Did Rick Santorum Almost...?

I'm not really sure what to think of this.  Technically speaking, Santorum didn't actually say anything.  But the fact that he stumbled and then changed subjects completely has me wondering what it was that he was going to say.

No other words come to my mind other than the harsh, derogatory racial slur.

I expected this to be all over the news and yet I haven't heard a peep from any major news network.  It only popped up once here at AddictingInfo (where I first saw it).  So what's up, media?  I think this deserves a little attention.  I'd at least like to know what it was he was going to say, and why he stumbled over his words like that.

What do you think?  Speak up in the comment section below. 

Gingrich And Santorum Attack Obama For His Comments About Trayvon Martin's Death.

On the 23rd of March, President Obama spoke out on the murder of seventeen year old Trayvon Martin after a journalist asked him about the case.  He had this to say:

“I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking place right now. But obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through and when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. I think that every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened…But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Ten Logic Fallacies Used By Politicians (Part One).

Before I begin this particular post (and the one to follow), I want to thank E. Magill over at The Unapologetic Geek for compiling this list.  While the logical fallacy selections are his, the commentary is my own.

We're all aware of how most elected officials have their own way of speaking, much like lawyers do.  The best of them can turn an argument on its head or have you believing something that is completely fictitious.  Here are the first five of ten specific tactics to look out for the next time you hear any politician talk.

1.) The Straw Man Argument.

Political Spitfire - Two Week Round Up.

So I've been absent for a little while, as I'm sure my regular readers have noticed.  My fan page and special blog email have flooded with questions like, "Where are you?" and "Where the hell are you?" (Not really).  Well, I've been sick.  With the flu. 

And what a horrible time to be sick it was.  I missed so much and, because of that, you missed so much.  Because I'm your only source for news.  Right?

...Right?

Anyway, rather than make empty promises about how I'm going to catch up on all that stuff, I'm just going to quickly recap the things I would've written about had I not been sleeping away my illness.  Buckle your seat belts, people.

1.) Rush Limbaugh

Not 48 hours after my last post in which I criticized him for his remarks towards Danica Patrick, Rush Limbaugh dug himself a deeper grave when he called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute."  The day after that, he insisted that if women want the taxpayer's to pay for their contraception, then we (I assume he means himself there and not the taxpayers as a whole) "should get something out of it."  That something being internet videos of said women having sex.  As numerous groups, sites, and individuals have pointed out, Rush Limbaugh has absolutely no idea what he is talking about at any level.  I won't get into that myself, but I urge you to cross reference what he said with actual facts.  The results will surprise you.  Also, Limbaugh has since lost more than one hundred sponsors from his show.  I sincerely hope that this marks the end of Limbaugh's hold on shitty talk radio as well.

2.) James Inhofe

An actual living, breathing senator of the United States of America declared that global warming is a hoax, so sayeth the Lord.  "Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that 'as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.' My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."  You know what's outrageous, senator?  The fact that you represent this country.  You're basically saying that science, as well as basic ideas like "cause and effect," are nonsense.  Seriously.  Who voted these fucking idiots in?

3.) Missouri House of Representatives Advances Anti-Discrimination Bill

...For gun owners.  Oh, good.  Because when I woke up this morning, I was thinking that people with guns have been discriminated against for far too long.

4.) Andrew Breitbart

To me, his death was irrelevant.  That's not to say that I feel sorry for his family's loss, as well as for a death that came far too soon.  But apparently Breitbart had in his possession video taped evidence that would connect President Obama to *insert scary group here*.  When he died, several right-wing groups immediately suspected foul play and accused the Obama Administration of having Breitbart killed.  Despite the fact that Breitbart's own family shared the cause of his death without too much hesitation.  Oh, and the video taped evidence that Breitbart assured us would bring down the Obama Administration?  It was released, despite his death.  It was of Obama hugging the first black tenured professor at Harvard.  Scary stuff.  As ThinkProgress reports, PBS's Frontline program aired the same "damning" footage days before the 2008 election.  Whoops.

5.) Sarah Palin

My favorite Alaskan girl.  We go way back, her and I.  She was one of the first posts I ever wrote on this blog.  I put forth the hypothesis that she is really Predator from the alien action movies.  I think it was to prove a point.  I'm not really sure.  What I am sure of is that Palin accused President Obama of wanting to "go back to before [the days of the Civil War] when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin."  First of all, we are in different classes based on income.  Two, really.  Poor and wealthy.  The middle class is pretty much gone at this point.  Second of all (and more importantly), if President Obama wanted to return us to the days where classes were based on the color of our skin, wouldn't that be a bit of a step back for him?  How does this rhetoric even make sense?  For the love of all that is right in this world, please shut the fuck up.

6.) Mitt Romney

He's still trying to get everyone to like him, and he's still showing that he can't relate to anybody but his wealthy friends.  I'd be more excited talking to a saltine and a gallon of off-white paint than I would be voting for Romney.  I'm sure it would be a stimulating conversation.  If he wins the delegates, Republicans will back him, but not enthusiastically.  It's obvious to a lot of people that Obama will be in the White House for four more years.

7.) Wisconsin GOP

After the wave of anti-governor sentiment washed through the capital, the state GOP made sure to let their constituents know that they were listening - by boarding up all the doors and windows.  The GOP in the state assembly voted to amend the state constitution in order to make it harder for officials to be booted out of their office.  This really pisses me off.  Instead of listening to what the voters were saying (i.e. "You aren't doing your fucking job and we don't want you making laws for us anymore"), the politicians in the capital changed the rules to keep their jobs and to continue doing their dirty business.  Hey.  Guess what?  You're there because people voted you in.  If they want you out, one way or another, you're coming out.

8.) Rick Santorum

Someone dug up an interview back from 1994 in which Santorum claimed that, "Moms raising children in single-parent households simply [breed] more criminals." He also, according to ThinkProgress, introduced legislation during his second term as congressman that would have denied welfare benefits to mothers who could not name their child's father.  Asshole.

I Challenge Rick Santorum To A Debate.

 I want this copy and pasted and spread to the four corners of the internet.  Much like the high school sophomore from New Jersey, Amy Meyers, challenged Michele Bachmann to a debate on United States history, I am hereby issuing a similar challenge to Rick Santorum.  Here we go. 

 ----------

Dear Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum,

     My name is Shaun Robinson.  I am a college student in central Maine, studying to be a high school English teacher.  Due to your status as one of the last four candidates seeking the GOP nomination, your voice, opinions, and knowledge of American history are heard not just by fellow Americans, but by people around the world.  And as your opinions become increasingly venemous, so too does the world's opinion of us.  This is not okay.  We are not all like you, nor do we all think like you.

     Your lack of historical knowledge is fine - it's your problem.  But your penchant for spreading it as if it's truth is not.  It is ignorant.  It is appalling.  It is insulting.  And because you have made no effort to learn the truth, you have shown that you are far too close-minded to be the President of the United States of America.

     Mr. Santorum, your inability to present basic historical, scientific, and even religious facts - facts that middle school students learn - has led me to submit the following challenge, pitting my twenty-two years of life experience against your fifty-three years and your college education:

     I, Shaun Robinson, do hereby challenge presidential candidate Rick Santorum to a public debate on Modern Science, American History, and World Religion.  

     I hope to see you soon here in Maine for our debate.  

Sincerely,

     Shaun Robinson 

 ----------

As I said, please spread this all over the internet.  Contact the media if you know how, and get in touch with me via email at asanebreak@gmail.com with any questions you might have.  I really do hope that, unlike Representative Bachmann, Mr. Santorum accepts this challenge.

More From Rick Santorum.

I am so tired of writing about Rick Santorum.  But as the days pass us by, Santorum has realized that the only way that he can stay in the spotlight is to say outrageous nonsense to his base of scared, old, white people.  And, unfortunately, I'm a sucker for outrageous nonsense, no matter who the speaker is.  It's pretty much what this blog is about.  I do take issue with the fact that I only seem to be writing about Rick Santorum anymore, so much so that I've been considering changing the name to Rick Santorum Is A Mouth-Breathing Fuck, And Here Is Why.  Ugh, but then I lose brand recognition.  Oh, well.

At any rate, I'm not going to go over what he said in detail.  It's all over the internet.  Suffice it to say that the "liberal 'gotcha' media" pounced on Santorum over something he said about a famous speech by President John F. Kennedy back in 1960.  Here's a brief video outlining that:

Santorum on Church-State Separation

Santorum to Glenn Beck: Colleges Are Indoctrination Mills.

When Rick Santorum and Glenn Beck exchanged words last Thursday, I was surprised that the Earth didn't spin out of its orbit and into the Sun.  I was surprised that the planet's core did not implode; that the atmosphere didn't dissipate; that Jesus Himself didn't appear before us in his golden armor - flaming sword in hand - to usher in the rapture.  Why?

Because I was fairly certain that nature was supposed to abide by a strict set of laws, one of which being that two ignorant, pompous blow-hards like Glenn Beck and Rick Santorum could not share the same air space without the world - nay! - the universe ending.

Unfortunately, we're all still here.  Just you, me, and....this:

“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills.  The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.” 


Yeah.  Feel that?  Disgustingly uncomfortable, huh?  Like... like "swamp ass."  Ugh. 

Santorum Is On Everyone's Lips These Days.

Oh, boy, does Santorum know how to get a crowd of the Righteous Right going or what?  All it takes is one good glance at any major news network's home page to know that my buddy Rick Santorum is going places.  What places, you ask?  White House places.

Sure, most of the stories about him are usually ones questioning his "outrageous" statements and accusations against the left.  But where the Liberals see crazy, I see smear.  How dare the Left smear Santorum when every word out his mouth is divine truth.  In 2008, for example, he said that the Democratic Party has "become the party of Woodstock" in the sense that Democratic lawmakers "prey upon our most basic primal lusts...sex."  What kind of sex?  Homosexual sex of course.

To that I say, "Duh," but the media wants to pull the reigns on the horse and slow this Santorum buggy down.  Fuck that.  Santorum stops for no one except the Lord.  So suck it, Anderson Cooper.

Why Public Schools Are Unnecessary.

For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. 

“Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added.  “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.” 

-For the full article from The New York Times, click here.

Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum is correct, of course.  The federal government should not be running our public schools (which is why they don't), and neither should the state governments.  So, if not the government, than who?  The teachers?  Hah! Those liberal pussies aren't fit to run a classroom, much less the whole building.  Let's break it down and look at the pros and cons of public schooling:

The War Against Women.

Women.  They've been a thorn in our testicles ever since the One True God created them out of our manly ribs.  They get us kicked out of paradise by eating that fucking apple, and then they have the ovaries to complain when God curses them with menstruation and painful childbirth.  Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, ladies.

~6,000 years later on the other side of the Earth, women start to argue that they have rights too - that they are, in fact, human beings, and not just our childbearing, child-raising, maids/nannies.  While the idea itself is, to this day, laughable at best, they somehow managed to convince those damned bleeding heart liberal jag-offs in Washington to let them vote in 1920.  

Okay, okay.  Being allowed to vote probably isn't that big of a deal.  It's not like we'll ever have a president with a vagina, right?  But then they start running for Congress, and here's where things get messy.  Why?  Because women have no right to dictate how us men run our lives, our country, and our money.  It's as simple as that.  

The Shadow War On Religion Is Over.

And we were so close, too.

For the last few decades or so, we've waged our war against the religious institutions of the United States of America.  We have struck from the shadows.  We have meticulously chipped away at the foundations of Christianity at every level of the government.  Victory was all but assured.

But then we slipped up.  President Obama - our figurehead, our face - tried to force religious institutions to offer free contraception to women under their health insurance plans.  And now... now those institutions are on to us.  They now know about the war that we have waged for so long.

My friends.  It is over.

We cannot stand tall and fight back against the journalistic integrity and research that the Fox News machine has to offer.  We cannot fight against honest men like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes.  The former even called us out, saying:

"And I frankly don't care what kind of deal he tries to cut.  This is a man who is deeply committed - if he wins reelection, he will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after he's reelected."

Rick Santorum's C.U.M. Movement.

 

When I woke up this morning, I had one thing on my mind: writing about education.  My first post, as you all have no doubt seen, was about Maine's governor demanding the legislature to cut MaineCare recipients (or face school closings).  My second post, currently in draft mode, is about President Obama's recent vetoing (technically) of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I woke up, I had no idea that Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum would make my day and, really, my entire weekend.  In an effort to help fund his campaign, Santorum has decided to set up an online drive called "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb," or C.U.M.  I'll let that sink in for just a second (gross).

A man whose name is synonymous with a rather disgusting byproduct of anal sex is trying to raise money with C.U.M.

Santorum Uses Brief Media Spotlight To Ruin His Chance To Be President.

"Shhhhhh....I'm crazy...."

My original plan was to write about Donald Trump's possible run for president in the Independent Party, but a quick pop over to ThinkProgress.org (one of my new favorite websites - definitely bookmark it) showed me that Donald Trump's craziness can wait just a little bit longer.  Rick Santorum is using the brief media spotlight of his - and his potential win tonight in the Iowa Caucus race - to amp up his inner republican.  

I am going to post the entirety of the article here, and have comments of my own at the bottom.  I'd write about it myself, but I have a few more of these posts to crank out tonight.  Besides, the folks over at ThinkProgress.org do a wonderful job at summing this whole fiasco up - certainly better than I could.

Outlaw Contraception?

I'm not a huge fan of any of the Republican Presidential candidates, and I pretty much laugh at the idea that the party will "take back America" in November.  When I think of the people that these out-of-touch individuals represent, a few things come to mind: the constituents are either: 1) Rich, 2) old, 3) extremely religious, or 4) extremely ignorant.  Oh, and I suppose one last thing.  I tend to think of most republicans to be male.  Why? 

Well, the answer to that is a long one.  Suffice it to say that the republican party rarely puts forth legislation that helps women.  The big issue is one everyone is familiar with - abortion.  I personally don't believe that men should pass legislation on things that do not affect them.  I tried to think of a good metaphor for this, starting with, "That would be like female legislators trying to pass a law that...", but no dice.  The truth is, whatever the flip-side of that is, it would probably cause permanent physical damage that would result in no less than two bodily functions from...functioning. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do not understand why any woman would vote republican.  Men?  Sure.  We're dumb enough to do shit like that.  But not you ladies.  

Republican Presidential Candidates And You.

So many good choices... how could we possibly just

choose one?!

Before I get into the meat of this article (or, more appropriately, the gristle and fat), I want to acknowledge something that I'm willing to bet everyone was expecting me to write about.  Representative Anthony Weiner has caught a lot of deserved flak for tweeting pictures of his... weiner... and having some very strange contact with young women.  He is a married, is a Democrat and, while he did nothing illegal to my knowledge, is still responsible for creating a media sideshow full of obvious puns that lasted far longer than it should have.

I didn't mean to ignore this whole scandal.  I wanted to write about it.  The thing is, I have a habit of watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both of which covered this thing extensively.  Hell, Jon Stewart went to high school with the guy.  They said so much about the incident, I decided that I wouldn't write about it in order to avoid accidently copying a joke or two.  I wasn't trying to dodge it because Representative Weiner is a Democrat.  He deserves just as much hell as anyone else, regardless of what political party he is in.  Truth be told, I think it's more appalling that he lied about it.  "I cannot say with certainty that that is a picture of me"?  Really?  C'mon.  No one bought that.  You should know your own junk shot if you saw it, particularly at your age.  You should be able to pick yours out of a line up of 1,000 by the time you're 40 years old.  

Ugh.  Moving on.