It’s the combination of religious zeal, ignorance, the obsessive need to control the sex lives of other people, and the yes-clowns around him telling him he can and should be president that worry the hell out of me.
He doesn’t have the slightest conception why people need contraception nor what happens with medical tests, and that’s dangerous. He also doesn’t get that some people don’t have resources to let them take care of disabled children and still keep a roof overhead and food on the table.
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“I really would not be interested,” [Mitch] Daniels told CNN affiliate WISH Monday. “If we get to that point, I would be interested in finding someone who can present a really credible and winning alternative to where the nation is going right now. I still think it’s very unlikely. These things have a way of resolving themselves.”
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unspoken implication: by electing the other side this time out, if all else fails.
This may be a learning experience for socialcons. (I wonder, though; they do seem to think that the answer to their unpopularity is to outbreed everyone. Will we see preachers cajoling their flocks to quiverfull?)
The GOP out-crazy the Democrats by a thousand to one, at least. Their slate this year was outgunned Tim Pawlenty; Mr.Moneybags Mormon Mitt Romney; Wannabe Moneybags Donald Trump; Ladies Man Herman Cain; Mrs, Hoovering up all the Federal Cash I can Grab Michele Bachmann; Asshole Hypocrite of the Millennium Newt Gingrich; and now introducing the Pope Puritan Prez in a sweater-vest, Santorum, His Holiness the First.
‘Crazy’ is a vague term, and can mean different things.
Is he schizo or something, with hallucinations and the like? I don’t have enough information.
Is he obsessive, compulsive, manic, etc.? Maybe, probably not, let alone to disorder level. He’s in a business which rewards some behavior which can look like that out of context.
Narcissistic? Sure, as are the other guys still in the race, but not necessarily to disorder level.
But ignorance and false information create cognitive problems too.
I know Sampiro answered this already, but I think there is a point at which extreme or disproportionate responses should be seen as a sort of cognitive failing–albeit limited to that one issue, not as a general diagnosis of ‘crazy.’ Is ‘maniac’ a fair characterization of ‘massive overkill’?
I agree that you have to really have a differently wired mind than most people to want that job, but there’s DEFINITELY a spectrum of nuttiness among those who do go after it. Mitt Romney for instance- I don’t like him as a candidate and for the life of me I can’t understand how anybody with more than one cluster of functioning neurons can actually believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, but I think he’s perfectly sane. Gingrich- I think he’s a corrupt asshole but sane. Romney, whether sane or not, is definitely 5 times loopier than your average bear.
I remember his Daily Show interview: he continually spoke of the state teaching virtue. It was the first time I really thought "This isn’t your average ‘family values’ talking pointer, this guy has oodles and oodles of issues. (Stewart was amazingly, I would even say disappointingly, polite and restrained during that interview.)
I don’t think Newt Gingrich is crazy - he’s a psychopath. I think Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry are as well. Crazy as a shithouse rat is that dishevelled guy with the crazy eyes you see shouting at himself on the subway. Psychopaths
I think Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman are a combination of religious fanatic and stupid. And like most fanatical Christians they seem not to understand any of the alleged teachings of Christ. Rick Perry fits in here as well as being a psychopath.
Herman Cain on the other hand is just stupid. He’s an interesting case though because he reputedly rescued a large national business from the brink of failure and yet watching him campaign it was very obvious that he is profoundly hard of thinking. Something doesn’t add up with him.
> Herman Cain on the other hand is just stupid. He’s an interesting case though
> because he reputedly rescued a large national business from the brink of failure
> and yet watching him campaign it was very obvious that he is profoundly hard
> of thinking. Something doesn’t add up with him.
It’s far from clear that he rescued Godfather’s Pizza from the brink of failure. During his time as CEO, it went from the fifth largest to the eleventh largest pizza chains:
“The problem is not that the phenomena that trouble Mr. Santorum are unserious. The use of prenatal testing for search-and-destroy missions against Down syndrome and other handicapped babies is barbaric.”
Yep - if you do prenatal genetic testing and (for example) find out that the fetus has the genes for Tay-Sachs disease (meaning slow deterioration beginning at six months of age proceeding to death by age four) and you decide not to inflict that on a child and the family by getting an abortion, it’s a “barbaric” “search-and-destroy mission”. George evidently hopes Rick or someone like him is able to ban these “search-and-destroy missions”.
FWIW I believe George Will has a mentally disabled son, so he might be looking at this differently from the average person…
But yes, he can be awfully cold. When the late Princess of Wales was killed, he said something to the effect of, “So what? They should have had their seatbelts on,” and when Katrina destroyed New Orleans he said something like, “It’s their own fault for living below sea level.”
One might argue that something is wrong there. Even if he doesn’t care personally, he seems to take pride in being the meanest SOB in the room. You don’t have to be so hurtful, Mr. Will. You could just keep your mouth shut.
In my experience, one of the hallmarks of many mentally ill people (of the ‘confirmed and diagnosed’ variety) is absolute selfishiness and a near total lack of compassion. This was not true for all of them, but it was of the majority; somebody in the same room could be on fire and they’d whine about the screaming.
Actual example: I once had to give CPR to a resident who was pretty much stone cold dead when we found him. One resident who I’ll call Rommel (wasn’t his real name, but close to) had known this guy for years and stood in the living room outside of the bedroom door where the body was and where I was giving CPR til the EMTs came, stayed there as the EMTs relieved me and hooked up the equipment and said “He’s dead” (i.e. not even worth defibrillating- he was cold), and put the guy’s dead body onto a gurney, by which time the dead resident’s mother had pulled up. So, knowing that his neighbor and ‘friend’ of years was dead and that a 70 year old woman was about to learn her son was dead, and with the dead guy’s body being put onto a gurney, Rommel comes up to me and asks “Can you take me to the store? I need to get some cigarettes.”
That’s an extreme example admittedly, but lesser variations on it were a daily occurrence.
I went with Option 2, although, I wouldn’t call him “extreme.” Fanatical, sure, but it’s not like he’s marching down the street with a flaming sword anything.
I’d actually plop him down squarely between Option 2 and Option 3.
This, and he’s at least honest and forthright about his beliefs, however crazy they are. Romney’s pathetic attempts to connect with the grassroots drip with insincerity. Conservatives are being forced to choose between Honest But Crazy Loon or Sensible But Patronizing Simp, and they seem to be going with honest.
Will has lived a long life of absolute privilege. He was born rich and lives rich because he says and writes the sorts of things that his rich employers approve of. Plus he does not end his sentences with prepositions. But I digress. Because he cannot conceive of anybody beyond his own experience, he morally judges all people in all circumstances do not make his same choices and judgments. I personally have no judgment to make on a woman who does not wish to raise a severely mentally retarded child, or a child who will die after a few years. I consider it barbaric to judge a woman who choose abortion for whatever reason.
I’ve read Will’s stuff since the 1970s, and he is obsessed in a bad way with people who are different than he is. I think that he fails to understand that our nation has only a few dozen openings for professional and well paid scold.
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One might argue that something is wrong there. Even if he doesn’t care personally, he seems to take pride in being the meanest SOB in the room. You don’t have to be so hurtful, Mr. Will. You could just keep your mouth shut.
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For general meanest SOB asshole status it’s hard to beat Glenn Beck. When he was a DJ he called up the wife of a rival DJ and mocked her, on air, for having a miscarriage.
And now we turn this thread in a happier direction
Stewart goes very easy on elected officials as guests on his show. He lets them have their say. See, for example, when Zell Miller was on TDS. Now media flacks - Stewart gives them no mercy, while he draws them out and quarters them.
We now return to your regularly scheduled thread about nutso POSTUSes and looney candidates, already in progress.
(Actually, when that site opens it just looks like a photomosaic with Rick Santorum’s pics- it’s when you enlarge it and can make out the tiles that it gets really NSFW, but better broken-link than sorry.
“Mitt Romney has criticized me for taking one for the Republican team and we all know why, because Mitt Romney’s teammates are all Democrats,” Santorum said in an emailed statement. “It’s pretty clear what team Mitt Romney is on when he passed socialized medicine that included $50 dollar abortions – bragged about not lining up with the NRA – appointed liberal activist judges to the Massachusetts bench, and was hanging out at Planned Parenthood events celebrating the pro–choice agenda.”
“No wonder working with a Republican President’s team is foreign to Mitt Romney,” Santorum said.
and
“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely … The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”
