Some Thoughts On Hawaii’s Mistaken Alert

Rush Limbaugh said some very interesting (and true) things about Hawaii’s false missile alert. I would like to share them here.

This is part of the transcript of what Rush Limbaugh said yesterday on his radio show:

You know, I mentioned on this program countless times that one of — you know, we all have pet peeves. And one of my biggest pet peeves is arrogant condescension. People who know less than I do who think they know more than everybody else, and they’re arrogant about it. And then they condescend, treat you like you’re an idiot, treat you like you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about.

The second — and it’s kind of related — the second pet peeve that I have is people insulting my intelligence, and it happens frequently. And we are in the midst of it right now with this explanation of what happened in Hawaii with the, “Oops, the guy hit the wrong button!” And for 34 minutes, the people of Hawaii thought they were dead. Yeah, he hit the wrong button twice.

Have any of you — don’t do this if you haven’t — have any of you on your iPhone ever had to erase the whole thing for whatever reason to start over? It’s called settings, general, reset. And there are many different things you can reset. You can reset network settings, you can reset the whole damn thing, which means that you are going to erase everything on the phone. You have to confirm that a minimum of three times.

Apple will not let you do that accidentally.  And it’s an iPhone and there’s not a single nuclear code on an iPhone.  All there is is your personal data.  All of your passwords, your settings, whatever is on the phone, if you have to erase it, which you can do, you will get three different alerts asking you if that’s what you really intend to do, if you’re really certain about it. And there are areas like this all over the iPhone.

There is a feature that hardly anybody knows about.  It’s well hidden.  It happens to be one of my favorite features that Apple will not divulge anything about.  It’s called significant locations.  I’m not even gonna bother to tell you where it is.  That’s not the point.  But you can clear the location history from your phone if you want to.  Your phone records, where you’ve been.  I happen to think that’s marvelous and magic and great and I love it.  And I use it.  Other people are paranoid about it.  They think Tim Cook is spying on everything they do, just like Zuckerberg spying on every Facebook user and the Twitter people — (laughing) it turns out the Twitter people are spying on you!  O’Keefe has yet another video from Project Veritas.

They’re collecting everything at Twitter on you, everything, including your photos.  They’re creating a sexual file of all of their users.  They’re creating a data file on everybody at Twitter, by their own admission.  More details on that.  Anyway, if you want to clear your location. Let’s say you have effectively been made paranoid about your phone recording where you’ve been.  And you find out about it, “Oh, no, I want to get rid of that.”  Okay.  You go into significant locations, and you tap on “clear history.”

You will have to do it three times.  You’ll have to confirm that’s what you want to do three times. Just like if you want to erase the whole phone, you’ll have to confirm that three times. “Are you sure you want to?”  Yes.  “Are you really, really sure?  This is gonna erase everything on your phone, and you can’t go back and undo this.  Are you sure you want to do it?”  You tap “yes.”

It comes back, “Do you really know what you’re doing here?  Are you certain that you want to take this phone and make it like it’s brand-new out of the box?”  And yet we’re told that on a nuclear warning test, the guy hit the wrong button twice.  We’re now told the guy hasn’t been fired.  He’s barely been reprimanded.  We don’t know his name.  He’s going to be reassigned.

…And we’re told, “Ah, the guy hit the wrong button.”

I just can’t accept this, not within the context of everything that has gone on that has been originated in or perpetrated by the American left and our administrative state. The Hawaii emergency management administrator, Vern Miyagi, reported one of his employees clicked the wrong button twice, said, “It’s embarrassing, but again, it’s a mistake.”

Why hasn’t it happened before? If it’s this easy to make this kind of mistake, why hasn’t it happened before? And why did it take 34 minutes to correct this mistake? People were living in abject fear, except for one guy who kept playing golf. I like that guy. He said (paraphrasing), “Even if it’s true, I’m going out doing what I love. To hell with it. I’m not hiding in some sewer drain.” But that’s what people were doing. They were hiding their kids everywhere they could. I mean, for 34 minutes the Hawaii emergency management administration allowed abject fear to percolate in the state of Hawaii.

“Vern Miyagi, the administrator, said, that he “was supposed to select the option for a drill. Instead, he chose the real thing twice. ‘A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. This is not a drill.’” Grab audio sound bite number 17. Here is what it sounded like…

VOICE: The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. This is not a drill. If you are indoors, say indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor.

So let’s say the employee did this on purpose. Thank God America did not respond. The military would have known if there actually were missiles in the air, so they would have known the alert was a mistake. Did the military scramble? Did they know about the alert?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the person who pushed the button thought that if he could get a dangerous response out of President Trump, President Trump could be declared unfit for office. Having watched the media for the past year, I am convinced that there are some people out there who would put the safety of America at risk to bring down President Trump. The irrational hatred of President Trump is totally amazing. Was this person willing to start World War III in order to prevent President Trump from succeeding? I don’t know. I do know that Microsoft Word won’t even let me close down its window without telling me that I am going to lose what I have typed. Surely, our missile alert system is better than that.