That is, before I agree to pile on along with all the Right Thinking People — who, time and time and time again, it seems to me, can’t climb over each other fast enough to express OUTRAGE and then distance themselves from something potentially / ostensibly controversial (or, to hear them tell it, far beyond the pale) uttered by a fellow rightleaner, thereby proving themselves not one of those kinds — I’d like to know what Akin meant.
After all, if you are fully pro-life, you are fully pro-life — and while special circumstances obtain with what to do with the (potentially) resultant human produced by a rape, what doesn’t change is the idea that abortion, considered in such a way, kills a human. And you oppose that in all circumstances. So it matters what his actual argument is — and a party that positions itself for political purposes as pro-life ought not be so quick to dismiss the argument as outrageous, heretical, etc., particularly when they are free to respond intelligently to the argument being made to evince, perhaps, a wider trajectory of “pro-life” thinking than is typically portrayed by the media, the left, or Hollywood.
Communication doesn’t necessarily stop with a soundbite. We have the capacity to press the question, to draw out longer responses, to explain what it is we meant.
— unless, that is, we yet again wish to play the left’s game and pretend that a text exists on its own, divorced from any originary intent, and subject to our interpretive whims (or, for the more advanced, cowardly, and self-serving sophists on the right, subject to being taken out of context, and so therefore irredeemably faulty and worthy of condemnation for its very inartful presentation).
In which case, as I’ve tried to explain time and again, we’ve already lost.
There’s a reason we keep rushing to eat our own, and the left simply sits back and smiles every time we do so. As we pretend we’re holding “our own” to some lofty standard of intellectual rigor, terrified at the supposed consequences should we not, what we’re really doing is straining to appear as something other than the knuckledraggers the left has attempted to paint us as en mass (when really, the knuckle draggers are but “purist” nutjobs at the fringes of the base).
And in so doing, we’re propping up and institutionalizing an idea of language that is collectivist and authoritarian, along with an intellectualism that is so tied to socially/politically approved speech that it is not only PC, but it acts as a kind of self-abnegation of the First Amendment.
And Republicans are helping lead the charge.
Brilliant.
So, let me ask again: has Akin clarified his remarks? Or is it too late now — political pragmatism is our sole allegiance — and we must burn this newest GOP witch?
Bill Quick seems to think that Akin should NOT step down.
So, let me ask again: has Akin clarified his remarks? Or is it too late now — political pragmatism is our sole allegiance — and we must burn this newest GOP witch?
I assume that that question is rhetorical.
My problem with Akin is this soundbite, however little it reflects on his actual positions on anything, is so dumb and inarticulate on a general question that it reflects poorly on the candidate’s preparation. Flubbing what should be an easy question show me he’s not ready for the big time (general election).
To me, from the original context that he meant a non-consensual rape, as opposed to either consensual statutory rape or a hypothetical scenario under which abortion be legal only in cases of rape/incest, which any rational person would assume would encourage women pregnant from consensual sex acts to retroactively reclassify them as “rape” so as to qualify for legal abortions. [Gedankenexperiment: How many black men would be charged with rape before the Left became outraged at that entirely predictable result?]
I say we ought to be able to have that conversation, but the hysterical reaction “My sister was raped; is that LEGITIMATE ENOUGH for you!!!?!?!!” means, sadly, no: we can’t. People are so used to being outrageously outraged based on their “interpretation” of what someone said that they just can’t let go of it. I think they are literally addicted to the mental state of outrage.
Where Akin went off the rails for me was his assertion that pregnancies resulting from rape are rare. The sad truth is that there’s a higher rate of impregnation from rape than from consensual sex. The implications of that are … unsettling to say the least.
Meh. He’s still not as stupid and insufferable as Claire McCaskill. I know, low bar, and all — but this IS the Senate we’re talking about, where Uncle Choo-Choo was considered a genie-eye-us.
He meant this, and by “legitimate” rape he meant forcible rape as opposed to statutory rape or “I didn’t really consent because I was shitfaced” rape or “Sure, I consented but I changed my mind afterwards.” rape.
The argument for him to go that I most agree with is that as a staunch pro-life politician, he should have had his argument ready to go for a question he should have known he was going to face. This is political incompetence.
Yes. Being factually wrong on top of being politically incompetent in what should be a slam dunk race in doubleplus ungood.
Really? Me, I wouldn’t know how dumb and inarticulate it was without pressing it a bit.
FACT: you don’t want soundbite politics, or you bitch about same? You shouldn’t react this way to soundbite politics, because you are only reinforcing its power.
My understanding of his meaning is that one consequence of the trauma of rape is a physical rejection of a fertilized egg. This is a frequently repeated theory of the squishy pro-life proponents unhappy with the logical necessity of rape/abortion sequence being indistinguishable from any other abortion. This flies in the face of millenia of conquering armies raping the women of the conquered land in order to plant their permanent seed, as it were.
The unfortunate inference is that, if you are pregnant, you were probably not actually raped. This second stage thought was certainly not what drove Akin’s comments; but it is not really unreasonable to take his comments to this conclusion. An unforced error to be sure, and one that his apology does clarify.
But he’s toast either way.
Well, if he had some data to back up the assertion, and you had some, you could have what used to be called an intelligent conversation, and perhaps one of you would convince the other, and both of you would grow for having done so.
But we don’t do that anymore. If you weren’t born all-knowing, speak in empty platitudes. It’s the only way to be sure you don’t offend.
Only if he could have forseen how “legitimate” might be taken to mean something other than how he was using it — and forseen that he wouldn’t be given the opportunity to clarify, nor given cover by his own “pro-life” GOP groundtroops, who have moved to burn him.
It is not outrage (at least on my part). I do not think Akin is a bad person. He fucked up. He was trying to say that Democrats use abortion and rape as a justification of general abortion on demand. He has a point. But he said it poorly, it could cost us not only the Senate but the White House and we have bigger issues to deal with.
Stacy McCain summed it up well: Incompetency in politics is unforgivable… Out of the blue he just managed to pivot the election from the economy and Obama’s record to this BS war on woman crap and Romney and Ryan’s positions on abortion.
He should have watched his words more carefully. He should have known he’d be taken out of context. That shows his incompetence and frankly its politically unhelpful.
Got it.
This has been a week of failure cubed for me.
I can fight against soundbite politics, while still acknowledging that the rules as they currently stand are the rules as they currently stand. To me, expecting a staunch pro-lifer to be prepared for these “gotcha” moments is little different from expecting Paul Ryan to bring pork back to his district: you gotta play the game even if you don’t like the rules.
And rather than make the case for the legitimacy of the argument (however wrong with think it), it’s easier to feign outrage, distance ourselves from the godbotherer — if not for his views, then certainly for the “incompetent” way he expressed them — and move to find another candidate.
Which helps us in the long run because, well —
It is like when you have a really good pitcher, but he allows a run in a play off game that is tied, the bases are loaded, and he looks like he is in serious trouble. If you are the manager you could stick with him and see what happens, or you can pull him and send in a relief pitcher.
And I do not disagree with you on some of the rhetorical attacks of some on the right against Akin. A GOP dog pile in that sense is counter productive and just feeds the left’s strategy. But I think they are worried that Akin might consider staying in and they are panicking.
Shhhhhhh. Only mention the economy.
Here’s an idea: cut out the rest of your party platform if you don’t believe in it or you’re just using it to grab certain types of votes and voters.
Show some fucking balls.
Be honest about yourselves.
No. He should have had a coherent argument at the ready. Inartful phrasing is one thing. Proffering pseudo-science in the service of a political position is another.
I’m not suggesting that he must get out, but I am suggesting that he’s an idiot.
If you want competence in politics, then vote Democrat.
Because the Republicans, from Mitt Romney down, already lost the politics of this clusterfuck.
Sounds to me like he has a coherent argument, however wrong it might be. And perhaps he hasn’t yet been convinced it’s based on pseudo science. Since when is being wrong about something before being corrected by better data / argument a sign of moral failing or intellectual derangement?
What the fuck?
This is why I left academia. We already know everything, the position of today’s intellectuals is. We have consensus. Thus, our real purpose is to fend off challenges to our academic orthodoxy.
It’s anti-intellectualism disguised as intellectualism.
Not for me. No thanks.
If that’s true* then we deserve to lose.
*When is mediacrat conventional wisdom ever true, btw?
I didn’t say it was either. I said it makes him an incompetent politician, particularly when it comes to a highly charged issue like this. I said it makes him an idiot.
FTFM
Jeff,
I understand your desire to defend language. However, dying on this particular hill strikes me as counterproductive. Akin was democrat supported and beat Sarah Palin’s endorsed candidate.
No, I don’t think Palin’s endorsement is the end-all, be-all. However, she has generally chosen conservative, smart candidates, which makes me think Akin was not the best choice to begin with.
Oh, and that argument of his? He’s completely abandoned it and claimed he didn’t mean to make it. Which is bullshit.
It was a stupid comment. He’s acknowledged it was stupid. It’s good enough for the other side.
It’s not a game-changer unless we let them have the narrative, which, well, I won’t hold my breath.
No, you don’t.
That’s the point. If we all insisted as a unified front that no, we don’t have to play this game this way, we wouldn’t have to.
But rather than saying, “we can argue the merits of what Akin said — he’s basing his statement on X, which I would counter with Y, were I speaking to him about the data he’s using to support his otherwise principled argument — but honestly, these are questions meant to stoke controversy and deflect from what Akin would do in the Senate to repeal ObamaCare, which has its own radical take on abortion,” we respond w/ “OH NOES, he showed his Xtianness and we must hide hide hide because, you know, extremistism and whatnot. Quick, retreat! Renounce! Denouce!”
Repulsive. Unprincipled.
We deserve to lose because all we care about is winning. The same goes for the Dems, too, by the way. But they’re just better at it.
Oh, and he should pick up a biology textbook to read in his spare time.
Hank Johnson said Guam was gonna tip over, and he’s still in office.
Just saying.
Alcie Hastings is a disbarred judge and he’s still in office.
Not everyone knows everything about everything, from how to spot a pseudo-scientific study to how best to react to an inoperable brain tumor. So maybe we should cut the poor dolt some slack and not be so quick to burn him.
Out of graciousness and humility.
Since when is being wrong about something before being corrected by better data / argument a sign of moral failing or intellectual derangement?
What the fuck?
Yes, this.
Todd Akin has been my Congressman for 12 years. He has been reliably conservative and a good soldier for the GOP. Nonetheless, I think his comments about rape and pregnancy were irretrievably stupid and have no problem with him departing public life. This isn’t about a propensity for eating our own but rather for having someone qualified who can represent us. Yes, the other side will more readily forgive such stupid remarks for political gain but I don’t aspire to their levels of mendacity and deceit.
Akin would have beaten McCaskill, and he still might if he stays in the race, but I wouldn’t feel very good about him as my Senator. Steelman or Brunner were the runners-up in the recent primary and either of them will also beat McCaskill. As noted previously, if Jim Talent could be brought into the contest I would be much happier. He is young, qualified, and talented, no pun intended.
He’s a politican taking cues from the reaction of his side.
I’d be schizoid, too.
The dumbest thing about this – is that once again we’re talking about (basically) abortion.
CAN WE ALL SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT ABOUT ABORTION FROM NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER.
Please?
I have no argument about Jeff’s point re: we don’t roll over just because that’s the way the Left plays this game.
I’m only going to comment on the Pro-Life stance on rape because I grew up around some extreme Catholic pro-life “volunteers”. Part of their belief system was that YES, women who are raped are so physically overwrought that they don’t even ovulate. Hence, “most” women who are raped never get pregnant. So, if you follow that logic, most women who are pregnant from a supposed rape are probably lying about the rape bit. That much was not articulated to me as a young girl, but since I’ve got a brain I figured it out on my own.
This is what divides the “Squishy” pro-lifers from the hardcore “it’s human life and it is sacred no matter the circumstances/it’s murder and should be outlawed even if your dad rapes you and you get pregnant at 10 years old”
This is where the hard part comes in. This rape/pregnancy narrative is an attempt to get around our bad feelings on this …
and so concludes our lesson on the Pro-Life culture. :)
I agree completely. And I recognize that he’s a dolt, or, if you will, an idiot.
Bill Clinton spilled jizz on an intern’s dress, and he served out his term.
[…] be frank: Between these two invocations of 'science' that never was, Holder's is the more offensive. These ethnicities, they're so developmentally disabled that it's no wonder they need to be […]
We’re running out of hills john.
CAN WE ALL SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT ABOUT ABORTION FROM NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER.
sure. :)
GO ROMNEY!
Look…he *was* beating McCaskill by 13 points up until this. If you take the PPP poll, and remove the ridiculous +9 Republican sample bias…and give the republicans their best sample EVER in MO, he loses 47-41.
That’s a *19* point swing over this. That could make it *impossible* to get rid of Obamacare.
Do you *want* Obamacare around? Do you want a chance to get rid of it? If you want to get rid of it, you have to play to win…as distasteful as it is. Principles are great, but if we lose this, we lose *everything*. I’m not willing to lose everything.
Stacy McCain summed it up well: Incompetency in politics is unforgivable…
Like hell it is.
If the only definition of “incompetent” applies to public statements, then what do you call the myriad awful decisions they make while in office? And we surely forgive most if not all of those, do we not? Otherwise, no one would ever be reelected, because they all biff it when it comes to actually governing.
We get the politicians we deserve, and if all we want are oily, glib, pathological liars, then by all means, let’s crucify poor saps who dare speak their minds, however inarticulately.
I highly doubt that.
Yea, well, Missfixit – my comment was mostly directed at the idea that of all the shit going on, abortion is about the least of our concerns.
But- the facedouche tools are all fired up.
You don’t pick and choose when to defend language and when not to.
I’d rather have the TEA Party candidate. And I know the Dems supported this guy.
Doesn’t make a difference to me. Playing these games only further institutionalize the tactics, devalue the language, and insure future repeats of just this kind of empty, soundbite politics — such that soon we’ll have to choose between candidates saying exactly the same things in exactly the same way, and our measure of who’s best will have to do with who is most polished.
Hardly ideal.
Nope. Not for me.
And I am not dying on this hill. I’m a ghost standing on this hill reminding you that I’ve always been here, and I’ve already been killed for having been.
I doubt I’d be a politician.
Related: Team ORomney is using Obama’s you-didn’t-build-that and veritibly turning it on its head!
Go Team ORomney!
Er, because to give the fucker’s lie the legitimacy of equal, debate-worthy footing in a national convention — thereby pandering to the lowest common TeeVee denominator at a time it’s critical you instead rediscover formative, original, Constitutional thought — is the best way to recover the country.
In other words, don’t argue points and principles, argue against The Lie.
My liberal friends are all bent over Akins — not unlike how Obama is all bent over Romney’s taxes.
Best strategy in this hienously critical election? Shout I know you are but what am I.
What a nation of infantile cowards we’ve become. Actually I take that back. Given the crowds amassing in the Libertarian-Republican axis, desparate for truth, what a nation of infantile cowards the Establishment is hell-bent on creating.
I rather liked this tweet from Treacher:
We’re living in a hysteria-fueled politics-of-the-moment, which prevents and shouts-down any attempt at intelligent argument, and “our side” (such as it is), rather than exerting any sort of calming influence, is out there trying to shovel fuel onto the fire faster than the other side.
This can’t end well. I fear Mike Judge set Idiocracy about 490 years too far in the future.
Faulty reasoning, GMan. Not to mention, entirely self-serving.
At this point, the GOP has made its bed. But who knows what the polls would look like had they reacted differently to the statement, treating it as a matter of intellectual debate rather than an extremist heresy that embarrasses them.
I don’t shame. So knock off the crap about “do you *want* Obamacare around.” What I don’t want is a country wherein we are so terrified to speak in anything less than progressive-approved soundbites that we may as well stop pretending we’re different.
There are a lot of us who aren’t infnatile cowards – it just seems like we are few and far between. (I was kidding about that “GO ROMNEY” bit, heh)
Best strategy for Akin? This. “You want to talk rape, Claire? Let’s talk about child rape and how irredeemably evil you are.”
No disrespect to charles, but this is why even when we win, we still lose.
Not faulty reasoning. If this douchebag costs the GOP the senate, thereby blowing *any* chance of getting OCare removed, or even altered…well. Great.
Not trying to shame you. I phrased that poorly, sorry. I really meant the second half of that. But I don’t get the dying for this. The man took a gimme race and flushed it. You can argue all day that it *shouldn’t* be that way, but it is.
And it’s true that playing to win is important.
dicentra, read what RSM says in that article. It is not about vilifying Akin as a bad person (and Republicans doing that should be noted and rightly condemned by conservatives) but sometimes a politician has to fall on a grenade and in Akin’s case, he also pulled the pin.
I don’t know jack about this Akin chap, but this very much IS about playing by the Left’s rules and eating our own and having a twisted definition of “competent politician.”
We’re so damn embarrassed by the mocking of the Left that we MUST throw this dude under the bus, is that it?
You really think you can serve God without offending the devil, so to speak? Having the courage of your convictions also means enduring the mockery from the other side.
It’s so ingrained, even the very intelligent among us refuse to see it.
Wake. Up.
Heh.
Amazing…
The solution for the GMan, if he lives in Missouri that is, and he really, really doesn’t want to see Obamacare, seems obvious:
vote for the ignorant, bigotted Xtianist.
dicentra, read what RSM says in that article.
I’m only interested in reading what Jeff has to say, today. I’m not interested in more apologetics for the status quo.
You can argue all day that it *shouldn’t* be that way, but it is.
You can also push back against the way it is, if you’ve got a big microphone and are in a position to defend the man against witch-burning. But the big-microphone types have their anatomy to cover, so that will never happen.
By all means, invest in despair. You’ll definitely reap what you sow.
EBL, it wasn’t a grenade until the lamestream media shouted “grenade!” and the chicken little caucus started running around in confused circles.
You seem to have missed my point. The GOPers who rushed to aid the left in turning this into the OUTRAGE it’s become — those so concerned over how Akin blew this — may in fact themselves be responsible for blowing this. They have shown voters they are ashamed of a plank in their own platform, that their pro-life stance is more political than moral.
Rather than protecting the candidate, they didn’t want to be seen as one of those. They made a choice and ran with it, and are standing on each other’s shoulders trying right now to be the MOST righteously indignant — though some have climbed back down a bit, walked it back, and are now more concerned over Akin’s “incompetence” than they are with their own propensity to help the left by falling into its traps to begin with.
Again, I’m not “dying” for this. I’m already dead. But I’m also consistent. Which, of course, makes me a small-minded hobgoblin who doesn’t want to win the Senate.
In this climate you really can make this stuff up. The Onion:
Amazing…
Isn’t it though. I know the double standard sucks, and it’s worth fighting against. But when somebody (who is supposed to be intelligent) by the way, says something so demonstrably stupid that your enemies will use it against, not just him, but every other thing you want to achieve…well, what are you supposed to do? Applaud him for being dumb? Applaud him for phrasing something (and it’s not even the “legitimate” that’s causing a lot of the angst) so poorly that it’s obvious use as a weapon against, again, not only him, but others around him (see current attempts to link Paul Ryan to Akin) should have freaking been apparent before he opened his mouth? Seriously?
So if Akin steps aside, how does that help the GOP?
soooo…. what are the odds the economy will actually get better if Romney wins? I’m trying to plan a major financial decision for the first part of 2013 and I’m nervous.
Maybe Obama should add this abortion thing to Julia’s timeline? “At age 14, Julia falls in with the wrong crowd and —” nevermind.
those so concerned over how Akin blew this — may in fact themselves be responsible for blowing this
TRV
DAT
The GOP is going to take the Senate by more than one seat. The Dems are defending 21 seats versus the GOP’s 10.
the double standard sucks, and it’s worth fighting against. But…
The word “but” negates everything before it, you know. If the double standard is worth fighting against, then it’s worth fighting against NOW.
Even when someone says something a bit kooky but not irredeemably so.
After all, it’s not as if he complemented a black man by calling him “clean and articulate.”
Cave. Evidently.
Because redefining stupid back to its authentic use — you did see the Onion piece just above your comment, right? — is right out.
See what I did there? Because you didn’t with “amazing”.
Or said “macaca.”
Read the last five years of this blog.
Yeah the shit Biden has said and gotten away with pretty much blows this argument to pieces (“his fault, he blew it”)
I’m going with “thank you, sycophantic democrat media person, for offering me this opportunity to criticize another Republican but I’m not interested in helping you today.”
I defended his comments immediately after he made them. So did Professor Jacobson. The idea that rape and assault might pregnancy less likely hardly seems that radical. But–(sorry dicenta) that does not mean he should continue on in this race. We are two months from a major election and this is a distraction. It is not personal. Akin has become a tubal pregnancy to the GOP mother. Tough decisions are required.
The problem with PW? Just another GOP echo-chamber.
What’s tough about throwing Akin under the bus?
What changes the calculus of hills and dying is a bit of exercise. (To tweak the metaphor from war to running.) They all look like death traps because we’re out of shape. Put in some time and effort and we’ll be in the mood to take hills just for the fun of it.
Ideally, only one hill kills you per life. But, equally ideally, thousands and thousands of them are worth climbing up and taking just to enjoy the view.
That’s perhaps a very optimistic way to say that we have to start somewhere if we want things to get better down the road. Everything is always important in the short term but that includes the future short term which will remain bleak unless we put in the effort now.
The left needed someway to keep control of the Senate. They were going to find something somewhere even if they have to lie to find it. So they did.
The paper that Adkin was going from, that Pablo linked above @ 8:50 am and that I linked to here is a “back of the envelope calculation by a physician on how many forcible rapes end with the woman pregnant. It comes in at 1 to 2 per thousand rapes which is where a study made back in the 70s also comes in at. Said study footnoted in the paper. The number being between 200 and 400 pregnancies per year due to forcible rape.
The left-wing rabidly pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute study from 2005 is said to have found that there are 31,000 pregnancies per year as a result of rape. Over two orders of magnitude higher.
Someone is wrong. I’m betting it is the left as they have shown that they will manufacture evidence and twist words and reality itself to obtain their desired outcome. If the 31,000 is right than forcible rape is one of the most effective means ever of achieving a pregnancy at 62 pregnancies per 1000 attempted acts of intercourse.
The left’s position seems to be that rapists are attracted subliminally to rape fertile and ovulating women. Science!
Howzabout: Ideally, you face only one killer hill per life.
Thank you, Jeff, for having the brains to see the truth and the balls to speak it.
http://theothermccain.com/2012/08/21/rove-akin-irreparably-damaged/ Oh fuck me. Akin should show some grace and just get out. We do not need press conferences.
So are we going to run Alan Keyes this time too.
Well, if ROVE says so, it must be true.
Because even if it isn’t, he’ll make it so.
The mere fact that the establishment GOP has already abandoned and burned — from their point of view — Todd Akin’s political career presents the people of Missouri, together with whatever people outside Missouri who choose to support Akin an opportunity to visibly rebuke that establishment, should Akin himself choose to stay in the race. The establishment members, I think, still do not calculate how they expose themselves in these instances.
If I were Akin, I’d stay in, purely out of the hope of being the 51st Senate Republican.
Because then Mitch McConnell would have to spend the next two years kissing my ass.
If the “objective” media weren’t political operatives in the service of Leftist narrative, then we wouldn’t need a unified front to push back against them, and Akin wouldn’t need to be so careful about interacting with them.
If the classical liberals had a powerful caucus and a coherent message to unify around, they could push back against the Leftist media and Akin could interact with that media knowing that he might be treated fairly, and knowing that he had backup in any case.
If Akin weren’t such a clumsy fool, he wouldn’t have walked into a Leftist media minefield, and wouldn’t require rescue by a unified conservative caucus that doesn’t at present exist.
I can fight against Leftist narrative and those who craft it. I can also work to assemble a classically liberal caucus with the power and the skills to promote my ideals and fight the Leftists. And I can lament the foolishness of a man who should know better than to force his allies into a defense they are ill-prepared to mount. I can do all of these at once, without contradicting myself.
I agree with you that the Left can be de-fanged if we push back against them in concert. I share your frustration that we don’t have a caucus who can execute this counterattack. I hope that we can fix this deficiency sooner than later. But I still find it hard to defend Akin for exposing this deficiency so publicly. It is, to borrow a phrase, unhelpful.
Seems to me the most efficicent way to bring about your goals Squid, is to punish every Republican who obliged the mediacrats by denouncing Akin. Starting with Mitt Romney.
Efficient, not painless.
Greetings:
Has anyone heard from Whoopi (rape-rape) Goldberg on this ???
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/08/karl-rove-is-making-things-worse-we-do.html Akin is going on Dana Loesch’s show shortly.
Why do people still ask Rove anything? Who cares what he says, besides the left when they want to use the GOP to attack the “far right extremists?”
“far right extremist” is redundant cranky.
In Barak Obama’s America, you WILL conserve pixels and bits!
At which point he’ll traumatize himself not for violating reason in public, but for the capital offense of running afoul of political correctness. A shame worse than death.
Evi L Blogger Lady doesn’t get it either?
$$$$$
Gee,I wonder if the progs can figure out a way to make someone we’re willing to defend intellectually a liability politically in key races?
We should prepare to dump a lot of candidates. For the greater good of us.
My argument has nothing to do with whether Akin should or shouldn’t stay in the race. Frankly, if he’s willing to debase himself and apologize for what he believes because he found out that others disagree with him, then he’s not my type, anyway.
This is about the reaction to what he said. And to how and why we’re likely to lose what was once winnable. And it has less to do with Akin than it does to do with his most vehement detractors on our side. They still don’t get it.
I don’t care what a leftist thinks of me. I’m not shamed by it. Fuck them. They want to own me and tell me how I must live. They want to steal my shit.
Fuck them. Fuck their outrage. Fuck their anti-intellectualism. Fuck them. I won’t play their game and neither should any of you.
The GOP mother is a barren ancient hag, hanging on to power for ever less dear life. Her course has run, she just hasn’t grasped the fact yet.
This is why it’s futile to try to save the Republican party. The party doesn’t want to be saved
… as evidenced by the pragmatists tripping over themselves to be the first to sate the crocodile with Akins pathetic corpse.
Why the hell would anybody want to run for office as a Republican? The first time you make a misstep, you’re on your own.
I have an idea for a new GOP logo: the O resolves into a circular firing squad.
I got seriously po’ed at the lib half of the afternoon drive show that follows Limbaugh in KC yesterday for talking about how her vagina doesn’t have any magic forcefield to repel rape sperm.
And the conservative hostess who followed bought into it. I was able to call in and complain about that. What Akin actually said was dumb enough without putting words in his mouth.
He never said there was a magic protection that kept all rape sperm out. He said it was his understanding that women who become preggers under the stress of forcible rape have a tendency to miscarry. And that much is true, but the way he phrased it he made it sound like the pregnancy rate for rapes is lower than that for consensual sex, which isn’t true.
Now Obama gets to say “rape is rape”, which is frankly bullshit. “Rape” has been inflated to mean a lot of things that don’t deserve the term. And if you challenge any of it, you’re “in favor of rape.” That this is a circular argument does not seem to make it less effective.
Is Obama attacking Akin? Or Whoopie Goldberg?
Amongst its other faults, in general terms, the contemporary GOP often seems to muster any alacrity only when it comes to throwing its own members overboard. And in contrast, against the statist progressives and their depredations of American liberty it seems only to swim in molasses. That’s a lousy formula for extending its political usefulness.
Too late Monster. The damage is done and Akin’s got to go.
And the fact that the electric yellow hamster will be vindicated about abortion foes being all about RAPE-BABIES!, and it’s better that the 99.9% of elective abortions continue unabated than a VICTIM have a RAPE BABY imposed upon her?
Well, that’s the price to be paid for not choosing our words more carefully.
Our side loses because it deserves to.
*
Because the only legitimate issues for national government are abortion, rape, vaginas, and the color of speech.
I’m seriously considering writing in Todd Akin for president.
@Ernst, I agree Akin has to go, but he should go for his own stupidity, not for words people put in his mouth. And THAT hill is worth dying on.
And the scared-shitless chicken littles listed in JHoward’s link are the reason why.
The fifty-seven States agree, Monster.
I would like a cite or better two for this. I’ve found, as noted above, rates which vary by 2 orders of magnitude and the assertion that rapists are drawn to those women who are both fertile and ovulating.
Please make sure that we are comparing apples with apples as the rape one is based around the rate for one, possibly attempted, act of forcible intercourse. This is quite a different thing than a couple trying over and over to conceive or even an accidental pregnancy after multiple acts.
I think the best way to punish Akin for his stupidity is to leave him in.
It’s the panic induced stupidity on display by the rest of the GOP that I’m motivated to punish.
CAC as Ace of Spades looks critically at that PPP poll that had Akin up. It is a trap. Akin is dead man walking.
I am not supporting panic and Rove’s BS on TV. That is causing more harm. The issue is if you have a candidate in serious trouble, you pull him if you can and mitigate the harm.
Or not.
And I do not think Akin should debase himself. He should say he is dropping out because his comments are a distraction and being grossly misconstrued. That is he is pro life and proud of it. But this election is bigger than his candidacy and for the good of the country he will walk away.
Without looking critically at how it is you who caused the harm.
Because it’s not like something like this can ever happen again.
By the way, Rove is already thinking about how he can use these tactics to sink TEA Party candidates going forward. Bank on it.
And conservative sites like Ace of Which Way Is the Wind Blowing will help him out.
Staunch.
If this election is bigger than a stupid and factually incorrect* statement about the probability of a rape** resulting in pregnancy as it pertains to a rape-exception to an abortion ban, a statement deliberately misconstrued to be insensitive, depraved, un-pc etc. (aka “business as usual on the left”), THEN WHY IN THE HELL IS EVERYONE ON “OUR” SIDE SHITTING THEMSELVES?!?
*although perhaps not, see GeoffB, above.
** as if rapists don’t know about forensics and leave DNA all over the fucking place.
Off to the dentist. Listening to a dental drill’ gonna be a real pleasure today.
Jeff wrote: We deserve to lose because all we care about is winning. The same goes for the Dems, too, by the way. But they’re just better at it.
The Dems are because they have rejected all Morality.
Well, Ed Rollins says Akins has to go. That’s good enough for me!
I’m only guessing here but I may have an insight to his thinking. (very poorly expressed)
There are those that believe a woman, due to various emotional and physical responses, may be able make herself more fertile than she would otherwise be depending on who the partner is. I believe there may even be a few studies of this anecdotal phenomenon.
Thus the reasoning is that in a “legitimate rape” (I think what he means here is that there are actual rapes and then there are women who claim to have been raped but just changed their mind about having agreed to have sex and have now decided it must have been rape because they don’t like the results or something. Date rape in other words only the woman was initially okay with it.) a woman would NOT be in the mental or emotional state to make herself more fertile and thus fewer babies are born to victims of actual rape.
And I believe that the statistics show something like that in that few rapes result in a child. However the statistics may be very wrong to due unreported rapes and abortions without the victim saying their was a rape.
Now don’t beat up on me for my attempt to delve into his mind. I’m just applying a few passing passages I’ve read and the musings there to on the subject. In rural areas and small towns, there are opinions held like this because the facts of anyone’s pregnancy can be widely known in a small community and there’s a large volume of “fake rapes” (Girl feels ashamed at it being known that she wanted to have sex. A big no no in the mores of rural and small town areas, so girl claims she was raped and that’s why she’s pregnant.) that occur but no one is ever charged but everyone knows what happened. Much of the time, it wasn’t an actual rape but once the girls finds she’s pregnant she will sometimes resort to the excuse of having been raped to fend off her parents anger and shame at her out of wedlock shame.
These days it happens less and less but those attitudes would have been prevalent during Mr. Akin’s youth and apparently his Mom or his school didn’t disabuse him of this opinion.
Ernst, I feel your pain. I had oral surgery last year and I get hives everytime I take my kid to get his braces adjusted.
Jeff wrote: Playing these games only further institutionalize the tactics, devalue the language, and insure future repeats of just this kind of empty, soundbite politics — such that soon we’ll have to choose between candidates saying exactly the same things in exactly the same way, and our measure of who’s best will have to do with who is most polished.
Hardly ideal.
Nope. Not for me.
And I am not dying on this hill. I’m a ghost standing on this hill reminding you that I’ve always been here, and I’ve already been killed for having been.
Ernst wrote: We’re running out of hills john.
If we keep losing these hills to the enemy, we’re going to end up down in the valley surrounded by the Left holding all the high ground.
How much ground do you give up before there’s none left to give.
The stakes are too high to keep playing the old political game – a game, by the way, that was designed by the Left to silence the opposition. Every time you play the game you accept their rules and are forced to follow their narrative. There’s too much at stake, dammit.
But really? They don’t put out press releases of prominent conservatives calling for his ouster unless they know they can secure it.
Having already done that, it will now require some walk back. They need to show that McCaskill’s stance on abortion is equally as “extreme” — and that her side actually has succeeded into getting it into law. And all else being equal, at least the GOP candidate will help stop our fiscal ruin and not act as a rubber stamp for Reid and Obama.
A passing thought:
G is for “Gee can we screw this up somehow?”
O is for Open mouth insert: foot, gun, penis etc.
P People publicly pissing on themselves
JeffG said:
The bolded part isn’t necessarily true, unless the only authentic pro-life position is that all unborn infants are equal. In fact, the pro-life camp exists along a continuum, and Akin, perhaps inadvertently, revealed that he resides on one extreme end of that continuum.
I think you would find the majority of the pro-life public draws the magical “personhood” line in the sand somewhere short of a conception as the result of rape or incest. I don’t guess to speak for the rest of the pro-lifers, but the idea of forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist carries a visceral revulsion greater than the revulsion of aborting a child.
Which, incidentally, helps to explain the immediate disgust Akin’s comments have caused even among the pro-life right. It’s not just that we don’t want to be left holding Akin’s rhetorical bag, it’s that we really don’t like the idea of rapists getting to use the machinery of state to force their victims to protect the rapist’s offspring.
This is not to say that there aren’t opportunistic media whores who are jumping at the chance to prove their righteousness by condemning a universal pariah. To ascribe that ugly motive to every person who is calling for Akin’s withdrawal is wrongheaded.
I don’t think that it’s the only authentic position, just that it’s authentic, and that if we have a problem with the argument we condemn (but more appropriately address or engage) the argument, not demand the head of the arguer. By condemning it the way they’ve done to me suggests that they are embarrassed by what is a natural intellectual extension of their own stated position.
If they aren’t willing to fight for it, take it out of the platform.
And I haven’t ascribed an ugly motive to everyone. If the shoe fits, and all that.
I believe this happened with O’Donnell; so many R’s and conservative bloggers dissed and dismissed her it was a huge self fulfilling prophecy.
Or she was a liability. It’s so hard to second guess the past.
I’m not really seeing this as yet another example of GOP fecklessness. Then again, I’m not exactly on pins and needles for his explanations when Jesus-humping morons who oppose abortion in the case of rape are damn near impossible to share a party with even when they can articulate their reasoning. Maybe instances like this will teach Godbot conservatives how to be better politicians, assuming that a lot of them are even capable of learning anything.
O’Donnell’s “I’m not a witch” ad was sheer idiocy. Meanwhile, something amazing: an interesting piece at Salon.
And the Akinization continues
But that’s not what he said
“I’ll be open to discussion” means “I don’t know, so educate me”, which doesn’t deserve condemnation.
Let’s be clear: Akin didn’t fuckup typical stuff that is profoundly easy to quibble with, he fucked up basic human sexuality and biology.
Pro-abortion people are prepared to be disgusted with the pro-life position but they at least recognize it as an established viewpoint. Akin took it somewhere else.
It’d be nice to be symmetrical and consistent with the PW viewpoint on this but it’s impossible to move away from Pablo’s assessment on this @ 8:53 am: Akin fucked up something that was a slamdunk in such a way that rational people question whether this guy is all there.
Perhaps we are disagreeing about the meaning of the term you used, “plank in the platform.” I understand that term to mean a political position on an issue, and generally a party/candidate will only endorse one position per issue.
Akin is indisputably pro-life, but his pro-life “plank” is very different from the one endorsed by many if not most other conservatives. The Republican party’s rejection of his view on abortion is not necessarily an abandonment of pro-life principle as much as it is a clarification of the party’s position.
The term legitimate, apparently intended in the sense of bona-fide, but misapplied in that way doesn’t sound much like biology or connote sexuality to me. Sure, he went on to make other questionable claims regarding sexuality, rape, conception and so on, yet I doubt those further comments would have raised anywhere near the public furor had he simply said bona-fide where he apparently meant bona-fide.
More bullshit. Unless you think years of being a good conservative and representative needs to be bracketed so we can judge “whether this guy is all there” based on fucking up a question about a particularly troublesome bit within the pro-life argument.
You all can justify it any way you want. But again, engaging in argument and defeating was the way to go. Climbing over each other to show you are more outraged than the rest of your “conservative” Twitter buddies so that Eric Boehlert won’t make fun of you is not.
For the record, Abe, I don’t want to share a party with a bigot like you.
I’d always assumed the GOP’s pro-life stance encompassed a variety of pro-life views, and that those views were open to debate and argumentation, persuasion and evolution.
Guess I was wrong. The GOP’s pro-life stance is “pro-life, unless it makes even us uncomfortable. I mean, there’s pro life and there’s pro life life.”
Or, you know, rape rape.
Over at The Other McCain, the general tone is that Akin needs to go because his comment has sucked all the air out of the discussion of substantive topics. My comment:
It will of course be ignored.
For the record, Abe, I don’t want to share a party with a bigot like you.
I am a bigot, I suppose. An inability to see where much or any of the brainpower in the conservative movement is coming from the hicks for Jesus community will do that to a guy.
I’m not particularly outraged jeff. he said something stupid, about a particularly sensitive issue, with plenty of time to ponder a reply. I suppose it could even be his true belief: that females cannot conceive from the ejaculate of rapists.
politicians of all stripes have a rich and varied history of fucking up statements of various import.
I no more think this invalidates classic liberalism than the credit crisis invalidates capitalism or free markets.
Hell, I dont think Maxine Waters, who appears to be literally retarded, invalidates progressivism.
he put his foot in his mouth and looks really, really fucking stupid.
no more, no less.
” I suppose it could even be his true belief: that females cannot conceive from the ejaculate of rapists. ”
This is the kind of shit that pisses me off. He didn’t say any such thing. What he said was stupid enough without lying to make it worse.
Perhaps we’ll have to agree to disagree about Todd Akin. I like to think I’m quite awake and nominally more in tune with Missouri politics and nepotism than most here. I’ve voted for Todd Akin six times, but have trouble pulling the lever for anyone so stunningly ignorant again when there are rather clear alternatives which are practicable, and no, I don’t mean voting for Claire McCaskill. The stupidity I’m concerned about is not the usual political stupidity but the actual ignorance of a purportedly educated man saying anything so nonsensical. I’m something of the opposite of a yellow-dog Democrat so I would still vote for Akin over McCaskill, choosing I suppose the sins of ommission over the sins of commission, but leaving him on the ballot will make McCaskill’s re-election more likely, and isn’t that what this is really all about in the world of realpolitik? Speaking of yellow-dog democrats, when you meet one don’t forget to remind them that Obama ate a dog.
I did enjoy the personal e-mail I received from Donna Brazille this morning with an urgent request for cash on behalf of Claire to get rid of this berzerker in the war on women.
Whatever you have to tell your pillow, Abe.
This is war, we are going to take casualties. I am OK losing the asshole who stuck his head up out of the foxhole and got it blown off, in the process stopping the only real positive momentum the liberty cause has had since Romney clinched.
75 days. I am OK just doing politics for 75 days to get the Marxist out.
If only Akin could say, “I was wrong. I fucked up. But at least I didn’t vote like Claire McCaskill did to rape 1/6 of the economy. In the ass.”
Jeff, also, this isn’t about absolutism regarding opposition to abortion in all cases. He’s free to hold the position, even if I don’t agree with it. What I can’t abide is his saying that women can’t get pregnant from rapes. That’s some first rate stupid there that even getting rid of Claire McCaskill can’t wash away.
Sorry, meant to say that Akin’s saying that women have the wherewithal to not get pregnant from rapes, because they’re all womeny or something, is what I have a problem with.
I’m not. And here’s why: If we spend the next 75 days doing this kind of politics, either we won’t succeed in getting rid of Obama, or we won’t succeed in getting rid of his policies —which amounts to the same thing.
Isn’t debate and argumentation what just happened?
1) Akin defends his position of no abortion even in circumstances of rape, and in doing so, he makes an assertion that women have some biological mechanism to shut down fertilization processes in rape situations.
2) The entire world looks at him and says, “Um, no. Are you familiar with human reproduction?”
The fact that his argument was completely devoid of merit means that only brief time needs to be spent to refute it. Does this mean that the GOP is suddenly not pro-life? No. It just means that the pro-life ideology of the GOP doesn’t include magic rape-baby prevention logic.
Note that I don’t think this prevents a person from making a principled argument against abortion even in cases of rape. That person just has to be willing to acknowledge that conception can result from rape.
But is that what he said?
“Bill Quick seems to think that Akin should NOT step down.”
I would normally agree with Bill Quick on this. Unfortunately, given his recent ‘people supporting Chick-Fil-A= HOMOPHOBIC EVIL’ nonsense, my response to anything Bill Quick says must be “BULLSHIT! And he KNOWS IT!”
Ernst, I tried to correct that in the next comment.
Yes, I know that ‘Bullshit! And you know it!’ is not an argument so much as a force field. It is an adult version of “na-na-na-na-na-na-I can’t hear you!-na-na-na-na”.
You need something more like ‘bullshit-because x’ and ‘he knows it because y’ and the x and y have to be pretty good and persuasive and at least appear accurate without feeling based on some lazy ‘truthiness’ meme or other.
Without that it boils down to “STFU! This is my house! Bow or bail! ”
But apparently that’s just how Bill Quick rolls. And when in Rome…
I was typing as you were posting charles.
hazards of the format and all that.
Incidentally, just now listened to Levin’s show from last night. He’s pretty much where I am except for the fact that he says he’d prefer it if Akin dropped out. Whereas I don’t care if he stays or goes. I also don’t agree with Levin that, if Akin stays and loses, then we can start blaming him like we did Angle or O’Donnell (mostly because Levin didn’t blame those two, and the double standard on that point, therefore, is his own).
What concerns me most is the yapping, sanctimonious cowardice of those on our side who were climbing over each other to throw Akin under the bus — and the mindset and intellectual assumptions that animate such behavior.
We’ve learned nothing politically it seems since I wrote that Rush piece for Hot Air, the one that received plenty of praise and agreement but yet is also the piece that, at base, is what put me on the wrong side of the fluffers and lead (along with my propensity to be an asshole) to my shunning and networked excommunication.
And that’s hard for me to take.
My problem is not people turning on Akin. That’s legitimate enough, to use a much-abused word.
It’s that everyone turned on him and each other like starving rabid sharks at the waste chute of a seaside tuna canning factory.
People saying “is this the hill to die on” are missing the point that a large number of commenters, pundits, commenterati et al *are in fact* choosing to die on this hill, without even waiting for the enemy to arrive. It’s a frag fest, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for not showing up for the grenade party.
It is perfectly okay to ask someone you think is a liability to step aside. Going all alpha-sierra over the situation and lashing out randomly is what’s not okay, and that unfortunately is how people on the right deal with adversity.
Which is kind of a shame, as, you know, last chance to avoid economic collapse and Lord Humongous and everything.
No.
A bunch of sanctimonious cowards engaged in a lynching is what happened.
Akin didn’t invent the argument. If he’s wrong, tell him he’s wrong and why. He grows, you feel good.
Not what happened here.
No.
I’m pretty sure he’d vote to repeal ObamaCare and is a fairly reliable conservative.
I think that makes up for a lot.
” I am OK losing the asshole who stuck his head up out of the foxhole and got it blown off,”
Some of the bullets in him are NATO and came from behind the foxhole. And people back there are still shooting to be SEEN shooting. Fratricide USED to be considered shameful or at least unfortunate and regrettable. Are we fucking party Kommisars now with a morale raising pistol?
GOP pragamatists want to bitch about the ugly unpopular absolutism of so called “purists” and yet simultaneously want to dispose of and isolate people who don’t meet the “winning” template in one way or another before the opposition party does?
1) Akin defends his position of no abortion even in circumstances of rape, and in doing so, he makes an assertion that women have some biological mechanism to shut down fertilization processes in rape situations.
No, he does not. He never said the word “fertilization”. Haven’t you ever heard of a “miscarriage”? STOP PUTTING WORDS IN HIS MOUTH!
Hadlowe, the only fact we have here is that Akin’s assertion was refuted with a counter-assertion. As geoff has been (too) politely pointing out all day.
Jeff, well I said I’d still vote for him. But let me try one more time. If Todd Akin is opposed to abortion in all circumstances because he believes abortion to be an abomination, I understand that and accept it as a principled position, albeit one I do not share. If Todd Akin is opposed to abortion because he believes women have the ability to prevent pregnancy by some sort of womeny magic or other, then I don’t understand it and can’t accept it as a principled position. However, this incident, like all incidents are just data points. It’s a big black mark but it pales in comparison to the rather large number of even bigger black marks that Claire McCaskill has accumulated and would add to if she is reelected. Personally, I’d be happier with Steelman, Brunner, or Talent replacing Akin as the GOP candidate for the general election. But then again, I’m not a Republican so I doubt the Missouri Republican Party cares much what I think. I’m not opposed to Todd Akin because I’m “supposed to be” but because I think he’s revealed himself as a real moron. FWIW, I have a number of Republican friends who have held this opinion of Akin for quite some time.
“Maybe instances like this will teach Godbot conservatives how to be better politicians, assuming that a lot of them are even capable of learning anything.”
Yeah they can obviously learn a hell of a lot from the genius side of the party. McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Huntsman, and Dede Scozzafava fucking rock! Down with Christers!
What the hell.
I’m not opposed to Todd Akin because I’m “supposed to be” but because I think he’s revealed himself as a real moron. FWIW, I have a number of Republican friends who have held this opinion of Akin for quite some time.
This is one of the things that make Republicans clearly superior to Democrats. They have no capacity for making qualitative distinctions within their own ranks, whereas – while it may be vastly over-applied – I’d much rather be in a party where stupid people are characterized as stupid by a large number of people. I’ll never forget the look of complete and utter shock I got from a liberal friend when I said that pretty much everyone in the CBC has Down’s Syndrome.
Well, let’s dispense with that. Akin was wrong, and readily admits as much now. The essay Akin was relying on, according to him, is the one I linked in my 8:50 am. At the top of that page, you’ll find this:
Again, the pregnancy rate is 5%. The essay is nonsense. Akin was wrong.
Someone do me a solid and fill me in on what A. S. stands for? Is it ape shit?
(I know it’s neither here nor there but I’m curious.)
Willke is making assumptions based on figures he admits he doesn’t actually have. Statistically speaking, it’s crap. Medically speaking, it’s worse.
What if Akin was trying to explain here why he doesn’t believe a rape exception necessary from a non-religious perspective?
*i.e. not enough rapes result in viable pregnancies to merit an exception to a ban on abortion —and here’s my (psuedo-)scientific reason why.
Guttmacher study here [pdf].
What concerns me most is the yapping, sanctimonious cowardice of those on our side who were climbing over each other to throw Akin under the bus — and the mindset and intellectual assumptions that animate such behavior.
My very initial reaction to this was, Fuck you, next question. Honestly.
I listened to Levin last night and I saw his point.
And Jeff’s argument brings me back to the FYNQ stance. I understand the implications and that makes me nervous.
The other side lies, it’s what they do. Akin made a error, but he didn’t do what they are accusing him of. You should read the shit they write. And every time I begin to think they’re right, I remember Hank saying Guam was going to flip over.
Without looking critically at how it is you who caused the harm.
Because it’s not like something like this can ever happen again.
How did I cause harm to Akin? Because given the situation, I agree it would be best for the race if he gracefully bowed out and let someone else pick up his flag? I do not think Akin is a bad guy. He is broad on pro life issues. Broader than me. Nothing wrong with that. The Pope has similar pro life views too. But he phrased an answer about “legitimate” rapes that seemed awkward at best. It is hurting him on getting elected. It is really that simple.
If he stays in and I lived in Missouri, I would vote for him. I hope he wins–but it is going to be tough. I hope the GOP takes the White House and Senate.
Rush and Levin are calling for him to drop out. So, did they cause him harm too? If you think being principled means fighting every one of these battles on issues of false outrage and language, you make a point. Of course this will happen again.
Sometimes it is better to choose your battles and Akin had an easy out by passing the flag off to one the other GOP candidates who had almost as many primary votes as he got.
If he stays in I hope he wins. But this is a battle we could have avoided.
And liberals discussing 1) rape and/or 2) abortion is the most … mind numbing exercise. They completely lose their shit. That are unable to utter even the smallest bit of truth.
Because conservatives want women to be raped, and then force them to have those babies.
As geoff’s lastest makes clear, Pablo, Adkin was right, albeit, for the wrong reason.
I don’t particularly have a problem with Adkin saying that he was wrong, correcting the factual record, and moving on.
Or is that an option only available to Democrats?
Just saw your assessment of geoff’s quotation from Wilkie, so take my comment any way you want Pablo.
And the best way to do that is to preemptively surrender.
Yes, they did.
Bh yes, alpha sierra is ape shit.
Habit.
You in the plural. As in, you all. Or y’all, if chains are involved.
And the you all caused harm by not coming to his defense, slapping down the left’s phony outrage, and noting that, while Akin maybe has his facts wrong on what he said — we’ll have to ask for clarification — he’s not supporting demands for the Catholic Church, for instance, to fund abortifas blah blah blah.
The WE ARE JUST AS OUTRAGED! crowd harmed Akin. The HE TOOK THE MOMENTUM AWAY crowd harmed Akin — particularly inasmuch as they have been helping take away momentum by commenting on how momentum is being taken away (a point McGehee hit directly earlier). The FOR THE GOOD OF THE PARTY people most likely didn’t want him to begin with and are simply being opportunistic.
This guy has years of service as a reliable conservative vote. The phony outrage should have been ignored or laughed off until the left realized it had no bone to cling to here, and the ire should have been turned on McCaskill for voting for the single greatest intrusion of government into women’s health care — and man’s and child’s — ever.
But our side is rife with very influential cowards and self-serving bullshitters looking to find a niche.
WhoTF cares about harm to Akin? Ask instead how you caused harm to what really matters: By buying into the distraction of Akin’s comments to let the BSM knock real issues off the front page.
“We’ve learned nothing politically it seems since I wrote that Rush piece for Hot Air, . . .”
I think this is so, and that the lessons — generally speaking — that we should be teaching ourselves and our fellows are somewhat orthogonal to those we actually pursue, though not for nothing do we pursue these nearer at hand. But finding the better questions isn’t a simple thing as politics goes. It’s hard to persuade people to turn to distant and decidedly obscure objects in order that they may obtain nearer and more irritating desires. This too, is to say nothing about the bad lessons people have generally already taken onboard and use without the first thought as to what they portend, nevermind ridding themselves of them.
Thanks, Merovign.
Bingo.
I’ve been pointing this out for years with real world links and examples to other bloggers — because many of them do influence the debate, and they don’t get a pass from me — and that’s why I’m out.
doing the alinsky at nro
every living Republican who has served as a Senator from Missouri to Akin: Get out.
Akin to Mike Huckabee: I’m staying in.
Congressman, pride is a sin.
link
You know what else is a sin? Killing an innocent, then claiming you only did so for the greater good.
I don’t hang out with cowards. I’ve met Ponnuru. I wouldn’t hang out with him, either.
You can oppose Akin and *not* ally with the left/MSM. This is what is missed.
Out of the gate, “I disagree with what he said, I hope he makes a sincere correction (or bows out or whatever), but I disagree even more with you (MSM/left) trying to hijack the national conversation and steer it away from our disastrous economy and your constant stream of lies because you think you have an attention-grabber.”
Or words to that effect. Instead, grenade party. Because it’s Our Way.
Not by me.
Then you’ve a home in the Republican party, because everybody, and especially Republicans, agree that it’s the stupid party.
CONCENSUS!
the brainpower in the conservative movement is coming from the hicks for Jesus community
Yo, over here!
You gotta problem with my brainpower, Abe? Or only with those who are so unbearably tacky you can’t stand to be seen with them?
Sorry McGehee, I did not. Well at least no more than Rush or Levin did.
Republican/Democrat. Two sides of the same coin. Obama has nothing except the abortion and birth control. They will roll out Sandra Fluke at every opportunity and the Republicans will play along. When are they going to say fuck the social issues and start going after these clowns?
You can disagree with Akin. If you oppose Akin, you’ve allied yourself with the Left/MSM.
Objectively, as Orwell used to say.
but have trouble pulling the lever for anyone so stunningly ignorant
If everyone had a button located behind the left ear that, when pushed, produced a list of assumptions that we have nestled somewhere in our brains (conscious and unconscious), I think we’d all be guilty of “stunning ignorance” in one sense or another.
I don’t know whether forcible rape has a lower conception rate than statutory rape or any other kind of intercourse, but I’ll be damned if I’ll run a man out of town on a rail just because he supplied a moment of embarrassment and a couple news cycles of “distraction.”
People who think nitpick themselves to death.
People who don’t think just keep charging FORWARD!
Sucks.
How is making the Catholic church pay for abortion, abortifacients and birth control in contradiction to its own teaching NOT a social issue?
When are we going to say fuck the demcrat framing of social issues?
Amen.
“Because conservatives want women to be raped, and then force them to have those babies.”
And then we are ALSO assholes because want to save the life of the kid who is product of rape. And we are jackbooted thugs because we want to lock the rapists up in boot-camp prisons and have the state charge them for room and board instead of getting them the help they need to reenter society. And we want to punish rich and influential rapists like movie directors as if they were y’know…just truck drivers or something. We’re crazy. And we want to thoroughly investigate rape charges too which is like punishing the victim and hurting her just as bad as the attacker did or something. And that whole ‘please don’t dress like a stripper when hanging out alone at a dive bar where a lot of bad things happen’ is blaming the victim. (Despite the fact that we want the perpetrator convicted and locked up). And the per capita racial composition of people arrested for rape or sexual assault is UNFAIRLY slanted against minorities and so is the conviction rate… blah blah blah. And we shouldn’t convict like foreign muslim arab residents of raping people they married against their will or of forming rape gangs because that’s like a different culture n’ stuff and we can’t judge them.
Yeah, I’m sick of it too.
EBL | August 19, 2012 at 9:25 pm
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/republican-makes-stupid-statement-everyone-swarm/comment-page-1/#comment-365923
I know many pro life people who are pro life–they are opposed to the death penalty and they are opposed to abortion. What Akins said was not that radical. Does anyone really believe we will reverse Roe and then make abortion in the case of rape illegal in this country or for that matter Missouri? I do not think so. His position is a defendable one (if not entirely popular).
Now I disagree. I would never use the power of the state to compel a woman not to have an abortion in the case or rape. But he did not even go there, he just said he would lean toward punishment for the rapist and not the child of rape. It is a moral question that many Christians (and other faiths too) agree with.
Like or Dislike: 6 4
That was one of my first comments on this when it broke. I do not think I was throwing Akin under the bus.
We’ve learned nothing politically it seems since I wrote that Rush piece for Hot Air,
Well, there’s learning, intellectually, and then there’s summoning the intestinal fortitude to act on principle.
A well-written essay can do the former, but I don’t know how one effects the latter.
It’s depressingly easy to abandon what one knows to be right to avoid the discomfort—however brief—of being thought a fool, and a damned fool at that.
Turns out both Hewitt and Levin are covering the subject with glory, and by “glory” I mean “cowardice.”
For the children.
Sigh. At the risk of failing to recognize sarcasm . . .
Those are his words. He doesn’t say fertilization. The interviewer asks him about abortion in the case of rape. He says he understands “that’s really rare [implied because] [i]f it’s legitimate rape, the female body has a way to shut that whole thing down.” the context indicates a belief in a biological mechanism to shut down conception in a rape situation rather than a mechanism for auto-aborting a fetus.
However, even assuming that he was speaking of miscarriage, is an unfounded belief that the female body has some mechanism to reject rape babies any better than an unfounded belief that the female body has some mechanism to kill rape sperm before it can fertilize the egg?
If his comment is defensible, or if the election is about Bigger Things™ than an idiotic understanding of the probabilities of rape resulting in a viable pregnancy, why must he then “show some grace and get out,” I’m wondering.
Turns out that you get fragged from the right if you have the everlasting gall to resort to original sources when writing a book about Thomas Jefferson.
David Barton’s latest book was pulled by the publisher, the conservative Thomas Nelson imprint. Instead of merely declining to reprint the book and letting it fade into obscurity—or issuing errata or whatnot—they retrieved all of the books currently in bookstores. Good thing I bought me one.
I really hate people sometimes. Sometimes is getting awfully frequent.
recent mccaskill gaffes
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., had to apologize after she dismissed a negative campaign ad by wrongly denouncing the people who spoke out against her for “pretend[ing] like they were Missourians,” when in fact they were “concerned” constituents.
“They went out an hired some actors to pretend like they were Missourians,” McCaskill said when talking about an Americans for Prosperity ad. “I don’t know they’re actors, but I certainly didn’t see them identifying themselves as Missourians.”
It turns out, McCaskill was wrong. “We are all Missourians in that commercial,” Linda Becker, who appeared in the ad, told the St. Louis Fox-affiliate, KTVI. “We’re not actors, none of us are professionals, we just are concerned taxpayers, and we’ve been taxed enough already and we want to see a change.” Becker told Fox that she got into the ad through Tea Party connections.
She suggested that McCaskill was trying “to put the focus back on us and whether we were legitimate instead of putting the focus on her and her overspending.”
link
Because “thing” couldn’t refer to pregnancy at all —just conception.
Riiiight.
No, that’s the piece I’m referring to. For instance:
What statistical reporting? He doesn’t say. AJOG puts the rate at 5% among childbearing age women, or 1 in 20. Then there’s this:
SCIENCE!!! Nay, bullshit.
recent mccaskill gaffes
Give up yet? Okay, here’s the problem with Senator McCaskill’s comments.
[…] A Democratic lawmaker may have violated prohibitions against soliciting campaign contributions on government property while appearing on MSNBC on Monday night.
It is against the law to fundraise on government property. […]
Here’s the text of what McCaskill said in the interview with Matthews.
[…] “I’m asking regular folks to be my super PAC,” Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” from inside the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building while discussing how super PACs are targeting her.
But what could be problematic for the senator is that she also reminded MSNBC’s viewers that “on ClaireMcCaskill.com, people can give 25 bucks and, if we get a lot of those, we will have our own super PAC, and that’s the kind of PAC that should be super, made up of regular people giving small amounts.” […]
link
You gotta problem with my brainpower, Abe? Or only with those who are so unbearably tacky you can’t stand to be seen with them?
Mormons are different. For whatever reason, Mormon culture in, say, Utah, kind of transcends the insularity that characterizes other areas in the country where overt religiously is the norm. It isn’t about embarrassment, either. For instance, Duck Dynasty is probably my favorite show on television, and I find the whole family to be smart and pretty awesome, but I watched the patriarch of the family (on Youtube) give a sermon, and it kind of made my skin crawl.
It isn’t faith that troubles me, it’s how seeing everything through the prism of belief – and having that re-enforced by everyone in your community – can reduce all thought and argumentation to something akin to the quasi-religious argument by assertion which characterizes most everyone on the left. It does nothing to advance conservatism.
*snicker*
Yes, we’re different, but we’re just as “kooky” and “insular” in our way as everyone else, including you.
i’m enjoying aikin giving the gop a hearty fu
But it wasn’t “unfounded.” Clearly he had read something on the subject. And perhaps found it convincing. Now, it may have been debunked or what have you, but he may not have known that.
None of which explains official GOP press releases and the groundswell of witchfinding on Twitter and some blogs from conservatives who, in other circumstances, will tell us that it is important to stick to principle.
I was too quick on that last comment. I apologize to Hadlowe for not reading the entirety of his comment before I spouted off.
But then, I’m almost as big an asshole as Jeff.
You wish, Ernst.
So, to sum up, EBL: Akin said nothing terribly radical.
Now. He needs to step down.
Because.
oh noes NAZIS
One of the documents Rep. Stephen F. Freind used Tuesday to support his pregnancy-rape theory cited a World War II Nazi study on pregnancy and stress.
Yesterday, the president of the state affiliate of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said Freind’s use of the study was ”inappropriate.”
Freind (R., Delaware) did not mention the study at a news conference Tuesday, but he repeatedly used as a source for his information Dr. Fred E. Mecklenburg, who cited the study in an article.
In a 1972 article prepared for a publication called Abortion and Social Justice, which was paid for by a group called Americans United for Life, Mecklenburg said “medical research” linked stress and ovulation. Mecklenburg is an obstetrician and gynecologist working in Washington.
“In Germany, during World War II, the Nazis tested this hypothesis by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what effects this had on their ovulatory patterns,” Mecklenburg wrote.
According to the study, wrote Mecklenburg, 64 percent did not ovulate.
Freind, the legislature’s leading anti-abortion advocate, has been embroiled in controversy over his comments that it is extremely rare for women to become pregnant as the result of rape.
Although he retracted earlier statements about a “secretion” that kills sperm, he said Tuesday that stress is one reason few women who are raped get pregnant.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/08/romney-calls-on-akin-to-step-down/
Really? This seems like an awful nitty nit to pick at. Especially because there is no more a rape-sensing miscarriage than there is rape-conception goalie.
Fact of the matter is that if your principles hold that there should be no legal abortion under any circumstances, you’re going to have to argue at some point that the machinery of state should force victims of rape who become pregnant to carry that baby to term. You can’t try to weasel out of that devil’s bargain by saying that rape pregnancies are so rare as to be not a moral dilemma.
Personally, I’m uncomfortable with that notion, but YMMV.
Ernst, s’all good. We’re just an echo chamber in here, after all.
If Akin really wanted to give the GOP a fuck you, he’d withdraw from the Senate race, resign from the House, quit the party, and endorse Obama/Biden, McCaskill, and the Democrat challenger for his old House seat.
Then he could say “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.” and he’d be absolutely right.
Ernst, I do not believe that is an option because as far as I know he is an honorable man. Not particularly bright, but honarable. Theres still something to be said for that.
I like this Todd Akin doubling down on Our Betters™.
I think I’ll send him some money.
I don’t think he should step down. He said something truly ill-informed and thoughtless; a ninth-grader presumably has more awareness of the reality of conception.
The voters of Missouri will have a clear say on the matter in nine weeks and I’ll yield to them. It would be nice if someone could consider the man in full, his career and presumptive character when deciding to vote for or against. but then a lot of things would be “nice.”
Personally, I think candidates should be forced from office only when issues of alleged legal issues or personal character failure are so substantial as to obviously impede their ability to execute their job. Eliot Spitzer, for example, justly resigned not because of sex with a call-girl, but because he asked the President of a large bank to conceal his transactions to OFAC.
But the corollary holds too. I can’t support a candidate who is politically congruent with my views yet who is morally repugnant; if John Edwards went Outlaw!, for example, he could do so without my vote.
my allan. our rethuglican “leaders” are clueless aholes.
oh noes we can’t fucking take the attack to the enemy ’cause we’re too busy parsing words and worrying about the dickwads on the other side how they will use it. fuck this.
He said something truly ill-informed and thoughtless; a ninth-grader presumably has more awareness of the reality of conception.
’cause you know we can’t talk about guam tipping over or that corzine stole a billion dollars.
I don’t think it’s particularly honorable to fall on your sword after you’ve been stabbed in the back myself.
Look at some fertility web sites. Almost every one of them mentions stress reduction and relaxation as an important attitude to conception.
It would seem to me that unless you consider getting punched in the face and a full nelson foreplay that rape would be rather stressful. Going into shock, or acute stress reaction, sounds to me like it might create physiological conditions that aren’t quite as conducive to conception as conventional sex.
Don’t have any studies to back it up, but I can remember discussing it in classes back in school. We also discussed that there would seem to be evolutionary benefits to this.
Of course, we were all knocking dames in the head with clubs and dragging them back to our caves by their hair in those days, so there is that.
Ip gissa gul
Only cite such things when useful to the narrative, B Moe.
SCIENCE!!1!!
Heh.
Jeff wrote: I’ve been pointing this out for years with real world links and examples to other bloggers — because many of them do influence the debate, and they don’t get a pass from me — and that’s why I’m out.
That means me too. Well, the company’s better on the outside.
Stress only hurts the conception process when you’re being told it does so by holistic fertility clinics and many doctors.
When a Jesusy guy says it, it’s just plain cuckoo! Run! ABANDON SHIP!
Specifically, my heh relates to the juxtaposition of modern f fertility advice and the cartoon caveman method.
For what it’s worth I find the most persuasive argument towards non-cultural homosexuality to be pre-natal stress. I can’t scoff art someone taking a similar notion seriously even if I’d disagree here or there.
Argument should be explanation above.
You can’t scoff at them because they aren’t even allowed to make the argument.
And that is now a bipartisan decree.
Remember when bipartisan might mean presenting a united front in a time of war? Well, I don’t but I hear those were good times.
They were in a sense, although in light of the thousands of Soviet warheads pointed thissa-way, maybe only seemingly so.
Point taken.
(Just don’t make me watch The Day After again. That was my version of duck and cover.)
How would that be to have Congressional representatives who actually got knots in their stomachs daily on account of they genuinely understood what evils they are up against?
Instead we’ve got morons preaching “never let a crisis go to waste”. Fuck all.
This shit keeps up and me might have to start using the term TRI-partisan.
“You know what else is a sin? Killing an innocent, then claiming you only did so for the greater good”
Well said Mr. G!
Though watching Jeff manuever to the right of Mike Hukabee on the social front is a new experience.
(I’m gonna have to keep an eye on this Outlaw;)
Huckabee’s a sanctimonious twat dripping in the chrism of cheap grace.
“It would seem to me that unless you consider getting punched in the face and a full nelson foreplay”
Hey, let’s leave bh’s recreational activities out of this,
shall we? ;)
On abortion I’ve described myself as reluctantly pro choice and explained that stance.
I hate bullies and bullying. And I hate self-serving, sanctimonious disloyalty like that so frequently on display on the right. Hate it.
Ha!
I’m jaded now. All I really want to do nowadays is drop a left hand on someone’s liver. It’s something of a fetish. I never land it but when I do it’s gonna be magical.
Jeff,
This little ;) symbol was meant for the sentence above the one in parenthesis as well.
But, when you said this:
“You know what else is a sin? Killing an innocent, then claiming you only did so for the greater good”
You actually (perhaps inadvertently) provided the answer that Akin should have given that reporter. I’d humbly suggest that Akin’s biggest fault wasn’t an extreme viewpoint it was falling to recognize and prepare for a hostile interrogation.
Instead of pointing to the statistics he should have reminded his interrogater that he left an innocent party out of the equation.
Protecting the innocent used to be considered virtuous but now it’s considered extreme. I have a feeling that attitude is going to lead to a lot of regrets some day soon.
Ernst, stabbed in the back? Is that what I am doing?
I don’t get the variant du jour of angels dancing on the head of a pin here or the need for being purer than pure and having to alienate your friends for not thinking the right thoughts I’m reading in these threads tonight. Do you really want to keep trimming your tent until it can only hold the 8 or 9 people out of 300 million who are in complete agreement with you and bitch about how stupid and worthless everyone outside your tent is? I don’t get it. I really don’t. I don’t have the hermeneutic chops to play with the big kids here, but I don’t think of myself as stupid, backstabbing, or anxious to surrender either. But YMMV.
Is that what I’m doing?
I thought I was standing up to a ridiculous wilding from “conservatives” rushing to show outrage before the left can accuse them of believing anything and everything some individual might say.
Yes, we’re different, but we’re just as “kooky” and “insular” in our way as everyone else, including you.
Heh. That’s not really what I meant. Basically what I’m saying is that I can’t really think of anyone from Inner Redlandia who adds any value to conservative intellectual life. Name someone you admire/is influential as a conservative thinker, blogger, writer or what have you who is, say, a lifelong resident of Kansas or Alabama. Jeff is making as good a case as I’ve seen of taking up for Akin, and he’s from Baltimore. I mean I’m very happy that there are wide swaths of America where the majority of people are religious and conservative, but they’re pretty much dead weight in this realm.
Do you really want to keep trimming your tent until it can only hold the 8 or 9 people out of 300 million
SEEMS TO ME YOU’LL THROW AIKIN OVERBOARD TO THE WOLVES SO THAT YOU AND ANNCOUTLER AND HANNITY AND EREICERICKSON CAN HAVE A 4 SOME. WITH ACE OF WIMP FILMING. YES CAPT’N ED COME ABOARD.
NOT ONLY FIGHTING PROGGTARDS NOW WE HAVE TO FIGHT THE EFFIN RINOS.
Fred Thompson!
Marco Rubio!
Name someone you admire/is influential as a conservative thinker, blogger, writer or what have you who is, say, a lifelong resident of Kansas or Alabama.
YOU KNOW WITH CONSERVATISM YOU TEND NOT TO CHANGE MUCH. JUST SAYING.
JIM DEMINT!
Yahtzee Abe!!!!
Marco Rubio!
MORE GROUPTHINK NOW!
You mean Fred Dalton Thompson of Vanderbilt Law School, Hollywood and Washington DC? That lifelong Tennessean?
I’ll grant you Demint.
Name someone you admire/is influential as a conservative thinker, blogger, writer or what have you who is, say, a lifelong resident of Kansas or Alabama.
WE WON’T YOU NYC FUCKS TO LEAVE US ALONE!!
well won’t is want
There you go again putting words in his mouth. He never said there was any special “anti-rape” mechanism whatsoever. Being raped is stressful, which apparently interferes with a fertilized egg’s ability to implant in the uterine wall and stay there long enough to get a good placenta going.
The best estimates I’ve seen say that ~40% of fertilized eggs don’t implant. Anything that can sway that one way or another can have a significant impact on pregnancy rates (if we define “pregnant” to mean the fertilized egg stayed around long enough to suppress the normal menstrual cycle so that the woman thought she ought to take a test).
This is where an actual scientist starts formalizing the conjecture into a testable hypothesis, designing experimental protocols…
OTOH, the “anti-rape-sperm magic shield” crap makes it sound like he believes in some prima facie ridiculous mechanism that can’t possibly become a hypothesis, much less be proven by experiment. Anyone who believes that stuff has no business voting on legislation.
It would be nice if we could do some actual science on this subject, but we can’t do that, because whatever answers we find, they’re going to make a lot of people upset.
i be clinging to the bible not the dictionary sometimes
WE WON’T YOU NYC FUCKS TO LEAVE US ALONE!!
You live in a blue state, buckwheat.
Charlie Daniels
ZZ TOP!!!
Top That Biotch;)
“Heh. That’s not really what I meant. Basically what I’m saying is that I can’t really think of anyone from Inner Redlandia who adds any value to conservative intellectual life. ”
I can’t even think of anyone even pursuing a conservative intellectual life anymore. It’s all a bunch of Frums and Lowry’s playing musical chairs with party planks until they look like the left only less chipper and industrious. They aren’t opposition anymore so much as slow pokes.
No one at WebMD can ever run for Senate now.
I was referring to the party apparatchiks and the right/republican leaning commentariat who demanded declared his candidacy doomed. he withdraw and then, just to make sure one or the other happened, announced that they wouldn’t support him, despite, as you yourself said, his being a reliable Republican and conservative for 12 years.
I’d be more inclined to view this differently if the views of actual and potential constituents, such as yourself had had more time to be taken into account.
But shit, phoney balooney jobs are at stake, and gentleman had to act
immediately IMMEDIATELY IMMEDIATELY
harrumph
And these UC Berkeley researchers aren’t being at all helpful.
You live in a blue state, buckwheat.
SEE YOU NOV. 7TH
And just what the hell do you think the Establicans are doing?
Oh yeah, they’re just making sure that the right people remain in charge.
Hobbits should donate, convass and then vote. In even numbered years.
In odd numbered years they should shut the fuck up and leave the important work to the important people. Which they aren’t. Because if they were important, they wouldn’t be hobbits, would they?
That’s totally different
sarcasm intended, but no disrespect charles
And these UC Berkeley researchers aren’t being at all helpful.
THE “SCIENCE” IS SETTLED OK?
Forget it Monster. Everyone just knows. The rest is a distraction.
How the hell did this ever make it into Slate?
Oh, right. The author is gay, so no one is allowed to challenge him on questions of sexuality.
Abe, what it boils down to is that you and Bill Quick are a couple of anti-theist religious bigots who will seize on any damn thing to justify your bigotry. You may have other redeeming qualities but that’s the point on which both of you “conservative” / “libertarians” will stand up and cheer as the state marches people off to the ovens.
” Do you really want to keep trimming your tent until it can only hold the 8 or 9 people out of 300 million who are in complete agreement with you and bitch about how stupid and worthless everyone outside your tent is?”
Yeah. Your tent is awesome. It has room for about a million Colin Powell’s who don’t even want to hang out in it, and one Alan West, but ONLY if they can’t redistrict him out of congress. Stupid embarrassing Christer’s like Palin and Akin? GTFO.
There’s no room for flyover trash like them in that huge Tolerance tent. They mighty run off the independents. Well, maybe Palin can stay until she helps run Akin out. But then she needs to go and take her purist cult with her to her house so they can keep an eye on Russia. LOL.
Abe, what it boils down to is that you and Bill Quick are a couple of anti-theist religious bigots who will seize on any damn thing to justify your bigotry. You may have other redeeming qualities but that’s the point on which both of you “conservative” / “libertarians” will stand up and cheer as the state marches people off to the ovens.
Exactly.
Rush Limbaugh wasn’t Rush Limbaugh until he left Missouri. Goldwater? shit-kicker Reagan? California made Reagan Reagan, not growing up in Illinois. Iowahawk? comedian If he was a satirist, he’d be Central Park Peregrine or something distinguished. Russell Kirk was from Michigan, which is bad enough, but his Southern agrarian sympathies, gauche. Thomas Sowell?
You know what the difference between your urban sophisticate airs and my small town middle american prejudices is Abe? You don’t think your just as biased as I know I am.
Fuck off.
caps off eliot ness just took out a choomtown gangster on metv
Sowell was a New Yorker. Which is a reminder to tell a guy to fuck off AFTER you’ve proof-read.
Ernst Schreiber is Batman confirmed.
Format and pedigree > content. QED.
Fucking echo chamber.
Okay, I’ve got about 10 “What Not to Wear” episodes on my DVR in need of my undivided attention.
Dressing like a pixie? SHit, lady, you’re 30. And with a bitchin’ body! What are you thinking?
That’s a rather convoluted mix of people, Ernst.
“Dressing like a pixie? SHit, lady, you’re 30. And with a bitchin’ body! What are you thinking?”
Kind of a sick Sandy Duncan thing going on. If she munches on a trisket and winks…Awww yeaaahhh…
http://www.clothlands.com/images/cls6/12171/Green-Pixie-Costume-45-Asymmetrical-Hem-Scattered-Glitter-Dust-1.jpg
Why dontch’a come over here and tinker with my bell a little…it hasn’t rung in a LONG time.
It is. But then I’m an eclectic thinker. If it’s system you’re looking for, go read Marx. And anyways, you asked “name someone you admire/is influential as a conservative thinker, blogger, writer or what have you.” I’ll grant that it doesn’t meet the “life long resident of inner redlandia/jesusland (as some asshole cartoonist dubbed it in 2000 or early 2001) requirement. Although Russell Kirk and Barry Goldwater do for all practical purposes —I can play ridiculous qualifier too.
Not looking for a system. Things may change as the internet levels things somewhat, but it just strikes me that effective advocates for conservatism are overwhelmingly those who have had adequate personal exposure to leftists. And rather than this being a function of urban snobbery on my part, it’s exposure to the equally brain dead – but sanctified by media access and approval – thought process of most liberals in liberal environments that spawned this realization.
So you cant get adequate (what ever that its) exposure to leftists in the South?
Abe,
Have you been to Austin, Miami or New Orleans?
I guess that depends on what kind of conservatism you advocate for, as well as to whom and for whom you advocate.
Kirk isn’t Buckley isn’t Podhoretz (Norman) isn’t Kristol (Irving) isn’t Burnham isn’t Goldwater.
You can’t really say the same thing about the thinkers on the Left.
Jan Brewer
Nikki Haley
Hell, you want exposure to leftists, go to any town big enough to have a liberal arts college. You’ll find plenty.
Even in the teeny-tiny (ostensibly) religiously affiliated ones).
Or I suppose you could go hang out at the nearest Starbucks.
What have you been reading lately that made you mention Burnham there, Ernst?
Ok people,
I threw down the ZZ Top marker with no calls or raises so I’m takin the pot and retiring for the evening.
Whatya say we find a target on the left side of the map tomorrow?
Danger out!
He fits nicely in your comment, of course, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him mentioned in comments before. That’s like a dozen years of comments.
Is he going through a minor reappraisal with you historian types or something? Just happenstance?
Later, Danger.
Nothing new bh. Burnham just sticks with me because of something Hitchens wrote about Orwell as a critic of both the Left and the Right. Burnham was Hitchens example of a right-winger Orwell took to task.
Too bad for Hitchens that Burnham was still on the left in the 30s and early 40s.
And speaking of reformed leftists, half the people on my list there are exactly that.
Abe should beat me like a mo-fo with that stick [grin].
Abe,
Have you been to Austin, Miami or New Orleans?
Yes to the first two, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is that people who live and work in almost exclusively religious and conservative environments tend to suffer from the mental laziness which comes from everyone sharing the same assumptions. It afflicts liberal environs just as acutely, except that they have the advantage of controlling the universities and the media/entertainment complex.
The big difference being that everyone thinks religio-conservatives need to have their worldviews shaken up. (Question Authority!) Almost nobody thinks that liberals should experience the same thing. (Why Should I? or Whose Authority? or Who’s You’re Authority?)
The big difference is that liberals have large megaphones, whereas religious conservatives like to fondle themselves. Aside from being a large voting bloc, they aren’t even in the game. That takes people with balls and a thorough understanding of their enemy.
Like Andrew Breitbart.
From Hollywood.
” That takes people with balls and a thorough understanding of their enemy.”
Um…just who likes to fondle themselves again?
That doesn’t even make sense.
“That doesn’t even make sense.” Abe said, gently cupping his own free thinking, advanced, city-bred, genius nuts.
I can’t tell if that’s cornpone sarcasm or some sort of insecurity masquerading as wit. Luckily I have to sleep, so I won’t be burdened with contemplating it.
“I can’t tell if that’s cornpone sarcasm or some sort of insecurity masquerading as wit. Luckily I have to sleep, so I won’t be burdened with contemplating it.”
My loss I’s a sure professor. ‘Cause yee-haw-derp-a-Jesus n’ shit.
“Name someone you admire/is influential as a conservative thinker, blogger, writer or what have you who is, say, a lifelong resident of Kansas or Alabama.”
Mind you, I understand that what I’m about to propose is a species of cheating. Still. In their day, the entirety of the British colonies in America were the backwater of the growing Empire, at least as seen from the lofty heights of urban Westminster. And only look what those yokels produced.
Could someone here enlighten me, please…what the hell is “derp”?
“Heh. That’s not really what I meant. Basically what I’m saying is that I can’t really think of anyone from Inner Redlandia who adds any value to conservative intellectual life.
So, to be a valuable conservative, you need to achieve it through trial by fire?
“That takes people with balls and a thorough understanding of their enemy”
Oh,
Like this guy:
And about 80% of his associates.
“Aside from being a large voting bloc, they aren’t even in the game.”
Abe,
Remind me again, which city banned the Big Gulp? Is that what being “in the game” looks like?
palaeomerus, such dichotomous thinking. I don’t dwell in the Colin Powell tent or the establishment tent and don’t understand why everything has to be a you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us-die-on-this-hill thang.
Abe,
Remind me again, which city banned the Big Gulp? Is that what being “in the game” looks like?
Unfettered liberalism like that is pretty much the opposite of my point, no?
ZZ Top has shown commie leanings at some times. I saw some climate change the world is going to end soon carp in the liner notes of afterburner.
I don’t know that it’s all that accurate to say that religious conservatives are on the cultural/academic sidelines. Yes, it’s true that there is a lot of navel gazing in the subculture, but the influence of men like Francis Schaeffer, Mark Noll, Richard Neuhaus and Chuck Colson (engagers all) is alive and well within the so-con community.
And while I admire the hell out of Breitbart and his fearless style, I don’t know that his intellectual worldview had fully gelled before his untimely death.