Funny or Die's Rick Santorum's "aborted" Presidential Campaign.

I don't normally use stuff like this, but for Santorum, what the heck.

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd      

Actual Crazy Robo Call Messages...

Santorum campaign: "When you vote tomorrow, please vote for social sanity and Rick Santorum, not for homosexuality and Mitt Romney..."

Packers Player Backs Santorum.

The news that Mitt Romney got the endorsement of dumb Ron Johnson was a surprise, since Romney brought us the Affordable Care mandate and the reform plan itself, the one big reason Johnson goes ballistic and entered politics in the first place. He really is dumb. 

   

But sadly, it looks like a former Packer is a crazy Rick Santorum backer:

RTT News: Meanwhile, rival Rick Santorum hopes that public support from former Green Bay Packers defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila can help him spring an upset on Romney.

"Football taught me a lot," Gbaja-Biamila said. "One of the game's greatest lessons is that we play to win, and we play until it is over. I am endorsing Rick Santorum for president because he is a solid leader that represents the timeless values that made America good and prosperous. Rick Santorum is also the only person who can beat Barack Obama in November. While some may want to declare the game over, the reality is, it's not even half-time yet. 'Game on!'"

I used to cheer this guy...

Santorum's Mysterious Stump Gaffe in Janesville!

Blue Cheddar found an interesting clip of a Rick Santorum speech in Janesville, Wiscsonsin. In what can only be described as an odd verbal stumble, Santorum made this bizarre slip of the tongue:

“We know what Obama was like, the anti war, government nig-gah”

What two words was Santorum pairing together here? Context wise, it doesn't exactly fit in with his full statement shown below, which I've edited together for length:



I don't usually post slips of the tongue, but this moment of Santorum clarity stood out. What word is Santorum reaching for with "nig-gah?" Any reasonable suggestions?

Rick Santorum Proposes Conservative Indoctrination Studies in College. That's the Ticket.

This is about Rich Santorum's attack on college education. Eugene Robinson rightfully asked what parent is going to buy into Santorum's message that their kids don't need to go to college like they did. No parent would want less for their kids than what they achieved in life. This attack is nothing new. It's just a continuation.

David Horowitz has all but crawled back under his rock after failing to convince people there was a need for the "academic bill of rights." His attacks on liberals, college professors and higher education were the rantings of a lunatic. His entourage of body guards kept the latte sippers away, but also provided him the opportunity to claim to be a targeted victim of the radical left.

Now we have Rick Santorum following in Horowitz's footsteps. Here's Santorum trying to convince viewers that "conservative studies," or indoctrination, should be introduced to add balance. Does he think we're stupid?



Rachel Maddow explains:

When Rick Santorum argued recently against public education … higher ed insisting the other day that President Obama only wants to help young people go to college so they can undergo "indoctrination." In 2008, the former senator argued that Satan had succeeded in his attacks on academia.

As Kevin Drum put it, "It's commonplace for movement conservatives to believe that universities are dens of depravity and radical left indoctrination. But as far as I know, most of them don't believe that efforts to get more kids into college are motivated by a desire to destroy their faith. That's a step beyond even normal wingnut land."

My larger concern is the trajectory of Santorum's rhetoric: if access to college degrees is itself a culture-war issue, and Republicans start arguing en masse that policymakers need not prioritize higher ed as a national value, the consequences for the country and the economy could prove to be significant.

Matt Yglesias explained this morning, "[T]he fact is that America has historically been the richest country on the planet because we've invested in being the best-educated country on the planet. In recent decades, we've seen the pace slow down markedly … the emergence of a block of people so driven by resentment of college professors that they want to abandon the goal of improving American education is a disturbing trend."

Incidentally, if Santorum believes publicly-funded universities may need to start requiring "intellectual diversity" on campus, how in the world would that work? And what about students whose ideologies change during their academic careers?

Or this from CNN's LZ Granderson:

But the rest of us look at "Slick Rick's" college degree, law degree and MBA, the fact that he's sending his kids to college and owns at least six properties, and has earned millions, and wonder -- What is he talking about? Virtually every socioeconomic study looking at the intersection of income and education shows a direct correlation between the two. For Santorum to vilify higher education for political gain -- while obviously benefiting from attending universities -- is embarrassing. 

Santorum Compares Obama to Hitler!

Ed Schultz nails Rick Santorum with this video clip proof that Hitler references are only off limits to Democrats. It's a stunning bit of campaigning, essentially fear mongering to gin up the crowd. Other clips show tea party losers calling Obama a terrorist.



Here's Martin Bashir with something he noticed about our good Christian Rich Santorum; not the biggest charitable giver:

Presidential contender Rick Santorum thinks Public Schools should go the way of Manufacturing! Bring on Home Schooling.

Parents have a lot on their plate nowadays. But to Rick Santorum, that's still not enough. 

Can you imagine throwing home schooling into the mix? Are you up for it? That is Santorum’s solution to society’s woes, economically and morally. Let’s leave it up to the whims of parents when it comes to competing globally for economic and educational dominance.

It sounds crazy because it is, and it is over the top lunacy. Warning, reading what Santorum said might reduce your IQ. NY Times:

Rick Santorum questioned the legitimacy of state-run public education systems” … he said the idea of schools run by the federal government or by state governments was “anachronistic” … he takes a dim view of public schooling. He and his wife home-schooled their children. “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.”

Really? I don’t remember that as part of our history. Do other industrialized countries depend on home schooling? Even a little? Santorum does make sure that private interests will continue to get a large share of taxpayer’s dollars:

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. 

The following is what many call “crazy talk.” I don’t know what history book he’s getting this stuff from, but I’m sure it's hot on Santorum's particular home schooling circuit.

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.”

To sum up; those anti-American big box schools are nothing but the ugly side of progress, an aberration that caught on globally, but nevertheless needs to faded away like American manufacturing.   

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” 

Santorum ad: Romney whips out his assault rifle and...wait, this was a Twilight Zone episode, right?

I like the following Rick Santorum ad because it's silly, bizarre and Onionesque. Think about it; it shows a Mitt Romney double with an assault rifle, shooting at Santorum...with mud (as in mud slinging). Just the idea of portraying an armed opponent, shooting at the other, should have been enough for someone in the room to say, "are you crazy."

But this is what passes for the Republican Party these days.



As far as Santorum's social agenda, Paul Krugman wrote this:

From an excellent article published last weekend, that the regions of America most hooked on Mr. Santorum’s narcotic — the regions in which government programs account for the largest share of personal income — are precisely the regions electing those severe conservatives. Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on handouts?

Santorum: "You've been conditioned to thinking health care is you should get and not pay for."

Rick Santorum couldn't have exposed the conservative plan for health care any more clearly than he did the other day;

CNN: Rick Santorum found himself defending a profit-driven health care system to a woman who said her son requires expensive medication to stay alive.

"We can make medicine cheaper by using markets. That's how you make medicine cheaper is that you have free people going out there and competing against each other and competition drives up quality and drives down costs."

I've condensed Santorum's comments below for the sake of your own sanity:

Another woman chimed in that she can no longer afford medication she desperately needs because the cost has become so exorbitant.

"The only reason new drugs are developed is because Americans actually do pay for the cost of that research," Santorum said. "You have that drug and maybe you're alive today because people have a profit motive to make that drug."

Santorum tried to explain the need for a profit motive by comparing health care consumption to technology consumption.

"People have no problem going out and buying an iPad for $900, but paying $900 for a drug, they have a problem with it. It keeps you alive. Why? Because you have been conditioned to thinking that health care is something that you should get and not have to pay for. “Drug companies, health care companies need to have a profit motive, because if they don't, then how are we going to regulate costs?”

The mother of the original questioner explaining she's paid $1.3 million a year to keep her son alive, and while she's willing to go bankrupt for her child, it pains her to see his friends die in the hospital because their parents cannot afford the treatment.

"He's alive today because drug companies thought that they would make money in providing that care and if the drug company didn't think they could make any money by providing that care, I hate to put it in these terms, but that drug wouldn't be here," he said, adding that he sympathized with the mother, "we either believe in markets or we don't."

Asked by a reporter after the event about what alternatives people in such tough circumstances have, Santorum suggested that charity was a better option than government intervention.

"Even in the tough cases, even at the ones that pull at your heart strings, we've got to believe in people and markets and churches and families and charity instead of government, and that's what I believe" he said. 

Put a Stake through the Heart of the Ryan Lie Small Businesses will be Taxed by Obama.

Facts, damn facts.

Paul Ryan's reputation as a numbers guy is so misplaced, especially when it comes to taxing "small businesses." He's flat out lying.

But, again the facts say something else:

IRS statistics indicate that only 3 percent of small businesses would be subject to the higher tax, and many studies of previous tax increases suggest that it would have minimal impact on hiring.

And it gets even worse for Ryan’s argument:

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 97 percent of all businesses owners do not earn enough to be subject to the higher rates. Even among the 750,000 businesses that would be subjected to the higher rates in 2011, many are sole proprietors — a classification so amorphous it can include everyone from corporate executives who earn income on rental property to entertainers, hedge fund managers and investment bankers. THE FACTS: The U.S. has roughly 6 million businesses that employ people, and 20 million businesses without employees. The latter group includes solo operators, professionals in partnerships and those who organize themselves as a business for tax purposes but earn little if any income from the enterprise.

So when it comes to the government making money, like a business, Ryan's brain stalls. 

Critics reason that owners of many small companies report business income on their personal tax returns instead of filing corporate taxes. But most small businesses don't create jobs. They tend to be lawyers, accountants and other professionals who earn some of their money from partnerships or otherwise organize themselves as a business entity. As well, many small businesses with employees don't earn enough to put their owners over the threshold for the higher tax rates.

Small businesses are defined as having fewer than 500 workers each. Sizable companies within that group wouldn't be snagged by Obama's personal tax rates simply because they are too large to report income on the individual return of the owner. Many truly small operations simply don't make enough to qualify for the tax hit.

Santorum Preaches Big Govenment Republicanism. We were warned.

Rick Santorum is the moral heart of the Republican Party. The only problem with that; that moral heart needs a big government authority to keep it beating. Take Santorum's very typical conservative opposition to birth control. It's counter to how things...are supposed to be:



But if you're not quite sure yet if Santorum's moral absolutism won't result in a big intrusive government, check out this old 2004 warning to a nation suffering from less virtue:

Far Right Wing Verbal Gymnastics: Stimulus Lost Jobs…from the higher estimates.

We catching on, aren't we?

Like Paul Ryan’s ginned up expectations that all of Obama’s predictions are to be factual and numerically perfect, Rick Santorum has decided that estimates made by the administration must be exact too.

In a moment of absolute stupidity, Santorum not only said the stimulus lost jobs in a ludicrous attempt at spin, but he got his numbers wrong, never thinking long enough to realize the impossibility of those numbers. In this clip from CNBC, Ali Velshi:

SANTORUM: [Obama] passed a huge stimulus package that now we know, over the past two quarters, has actually cost American jobs, and that’s from the report of his own administration. They claimed in December that, uh, by the end of last year that they created 280 million jobs, and now they’re saying that they created only 240 million jobs. So look, in this, you’re talking about huge increases in spending. In other words, there’s 30 million less jobs as a result of the stimulus package.

VELSHI: That’s not a loss of jobs, Senator, that’s a smaller aggregation of jobs. You can’t go on a campaign, a national campaign with this kind of math Senator. It’s just incorrect…I know you’ve got a lot of interviews to do. You might want to check that math.

Rick Santorum: "The government wants your children as fast as they can...so they can indoctrinate them into exactly what they want them to be."

Republican presidential candidate Rick "man on dog" Santorum is not an aberration in the new conservative movement. Conspiratorial paranoia sells? Santorum goes after the idea of an educated public, by casting suspicion over early childhood classes. You can't get more sinister than this. Al Sharpton takes off on "Raving Rick."