Great piece today by Joe Queenan of the Los Angeles Times, reposted by McClatchy, on the idle threats that come and go with major legislative change. He points to Rush Limbaugh and the like who vowed to move out of the United States if Obama's health care package passed.

Not unlike many who said they would skip to Europe or elsewhere if George W. Bush won re-election in 2004. Both happened, few moved.

“Last week I read about a new poll indicating that if the health care bill passed, 46 percent of primary-care physicians would close up shop. Well, it's passed, so now it's time to put your money where your mouth is, physicians of the republic. The same goes for you, Rush. First you threatened to leave New York City if a new tax on the rich got passed. The legislation is now law, but it took you a year to put your Manhattan apartment on the market. Then came the Costa Rica threat, but two weeks after Obamacare passed, you're not there,” Queenan writes.

“This is unmanly and unconscionable. If you tell everybody that you're so fed up with the direction the country is headed that you're going to leave, then you are morally obligated to leave, or at least give your fellow Americans a timetable for your departure. Otherwise, the rest of us find ourselves in a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario, wondering what whopper you'll tell next. But unlike the boy, who only told a fib, you committed a truly unforgivable crime. You got people's hopes up.”