It is good to see Rick Santorum latching on to a positive theme after attacking educators, gays, and other candidates. Now he appears quite positive that we will all die if we do not elect him.
In speaking before the Colorado Christian University, Santorum referred to the sirens of disaster and warned “Go back and read what the sirens did once you arrived on that island. They devour you. They destroy you. They consume you.” In other words, if you want to avoid being devoured, vote Santorum.
The problem is that the description by Homer would appear to give an edge to Gingrich in his experience dealing with three sirens:
“He will not see his lady nor his children
in joy, crowding about him, home from sea;
the Sirens will sing his mind away
on their sweet meadow lolling”
Fortunately, with his other call to “Just Say No To Education,” it is doubtful that anyone would be in a position to challenge the reference. Indeed, Santorum appears to be fashioning himself as Odysseus who notably stuffed his followers ears with beeswax. That fits.
That frees the faithful to act on the warning: “Ladies and gentleman we cannot listen to the siren song. We cannot listen to President Obama and we can’t listen to those in our party who want to be just a little bit less than what the Democrats and the left is doing to our country.”
Source: CBS
Santorum: “People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why?”
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Ummm, people don’t have to buy multiple IPads a month/year or die, maybe that’s it Rick.
Before Karen Met Rick
Jan 16, 2012 12:00 AM EST
The GOP contender’s hard-core pro-life wife once dated an abortion provider.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/mrs-santorum-s-abortion-doctor-boyfriend.html
Excerpt:
Karen Santorum, the ultra-pro-life wife and mother of seven home-schooled children, has been the perfect complement to her husband, Rick, as he chases the Republican presidential nomination. On the campaign trail, the candidate often refers to her book, Letters to Gabriel, the story of the devoutly Catholic couple’s traumatic late-term 1997 miscarriage (the 20-week-old fetus lived two hours outside the womb). The couple opposes birth control as well as abortion, even in cases of rape.
But Mrs. Santorum, 51, apparently wasn’t always committed to the cause. In fact, her live-in partner through most of her 20s was Tom Allen, a Pittsburgh obstetrician and abortion provider 40 years older than she, who remains an outspoken crusader for reproductive rights and liberal ideals. Dr. Allen has known Mrs. Santorum, born Karen Garver, her entire life: he delivered her in 1960.
“Karen was a lovely girl, very intelligent and sweet,” says Allen, who at 92 uses a walker but retains a sly smile. A wine aficionado who frequented the Pittsburgh Symphony and was active in the local chapter of the ACLU, he lives with his wife of 16 years, Judi—they started dating in 1989, soon after he and Garver split—in the same large detached row house where he lived with the woman who would become Santorum’s wife. He and Garver also lived for several years in another house a few blocks away. “Karen had no problems with what I did for a living,” says Allen, who helped start one of the first hospital-sanctioned abortion clinics in Pennsylvania. “We never really discussed it.” (The Santorum campaign did not return repeated requests for comment on the relationship.)
Karen Santorum’s Impure Youth
By Amanda Marcotte | Posted Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/01/17/the_anti_fornication_anti_abortion_wife_of_rick_santorum_lived_very_differently_in_her_20s_.html
Excerpt;
Rick and Karen Santorum really take the cake in the “do as I say, not as I do” department. Building on earlier revelations that the Santorums themselves considered abortion for health reasons while Rick Santorum worked diligently to deny that right to others is the new revelation that Karen Santorum spent most of her 20s living with her much-older boyfriend out of wedlock. Oh yeah, and that boyfriend was an outspoken abortion provider, the kind of person her husband would very much like to throw in jail.
The detail in this story that seems to be grossing people out the most is that Karen, whose last name was Garver when she was living openly as the kind of fornicator she and her husband now claim is so sinful the government should work against you, was actually delivered by her boyfriend Tom Allen when she was born in 1960. I’m from a small town, so that probably doesn’t have the effect on me that it does on people who aren’t used to some of the uncomfortably close romantic entanglements people can get in. That this detail captures people’s attention suggests that we’ve become a little too inured to the hypocrisy of right wingers who carry on—and Rick Santorum is the worst—about how the government should restrict contraception access and teach abstinence-only because sex outside of marriage is sinful and how abortion providers should be subject to criminal penalties. It’s worth noting that when it comes to the black markets of the sort that conservatives wish to create around abortion, girlfriends and partners often get caught up in police stings, so if the laws the Santorums want were in place back then, it may not just have been Dr. Allen in danger but also a young Karen Garver. But even if not, since she lived with him for so long, she basically benefitted materially from “abortion money” he earned providing abortions, money that helped pay for her housing, if nothing else.
Carol,
I forgot about the abortion for Santorum’s wife. Between that and Elaine’s link to the news that the government paying for prescriptions would freeze innovation according to Santorum just provides additional evidence that Jesus was a liberal and Rick just can’t handle that fact.
Santorum Tells Sick Kid Not To Complain About $1 Million Drug Costs Because People Pay $900 For An IPad
By Marie Diamond on Feb 3, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/03/417657/santorum-tells-sick-kid-not-to-complain-about-1-million-drug-costs-because-people-pay-900-for-an-ipad/
While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.
The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:
GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[…]
“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”
The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.
Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.
Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.
Although Santorum has been a vocal opponent of health care reform, his callous reaction is somewhat surprising given that he himself is the father of a daughter with a rare genetic disorder. But if the Colorado mother thought Santorum might be sympathetic to families in similar situations who happen to be less wealthy, she was sadly mistaken.
He’s just doing his bit to appeal to the crazies.
Romney can’t do it because he has to appear “presidential” if they have any hope of attracting independents come November.
Let us not forget that when Santorum’s wife needed an abortion to save her life, she got it. He would do everything he could to keep anyone else doing the same.. Maybe only women married to super Christians like him are to be considered more important that a fetus.
Down here in South Carolina this Rickyboy Santorum didnt get much traction. Partly because Newt is next door from Georgia and knew how to push the Southern Strategy buttons. Ricky was not good at pushing the code words around like States Rights and Welfare Cheats. But what got me about him is the fact that he has life time medical insurance by virtue of having been in Congress for a few years. Then in the debate down in Floriday a woman got up and asked all four of them squids a question posed like this: I am ill, I lost my job and my insurance and what do I do to survive? Well all four did a great floor dance but none addressed her question. Ricky boy runs back home to take care of one of his kids on the government’s dime (dime is like States Rights– a misnomer) and does not think or blink that the rest of us know that he is living off socialized medicine. The kind where they privatize the gains and socialize the losses. Only in America would socialized medicine cover only the few, the proud, the brainless and the ugly. Excuse the rant I live in South Carolina and tend to go off on tangents. We had some tentheads from the Klan parading around the other night and fussed up all the chickens and the sqauwk twenty four seven now.
Frank1, February 3, 2012 at 10:55 am
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it is too damned early in the day to be filled with terror.
I would vote for Roseanne in a nanosecond 🙂
NO candidate or the President has spoken about or endorsed the current ERA bills SJ Res 21 and HR Res 69. These simple bills cannot get out of committee and the media and others are oblivious to the ERA issue. It is time that all people demand politicians pass the ERA and endorse it now. if they do not the women voters must vote all these men out of office.
Santorum would turn the country into the United States of Christiandom while ignoring the teachings of Christ.
Elaine M.,
Ditto…
Frank, Roseanne Barr wants the Green Party endorsement.
Psst! Ricky! Wrong conjunction!
Obama = NDAA= Romney = Gingrich= patriot Act
Santorum = anti gay , antimuslim by his own mouth, not thru guilt by association or he said she said.
These are the 4/5 options for 2012 .
Santorum cannot wait to bomb people . In my view he is too unstable even to run a burger king . We all will need Valium under him . The self righteousness is simply nauseating!
Elaine, I think you are taking these politicians too seriously! Not that the consequences of their brand isn’t devastating. But the world doesn’t need fewer rational individuals, though it’s hard to make a convincing case for that sometimes it seems. Now “I’d rather die than live under the consequences of a Santorum”, now that might be defensible.
Obama 2012
his other call to “Just Say No To Education”
This was a mystifying plank in the right wing platform until I read a paper in Psychological Science Journal entitled “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact” (free PDF is available for download)…
It should give liberals and moderates serious concern. Especially when you see teens being interviewed in the U.S.eh? who cannot answer the most fundamental of questions.
The study shows that these young people will tend to become right wingers driving by prejudice upon very little exposure to Santorum type right wing propaganda.
That is why the right-wing pumps out the words from another world and why many do not detect it.
I’d rather die than vote for Santorum.