Down the street from our ancestral home in Eugene, Oregon, once stood a small private institution devoted to the education of what are now called “special needs” children. It was formally known as the Pearl Buck School, named in honor of the Nobel-winning author.

But to us kids, it was simply where the retards went.

We were very, very cruel about that, as only kids and Republicans can be. We didn’t have “shortbus” as shorthand in those days. If you wanted to snap at someone on the playground, you’d accuse them of going to Pearl Buck.

Language works that way. Today’s well-meaning euphemism is tomorrow’s slur. In the defining example of our era, “colored people” was proudly codified by the NAACP, devolved into a vicious taunt for decades, then re-emerged as “people of color”. Even “mental retardation” began as a polite substitute for “idiot” before we kids got hold of it, giving rise to “special needs” as a subsequent replacement.

You really can’t escape it. At best you can acknowledge it — and turn it on its head.

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Oh please oh please oh please:

“I promise you, I will stop at nothing when it comes to defending our freedom and our values,” Santorum wrote [in an email to supporters]. “That’s the real reason why — after talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids — I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race.”

As long as Spreading Santorum shows up as the first Santorum link at Google, he has our endorsement.

The Re-Emergence Of Rick Santorum — From Ex-Senator To Potential Presidential Candidate [TPM]

It has come to our attention that our thesis about the relationship of feral pigs to South Carolina douchebags was incomplete in its implication. Let’s study a fresh example and expostulate:

South Carolina will no longer recognize U.S. currency as legal tender, if State Rep. Mike Pitts has his way.

Pitts, a fourth-term Republican from Laurens, introduced legislation earlier this month that would ban what he calls “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

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Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America, gets the word out via ChristianNewsWire:

When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it’s shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama’s kooky coalition…

Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.

In related news, we’ve just discovered that “Help me” is inscribed in the back of our teeth. In Hebrew. We don’t know what it means.

1000 Rabbis Warn: Open Homosexuality in the Military is a Disaster and May Cause Further Natural Disasters [ChristianNewsWire, via Sully]

So Lindsay Vonn (r) and her Shin of Destiny (not pictured) are at Whistler today for the wimmins’ downhill run.  Apolo Ohno does his thing again tonight, as does Shawn White and Shani Davis.  Thankfully, there’s no figure skating to interfere, though NBC of course will do its level best to squeeze in a half-hour of talking about it before the men’s final tomorrow night. 

And we actually have a shot (supposedly) in the women’s cross-country 1200m sprint race.  And a word on that — have you ever seen the end of a cross-country race?  Jesus: every single time, they cross the line and then immediately collapse in exhaustion.  You don’t see that in marathons, or swimming (a good thing — you’d have drownings otherwise), or any other olympic sport.  Kind of incredible, really.

Elsewhere, USA 3:1 Switzerland in men’s hockey, in a frankly underwhelming performance.  Though it must be said that the Swiss actually trained as a team in the run-up — only three NHLers in the lineup allowed for that — the U.S. Americans should have done better.  Mark Sunday in your calendars, when they take on Canada in the biggest preliminary matchup of the bunch. 

And the storyline for Lindsey Jacobellis came to an obvious conclusion when she crapped out in the semi and ended up in fifth.  This, once again, leaves Bob Costas wanting for a storyline.  Poor Bob.  Perhaps a cute, 10-minute fluff piece about the noble, majestic beaver?  Nah… Lindsey Vonn stories are — [SHOT CLOCK BUZZER]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM2AxGYn8jU

As a young lad, trapped in a world we never made, we suffered from a recurring nightmare: the TV set would go dark. A tiger’s head would appear on the screen. And then the tiger would jump out of the TV set. And eat us.

That last step was presumed — we have no recollection of actually being devoured, followed by a muffled roar of “Theyyyyyy’re GREAT!” from somewhere beyond the intestinal tract. The moment of consumption was the moment of awakening, scared shitless.

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Does it count as a sign of the Apocalypse if it’s deliberate?