they condemned fear mongering and using the pain of others to make political hay, in fact it was basically what I had felt about their anti-train rant just minutes earlier. Still it was “unforgivable” and they urged others to spread the word and support nuclear power as being safe.
At least we didn’t have Dick Morris going on the Sunday shows to tell us “Obama broke Japan, now he owns it.”