WaffleStomper: Joe Biden: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

LOL

Ah, yes, misdirection - "Look over here! Don't look at our guy making an ass of himself claiming that the world did squat for 2,000 years before 'Murika showed up! Look at this quote from four years ago by some other guy! Whew, that was close - now no one will know that our guy is as dumb as a box of rocks."

Genius, we know Joe Biden is a chucklehead. He's the Vice President, and he makes the occasional gaffe - like the quote you pulled from a 2008 interview. We don't defend those gaffes - Biden's a chucklehead, after all. We know that.

That's the fun part about simply being direct. You feel the need to somehow say that, because some other guy made a mistake about who the President was in 1929, or that television wasn't around at the time, it somehow invalidates the fact that your guy believes that the world spent two millenia locked into... something... before America came along, and that if it weren't for the private sector, the government would be unable to do something as simple as back a current technology. You know, the government that actually backed the current technology about which he's actually speaking. Biden didn't do that - he's not that inept. He made two mistakes on facts that were secondary to the rather salient point he made during that interview.

Unlike Biden, Santorum didn't just make a boo-boo on a fact ("gee, if he'd only said 30 years, none of this would have happened") while making a salient point - he made a series of nigh-insane claims in a series, specifically to back his nutty premise that our current government has become a group of degenerate socialists unable to pick its nose, much less ensure that cell phones became available. That's a wee bit different.

I mean, I know why you went with misdirection - how in the hell do you defend Santorum's entire spiel? That would be lunacy. The best you can do is point to a derpy opponent and go, "well, your guy says dumb things too." The thing is, we agree with you - Biden says dumb things, too.

Now what? Did Santorum's inept understanding of history, economics, politics, or science improve? Nope.

Holy shiat that article is like one giant list of "how many different things can one man be wrong about".

The first commercial cell network was in Japan, not the U.S. The U.S. didn't launch one until four years later and several other countries between us and Japan beat us to it as well. We aren't even the leader in modern high speed networks. Again, that's Japan who launched the first 3G network what.... a decade ago now?

Let me assure you if the government had taken over the technology sector of our economy 25 years ago, no one would ever have heard of a cell phone.

The government did get heavily involved early on and it created a lot of problems for portability between markets. And "taken over the technology sector? Really? A vast portion of "the technology sector" we know today exists solely because of the contributions the government made to developing the internet.

In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change

And this... really? Movable type, mechanical clocks and watches, medicine... contributions which mostly originated in Europe, especially in relation to medicine, not the U.S. Hell, even one of the most fundamental game changers in modern history, plumbing, wasn't contributed to the world by the U.S.

What a complete farking idiot this douchenozzle is....

Well Rick, twenty years ago no one could've fathomed that a man who is as jarringly ignorant as you could be a frontrunner to be a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, but here the fark we are.

I would say that he's right in that if you told someone twenty years ago they'd carry a computer around in their pocket which would let them do everything from making video phone calls to watching the Simpsons to accessing virtually any bit of information in the public realm, they'd think you're crazy.

I'd also say in respons to "Let me assure you if the government had taken over the technology sector of our economy 25 years ago, no one would ever have heard of a cell phone. "

That we can do all of this because the government essentially invented the internet. Without the government-funded DARPA, without the research at public universities, we wouldn't have the internet to do all this.

OBAMA 57 STATES!!! OBAMA 57 STATES!!!

/Whew!

Useless lump of carbon and fail says millionth insanely stupid thing, is somehow still an actual candidate for President

Keizer_Ghidorah: Don't Troll Me Bro!: Keizer_Ghidorah: And people support this guy... why?!?!?

because they are every bit as stupid as him.... next question?

That is the saddest, most frightening part. And they're PROUD to be this stupid. Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles in a clown car, this man and his supporters are DANGEROUS.

Anti-intelligence (as distinct from anti-intellectualism) is frightening when used as a political tool. We're not looking at praxis, or concrete thinking, or anything like that - we're actually looking at an attack on intelligence itself, that, somehow, intellect is seen as a negative quality and distrust of intelligence is cultivated to identify the faithful.

It's not just dangerous, it's destructive to a society over time. We're already feeling the results, as we slowly lose the economic & technological gains made over the last half century to countries happy to focus on intellect, education, and training as societal goals.

Don't Troll Me Bro!: Keizer_Ghidorah: And people support this guy... why?!?!?

because they are every bit as stupid as him.... next question?

That is the saddest, most frightening part. And they're PROUD to be this stupid. Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles in a clown car, this man and his supporters are DANGEROUS.

"In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change"

Things Republicans think don't exist:

1) female voters

2) functional government programs

3) history

Ok...almost. Started filming in 1994 (I think) and released in 1995. But the title applies.

For a person who's religion has the world dated at 6000 years old, getting a technology date off by 10 years isn't all that bad.

1941

Santorum? This is Gekko calling from 1987, you dipshiat.

I remember fake car phones. For $20 you could get a squiggly antenna for your back window and an empty phone shell you could stick on your center console.

He does understand, doesn't he, that "twenty years ago" we even had electricity, indoor plumbing, and automobiles that would travel more than 25 miles per hour? And that the first real cell phone, the Motorola flip phone, was introduced about two years later?

What a maroon.

The phone thing is bad enough, but as a historian, this farking shiatpile is what really pissed me off:

"In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change," he said. "And then America came around and said, 'No, no more dictators, no more kings, no more classes, no more nobility.' We believe in limited government, not an all-powerful state. We believe that if we liberate people, we recognize the rights that God has given every person then the world will change."

The truly sad part is that there are people with world views small and narrow enough to simply accept this, never bothering to learn about the Magna Carta, or the Enlightenment, or the Glorious Revolution, or the fact that a large number of Americans wanted to declare Washington king, or that pretty much every presidency up to the Civil War had to continuously deal with the arguments between state and federal authority.

1987.

Wow, that dude is industrial strength ignorant. Shockingly, mind-numbingly ignorant. Not worthy of a response ignorant. Ashamed that there are people in this country that would vote for that idiot ignorant. Wow.

heinekenftw: I was going to say no to this, that I still prefer Rick to Palin . . . and then I hesitated.

I'm no longer sure.

now picture the eventual candidate that will make you look back fondly on the days of rick santorum's erudite proclamations.

we all know it's going to happen.

if we're getting into our rick santorum telephone wayback machine, if you'd asked somebody 6 years ago if George W Bush was a rational, pragmatic and elegant political candidate...well, now ask those questions as comparisons with him against what's waving the freak flag currently.

it's tardles all the way down.

To be fair, he's working with a 6,000 year timeline. His dates may be a bit off from our silly sciency timeline.

That's absurd.

Would You Believe....




/hot like 99

"Let me assure you if the government had taken over the technology sector of our economy 25 years ago, no one would ever have heard of a cell phone. Because what we would be doing is we would be making sure everybody had pagers and allocated them equivalently across everybody."

Gotta add more here. The government DID take over part of the technology sector, by allocating bandwidth and the broadcast spectrum so individual companies could have a level playing field and allow consumers to actually use these shiny toys.

And if the government HAD taken over the entire cell phone market, they'd only be issued to the military and would cost $100k each. Oh, they'd still cost a few hundred bucks to manufacture, but the government would be paying ridiculous premiums to the suppliers who gave the biggest donations to the right politicians. Sorta like how ricky wanted to dismantle the National Weather Service in favor of accuweather, a Pennsylvania company owned by a contributor.

Dick Tracy was talking into a watch phone in 1946. Conceived of and made famous, Rick. 65 years ago.

never thought you'd be pining for the intellectual heft and stolid policy pronouncements of Sarah Palin, did you?

Muta: FTA: they are commonplace because Americans "recognize the rights God has given every person."

That is right people, cell phones are a gift from God.

But you have to pay full price if you don't sign up for the 2-year Christianity plan

We couldn't conceive of the idea because of the government-mandated mind condoms.

Hey Santorum:



Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?