Allow me a few final words on this Akin dustup so that I can address some of my “critics”. First, I am not supporting Akin in any specific way. What I’m doing is criticizing as deplorable, stupid, politically retarded, and all too frequent, the canned, PC, preemptive (and in many cases, I believe, if not ridiculously hyperbolic, then outright phony) outrage that came from the right in reaction to a impolitic phrase from a GOP candidate. I’m criticizing it for its cowardice and its cynicism. I’m criticizing it for its moral preening and its tacit acknowledgment that, because the left would doubtless make a stink about what has become, in our PC culture, a kind of social third rail — everything we know of rape is settled science — those on the right, or in the pro-life camp, who don’t wish to be tarred with the brush Akin wielded, had better get out front of it, fast, and distance themselves from his comments in the most forceful way they knew how. As if not doing so was an admission of some sort of guilt by association.
That is, I’m criticizing them for repeatedly being manipulated by the left, oftentimes before the left even has to spring into orchestrated action. That’s how scared many on the right are of being called anti-science or knuckle draggers, etc. Without stopping to tell themselves that those who are making these charges are doing so solely for political purposes — to try to shame you, to try to mock you, to try to fluster you and silence you. And that, no matter what you say — even if you’ve apologized, or you were one of the first to distance yourselves from the comment to show you aren’t “moronic” or “one of those kind of conservatives” — it doesn’t matter: they’ve determined merely to tie all Republicans to it any way, regardless of your very public protestations that you are nothing like that horrible horrible man who said horrible horrible things.
— When really, the proper response would have been, from the right, well, I don’t agree with Akin and I’d like to ask him on what, exactly, he’s basing certain assertions about rape and pregnancy, because I suspect he has his facts wrong — or at least, he’s relying on old theories. In which case, I’m happy to present him with my facts, and perhaps persuade him to change him opinion on the matter.
You know, treat it as an intellectual exercise, show voters that Republicans can speak intelligently about the finer points of their Party’s pro-life platform, that they are capable of intellectual growth, when the need arises, and that they don’t react to speech like the left does, instantly denouncing, shaming, and calling for excommunication so as not to run afoul of the cultural PC police — all so that they can assert their own moral and intellectual superiority in a way that is terrible ostentatious and entirely self-serving.
In fact, I find it rather odd that those who instantly called on Akin to leave the race for the good of the party and the cause — this race is, they keep reminding us, bigger than just one man, and so much is at stake! — didn’t themselves stop to think just how badly their very public shunning of Akin might hurt the party’s electoral chances, particularly if they failed in their efforts to chase Akin off the ballot and replace him. As is often said, if you’re going to kill the king, you’d better kill the king.
And so we are where we are: with the GOP now in full-on panic mode, coalescing around their hatred of the dastardly candidate who has RUINED their chances in Missouri, and perhaps cost our children and grandchildren their freedom. Which they are able to do, because they have pulled themselves into a large consensus group where they can reinforce for each other their relative righteousness and selflessness (we act for the good of the party!) — and decry Akin’s relative selfishness for daring to try to save his own political career, and for his refusal to disenfranchise those in Missouri who voted for in the first place. Not to mention whatever good name he may have secured for himself over a long and (from what I’ve read) honorable life.
My criticisms throughout this mess have been an attempt to show the GOP just how it is they themselves are culpable in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — and to hopefully provide some insight into why they consistently do so, be the left’s scapegoat Rush Limbaugh or Todd Akin.
A Thought experiment:
You are a political party backing an incumbent candidate and have only so much advertising money for the final push before the election. So you have to make a choice. You have two potential commercials you can run. You are down in the polls and desperate — and the people of your state who have put you in that spot know it, and perhaps half expect on final attempt on your part to change their minds about you — or at least, to change their minds about your opponent.
Commercial 1) Soundbite footage of your opponent using the phrase “legitimate rape” and talking about a woman’s body reacting to forcible rape — an unfortunate phrase for which he apologized and claimed he misspoke — that ends with something like, “TODD AKIN: TOO EXTREME FOR WOMEN, TOO EXTREME FOR MISSOURI”.
Commercial 2) Blurb after blurb appears on the screen from the opposition party calling your opponent, who supposedly represents that party, a “moron,” a fallen Christian, an “extremist,” and “anti-woman.” Big names on the right, from Mitt Romney on down, appear and then dissolve on screen in a seemingly endless cascade of condemnation and calls by his own party and their representatives and opinion leaders to step down. The image of official opposition party letterhead on which is highlighted calls for Akin to leave the race. Todd Akin is “selfish,” “hates freedom,” and “thinks himself bigger than the cause.” All this before a black screen appears and in big white letters, with no sound, we see: “TOO EXTREME FOR THEM, TOO EXTREME FOR MISSOURI”.
Which ad do you run? Why?
And yes, those are rhetorical questions.
The prosecution rests.
As the Democrats begin to alter their campaign around the risible idea that Republicans en mass don’t take rape seriously — and in so doing, show themselves, these supposed “progressive” champions of women, to be willing to use rape and the serious issue of sexual violence as some cheap campaign ploy — perhaps it will begin to dawn on those on the right who were so quick to express publicly their OUTRAGE (rather than to treat the issue as a positive opportunity for the party, the pro-life movement, and conservatism in general by showing that even those in the pro-life camp will disagree, and are willing to listen to evidence and allow their positions to evolve based on a familiarity with that evidence — that the GOP is about intellectualism, not PC bullying), that their reactions were not even their own: they had been conditioned to react in just that way by the left, who, because they control the cultural narrative, demand it of them.
I’ve counseled repeatedly that we don’t play their game — that once we refuse to play by their rules, their institutional power over public debate evaporates. The left is not fate. Their control over the social narrative was not present at the creation, and is not some immovable force of nature.
Stop playing.
Naturally not everyone who has found themselves at the anti-Akin end of the preference cascade is a RINO or a coward. Some have gotten to this point because they feel that Akin simply can’t win now that we’ve reached this crescendo, and they desperately want him to bow out of the race. Me, I don’t much care either way what he chooses to do — though I can certainly see why, from his perspective, calls to bow out for the greater good of the party by those who worked so immediately to stab me in the back so that they can insert their preferred new candidate in my place, might not prove terribly persuasive or seem terribly genuine.
So what do we do now? We note that Akin made a mistake and we disagree with what he said as a matter of fact; but if we wish to talk about doing violence to women, we need not play games with soundbites for which Akin has already apologized, but look instead at how each candidate votes and what they stand for as a matter of political principle: McCaskill championed legislation that calls on the Catholic Church to pay for abortifacients. The coming tax increases she supported through her legislative rubber stamping of Obama’s policies will hurt everyone — including, yes, women.
Todd Akin may have been proven overzealous in his desire to save the unborn. But he never voted for partial birth or live birth abortions. And he never voted for legislation that would take away religious liberties while requiring you as a citizen to become a subject of the state.
So, Missouri. Choose.
It really comes down to insecurity and embarassment, doesn’t it?
It’s a bit out of the way, but seems to me something people should consider about the science itself, which, so far as I can see remains murky at best, and that for a good reason.
The good reason is, I believe, that science is not preeminent in human matters, giving way to political control when it comes to “torturing nature to reveal its secrets” about human functioning and relations in particular. About birds or clams, cacti or trees, we don’t hesitate to experiment. We don’t do experiments on people, to put the matter very simply. People generally hate the idea of Dr. Mengele, whatever the real Mengele may have been or not.
This.
More.
Sorry, you miss the point. Akin is an utter moron. The idea that his idiocy is some kind of isolated incident is exceptionally optimistic. You also apparently miss the fact that after his comment there was only 24 hrs for him to easily drop out, thus the urgency of the calls for him to get out.
You can rant all you want. But the fact is fools like Akin are the reason WHY the left’s playbook is what it is. Lament the playbook all you want. You want to fix the problem, change the players.
In fact, I find it rather odd that those who instantly called on Akin to leave the race for the good of the party and the cause — this race is, they keep reminding us, bigger than just one man, and so much is at stake! — didn’t themselves stop to think just how badly their very public shunning of Akin might hurt the party’s electoral chances, particularly if they failed in their efforts to chase Akin off the ballot and replace him. As is often said, if you’re going to kill the king, you’d better kill the king.
I totally agree with that point. The falling over one another by the GOP with public shunning and denunciations was pathetic (the Democrats did not do that with Weiner). If privately things were said to Akin like: “Hey, this is bigger than you, tough break, but you have to take one for the team…” It would have been better.
I still think Akin should have walked away for the good of the country and for the good of pro life positions–but it is what it is.
Waste of time.
Our side, such as it it, would rather lose than win with the wrong sort. They don’t want to defeat the left, they want to be accepted by it.
It has been said that everybody needs a hobby. It may suffice you’ve found a hobby-horse deadrody. Certainly Todd Akin won’t fight you over it.
No, I don’t.
Thank you!
You mean, imperfect people who embarrass you? And you allow them to manipulate you based on that?
My.
Well, since we can’t really know in advance everything a person might say — or every mistake he or she is likely to make — I say what we do is provide them a list of words, phrases, and crowd-tested, generalized political pablum to spout. That way, they are all the same, save for matters of appearance or inflection / charisma — and we can’t mess up!
Yup. Keep screeching so everbody knows you ain’t one of them purists.
I already know how to fix the problem. It’s to break from people like you.
They should have called him before they started calling press conferences.
Change the Players amd keep the Playbook huh?
If we have to become them to defeat them, haven’t we lost?
The doublethink is strong in this one.
Sorry for the OT, but hey, it’s For The Greater Good.
My company is having a hard time hiring people. Yes. Really. Mostly because it’s in the field of network security, and you’ve really gotta know your stuff.
We’re really hurting for sales engineers in various regions of the U.S.: NY, Central, West, TOLA, Southeast.
The top four requirements are as follows:
(There’s more, but if you can’t clear that hurdle, you can’t clear the rest.) If you or anyone you know or anyone who knows someone you know might be interested in such a position, e-mail me at my xmission.com account and I’ll send along the rest of the info.
This company is exploding into the network security space and has been picking off employees and customers from its primary competitor.
Oh, there are also programming jobs (Linux, GUI) here in the Salt Lake City area.
Lament the playbook all you want.
Learned Helplessness: A Performative
– At the risk of repetition, other than the smooth tie-in to the Republican platform war-on-abortion-and-women scam , which is really the whole thrust of the Left’s mighty ‘Akin-demolition-campaign-agitation-to-stampede-the-PC-mongals-on-the-right, the whole thing has largely moved off the radar already in terms of Akin himself. He was only important as a symbol, and a handy way for the Left to link Romney/Ryan to the ‘etremist’ labels.
– However, the stumble-bum clown car reaction by the Republican establishment needs to be revisited and analyzed in all its political eneptness, if for no other reason than so sports fans can follow the game.
– And. More popcorn.
Hang in there Todd! You take it to
Claire McCaskillthose mean old Republicans*!*whom, like you, we despise
Akin said something stupid in a MO election. It should be somethin for the voters of MO to concern themselves with. Instead, the entire Republican Party got the vapors and threw a fucking hissy fit making it National News and making it easier for the Democrats and the Media to blow the story up and hang it around all of your necks.
I would think twice about calling someone else an idiot if I were you.
It just doesn’t matter.
It just doesn’t matter.
It just doesn’t matter.
Even if we never say or do anything that anyone could ever [mis]construe, reinterpret as “bad”, “offensive” or “stupid”.
It just doesn’t matter, because the Left and their media buddies will simply make it up out of whole cloth and lie, lie, lie, until the lie becomes “truth.”
So it just doesn’t matter. And BTW you and your spouse will never get to go to the really good parties anyways except when they hold a “pig party.”
Is that what the options are here?
They don’t have to lie here. They don’t have to take him out of context. All they have to do is play this clip and roll out a rape victim or 3.
Yes, the left does that incessantly. This doesn’t need that treatment.
Yeah. Missouri voters:
The standard now is no fucking up or we’ll have to publicly shun you.
This is because we are better than them, who stand behind their idiots. Who then get elected as a result. And hold power. To pass laws. That we must follow. Boy, are they fucking dumb!
Winning!
I think I’m done. I go to get my pic taken for my CCW today. I’ve wasted years here. There will be no changing. We have lost. The rest is just about a severance package.
Yea, and Guam never flipped over yet Hank Johnson is still in office.
If we’re somehow arguing that we cannot have an idiot in office – when the alternative, RIGHT NOW, are some rather dire consequences … I’m just confused as to why WE need to add fuel to the fire?
I say GO AKIN!!!!!! MO likes, him. My conservative friends in MO said he did a fine job in office so far.
Perhaps I’m just a bit more immune to idiotic statements coming from politicians. Being from Detroit.
Reading this string from top post through all the comments, one cannot but see progressivism as a disorder. You must cease to think it is a co-equal participant.
That, Pablo, is why Jeff is right. Akin could be a set of synthetic rubber trailer hitch testicles and Jeff’s point would not be diminished. In fact, running a set of synthetic rubber trailer hitch balls for office and gauging the left’s response would only prove it: At that point you’d see so little difference between the two from the left’s perspective as to do so.
The left, as a place, is where the disordered go. Thieves and frauds and liars need love too. Well, there they get it. And to expect they ever once repay civil, benevolent tolerance — a quality that in the Akin affair the right is just about out of — with equal lattitude is folly.
orty-one percent (41%) say Akin should withdraw from the campaign and have Republicans select another candidate to run against McCaskill. But just as many (42%) disagree and say Akin should not quit the race. The partisan divide reveals voter understanding of the underlying dynamics. Most Republicans (53%) think he should quit; most De
SHOCKING. I mean, we’ve only had the news telling us 24/7 since Monday that he needs to go.
It’s just amazing that sort of constant drumbeat it having an effect.
I ask again: What is the MO voter’s reason to shun Akin, Pablo?
sigh. Preview. My friend. Should get to know it. ^ SORRY.
He’s an idiot, JHo.
I ask again: What is the MO voter’s reason to shun Akin, Pablo?
because the talking head on tv told ’em too, JHow.
Duh.
But no, it’s GOP cowardice that caused a 13 point bump for McCaskill despite Akin having won the primary in the midst. Must be. Perfectly logical, that.
Debby Stabenow is an idiot and the voters in Michigan don’t see that as a reason to vote her out of office.
And you’ve interviewed these voters?
Right. That cost him 13 points in 3 days. Not this.
this race is, they keep reminding us, bigger than just one man, and so much is at stake! — didn’t themselves stop to think just how badly their very public shunning of Akin might hurt the party’s electoral chances
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I won’t really argue with your premise, but your preaching to a small choir. McCaskill is up 10 today. Most don’t get (or even hear) the level of thought that you and most of the commenters’ here put into it.
A lot IS at stake. And as the LT said in that movie Act of Valor, “This is some high speed shit”. These days, in this news/ smear cycle, any political animal that is on the same team and sees a horrible “own goal” has about 30 minutes from ground zero to make a decision about how they’re gonna respond.
Basically this happened. You want that guy continuing to teach kids “gun safety”?
Again, I get that the “soundbite” is what the left uses to crucify. It’s a crying ass shame. But it is what it is. But knowing an enemy’s only tactic would put a smile on Sun Tzu’s face.
Also, this is funny.
Jeff – For an excellent example of the phenomenon you describe, check the comments at the following link:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/mccaskill-up-10-pts-in-non-troll-poll/
The same folks who were in the forefront of the attacks on Akin because he was going to “damage the party in an election we can’t afford to lose” can’t restrain their glee over a poll showing him ten points down.
It’s conservative cowardice that caused a 13 point bump for McCaskill.
Guam might flip over. As the 57th State.
(and around we go again…)
You just gonna abandon him, Lamont? Coward!
So you and a whole bunch of other people keep saying, so it must be true otherwise you all wouldn’t be repeating it.
I’ve wasted years here. There will be no changing. We have lost. The rest is just about a severance package.
It took the Left 100 years of slow and steady drum-banging to get us to this point. The GOP’s co-dependence can’t be undone by 10 years on one blog, not when things are going well enough that they can continue to drift unmolested along the Big Egyptian River.
After the collapse, they might be more willing to listen. After they have to recognize that they have a problem, they will be looking for a new way to think.
So Akin took the idiot pill the day before the poll, Pablo?
They may be beginning to see the light. Michigan has been really bad at picking politicians for some time, as I’m sure you know. But they seem to be getting better lately.
The same folks who were in the forefront of the attacks on Akin because he was going to “damage the party in an election we can’t afford to lose” can’t restrain their glee over a poll showing him ten points down.
AWESOME.
Wait, wut?
I posed a thought experiment. Anyone care to react / respond to that?
Are you suggesting it isn’t true?
Except now they don’t even have to play that clip. You will do it for them.
Most polls do not support that poll, Pablo. As much as I’d like to believe it.
I’m simply astounded, Pablo, that you continue to act as if the polls would be what they were without this national shunning of the candidate by the near entirety of the right.
I know you’re on record now and so you’re invested here in maintaining your position, but seriously, man. We got played. And we got played because we were scared we were going to be played.
We live in constant fear. And by we, I don’t mean me.
Will check it out, SVT, thanks.
Sure. It isn’t theoretical. You don’t have to guess.
Bullshit. She’s been in office wreaking harm since Jimmy Carter.
Look, any conservative enlightenment and reform comes years after the fact. Preemptive leftist action happens with lightspeed. It can’t but: They own the channels. And you know it.
I never thought I could fix the world. But I can’t even seem to get through to regular readers. And I’m not bad at putting together arguments, either.
So.
I’m astounded that you think the opinion makers on the right can cause a 13 point swing in 3 days.
If they could do that, we could all knock off early and go have some beers.
Commercial 3) Soundbite footage of your opponent using the phrase “legitimate rape” and talking about a woman’s body shutting down pregnancy in case of legitimate rape. Blurb after blurb appears on the screen from the opposition party siding with your opponent, who represents that party. Big names on the right, from Mitt Romney on down, appear and then dissolve on screen in a seemingly endless cascade of support. The image of official opposition party letterhead on which is highlighted calls of support for Akin. — that ends with something like, “TODD AKIN: TOO EXTREME FOR WOMEN, TOO EXTREME FOR MISSOURI, JUST RIGHT FOR ALL REPUBLICANS”
That’s not a commercial, Pablo. And Akin still has some time, technically, to drop out.
Let me ask it this way: which commercial would you run, were you her campaign manager, should Akin stay in the race. On the off-chance, of course, somebody in Missouri hasn’t already heard the GOP on TV there disowning Akin and saving her the trouble of putting it out?
Wow. The fact that the entire party apparatus has come out against you, is not what has caused the impact.
Okay.
We disagree.
Ah, yes. It’s my fault that exists. Well, me and Romney. Not poor Todd Akin, though. And I don’t know whose fault it is that he spent the next three days endlessly talking about it to anyone who would put a broadcast mic in front of him. Rove probably did that, though. Or maybe it was Priebus. Couldn’t be Akin’s fault. He’s one of “us.”
McCaskill can’t run on her own abysmal record. She is roundly detested by her constituents in SoMo. Akin is from up around St. Louis with is a completely different demographic of voters.
TIme will tell. The peoples of Missouri are some stubborn bastards. It’s not the “Show Me” state for nothing.
Except, motionview, there was never a requirement to agree with the substance of what Akin said. Just as there was never a need to rush to distance yourself from it if it wasn’t you who said it.
– As I understang things McCaskill is so bad even the MO Dems don’t want her, which has to be some kind of bad for them to take that position.
– Akin may well redeem himself, and this single misstep, which has to have been amplified a 1000 times simply because it fit so well with the Lefts war-on-women scam. may prove to be the exceotion in his case. We’ll see.
– But in any case, you could hardly watch this massive self ‘chain whipping’ effort on the right and not come away just shaking your head.
– I mean what does Romney do now, condemn his on parties abortion platform? The right played right into the Lefts hands on this, and didn’t achieve a damn thing politically.
Conservative response to l’affaire Akin has been a huge disappointment. But it’s no more so than their reaction to ORomney. Anybody-but-Obama is a load of rubbish.
We’re about to find out just what a specious argument is the one that lies to itself to claim that Romney is the first brick in rebuilding the nation.
We perpetually vote for the lesser of two evils — which the first-brick-Romney people admit when they make their foolish claims about him! — and never ask ourselves how voting for evil has been working for us.
Oh. Does it have to be TV or can it be radio? Web ad? It’s the message she’s going with. Here too. Over and over.
Really? I wonder if anybody factored that in. Maybe there’s a way to move that seat back into a lock to pick up. Nah, good old Todd is our guy, right or wrong!
Yes. Because you didn’t make the gaffe, how could you or any GOP member who didn’t make the gaffe be at all responsible for its having become what it’s become? Having not made it yourself?
It’s a mystery! To even consider it is perplexing!
Do you suppose it’s possible that the electorate turned against him for the same reason the party apparatus did? I see it as most likely.
JG, 8:56am:
Pablo, 10:24am, in sarcasm:
No siree, Bob, that’s the wrong attitude. Sometimes you have to ruin a few lives and careers for the greater good of not getting any on you. Why stick with someone who ain’t going to get you what you want — even if the reason you’re abandoning him has everything to do with running scared because that’s just the way things are in a political world the left owns and will always own because, well, because.
He’s only one guy. And besides, he’s practically subhuman. I mean, did you hear the moron? We can’t stand up for anyone who said that. We are righteous in our shunning. We’re doing it because he’s a moron. No one is making us do it. We are our own people!
You just gonna abandon him, Lamont? Coward!
Pistols at dawn, sir.
While I can’t vote in, and will never again step foot in, Missouri (my ex fiance lives in Springfield and I would likely be shot if found on the wrong side of Bull Shoals lake…Springfield is a great town btw), I’ll tow the line as best I can. But the whole point of my earlier comment, is that hopefully there are very few of the electorate that would even know what the hell we are talking about outside of that particular state.
Obama’s Chicago machine and the media (repeating myself) will throw as much shit at the “Wall” as possible and pray something decidedly distracting sticks…but I think maybe…just maybe there’s a common sense virus that the CDC would call “epidemic” going around.
Do you suppose had the party apparatus not preemptively moved to bury him, but instead worked to minimize any damage, the electorate may have stuck with him?
He isn’t one of “us” as far as I am concerned. I disagree with his stand on abortion completely. I also disagree more with abortion only in the case of rape. I think abortion should only be outlawed in the last trimester. None of that is the issue.
I also don’t think this is “your fault”, and I agree that what Akins said was stupid, and his response has been worse. The point of any criticism I have is in the way the Republican Party and its assoc. have responded. Which has been to pour gas on the fire and help the enemy. Pointing out McCaskills bounce in the polls isn’t exactly disproving anything.
I’ve an old slow computer so I have no idea what happened in the youtube Lamont linked. But the Left’s answer to guns is: Ban Guns; Guns are Dangerous. And I’m guessing your link proves that.
So. No talking about guns. Because somebody did something careless. Which proves guns are dangerous and outght to be banned. There’s no upside to talking about guns, because if you do, you’re going to wind up associated with people who do careless and reckless things. With guns. Which are dangerous. And ought to be banned. And besides, our betters, like David Frum, tell us we don’t need guns, which are for clinging to, bitterly, and who wants to be associated with bitter clingers and other assorted rubes, hicks, hayseeds and rednecks.
So just shut up. Because we have to pick and choose our battles. And this is not the hill to be dying on.
Strength is Ignorance
Slavery is Freedom
There’s an awesome and vast Cabela’s in Springfield. You may want to risk getting winged, Lamont.
– Sorry to those who don’t see that a massive gaffe on the part of the Republican establishment has occured in response to a rather insignificant one by a GOP candidate.
– What I see is ‘I’m embarrassed I fell for this Left bullshit’, but I ment well, so I’m going to dig in my heels’.
– The right took the head fake and jumped the shark royally, compounded even further when they thought a massive ‘quick kill’ against the offending heretic would save them from losing face.
– Now they have neither and they’ve put their oen candidate in a rather difficult position.
– What was the point? Seems like a simple enough question.
First, good on you Jeff. Second too bad you have to explain yourself using smaller words for some people but then if it was obvious to most, we wouldn’t be talking about it.
What’s more amazing, than the self righteous piling on, are those calling for a write in candidacy effort. Big names, that might just inspire others to make it happen. Coulter and Palin are the two I know of.
Talk about insuring that they lose MO!
Write ins at the state level rarely work. Too many people, too much trouble to do so at the polls so the majority don’t bother to do a write in when they vote.
What DOES happen (or will) is that enough fools decide to do so and those votes most likely would’ve gone for Akin regardless of his speech crimes. So now we have a classic Bush-Perot-Clinton situation whereby a low life accused rapist and philanderer gets to be president by the actions of some looney tunes. (no not George Bush. naive and Old line establishment but not looney tunes)
Not only are they screeching loudly enough to create the potential for a self fulfilling prophecy, they’re even going to help MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Then they can squawk for 2-4 years about how Akin lost the Senate majority.
(Frankly, I’m not inclined to want a Republican majority in the Senate with a Republican Pres. and House. They can get up to too much mischief that way. I like my government hamstrung and tied up in knots. And if you think that majorities in Congress and the Presidency insures the repeal of Obamacare, I have a Bridge in Brooklyn that’s coming on the market soon that you just have to see for the potential investment opportunity)
I’m sure everyone here would be thrilled to accept for the good of the party the premise that their a moronic godbothering rape lover who hates women. Try to explain yourself beyond the soundbite and apology (that clearly didn’t take) Try to answer charges that you need be shunned by polite society for your hatey moronicity?
Why, doesn’t he know that there’s an election to win — for the good of the country?
I know everyone here would have just done the right thing and shut up. Why try to explain yourself when you can shut up and hope it goes away? Has this man no shame>? Is he really that selfish?
It was conservatives and republicans saying that he was an idiot who had to go because he couldn’t win, due to the fact he couldn’t win because he was an idiot, and thus had to go, that caused a 13 point bump for McCaskill.
Whether that was due to cowardice or panic or shame or even political calculation is irrelevant to the 13 point bump.
No, I don’t think people in the soundbite culture are watching the sideshow as much as they’re watching the main event.
The martyrdom bit is overwrought. This is the big leagues. You have to be able to play the game at the pro level. They don’t kill you if you can’t, you just don’t get put on the roster.
Better to bracket it out than to rick having to reexamine my premises, and possibly thence rethink my already determined conclusions, tactically speaking.
Wouldn’t you agree?
– Well one thing is clear from all of this. It certainly explains why so many prominent Democrates are staying away from the Dem convention, and it isn’t because of trust in party.
Really? So the progressives and Democrats saying he’s a dangerous extremist who hates women had nothing to do with it? People watching him jam his foot down his throat can’t compare to what Karl Rove had to say? Damn, if these conservatives are that effective at driving public opinion, how the hell did we get here?
Which is the sideshow and which is the main event again?
Ernst,
First, get’cha a new laptop. Second, it was a hot-shot muscled up ATF agent talking to a middle school class about guns, gangs, etc, and, middle of his speech, he accidentally shot himself in the leg with a Glock 40.
“Own goal”.
leigh, from Little Rock, Ar the Cabella’s in Texas is a longer drive, but worth it. I went to see a friend a while back in a little town called Cole Camp, in Missouri. Had to drive past Branson & through Springfield. My “fight or flight” response lit up like a Christmas Tree for a good 125 miles.
Good news, Lamont. There’s a brand-spankin’ new BassPro in Tulsa. Far, far away from MO.
Change the fucking subject and get back to campaigning? Stay off the national morning shows and let the fire die down? Quit offering yourself up as the national news story of the day, 24/7? Refrain from blaming your self-inflicted quandry on others and move on more relevant issues? Attack your opponent and tout your commitment to all the things you’re running on?
No.
Trying something. Hang on.
Nope. Guess you need the CSS, too.
Someone remind me; what is the political system that purges those who stray (through error or ignorance) from the approved party line? To it’s own detriment?
And calls it reeducation?
We’ve not only become a third world banana republic but we’ve become afraid to let those who disagree with us speak out for fear that our opponents will hate us or something. This is the same mind think that gets politicians in trouble when dealing with the press; they think the press is neutral.
When playing in a strange establishment, always ask for a new deck AND count the cards AND ask for a full shuffle.
Not that you don’t trust them or anything but only stupid people play a game designed by and played only for the benefit of their opponents.
Crapdoodle.
Obviously I meant Pablo & not Earnst in first part of my last.
This feels like a drunken After The Catch episode.
Well, if I’m Joe Sixpack, low-interest, moderate-independent from Podunk, outter Ozarkia and I’m listening the Democrats call him the anti-christ, I might take that with a grain of salt, seeing how he’s a Republican and all either side does is call each other names (which is why I’m an independent —I’m moderate, not an ideologue like that). If on the other hand, people in his own party are calling him an idiot while the other side is calling him the anti-christ. I might just decide not to take a chance on the idiot-anti-christ.
And now we’re back to conceding control of public opinion to the left. Best watch them words. Or better still, don’t say anything.
Oh, I saw the clip, LYBD. My response was wholly sarcastic, as I thought it was a great parallel. Related: The guy sued the gubmint after the fact. Because victimhood.
I agree with your assessment.
I wish that Representative Akin can open his heart and his head to the realities, while unfortunate, that are ahead.
.
Joe Sixpack isn’t listening to all of that. He just saw the clip on the 6:00 news.
What? I thought conservatives were driving it like a go-kart?
Are you saying that you agreeing with them didn’t?
Because the conservatives are driving public opinion in this direction. Jesus, dude, what the hell happened to you?
Pragmatic Winningism for Freedom.
No, not at all.
No, they’re not. Akin is, in this matter.
Well, that’s a complicated question. Could you be more specific?
If politicians and opinion makers on the left could be relied upon to turn on their own at the first miscue because they knew what the right would say and they were afraid of that, absolutely we could.
First, then we’re trading speculation: when I’ve asked you to deduce the MO voter’s mind, it was because I’m convinced it’s the spin that won them.*
Or, second, you miss the point: In Normal Earth, where leftism isn’t tantamount to The Lie, there was no main event.
But here in Progressive Land, where we know we reside and that this blog — among many — has laid bare, it’s all sideshow.
Now, you know this. And you know the Akin affair was blown completely out of proportion. Did the “main event” do that? In the land of flipping Guams and freezer cash and blowjobs with 17 year olds over in the bushes that get no air time because of the letter D? Or the grinning Presidents on late nite teevee because of the letter D? Can Dubya play saxophone? Did he have a million watt toothy grin and black skin hooked to a pathologically dishonest narcissistic personality?
It’s all sideshow. It’s propaganda. To say otherwise is to refute the notion of a leftist press and academy. To refute the notion that virtually everything about leftism clearly shows that it’s a dysfunction of reason and integrity.
*It’s the political culture. It’s the political culture where hating on women by slogan outstrips the brutal, inescapable fact we’re an utterly insolvent country “led” further in that direction by a reckless Establishment presently helmed by a nihilist and fraud. Along with his handlers and enablers and proxies.
But: Vaginas!
Since you missed it, let me repeat it:
Just remember. There is a large group of wingers who pounced on Akin, a man who really had a good bead on shooting his own foot, are lamenting “Oh noes, we’ll lose the Senate! All our plans for Real Conservatism will die!” even though they haven’t won it yet. Nevertheless if the GOP wins the Senate by a narrow majority, these self-same wingers will in 2013, I promise you, advise everyone about the need to avoid extremism. We must worry about the mid-terms in 2014. Let’s not scare voters with words like “repeal” but soothe them with words like “reform” and “rationalize.”
Having said that, it is possible to ruin your career with poorly chosen words, no matter what you really believe. Fair or not.
There is a large group of wingers who pounced on Akin, a man who really had a good bead on shooting his own foot,
arelamentingSentence structure: How does it work?
Which need not necessitate that we turn what’s possible into what is inevitable.
” Damn, if these conservatives are that effective at driving public opinion, how the hell did we get here?”
When they agree with the libs and cited by them you mean? Are going to KEEP pretending that chanting what your enemy chants is a recipe for success? Yes, Akin was an idiot. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the left and the right chanting that is = to the left chanting it? Do you not understand how vectors work? When R and D are in the same direction the resultant vector is R+D. When R and D are in opposite directions the net vector is R-D.
R+D is more powerful than R-D.
Going R+D against a republican in an important senate seat because you MIGHT get someone else to run if the “SELFISH INDEFENSIBLE IDIOT” steps down and saying that if he doesn’t step down he will not receive support or funding from the party is a classic idiotic chump move.
The idiot in the critical formerly winnable race is NOW running against R+D instead of R-D or even just D because R came in on the side of D like IDIOTS and still are.
How is that smart? How is that beneficial? How is it even harmless?
The R’s fucked up WAY worse than Akin did. And they’ve doubled down now. And they want to whine about losing the seat after HELPING to lose it.
IDIOTS!
You explain yourself, apologize and correct where necessary and then go out and be the best candidate you can be running the best campaign you can run. You stay out of the national media and do your best to make the people whose votes you need want to give them to you.
This is not what he has done. And frankly, when your apology needs to include “The fact is rape can lead to pregnancy.” you are already squarely behind the political 8-ball. I don’t care who you are or what party you’re in. You’re in a very bad place in your campaign.
As I’ve conceded elsewhere, the Republicans did not cover themselves with glory in their reaction to this matter.
However, the fact that the Democrats are going “all rape and abortion all the time” at their convention gives me hope that they might just out-stupid the Republicans this time around.
What libs are citing them? You seem to forget that they’re trying to keep Akin in.
How is that smart? How is that beneficial? How is it even harmless?
The proggs are doing their best to tie Akin’s “thoughts” to the rest of the republicans and conservatives. That’s been their goal since he dropped the ball (or misspoke, or however you want to put it).
How can the republicans tying themselves to him defeat what the proggs are trying to do? It’s a serious question. I understand the concept of “Explain what you really meant”, but if it’s not a soundbite, Joe Sixpack is *going* to tune it out. When you have to write 6 paragraphs (or talk for 3 minutes) to explain something when the other side can simply go “You’re a monster for this!”…well, you’ve got a problem, don’t you?
This, the conditioning, is why I’m convinced we are dead as a free people living in a constitutional republic.
Americans have lived under a relentless propaganda campaign, mostly but not always at a subtle level, since WWI. It is less effective on people grounded in a strong family and/or with religious faith, so powerful efforts have been made to corrode those institutions. Also, as the times progressed (pardon the pun), the tools of propaganda have become infinitely more powerful and pervasive. From horses and steam trains limiting travel, and mostly weekly newspapers, to cars and jet aircraft, the internet, TV, and tweets. It’s a rare person these days that isn’t subject to propaganda daily.
So here we are. A people that voluntarily place themselves in their proscribed identity group, to act as conditioned to act as a member of that identity group. God has been replaced by government, and individuality scorned by the collective.
We lament that the people have been dumbed down, but I think the truth is people have been over-educated. As Reagan said, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.
OHNOES!
And rather than laugh and say, uh, that’s not how it works, unless you want us to believe that every Democrat thinks the same as Bob Byrd did about the coloreds, you shun and act guilty and desperately try to show them that you aren’t what they are saying you are.
And then they go and say it anyway.
Maybe if you had stoned Akin to death, then …
Yup. Obama playing the abortion card is just asking for a rhetorical beating which will be really easy to give him. And the rape card? Who’s their keynote speaker again? Oh yeah. Bubba.
Since that’s obvious sarcasm, I take it you agree with me that conservatives aren’t driving public opinion. Which means this:
was sarcasm as well. So I guess:
And
Is what you think.* So I’m going to stand by my observation that we’re back to conceding control of public opinion to the left. And I ‘ll add that the six o’clock news piece comes prepackaged, complete with “watch Todd Akin jam his foot down his throat!” lede and thoughtful analysis about What it all Means™ from an objectively left of center perspective afterwards. (And if it’s a full segment, they might even have a quote from the “right” helpfully provided by an analyst who can be relied upon to not disagree with the objectively left analyst —because that’s how you get face time on tv.)
If you want to give the Left a veto over who and what we support, be my guest. Don’t count on making any headway on this losing more slowly thing though.
*And if that was you agreeing with me in an ironic way: congratulations, you pushed my “earnest” button and made Ernst jump. I hope it was high enough for you.
I agree. Almost added it to the post, but I figured why fucking bother?
Then we’ll be able to argue how it was Akin who won the national election for the Republicans, and all the popping of heads is bad for the environment.
Another way is to say that what Akin said was just wrong. Like Akin did.
Which I’ve already posited as the first thing that should have been done.
So I’m not sure of your point. Following that up with “so now we must shun him,” however — no, I didn’t back that play.
By the way, that saying he was wrong — without the other attendant stuff I suggested and continue to suggest could have been done and should have been done — how’d that work out for him? How’d it work out so far for the Republicans?
Even if they force this guy out and win the seat? We’ve lost.
OHNOES!
And rather than laugh and say, uh, that’s not how it works, unless you want us to believe that every Democrat thinks the same as Bob Byrd did about the coloreds, you shun and act guilty and desperately try to show them that you aren’t what they are saying you are.
And then they go and say it anyway.
Precisely. Let ’em run a social issues campaign from the vantage point of the hard left (“A pair of scissors in every unwanted fetus”). Amanda Marcotte’s dream campaign.
There won’t be a dry seat in the house at Jezebel, but see who else signs on.
The “War on Women” isn’t working–by all means, let them go all in with that busted flush.
On the plus side, that would lower unemployment.
Whoa, hold on here. The accepted premise seems to be that conservatives and the GOP are responsible for Akin’s -13 point polling swing. I don’t believe that to be true, but I seem to be a minority of one here on that point. Is it the two of us now?
So it isn’t the GOP/conservatives who caused this polling result? Welcome aboard, Ernst! Did ya bring any cigars?
And decided, on that clip alone, that Akin was unfit for office? No fucking way.
The Baseball Tonight show spent time last night dwelling on a 30 – 3 loss the O’s had to Texas a few years back. Even said they were going to make a point of celebrating that event on that day from here on out, year upon year.
“That’s an odd thing to do” I thought to myself.
Unfortunately what Akin said was almost as productive of the vapors as a white Republican using the n-word in public (Toure gets a pass, being a metrosexual prog of preferential shade). However, we’ve had enough cannibalism on the Right, or what passes for the Right (the ex-governor father of Robertscare hardly seems a zealot of the Chicago School of economics, what with wanting to repair the safety net and all). The unseemly and dishonest part is how the same set that says this is the Most Important Election Evar and we must win at all costs, is the same set that has a history of Careful Moderation leading to incremental but inevitable drift to the Left. Had these Republican voices, liquid with saliva over the digestion of Akin’s viscera, shown a history of bold defiance to the Left at the possible expense of their own electoral chances, one might feel differently.
Put another way: Why is it the Republicans who lecture that politics is one election at a time, an incremental and pragmatic venture, now invert their former position and declare “It’s imperative this time or else all is lost!” Again, I promise you if Obama wins, people like Boehner or lapdogs like Hugh Hewitt will find plenty to keep their careers flush under a second term, and they won’t be packing up for Tasmania or Belize. Furthermore, the rise or fall of a single seat in Missouri will be a small matter when it comes to undoing Robertscare or anything else. Look at the supermajorities Obastard had four years ago. Even then it took two years to mount enough support and come up with the unholy bolus of incoherent Robertscare legislation, half-formed like a teratological rape baby… and progs have been drooling over the prospect of socialized medicine for decades. Just how efficient will “our side” prove at their legislative efforts? There will be many more recalcitrant chips of bone in the Congressional sausage grinder next year, even if the GOP wins both chambers and the Oval Orifice.
Right now the GOP is just pointing at its own hairy pimples, the more it keeps its attention on Akin. Let it go. Let the progs drone on about rape-rape-abortion-rape. You don’t need to take part.
They are responsible for helping to drive it. They are responsible for deciding that, instead of trying to diminish the damage and defend their candidate, the proper response was to prove themselves pro woman — to whom, I can’t be sure, because no one really believes, outside of rank leftists, that Republicans are pro rape — and hope they can replace him with someone else.
They are responsible for a tactic that thus far has backfired. They are responsible for proving yet again that the left can make us jump for fear of what they might say about us — all while we continue to pretend that we don’t care what they say, we’re really only concerned about what the moderates and independents might think, as if moderates and independents will naturally decide on socialism if they hear that a pro life GOP politician made a rape gaffe.
Face it: we now use the “moderate” and “independent” vote to justify the pragmatism that is used to disguise our own fear of the left mocking us.
And by we I don’t mean me.
Then we’ll be able to argue how it was Akin who won the national election for the Republicans, and all the popping of heads is bad for the environment.
Poetic, it is.
They tied themselves to him the minute they tried to untie themselves by calling on him to get out. Because in so doing, they signed on to the Democrat retextualization of what he said (magic vaginas make rapist sperm go ‘way!), which isn’t what he said (rape pregnancies are rare because from what I understand from doctor’s the female body has ways of dealing with that [which may or may not be true, but to the degree that it is, those “ways” aren’t as effective as Akin’s thought]) And in any event he wasn’t talking about rape and pregnancy he was talking about a rape-exception to an abortion ban.
If they didn’t want to tie themselves to him, they shouldn’t have intervened.
I don’t either. But neither do I think it’s a dominant factor in causing the position Akin finds himself in. I don’t see as ranking any higher than third, with Akin and the media atop the list.
-13 and down 10 to McCaskill, largely because of all the other attendant stuff that should have been done and wasn’t.
He was absolutely talking about rape and pregnancy (and the rarity thereof), in the context of answering a rape exception question. Let’s not rewrite him, k?
Yeah Ernst, I think maybe the guy could have put his ideas better, but I fail to see what the outrage is about. I haven’t been paying attention the last few days, so, some help anyone? Why am I supposed to be outraged?
I don’t believe that’s the question they ask. I think they ask which candidate you’re going to vote for.
First, I think it’s rather obvious that what I was saying is that the conservative reaction is feeding into and reinforcing the democrat narrative on Akin. (that, in your words, he’s a dangerous extremist who hates women which is what they say about all republicans anyway). All our side has done, and I believe to it’s future detriment, is offer up a steaming heap of confirmation bias. But blame that on Akin if it makes you feel better next March.
Second, your either/or argument is a cheap debaters trick and in this case not particularly effective.
Finally, I’ll thank you not to twist my words to suit your argument. You know damn well what I meant about Joe sixpack hearing both sides calling him an idiot-antichrist.
Let’s see if in this case Ed Morrissey is right, and he might be. Yesterday(ish) he opined on his show that in a month this Akin crap will be forgotten. The presidential race will overshadow everything, and this word-tempest will vanish like frost in sunlight.
Akin truly perpetrated a self-inflicted wound. However. May we see, at least, certain Republicans demand with equal Akin-fervor that Democrats denounce their own miscreants? How much time have these Republicans spent repeating the story of Kerry Gauthier (D-Toilet Blow Job With Minor)?
Fine, let’s not.
You have your text and context backwards.
Yep, and the sharks tore into him. A regular feeding-frenzy. Becuase a shark is a shark, whether there’s a D or an R tatooed to it, and there was blood in the water.
You know, once one of the troops has proven incompetent and shot himself in the fanny, you might just hand him a bandage and send him to the rear. Or, you can pike him on bayonets and yell “Traitor!” loud enough that the enemy lines can hear you. The same choices are available whether we are discussing a private or an officer.
Really?
OK.
Oh.
If you say so.
As you know damn well what I meant about Joe Sixpack not paying attention to all of that. After all, the Cardinals are playing.
Still not sure why I’m supposed to be outraged…
“Still not sure why I’m supposed to be outraged…”
I think it’s because you’re supposed to want to win so badly. But maybe I’ve got that garbled up somehow.
Next time Manning fumbles the ball I think the rest of the team should demand the uniform be torn from his back before he leaves the field forever in disgrace, never to tarnish the good name of the Broncos again.
For the team…
Dogs and cats living together. Jeff and Huckabee aligned on an issue.
So true it’s almost depressing.
…which is sadly just the way I like it.
I love that there are people who think having theories about the magical cooch that repels rape sperm is the only idiotic idea this fool has or will have.
It takes a special form of stupidity to come up with that one. I guarantee you that weapons grade stupidity is not restricted to his knowledge of the female reproductive system.
OR that in the face of uncertainty, voicing such an idiotic theory without knowing the facts doesn’t represent a horrendous lack of judgement.
And this was just a LOCAL interview. Imagine what the national media could do with this idiot
It seems to me that you’re picking and choosing and retextualizing my comments to suit your purposes, a rhetorical tactic, which, as by now we all know, I’m helpless to defend against. So, since I’ve clearly embarrassed and humiliated myself, I can only assume that you’ll want to call for my banishment from the protein wisdom commentariat as a detriment to the community as a whole. I mean, we wouldn’t want any of my taint getting on the rest of the fine people here; not when that might diminish them in the eyes of more respectable blog communities.
So while I wait for the inevitable reader poll, and at the risk of handing my social, political, intellectual (and in all other ways) superiors more evidence to judget me by:
(And now that I’m done spilling sarcasm all over myself) “You’ve got your text and context backwards” was too pithy to be irrefutably accurate, and I’d like to try again.
I’d say that Akin absolutely answered a rape exception question in the context of talking about rape and pregnancy (and the rarity thereof).
Consider: what was the question, and what was the answer to the question?
I don’t think the answer to the question is in the text. I think you have to look under the text to find it.
And that was the mistake Akin made. As any lawyer here will tell you.
Of course, not thinking like a lawyer (or a politician, for that matter) usually isn’t considered a character flaw.
I love that there people who think saying Akin has a theory about the magical coochie that repels rape sperm over and over again makes it so by virtue of repitition.
It takes a special kind of fool to believe that.
And once that 24 hours had passed, what purpose was served by continuing to repeat the calls?
Instead of, say, accepting that he wasn’t going, and figuring out a constructive way to deal with that fact?
Well here’s the thing: I addressed that. Respectfully I believe.
And anyways, if Joe Sixpack isn’t paying attention because the Cardinals are playing, why do we care what the polls say one way or another?
A lot of people have ideas that are ridiculous. For instance, my step-daughter is a very smart girl who runs a successful business and has a lovely home and a beautiful child. Her husband is also very successful. However, they also are members of a Young Earth Creationist church. They believe that the world is only 5,000 years old and that men and dinosaurs roamed the Earth together.
Do I think that is a special kind of crazy? Yes, I do.
Akin may have a misguided belief about magic cooters that repel rapists. That may be his only crazy belief. I can’t read his mind, so I don’t know and I don’t care.
No, leigh. Believing in a magic cooter means your are defined as an idiot forever. Whereas, say, believing Jesus hopped up after a dirt nap and flew home to the Giant Cloud Condo to stay with Dad to the everlasting chagrin of the Devil? That makes you a good Republican.
Damn, Jeff. I need to be sent for regrooving.
Just making a point.
Hell, I believe in Bigfoot. I love cryptozoology. Irredeemable idiot and moron that I am.
Clearly you are now permitted to preemptively ignore everything I say about language. Because I’m an idiot. Who believes in Bigfoot. And needs some shunning by you lest people claim you, too, believe in Bigfoot. Because I do.
Ernst:
The idea of “God’s little shield” preexisted Akin’s statement, and, in most iterations, involves the idea that women can control their pregnancy through hormonal secretions. It was an urban legend in pro-life circles well before Akin waxed ineloquent on the subject. I remember hearing about it back in the ’90’s when I was a teenager in a fairly cloistered conservative community.
Is God’s little shield what Akin was referring to when he said “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But, let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something”? Maybe not, but it sure seems to refer to the same idea, does it not?
And God’s little shield is exactly a “a theory about the magical coochie that repels rape sperm . . .”
As you said, it would take a special kind of fool to believe that.
For what it’s worth, this Ricochet podcast with Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz was the only punditocracy-class commentary on the Akin thing that I could listen to without puking.
It is a meta-commentary on the situation rather than an opportunity to demonstrate outrage or to fuss over rape/pregnancy. Kinda refreshing.
They also discussed a lot that wasn’t related to Akin.
I’ve long been of the opinion that all cooters are magical.
Jeff:
Because you didn’t ask for it, I present the true origins of Bigfoot.
Hell, I believe in Bigfoot.
What about Nessy? I have a soft spot for lake dinosaur/serpents. I don’t care if it’s been debunked. Those debunkers have an agenda!
For the record, I find those who find the reproductive system to be a very simple matter of penis goes here and baby pop out later to be a bit idiotic. To hear how open and shut some things are — Idiot! Retard! — leads me to believe there could be no such thing as a placebo effect or even, gasp, this. Read that link. Magical motherfucking cooters.
Guy can be wrong about something, can be too open about relating it to others without more research, or simply guilty of speaking extemporaneously but if that’s a stoning offense we’re fucked. Each and every one of us.
I don’t know, does it? I remember he said something about what he understood coming from doctors, but maybe they were Doctors of Divinity. I suppose it’s possible. Maybe somebody should have asked him.
Or was it better to play it safe, assume the worst, and preemptorily denounce him?
Because, God knows, we don’t want any of that MAGICAL THINKING IDIOCY shit on OUR shoes! What would the neighbors think?!
Up until the 19th century it was common knowledge, common knowledge! that to get your lady in the family way, you had to bring her to climax or no heirs. Just no way, no how. It wasn’t going to happen because of you, you loser. That’s why all the kids look like your best friend.
Just sayin’.
Also hadlowe, just for the record, I’m not the one who said it takes a special kind of fool to believe in a heavenly rape shield.
I’m the one who said it takes a special kind of fool to believe that saying “Akin believes in a heavenly rape shield! IDIOT!” Over and over makes it so, regardless of whatever it is Akin himself actually believes.
No point in asking Akin though, is there? We already know better, you see.
Boids. Note the twisty dicks. Er, ducks.
Er, duck-dicks.
Well, at least we have another object lesson we can ignore about what unplanned, hysterical infighting can really *accomplish*, when you try hard enough.
“Well, at least we have another object lesson we can ignore about what unplanned, hysterical infighting can really *accomplish*, when you try hard enough.”
heh.
That reminds of a saying attributed to Mark Twain, as it was told to me. “Experience,” says Twain, “is that thing that let’s you know when you’ve made the same mistake again.”
The heavenly rape shield strikes me as very secondary to the fact that most sane people find the idea that a woman should be forced to carry a baby with her rapists DNA pretty loathsome. When you hold a position that’s that ghoulish, couching your rationale for not favoring the exception on the remote likelihood of conception is somewhat cowardly, no?
Interesting article, bh. Food for thought, I suppose. I still wonder whether the incidences of preeclampsia due to unfamiliar sperm wouldn’t have to be greatly exaggerated for it to function as an effective biological defense mechanism in cases of rape.
The article says that the rate of preeclampsia increases outside the margin of error for unfamiliar sperm, but doesn’t give a percentage of increase.
Ernst:
As Pablo has pointed out, Akin denounced himself when he abandoned the position. The denunciations that followed were just piling on.
Jeff, how long will you stick with a pitcher that’s walking in runs, a quarterback who throws interceptions or a soccer player whose specialty is own goals? We’ll never know how much that 13% drip is due to Republican leaders’ comments or an abandonment of Akin by some of his supporters and a reaction to his comments by the general populace. Either way he’s now tainted goods. I see the Republican leadership in a no-win situation. If they didn’t condemn Akin it would have been even more of a distraction from the economy. This isolates the problem to a local issue in Missouri.
That way, when the Democratic party decides to go with their abortions-rights-athon convention starting Sandra Fluke and an efigy of Todd Akin they’re the one’s who will turn off the broad American middle which is tiring of a lot of the social issues debates. People want a good economy and jobs.
Wars and elections are won by the side that makes fewer mistakes. As big of a mistake that you think the Rep leaders made here, the Dems appear to be stepping into an even bigger pile of shit with Abortionorama.
Up until the 19th century it was common knowledge….
I’m going to start posting long excerpts from Peter Brown.
Just so we can feel superior to all those IDIOTS who built Western Civilization.
Also, bh, that would be a fun article to show to a few feminists of my acquaintance as it would simultaneously evoke the salutary effects of semen ingestion, unprotected sex, and possibly serve to defend Akin.
Heh, Ernst.
I’m not positing this as an ironclad rape baby defense or as a rape baby defense or even as a paper I’ve given a great deal of thought to, Hadlowe.
I am offering it as some non-idiots and non-retards speaking of differentials that prevent childbirth. Was the paper obviously drafted by idiots and retards?
This short hand of magical cooch and all the condescension is a bit much.
And what precisely was the position that he abandoned? That pregnancy as a result of a (legitimate) rape was rare? That the female body had ways of dealing with that? Or that there’s no such thing as Holy Rape Shields or Magical Cooters?
Let me rephrase that for you. How long will I stick with a party that does all those things, then blames it on their equipment?
Answer: I’m not.
Point taken.
It’s not ghoulish. In fact, it’s a natural extension of the pro life position, if you happen to hold that and you happen to be honest about it.
Seriously leigh, if you think Akins* thinks some out there things….
*The Akins that’s been constructed for us, not Todd Akins (R MO). Because nobody’s bothered to ask him about whatever it ishe thinks he thinks.
It’s more fun that way.
(Well, not for Akins, BUT THAT’S HIS OWN FAULT!)
He’s an idiot, JHo.
wiki
“Early life, education, and business career
Akin was born in New York City, the son of Nancy Perry (née Bigelow) and Rev. Paul Bigelow Akin. He moved to St. Louis and attended John Burroughs School. After graduating, he attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts where he earned a degree in management engineering, and in 1984 he earned a Master of Divinity degree at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. During college he was member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.
From 1972 to 1980, Akin served in the Missouri National Guard.[1] After his military career, he took up work at IBM as an engineer and later became a manager at Laclede Steel Company.
Missouri House of Representatives
Elections
Akin was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in November 1988, running unopposed to represent District 85 which included Town and Country and much of West County.[2] He won re-election in 1990 (59%),[3] 1992 (100%),[4] 1994 (70%),[5] 1996 (67%),[6] and 1998 (66%).”
Stop fucking us up, bh. This was a simple, open and shut case of SEE WE DON’T HATE WOMEN conveniently dropped in our laps by a silly godbotherer who talked about magical pussies, allowing us to express our WE’RE FOR SCIENCE, TOO outrage. Plus, we can replace him with somebody more palatable. It was a slam dunk!
Your “medicine” is getting in the way of what everybody knows: the pro life position is to attract the godbotherer voters. But we don’t really want to talk about it, much less follow it through in all its implications.
This is politics, not, you know…wait, what else is there, again?
It’s not ghoulish. In fact, it’s a natural extension of the pro life position, if you happen to hold that and you happen to be honest about it.
But ducking an explanation of why you hold that belief with a punk-ass bitch rationalization about how infrequently it occurs is standard liberal behavior. Leaving aside whether or not his sentiment is correct or not, It’s a non-answer.
I would have thought saying “the importance of Akin’s views on [whatever the hell it is that we’re supposed to be upset about] is something for the voters in Missouri to decide, I (we, whatever) think this election is about x,y,z” would have isolated the problem to Missouri.
But then I’m just a fly-over country hick and a rube, so ignore me.
If they didn’t want to tie themselves to him, they shouldn’t have intervened.
Was a time when you could invoke an Uncle Remus story here, but not no more.
Maybe he was trying to get back to the economy. Because there are no other positions or arguments. Mitch Daniels told me so. And besides, it’s a matter that is of no import, what w/ Roe v Wade. So the very question itself is the distraction.
Ah, so now we are equating an occasional magical cooter with a fulltime, no shit, there is no such thing as rape induced pregnancy cooter ?
Nice try morons. Just because it happens SOMETIMES, does not mean it happens ALL THE TIME. And since the only time it matters is ALL THE TIME, the point remains
And I’ll just post the “conclusion” section of said “proof” here so we’re clear how much of this is actual occurrence (you may recognize the use of words like “may” and “could” here):
“Conclusion
Because the costs of reproduction for females are so high and human infants require extended care and provisioning, increasingly during human evolution successful reproduction (i.e. producing children that live long enough to produce children of their own) came to depend on parental investment by both the mother and the father. Females without committed, caring male partners would have been at an enormous disadvantage when it came to childbearing and child-rearing. We theorize that because of the growing importance of paternal investment, mechanisms may have evolved to terminate pregnancies under conditions in which support and provisioning by the child’s father were doubtful. One reliable means of indexing paternal commitment would have been frequent and recurrent insemination of the female by the child’s father. Subtle differences between males in semen chemistry could have been the basis for the evolution of an ensemble of pregnancy termination mechanisms triggered by impregnation as a byproduct of exposure to unfamiliar semen”
And furthermore this entire paper involves POST-pregnancy complications. Not conception prevention. Just FYI
Women under stressful situations are less likely to conceive. And rape counts as a stressful situation. There can’t be much settled Science on the matter because, you know, you’d have to rape women to examine the situation.
It was a dumb thing to say because it’s a fact that must focus on brutality for it’s hypothesis, it has a lot of complexity, it’s always tragic, and it’s a distraction from larger issues.
But, yes, there is a place in the Pro-Life arguments for it. And we took the chance to be consistent and large tent and gave the other party an absolutely perfect political ad.
Believing that murdering a baby, even one concieved in a violent crime, is still murder, Ghoulish
Scrambling the brain before crushing the skull of the same baby, and then pulling the corpse out of the mother’s womb: perfectly legal
Tossing that baby in a corner to die after the abortionist fucks up the job and delivers a live baby endorsed by the president of the United States!
What exactly is ghoulish here?
The idea of “God’s little shield” preexisted Akin’s statement…. It was an urban legend in pro-life circles well before Akin waxed ineloquent on the subject. I remember hearing about it back in the ’90?s when I was a teenager in a fairly cloistered conservative community.
You know, I was raised in Utah and this is the first time I’d heard the notion that forcible rape causes enough trauma to prevent conception/induce miscarriage.
So it was common in some circles, but not in others.
Maybe he was trying to get back to the economy. Because there are no other positions or arguments. Mitch Daniels told me so. And besides, it’s a matter that is of no import, what w/ Roe v Wade. So the very question itself is the distraction.
That immediately suggests a million better answers. I suppose that we can chalk his response up to a bit of once in a million times foolishness.
Does deadrody have some sort of reading deficiency?
I mean, if it’s been diagnosed and everything I’m willing to pat him on the head and ask him to try harder.
No. That’s the voice in your head you’re arguing with. Either take your thorazine or wrap another piece of foil around your thick skull.
Well put, Ernest.
Worst possible case: “God magically prevents bad things from happening when you’re being legitimately raped. So these women that need abortions after rape are liars.”
Worst possible case: “Even if there are people willing to adopt the discarded, viable baby, respect the mother’s body in letting that baby die in a closet.”
Believing that murdering a baby, even one concieved in a violent crime, is still murder, Ghoulish
I’d say so. Then again, even though I’m about as close to being pro-life as a pro-choicer can be, I don’t believe for a second that conception equals a baby. If a rape victim wants to immediately assure that she was not impregnated after being raped, I think that I stand with most people (women especially) in being in favor of her having that choice.
Tip, deadrody: commentators who live in big floppy clown shoes shouldn’t throw cream pies.
I wouldn’t.
And I’m about as close to being pro-life as a pro-choicer can be. But I’m uncomfortable with my own position. Because we are weighing two fundamental rights, neither of which I want the state to say we can violate. These aren’t easy questions.
What is easy? Shunning.
I’m seriously pro-life, Abe, but even I agree that should remain legal.
I’m off to get my CCW, then go to the grand opening of the Obama support center in my town. I’ll ask them about rape rape. Should be a blast!
This is why we can’t have honest, forthright citizen legislators instead of politicians.
Because at the end of the day, we’d rather be lied to than work our way through hard questions.
And by hard question, I don’t mean what’s the best way to answer a question on abortion without offending either your base or the “gettable” part of the mushy middle?
I do too, for now. But as viability outside the womb keeps getting pushed forward, I’m less and less amenable to the pro choice position.
As it is I’m for lots of restrictions on abortion.
Having said that, I can see how a pro life person would have to believe that a rape baby is just that, a baby. And I understand their moral dilemma.
Saying “most people agree” doesn’t end the dilemma. It just gives you cover to avoid thinking all the way through it.
And the GOP reaction further ensures soundbite, bromide politics.
Which the status quo ruling elite likes. Because they have that kind of campaigning down.
The difference is that in the former instance, the worst possible case is posited by third parties and then attributed to Akin, who may (or may not, we’ll never know now) agree with the first sentence, and absolutely said nothing resembling the second sentence.
In the second instance, it’s Illinois law.
Here’s what it comes down to. I know you want to win the election. But that doesn’t give you the right to take away someone else’s good name.
Jeff, how long will you stick with a pitcher that’s walking in runs, a quarterback who throws interceptions or a soccer player whose specialty is own goals?
Your quarterback throws an interception, and so next time the QB is on the field, all ten of his teammates sack him themselves, for a 20-yard loss, before the defense had even crossed the scrimmage line.
HIGH-FIVES ALL AROUND!
Ugh. That’s an even better point.
This is one of the best damn threads on the Internet.
*sniff*
I love you guys.…
I don’t want to win the election. Winning the election is easy —out Democrat the Democrats in pandering and condescending to the lowest common denominator.
I want to win the political argument. Winning the argument is how you win elections AND have politicians willing to stick their necks out and do things, necessary things that are going to make the socialists howl and turn the OUTRAGE-o-meter to 11, things they won’t be willing to do without some surety of popular support.
Because politicians are cowards. And there’s no upside to doing the right thing when your own party thinks that you can appease the crocodile.
Scrambling the brain before crushing the skull of the same baby, and then pulling the corpse out of the mother’s womb: perfectly legal
Tossing that baby in a corner to die after the abortionist fucks up the job and delivers a live baby endorsed by the president of the United States!
What exactly is ghoulish here?
They’re both ghoulish, especially the latter. Only fringe leftists like Obama would be in favor of what fits any rational person’s definition of murder. But he lies about his position and he has an army of sycophants who’ll run interference for him. The business model is -of necessity – different on our side, and while Jeff may (or may not) be correct about how this situation fits seamlessly with his general complaints about the right, this particular case is stuff for black belts, and we’re still a party of white belts. There’s a long way to go before something that is this viscerally disturbing to even people inclined to be sympathetic can be overcome.
Just to spare somebody else the trouble:
You don’t?!?!
FUNDAMENTAL UNSERIOUSNESS!
IGNORE THAT SHITHEEL!
That was a thoughtful comment Abe. Just wanted to acknowledge that.
How about we agree that Akin’s position seems callous instead of ghoulish?
Yeah. Callous is probably a better word.
Concord between the Big Apple and the Big Middle of Nowhere?
What the hell is this place coming to?
I’m firmly pro-life, but I agree.
The problem with abortion is, views range from the Catholic Church’s (where they teach it’s wrong to even preemptively wear a condom) to the POTUS (who thinks a baby already born, on the table and breathing on his own, should be allowed to die because of the mothers intentions).
Somewhere in there the laws need to find an acceptable median. Personally, I think the laws we have now are way out of whack with what ‘most people are in favor of’.
How about, a woman can choose to abort her baby if she’s a rape victim, or even if she already scheduled a pedicure for that day, don’t matter…as long as she does it on her own dime before the babies first heart beat?
First I would like to apologize for the too-little-too late-ness of what follows and for the math which is hard to read in a text format. I will bring it home however.
There seems to be one main source for the “fact” that 5% of rapes end in a pregnancy. It is the abstract which Pablo cited. Let me look at the figures that they have and then at other figures which are beyond dispute.
The study was of 4008 women done over 3 years. In those 3 years they have 34 pregnancies which are from a rape. This they say is 5% of the rapes that occurred over that time period to those 4008 women. From this 5% rate they then conclude that there are 31,101 rape caused pregnancies each year.
Now 34 rape-pregnancies over 3 years is 11.34 per year. Since 11.34 is 5% of the total yearly rapes then there were 226.67 rapes per year in this group of 4008 women. This means that 5.65% of the women were raped in any given year. Also if 31,101 is 5% of the total yearly rapes in the US then the yearly total number of rapes is 622,020. So to summary.
5% of rapes end in pregnancy
5.65% of all women are raped each year
The yearly total number of rapes is 622,020
Now this comprehensive 2002 study puts the number of women aged 15 to 44, childbearing years, at 61,561,000. The FBI reports over the past 10 years have the number of reported rapes as running from 82,000 to 90,000. It is estimated that only 1/2 of all rapes are reported so let’s say that there are 200,000 rapes per year. Now to plug in the studies numbers.
5.65% of 61,561,000 is 3,478,196. Three million, four hundred seventy-eight thousand, one hundred and ninety-six rapes per year resulting in 173,910 rape related pregnancies each year at the 5% rate. These numbers seem quite high. It is 5.6 times higher than their own figures of 622,020 and 31,101 and 17.4 times higher than even the upward adjusted FBI figures. It seems that the women in the study were raped at a rate many times higher than any other report we have. Their sample seems skewed somehow.
Akin’s comments were prefaced by his speaking of what he clumsily referred to as “legitimate rape”. Now from the attempt to get Paul Ryan to define “forcible rape” we know that everyone, the media included, knows that Akin was referring to forcible rape as opposed to statutory rape. Now the study has this to say about the women who got pregnant from a rape.
Wouldn’t this be then that most of the pregnancies not only happened to the most fertile of the women but also would likely be classed as statutory not forcible? Would it also be likely that more than one act of intercourse occurred before each pregnancy? Something stinks in the numbers presented just like it did in the “Climate Science” numbers. It would be good to have a real honest study done on this issue but that has not happened yet or at least one has not been cited.
This whole thing…it escalated quickly…kind of a “all of a sudden” thing…Brick killed a guy with a trident. Kinda got out’a hand.
A random thought that came to me which I would like to share:
To those of you arguing that the belief in magical protections from pregnancy in the case of rape rape attributed to Akin, regardless of whether it’s true or untrue, is in this instance a bridge to far for this the most critical of critical elections, and therefor not a battle worth choosing, let alone a hill to die on, I have two words:
Magic Underwear
Proceed with this line of argument at your own peril.
Formulating rape statistics in good, easily peer reviewed math…or am I an old Russian in denial about the “Great Rape Adventure”, circa 1943-1945 in Eastern & Western Europe? Baby’s much?
Oh yes…There were. Lot’s of them.
Have none of you considered the fact that if abortion is only legal if you have been raped, then the only way a woman can get an abortion is to accuse someone of raping her?
Unintended consequences, any one?
The only justification I can think of for outlawing abortion immediately is you believe life begins at conception, which means all abortion is murder. The child cannot be considered anything but a victim of the rape, in the case of consensual statutory rape, it is the only innocent involved.
In the past people who condone punishing victims of rape here have not been particularly welll thought of…
In the past people who condone punishing victims of rape here have not been particularly welll thought of…
“i don’t want punish them with a baby” baracky
Magic Underwear
It’s how we know who the Muggles are, duh.
The only justification I can think of for outlawing abortion immediately is you believe life begins at conception, which means all abortion is murder.
If the legal meaning of death is stopped heart and no brain waves, then invert that for the beginning of life.
Blamed if I know when that is, though.
Buzzfeed says that the whispering campaign about how “Mormons aren’t really Christians, you know” starts in the South soon. Probably this weekend.
Brick killed a guy with a trident. Kinda got out’a hand.
Sounds like a movie ref.
Share?
the whispering campaign about how “Mormons aren’t really Christians, you know” starts in the South soon.
And they’ll whisper back, “We know: we’ve been saying it for decades.”
hmm. I wonder if Akin considered that in his ill-considered response:
Besides, all penetrative sex is rape anyways, or so I’ve heard.
Heh, dicentra. You know my neighbors.
“Buzzfeed says that the whispering campaign about how “Mormons aren’t really Christians, you know” starts in the South soon. Probably this weekend.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone who’s inclined to believe that who wouldn’t nonetheless see more of themselves in Romney than in a pretend-Christian tinkerbell like Obama.
Okay. That was callous.
Callous would have been how I worded it in my head.
ABC Nightly News has been running it all week long.
Shows what I know since I get my news from Faux.
I guess I just can’t play in the big leagues. Better find someone to take over lest I continue to embarass.
It’s okay. A Mormon > a secular humanist(yes this term still plays in the south)
Especially a secular humanist that hides behind a church and previously tied himself to liberation theology(which was the original foundation behind the Jim Jones People’s temple Cult) and Pastor Jeremiah Wright.
I guess I just can’t play in the big leagues. Better find someone to take over lest I continue to embarass.
Note to Germanic person: That was a joke!
That is certainly possible, but we do not have that info. Many young women are also forcibly raped by people they know, so I’d be hesitant to classify it as “most”.
We don’t have perfect reliable studies to go with on this. It is possible that in some cases the mechanism Akin suggests is in play, theoretically. But stating it as a fact is wholly inappropriate, as there is no research to support it. Infertility studies don’t do it. Animal studies don’t do it. Concentration camp studies don’t do it. None of these are representative samples of women in general.
There’s another study, older with a smaller sample, referenced here by the folks who promoted the Willke piece Akin relied on. It suggests 2-4%. Assuming the low end of that and the low end of the rape stat, that leaves us with 3200 rape pregnancies a year.
Is that rare?
Anchorman, di.
i like how this works : akin mouths pseudo science – burn the witch. algore and proggtards mouth pseudo science – burn the deniers. there’s an overton window there that needs cleaned.
Pala, you’re one of the first people (or dinosaurs) that I’ve come across on the interwebs who knows about the Jim Jones/Liberation Theology nexus.
My reply was tongue-in-cheek.
And a bit of self-castigation too.
Psssst! Marxists aren’t Christians. Pass it on.
In a just society, we’d enslave all the men.
Haven’t we? It’s work or prison, guys. Just a heads up.
Interception? Your QB takes the snap, turns around and breaks for his own end zone…
Good point, leigh. Unless we happen to be gay.
Hey, all you Akin detractors! @Shoq is leading; are you really following this guy?~!
“Interception? Your QB takes the snap, turns around and breaks for his own end zone…”
Nah. Not even.
Your QB takes the snap, turns around and breaks for his own end zone…
I am still going to block for him.
so if akin is such a horrible politician and idiot why did he get elected by the mo folks thru the ’90’s to the state house and then thru oo’s to congress?
Getting an anti-abortion line wrong is running for a private endzone. Sure. Whatever. Etch a sketch? No problem. Matching a minimum wage to inflation? Sweet. Safey net! BACON BACON BACON BACON….SMART!!
Meanwhile the whole team tackling their guy twice and still not really bringing him down but complaining how he’ll never make a touchdown NOW oh and by the way he’s selfish for not quitting the team? Oh that’s normal and wonderful and what dreams are made of. Who can I fuckin’ laud for that bit of strategic “inevitable” serious-grown-up campaign-to-win power-thinking?
Claire’s an idiot and she’s on the other side and incumbent. You want to maybe take a shot at her ? Is that possibility? I mean only the democrats want to vote for Akin anyway according to some.
So, long live the Grand Old Blanket Party.
Can’t reach McCaskill so just lay it all on recently declared political invalid and idiot Akin. Then claim doing so doesn’t help the other side because…look! An idiot! So stupid! Idiot! Did you see me call him an idiot? Look, I’ll do it again!
Republican politics is now all about supporting the adversary in their attacks so long as we agree with them, while they take their best shot at us and moving left so we can win. And eating turds if that might help. Not the leadership, just the base. Especially the stupid Christer southern presumed illiterate base. That needs to vote, donate, and shut the fuck and hide so we can elect more Arlen Specter’s and Olympia Snowes and so Colin Powell’s admiration squad can lure him back from Obama to slow down the train wreck.
There are approximately 6 million pregnancies every year in the U.S. Of the 6 million 4 million result in a live birth. Of the 2 million pregnancies that don’t result in live birth, 1.2 million end in abortion, .6 million end in misscarriage, .064 million are ectopic pregnancies, .026 million result in stillbirth, and .006 million are molar pregnancies.
So yes, the .0032 million pregnancies that are a result of rape are rare.
He’s going to go mark a ballot.
so this why mccaskill ain’t going to charlotte
McCaskill 2006 on Bill Clinton: “I don’t want my daughter near him”
Would you go out and argue that those 3200 women per year aren’t significant enough to worry about when we’re setting national abortion policy? Me, I’d be arguing that the federal government has absolutely no business being in the abortion policy business.
3200 is more people than are diagnosed with Glioblastoma every year. Yet everybody seems to know or have known someone who’s had it. We all do.
If you want to explain how Akin’s performance over the last week is not electoral idiocy, please do. He didn’t just get a line wrong, btw. If this were just the “legitimate” line, I’d be foursquare behind him in fighting the mangling of his intent.
I don’t believe there should be a national abortion policy. I think that ought to be a state matter. And if the voters of a state decide that their fraction of .oo32 million isn’t significant enough to merit a rape exception to a state-wide ban on abortion, I’m fine with that.
On the other hand if a state’s voters thinks it’s fraction of 1.2 million abortions is cool beans and they want to try to up it by means of a tax funded subsidy, while I’m not fine with that, I recognize that they have the right under our system of government to do just that.
And if I happened to live in that state, I’d move.
Akin is scary I mean you kinda know there are people like that out there but it’s still shocking when they just pop up with no warning like that and even worse when they’re supposed to be on your side what is fighting for freedom and some wan pallid latter-day semblance of prosperity
there’s an overton window there that needs cleaned.
SOMEbody grew up in the PA/VA area.
Your QB takes the snap, turns around and breaks for his own end zone…
So the backfield grabs one arm and wheels him around while the rest continue to pound the opposition.
If you want to explain how Akin’s performance over the last week is not electoral idiocy, please do.
I will gladly stipulate that Akin’s post-gaffe performance has been the Hindenberg x10, even without my having seen a single clip.
Here’s the thing: if our side had run interference for him from the off, he wouldn’t have needed to keep trying to explain himself. Other, more articulate—more politically competent people—could have done it for him.
After telling him to STFU, you’ve done enough damage already, that is.
Uh-oh.
Feets? You been tippling today? No tipsy-blogging?
Only because when these types o’threads come up and then you show up, we kinda know exactly what happens next, and we’ve had the internecine tussle couple threads already.
“Sure, I said something dumb, but I won’t be billing my use of my private jet to the taxpayers. Of course, I don’t have one, but if I did I still wouldn’t do it.”
“Yeah, I blew a question, but I wouldn’t have saddled Missourians with Obamacare and I’m going to Washington to repeal it.”
“Hey, I might have stuck my foot in my mouth, but I’m not going to force people of faith to violate their consciences with government mandates, and I’m not going to enable the federal government to do it.”
“Yes, I had my facts wrong, but there’s no denying the fact that Barack Obama blew the better part of a trillion of our dollars stimulating the economy, Clare McCaskill helped him do it, and unemployment has been over 8% for 42 months.”
“Yes, I said something wrong, but it wasn’t as wrong as dumping billions of taxpayer dollars into failed crony fantasy energy boondoggles like Solyndra.”
Is Akin saying any of this or anything like it? He’s spent 3 days solid with his mouth moving in front of a microphone. Please, someone show me where he’s helping himself. Huddling with Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins is not going to make a winner out of him.
I had a chinese food and later i will have a “side salad with tri-tip”
mostly I have to take my sleeping pills early cause I need to get some sleep cause of I have to take my driver’s test tomorrow
they make you do those goofy hand signals for when you want to turn but that’s ok cause I got them memorized
Huddling with Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins is not going to make a winner out of him.
Pablo is the most perspicacious one I hope you are all paying attention
1.2 million abortions a year. That’s a lot of tough decisions.
Damn
“If you want to explain how Akin’s performance over the last week is not electoral idiocy, please do.”
If you want to make the case that Akin’s electoral idiocy extends beyond a bad line then please do.
If you want to explain how the GOP response to Akin’s performance over the last week was not electoral idiocy, please do.
“He’s going to go mark a ballot.”
Nah! Joe sixpack doesn’t vote that much.
This is where the football analogy breaks down due to the immediacy of the gridiron action and the fact that the team is dispersed. There wasn’t anyone there to stop him, and the points are already on the board. The rest of the team and the Coach and the crowd are calling for the backup and thinking he should get checked by the training staff and hit the showers. No coach in his right mind would send him back out for the next drive if he had another option.
I wonder if Perkins had anything to do with this. Focus was too narrowly on the economy. Let’s bring up other issues.
President Barack Obama.
Yup.
I’ve done it about a million times, most recently at ^^^8:10.^^^
President Barack Obama.
Joe ain’t turning up for him again.
“I’ve done it about a million times, most recently at ^^^8:10.^^^”
But it’s been a lot of shit.
If you want to explain how the GOP response to Akin’s performance over the last week was NOT electoral idiocy, please do.
They were hoping to put the backup in so they could win the game they were supposed to win in a walk before their QB had an on-field seizure.
there was no “GOP response” so much as there were a bunch of honestly revolted and embarrassed individuals spontaneously expressing revulsion – it’s like when that guy shooted all those people at the movies everyone instantly was all like hey that was messed up
A very incisive, substantial rebuttal, so devastating that I cannot respond to it. You cut me to the quick, sir. My argument is vanquished. So, I guess you’ll be fucking my wife now.
And then Akin wins! Yay!
Not simply revulsion, ‘feets, so much as noticing that Akin is sporting the Wile E. Coyote look.
it’s not unlike watching ryan lochte try to act
embarrassed individuals spontaneously expressing revulsion
because he be not talking right. you can’t talk that way and get invited to the right parties pikachu
Meanwhile:
Todd’s doing fine, you sillies! Move along now. Nothing to see here.
so pablo all your energy has been in getting mccaskill re elected no? seriously do you also shoot pitchers who make a wild pitch once every 20 years?
Has anyone before in the history of ever seen a politician dismiss a poll that shows them up by 10 points?
Pablo, once it became obvious Akin wasn’t going to bow out, the sensible response would have been to find a constructive way to deal with that fact.
What’s been going on instead has been … something not sensible.
Um, no.
1. I haven’t suggested shooting the guy. I haven’t even said he needs to go. I would, as someone who despises his opposing team, like to see it lose this game.
2. This is his Major League debut. We are not in the middle of his career. How he did in AAA is irrelevant.
I remind yall again: it’s Missouri. It’s Missouri’s problem to decide who will represent them in Washington.
Right now, both the candidates are certified boneheads, at least on camera, and that’s who is on the ballot.
I, for one, am sick to death of talking about it.
Jobs! The Economy! Jobs!
Who’s with me?
McGehee, if someone could show me where Akin has been doing that, I’d love to see it. The pressure upon him was when the transition to another candidate would have been easy. I don’t see the right harping on him now.
something not sensible.
yea some of the same folks who downplayed or ignored robertscare are vocal in this engagement. they don’t have the male testes to go after the holy religion of baby killing on a nation scale. effin roevwade is proggtard monument that cannot be razed. ’cause states doing their own shit is like putting biden voters in chains.
Sadly, not Todd Akin. He’s busy with the hardcore socons.
You mean the people who just put an anti-abortion amendment plank into the GOP Platform? Would you be so kind as to name a few of these people who downplayed or ignored the Roberts ruling?
Todd Akin may have a chat with the Lord this Sunday and come to a different conclusion about his place in politics.
Socons need to pack up their sand for a few more months and let us get on with getting the Wonce out.
Then, we can work on getting the politics right, as Ernst says.
How he did in AAA is irrelevant.
i’m sorry a guy who spent 10 years on the state level and 10 years on the fed level ain’t aaa. you anti akin folks thought you could lynch mob him out because he be talking about abortion. well you lost ’cause the dude had a backbone. peeps with backbones would be nice in dc ax orange man if he ain’t crying.
Nr, too many Arns tonight?
We’re all friends here.
And yet the noise still has yet to die down. It’s even still being argued about right here in this thread. Why is that?
The only person spontaneously expressing anything was Akin.
You see where that got him?
Would you be so kind as to name a few of these people who downplayed or ignored the Roberts ruling?
actually no i won’t. because this akin hysteria should of been the level of revulsion to robertscare. i didn’t see no peeps trying to impeach roberts for his dereliction of duty visavis his oath of office. sorry your siding with the real losers in this struggle.
Spontaneity + political disscussion + live teevee = Trainwreck.
The only person spontaneously expressing anything was Akin.
that’s just some blame dumb stuff. this is manufacturing consent and you be with peeps producing poop.
Spontaneity + political disscussion + live teevee = Trainwreck.
you didn’t build that!
Yes, he is. Big Leaguers play on National TV and get fat endorsement contracts. People have heard of them. When was the first time you knew who this guy was? For me, I first heard his name a month or so ago. Never really cared about him at all until a couple of weeks ago, when he won the primary. Didn’t really know anything about him until he was humping a third rail on viral video and blowing his race.
Of course not. You’re too pure to meddle in such tawdry details.
If you’re looking at GOP players it has. Who is still on his ass?
Yes, he is. Big Leaguers play on National TV and get fat endorsement contracts.
like ted cruz. if you find yourself in a hole stop digging.
here’s mitten’s first “crisis” and he went with the gop “groupthink”. it’s to laugh at mr. pablo.
Like banana blue turtle assface cumberbund! I think I get it now.
And the doorknob sold out the Commie Subaru! I saw it coming! Ron Paul.
FTW. Can’t forget that.
Akin’s gaffe was a kinsleyan one Mr. Moe
and in an instant he was laid bare like a naked face-eating bath salts zombie
but what was instantaneously so horrifying to so so many was the gnawing dread attendant to the realization that it’s a very real likelihood that… these Akins, they are Legion
They Walk Among Us
Like banana blue turtle assface cumberbund! I think I get it now.
don’t know what you mean. me billy kristal, ann coulter, sean hannity, nro losers on this topic. and mittens following their lead makes me think he can be shaped by their interests. DREAM peeps.
Bill Clinton’s of the world rape women and rise to high office, or the highest office. But that’s ok, because he’s of the anointed. Special. High value.
They rule among us.
They Walk Among Us
they do pikachu. mr. pol pot educated in the finest french universities managed to kill eh about 1 million cambodians.
I was wondering when Socons(!) would come up.
How do you plan to win if they pack up their sand and go home? Big Tent, just not too big, eh?
If you don’t get the politics right, you might as well leave the Wonce where he is. That way when it all goes completely to shit, Democrats won’t be able to pass the blame to Republicans.
it’s not ok it will NEVER be ok nothing will ever be ok again
hold me
hold me
are you free of stds?
Sure to be a topic on all the Sunday talk shows.
Can Mitt lead? Does this cause a rift with Social Consevatives (who are suspicious of the formerly pro-choice Mormon)? What does it mean going forward?
Weeks worth of material.
Maybe he should release his tax records after all.
you can wear a snuggy
If the Dems are going with AbortionandRapeapalooza for their convention theme with Bubba as keynote and we don’t hear from Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick in response, we can pretty much call the game right there.
I’m mildly optimistic that this crew has a bit more sack than the McCain bunch. We’ll see.
I didn’t say they need to go home, Ernst. I mean this is not the time to bang the socon drums. Finger cymbals? A-okay.
We need to talk policy, principles, people.
And we can all fit in the tent.
This country has many problems. “Socons” (however defined) are not one of them.
Pablo, Mark Levin says Dem wimmin should raise hell about Babba speaking.
But they won’t.
What does it mean going forward?
the folks like pablo (coulter, hannity, erickson et al) could stfu for a while and then come and attack mccaskill with same ferocity. they be “prideful” asshats though it seems.
you can wear a snuggy
don’t trust chinese imports
Then we should stop alienating them and start talking about policies based on shared principles. But there’s no need to for us to drag social conservatives into the Akin gaff. The Left will do that for us, and social libertarians on our side might want to think about what appearing to agree with the Left is going to do in the middle term.
Pablo is hardly an asshat, nr.
If the Dems are going with AbortionandRapeapalooza for their convention theme with Bubba as keynote and we don’t hear from Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick in response, we can pretty much call the game right there.
I hadn’t thought of that, but it would be right up there with the reaction to Ted Kennedy’s “where was George?” speech.
So I started to read the comments in reverse cus sometimes that’s just how I like to roll, then I saw Happyfeet had returned and I decided on the safer course of action.
So try not to kill each other while I catch up will ya?
True enough, Ernst.
We’ll talk more tomorrow.
G’night everybody.
‘Nite, Leigh.
TRS wants us to watch a dweeb attempt to take down a lying scrunt. It’s a tough duty TRS’s doling out, one of those dirty jobs someone’s got to do. Let it be someone else, please Jesus.
i go bed too big day tomorrow
What’s funny is that I’m the guy who’s been wondering out loud for 3 days why Akin isn’t doing that.
Your bleating may vary.
Pablo is hardly an asshat, nr.
being absolutely sure of the dynamics of an election in the middle of the country from a post on the coast: yea asshat like coulter, hannity, rove, mittens, the rest gop establishment, et al
Danger is about to learn of my failure as a hall monitor. I don’t regret picking up the trident though. No, I do not.
Yes, Akin already did that.
wondering out loud for 3 days why Akin isn’t doing that.
i dunno know maybe fighting the gop establishment and the mbm at the same time is fun.
Btw, no, Pablo is not an asshat. Notatall.
Yes, Akin already did that.
sandy fluke is laughing at you mr. pablo
Really bh? I thought today was better than yesterday.
“I don’t regret picking up the trident though.”
I HEARD THAT! (Yeah so I cheated, sue me;)
Btw, no, Pablo is not an asshat. Notatall.
stubborn sob?
Like Levin, Palin, Beck, et al. Fucking party line shills. It’s a goddamn shame that no one is as pure as nr. If only we could all ignore all the reality before us and embrace the One True Conservatism we one day might be worthy of posting links to Reagan clips on the interwebz. God willing.
How so?
Btw, no, Pablo is not an asshat.
but i group him with some “famous” peeps!
She can suck my dick. If I’m sufficiently drunk.
Well, first there was this. Now, there’s this. Meanwhile, no one is punching Claire McCaskill in the mouth.
It’s hard to say, Ernst. I black out for long stretches. Where are we?
Like Levin, Palin, Beck, et al. Fucking party line shills. It’s a goddamn shame that no one is as pure as nr.
sorry when i see gop clowns jumping on the same train in haste, i stand back and 1) question why they are doing it and 2) names you cite sounds like an echo chamber whereby your not allowed to question their motives or even what happened.
Likewise, homey!
Well, first there was this.
hey mr. pablo how about representing akin’s precisely:
akin believes that life starts at the moment of conception. in a rape the innocent victim when an abortion is done is the baby.
so mr. pablo why are you so pro abortion?
Right. And when women get raped they naturally have defenses against getting pregnant, so there’s really not much of a reason to consider that.
Fabulous. You should do a big ad buy for that.
Because you’re an idiot. Are you Todd Akin? You can tell us. We’re all friends here.
Ok, I think this bears repeating:
Lamontyoubigdummy says August 23, 2012 at 10:04 am
this race is, they keep reminding us, bigger than just one man, and so much is at stake! — didn’t themselves stop to think just how badly their very public shunning of Akin might hurt the party’s electoral chances
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I won’t really argue with your premise, but your preaching to a small choir. McCaskill is up 10 today. Most don’t get (or even hear) the level of thought that you and most of the commenters’ here put into it.
A lot IS at stake. And as the LT said in that movie Act of Valor, “This is some high speed shit”. These days, in this news/ smear cycle, any political animal that is on the same team and sees a horrible “own goal” has about 30 minutes from ground zero to make a decision about how they’re gonna respond.
Basically this happened. You want that guy continuing to teach kids “gun safety”?
Again, I get that the “soundbite” is what the left uses to crucify. It’s a crying ass shame. But it is what it is. But knowing an enemy’s only tactic would put a smile on Sun Tzu’s face.
Hey what are you trying to pull here, Lamontyoubigsmartypants?
bh, we’re in a 1974 Dodge Monaco. It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got, cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas and half a pack of cigarettes. It’s dark and we’re wearing sun glasses.
And “WE”RE ON MISSION FROM GOD”
Don’t forget it Outlaws!
And when women get raped they naturally have defenses against getting pregnant, so there’s really not much of a reason to consider that.
please do produce all of the “scientific” studies in peer review journals. are you a woman’s body parts expert?
I know how to find the G-Spot.
Because you’re an idiot. Are you Todd Akin? You can tell us. We’re all friends here.
yes no doubt about me being an idiot or anything else.
your position seems to go to ad hom attacks when questioned about what akin “actually” said. akin has a strong “pro life” belief that interferes with you and coulter, hannity, levin’s political outlook. funny that never happens “across the aisle”.
Newrouter,
Maybe you could cut Pablo some slack and consider that Akin dealt the pro-life cause a pretty big setback.
Sorry, I can’t do youtube. I agree with you about punching McCaskill.
Akin meeting with the Council for National Policy (whoever the hell they are) is a problem because…?
Besides, I would think you’d be relieved he’s gone to ground. Most likely that means he’s negotiating his honoraria and drafting his withdrawal speech.
Next you’ll be telling us about the time you and bigfoot went fishing in Loch Ness.
Again, how so?
Shit, Ernst. That’s some good stuff, my friend.
Next you’ll be telling us about the time you and bigfoot went fishing in Loch Ness.
Those were heady days. Squatch stole my camera though.
I think The G-Spot is a bar in New York Abe tried to show me last time I was in town.
Could ya bring your Id next time goofball?
The case against Akin being the worst politician who ever politic’ed mainly seems to be 1.) he’s an idiot and 2.) drop the other stuff people bring up(like how crowd-slapping a fellow party member harder than the opponent is helpful or even called for) and repeat “he’s an idiot” as though it cumulatively gains truth the more it’s repeated. And like I said, to me it smells of shit and communal reflex more than anything else.
I just figger’d Abe’u’d explain it’s a bar in Williamsburg or somewhere.
“Maybe you could cut Pablo some slack and consider that Akin dealt the pro-life cause a pretty big setback.”
How so? What argument changed? Was the cause purely about fashion and popularity?
All the ways a car can be cop car will always crack me up.
I did bring Danger into a bar that had a lesbian vibe! The one that wouldn’t let us in because of my not having the ID was a just dirty punk rock bar though.
Maybe you could cut Pablo some slack and consider that Akin dealt the pro-life cause a pretty big setback.
no the folks on the right who piled on akin did that. they don’t want to discuss when life begins. ’cause that means you stand up for sumthing other than gay clowns in manhattan.
The one that wouldn’t let us in because of my not having the ID
dude voter suppression
” other than gay clowns in manhattan”
Okay I need to know how whether these gay clowns are being served large sodas or not in local stores and restaurants. If so please let Mr. Bloomberg know as soon as possible. It’s VERY important. For freedom.
Again, how so?
By reinforcing the perception that pro-lifers are insensitive fools. And more importantly being a poor advocate for the cause.
He should have limited his response to the innocent child in the equation.
How do parental visitation rights work with a rape baby?
John Podhertz comes so close with this and then hits the banana peel.
Third, he comes from the culture of conservative victimization. Akin sounds like he thinks that by departing the race, he would be surrendering to his enemy’s superior cultural firepower — and thus be a coward rather than a warrior. That’s why he said yesterday he will “rush to the gunfire.”
…
Finally, he has a shot at winning. Akin is running in a conservative state against the weakest incumbent in the Senate. The first poll taken after his remarks had him tied with his rival.
That shot is a shot in the dark. A week’s harsh light on what he said and that weak support (in a poll weighted toward Republicans) will vanish. He’ll be behind, and he’ll never find a way to catch up.
Especially since Mitt Romney and the entire Republican Party are giving Missouri’s voters a pass on this one. They’re effectively saying they would understand anyone who chose to split the ticket and vote for Romney at the top but not for Akin below.
Still, a guy who thinks raped women have magical contraceptive powers will believe anything he wants to believe.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_gop_akin_heart_soJ0Uq1YhxBpjpmSZt1loK#ixzz24R8h3zY4
I’m not sure that people know what magical means.
Again, how so?
By reinforcing the perception that pro-lifers are insensitive fools. And more importantly being a poor advocate for the cause.
He should have limited his response to the innocent child in the equation.
i’m not accepting the “narrative” you and pablo are pushing. 1) akin has 20 years of elective office 2) sandra fluke baracky and co. were looking for sumthing and you outraged peeps gave it to them.
so thanks for being all outraged when discussing when life begins. go claire bears
I guess I’m just disappointed in him. I kind of expect someone that represents the same views I do to be better advocate and to have a lot better spidey-sense when talking to a reporter, even on Fox news.
How do parental visitation rights work with a rape baby?
you’ll have to ask the gay couple who adopted him/her
I kind of expect someone that represents the same views I do to be better advocate and to have a lot better spidey-sense when talking to a reporter, even on Fox news.
have you ever listened to former speaker of the house pelosi?
Newrouter,
I’m not outraged.
I believe life begins at conception.
I’m certain I could be a better advocate for a constistent pro-life position.
I’m standing up for Pablo because he’s a friend and I think he has a similar view as I do.
So should that be cause for condemnation?
Pelosi is not the bar I measure anything human against.
I think the mediacrats and the Republican reaction has done more to drive the perception of Akin as just another insensitive pro-lifer than Akin did. I don’t know if he’s a poor advocate for the cause or not. I haven’t heard anything he’s had to say on the issue other than the one quote at the center of the shit-storm. And while everyone agrees it was inelegant, I don’t agree that it’s indefensible and inexcusable.
But that’s what happens when you try to explain your position instead of answering a question. Or maybe it’s just that I’m a more charitable audience than the mediacrats, and not prone to panicked posturing like Professional Republicans of Good Standing.
Also that I’m more interested in the middle to long term than the short term here.
pablo, hannity, coulter, moosehunter et al. akin ain’t leaving. are you folks on board to defeat mccaskill?
We already had one dipshit come through here using magical as his wind totem and then after I called him on it he decided to say that sure maybe one cooch was magical but they all weren’t.
He didn’t do this ironically. He was just a moron. He didn’t get how magic was just a word that stupid people would use when they didn’t know high school graduates were around.
Magic means supernatural. When someone posits natural mechanisms that isn’t magic or supernatural voodoo. They can be right or wrong but it isn’t magic.
So should that be cause for condemnation?
here’s who i blame. coulter maybe malkin or cap’t fathead. those dummies stirred up this hysteria. i’d like to see a timeline of tweets and posts on this. and i’m disagreeing with pablo not condemning anything. it is like having a discussion.
I mean, if I’m going to pick up the trident, I sorta feel I should maybe impale some fools.
Sure, I’m all about going along to get along but I don’t know. Maybe I feel ornery and retarded people putting on airs annoy me tonight. Who can say?
“I don’t agree that it’s indefensible and inexcusable.”
I didn’t say it was.
“But that’s what happens when you try to explain your position instead of answering a question.”
As Jeff stresses, we have to do a better job of challenging the premise of a question(er). Then your position is much easier to
explain and defend.
But it’s such a killer zinger Stephanie. He knows his audience, so how could he be expected to pass it up. I mean, what’s the fun in being one of the enlightened if you can’t point at one of the benighted and laugh now and again?
And all those embarrassing benighted SocCons with their declasse “issues,” the ones who don’t appreciate the mockery everytime somebody who shares their views comes under attack, the one’s who wonder why “our” side isn’t on their side? Who cares what they think.
What are they going to do? Sit out the election?
There was nothing wrong with the premise of the question, Danger. The problem was that he never answered the question directly; just launched straight into an explaination of his answer in which he strung 3 seperate bullet points together.
Jeffrey Lord: Bill Clinton and Legitimate Rape
Hey Bill, you should put some ice on that.
bh,
Sometimes we just need to talk each other out of the tree.
Oh and while I’m thinking of it, the last time someone was here doing some indescriminate trident impaling I told a story about forgiveness. That story wasn’t directed at you, it was meant as a lifeline for a fool that thought he could outswim a riptide.
Unfortunately he didn’t recognize it (the lifeline or the riptide).
I wouldn’t bet the mortgage money, but I just might bet the drinkin’ money that the magical meme is out of some Leftist talking point memo.
I’d be surprised if you were wrong on that, Ernst.
I see the premise of “What about the case of rape” as: Surely you cant be so extreme and insensitive to oppose abortion in this case.
Of course that might be because it’s the left’s favorite cudgel to deploy. But I do agree with your assesment of Akin’s error.
If I am, Norman must be awfully proud of little Johnnie tonight.
i’d still want to see the timeline of the journolist- right
propaganda event for akin.
It’s cool, Danger.
I do sometimes stand on two legs and make a bit of noise though. It’s a thing that I do when people don’t chill out and make me want to play rough until they stop moving.
“What about the case of rape” as: Surely you cant be so extreme and insensitive to oppose abortion in this case.
can you say ru 486. no planned parenthood abortion. 90% xtianist agree.
OT: This (via Ace) is quite funny. I wish there were more comments because it’s gotta be painful to every lefty who sees it, but it’ll probably go viral.
In this case Danger, the premise was more like “how is the case of rape different from a danger to the life of the mother exception?” or “why the life exceptions but not the rape one?”
I don’t recall and I don’t remember the thread in which Hadlowe posted the question as well as Akin’s response.
so this akin rape thing has caused concern. ru 486 vs planned parenthood look for the rent seekers says sandra fluke.
What’s kinda wierd (or maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s both;) but when I scroll back up I see comments that I didn’t see before.
I bet that’s the magic bh is talking about!
Apparently Akin couldn’t. Possibly for impolitic reasons.
But yeah, that’s one of the messy
realfallen-world compromises that’s out there.I also suspect you could Jesuit your way to the position that rape doesn’t count as “natural” conception.
The Augustinians wouldn’t approve. And certainly not the Calvinists.
“how is the case of rape different from a danger to the life of the mother exception”
The life of a mother is another premise. Man it’s like a It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!;)
Or maybe I’m just a conspirisist. I don’t know.
You could totally Jesuit your way out of it. I don’t even care what “it” is.
I say that with a bit of admiration actually.
“How do parental visitation rights work with a rape baby?”
I guess you just find out what bio-waste incinerator was used and head there with a ouija board. Of course this might be a trick question to detect more idiots to smash in lieu of going after Claire McKCaskill… no baby means no parents right? Rape babies are just on the wrong side of history.
I’m thinking about kickball mainly.
Okay, found the question again:
Charles Jaco:
“Okay, so if an abortion can be considered in the case of, say, tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about in the case of rape? Should it be legal or not?”
[emph. add.]
Rep. Akin:
“Well, you know, uh, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, Well, how do you – how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question.
It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” — source
(originally posted by, Hadlowe)
Apparently Akin couldn’t. Possibly for impolitic reasons.
a rethuglican faction has found akin wanting in a key state and any akin statement is grist for the mill
You’ll note that the question asked wasn’t the one answered, except subtextually.
Well, how do you – how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question.
baracky kills it in the womb and failing that kills it outside of the womb. dead or alive baracky.
You know, I think there should be some punishment but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”
so akin must be silenced from the right because he THINKS life begins at conception? yo pablo?
I’d say there’s at least two factions, albeit perhaps with considerable overlap. The first faction just wants to win so badly that they don’t care what they have to do or who they have to screw in order to win. Sorta like Democrats, you might say.
The second faction falls into the group Limbaugh has characterized as Republican voting corporate executive types who hate social issues and especially abortion because their pro-choice wives nag the hell out of them about it. That’s probably a subset of a larger group that’s uncomfortable with traditional values because they’re traditional instead of popular.
I missed this one earlier:
Palaeomerus says August 23, 2012 at 10:53 pm
“Maybe you could cut Pablo some slack and consider that Akin dealt the pro-life cause a pretty big setback.”
How so? What argument changed? Was the cause purely about fashion and popularity?
Palaeo,
Nothing changed for the thoughtful types and I don’t care much for short-term and shallow concepts but the timing of this could just cost us a pro-life representative in the Senate.
Also, somebody just might be in the situation at hand (pregnant as the result of a rape) and the decision she makes ISN’T about fashion or popularity either. I’ts about life.
Isn’t it possible that Planned Parenthood will effectively exploit this?
And yeah, maybe it’s impact will be limited but even one extra lost life is still a pretty damn big deal in my book.
The best political answer to the abortion question I’ve ever heard was Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare.”
One* out of three isn’t bad I guess. When you’re a Democrat.
*One and one half out of three, if I felt like being fair; which I don’t.
Ernst,
After Clinton said that; Rush asked the question, Why should they be rare if there isn’t something wrong with them?”
I didn’t remember that. I wish someone had asked “safe for whom?”
Hadlowe was probably talking about an ectopic pregnancy
An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy that occurs outside the womb (uterus). It is a life-threatening condition to the mother. The baby (fetus) cannot survive.
If it doesn’t result in a miscarriage it could cause a hemmorage and require an emergency surgery to save the live of the woman. I forgot what they actually call the procedure but it’s essentially the same on they use on a miscarriage.
Somehow, I don’t think Clinton was referring to these procedures when he said “rare”.
“Isn’t it possible that Planned Parenthood will effectively exploit this?
And yeah, maybe it’s impact will be limited but even one extra lost life is still a pretty damn big deal in my book.”
I don’t think there will be any sudden movements on the issue.
This issue is so intensely polarized that we already use 50 year old special bullshit safe words (euphemisms? nullisms?) to discuss it. Pro choice. Privacy. Late term. Nonviable. Foreign Tissue removal. Abortion. Unwanted pregnancy as opposed to unwanted human embryo. On the other hand you have pro-life. (Does anti-abortion really sound bad enough that it needed a mustache? )
Most of the battles take place on strange extremes of the topic and ignore the common realities of the issue. The origins of the issue of public supported abortion get swept under the rug because no one wants to face that Saint Sanger wanted to wake up to a new day with less brown skin in her cities.
We don’t talk about it much any more and we punish people who do and call them nuts. We talk about HOW to talk about talking about it.
I think most people have already picked a side and aren’t going to casually swap sides because Akin is an idiot (in case you haven’t heard the regular chanting yet) and the wind feels suddenly chill and there’s a war on women.
Palaeo,
When their timed right (or poorly in our case) a small movement is a big deal. Another 6 years of McCaskill in the Senate could have a big impact.
And not just on the abortion issue.
Oh, and thanks for not turning on the multi-syllable rage machine on me (yeah, I been trackin you Mr!;)
their=they’re
stupid homonyms
stupid lack of sleep
Night All,
Next time Jeff says:” a final few words followed” by a thesis paper lets all humor him and let him have the last word, Cool?
(And Jeff that was me kidding btw;)
No, I go ad hom when people ask me idiotic things like “so mr. pablo why are you so pro abortion?” If you don’t like being called an idiot, don’t be one.
As big or bigger an impact than 6 years of a guy who can’t coherently explain why he’s opposed to a rape exception for abortion?
I guess that would depend on what the critically critical issues in this critically critical eletion are, and who is trying to distract whom. Also, how easily led joesixpack is when he stops watching the game and starts watching the news before he goes and marks his ballot.
No. That portion of his answer was coherent and sensible. If he’d left it at that, he’d still be leading the race.
She’s far worse, and it remains a possibility that that seat might have a huge impact on the future of America as we know it.
Can he win it? Is he trying to win it? I’d like to see him doing that.
Not sure which comment you’re referring to there.
Since I’m no political maven, is there a path to victory for Akin at this point? Barring some unforeseen discovery that McCaskill was a millionaire tax evader or something like that.
I mean, wouldn’t that be embarassing if that were to come out.
400+ comments?
Jesus age Christ.
I wasn’t told there would be homework.
Danger confused you with Charles Jaco after I acknowledged that the bit of the Jaco-Akin transcript I reposted here was originally found and posted to PW by you Hadlowe.
Well, it seems to me that IF McCaskill is far worse, and IF it remains possible that the outcome of the Missouri Senate election carries grave consequences for the future in this the most critical of critical election seasons, in which American itself hangs in the balance, and IF we beleive that, because WE can see that, presumably the Missouri ELECTORATE in aggregate can see that as well; that being the case and trusting that the voters can distinguish between the VITAL ISSUES and the NEEDLESS DISTRACTIONS, then yeah, I think there’s a chance he can win it.
As to Akin trying to win it, and not being seen to try at this particular moment, we know that he’s hunkered down. I’ve aleady suggested that this is because he’s negotiating his exit. Maybe it’s because he’s trying to find that path to victory. The guy’s got donors to reassure and supporters to shore up and a media strategy to plan, and a whole shitload of angry, worried, and concerned Missouri Republicans to call back.
And that letter signed by nearly every Missouri Republican of note didn’t help him any.
Pablo says that’s on him for putting his foot in his mouth. I say that’s on them for panicking over Akin putting his foot in his mouth. But then, Republicans don’t trust the voters to make the right decision anymore than Democrats do.
What is the overweening principle that makes Akin the right decision versus anyone else who might beat McCaskill like a rented mule? If Anybody But Claire is the standard, then why not anybody but Claire and those who won’t beat Claire?
President Barack Obama. Voters can and will fuck things up. We didn’t get where we are by the electorate being educated and engaged. I’d like to think we’re waking up, but it’s a slow process at best.
As for Akin, I’ve said repeatedly that he could have recovered but he’s done almost none of what he needed to do to make that happen. It’s not just the foot in mouth moment that’s sunk him, it’s also the 4 days of political incompetence that have followed.
Akin won the right to represent the party in the primary. Thus it’s his decision to make whether to continue or not.
The Forms Must Be Obeyed
Yes they do fuck up, and it’s up to them to unfuck things. We don’t speed the process up any by short-circuiting it. To give here a small example: If Missouri Republican don’t like Democrats fucking with them in Missouri’s open primary, either pay them back in kind until they get the message, or better still, go back to a caucus convention system.
I’m sure you think that’s crazy talk. But my outlook is middle to long term, not short to middle term. I don’t give a shit about elections anymore because giving a shit about elections isn’t winning the political argument. And winning the argument is where meaningful renewal of the Forms begins.
As others have repeatedly said that the four days of political incompetence isn’t entirely of his own making. Also, just because the things he needs to do to recover aren’t happeining fast enough for you and othes doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.
My guess, and maybe it’s good or maybe it’s just spitballing in the dark, is that one of two tihngs is happening, either he’s getting ready to drop out, or he’s hoping that by lying low until after the convention, most of this will have blown over, and he’ll have had a week to figure out how to right things. Probably also camp Akin is frantically trying to find out if they can raise the money they’ll need on their own. Now aybe it all works out, maybe it doesn’t. But he’s the nominee and it’s his call to make.
I don’t think MO Republicans were concerned with Akin being the the candidate before he melted down. After melting down, it’s not the least bit surprising that they are. Just as he has the right to stay in the race, they have the right to tell him he ought to get out. It is still his decision. No one is being violated here.
Yeah, could be. But he’s really late to employ the laying low strategy.
Akin and his family have been getting death threats, supposedly. I don’t know if it’s wingers who want him to drop out or more unhinged leftists, but I’d imagine that it’s the latter. It pretty much always is.
he’ll always be the guy who helped america understand the distinction between legitimate rape and procreative rape
it’s likely he won’t be celebrated for this in his own lifetime
his kind never are
he’ll always be the guy who helped america understand the
Not really. For the left, a “rape” is anything a woman says it is.
Any other position is anti-woman.
Good to see the yellow moron is back!
Oh happy. He’s a right-to-lifer. So what? He lives in MO which is one of the most prolife states in the union. There are approximately 6 abortions to 1000 live births in MO. If you’re going to hold “extreme” views about abortion, he’s living in the right place.
good morning Mr. Abe there’s free breakfast on the lido deck grab a plate and we can sit by the pool and get caught up
So what
If Missouri wants them a Senator who’d go to all the lamaze classes and help pick out a fluffy bunny for his wife or daughter’s rape baby, let them have him, I say.
oh my goodness what a pickle the showmies are in
They’re different up there, all right. But, they picked him.
I’ve heard that he won the nomination due to Democrats engaging in malicious mischief, but I don’t know that to be a fact.
Oh Goody. Has he dropped enough points that we can deny him the nomination yet? After all, as Missouri goes, so goes the nation, and what with this election being so super duper vitally critical and all.
And you wouldn’t? I thought you were a Catholic.
1.2 million abortions a year in the US, and y’all are worried about the extremest that REALLY believes life starts at conception. Huh…
Oh Goody. Has he dropped enough points that we can deny him the nomination yet? After all, as Missouri goes, so goes the nation, and what with this election being so super duper vitally critical and all.
If we continue with the circular firing squad, perhaps we can see him drop elsewhere. Which … success, right?
Go team!
Abe, that’s based on this sort of thing. I don’t know that it’s malicious, just sort of duplicitous. It’s pretty clear that McCaskill wants to run against Akin. Sneaky stuff, indeed.
Thanks, Pablo.
Irony aside, the trick to not getting accidently shot by your fellow executioners is to not join a circular firing squad. If Romney’s tied to Akin, he’s the one who formed the knot.
1.2 million abortions a year in the US, and y’all are worried about the extremest that REALLY believes life starts at conception. Huh…
Lee, settle down. “They’re different” is a Southerism. It’s kind of like the “bless his heart” thing.
Yes, I am a Catholic. Life is a seamless garment, as I have stated a number of times. I don’t know why you’re busting my balls unless it’s just because you missed me on your vacation.
I don’t know where this comes from. The problem with Akin isn’t that he’s pro-life. The problem with Akin is that he’s a terrible politician, which is to say that he sucks at his job.
Because trying to explain why you’re opposed to rape exception when you’re not opposed to a life of the mother exception is impolitic, making him a terrible politician —by definition.
In spite of 23 years in elective office.
No, flubbing the “legitimate rape” line, then offering the “raped women rarely get pregnant bit, then mangling 3 days of national media saturation and forgetting all the while to make the case for why your opponent has to go makes him – by definition – a bad politician.
I’m sure those from his community like him just fine and would continue to send him to represent them with no qualms whatsoever. Maxine Waters’ peeps do it. A Senate election is a whole ‘nother ballgame. This is the big leagues and he seems ill-prepared to play at this level.
I think we have a difference of opinion on what his “job” is.
Again, if Akin has done anything to proactively help himself with the electorate in the last 4 days, I’d like to see it.
He’s a candidate. His job is to get elected.
The idea of the Senate, and with it, who ought to be a Senator has undergone a diminution of stature over time, but this doesn’t seem to me to be a new consideration at all. As regards creating an atmosphere for renewing those older considerations, the Akin example wouldn’t be a particularly useful case I don’t think (if only because his opponent is manifestly worse). But could be I’m wrong about that. Perhaps it is as simple as any tool to hand is as good as another. Still, I doubt it.
True, sdferr. Senators were not subject to the vagaries of retail politics. That, of course, was then.
Admitting an error and apologizing used to go a long way before we were ruled by politicians and their sycophant media.
The founders, I think, could actually bring themselves to speak of wisdom without shame or jocular irony, and imagine they could differentiate such persons from among the non-wise. Nowadays such talk is tantamount to committing oneself to the looney bin. And this is to say nothing about the interaction of practical wisdom (sophrosyne as they understood it) with political necessities, which we’ve seen have themselves been nearly lost altogether.
Yep. difference of opinion.
His job is to honestly portray his positions, and allow the electorate to decide if they want him to represent them.
Obama did his job perfectly because he succeeded in getting elected I guess.
Akin did make an error, admitted it, apologized for it.
Then wouldn’t shut up about it.
That’s pretty lousy retail politics.
Whether or not he would be a worse Senator than McCaskill remains to be seen.
My senators (Inhoff and Coburn) are roundly portrayed in the press as right-wingers and extremists. So? We like them and they aren’t in any danger of being unseated.
Candidate Obama did his job well enough. Better than Candidate McCain did his. Of course, he had plenty of help.
Now wait a minute!
Pablo’ss aying Akin isn’t doing anything to help himself, having gone to ground instead of punching back at McCaskill twice as hard.
You’re saying that he won’t stop talking about abortion —presumably becuase he’s trying to help himself.
You can’t both be right.
Sounds like the best job any candidate can do is promise the electorate the moon and stars so they’ll get elected.
No wonder we’re where we are. 50% of the electorate living off the losers.
So? The mediacrats call every Republican rightwing extemists. Except of course for the useful ones, the ones who can be relied upon to criticize other Republicans. Those they call mavericks. And they’ve gotten so good at the rightwing extremist stuff that they’ve succeeded in turing a milquetoast Massachussetts moderate into a “conservative” stalwart.
Akin has gone to ground, er…Tampa, in the last day or two. First few days of the week he was doing media all over the place and saying….something. Nothing terribly helpful to his cause.
GMA
Today.
Hannity. More Hannity. That’s just a sampling.
Don’t mess up my tweaking leigh with your piddly facts Pablo!
We’ve gotta get this fucker to 500 one way or another!
thirty more to go
So…what happens is, Dems promise a chicken in every pot and relief from all of life’s consequences.
Repubs promise a job and chance of success in a free market, with relief from high taxes.
The two ideas are in direct conflict, except (happily for the politicians) both expand the power of government, and never shrink the debt. So Dems want to talk about relieving life’s consequences, and Rebups want to talk about doing what it takes to get elected.
I’ve heard no plans or promises about doing what it will take (reducing the size and scope of government) to start paying down the debt, instead of forever adding to it. What I see is once again, the proggs shriek and point in horror at some bitter clinging soc con, and the Repubs step all over each other trying to throw the idiot under the bus.
Wonder why we’re losing the country? Dems stick together. Bill Clinton is still beloved by the Dems, without fear of getting Monika taint on them, or supporting his work for welfare bill.
Akin meanwhile, has pretty much singlehandedly tainted the whole pro-life movement and made every republican look like a rube what hates women, so he must be ex-communicated, denounced, and sent to hell.
Akin meanwhile, has pretty much singlehandedly tainted the whole pro-life movement and made every republican look like a rube what hates women, so he must be ex-communicated, denounced, and sent to hell.
Wow, Lee. Why do you hate Akin so much?
Ernst, my senators are the fringeyest of ‘wingers. I hear it on the news all the time, so it must be true.
Tom Coburn hates wimmin so much he became an OB-GYN just so he could deliver more babies who would grow up to vote for him. He’s a tricky bastard, too. All his patients love love love him. They don’t understand that he is the Evil. Like a super-villian.
I never said he was an idiot that should abandon the Republican nomination the voters of Missouri gave him.
What I hate is non Missourian R’s saying he was an idiot that should abandon the nomination the republican voters of Missouri gave him.
Somehow, I doubt the voters in Missouri are surprised over Akins views on abortion.
The voters of Missouri are well aware of Akins views.
FWIW, I never said he was an idiot.
Again, Akin won a narrow plurality of the primary votes with McCaskill running ads for him and a reportedly significant crossover vote from a democrat operation chaos. He was a suspect candidate before this whole thing started. It may be that he still got more republican votes than the other two candidates, but that’s far from clear.
it’s time for procreative rape boy to go away so we can have Sunday shows where we don’t have to yammer about his dumb
i just know in my heart he’ll do the right thing
Thus does the Republican National Committee commit itself to the control of Barack Obama’s concerted Democrats and their allies the News Media. They can’t even be bothered to stay with their own predetermined message and form of display. Pitiful.
Mike Huckabee is blabbing about Akin and abortion. He has his unwatchable show on the weekends, too, so we can probably count on him to blab away some more.
Yammering is a choice.
I have to thank Ann Coulter for using the word “prattle” when I was half listening to her on the radio. That’s a good word and could use more play.
“Danger confused you with Charles Jaco”
Thanks Ernst,
I was having a devil of a time tracking the source of my error. It was kind of late last night but somehow I got the impression that Hadlowe was the name Akin’s interviewer.
A thousand apologies Hadlowe.
At the risk of wasting my time commenting on a buried thread:
Democrats were voting for Akin because, from the Democrat point of view, he’s too far to the right to be viable in the general election, not because he was a stalking horse or a 5th columnist or a squish. (That’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans, by the way. Only Republicans like John McCain —and the rest of the Establishment, for that matter—think crossover appeal is a selling point come November.
This is a tactic that’s been known to backfire. Although in this case….
And in any event, if Missouri Republican don’t want Democrats fucking with their primary, either close the primary or go back to a caucus-convention system.