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View Full Version : TDCDad's Rick Santorum thread


Tom Araya
09-02-2006, 08:45 AM
Most people probably missed when the Senator's name became a word with a definition. It is:

santorum: the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex

I think that's a fairly accurate description of this senator. Here's what he had to say about 10% of the U.S. populace:

Santorum describes gay sex as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which he said threaten society and the family. Furthermore Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts.

Santorum also believes that the right to privacy "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution"; that, "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family"; and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts that "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family." Straight people also take note: Santorum's position might also affect heterosexuals, in that he said that he did not believe there was a Constitutional right to engage in private consensual sexual acts. That's what we need: some bedroom cops!

I think it's dangerous when Christian fundamentalists allow their extremist & narrow views to creep into social & fiscal policy.

From the Rasmussen Report: He is one of the most vulnerable congressional incumbent this election season because of the unpopularity of the President and the emerging candidacy of Bob Casey, Jr., the son of the former Pennsylvania governor, whom Santorum controversially referred to as a "thug", as reasons for his drop in polls. Some also believe that he may be too conservative for Pennsylvania, which is a swing state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. However, recent polling shows the race tightening and Casey's margin shrinking. A recent poll that took into account the recent addition of Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli to the ballot, who is the only pro-choice and anti-Iraq candidate, shows a significant net gain for Senator Santorum.

There you go, divide & conquer. I'm guessing (though I haven't investigated it) that the Republicans are pumping a fair amount of money into the Green Party candidate's coffers. Not that it's illegal, or even stupid (on the contrary), but this is the means by which such people have to cling to power. This is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis. What a guy!

Oh, here's another thing I don't like about Santorum: In 2001, he tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools. In a 2002 Washington Times op-ed article Santorum wrote that intelligent design "is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes."

So he's also anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-learning, & anti-children.

You have got to be effing kidding me. What does a guy with a BA in political science, and MBA, & a law degree know about science? Apparently, not much. And as a lawyer, here's his crown jewel: While working at the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, he represented the World Wrestling Federation, arguing that professional wrestling should be exempt from federal steroid regulations because it was not a sport. Un-effing-believable.

I also question his sanity after one of his children was stillborn. He & his wife brought the dead infant home & had his other five children sleep with the corpse before taking the deceased child back to the hospital. I completely understand that losing a child can mess with your head (I think many of you know with the struggles I've personally experienced), but this seems a bit extreme.

He was also square in the middle of the Terry Schiavo fiasco and supports privatization of Social Security (which, curiously, is not even favored on Wall Street in most quarters). As of May 2006, Santorum has the lowest "net approval" rating in the Senate (according to a poll conducted by SurveyUSA). That same poll also shows that Santorum is currently the least popular member of the U.S. Senate, with an approval rating of 36%. He suggested penalties for anyone who stayed in New Orleans when Katrina hit, even though it was only a Category 1 storm that hit New Orleans (it was the under-funded U.S. Army Corps of Engineers levees that couldn't even handle a Category 1 storm).

Republican strategists have taken as a bad omen Santorum's primary results in 2006, in which he retained the Republican nomination for the senate without being challenged. The omen in question revolves around the fact that 22,000 more voters cast their ballots to nominate Lynn Swann for the gubernatorial ticket, who was also unchallenged, and that Santorum received far fewer votes, meaning 22,000 Republican primary voters abstained from endorsing Santorum a second time.

Mr. Santorum found himself mired in controversy over his residency, with his detractors highlighting the fact that while he maintains a modest residence in suburban Pittsburgh, his family lives in the Virginia suburbs when the Senate is in session, which is the majority of the year. Critics argued it was not unlike the living arrangements he denounced in his 1990 House race against Representative Doug Walgren, the Democrat he defeated. Mr. Santorum, then 32 and a quintessential grass-roots insurgent, accused Mr. Walgren of being out of touch with his Pittsburgh-area district, symbolized by his home in the Virginia suburbs. Hypocrite Santorum's legal address is a two-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He has six kids in a two-bedroom house? Right. . .

Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000. In November 2004, the Penn Hills Progress, a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife pay about $2,000 per year in property taxes on the home they own. The paper also found that another couple were registered voters at the same address. It would appear that Santorum is leasing his legal residence, meaning that he's not a legal resident of the state he purports to represent. Talk about out of touch with your constituency. . .

Other Santorum craziness: On September 8, 2005 during an interview with public-radio station WITF, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Santorum said:

[T]he weather service gave no warning, or not sufficient warning in my opinion, as to the effects when it came on land in Florida as a Category One hurricane [...] Predictions were that it wasn't going to go out to the Gulf and affect the western Gulf coast, it was going to sort of head up to Florida or go right off the coast of Florida [...] I'm not going to suggest when it comes to Katrina that there were any major errors. I don't know. This is something that I think needs to be investigated.

On September 9, Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, issued a press release: "After reviewing the actions taken by the National Weather Service, I am convinced that this was one of the most accurate hurricane predictions we have ever seen."

Did I mention that Santorum is the sponsor of legislation proposed to prevent the National Weather Service from competing with private-sector weather services, many of whom have contributed to his campaign? Like I always say, "follow the money."

Do you need more? How 'bout this one? Santorum added a synthetic-fuel tax-credit amendment to a larger bill introduced in the Senate by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who heads the Senate Finance Committee. Time Magazine called this tax-credit scheme "a multibillion-dollar scam." The amendment was inserted in the Tax Relief Act of 2006, which provides aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and sets new policies for tax-exempt groups.

More weirdness: On his campaign Web site, Santorum boasts of winning $8.5 million in federal aid for the riverfront redevelopment of an abandoned Peco Energy plant—an effort that culminated in the earmarking of $6 million in highway money last year.

But good-government experts were troubled by the appearance of a developer giving money to the senator's charity at the same time it was lobbying for federal dollars. Unlike a campaign contribution, checks to a charity can be written by a corporation and are not subject to any limit.

Washington, DC in general, and Rick Santorum specifically, are for sale.

In June 2006, Santorum declared that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been found in Iraq, a statement supported neither by the Pentagon nor by the Executive Office of the President. He was referring to degraded and unusable munitions, munitions (I might add) that were originally sold to Saddam by the Reagan administration.

This guy is not only unfit for the U.S. Senate, but unfit for general circulation in the U.S. populace. We usually put the insance in straight-jackets. Either that, or we elect them to high political office.

RP-in-Nebraska
09-04-2006, 10:16 AM
Tom, you obviously have a lot of time on your hands this holiday weekend. I didn't read all of this post but enough to make one comment. Santorum isn't the first to state such ideas. There are laws on the books that prohibit many types of non-conforming sex acts, even between consenting adults. Many of these laws have been around for a very long time. Perhaps I'll have time to do the research to list them but I have a feeling that with your history background that you know more about them than I do.

Thatbeing said, I find that type of behavior "deviant" also, however, as long as it isn't illegal (whips, chains, animals, etc.) I don't think we should dictate what two consenting adults do in the bedroom.

Tom Araya
09-04-2006, 10:37 AM
Actually, I made these posts on Friday afternoon, but it was late in the day.

We're in agreement, RP. I just wonder why some legislators feel they need to be the arbiters of bedroom behavior. I feel these "moral crusaders" make the worst form of politician, and more often than not, seem to have some "kink" that gets found out eventually, thus exposing their hypocrisy. These people pander to that 25% of the electorate who primarily vote their Victorian (some would say Puritanical) sensibilities, the same 25% of people I find particularly dangerous & frightening to have participate in a democracy because they would prefer to live in a theocracy.

Yesterday, Santorum & Casey were on "Meet the Press." If you missed it, you should try to find the clips online. They were very enlightening. Again & again, Santorum lied about his own record (he even lied about his residency, though, much to my chagrin, moderator Tim Russert let him off the hook on this issue) and distorted the record of his challenger.

At times, Santorum just looked like a puppet miming party talking-points. For example, Casey gave very detailed answers about steps he would pursue were he elected in order to reduce the deficit & help bring the budget into balance. Santorum's response, and I quote, was: "What you heard from Mr. Casey is what you hear all the time. No specifics, no answer." And oddest of all is the fact that Santorum is the one who holds the seat in the Senate & is the one responsible for voting for bills that have put us in this situation, yet he actually attempted to paint his challenger as one who operates in the red, when the record shows that Casey has been fiscally responsible during his time in various offices in Pennsylvania (the latest of which is state treasurer). Craziest of all, Santorum repeated his oft-mocked statement that we have found WMD's in Iraq, a claim even the Bush administration, the Pentagon, and others in the know have repeatedly denied.

Toughest of all for Republicans to overcome in this race is the fact that Casey is a Democrat that even I could support--a gun rights advocate who also is in favor of strictly curtailing the availability of abortions. Nonetheless, Santorum has always brought home the pork to Pennsylvania and he has enough defenders in this swing state to at least make this an intriguing race to follow. Though Casey maintains a lead, I fully expect this race to come down to the last piece of hanging chad.

RP-in-Nebraska
09-04-2006, 10:44 AM
I didn't see it. I'm not into politics quite as much as you.

In regards to WMD's, recal that 1.7 tons of yellow cake uranium was found in Iraq. In and of itself is not a WMD but along with the small test gas centrifuges found and a little bit of highly enriched uranium found, all of the senate intelligence reports indicate that it was clear that Iraq was SEEKING WMD technology, which I believe was the claim by Bush in his January 2003 speech.

RP-in-Nebraska
09-04-2006, 10:46 AM
Actually, I made these posts on Friday afternoon, but it was late in the day.

Not that it matters, but 9:45 a.m. on Saturday is not considered late in the day on Friday afternoon. :-)

Tom Araya
09-04-2006, 10:59 AM
[quote="Tom Araya":833a2]Actually, I made these posts on Friday afternoon, but it was late in the day.

Not that it matters, but 9:45 a.m. on Saturday is not considered late in the day on Friday afternoon. :-)[/quote:833a2]

I was talking about the Katrina/FEMA posts, not that it matters. :D

Tom Araya
09-04-2006, 11:00 AM
I didn't see it. I'm not into politics quite as much as you.

In regards to WMD's, recal that 1.7 tons of yellow cake uranium was found in Iraq. In and of itself is not a WMD but along with the small test gas centrifuges found and a little bit of highly enriched uranium found, all of the senate intelligence reports indicate that it was clear that Iraq was SEEKING WMD technology, which I believe was the claim by Bush in his January 2003 speech.

"(Iraq) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons."
-Bush, Jan. 2003

He hardly said they were SEEKING it.

MG_Grievous
09-04-2006, 11:02 AM
Tom, you obviously have a lot of time on your hands this holiday weekend.

:lol:


I find myself reading the first and last sentences of these long posts. That's where the good stuff is.

Tom Araya
09-04-2006, 11:25 AM
I admit to a sheer amount of boredom this weekend. I've mowed & weed-eated, I've stripped & painted the foyer, I took a 16-mile bike ride along the Blue River Trail yesterday, I've visited Santa-Caligon Days with my kids, I read SI cover-to-cover, and I got caught up on some work. But I did have some idle time after all of that, so I decided to start a brouhaha on mw.com! :lol: I don't sleep much. . .

RP-in-Nebraska
09-04-2006, 11:58 AM
[quote="RP-in-Nebraska":e8606]I didn't see it. I'm not into politics quite as much as you.

In regards to WMD's, recal that 1.7 tons of yellow cake uranium was found in Iraq. In and of itself is not a WMD but along with the small test gas centrifuges found and a little bit of highly enriched uranium found, all of the senate intelligence reports indicate that it was clear that Iraq was SEEKING WMD technology, which I believe was the claim by Bush in his January 2003 speech.

"(Iraq) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons."
-Bush, Jan. 2003

He hardly said they were SEEKING it.[/quote:e8606]

Yes, they possessed chemical weapons - they were found in Iraq. The pursuit of biological weapons was abandoned in the late 1990's but our intelligence was still reporting it was there.. The "SEEKING" claim to which I referred was for "nucular" (nuclear) bombs.