I often find that I need to dry off, burn the towel, bleach my bathroom, draw ANOTHER bath, and then wash again. It seems to just creep, seep, and stick in all the worst places.

What the hell is wrong with people in this country and politics?

Bigoted religious loons running for office.

What the hell is wrong with people in this country and politics?

And now to go take a shower so I can feel clean again.

Also, is that the crybaby one?  She’s all growed up!

A reporter’s job is to report the news, not to bait people with crap.

That makes it sound like the reporter’s job is to regurgitate press releases, which frankly is mostly what they do.  But that”s a bad thing.  A very bad thing.

The BoingBoing title may not be totally wrong – we don’t know what the journalist’s source for his quote was. I regularly update friends about poorly reported on news. Badly checked facts, links that aren’t followed, etc. The reporter may have seen only part of the quote, and read that part back to Santorum. If you check Jim Reardon’s CNN link above, and look at the headline, you’ll see the beginning of what I call Internet News Operator. Two links from there, and the title may just read, “Santorum Says Romney Worst Republican”. It doesn’t take long for the theme of stories to change on here, and on the road journalists are getting their news from the net. So, it may be that the journalist made an honest mistake by himself taking words out of context – it does happen. Santorum made the assumption that the journalist watched his speech in full, and so would have no excuse for misinterpreting its content – doubtful, when the journalist is covering multiple candidates and they ALL make speeches!

The fact that Santorum was unable to simply correct the reporter and say, “you’re generalizing. I said Romney was the worst Republican on the issue of Obamacare,” shows that he’s got two major problems as a candidate.

1. He can’t control his temper, and is argumentative. Not good when the President is sometimes needed to resolve issues between the two parties, and they’re currently at war. 

2. He can’t ad lib. No candidate who is incapable of calmly speaking without a prepared speech is a good candidate for President. This is because the President’s duties include visits of State (dinners, summits, presentations, and other functions). They include one-on-one encounters, and require an ability to communicate freely and away from prepared material. 

Doing the job of president is just as stressful, with just as high stakes as running for it. A qualified candidate needs to be above letting his emotions run the show even in far more extreme situations than this. Any politician might get angry inside, but the ones at all qualified for the job will communicate that anger (or choose not to) in a controlled and deliberate manner. Obama would have kept his cool, Clinton would have, and lest you think I’m too partisan, Reagan would have too.