Missed this yesterday, but via TPM, this, from the candidate with the unfortunate Google problem:
Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that“science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.”
(From the Des Moines Register.)
Well then, dude. That settles it. I guess the Santorum Administration…[pause to quell my alternating gusts of laughter and nausea]…will balance that damn budget by axing the NIH and the NSF, for starters.
I really have nothing else to add, except this: I just hope (really — I mean this) that no member of the Santorum family ever gets infected with a religiously incorrrect MRSA bug. Santorum may not believe in evolution, but our old friend staph? Mr. aureus (et al.) sure does…
Image: Henri Rousseau, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) 1881
Omnes Omnibus
That really covers my reaction to the entire GOP field.
SiubhanDuinne
Perfect illustration. I have a great weakness for Rousseau.
Zandar
I thought it was the other way around, but apparently politics is the more socially valuable of the two. Who knew.
Violet
Are his kids vaccinated? If so, why would he allow they to participate in such a politically-influenced scientific endeavor?
Judas Escargot
@Zandar:
It’s certainly the more lucrative of the two: Santorum’s technically been unemployed since he lost his seat, but can somehow come up with enough cash to run for President.
Praise Jeebus!
SBJules
Why is the Supreme Court intervening in Texas’ redistricing? Is this Bush v. Gore again?
amk
@Zandar: With rw, up is down, left is right etc. etc.
ericblair
Well, see, your more advanced creationist apologetics makes up something called “microevolution” to explain MRSA and all the other inconvenient realities that seem to crop up regularly. So life can evolve within a “kind”, but won’t evolve into something new. Apparently DNA just knows when to stop evolving or something. Very mysterious.
“Keep science out of politics” is like “Stop hitting my fist with your nose.”
Violet
Santorum has to be pretty upset that he hasn’t been chosen as a NotRomney yet. Why haven’t they given him his time in the sun? He seems to tick all the boxes for wingnuts. Is it his google problem?
MattW
I always figured Rick had a good possibility of prostate cancer. Because, y’know…it’s not like he’s ever going to let a doctor examine him back there.
Benjamin Franklin
Lately we’ve been having a 2nd honeymoon with Obama, with all the Teddy Roosevelt comparisons, and all.
I’m not forgetting the more important of his capitulations. Send DHS to disrupt ‘Occupy’, and this…..
“In recent days, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on a social networking site on Obama’s own campaign Web site. They are calling on him to reverse his decision to endorse legislation supported by President George W. Bush to expand the government’s domestic spying powers while also providing legal protection to the telecommunications companies that worked with the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/world/americas/02iht-obama.1.14161755.html
Dovetailing nicely with this is the subject of ‘retroactive immunity’ which entails much more for the War Criminals who have cock-slapped the Rule of Law when it suits them.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/12/resisting-elites-resistance-to-rule-of.html
Obama is in campaign mode right now, and he talks real good when HE wants something from us.
beltane
This is what I always tell creationists: natural selection, unlike religion, exists independent of belief. I guess this fact is at the crux pf why they get their panties in such a wad over evolution. The idea that the universe does not rotate around them and their beliefs is too scary for these childish people.
eemom
Considering that Man on Dog is at the bottom of the barrel and was the only one pathetic enough to accept The Dumbfuck’s “debate” invite, and further considering that there is no dearth of sewage emanating daily from the maws of the more favored Clowns, I must confess I don’t understand why he is getting so much attention these late few days.
But, if we’re going to be saturated with toxic slime 24/7 anyway I guess it doesn’t much matter which waste dump it comes from. Carry on.
Vixen Strangely
Hmm, in Santorum’s view, teaching science in science classes is political correctness, but pandering to Biblical-literalists is not. Verrry interesting.
Not that I think hisignorance of science is an outright pander, but a probable reality–I’ve considered the approach of creationists to be as simple as “if I never learn anything about it, I never have to believe it, so there!”
eemom
@Violet:
I think he’s too creepy even for the notRomney-seekers.
Snowball
I wonder if Santorum thinks the Earth is flat considering he hates science.
RossInDetroit
So FrothyMix has appointed himself to define the appropriate extents of Politics and Science. I suppose any time Science appears to conflict with GOP dogma he’ll just annex that issue. “Nope, sorry Science. That’s Politics now. hands off.”
Benjamin Franklin
My apologies, Tom. I thought this was an open thread……
Linda Featheringill
Santorum is weird. I’m not sure exactly what is off, but something is.
Robert Waldmann
Actually, I think that ex Senator Santorum presents a powerful case. I mean how can one reconcile the theory of evolution by natural selection with the survival of the alleles that, somehow, allowed the development of his brain.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he was born stupid. But I am saying that any blind backward looking evolutionary process worth its salt should have come up with some gene which somehow prevents the Santorization of a human brain.
Villago Delenda Est
Another prime test subject for my experiment in seeing how “theoretical” the Theory of Gravity is.
scav
Perry’s jumping up and down hard on the Gheys and War on Xmas Traditional Big Buttons, Santorum’s jumping on Bad Bad Science same and didn’t one of them go off about the activist (technically he said unaccountable) judges on the Supreme Court? Pretty sure it was Perry when he said there were 8 of them. Ah, the Clown Car Chorus brings you the K-Tel hits of the glorious past. (I can almost hear them muttering under their breath “why isn’t this piece of shit giving me my Snickers bar and nomination damn it, I put in the quarter, g-damed piece of crap” shake shake kick, mutter.)
I’m also very much enjoying Perry’s position that this season that begins seconds after Halloween, lasts longer than Advent and is onmi-present in every media channel and physical retail location on the continent is somehow not openly celebrated and thus presumably presumably in the closet. Simply imagine the season if it really let its freak flag fly and strutted its stuff out on the dance floor.
gelfling545
@Linda Featheringill: I have had the same feeling.I can’t pin down why but I just look at him and feel that he engages in some activity so perverted it does not even have a name. Probably unfair but there it is.
Ben Cisco
Painting reminds me of this song.
__
Franks is a lyrical genius.
johnsmith1882
you tell ’em, frothy! what has science ever done for us anyway? especially enjoy the wording in the article that describes science as ‘controversial’. damn liberal media.
Ben Cisco
He’s a tiger in the rain
It’s the thunder and lightnin’
He can’t explain
A tiger in the rain
Who’s frightened
Villago Delenda Est
@MattW:
A few weeks ago, I had my annual checkup with my doctor at the VA, and before the prostate exam he showed me a New Yorker style cartoon of a doctor, speaking with his patient while donning a glove, and telling him “This is going to feel like I’m sticking a finger up your ass.”
I could not stop laughing for a solid minute.
handsmile
[Reposted in part from DougJ’s “And Here’s Another Clue…” below. ]
[I find Santorum’s failure to garner more support in the GOP presidential sweepstakes one of its more perplexing aspects. With his credentials, why hasn’t political natural selection worked in his favor? Can it really be his Google problem? Do most GOP primary voters and caucus-goers derive their political intelligence from Google searches?]
[W]hy has Rick Santorum failed so utterly to become the driver in the Klown Kar Karnival’s game of Chinese Fire Drill? No other candidate has labored so tirelessly, so piously, throughout his political career on behalf of the full catechism of Wingnut orthodoxy. From ideology to political fealty to personal lifestyle, he would seem to be the paragon of GOP values and virtues.
Yet for all his froth and fundamentalism, Santorum remains unloved and unwanted. Does this prove that Dan Savage and the homosexual mafia are as powerful as some claim?
Linda Featheringill
@gelfling545:
Yes, there is a whiff of perversion, although I have no evidence.
Benjamin Franklin
@handsmile:
For the same reason Bachman has tanked. The Plausible Denialists are creeped out by those who actually believe their own shit.
Palli
Math is a science- and it was thrown out the political window a long time ago.
Yutsano
@gelfling545: The man buried his wife’s miscarried fetus and made his children view it. That’s creepy enough right there.
wag
Divine Intervention has had such a tremendous effect on human longevity. Damn that Satan for trying to mess up everything with his pesky MRSA!
El Cid
@ericblair: You see, they find microevolution believeable, but macro-evolution? Too much, just stretches the evidence.
The same rigorous standard does not, however, apply to their significant lack of proof of either macro- or micro-miracles.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
“Science should get out of politics.”
Funny, but not unexpected of Santorum, that he gets things completely ass backwards.
Keithly
@Robert Waldmann: Actually, Robert, being dumb as shit while running fast in a herd is a pretty good survival strategy. Antelopes would be exhibit a; frothy would be exhibit b.
wag
@El Cid:
…or evaluation of either micro- or macroeconomics
jrg
So, the empirical study of reality should not impact policy decisions at all? These people are so pathetic. “truth” is defined as “anything I pull out of my ass, even if it differs from something I pulled out of my ass five minutes ago”.
We really should carve off a piece of the U.S., and let these dumb hicks run it for a while. Let these fuckers discover the value of science from the discomfort of disease-ridden mud huts. It’s the only way they can learn without taking the rest of us down with them.
huckster
They reject him because he makes their entire belief structure sound stupid,even to them, and they simply cannot accept that.
jayjaybear
It’s always kind of amazed me that the ostensible reason the right-wing is so big on “states’ rights” and the federal system is that the states can be laboratories, to experiment with different methods and theories of government.
So why is it that they only want to export the stuff that’s been shown not to work from states at the bottom of most statistical lists to states that are more successful and not vice versa?
RossInDetroit
@jrg:
There are some Brits who claim George III came up with a similar idea about 230 years ago and it’s us.
JPL
I am so confused. Most candidates run a pro-education platform. What’s up with Santorum?
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
The child was born prematurely and lived for two hours. This is not the same thing as a miscarriage.
Apparently, they have a young daughter with a serious chromosomal ailment. I detest Santorum as a politician, but also note the family issues he has to deal with.
piratedan
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: yeah…. there’s a dragon living in a cave that is busy eating all the livestock in the land and King Ricky issues an edict outlawing caves.
kdaug
@Yutsano: I believe he took the corpse home in a jar for the viewing/bonding/”Here’s your little brother, kids” ritual before the burial.
jrg
Because dumb, authoritarian hicks define “success” differently than high-school educated liberal elitists.
Remember that clip where Rick Perry is asked about why Texas has higher rates of teen pregnancy, despite the fact that “Abstinence works”? He looks so dumbfounded, because he simply does not understand the goal of sex ed. In his authoritarian mind, the goal is to punish women who have sex. It has nothing to do with preventing STDs or teen pregnancy.
nancydarling
@gelfling545: Could it involve a condom clad dildo and wet suits? Just wondering.
JPL
OT
Tom, Congratulations on not posting about Megan’s xmas list. It must of been difficult because I’m sure you imagined the perfect painting to go with that pink pig thingamabob
eemom
@Brachiator:
yes, and his way of “dealing” with them is to spend his life flying around the country and otherwise engaging 24/7 in pursuit of a nomination he can’t possibly win, purely for the service of his own sick ego.
Oh, and then whining about it.
I’m pretty sure I detest him as a person too.
handsmile
@Brachiator: (#43)
FlipYrWhig
Like Vixen said above, it’s pretty amusing for Santorum to deem a movement based on complaints about being offended as somehow the _opposite_ of “political correctness.”
eemom
OT, but
the world according to firebaggers
a FB friend just posted this with approval. I think I am going to be ill.
gnomedad
@Villago Delenda Est:
What will happen if we throw Santorum off the Capitol Dome? Views differ.
Violet
@Linda Featheringill:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
gelfling545
@Yutsano: Eeewww
B W Smith
@eemom: You must be really bored this afternoon to open this can of worms! Good luck!
gelfling545
@nancydarling: No, I think it is probably beyond that. Probably something none of us can imagine (and I know folks can imagine quite a bit) and it is a good thing that we can’t.
B W Smith
@Brachiator: On the simple human compassion level, I do have empathy for the tragedies he and his wife have gone through. When his child died in the nineties, they brought his death into the discussion of late term abortions. They said explicitly that the path they chose was the appropriate one and others who faced the same or similar diagnosis who chose late term abortion were wrong. It’s that kind of moralizing that I find distasteful and wrong.
I do think the story out there about how they handled the death and burial of the child, exposing their children as young as 18 months to six years is a little bizarre. They held the child for hours, sang lullabies, and kissed and prayed over him which may be a perfectly normal reaction for the parents, but to include the young children seems disturbing. I think all but the most zealous anti-abortion fanatic would find those actions weird.
Svensker
@Benjamin Franklin:
Um, been debunked about 88 eleventy times already.
Svensker
@handsmile:
He’s just so unlikable. A real mook. Even Michelle and Ricky, hell, even Cain, I can imagine being at a family picnic exchanging a few laughs and talking about how we ALL think Uncle Harold is just too weird. But Rick reminds me of the cousin everyone tries to shuffle away from so he’s not sitting near them at the big table. “Oh, no, Aunt Mildred, I know how you LOVE talking to Ricky! No, seriously, I wouldn’t dream of depriving you. And Cousin Ralph, you sit on Rick’s other side. That’s OK, you know I don”t mind being down at the kids’ end. Now who’s going to start passing that beautiful jello salad?… “
The Republic of Stupidity
And make sure you take all your dirty stinking ‘facts’ w/ you, while you’re at it…
Everyone knows that ‘facts’ tend to have an inherent liberal bias and should NEVER, EVER be used as the basis for making ANY important decisions…
The Republic of Stupidity
@Zandar:
Silly… and of course, religion always trumps politics…
Kind of a paper/scissors/rock kind of thingy going on…
Benjamin Franklin
@Svensker:
Retro-active immunity for the Telcoms?
eemom
@B W Smith:
actually it was more of a cry for help. Believe it or not I am tired of arguing with people, and I don’t have the time or energy for a FB flame war this afternoon, much less with a high school classmate with whom I share many mutual friends in a community I cherish being a part of.
So I was sort of hoping y’all could argue it for me by proxy, or something.
eemom
@Benjamin Franklin:
hey, go check out that video I posted. It’s right up your alley.
And stay there.
Tom Levenson
@JPL: Thanks. I must say I’m not sure my “friends” here grasp the challenges of kicking it cold…genoise.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
As if anyone needed a reminder, however, that the stupid doesn’t exist only on the bottom of the polls, we get things like Gingrich proclaiming Palestinians are an invented people. You know, without the awareness to recognize that you could proclaim Israelis an invented people under the exact same standard.
EDIT: Guh…stupid typo completely flipping the intent of the post. Stupid doesn’t only exist in the primaries it seems..
Svensker
@Benjamin Franklin:
No, the DHS shutting down OWS sites.
Obama’s been complicit in the Telecom crap, Patriot Act, etc., not to mention drones and the ever expanding bombing brigade, palling around with banksters, etc., etc.
BUT, the DHS stuff appears to be made up by hysterics with ODS.
sherparick
Evolution a political question, eh.
For folks like the Santorums, religion is always really about upholding the existing social order and justifying who is on top.
For others, the questions start even before Evolution.
“TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies 5
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 10
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp 15
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee? 20
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”
B W Smith
Please save me from moderation, I used the proper spelling for the soshulist word. Editing did not help.
Benjamin Franklin
@eemom:
I am not familiar with your pov, so forgive the question. Which bear am I supposed to be? :>)
B W Smith
Never mind, delete worked.
@eemom:
You have my sympathies. I have the opposite problem with high school friends on Facebook. They have all turned into conservatives. They are either complete right-wing fanatics that moaned about Herman Cain’s treatment in the media or libertarians that post constantly about the sociaIist, anti-business Obama and how he’s killing the free market. I also have a generous number of extremely religious judgmental types. I have blocked many of them from appearing on my news feed, just to protect my sanity. It’s going to be a very long year.
Villago Delenda Est
@B W Smith:
If you want it fixed, you must bring us a shrubbery!
B W Smith
@Villago Delenda Est: No shrubbery for you today, my friend. Being the liberal version of a rugged individualist, I corrected the problem on my own today. I will remember the advice for the future.
Nutella
These silly people who go around saying they don’t believe in evolution have gotten the actual physical world mixed up with the fictional world of Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. No, you believing or not believing in evolution has nothing to do with its existence any more than you believing the sun rises in the east keeps it coming up every morning.
Brachiator
@B W Smith:
I don’t know. All our rituals for dealing with the dead can be seen as odd. Including the children could be odd and disturbing, or comforting, bringing grief into the open and making the loss something that they don’t have to tiptoe around.
I have problems with Santorum apparently linking the death to the issue of late term abortion, but again, that’s political, not personal.
Scott
@Svensker:
The Repubs and the media fetishize “the candidate you want to have a beer with.” And no one can imagine wanting to have a beer with Rick Santorum.
The man is deeply weird and has zero charisma.
The Other Bob
Speak for yourself.
B W Smith
@Brachiator: Perhaps you are right. It bothers me personally, but maybe that’s my problem. There appears to be something beyond politics that Republican voters find unacceptable. He has the conservative narrative down pat. He has more experience than Cain did. Setting aside his religious fanaticism (which they like), he doesn’t always come across as unintelligent on all issues.
suzanne
I didn’t realize that science was all up in politics’ grill. I think it’s really the other way around.
In other news, Frothy is an ideological moron.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@eemom: So… it’s a video about how overzealous Obots freak the fuck out when exposed to the slightest criticism of Obama and his administration, even when coming from a person who voted for Obama and worked to get him elected. The video makes fun of people who fly off the handle and start spouting crazy shit when confronted with the idea that Obama is in fact not utterly perfect in every single way and is capable of making mistakes.
You know, you could try on some self awareness. It won’t kill you, and it might help you stop being a raging asshole to people who share your politics in every way other than blindly worshiping a politician.
Obama has fucked up in many ways. I voted for him once and will do so again. These are not contradictory statements.
You Obots seem to believe that anyone who understands that Obama is merely a man and therefore refuse to worship him like he was Ba’al is either unforgivably stupid or a ratfucker. And when a silly little video appears which points out how absurd your position is, rather than taking a look at yourself you pretend that believing otherwise is some kind of psychosis.
What the fuck ever. Good luck building a coalition when you require your political allies to buy into a cult of personality that would have made Stalin blush.
dogwood
@B W Smith:
His polling is so low it’s hard to draw any conclusions, but as a woman speaking from a completely non-political perspective, he simply creeps me out. He’s one of those repressed guys who you just know is always looking for a righteous excuse to talk dirty. He’s just like all the republican congressmen of the ’90’s “reluctantly “reading aloud from the Starr Report. Contrary to popular opinion among many Democrats, not all fundamentalist Christian women are sexually repressed automatons. I imagine, whether they’d admit it or not, he creeps them out as well.
eemom
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
The problem with the video is this, dumbass: it fails to acknowledge that the bash-Obama element of the left behaves with equally knee jerk, blind devotion to dogma.
As in, most of the “progressive” soundbites delivered by the “progressive” in the video are just as distant from the actual FACTS as is the mindless “greatest president ever” spouted by the Obot.
Oh, and lack of self-awareness? Behold the mirror, clown.
Benjamin Franklin
@eemom:
We must become like the Jihadist, to defeat him.
I’ve noticed a substantial bit of cannibalism going on with Americanus Ignoramus wherein disagreements become blood feuds. It’s tearing them asunder, and I have no issue with their modeling the Donner Party.
“They are not our Teachers” comes to mind when the same thing happens in the Progressive community. I don’t wish to offend the Obama purists, but if they don’t like the criticisms, they should correct errors (such as mine) express themselves with words that display mutual respect, and move on.
Just sayin’ we don’t have to have divisions. Obama has done some good, and not so good. ‘Nuff said.
dogwood
@Benjamin Franklin:
That’s a pretty condescending response lacking in self-awareness. Luckily “firebaggers” and “obots” represent a very small part of the Democratic Party. But any group of Democrats who would take the time to make a video ridiculing other Democrats has definitely gone over the cliff. That’s not exactly ah expression of “words that display mutual respect.” I mean why do they care if some of their fellow Progressives love the President? Every major politician has had devoted followers. Were these people born yesterday? My favorite aunt literally worshiped JFK.
eemom
@Benjamin Franklin:
you will notice that the “progressive” bot in the video acknowledged ZERO of the good that Obama has done and in fact trashed every one of his accomplishments with glibbery and lies.
eemom
@dogwood:
I liked the fact that the little Obot was chocolate-colored, too. That was a nice touch.