Quote Of The Day: Stonekettle Station

Sep16 by D Gregory Smith

Part of a response to Rick Santorum’s Value Voters speech– in itself a study of mental Novocain:

…Rush is also the guy who recently said that Batman: The Dark Knight Rises was an attack on Mitt Romney.

I’ll pause for a minute so you can take that in.

Batman was an attack on Mitt Romney.

See in the movie, the bad guy is named Bane.

Get it?

No?

What, are you people idiots?

Look, it’s simple: Bane = bad guy. And Bane sounds like Bain. Bain. See? Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s company. Ah HA! So therefore obviously Obama is a communist Kenyan who eats little aborted white babies while scheming to turn America into a Liberal socialist vegetarian gay bath-house under Sharia Law.

Also, there might be Nazis.

I’m a little hazy on the part where billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne, head of Wayne Enterprises, is a filthy liberal socialist. It’s probably because Batman likes cats (and women) and doesn’t pack a gun. But I digress.

Meanwhile, just two days after appearing on stage with Mitt Romney, God’s favorite Christian, Pat Robertson, told a man to move to Saudi Arabia so he could beat his wife legally. …

Please, do yourself a favor read the whole thing here- it’s an amazing example of the schooling of fear-based logic gymnastics, contortionistic ridiculousness and crazy.

I love this guy.

Quote Of The Day- Maureen Dowd

Feb29 by D Gregory Smith

From her column on the lackluster Republican Candidates:

In an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, Santorum offended the Catholics he’s courting by saying that the J.F.K. speech ratifying the separation of church and state made him want “to throw up” because Kennedy had thrown “his faith under the bus.”

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute,” Sanctorum said.

If he is willing to cross that line, the only two possibilities are that he doesn’t understand the nature of the United States or that he wants to do damage to the United States. Neither is acceptable.

Santorum Believes That State Should Not Tell Churches What To Believe (lezgetreal.com)
Rick Santorum Says Separation of Church and State Makes Him Want to Vomit: VIDEO (towleroad.com)

Dutch Outraged Over Santorum’s Euthanasia Claim

Feb26 by D Gregory Smith

More Santorum leaking.

Check this out. From Buzzfeed:

Image via Wikipedia

Rick Santorum’s invocation of a nightmare of mass murder of the elderly in the Netherlands has provoked a storm of incredulity and criticism in the Western European country, where the local press say his statistics are wildly inflated.

“Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale” is Saturday’s headline in the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

“Rick Santorum is an arch conservative. The most conservative of all candidates in the Republican primaries. He loathes abortion and euthanasia. So now he loathes the Netherlands. Because in the Netherlands we kill the elderly like there’s no tomorrow,” reads the story, according to a translation provided by BuzzFeed’s Low Country correspondent, and author of a Dutch blog on American politics, Bertine Moenaff. The story quotes Santorum, before concluding: “This man is really imaginative. It would be a laughing matter, if he weren’t in the race for the Republican nomination to take on Barack Obama in the race for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world.”

Santorum said in an interview with social conservative leader James Dobson earlier this month that euthanasia makes up “ten percent of all deaths, and half of those people are euthanized involuntarily, because they are old or sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go into a hospital. They go to other country.”

The Dutch public broadcaster Radio 1 described Santorum’s remark as “fact-free politics,” and the comments have gotten wide play, leading this evening’s broadcast of the country’s popular current-event’s show De Wereld Draait Door and drawing reports all over the national media.

The Dutch sources estimate that legal euthanasia is the cause of what the Christian paper Nederlands Dagblad put at 3.2% fo deaths at the most liberal estimate, and others put around 2%. Public statistics, which have been reported since the practice was legalized in 2002, cite 3,136 reports of euthanasia out of a total of 136,000 in the Netherlands in 2011, a bit more than 2%.

The Dutch were also flummoxed by Santorum’s claim that Dutch elderly wear “Don’t Euthanize Me” bracelets.

Other reports label Santorum a “crazy extreme Catholic” with “a surreal view of the Netherlands.”

Santorum’s Not The Perfect Catholic He Claims To Be (DgSmith.org)
Santorum: Who Will Protect You From Crazed Euthanizing Dutch Doctors? (jonathanturley.org)
Dutch TV Anchor To Rachel Maddow: The Dutch Are Furious At Santorum Over Euthanasia Claim (mediaite.com)

Tuesday Clippings

Feb21 by D Gregory Smith

A few links to stories I found interesting this week:

~Indiana Legislator Refuses To Honor “Radical” Girl Scouts.

~Rick Santorum Could Take Republicans Down With Him

~AIDS Research Being Done By 17 Year-olds

~Rehberg Should Try Some ‘Made In Montana’ Funding

~Female Elephants Need Not Apply

~Marriage: David Cameron Faces Church Backlash Over ‘Cultural Vandalism’

Happy Clicking!

“An Open Letter To Gay Republicans”

Jan13 by D Gregory Smith

Image via Wikipedia

From Asher Huey at The Huffington Post :

Dear gay Republicans,

Rick Santorum’s surge and near-win in Iowa should be a wake-up call: your party hates you.

Let’s put economic and other issues aside for a moment; we can have a spirited debate about the backward GOP approach to taxes, the environment, and foreign policy another time. I don’t understand how you can look beyond the fact that a major portion of your party’s fundamental beliefs are that you are not equal.

This isn’t a minor issue within your party. The Republican Party platform calls for amending the United States Constitution to discriminate against you. Party officials actually want to use our country’s foundational document, which grants and extends rights and freedoms to people, to limit yours. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

…Your party has, as one of its major leading presidential candidates, a person who doesn’t think you should be able to serve openly in the military, who doesn’t believe that you can create a loving family, who thinks that your committed relationships are destroying the moral fabric of America. Your party has thrown you in the deviant pile. Your party has labeled you a sexual predator. Your party is afraid of you and does not incorporate your voice or believe in your dignity.

Read the rest here.

Asher Huey: An Open Letter to Gay Republicans (huffingtonpost.com)
After My Own Heart (dgsma.wordpress.com)
Montana Split On Gay Marriage Rights (towleroad.com)
Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney Pressed About Support For Gay Rights During 2012 New Hampshire GOP Debate (huffingtonpost.com)
Friendly Fire: Don’t mistake comments on imaginary gay sons and friends for a softening of Rick Santorum’s anti-gay bigotry (pinkbananaworld.com)
Letter: Republican Party’s decline is sad (knoxnews.com)
The Perry Campaign Recycles Homophobia, and Angry Gay Republicans Recycle Outing (queerty.com)

New Hampshire GOP’s On The Gays

Jan8 by D Gregory Smith

Didn’t watch the New Hampshire Debate?

Yeah, me neither. I thoroughly enjoyed the Twitterbate, though- the feeds of my Tweeps were hilarious. I was very busy watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. But don’t think me completely irresponsible- I knew there would be some good summaries this morning. Here’s one of them.

Think Progress has compiled all of the candidates statements regarding LGBT persons/issues/paranoid persecution complexes into a single video. Fascinating viewing- especially if you’re a psychologist:

GOP Debate: Why is ‘Gay Marriage’ always first on the agenda? (bazaardaily.com)
GOP Candidates Condemn Same-Sex Marriage In New Hampshire Debate (thinkprogress.org)
Rick Santorum Slipping In New Hampshire Poll, Bashing Gay Marriage Hurting Conservative Candidate (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
Republican Debate: Republicans Sharpen Knives As New Hampshire Primary Looms (huffingtonpost.com)
Five things learned from GOP debate (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Rick Santorum Is Not The Perfect Catholic He Claims To Be

Jan6 by D Gregory Smith

Rick Santorum has been touting himself as a Catholic of conservative values- toeing the line of Rome.

Hardly.

He’s conveniently forgetting to advocate for several key social justice positions of the hierarchy. He’s picking and choosing- much the argument that conservative Catholics accuse their more progressive brethren of doing. To wit: John Gehring’s breakdown in the Huffington Post (thanks to Enlightened Catholicism):

Image via Wikipedia

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a proud Catholic who often speaks about his faith on the campaign trail, is attracting some formidable buzz from pundits who view his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses as a sign that the former Pennsylvania senator might have enough mojo to rally a coalition of religious and blue-collar voters.

New York Times columnist David Brooks waxed poetic Monday about Santorum’s Catholic conservative sensibilities and touted the candidate as an authentic antidote to “the corporate or financial wing of the party.”Evangelicals are also taking notice. Writing on CNN’s Belief blog, Chris LaTondresse, the founder and CEO of Recovering Evangelical, calls Santorum a post-religious right candidate “whose concern for poor and vulnerable people” is “firmly rooted in his Catholic faith.”

It’s easy to see why Santorum might appeal to some culturally conservative Catholics and moderate evangelicals who are wary of Democrats but also turned off by the Republican Party’s cozy embrace of economic libertarianism and tireless defense of struggling millionaires. Santorum is more comfortable with communitarian language, has been a strong supporter of foreign aid to impoverished countries and connects with personal stories of his blue-collar upbringing.

But it’s a political delusion to think Rick Santorum is a standard-bearer of authentic Catholic values in politics. In fact, on several issues central to Catholic social teaching – torture, war, immigration, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor and workers’ rights – Santorum is radically out of step with his faith’s teachings as articulated by Catholic bishops and several popes over the centuries.

Santorum is conveniently forgetting key Catholic teaching on poverty, immigration, torture, worker’s rights, financial inequity and climate change- obviously to court the Christianist voter.

But Catholics should not be fooled. Read the full breakdown here.

And don’t miss this: Rick Santorum’s Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements