Rick Santorum is Fucking Insane

"My penis is the same size as my IQ!

Santorum warns Colorado Republicans about addictive entitlements, socialism 

Of course, that sort of thing doesn't even register as crazy these days. 

Potential presidential candidate Rick Santorum — who lost his Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2006 but has been raising his profile as a devout conservative in the last year — warned a crowd of about 100 Republicans that the country they grew up in could vanish if Democrats keep the White House in the next election.

The America in which medical problems lead straight to bankruptcy? That might disappear? I wish! I wouldn't worry too much about that, though.

Santorum related the story of his grandfather, who immigrated from Italy because he yearned for the freedom America promised. But Democrats, he said, are attempting to engineer “a fundamental shift,” and could turn the country into a European-style socialist state in the next few years if they aren’t checked.

Have you ever been to Europe? It's really not a scary place at all. People are happy there. You really have to be an incredibly xenophobic ignoramus for "European-style" to be a threat.   Also, have you met these Democrats? These putzes aren't changing anything.

“If we do not win this election and ‘Obamacare’ goes into effect, America as you know it, as you were given it by your parents and grandparents — America will be gone forever,” he said. “That’s what I believe is at stake. America as you know it will be gone.”

 So how exactly does healthcare reform threaten the American way of life?

The reason Obama’s health care plan threatens the American way of life, Santorum said, is that “once the government has control over your life, over your health, it’s almost impossible to get it back, almost impossible to get freedom back.”
It’s part of the Democrats’ plan, he said. Fox News commentator Juan Williams boiled it down for him, Santorum said. 

Oh, Juan Williams? Juan Williams boiled it down for you, did he? What, was Megyn Kelly too busy?

The answer, Santorum said Williams told him, is that Democratic leaders knew that Americans love entitlements, and that by turning health care into an entitlement the die would be cast. “Once we get them hooked on this entitlement, they will never let it go,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believed, according to Williams.

Which is why the Democrats specifically did not do that? That's why single-payer was never on the table? They wanted people hooked on an entitlement so they didn't make it an entitlement? Did Santorum hire Lewis Carroll to be his speechwriter?

hmmph! My tea party made way more sense! 

“Think about how they view you,” he told the crowd of Republicans. “They view you no different than the drug dealer views the little kid in the school yard. They want to get you hooked, they want to get you dependent. They want to get you relying upon them for your wellbeing. And once they’ve satisfied you, giving them that drug, that narcotic, then you’ll be reliant on them and, by the way, you’ll also be less than what God created you to be.”

Um, less than what God created you to be? What does that even mean? What exactly was I created to be? And how would heath care make me less than that? It makes no freaking sense? But wait, there's more!

Santorum talked about statistical proof of American exceptionalism — arguing that life expectancy didn’t increase for thousands of years until America was founded, and then it doubled in 200 years.

Wow, really? Here's another statistic you might find interesting. In 1966, the average life expectancy for American males was 66.7 years. In 1967, I was born. Since then, life expectancy has increased to 75.7 years. By Santorum's reasoning, I can take credit for that.

Of course, the increase in life expectancy over the last 200 years might have more to do with Englishman Edward Jenner inventing immunization  Or Frenchman Louis Pasteur developing the germ theory of disease. Or the German Emil Von Behring's discovery of antitoxins. But yeah, probably it's just because of America being founded. Idiot!

 

I weep at the thought of living in a country of which my daddy is president!

Why Exactly Are We Supposed to Take This Guy Seriously?

 

I haz a plan?

I don't understand why Paul Ryan's budget plan is supposed to be one of the serious options that serious people need to take seriously. Forget for the moment that the plan includes destroying Medicare and Medicaid and whatnot. Just the fact that the plan to decrease the deficit includes lowering taxes on the top income group should automatically disqualify this little snake turd from being taken seriously.

If I'm going over the bills at home and I say to my wife "geez, schmoopie, we're running up some serious debt here. I think I may have to quit my job," she would have me committed. And rightly so. How in the hell does anyone think that you can decrease a deficit by taking in less money? Even if you believed this Milton Friedman voodoo economics prior to the 1980's, hasn't it been thoroughly disproven by the enormous debts the Gipper ran up?

And speaking of Reagan, even he wasn't as big a nut as the teabagger's mythologized version of Saint Ronnie. When he came into office, the first thing he did was slash taxes. (Technically the second thing after having the solar water heaters removed from the White House) But when he saw the deficit ballooning out of control, he realized that he had cut them too much and he raised them  a little. Yeah, Reagan RAISED taxes. Then he raised them again. And again. A total of 11 times. (source)

Heh? I did what, now?

He never did raise them enough to get the deficit under control, but that's not really the point. The point is, even Reagan realized that tax cuts aren't the answer to every problem. Today's wingnut Republicans seem to think that they are. "Oh, the economy is bad? Better cut taxes on the wealthy. Economy's doing better? Time to cut taxes on the wealthy! The deficit is spiraling out of control? I guess we haven't cut taxes enough yet. The last round of tax cuts made the deficit bigger? We'd better cut taxes!" It's ridiculous. Yet, for some reason, we as a society have apparently decided that we need to consider this nonsense as if it were a legitimate solution to our nation's problems. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall until I'm stupid enough to get it.

Religious Values

From Yahoo Sports:

Roethlisberger isn’t living with fiancee because of religious beliefs

 

Roethlisberger and Harlan became engaged around Christmas, but the quarterback refused to talk about the subject during the Steelers' run to the Super Bowl.

Another revelation in the lengthy interview was that Roethlisberger won't live with Harlan until the wedding because of their religious beliefs. She still lives at home with her parents in nearby Newcastle.

Oh, good for you. Ben! Because we all know that the Bible forbids you to have sex with a woman to whom you are not married. Unless you're really drunk. And you follow her into the ladies' room. That's apparently OK.  Nice values, there, Ben!

Caturdayphin

Election Fraud in Wisconsin

via HuffPo:

Wisconsin Election Surprise: David Prosser Gains 7,500 Votes After 'Human Error' In Waukesha County

-- In a dramatic turn of events on Thursday, the Waukesha County clerk announced that the vote total announced for Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court race had been mistaken -- and that the corrected numbers changed the outcome of the entire election. 

So basically, Scott Walker's favorite judge lost his re-election bid. Not too terribly surprising, given Walker's  unpopularity. But wait! Suddenly this county clerk found a whole big bunch of votes that she had sorta lost somehow. And surprise! They're mostly for Walker's guy!

There were 3,456 missing votes for Democratic-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg and 11,059 for incumbent GOP-backed Justice David Prosser. Kloppenburg has previously been beating Prosser by just 200 votes of the roughly 1.5 million cast statewide. The new total puts Prosser on a significant path to victory, about 7,500 votes ahead of Kloppenburg.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced the news in a press conference at 5:30 p.m. local time, sounding nervous and, at times, on the verge of tears. She insisted that there was no foul play in the results and blamed the mess on her own "human error."

Is anyone buying this? What do we know about this Kathy Nickolaus? Personally, I know absolutely nothing about her, but the Google  found this:

via AP:

Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the assembly Republican Caucus. She worked for 13 years as a data analyst and computer specialist for the caucus.

She resigned from her state job in 2002 just before launching her county clerk campaign.

So, sure, why shouldn't we trust her? She was involved in illegal activity while working for the Republican caucus? That just screams impartial & trustworthy to me! 

And her stellar record overseeing elections just speaks for itself:

An audit of Nickolaus' handling of the 2010 election found that she needed to take steps to improve security and backup procedures, like stop sharing passwords. The audit was requested after the county's director of administration said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have county experts review her systems and confirm backups were in place.

Then there's this from  Daily Kos:

Nickolaus says repeatedly that she imported the data into Access, but through a process of "human error", she "forgot to save".  Then come the tears, repeatedly, throughout her presser.
Here's the problem.  Microsoft Access (any version) doesn't ask you to save. When you enter data into a table, it automatically updates the underlying database.  If you close the database accidentally, the data you entered (or imported, in the case of Nickolaus) remains.  If you stop to take a phone call from your buddy the governor (for example), your data will still automatically save.

So I decided to make a little voting database in Microsoft Access 2010 and 2007, to test her story.

I entered 10,000 votes for Prosser, and closed the database.  No save prompt appeared.  I came back in, and there were the 10,000 votes!  Thanks Bill Gates!  I entered 20,000 votes for Prosser, and did a hard shutdown of my computer.  When I booted back up and reopened the file, the 20,000 votes were there!  Thanks again Bill Gates!
Bottom line: Nickolaus is clearly lying.  Not only did she insist on having her own private system based on some of the most unsecure, pedestrian computing technology available (Seriously?  Access and Excel controlling such an important part of our democracy?), but she apparently assumes that nobody else has ever used Microsoft Access.

So a dishonest election official is apparently trying to commit a pretty blatant election fraud on behalf of a right-wing scumbag candidate. Why not? It worked in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. There is nothing these people will not do to hold on to power.