Last Call

But racism is dead, they told me.  It's all "reverse racism" now.  Old racism simply doesn't ha...errm, uh-oh.

 

A Mexican restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina is being criticized for its racist T-shirts showing a wooden trap using tacos as bait with the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

As the Palmetto Public Record notes, a South Carolina reporter tweeted a photo yesterday of someone who appears to be a Taco Cid restaurant employee wearing the offensive shirt.

ThinkProgress spoke with an employee at Taco Cid who confirmed that restaurant workers indeed wear the shirt. He also noted that patrons can purchase it as well.

Taco Cid, a one-star restaurant that has shuttered franchises in recent years, appears to have cribbed the design from the “Offensive Obscene & Sex Related Tees” section of an online apparel designer.

Keep it classy, South Carolina.  Home to a bunch of racist jagoffs who can't even come up with an original racist idea and steal it off a website because they're lazy on top of being clueless bigots.

Nice work, clowns.

Reading The Hagel-ography

Fred Kaplan over at Slate thinks he has the reasons why Republicans hate Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary:

The real question is what kind of job Obama wants his next secretary of defense to do. I have no inside knowledge on this, but judging from some of his actions and remarks on matters of national defense, Hagel seems to be the right choice. And that’s what disturbs the most outspoken Hagel-resisters.

These resisters have four main concerns. They fear that Hagel will cut the military budget. They fear that he’ll roll over if Iran builds a nuclear weapon. They fear that he’s too reluctant to use military force generally. And they fear he doesn’t much like Israel; the extremists on this point claim he’s anti-Semitic.

Kaplan then discusses these points, and finds they're all nonsense.

Let’s look at the real issues. Hagel is a former two-term Republican senator. He won two Purple Hearts as an infantry squad leader in Vietnam. No one could possibly dispute his devotion to the country, its security, or its armed forces. But he is a pragmatist, and there may be the rub. What Republicans seem to fear most is that by appointing Hagel as secretary of defense, Obama can claim a false bipartisanship in his national-security team. In fact, these critics say Hagel does not reflect the values or positions of the Republican Party; his presence in Cabinet meetings would not constitute real bipartisanship.

If that is true, the real problem is with the present-day Republican Party. It’s often said that today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Ronald Reagan for president. By the same token, much of its leadership would rail against Robert Gates for secretary of defense.

For once, Kaplan is right.  Also, let's not forget that the real reason the Republican party will fight Chuck Hagel as Pentagon head is the fact that Barack Obama is the one nominating him.  President Obama could nominate anyone -- even a Republican, mind you -- and they would be shot down.

Republicans are going to block anything the President tries to do, and then cry "DICTATORSHIP!" when the President is forced to use executive orders and recess appointments to do anything at all.  That certainly didn't change just because the President, you know, won the election.

Drunk With Power

Sen. Rand Paul, call your office please.

The son of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, and the grandson of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, was arrested Saturday morning at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

Police said William Hilton Paul, 19, was traveling early Saturday from Lexington, Ky., to Charlotte.

When the plane landed about 10:49 a.m., Paul was charged with consuming beer/wine underage, disorderly conduct and being intoxicated and disruptive.

“He was possibly served alcohol on the flight,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Blake Hollar said.

Rand Paul’s office issued a brief statement: “Sen. Paul is a national public figure and subject to scrutiny in the public arena. However, as many parents with teenagers would understand, his family should be afforded the privacy and respect they deserve in a situation such as this.” 

Really?  He's legally over 18 and doing a drunk and disorderly in an airport at ten in the morning.   That's 60 to 120 days in jail and a suspended license for a year on just the underage charge, plus the D&D.  Now, nobody expects a US senator's son to end up in the Mecklenburg County jail for two months, but you know, isn't that a states' rights issue, as both Rand and Ron Paul have said?

Should get interesting if the charges aren't dismissed outright.  He's still the son of a senator.  Not exactly subject to the laws their parents write, you know.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/06/3768359/man-idd-as-rand-pauls-son-arrested.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• President Obama is expected to formally nominate former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to the post of Secretary of Defense.
• Scientists studying dark matter have managed to break the absolute zero temperature barrier, creating readings below zero degrees kelvin.
• Construction is finally complete on a new hybrid airship that combines a zeppelin and an airplane for large cargo lifting, with the airship's first flight soon.
• As Chinese flat screen TV makers are getting into the US market, analysts say competition could sharply lower prices of new TV sets in 2013.
• The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas gets underway this week as tech companies show off the latest and greatest for 2013.