Poor Baby

Rand Paul is whining that the TSA at the Nashville airport were mean to him. They “barked” at him! I assume he was referring to human personnel and not sniffer dogs. Imagine that a Person in Authority would so much as raise his voice at a law-abiding citizen! Obviously, that never happens to anyone but people known to be conservative politicians.

Yes, it was a “major ordeal”! I hope he recovers. Ron Father of Rand is saying the police state is out of control! And of course all the rightie bloggers are in full-bore everybody-picks-on-us and Obama-is-a-dictator mode.

I’m sure they were just as outraged when Sen. Edward Kennedy was stopped and questioned by airport security five times in March 2004. Oh, wait …

No, Both Sides Don’t Do This

Genuinely disgusting.

Update: Blue Arkansas

Personally I would hope that leaders on the right-Steve Womack, the Arkansas Republican Party, etc.-would step up and condemn this as strongly as possible. I would also hope that Steve Womack’s father, owner of a local radio station, would stop giving out the names, phone numbers, and addresses of members of the Aden team or anyone else for that matter on his radio program when ranting about Aden. The elder Womack has done that several times and Aden’s former press secretary got a death threat in the mail soon after her name was mentioned on the program. Clearly there is someone out there that doesn’t need anymore of that kind of information, much less inspiration to act on their hatred. I also hope that the Aden campaign will do whatever they can to up the security at some of their events, for the time being at least. Aden has said he’s going to put out a press release on the matter soon, and we’ll be following this and any developments related to it closely.

The radio station is KURM, I believe.

Stuff to Read

James Surowiecki, “Private Equity.” Yes, it’s as bad as we think it is. See also Krugman’s comment:

They make one especially keen point: if it were really about adding efficiency, why do the same people lead takeovers in many industries, instead of people with specific expertise in each industry doing the job? Their answer is that these specialists are specialists in deal-breaking, not value creation.

This takes me back to my theory of What’s Gone Wrong With American Business. I wrote awhile back:

In my experience, CEOs rarely come up through the ranks of production, manufacturing or engineering. They come from finance, advertising, marketing. They make decisions about money, sales, acquisitions. Often they have only a vague idea how the products their company sells actually get made. Nor do they care. As a rule they don’t deal with employees below the upper management level. Often they aren’t even that bright; they’re just really aggressive and narcissistic and intimidate everyone around them into obedience. Their success often depends on the quality of the staffs they assemble around them who take care of the details, like actually managing.

The money guys not only don’t care how the products get made; they have no respect for the processes and skills required to get products made. This means they honestly don’t see any difference between managing a fruit company or an automobile company or a toothpaste company. “Making things” is what the little faceless drones in the office cubicle hives do, and one office full of faceless drones is just like another to the big shots.

See also Steve Kornacki, “When a Party Flirts With Suicide.”

Update: Following up the Rand Son of Ron airport issue mentioned in the last post — Steve Benen says Rand was on his way to Washington to speak at the annual “March for Life,” also called the March to Criminalize Abortion and Turn Women Into Cows. Steve says,

Hmm. So, Rand Paul, always cautious about his privacy rights, balked at airport security measures. He was en route to a March for Life rally, where he’ll speak to activists who don’t believe there is a right to privacy.

Libertarians sure are an odd bunch.

Son of Ron was able to take another flight.

Is Mittens Toast?

The latest data at Nate’s place:

Florida VOTE
PROJECTION
CHANCE
OF WIN
Newt Gingrich 37.6% 66%
Mitt Romney 30.0 32
Ron Paul 15.2 1

All last week, the chart showed Mittens as the overwhelming favorite in Florida, with a 90-something chance to win. Now that’s gone. almost overnight.

The Florida primary is nine days away, and a lot can happen in nine days. But Romney’s strength (again, this is what Nate said awhile back) is that he was positioned to dominate the early primaries, and that’s not happening. And there aren’t that many primaries in February. A bunch of caucuses, yes, including the ever-entertaining Nevada caucus. There’s a primary in Missouri that won’t award actual delegates.

So after Florida the only “real” primaries are in Arizona and Michigan on February 28, and then there’s super Tuesday on March 6. So one could argue that a big win in Florida could give Newt the “big mo” going into Super Tuesday. At the very least, if Newt wins Florida as decisively as he won South Carolina — still an if, with nine days to go — it ought to cement his status as the Favorite Not-Mittens Candidate, and Santorum and Ron Paul likely would fade away.

Democrats are surely giggly with joy at this development. On the other hand, Newt’s blown it before; he can always blow it again.

Update
— speaking of Ron Paul — Rand Son of Ron was detained at the Nashville airport for refusing to be patted down after the body scanner showed an “anomaly.” Y’all can go ahead and have fun guessing what the “anomaly” is; the news story doesn’t say.

Update: More news stories say that Rand Son of Ron was not detained at the Nashville airport, but neither was he allowed to board the plane.