It Is Only February, Huh?

It really is the Season of the Weird. In the middle of the Republican primary season, we now have a full outbreak of Catholic outrage, contraception mania, personhood amendments, abortion-inducing prenatal testing, and government-mandated unnecessary vaginal sonogram probes (mandated of course by small government conservatives). Guess the Social Conservatives just can’t help themselves. BTW, when did Virginia turn into Mississippi?

At the forefront of all of this crazy stuff is Rick Santorum. I am just an outsider, but I am frankly puzzled why a party that has, in its stable, proven executives (Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsmen, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, etc) is apparently seriously considering a two-term senator who got his clock cleaned in his home state the last time he ran for anything. Particularly in a year where, you would think, the economy and basic executive competence, would come to the fore. Why in the hell are these social issues even being discussed? Beats me and who am I to tell them who to coach their team, but, damn, those Social Conservatives, they do love them some Rick Santorum.

I used to take some, admittedly juvenile, pleasure in the fact that Little Ricky was a Penn State Grad – until I found out he has an MBA from Pitt. Doh! Just wonderful - now us Pitt alumni have to answer for both Jim Traficant and Santorum.

I understand the well-established pattern is that all the presidential candidates run hard to the far right (or left) in the primary season and then sprint back to the middle for the General Election to pick up the precious moderates and independents. But Santorum already starts way out there on the social issues. I don’t think he (or his staff for that matter) is terribly disciplined either. This is going to be fun. We have already had Santorum take cheap shots at Protestant denominations and offer his first Obama-Hitler analogy. Where the hell do you go from there? Stalin? Pol Pot? Genghis Khan? (sorry, I mean “Jenjis”, Senator Kerry).

One of Santorum’s big money men is this cat named Foster Friess, who made a bunch of money with an investment management company that he started. Friess funds a boatload of conservative causes and candidates. Like many financially independent folks, Foster tends to disable the PC filter between his mouth and brain and shoots straight from the hip. Works for me and makes for some good copy. (BTW, his name just rocks!) He seems like he would be a good guy with whom to thrown down a couple of beers. Foster caused a bit of a stir last week with an almost throw-away comment in an interview with Andrea Mitchell:

“This contraceptive thing, my gosh it's such [sic] inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly,"

Hmmmm. Come again, big guy? Frankly, I am not sure what good old Foster is talking about. Maybe it is a generational thing? Was that phase used commonly in the old days? Or maybe someone can actually explain it to me, please? Apparently, Foster apologized for this remark. But, wouldn’t someone need to actually understand what the hell he was talking about to have actually been offended by said statement?

Well, maybe Foster is on to something and who in the hell am I to doubt a businessman who has a net worth of $550M USD. Plus he is buddies with the Koch Brothers – so he has that going for him (more Carl Spackler there).

Time for a contraception experiment – don’t worry, this won’t be graphic or (too) disturbing. When I heard about Foster’s remark, I went to my pantry and extracted a Bayer Aspirin from its container. Wait a minute - full disclosure, and in the interest of accuracy, it was actually an Ibuprofen. But I believe, for the purpose of this discussion, that the contraceptive qualities of my Ibuprofen tablet roughly match those of the Bayer Aspirin that Foster’s hotties apparently used to pull out in the heat of the moment. (Beavis: “He said ‘pull out’. He-he”.)

I laid down on the couch, on my side, and positioned the Ibuprofen between my knees. Now, mind you, I stress that I don’t have any particular special expertise in this arena (not that there is anything wrong with that). But, based on how I was positioned and what expertise I do have, I really don’t think that Foster’s Bayer Aspirin is going to provide an effective deterrent that prohibits the dreaded sex act from occurring.