When Satan set his sights on America, the place were he was "most successful and first successful was in academia."

Said Rick Santorum in that 2008 speech at Ava Maria University. I've lived in that purported stronghold of Satan for the last quarter century, so that caught my attention.

He understood the pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church.

Interesting that he said "domino effect" while speaking at Ave Maria University and saying that Satan has reached into academia and the church. Ave Maria University was founded with the fortune that Tom Monaghan made selling Domino Pizza. Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go? All the way back to Ypsilanti in 1960 when Tom and his brother bought that small pizza store. I have lived in Ypsilanti. I know Ypsilanti. I have seen the mark of the devil in Ypsilanti. The Domino's Pizza logo has 3 dots. They were going to add dots for each store that they opened, but they stopped at 3, the number of stores they had in 1969, when the logo was designed. The company headquarters is in Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, where I arrived in 1969. Was the Devil digging his hoofs into academia, beginning right there and then? I'm no expert at numerology, but I can't help noticing that if you take the 1 in 1969, grip it tightly, and knock the two 9s over, you get 666.

But here's where my blood ran cold. I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!") I was reading on in the above-linked Wikipedia article on Domino's Pizza, and I came to this:

In 1998, after 38 years of ownership, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion and ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company.

Bain Capital! The bane of our existence!

To say that something or someone is "the bane of my existence" means that the person or thing is a constant irritant or source of misery. As a cliché, "bane of my existence" has lost its edge to a large degree over the years...

But "bane" was once a very serious word.  The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer."  Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."

Connect the dots, people! The dots. Not just the 3 dots in the Domino's Pizza logo. There were many more dots, but they withheld them from the logo. They didn't want you to see that many dots. You must struggle to see the dots before you can even hope to connect them. Bain/Bane Capital is reaching everywhere, into our pizza, into our university. It was Bain's billion that built Ave Maria University where Santorum came to deliver his warning about Satan in academia. And now we have the 2 men left standing. Santorum, who is warning us, and Romney — r omney/r money/our money — who is the Bain/Bane of our existence. We've lost Cain — Cain ≠ Bain — a man — her man — who rose like Ave Maria, out of pizza. But it was Godfather Pizza. God the Father's pizza, not the Satanic 3-dots pizza.

Connect the dots! Find all the dots and connect them, lest Satan's already successful plot further succeed, perhaps vaulting the baneful Romney to the Presidency! But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people, and therefore vulnerable to Satan's depredations, pleased to offer up something new and different, tantalizing us with new truths, denying the existence of truth, playing with truth because she's so smart.

Close the box — that 3-dot box — on the melted cheesy atrocity. Move along, smart people. There's nothing see here. Look, over there. It's Mitt, that terribly handsome man. Hail, President Romney!