Loose Lips Sink Ships

Santorum, Gingrich and Romney are loose lipped loonies who do the nation a disservice with their tough talk about Iran!
by Charlie Leck

Let's just call 'em the Three Stooges!
There’s a letter to the editor in this morning’s edition of our local paper. It’s written by Robert Loscheider, a fellow from Grand Rapids, Michigan. It makes a helluva lot of sense and I wish all the Republican candidates for the presidential endorsement of their party would read it.

“Some individuals are critical of President Obama’s ‘go slow’ strategy with Iran’s atomic energy/bomb efforts. Hasty action by previous presidents has cost Americans trillions of dollars. [You can read the rest of the letter here!]

The first thing these candidates need to be reminded of is the great cost in lives and limbs that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has wrung from our military. Minds also have been forever altered and affected by the men and women who served us in these wars. And, the nation has spent nearly four trillion dollars on these entanglements. The problem of our national debt needs no further explanation than this.

Now the Republican candidates, out on the stump, are criticizing the President for not being forceful enough – for not threatening more the use of American military might in Iran. These bozos do great damage to the President’s attempts to solve this problem diplomatically.

This is a difficult time for our President. It would be difficult no matter who was serving in this office at this precarious time. If ever the nation should rally around a President – should ever faithfully pray for his success in keeping the peace – this is that time. I wonder if the pious Mr. Santorum understands that.

With the exception of Mr. Paul, the candidates are taking very hawkish positions on Iraq and I can’t believe they don’t really understand how foolish that is. Nevertheless, they play to the basest interests and fears of the American people. Hopefully, most Americans will see how foolish they are.

U.S. Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, put it this way about Mitt Romney in a column in the Washington Post (though he could have been addressing several of the candidates):

“While wise Republicans stress the perils of loose war talk and the value of engagement to isolate Iran, Romney seeks to create political division with an attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy that is an inaccurate as it is aggressive.”

Here’s the kind of loose talk Kerry is alluding to (Mitt Romney wrote the following and he’s expressed these sentiments on the campaign trail again and again)…

“My plan includes restoring the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously. It also includes increasing military assistance to Israel and improved coordination with all of our allies in the area.”

Frankly, President Obama has instituted some of these measures and he’s seriously considering others, but he is first pushing a strong diplomatic effort, trying to get the Iranians to think seriously about what their threatening plans will force the world to do to stop them. He doesn’t need people like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum undermining his efforts

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Santorum takes a hard turn to the right!

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has decided to move even farther to the right and has moved out there on the very, very edge – right out on the ledge!
by Charlie Leck

Is Rick Santorum nuts – or what? The Washington Post editorialized this morning that “Santorum shows he’s the wrong man to be President.”

“When he so misreads Mr. Kennedy, when he perceives a war that does not exist, he shows a lack of appreciation for the first amendment. When he accuses President Obama of harboring a ‘phony theology’ – ‘not a theology based on the Bible – a different theology’ – it seems he does not understand the line between policy and religion. Mr. Santorum later explained that he was not questioning Mr. Obama’s faith, only his environmental policy. But theology means ‘the study of God and of the relations between God, humankind and the universe.’”

I hope you caught the above in all its humorous glory! Mr. Santorum was only questioning Mr. Obama’s environmental policy. This man is living out there in La-La Land.

Here’s how Nia-Malika Henderson opened a story in the Washington Post on Sunday…

DETROIT — Rick Santorum has opened up a new and provocative front in the political culture wars as he boldly tries to cast the race for the White House as a battle between the secular and the religious.

In back-to-back speeches over the weekend, the candidate described President Obama as “a snob” for focusing on the importance of a college education and disparaged the idea of a separation between church and state by attacking President John F. Kennedy, who made it a key point in his 1960 campaign.

Santorum said that he wanted to “throw up” after reading the late John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to Catholic bishops back in 1960.

Santorum insists on driving himself further and further out on the fringes of politics – something that’s often called “political suicide.”

The above quoted passages are not even the worst of his remarks. Santorum has had a brain glitch such as the ones usually only associated with Representative Michel Bachmann.

Here’s how Santorum went on as if dizzy and unable to use his brain…

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” he said. “The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.”

“True happiness comes from doing God’s will,” he said as the audience at Central Baptist Church cheered and gave him a nearly minute-long standing ovation. “It comes from not doing what you want to do, but doing what you ought to do.”

Uhm!
Do you think, Mr. Santorum, if you don’t mind me asking, that it may be God’s will to see to it that President Obama is reelected? To achieve His purposes it appears that He has affected your brain and stopped it from working any more. God’s power is immense, Mr. Santorum! He has struck you dumb! Dumb!

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Santorum II

My title sounds like some kind of Gregorian Chant, doesn’t it?
by Charlie Leck

Rick Santorum has an enormous problem. His mouth goes off involuntarily before his brain kicks in. He is slightly (and only slightly) more intellectual than Michele Bachman. There are so many Santorum comments out there in the public that he would like to withdraw. It is a little frightening to think that a large number of people are giving serious consideration to this guy as a possible President of the United States.

I just wonder if he thinks very much at all about some of the outrageous things he says. After accusing the President of a “phony theology” he is now saying that he doesn’t question the President’s faith. Hmm! What?

But the biggest gaffe comes from his comments about involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. (I really can’t make this stuff up! Santorum shouldn’t either.)

“In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized — ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness.”— [Former senator Rick Santorum, at the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri, Feb. 3, 2012]

Mr. Santorum is clearly accusing the Netherlands of euthanizing many older sick people. His charge: 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are the result of euthanasia and half of those are involuntary!

What? That’s a serious charge! I… I… I… I just can’t believe it!

How does the Netherlands react to the charge? A headline appeared in Holland quickly after Santorum made the charge: RICK SANTORUM THINKS HE KNOWS THE NETHERLANDS: MURDER OF THE ELDERLY ON A GRAND SCALE.

The facts!
Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands under very strict guidelines. However, it is a very uncommon form of death. 2.3 percent of all deaths in 2010 resulted under those guidelines. More than 80 percent of those deaths happened in the person’s home under a doctor’s care. More than 80 percent of those euthanized were suffering from cancer.

What about the bracelet? Appears to be rumor or gossip that Santorum bought into!

Why did he make the comment in the first place? Probably because he wants government to stay out of health care. And, it leaves certain implications hanging out there for the voter to worry about.

Like Michel Bachmann, Santorum reaches for the wildest stories he can find to support his arguments and the facts be damned. He can always apologize for what he said later!

That’s not the kind of President the country needs! I just don’t know why so many people still buy into him.

The Darkness of Rick Santorum

It’s quiet and peaceful on this Saturday morning in Minnesota. The weather for the last several days has been balmy and delightful. The next several days will be the same; yet I am thinking dark thoughts!

by Charlie Leck

My Word of the Day today, from Dictionary.Com, is Cimmerian. I thought for a little while this morning about playing the snobby scholar role and using the word in a blog about Republican Fundamental-Evangelical-Christian presidential candidates. As I read about the word this morning, I kept thinking: How perfect!

It’s a word out of classical mythology: “Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of a western people believed to dwell in perpetual darkness.”

I was warming up to something like this: “The Cimmerian candidates, like Bachmann and Santorum, are living in another level of civilization – namely that cauldron depth where it is so dark, dank and cold that there are no creative epiphanies or innovative possibilities.”

Oh, my! The coffee is hot and delicious this morning. It is incredibly quiet in the house and I my major responsibility is to read the national newspapers in-depth and make the important decisions about our nation’s economic conditions and its relations with China and Iran. My wife will rise later and make the mundane assessments about categorizing this month’s bills and what we shall do about one of the ovens in the kitchen that isn’t working quite properly.

In the Washington Post, I find a barn-burner title on Eugene Robinson’s latest column about Rick Santorum (oh, Mr. Robinson can write!): “He shouldn’t be allowed near the Oval Office!”

“Before there was the Tea Party to define the phrase ‘far-right fringe,’ there was Rick Santorum…”

“…those welcoming the Santorum surge for Machiavellian reasons should be careful what they wish for.”

“The problem is that his views are genuinely extreme and, in some instances, patently offensive. He is a cultural warrior who has equated same-sex marriage with polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality – and who has argued that gay men and lesbians should not serve openly in the military because ‘they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.”

“…Santorum says he doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality, just with ‘homosexual acts.’”

“Contraception, he said in October is ‘not okay’ because it gives people ‘a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.’ Thankfully, no one asked the obvious follow-up question.”

See exactly what I mean by the Cimmerian level. And all of this only begins to describe Santorum. This is a man you must get to know. Don’t be fooled by his nice guy appearance and his very talented vocal chords. He is opposed to taking away insurance companies’ rights to deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. He gets fuzzy when asked: Who then is going to pay for this health care if not highly profitable insurance companies?

Here’s exactly how Santorum put it:

“I had insurance under my employer. And when I decided to run for president, I left my job, I lost my insurance, I had to go out and buy insurance on the open market. We have a child who has a pre-existing condition and we went out and we said, we like this plan…we have to pay more because she has a pre-existing condition. Well, we should pay more. She’s going to be very expensive to the insurance company and, you know, that cost is passed along to us…I’m okay with that.”

Fine for you, Mr. Santorum, but go tell that to a single mother with two children (one of whom has juvenile diabetes), who works in a corner grocery store and has a very difficult time getting health insurance. You’re “okay” with the costs for your child’s health care being “passed along” to you, but this poor mother is hopelessly unable to pay such bills, you dingy!

But, let me put the ice cream on the pie! Rick Santorum is frighteningly hawkish. I frankly have had enough war for the rest of my life and my grandchildren’s lives* and I would like a president who is a seeker of peace. Yet, Santorum looks with eager excitement at the imminent possibility of thunderous strikes against Iran. (That’s all we need!)

Again, here’s Eugene Robinson on the subject of Santorum’s hawkishness:

“I do not say this lightly. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republican candidates have competed to see who can be most hawkish on Iran’s nuclear program. Santorum wins, hands down. (emphasis mine) He has said flatly that, unless Iran agrees to open its nuclear facilities to inspection and begins to dismantle them, as president he would order military strikes (emphasis not mine). In fact, Iran is already under nuclear inspection, but Santorum seems not to care. He has said he believes an attack by Israel or the United States is probably inevitable.”

Cimmerian?
The man is Cimmerian down to his tippy-toes!

Santorum lost his bid in 2006 to be reelected to the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and he lost it in an absolute landslide. Nevertheless, don’t underestimate him because this dark side he has will appeal to a great many other Cimmerian types.

*World War II, a 4 decades cold war with the Soviet Union, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Laotian Civil War (or the Secret War), the invasion of Panama, the liberation of Kuwait (or Desert Storm), the Somali Civil War, the Bosnian War, the War in Iraq, the Afghanistan War, the Incursions into Libya (and dozens of other little military dalliances like Ronald Reagan’s silly invasion of Grenada, the Kosovo War under Bill Clinton and, of course, the War on Terror). As a grandfather of mine would have said: “Enough already mit dem wars!”

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