Here's What They Actually Said...Just THIS WEEK!

By Peter Rodman
and compiled from other sources*

Okay, so this week I'm going to take the lazy way out, and let the candidates speak for themselves!  I think you'll find this passel of stories as fascinating as I did. 
Remember, folks: We're actually considering making some of  these people President of the United States of America.
So here's what they actually said…just THIS WEEK!

　
Ron Paul on Hurricane Irene: Response Should Be Like It Was In 1900 


Taking his anti-government ideology to its logical extreme, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) told NBC News’ Jo Ling Kent today that there should be no national response to Hurricane Irene, and that government responses should revert back to how they were over 100 years ago. “We should be like 1900, we should be like 1940 1950 1960,” he said. 

Ron Paul...



...George and Ringo

 “I live on the gulf coast, we deal with storms all the time,” said Paul, who has called for abolishing FEMA, dismissed the organization because it is “a great contribution to deficit financing.”  Heckuva job, Ron.

Glenn Beck called Hurricane Irene a "blessing" on his Friday radio show, saying it would teach people to be prepared for disasters. 
As the hurricane barreled towards the East Coast, Beck said that it would be a valuable lesson for people who have not heeded his warnings. He said he has long told his followers to stock up in case of "global disruption in food." He said that, even though people had mocked him for it, disaster preparedness was key to him.
"If you've waited [until now], this hurricane is a blessing," he said. "It is God reminding you, as was the earthquake last week...you're not in control."

John Boehner and Eric Cantor Won’t Even Commit To Hurricane Relief, Without Budget Cuts 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is insisting that “any potential emergency disaster aid be offset by spending cuts.” Huffington Post reports that “Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring on Friday declined to say where Republicans would look to make cuts to pay for a potential storm aid package.” Speaker John Boehner’s spokesperson “ducked the question altogether when asked if Boehner agreed with Cantor’s call for offsets for emergency aid.” Boehner and Cantor’s position is “a break from a bipartisan tradition” of immediately appropriating funds to help those in need following a natural disaster.

Rick Perry may have led the field in "crazy" this week.  He doubled-down on his  contention that everything from consumer protection to Social Security to federal child labor laws is "unconstitutional." 
Now he’s been caught on tape in South Carolina, comparing the civil rights movement to the GOP’s fight for lower corporate taxes and deregulation. He could hardly have picked a worse occasion (the unveiling of Martin Luther King's monument, in D.C.) to fundamentally misunderstand and misrepresent the struggle for civil rights in America.
Earlier this week, Time Magazine discovered that Perry had compared homosexuality to alcoholism in his 2008 book about the Boy Scouts.　
And just last November, Gov. Perry published a book called Fed Up!, a 240-page tome which argues that everything from child labor laws, to the Clean Air Act, to Medicare violates the Constitution.

As it turns out, however, claiming that America’s entire social safety net is unconstitutional isn’t a very popular position — so Perry’s now trying to take it all back whenever questioned about these assertions, even as he repeats them before campaign audiences.
[Perry's] communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest [Social Security] was unconstitutional.
Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.
The campaign’s official disavowal of “Fed Up!” is rather curious.
On Sunday evening, at Mr. Perry’s first campaign stop in Iowa, a questioner asked the governor to talk about how he would fix the country’s entitlement programs.
Mr. Perry shot back: “Have you read my book, ‘Fed Up?’ Get a copy and read it.”
Again, Fed Up! is not some 20-year-old thesis that Perry wrote before he served in elected office.
It is a nationally published manifesto that Perry was proudly signing at book tours just a few months ago. Indeed, as recently as last Monday, Perry was on the campaign trail citing Fed Up for the unusual proposition that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.”
And yes, he repeated once more that Social Security is a "Ponzi Scheme," and is "unconstitutional."

Michelle Bachmann said this week that she will "take a look" at LOWERING the $7.25 minimum wage, if elected Commander-in-Chief. 

That's right, she thinks we might need to lower American wages, even at the entry level, to 'compete' with foreign countries!
Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up.  
At a campaign rally on Sunday in Sarasota, Fla., Bachmann took note of last week’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake that rocked the Washington area and whose effects were felt beyond New York City. She also cited Hurricane Irene, which hit the United States as a Category 1 hurricane before traveling up the East Coast to Canada, leaving an estimated billions of dollars in damages and almost two dozen reported deaths.
“I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said.“We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people, because the American people are roaring right now."
Politico.com reports that her reps are now saying it was a "joke." Says the New York Daily News, "Even if it was meant to be funny, Hurricane Irene has reportedly contributed to at least 32 deaths."

Finally, there was this:
A study led by a team of UNC-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt professors examining what “cultural dispositions” unite the Tea Party reaching some interesting conclusions about the political movement’s relationship with the Constitution. They simultaneously revere the idea of the Constitution and hate much of what it actually says.

Their support for 'Constitutional principles' often amounts to random, inaccurate guesswork.  TP supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Tea Party seems more interested in simply asserting repeatedly and loudly that the Constitution already imposes their preferred policy outcomes on the country — and in ignoring any evidence to the contrary.   In the past two years, we’ve seen Tea Party elected officials claim that everything from Social Security, to Medicare, to Pell Grants and federal student loans, to federal disaster relief, to the minimum wage, to child labor laws, to the ban on whites-only lunch counters all violate the Constitution. In other words, it’s clear that the Tea Party has little interest in following the actual Constitution — they just think the rest of the nation is gullible enough to believe that it says whatever the Tea Party wants it to say.　

And there you have it:

A brief compendium of just one week's worth of mindless extremism--and just to make it fair, I've completely omitted Pat Robertson's claim that God (not an earthquake) cracked the Washington Monument, earlier this week--on purpose--because Jesus is coming soon.  

In a country where nutjobs seem to have hijacked an entire political party, no amount of reason seems to sway the 'idealogues'...despite all the destruction their 'philosophy' continues to wreak. 

...Have a Nice Day! 

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Copyright 2011 by Peter Rodman.  All Rights Reserved.
*Vast portions of this particular column were reprinted directly from stories in The Huffington Post, ProgressReport.org, and other sources.