Mitt Romney screws up again... sigh...

Ok, now it's starting to get old. At first, I liked watching the Republican candidates say a bunch of completely nonsensical things as much as the next guy. It seriously was some of the most entertaining television for several months. Unfortunately, it's starting to get old.

This past week alone, Rick Santorum lost his cool when he was asked whether he said Mitt Romney was the worst republican in the country (he kinda did),  and both Santorum and Gingrich (once again) completely misinterpreted President Obama's words calling for solidarity in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

http://live.drjays.com/index.php/2012/03/27/rick-santorum-loses-temper-calls-nyt-reporters-question-bullshit/

However, the most publicized gaffe came when, during a national interview, Romney's adviser Eric Ferhnstrom compared the Romney campaign to an etch-a-sketch, in that "you can kinda shake it up and restart all over again."

Opponents of Romney quickly took to the offensive, claiming that this proved that Romney didn't really care about the issues, and would say anything to win. Quite frankly, given Romney's past statements, his opponents are correct.

The reveal of these details severely hurts Romney's ethos, as he will not portray the idea of an ethical, moral president, but rather a person who will stop at nothing to gain power, even if it means lying to the people.

At this point in time though, it appears that these comments will not affect the outcome of the republican primary, as Rick Santorum must win 70% of the remaining primaries to win the nomination. Astonishingly, this could even be considered good kairos. While the statement was ill-advised, it could have come earlier in the race, and destroyed Romney's campaign. However, since the comment was made so late in the process, it doesn't look like Romeny will be affected.

But this whole etch-a-sketch thing isn't all bad. In fact, there is now a fun new website, etchasketchmittromney.com, in which one can see numerous Romney flip-flops on an etch-a-sketch.

And, etch-a-sketch sales have risen 3000% since the comment was made. Romney inadvertently helped out the economy!

Seriously though, it's getting frustrating listening to these guys. Of course, funny Rick Santorum photos never get old.

Fighting Rick Santorum

Today, I'm going to continue riding on the Rick Santorum bandwagon. No, I'm not talking about being a Rick Santorum supporter, I'm talking about blogging about him at his expense. And today, I'm gonna push the boundaries about as far as they can go, and it is all completely justifiable!

Recently, as many of you know, Rick Santorum has taken some very conservative stances on the issues... Especially those issues involving gay marriage and pornography. In fact, before Santorum's run for president even began, he was already making stupid comments that caused major controversy.

Back in 2003, Santorum stated in an AP interview that "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

Now, Santorum claims that he was saying that homosexual sex was not beastiality, but others are skeptical, arguing that if that were true, he'd never had brought up "man on dog" in the first place. After Santorum defended himself, the tension boiled over, and journalist Dan Savage decided it was time to act.

By acting, I mean Savage created a new definition of the word Santorum on the website spreadingsantorum.com, and began an internet campaign to make it the first thing that comes up on a google search of the word. His plan was successful, and now the name Santorum will forever be associated with-- No, I'm not going to post the definition on here. If you don't already know what santorum now means, and you really want to know, just look it up on Google. Just be prepared to be thoroughly disgusted.

More recently, Santorum has attacked the pornography industry, claiming that it is dangerous to American morals, and is causing violence to spread. Beside the fact that he is wrong, Santorum has kinda annoyed the male community (I'm sure other groups are annoyed too, but men were the first people to come to mind). Of course, these comments once again made Santorum look dumber and dumber. Seriously, why would someone ever put eliminating pornography as a major concern, while there is so much wrong with our country?

In response to this, internet users decided to make some rather clever images. The first, as seen above, is a portrait of Rick Santorum made completely out of gay pornography (it becomes borderline NSFW if you enlarge it). The second, seen below, is a bunch of small images of Rick Santorum, forming the image of gay pornography.

Rick Santorum

Not only is this trend of utilizing Rick Santorum's hatred for/obsession with homosexuality and pornography to create jokes hilarious, but it also has utilized kairos and ehtos in attempts to derail his campaign.

The timing of these attacks on Santorum have come at the perfect time, right during presidential election season, when the eyes of America are locked upon Santorum. Now, if a potential voter who knows nothing about Santorum looks him up online, they will be shocked, and the word Santorum will evoke images they'd rather not think about, and could even decide to not vote for him (which is the goal). And the pictures do the same thing, as Rick Santorum and gay porn are forever linked.

The plan is that by linking the two, opposition of Santorum hopes that Santorum's ethos will drop due to a lack of credibility. Obviously, they hope that internet users won't pay enough attention to notice that these definitions and images are meant to make him look bad. In fact, this is just normal political mudslinging that voters see every single election season. Campaign ads do exactly the same thing, by questioning superficial characteristics of opposing candidates in order to lower their ethos.

I personally hope Santorum stays in this race all the way until the Republican National Convention, where  he will inevitably lose to Mitt Romney. My reasoning isn't that Santorum is a good candidate, in fact he is very far from being a god candidate. My reasoning is that Rick Santorum has been extremely entertaining, and the comedy world will never be quite the same once he is out of the picture... Well, that is until 2016 when he will likely run for office again. It's just like the Olympics, except way funnier.

Oh well, for now I will just have to cherish these last few months of hilarious Santorum-related comedy bits while they last.

The "Logic" of Grover Norquist

On Monday, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, appeared on the Daily Show to discuss his stance on the issue of Tax Reform.

On the show, Norquist took an absolutist approach to spending, claiming that "taxes should never be raised" and instead should be replaced by lowering spending by Congress. The problem with this is that Norquist refuses to see any other options. This was mostly highlighted when he claimed that the 2010 elections, which he claims were "an election won against spending." This is a major problem with Norquist and many of the anti-tax Republicans; they refuse to look at anything on a wide scope, and demand to get what they want, even if they don't even know the whole picture.

Shortly after Norquist's remark, host Jon Stewart noted that the election was won on "both [spending and taxes] and a few other things." This two second answer completely reveals the problem with politics in general; people are unwilling to to acknowledge a grey area, and have turned politics into a right vs. wrong mentality.

I also found it interesting how Norquist explained the fact that America faced a deficit with the previous three republican presidents, and a surplus under Clinton. To counter this, he claimed that lower taxes actually helped boost America's revenue before Clinton, but it went into effect while he was in office, but his policies caused the economy to once again fall apart when Bush took over.

Now, you could easily say that his opinion matters in the argument, but to me, he's just completely ignorant to how the economy actually works, and refuses to acknowledge the facts. The fact he runs a PAC that has such strong control over the republican party is a major threat to the sanctity of our government as a whole.


To see Norquist on the Daily Show, click here

The "Silence Gun"

Recently, I read an article about a new "gun" that could be used to stop people from being able to talk. The gun uses microphones and speakers to capture and replay a person's voice directly after they speak. When the brain attempts to process the two voices in such close proximity (in time), it becomes confused, making it nearly impossible for a person to speak properly.

Right away, this brought my mind to the dangers of this technology on the rhetorical abilities of Americans. This "weapon" could easily be used to suppress someone's right to free speech. For example, if a person is protesting, how hard would it be for an opponent to aim this "gun" at them and force them to be quiet. Basically, this technology is able to suppress a person's ability to convey their ideas and beliefs.

In doing so, one coud eliminate the original view of debate and rhetoric. Ideas and opinions were exceptionally important to ancient thinkers. However, now, if a person holds a viewpoint against the government, then the government could point the gun at the protester and shut them up (if they have the gun). If someone can do that, then they aren't respecting the opinions of others, and are therefore going against the basic nature of rhetoric and debate.