Loving, loving, loving Akingate! Here’s a pretty good MoJo article on the can’t-get-pregnant-rape-stuff.
And a question: who will be the first serious person to stake out a contrarian position on this one? Todd Akin was right, the rate of pregnancy is slightly lower when someone is raped, so both sides are wrong, the truth is in the middle. Todd Akin may be a buffoon but this issue helps Republicans because we’re still a center-right country. Has someone already something like this?
? Martin
Bobo. Always.
Violet
Well, there’s Steve King. Does this count?
Hunter Gathers
Boboor Chunky Bobo.Edit – beaten to the punch on the former
Violet
Dammit. Moderation. Forgot the bad word again. Repost with speshul speling.
Well, there’s Steve King. Does this count?
Cassidy
Didn’t Rep. King already go this route? He’s never “personally” been told about it. I’m sure the fuckstick has read it, but no one he knows personally has brought it to his attention?
Argive
Bobo, definitely. Then Candy Crowley will start noting that some people say you can’t get pregnant from rape so it must be a legit viewpoint.
Villago Delenda Est
I think in the first five posts we’ve named the usual suspects, ah-yup.
eric
Probably Fareed, oh wait, that was just Akin again. ;)
Tokyokie
Doug, Seems to me that the difference between the pregnancy rates that you mentioned is that women trying to get pregnant are more likely to have intercourse at the peak of ovulation, whereas rape victims don’t get that choice. And by the way, Rep. King, when the statutory rape or incest victim is so young that she hasn’t begun menstruation, then she’s not going to get pregnant. He must be another member of the House Select Committee on Science, Technology and Alchemy.
catclub
I would suspect the pregnancy rate is higher for cases of rape.
People in relationships with consensual sex often use birth control – on purpose. Rapists, not as much, I suspect.
Brachiator
The better, more important thing is that the InterTubes is full of truth on this one. A great article here that should be passed along to those who want to try to rationalize Akin in any way, shape or form.
Facts can be very inconvenient things. The only thing that the GOP is left with is ideology and a curdled theology.
Thomas DeVito
Help a longtime lurker in his budding writing career. Looking for some page clicks, and possibly some “Likes”, if you are so inclined. If you are looking for a break from politics, and enjoy reading about travel, help a brother out.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/08/reflections-on-the-discomforts-solitude-of-travel-thomas-devito/
The Red Pen
That’s not really what he said. He said that there is a mechanism that makes it rare.
The great thing about this is that you can give Akin the benefit of any possible doubt and he’s still full of it.
eric
We could go with some version of Mary Daly and say all sex is rape so that there is nothing to compare it to ;)
Someguy
The best part of it is, Akin’s presence in the campaign appears to have been engineered by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It turns out that Dem interests spent way more on getting Akin through the primary than Republican donors. Awesome!
bemused
Now that Akin just announced he’s not dropping out out of the race, I wonder if Rove and the GOP have any rabbits left to pull out of their hats to minimize the damage.
catclub
Ask the Serbs and Croats about the non-existence of rape causing pregnancy. But be sure to stand back, first.
Violet
BTW, was just in the car and decided to listen to Limbaugh. He’s got a massive sad that Akin seems to be staying in the race. He’s going on about how “everyone” knows that there aren’t different kinds of rape, and how Akin should step down for the good of the movement.
Best part was, he took a call from an older-sounding woman from MO. She said she voted for Akin and refused to agree with Limbaugh on just about everything. Limbaugh said that the only reason Akin got elected is McKaskill (sp?) both put ads up supporting Akin and also told Dems to cross over to vote for him. This caller told him “that may be true, but a bunch of Republicans voted for him. I voted for him.” Limbaugh didn’t know what to say.
Then the woman went on and said that if the Republicans forced Akin out, the voters in MO would be very unhappy. They’ve been told who to vote for before and it hasn’t worked out well. This time they chose who they wanted and the GOP should stay out of it.
Limbaugh’s tone during the whole show is hilarious. He sounds so sad and disappointed. And there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.
cmorenc
@DougJ:
Frankly, you’re missing the mark widely as to what direction some prominent MSM figure’s misdirection will take. Instead, they’ll skeptically challenge the proposition that Ryan’s positions are identical to Aiken’s. Although I don’t have the link handy, ANDERSON COOPER has already gone there.
jwb
OT, the PPP polls today are uniformly depressing, especially the Senate race in MA.
Felinious Wench
These quotes from the article are so wrong I can’t believe a doctor had anything to do with it.
1. Miscarriage requires a pregnancy first.
2. We don’t know the true numbers of women who are raped due to the fact it’s underreported. So, how would we know if pregnancy is rare? Does that include spousal rape?
3. This clinical discussion of women being in shock and how it affects their body’s ability to conceive is sickening to me, and I suspect sickening to other rape survivors as well.
Completely unproven. No studies show this. It is pseudo-science at its worst.
Yes. That does not correlate to stress as birth control.
Yes. It’s called a monthly cycle, specifically, ovulation. We manage to do it every month, rape or no rape. If a man commits rape at the right time in our cycle, we’re likely to get pregnant if we’re not on birth control. Amazing how that female body functions!
Rape isn’t going to keep us from ovulating. So, is that rape supposed to stop the implanting of an egg? How exactly is all of this supposed to work?
Hence, the sun revolves around the Earth, global warming is a myth, and the fossil record is faked by evolutionists.
This is so absurd. It shows a profound lack of understanding of the female body and the reality around rape as a crime. It only requires a small bit of research to know how our lady parts work, and even less to look at rape statistics. And no one should underestimate how offensive this whole discussion is to rape survivors, and there are a lot of us.
Downpuppy
McMegan has, via Susan
kay
@Cassidy:
He’s just such an idiot. There are lots and lots and lots of pregnancies that result from statutory rape.
I cannot believe he’s in Congress. Tell him to stroll down to the juvenile court in his district the next time he’s home.
Anti-abortion people live in imaginary greeting card world.
Baud
The question we should be asking is, why can’t women secrete their own birth control when they’re raped? Doesn’t Akin have a point in that they should be able to do that? Is Akin a more intelligent designer than the Lord?
Cassidy
@kay: I’d rather tell him to stroll into a wood chipper. Not to be too blunt, but I’m past the point of snark.
pragmatism
@catclub: if i have learned anything from L&O SVU, besides the fact that legendary character actor Ice-T is a true delight, it is that rapists frequently use condoms and/or spermicide to avoid a DNA trail.
Console
@Downpuppy:
I was just about to bring that up. It was too perfect. Too in character
Susan of Texas
Need you ask?
Megan McArdle says:
Not that she supports Akin, mind you, it’s just that he might be kind of right, if not completely right.
Mart
Akin’s comments are just fine by my neighbors. Why is the GOP freaking out, they should do their usual double down. I knew Akin would not drop. McCaskill is an uninspiring blue dog, and as bad as Akin is, the propagandized will vote for him as Claire votes with the evil other 98% of the time. Pretty sure he wins here.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Didn’t a CNN reported get in trouble yesterday for tweeting exactly this.
fraught
Why not go back to the 40’s, 50’s when there was a strong belief that “There’s no such thing as rape.” It was proven by moving a beer can around on a table and challenging some one to drop a pencil through the drinking hole. This Akin thing is a variant which appeals to the MANY men who deeply believe that all rape allegations are false and for god’s sake rape is sex and sex is fun and so if the opportunity arises why not enjoy it? It’s a kind of Retro Beavis and Butthead Meme. (can I use that word here?) There is a market for this message and it’s going untapped. It’s gonna happen people. It’s all about re-packaging it as Permissible Rape.
El Cid
This reminds me — it’s probably time to outlaw the use of contraceptives by rapists, both legitimate and other kinds.
beltane
@Felinious Wench: What Akin is really saying is that from a male perspective, rape is safe since it cannot result in pregnancy and no long-lasting harm is done to the woman. Since the risk of pregnancy exists only when a woman consents, the only “safe” dealings with women involve rape. In this sense, Akin can be seen to be objectively pro-rape aside from being anti-woman.
Baud
@Susan of Texas:
I like how she can’t actually cite the study, but it’s her recollection that there is this one study out there which means they’re not all completely insane.
RP
Don’t a number of cultures, including Judaism, determine membership in the community by matrilianial descent in part because of rape? The mother’s identity is always certain, but the father’s is not.
jl
Why, this could be good news for Republicans!
Keeps the vicious garbage they try to hide in the news.
Remind people of vicious and insane GOP platform.
Will be enough loudmouth loons like Steve King to keep the most vicious and disgusting and stupid line in the news (that somehow, conception doesn’t happen in ‘legitimate rape’, so any rape victim who got pregnant was maybe… not really raped. eh?).
Chickenshit corporate news ‘analysis’ of how what Ryan wants do actually do is somehow different from Akin will be strained enough to be counterproductive.
Produce more frictions in vicious loonwing media world.
Only bad side of Akin staying in is that a cynical person might suspect that a corrupt and cynical GOP might publicly pull funding, but see that enough support gets to him on the sly to keep him in the race to win.
Let’s see that the status is tomorrow morning.
If GOP freaked enough, and he is really as unacceptable as they say he is, they will going to court to get him removed, right? That would be interesting.
Seth
Politico reporter.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/politico-reporter-removed-from-akin-coverage-after-tweets/
Jewish Steel
@jwb: As someone on a prev thread pointed out, poll watching in August, around the conventions, around the VP pick, is an exercise in self inflicted despair.
For sanity, stick to this: http://election.princeton.edu/
beltane
@Susan of Texas: Does she provide a link to this alleged study?
flukebucket
@Cassidy:
I saw that this morning and I still have not gotten over it. It is almost as if we have entered some kind of weird time warp or something.
Maybe King thinks that forcible rape has to include handcuffs and statutory rape only duct tape.
Maybe they have so many different kinds of rape to keep up with that they just can’t do it.
I don’t know what the deal is with rape and contraception and things that just have never been all of that controversial before but I think it could have something to do with the approaching asteroid. Some kind of unknown spooky action at a distance or something.
Hell if I know but I can tell you this. The fact that 12/21/2012 falls after the election and before the inauguration should cause popcorn futures to soar!
? Martin
@kay: The problem with these dipshits is that they can’t conceive of any reality that they can’t see with their own eyes. Pregnancy from inçest isn’t the sort of thing you bring up a the office holiday party, therefore it doesn’t exist in their eyes. Same with poverty, poor health care, and so on.
OTOH, creeping sharia law obviously exists because it makes them pee every time they think about it.
Marc
Dude, a Politico reporter already went there.
Incidentally, this guy reinforces my theory that people who publish underneath caricatures of themselves always, always, always turn out to be douchebags.
Felinious Wench
@kay:
The ignorance on display is good for women to see…they need to understand what we’re dealing with here. This is not an innocuous idiot. This is “you’re in a dorm room, a guy you know and have hung out with in public forces his way into your room and rapes you, but your body’s rape prevention shield didn’t kick in. You must have wanted it. So, he didn’t rape you. No crime here.”
Sickening.
MattW
Balloon Juice’s search function doesn’t work for me, so I can’t tell if anyone else has pointed out that Todd Akin’s understanding of female physiology seems similar to the Bene Gesserit sisterhood in Brian Herbert’s shitty Dune books. The Bene Gesserits can control virtually every aspect of their bodies. They can decide to conceive or not to conceive. They can even choose the gender of their child. They are immune to disease and poison. In Brian’s books, they even store a variety of diseases up their vajayjays to be used at will. When the Baron Harkonnen rapes Reverend Mother Mohiam, she releases a virus into him that causes his lean athletic physique to deteriorate into the gross, suspensor-supported blob from Frank Herbert’s far, far superior novels. Googling Todd Akin Harkonnen shows that I wasn’t the only one to notice the parallel between these stupid books and this stupid man.
Brachiator
@Susan of Texas:
Ho-leee shite.
She just double downed in the stupid. A single study, which she remembers and cannot cite. And too stupid to use the google (or to have an assistant do it) to find actual evidence which would refute her ignorance.
We may be about to jump into another round of Terry Schiavo cloud cuckoo land, in which conservatives circle their Internet wagons and only link and quote fools, idiots and ideological nitwits to convince themselves that made up bullshit is fact.
Tractarian
You gotta say this about disparaging rape victims – it is a high-risk, high-reward strategy for Republicans. On the one hand, suggesting that many rape victims are “illegitimate” might offend some delicate sensibilities in the Beltway and the Upper West Side. On the other hand, if Akin wins, then we’ve got a fundamentalist women-hater in the Senate. And that would be a HUGE VICTORY for fundamentalist woman-haters everywhere.
And the funny part is, Obama created this monster by hammering the GOP on its alleged “war on women.” If he never does this, the press never asks Akin any question about abortion, and we’re not even here today.
(For those without a sarcasm detector, this is an adaptation of Ezra Klein’s recent article about Paul Ryan.)
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@jwb:
Scott Brown’s been plastering the airwaves with the same sort of old boy/feel good ads he used in 2010, complete with U2-ish jangly guitar music in the background to serve as the soundtrack to the ‘struggles’ of his childhood.
Someone’s been adding several paragraphs’ worth of these tales of childhood struggle and woe to his Wikipedia entry, BTW.
(The article neglects to mention that his native Wakefield has a per household income of about $85K/yr. One of the richer northern burbs).
Console
@beltane:
It’s even more insidious then that. It’s the converse (inverse? I was never good at that shit) of the statement that’s important to his beliefs. The idea that if a woman gets pregnant, then she probably wasn’t raped. That’s a very perverted idea, but that makes it a lot easier to stomach not having a rape exemption for abortion. Add in the general lack of empathy it takes to be a conservative (it’s not like he’s ever going to get impregnated by a rapist) and it’s easy to see where he’s going with this.
Linda Featheringill
@Cassidy: #4
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Fuck you, Steve King.
dmsilev
@Susan of Texas: Citing Megan McArdle is sort of cheating, though. It’s like answering a challenge of “who will be the wrongest about pushing us into a war with Iran” with Bill Kristol. Well yes, of course, but who else?
After winning a Lifetime Wrongness Achievement award, her jersey is retired.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Violet: As I commented on a DK diary on the same subject: So that girl who was imprisoned by her father hand had four kids by him wanted it?
Susan of Texas
@beltane:
Sadly, no. But it has to be true because Megan McArdle comes from a family of academics who are actually intellectually intimidating.
pk
I wonder why no one talks about a different aspect of the theory that women who are legitimately raped cannot get pregnant. Why can’t law enforcement use this criterion? If a women claims to be pregnant due to rape then by Akin and Ryan’s argument the accused is innocent. Why cannot the police be allowed to use this argument? Why is the theory limited to abortion. Someone needs to ask these morons this question. 200 republicans sponsored the bill redefining rape for purposes of abortion, but why would such a law, if passed not spill over into law enforcement?
EconWatcher
By the way, I know some of you, like me, watch the Frum-O-Meter to get an idea of Mitt’s chances.
David Frum is a smart guy and a shameless opportunist. At times when it appears Mitt is doomed, he writes articles seeking to burnish his credentials as a reasonable and objective observer, criticizing both sides. When he’s feeling more optimistic about a sweet sinecure in the Romney Administration, he writes brazenly hackish articles attacking Dems.
Well, FWIW, Frum is apparently feeling frisky lately about GOP chances, because he just let loose an embarrassingly silly comparison of Akin’s despicable comment and some of Joe Biden’s more colorful gaffes, seeming to imply that Biden is as bad or worse. So the Frum-O-Meter is leaning in the Mittster’s direction. Take from that what you will.
Felinious Wench
@beltane:
The implication is trauma as birth control. If a woman is raped and gets pregnant, she wasn’t raped and there was no crime. If she is raped and there’s no pregnancy, her body worked as designed, no harm, no foul. She may have some pain and trouble walking for a day or two, and some emotional difficulties, but she should learn a lesson from this and not put herself in dangerous situations.
Sorry, but this is the reality of this whole conversation. It’s not abstract. It’s very personal to women, much like the Planned Parenthood funding from Komen. Rape, like breast cancer, transcends ideology.
scav
I think Steve King is just indicating he’s not going to believe statutory rape and/or inçest involving children results in pregnancy until he gets to watch the process with his own empirical eyes. If it hasn’t happened to his family or friends while he was there carefully verifying, it doesn’t exist. And oh, remember, we mustn’t elevate animals over people so no-holds barred there either.
Jennifer
@fraught: Hell, you don’t have to even go back that far.
Up until the 1970s, an eyewitness was required to prove rape in the state of New York. Otherwise the law looked at it as “he said, she said” so, you know, who are you gonna believe? Obviously thanks to setting the bar impossibly high for prosecution, most rapes went unreported.
That was only 40 years ago. Hard to believe, but then you hear some effluvia falling from the mouth of a shitstain like Akin, and it reminds you that no matter how far we’ve come, not everyone got on board the bus to the future.
Linda Featheringill
@catclub:
Interesting point.
I did a search yesterday [don’t have time to find my sources again] and came up with figures of around 5% conception rate associated with rape and around 2.5% associated with consensual intercourse.
Gindy51
Not that any of the GOPper pundits will pay attention to this but here we have a little info from the science people….
Sex and the Female Brain: Protein in semen acts on female brain to prompt ovulation:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120820152100.htm
catclub
@pragmatism: and if it is on L&O SVU, it must be true.
Agree on Ice-T
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
Not if she is still playing.
If only she retired from whatever it is she thinks she is doing, and maybe took up cooking or travel writing, or something.
Linda Featheringill
@Tokyokie:
I assumed he was a pedophile at heart and seldom thought of children that were post-pubescent.
Percysowner
As mentioned above, Law and Order, SVU and the various CSIs have let rapists know that wearing a condom can keep them from being convicted, which would play into lower pregnancy rates. Plus, with Plan B, rape victims can now make certain they don’t get pregnant after a rape. It may be offered at the hospital to rape victims. So I can see where rape victims may now have fewer pregnancies than during consensual sex. Of course, in the case of Plan B, the right to lifers want to take away THAT option as well.
Linda Featheringill
FYWP. In moderation. Was it because of love of children or onset of sexual maturity?
Mino
There’s a thesis subject…How does the rate of conception change in a population when said population is subject to rape and pillage? Bosnia would probably have a few statistics.
Susan of Texas
@Brachiator: She just wrote an article for the Daily Beast in which she noted that greedy people fell for Ponzi schemes and Social Security claims. She lets her audience fill in the blank; SS=Ponzi scheme, and the people who put their income into SS should not expect to get it back.
She’s still in the game.
Petorado
Damn! The wheels are turning to make an A-holish comment made by a real A-hole into “part of a national dialogue” and an item of “healthy debate.” Rather than falling for this trope, the attention should shine on how he’s using victims of a horrible crime as a ploy for his bid to gain higher office. He’s a politician trying to tell other people how government should determine their most personal decisions while he’s trying to say he’s for small government at the same time.
If we go down the “debate” route, Akin gets to be a hero for taking a brave but unpopular stand, with double points from the base because he pissed off liberals also, too. This needs to get filed under “just like Schaivo,” with pols legislating good rapes and bad rapes, and not be about looking at pregnancy rates.
scav
@Linda Featheringill: Or vibrant and usually frowned upon physical expressions of great love of family members not directly attached to your own body?
Basilisc
“Akin may be wrong on some of the obstetrical details, but his remarks on pregnancy reflect a larger, more fundamental point, one that is still instinctively understood by Americans outside the New York-Washington-Chicago orbit but that still, after four years, continues to elude most Democrats, excepting perhaps wise elder statesman such as Joe Lieberman, Artur Davis and Ben Nelson. And Barack Obama, in attempting to force women to undergo newly developed, fundamentally alien procedures such as “contraception”, certainly doesn’t get it.”
What do you think? Tomorrow’s Bobo, or maybe Clive Crook, or George Will – amirite?
beltane
@Console: Yes, in the middle ages it was commonly assumed that conception could only occur if a woman enjoyed the act, making pregnancy an iron-clad defense in rape cases. This all goes back to Christian doctrine regarding the inherent impurity and lasciviousness of women and the idea that all females other than the Mother of God are evil succubi plotting and scheming to seduce men and sap them of their vital essence. The debate over whether or not these filthy polluted creatures even had souls raged on for centuries.
I wish I were exaggerating, but this view of women was central to Christian thought from Paul right through the 19th century, and being that most Republicans are living in a self-imposed 19th century it is not surprising that they retain these odious beliefs.
Redshift
@EconWatcher:
I take from it that Frum, like nearly all pundits, does not understand the concept of a VP/convention bounce, and is going to get all excited about the race getting “closer” for the next month.
Cassidy
@Linda Featheringill: I disagree. He specifically said that no he knows has personally brought it to his attention. He used very deliberate wording. It is not a mystery that young girls, as young as 11 and 12, can conceive. I suspect that 9 times out of 10, if they do it’s due to incest or rape, but that’s my own assumption. But regardless, he knows it can happen, just no one he knows has personally brought that to his attention.
Redshift
@Baud:
If the organs in question were intelligently designed for the purpose Akin imagines, vagina dentata would be a real thing.
I wish someone would ask Akin about it. He probably knows a doctor who has told him that’s true, too.
Felinious Wench
@Mino:
And Eastern Congo, where nearly two million women have been raped with women victimized at a rate of nearly one every minute. 1/4th of the female population has been raped.
Which is another question for Akin…what about gang rape? Where does that fall in the spectrum of “she got pregnant, not a rape.”
This is a goddamned violent crime, not a nice little discussion on the mysteries of the female body and how wonderfully it protects itself.
Culture of Truth
I saw a contrarian analysis this morning and now I can’t find it.
I would note that after retreating slightly Akin himself appears to be doubling down.
jl
@Basilisc:
Let them try. These vicious lying scumbags seem to think that they can sell any scam in a pinch to win an election. Just gotta get the marketing line out and get it to work of 30, 60 days or so.
But they have repeatedly failed with Social Security, because their BS was just too transparent. I think same thing will happen here, because the BS is transparent, and you have the added issues of it being offensive, and egregiously, patently, ignorant and stupid.
Redshift
@Cassidy: It’s the essence of modern conservatism. If it didn’t happen to someone I know and care about, it can’t be real.
fraught
Didn’t Ayn Rand have some of her heroines raped? I seem to remember Dominique Francon and a quarry man. Is this where some of these Rand-nerds get their earliest sexual information? I can see Paul Ryan flogging himself into a 14 yo frenzy reading that section of The Fountainhead. (I mean I can’t actually see him, um, I can imagine uh…oh, never mind. yuck!)
UncommonSense
@Violet:
Yep, Steve King counts.
schrodinger's cat
Saletan will get there first. Followed by Bobo and Chunky Bobo.
dance around in your bones
King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or inzest.
__
TuiMel
Bad things happen to Republicans when they baldly state the superstitions underpinning their policy positions.
Southern Beale
Bobo or Chuck Todd.
It will be a man for sure.
schrodinger's cat
This entire debate shows that to the GOP fundamentalists, women are the lesser gender. Someone who said Taliban but with higher BMI was right on the money.
Southern Beale
Let’s not forget “Dr.” Ron Paul talked about “honest” rape earlier this year. They’re all the same, all of them.
dance around in your bones
Fucking moderation for the in.cest word.
JGabriel
__
__
DougJ @ Top:
Yep. Seth @ 37 and Marc @ 42 got it, Dave Catanese of Politico already went there:
__
and
__
and
__
Politico has pulled Catanese from the Akin story, but no other repercussions so far. I guess we’ll see whether or not they follow through with firing him, as they did with Joe Williams when he said that Romney is comfortable with white people but not so much with others.
I’m guessing they don’t fire Catanese, because it’s okay if you agree with crazy Republican misogyny.
.
hhex65
@fraught: If memory serves, most of the ‘sex’ scenes in her books were really rape scenes because the predator knows best and is in the right.
JGabriel
__
__
fraught:
Pretty much all of them. I’ve long suspected that her entire oeuvre of power worship based in greed is actually a twisted expression of rape trauma, inflicted by someone she admired and identified with.
.
Linda Featheringill
@scav:
Moderation:
O
Well said! :-)
lacp
@Violet: Isn’t he originally from MO?
Jennifer
I think others have already pointed this out, but one would expect fewer pregnancies from rape than consensual sex these days, since rape victims are routinely given Plan B.
Which Akin and co. also want to outlaw.
scav
So Newswiki merely aggregates the news but doesn’t fact check it while Politico (et Steve Catanese) opines studiously ignoring all the factually untrue statements someone actually said but positing other things same individual might have said. The exciting new world of new media market niches.
dance around in your bones
DougJ! Hep me, hep me!
Comment 81 has been sent to perdition.
Linda Featheringill
Uh . . . most of the literature I’ve found shows about twice the rate of conception associated with rape than with consensual intercourse.
Which is different from what I’m reading here.
IowaOldLady
Steve King drives me to despair. Honest to god, I think he could behead someone on TV and his district would still elect him. What is wrong with these people?
I live in Bruce Braley’s district, which is next to King’s. I don’t even like to go to that side of the state.
Bobby Thomson
@catclub:
More frequently than you would think, but the purpose is to avoid leaving DNA.
Culture of Truth
No.
scav
@Linda Featheringill: well, as post-rape treatment changes over time and space, it would be hard to make firm statements one way or another statistically. (Human behavior is just so darned variable!) The biological mechanisms are utterly lacking, so that’s pretty firm.
Napoleon
@lacp:
He is – a Fed Ct house there is named after his father.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Rand’s crap has easily been outdone by stuff that you can read in some romance novels and the nuttier fan fiction.
And I recall some sick fantasies in many supposed legitimate works of literature (e.g., The Man Sitting in the Corridor by Marguerite Duras). Lit majors ignore and abstract the obvious SM bent of the short story.
It’s a waste of time to try to facilely connect fantasies to trauma, even for someone like Rand.
@Jennifer:
Again, I reference the very good analysis on this which I referenced earlier in this thread.
There are all kinds of variables at play here. For example, a woman might be on oral contraceptives, which would reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of pregnancy; and even here in addition to all the other horrible trauma would be fear of pregnancy and infection from a sexually transmitted disease.
Bottom line is that Akin and anyone who tries to defend him are working from ideology and sick religious zeal. They do not have any science or statistics at their disposal.
Felinious Wench
@Culture of Truth:
Your response was “no.”
Much like voter fraud, it’s a right-wing talking point/meme. ~3% are considered unjustified reports (vs. flat-out lies to try and convict some innocent man).
Rapes not reported is a much higher statistic than rapes falsely reported. Rapes not reported is ~54% in the U.S.
wrb
Somewhere a book is being rushed to press
“Everything About Female Secretions That Liberals Don’t Want You To Know”
Culture of Truth
Lying Drug Addict Courthouse?
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
As our own Tom Levenson has shown, she can be staggeringly wrong when she writes about those things, too. Her talent for wrongness is truly versatile.
Felinious Wench
@Brachiator:
And of course, that crazy thing called ovulation. :)
Lady parts, how do they work?
wrb
@Culture of Truth:
So the lynchings were justified?
Mart
Black man attacks white woman = legitimate rape. White man attacks white woman = misunderstanding.
jl
@Brachiator:
Thanks for reference on rape, conception and miscarriage.
Only problem is that it is a blog from Scientific American, which is concerned with science, empirical evidence, and logical argument, and therefore
Satanicsomewhat suspect junk science from GOP point of view.If people want to debate the evidence on rape and conception, fine.
But the bottom line is that Akin talked vicious ignorant nonsense, Medieval superstition garbage. I have never heard of any known biological process that is triggered by trauma or stress to prevent a woman from conceiving from intercourse. That is what Akin said.
It is pure ignorant BS nonsense. People can discuss out of curiosity all they want, but I think it is insulting, and misleading, to give any credit to what Akin said whatever.
So, to not be insulting and not be misleading, all such discussions at this time should start with the disclaimer: What Akin asserted was vicious, insulting ignorance that has absolutely no basis in fact, not a shred of evidence in its favor.
dance around in your bones
Muchas gracias, whoever released my comment from the hellhole :)
I don’t know why it seems so important – that instant gratification thing, I suppose.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: If only she retired from whatever it is she thinks she is doing, and maybe took up cooking or travel writing, or something.
Good point. It’s just that with these topics, the damage she inflicts would be limited to a smaller group.
@Felinious Wench:
Totally understandable.
What is both sad and maddening here is the number of people, especially conservatives (men and women) who believe such crazy stuff because it reinforces their religious and social beliefs.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
You’ve already given in to regressive framing with your 9/10 point. Maybe only 9 of 10 involve violence, but girls that age aren’t capable of giving consent. That makes 100% of their sexual encounters rape.
Linda Featheringill
@Mart:
I’d really like to argue against that statement but I can’t. Sigh.
Cassidy
Unfortunately, I think this is more accurate.
sagesource
@Cassidy: Since he’s a Republican, I guess it’s important to be reassured he hasn’t personally jumped his sister, his daughter, or his assorted livestock. Though given the sort of creature he is, I would suspect that it would only be the last of these categories that would be in any danger of pregnancy in his case.
Culture of Truth
@wrb: To what lynchings are you referring
Svensker
@beltane:
In fairness to the Middle Ages, no one back then knew what was going on inside a woman’s body. They could see that a man had to orgasm for pregnancy to occur — why not posit the same process on the woman’s side? Absent knowledge of ovulation, etc., it makes fairly good sense.
Akin, et al, don’t have the excuse of living hundreds of years ago, of course.
pragmatism
Y’all’z can’t judge ‘cuz you don’t know. Before he passed away, Steve Jobs (as a newly minted hero of the right for pushing the kenyusurper on economic issues) included a smart uterus in the next apple update.
Linda Featheringill
@Svensker:
Have you looked at him? That may have been when he learned about the birds and the bees as a young lad.
Quaker in a Basement
If rape rarely results in pregnancy, how do they know it’s the woman’s body that makes the difference? Maybe rapists are shooting inferior sperm.
jl
And same goes for debates about the rate of false accusations, or false claims, of rape. Fine topic for investigation and discussion. But, has nothing to do with what Atkin actually said, and very harmful policies he was advocating that will get women and children killed and crippled.
JPL
@Quaker in a Basement: Now Akin is going to say that men have special protection… Don’t give him any ideas.
Culture of Truth
@Quaker in a Basement: ah nice try, but in their world legit rape is defined by the woman’s actions and desires
Felinious Wench
@Brachiator:
It’s the usual pattern. Twist or invent science to reflect religion instead of adjust religion to reflect scientific reality. But this time, it’s a violent crime they’re fucking around with.
@jl
Well said.
Felinious Wench
@Quaker in a Basement:
I’m sure that’s a feature God built into the rapist model.
Chris T.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Rick Perry is begging for Federal funds for mosquito control because of West Nile Virus. Maybe someone should tell him that if a man has a legitimate mosquito bite, his body produces secretions that prevent disease, and anyway, if he were modestly dressed so that all his skin is covered, no mosquito could bite him in the first place….
pragmatism
@Chris T.: an oldie but a goodie: http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-sends-troops-to-west-nile,57/
sharl
@Susan of Texas:
This will never stop being funny. Kudos to you, and to TBogg for making it one of his tags.
Stooleo
@JGabriel:
All I have ever needed to know about Ayn Rand in one easy flowchart
mdblanche
@MattW:
FTFY
Poopyman
An hour until the deadline, and there’s no quitting for Todd Akin, according to the WaPo.
(Maybe I’d better scroll through earlier comments here to see if they’ve been scooped … again.)
Zach
This probably is true to an extent; perhaps people have even studied it. Unfortunately, it makes zero sense to think this might be true (and much, much, much less sense to take it to the extreme like Akin) without also recognizing that, to the extent that this is true, it’s a product of evolution. I don’t think it’s really worth taking the time to google to see whether or not Akin’s a Darwinist.
Similarly, the argument that only heterosexual couplings make sense because only heterosexual couplings bear children makes little sense coming from people who don’t “believe” in evolution.
Dr. Squid
@Console: That’s the contrapositive, where, If A then B and If not B then not A are equivalent.
That is: If raped, then not pregnant? What they mean is: If pregnant, then not raped.
David in NY
@Culture of Truth:
“some can agree that all rapes that are reported are not actually rapes?
No.”
You need to check the California Innocence Project web site.
I don’t mean this happens much; but it does happen. And some people get convicted based on it.
“[Brian Banks was convicted of rape.] Then, last year [after his release from five years of prison], his accuser reached out to him on Facebook. He asked her if she would meet with him and a private investigator and she agreed. At the meeting, which was recorded without Gibson’s knowledge, she acknowledged that Banks did not rape her. But when asked if she would sign a document to that effect or speak with prosecutors she declined, according to Banks and [the investigator].”
http://www.californiainnocenceproject.org/index.php/component/content/article/8-news/78-puracal
Edit: Also, http://blacksportsonline.com/home/2012/05/wanetta-gibsons-mom-wanda-rhodes-plotted-brian-banks-false-rape-accusation-for-money/
Linda Featheringill
Regarding false accusations of rape:
If a woman who claims rape goes to a hospital for examination and treatment, and if her vagina is found to be torn and bruised, how can anyone say it wasn’t rape?
srv
According to the Old Testament, it’s a legitimate rape if she’s a virgin and you pay dad 50 shekels to make her your wife. Now, if she’s not a virgin, then she’s a whore, and it just doesn’t matter.
Obviously, today, liberalism does not follow God’s Law, so men are forced to become criminals and women are allowed to make their own choices.
This is the crux of the GOPs hangups.
beltane
@srv: And that’s all it comes down to with these people really. No further analysis is needed.
shortstop
Steve King should talk to Phill [sic] Kline. A centerpiece of Kline’s give-us-all-the-private-medical-information-of-all-abortion-patients campaign was that he needed this info to protect child rape and incest victims, whom he insisted were being bussed en masse to Planned Parenthood by their rapists for secret abortions, while PP actively covered up the rape and abuse.
Princess Leia
@Svensker: They didn’t realize that women were anything but receptacles for the miniature baby implanted by the male. Hence, as well, the Church teaching against anything that might “kill” the baby juice. At least that is what they taught us in Moral theology class at the Catholic College.
shortstop
Let’s try that again with the I-word broken up…
Steve King should talk to Phill [sic] Kline. A centerpiece of Kline’s give-us-all-the-private-medical-information-of-all-abortion-patients campaign was that he needed this info to protect child rape and in.cest victims, whom he insisted were being bussed en masse to Planned Parenthood by their rapists for secret abortions, while PP actively covered up the rape and abuse.
Culture of Truth
Akin In it to Win It;
Matalin Offer Dems Highly Useful Free Advice
“Democrats are mistaken if they believe an attack on life
or a full-throated defense of abortion would accrue to their
political benefit in this cycle, they could make it part of their base-energizing effort, but this electorate does not want to have an election about abortion.”
AA+ Bonds
I believe the ‘contrarian’ position is that McCaskill may still lose to him given Missouri’s voting patterns
‘Contrarian’ in this case means ‘the position McCaskill’s supporters should be taking in public to raise money’
David in NY
But this is irrelevant. It definitely happens sometimes, and statistics show it’s about 5% of all rapes. That’s a lot of women. And they should not have to bear the child of some thug. Period.
Culture of Truth
AA+ Bonds
I think that Megan McArdle sort of has to defend apologists for rape in order to achieve MeganMcArdleness
There is no real distinguishing between her writing and her slavish terror and obsequiousness toward patriarchy
If she failed in her duty as a sentry even once, who would ever hire her again
This is really what girds libertarians in my experience: personal insecurity leads to envy of the elite, which transfers to worship of the elite out of fear of failure if one does otherwise
Linda Featheringill
@Culture of Truth:
Akin:
But we could talk about lack of sympathy for victims of heterosexual violence.
David in NY
@Linda Featheringill:
Rape often happens and it can usually be proven. But false accusations are sometimes made. Life is complicated, and so are people. See my links above.
rlrr
@Poopyman:
Isn’t it 2 hours? I thought it was 5:00 PM Central Time…
Interrobang
@wrb: Only if you think summary execution without benefit of due process is the appropriate response to rape.
Take your “bitchez be lyin’, amirite?” BS elsewhere.
AA+ Bonds
I want to have an election about candy and liquor
pseudonymous in nc
Steve “Tancredo” King’s get-out is bullshit. The question was about passing legislation, and there are plenty of laws that get passed without being a “circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way.”
AA+ Bonds
We go to war with the election we have, though
Joel
I kind of miss “pooping on Niall Ferguson” day.
Joel
I kind of miss “pooping on Niall Ferguson” day.
scav
Akin sure can pontificate about what women’s secret bodily functions do and what the electorate secretly really wants this election to be about — wonder if he’s equally sure about what a woman secretly means when she says no?
Poopyman
@rlrr: Yoiks! Could be, I’m EDT-centric.
SatanicPanic
@Culture of Truth:
I read this as- if a rape is reported, it is not actually rape. Which I’m pretty sure the author didn’t intend. At least, I hope. Or maybe the author just wanted to point out that some can agree with that. Some sociopaths anyway. The sentence is very poorly worded.
wrb
@Culture of Truth:
The many lynching (and trials and executions) of black men accused of raping white women.
People like Faulkner and Harper Lee seemed to think that sometimes the accusations could be false.
AA+ Bonds
We will all have the opportunity to vote for either banker-controlled party soon enough so just simmer down, enjoy August
NotMax
While Akin’s medieval ignorance and expressed allegiance to tropes such as mythical sperm death panels inside women’s bodies should be sufficient to deny him a seat at the table of public political discourse, let’s not lose sight that his views on abortion for the forcibly fetused mesh exactly with those of the GOP’s platform and spokespeople/candidates accepted as credible in the public sphere such as Santorum, whose implication, among other things, was that rape is God’s will and that a girl or woman, regardless of her circumstances, beliefs or tenets, must be mandated and required to accept “the gift” (and presumably the responsibilities attendant to rearing any offspring for 18 years).
Linda Featheringill
@David in NY:
Identity in cases of stranger rape can also be problematic at times.
jl
@srv:
” According to the Old Testament, it’s a legitimate rape if she’s a virgin and you pay dad 50 shekels to make her your wife. ”
I think the woman has to yell loud enough for towns people will come running and witness the crime, too.
So, you see, all these problems with rape are because these damn women rape victims do not yell loud enough. Now, I feel very sorry for the victim, and it IT IS, I want to emphasize IT IS tragic, and rapist should be punished, but a lot of these problems would be avoided if the woman would exercise due diligence. (/snark)
Behold the world the GOP wants to take us back to.
jurassicpork
Assclowns of the Week #91: Akin to a Fool edition is up and I’ll give you three guesses which guy finished 1-2.
Violet
@srv: This is exactly right. It’s all about religion.
I don’t think Akin’s going anywhere. He’s taking a principled stand. His religious nut supporters want him to stay. He’s a True Believer and he’s going to Carry The Message of God to The People.
Calouste
@scav:
So Steve King is saying that all the underage girls he ever raped never got pregnant?
David in NY
@Culture of Truth: OK, I read that as I thought it was intended (“all rapes that are reported are not [all] actually rapes”). I wholeheartedly agree that not “all” rape reports are false, and don’t think that was what was intended (but we’re in looneyville, so maybe I was wrong).
Culture of Truth
I’m not a grammer nazi, but people should say what they mean, especially with regard to something like this, and this: “all rapes that are reported are not actually rapes” is nonsensical. That is all.
For the record, I am against lynchings and convicting innocent people of crimes.
Linda Featheringill
@NotMax: #157
“forcibly fetused”
:-)
Linda Featheringill
@Calouste:
I think so.
Poopyman
@rlrr: You are right, AFAICT. Also, I went looking and found this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article that says he could still take himself off the ballot via court order:
Culture of Truth
I mean, really, if you’re going jump on twitter to be contrarian and clever in a fucking rape debate, choose your words fucking carefully.
David in NY
@Linda Featheringill: Oh sure. The misidentifications seem the most common problem.
And I seem to have misinterpreted the comment (not yours) that I was originally responding to.
So nevermind.
scav
@Calouste: Basically, as best I can tell it was the dog he had to transport across state lines to deal with the sad-eyed progeny. Or, so I’ve been told.
NotMax
Romney sticks a finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.
Violet
@Calouste:
And the underage boys he raped didn’t get pregnant either.
David in NY
@Culture of Truth: I concede: you are a far more astute reader of nonsense than I.
shortstop
@Culture of Truth:
I guess not. ;)
SatanicPanic
@wrb: That’s a pretty apples to oranges comparison.
wrb
@Culture of Truth:
Oh, I see. It was grammar snark. Good grammar snark.
jibeaux
@kay: I live in a state where you can be married at 16 if you have your parents’ permission or are pregnant. It has been pointed out to me before that many, many girls in this situation are marrying men older than 18 and thus in a sense the state is legitimizing statutory rape.
Litlebritdifrnt
Akin is going to be on Hannity in a minute, it should be interesting as there have been callers from MO all afternoon telling Sean that he is wrong and Akin should not drop out.
Stand by:
Replaying the remarks right now.
Akin quoting the founder of the National Right To Life, said he misplaced the word.
jibeaux
@NotMax: His fellow Missourians? Half of them plan on voting for him. I think you’re thinking of “Republicans on the national scene trying to win the race at any cost”, there, Mitt-o.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
But how can he even see his finger when his head is stuck so far up his ass?
David in NY
I would only humbly request that Culture of Truth insert a /grammarnazi tag after his next post like that.
? Martin
So, Akin has what, an hour and a half to file? Tick, tick, tick…
Downpuppy
Edit : Missed 20 or so posts, so ummm – If you’re unfortunate enough to see McArdle’s twitter feed, she’s spent all day trying & failing to attack james Fallows, who she appears to blame for getting her canned from The Atlantic.
chopper
@NotMax:
lol. given the clout romney has in his party, i expect akin to stay in.
John O
I do a pretty good job of not blog-whoring out here, as consistently as I’m at BJ, but isn’t this about right to you folks?
Just sayin’.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@fraught: Congratulations Fraught; “Paul Ryan flogging like a 14 year old to Atlas Shrugs” has entered the conversation.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: I heard a woman from MO call into Limbaugh’s program and say the same thing. Said she voted for Akin and he should stay in the race. And they’re tired of “the Republican establishment” telling them what to do.
Limbaugh sounded practically mournful trying to talk to her. On the one hand, she’s obviously a True Believer Republican, so she’s GOOD, but she can’t understand why she shouldn’t stop supporting Akin so she’s BAD. Limbaugh was fit to be tied.
dance around in your bones
I just wish these asswipes (King, Akin) could be female for just one day/week/month/several months.
These things just don’t seem so important if YOU aren’t the one getting pregnant.
OMFG no, it’s all about the fetus, not the LIVING SENTIENT HUMAN BREATHING ALREADY ESTABLISHED LIFE FORM!
Nah, it’s all about the zygote. however it was created.
Gawd fucking damnit all to hell.
Litlebritdifrnt
Hannity just read Romney’s statement to Akin who is calling himself a “braveheart”, the defense of the unborn is too important to run away from. Hannity talking about all of the others that have asked him to quit.
Hannity’s tone is a little less confrontational today.
Poopyman
@Litlebritdifrnt: “Misplaced” the word? Look, I’ve misplaced my keys and misplaced my glasses, but every time I’ve misplaced a word it’s because I set it down somewhere in my brain and then can’t remember where.
He may mean “misused”, but that would be admitting he was wrong. No, I’m pretty sure he’s hiding behind jibberish.
jwb
@Downpuppy: Oh, this could be awesome if McMegan spends the next year stalking Fallows.
dmsilev
@Litlebritdifrnt: A braveheart? Does that mean this will end with Akin being drawn and quartered by a team of horses while he screams out “Freedom!”?
Man, GOP internal battles are *tough*.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
Yeah I heard her, it would appear that the people in MO don’t like being told what to do.
Jennifer
Damn straight he’s hiding behind gibberish.
Set aside the “legitimate rape” construction. The rest of the statement is pure-D bullshit. He claimed that DOCTORS had told him that women have some super-secret-sperm-killing shield that’s deployed when they weren’t asking for it. That’s not a “misplaced” word. That’s a whole fucking string of stupid, which he either believes or lied about believing, because otherwise it couldn’t have come out of his festering gob.
NotMax
Breaking news just announced that “Mr. Serious” Ryan called for Akin to drop out.
Litlebritdifrnt
Akin says he is “standing on principle” Hannity is now resorting to whining.
Elizabelle
T(eabagger) minus ten.
dmsilev
@NotMax: Given that they basically share the same views on abortion, I don’t suppose Ryan is calling for Ryan to drop out?
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Not surprised Hannity’s tone is less confrontational. The GOP is starting to realize they’re stuck with Akin and now have to pivot to try to make the best of it. Hysterical.
? Martin
@Jennifer:
He’s a Republican. Gibberish is their native language.
dmsilev
@Elizabelle: I think MO keeps Central time. The GOP still has another hour to find a horse’s head for Akin’s bed or something.
Jennifer
@Litlebritdifrnt: WHAT “principle”? The principle that no matter what stupid shit you believe and intend to legislate into law, it shouldn’t be a disqualification for office?
NotMax
So both Romney and Ryan now on record as calling for Akin to – um, er – abort his campaign.
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
I haven’t seen a single person here try to claim that there are never any false accusations of rape. What we’re pointing out here is that pregnancy after a reported rape is not proof positive that the rape accusation was false, which is what Akin is claiming.
scav
There is no ringmaster at this circus.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Can’t say I blame them. The people of MO, or at least the GOP primary voters, selected Akin fair and square. They should be allowed to keep him as their candidate. “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM!”
Jim C
@Violet:
My reaction to this: Steve King has never seen Chinatown.
Elizabelle
@dmsilev:
Oh no. Central time, you say.
Claire McCaskill’s fingers are probably crossed tighter than any of ours.
Scotty
The whole Akin issue has blown up because of his ridiculous statement on an incorrect belief in a biological process that shaped his policy making decisions.
Explain to me how that is different to arguing that global warming does not exist, an incorrect belief in climatology and meteorology that shape many policy making decisions of Republicans?
Why is outrage for one incorrect scientific belief rightly discussed by the media while another incorrect scientific belief is taken as serious discussion? Why not treat climate deniers as equal opportunity morons?
shortstop
@Jennifer: Yes, and also too, everyone needs to stop bullying and persecuting him. And what about his free speech rights? Free speech means you should be able to say whatever you want without hateful, vengeful people refusing to support or vote for you as a result.
mdblanche
@NotMax: Now really, is that any way to treat your bill’s co-sponsor?
shortstop
@Scotty: For that matter, why do we all “believe in” gravity? It’s only a theory, right?
Bobby Thomson
@Poopyman: Correct, and it wouldn’t be hard to get that court order, either. Democrats in NJ waited until October 1, 2002 to replace Torricelli with Lautenberg.
Violet
I think we need an Akin Watch thread for the final hour countdown.
Anya
So, it looks like Akin is staying in the race. What does this mean? Can the GOP still force him out after the deadline? If not, can they support him with ads, and would any big name GOP want to be seen with him?
I know a lot of you are convinced that Missouri voters are so batshitinsane that they will elect this guy even after his craziness was revealed to the world. But I don’t see how the republican party can support him after they publicly condemned and distanced themselves from him.
Anya
So, it looks like Akin is staying in the race. What does this mean? Can the GOP still force him out after the deadline? If not, can they support him with ads, and would any big name GOP want to be seen with him?
I know a lot of you are convinced that Missouri voters are so batshitinsane that they will elect this guy even after his craziness was revealed to the world. But I don’t see how the republican party can support him after they publicly condemned and distanced themselves from him.
Anya
So, it looks like Akin is staying in the race. What does this mean? Can the GOP still force him out after the deadline? If not, can they support him with ads, and would any big name GOP want to be seen with him?
I know a lot of you are convinced that Missouri voters are so batshitinsane that they will elect this guy even after his craziness was revealed to the world. But I don’t see how the republican party can support him after they publicly condemned and distanced themselves from him.
shortstop
@Bobby Thomson: It might be hard. MO has a Democratic secretary of state who might put up a fight in court if Akin tries it.
scav
@Scotty: Does the phrase “Beam me up” bring any statements of local conditions to mind?
Violet
@Scotty: Yes, it’s appalling. But given the poor quality of the press we’ve got and the idiocy of the Republicans, I’m glad we’re getting any kind of scientific discussion about anything.
NotMax
@Violet
My understanding is that he can wait until as late as Sept. 25, but if he pulls out after today’s deadline, any and all costs involved in his doing so, including reprinted ballots, are charged to him/his campaign.
Bobby Thomson
@Anya:
Ha! As if they’ve ever cared about intellectual consistency. Shit, Mitt will flip flop in the same god damn sentence.
Anya
I swear I did not push send several times. Also, too, I tried to delete duplicate comments to no avail.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Second the call for a new thread/open thread.
Pet pictures optional.
John O
@Bobby Thomson:
LOL. “Like.”
Romney is one soul-less dude, especially for a Mormon, as best I can see. Two GOP candidates in a row with daddy-issues. Super.
shortstop
@NotMax: He can wait as late as September 25 if the court allows it. There will be people challenging him if he tries it.
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: De minimis costs that the Republicans gladly would front in exchange for Senate control. Of course, they would prefer to renege on a promise to pay them and then dare MO to do anything about it (because that’s just how they roll), but if they have to pay it it’s chump change.
Anya
@Bobby Thomson: True. But this is different. I don’t think they will get a pass from the media this time.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle: Five PM is NOT a drop-dead deadline, according to this article.
Violet
@Anya: Akin can take himself off the ballot after today if he gets a court order and his campaign pays for ballot reprinting costs. Or something like that. I think they have until Sept. 25th for that.
As for the GOP supporting him…I have no idea how it’s going to work. The whole thing is hilarious. They condemned him so quickly, probably figuring they could get him to leave, and now he’s not leaving and they’re stuck.
Brachiator
@Scotty:
Most informed people do. Especially when dealing with those deniers who claim that the Deity would never let man destroy the planet.
What’s your point?
Ash Can
And in other news, via one of the commenters at LGF, Reince Priebus declares that
Mitt Romney needs to sit his sorry ass down, shut the goddamned hell up, and do as he’s fucking well toldthe official GOP platform for the Republican National Convention is “the platform of the Republican Party; it’s not the platform of Mitt Romney.”NotMax
@mdblanche
Appearances point to Steely Dan’s album title, Pretzel Logic, being a Ryan favorite. :)
Poopyman
@NotMax: I’m sure the Missouri Republican Party will gladly eat those costs if he just agrees to do it.
ETA:@Bobby Thomson: Jeez, I’m a slow reader today.
Leo
Based on my (quick and non-authoritative) review of Missouri statutes, Akin will not have any trouble withdrawing after today. The statute says that leave to withdraw “shall be freely given” by the court. That means it will be given almost automatically. The only limitation that I know if is that Akin will be on the hook for the price of reprinting the ballots, but anyone here want to bet that Akin will have a line of donors a mile long to cover that cost if he moves to drop out?
scav
@Ash Can: Circus! Circus! Circus!!!!
(sorry)
shortstop
@Ash Can: Damn. That’s cold.
@Leo: Ah, okay. I suspected he might have trouble obtaining the order. Well, I’ll just enjoy the gay mad whirl until then.
dmsilev
@Violet: I imagine that once it sinks in that he’s planning to stay the course, some GOP-backing billionaire will set up a “disposable” superPAC expressly to funnel money to Akin.
Unless, of course, it looks like he’s a dead duck. Unlikely, of course, but possible. In that case, they let him swing in the breeze, as a warning to the Tea Party types about not getting too full of themselves.
Shawn in ShowMe
@NotMax:
If Ryan wanted to keep his name out of Todd Akin discussion, he should have kept his trap shut and let his boss’s words carry the day. Who the hell is in charge over at Romney headquarters?
Violet
@dmsilev: If the GOP establishment/money folks stay out of the race, it’ll just fuel his Braveheart fantasies. I’d expect various forced birth organizations to step up and host fundraiser for his “to support his brave stance.”
Poopyman
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Given their long and delicious history of fuckups, I’m going to guess it’s the guy delivering the pizza.
Mart
No need for him to drop. I live in rich white STL suburbs and I think he wins. The dumber the candidate the better they like them. Also blue dog Claire has done nothing to fire up the base, other than being an early supporter of Obama four years ago.
Brachiator
OT, but on theme. The GOP insults gays. Gay Republicans don’t have a problem with it (from yahoo news).
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan accuses Obama of”dropping his veil” at times.
Good old GOP, doing their best to make us forget about Akin.
Poopyman
@Violet: I for one look forward to his campaign appearances with his face painted blue. (How does that work in a red state?)
Ash Can
@scav:
@shortstop:
It almost sounds like they’re paving the way for a dump-Romney effort at the convention.
::munches popcorn::
Poopyman
@Brachiator: “Drops his veil?” Sounds like he’s looking forward to Lindsay Graham’s dance at the convention afterparty.
Ash Can
@Brachiator: Shorter Log Cabin Republicans: “Beat us again; we deserve it.”
Geoduck
@Ash Can: I imagine some would like to dump him, but it’s just not going to happen. I predict, apart from the usual insane speechifying, the convention ends up being quite dull.
scav
File under seriously unexpected source of info: The Chi Trib has Doctor behind Todd Akin’s rape theory was a Romney surrogate in 2007 so it should be in several other papers.
WASHINGTON — After saying he “can’t defend” Rep. Todd Akin’s suggestion that women don’t get pregnant from rape,
Violet
@Poopyman: He can just paint his face red and say he’s a Braveheart for a new generation.
@Ash Can: Who would they dump him for at this point?
Also, we now have Tropical Storm Isaac and current models are sending it to Florida, specifically the west side, early next week. Gosh, what else is happening on Florida’s west coast early next week? Hmm…
lamh35
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wait, so Limpballs audience was calling saying that Akin should stay in and now KKKlanity’s audience is calling in saying Akin should stay in. Serves the idjits right. They’ve stroked the beast of partisan rank and file for so long that the rank and file aren’t even listening to them anymore. It’s like the Terminator movies, humans created Skynet and not Skynet has become self-aware and no longer even listens to the humans anymore.
HAHAHAHA.
Anya
@Ash Can: This dweeb is a clear example of white privilege. Everything that comes out of his mouth is either idiotic or is a juvenile taunt. People constantly made fun of Michael Steel for less.
chopper
@dmsilev:
or as i like to call it, an ‘adult abortion’.
lamh35
@Violet: Its’ no laughing matter and I know this dude can still beat McCaskill, but damned if I am NOT enjoying the GOP’s disarray. And ya know later if Akin stays in, that the GOP will start giving money to him again, cause they can’t afford to lose a Senate seat. So they will once again be hypocrites!
Poopyman
@lamh35: Am I the only one with a mental image of DougJ with a phone in each hand?
NotMax
@Brachiator
Ah, so now Obama is a transvestite Moooooslim.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Over at Thinkprogress, They’ve got an interview with Akin where he doubles down. He thinks we’re all mad because of his wording, not because his understanding of science is dangerous and sociopathic for a public official to have. He STILL thinks that what he said was true!!!!
I’ll say that again.
He still thinks his statement is true, and so do most repubs.
shortstop
@Poopyman: No cheese. Mitt doesn’t do cheese on pizza.
Carl Nyberg
Akin should respond to Romney:
That should shut up Romney.
shortstop
@Ash Can: I think it may be more of a “We’re not going to become less conservative just because our presidential candidate is the worst natural politician most living Americans have ever seen” thing.
Sly
Incoming Douthat whine about our inability to come to a bipartisan and perfectly reasonable consensus on how abortion and contraception should be illegal in all instances because law isn’t a philosophy seminar or an all you can eat buffet and such views undermine liberal Christianity and purple-nurple fire engine jibber-jabber rocketship to the moon, Alice.
shortstop
@Violet: This better not make it too wet and windy to get from the convention hall to the titty bars, or heads are gonna roll.
Ash Can
@Geoduck:
@Violet:
Common sense says Romney’s the candidate, period. In my own estimation, this is most likely the GOP leadership telling Romney to get in line and stay there. But there are far less harsh ways to tell him this. The RNC is really giving him the back of its hand this way. It’s the harshness of this statement (as well as the action backing it up) that makes me wonder just what the RNC might have in mind beyond simply reminding Romney that he has to play ball with them.
Violet
@shortstop: Didn’t the convention planners get some condom created so convention-goers can walk outside without having to get wet?
Ash Can
@shortstop: Yeah, with the emphasis on the “worst politician” bit.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate. And WRT the grammar complaints made above, ITYM, “Steve King is saying that none of the underage girls he raped ever got pregnant.” That version is much clearer.
shortstop
@Violet: I believe they did. I’m thinking it’s no match for Mr. Isaac. Now, let’s be clear; I don’t want anyone to get badly hurt, but I’m loving the idea of a few thousand bad combovers flying like big soppy flags.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne: There was a misunderstanding by a couple of us of a cryptic Culture of Truth comment. You can find all the unedifying details in comments above, but I don’t recommend you try. Sorry about that.
Roger Moore
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Romney. He’s in charge of everything, down to the last detail. Of course in practice he can’t keep up with everything, so either nothing gets done or it gets done by random people who probably shouldn’t be doing it.
Ruckus
@jl:
What Akin asserted was vicious, insulting ignorance that has absolutely no basis in fact, not a shred of evidence in its favor.
This can be applied to more than just his view on rape. His whole outlook is based on religion which the bold section above also applies to.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
I read that as giving permission for Mitt Romney to ignore any part of the platform if it’s politically expedient. “Oh, that part where the platform says that poor people are delicious and nutritious? That’s the party platform, not my campaign promise.”
Ruckus
@dance around in your bones:
If they had any empathy whatsoever they wouldn’t need to spend time in someone else’s shoes. Of course if they had any empathy whatsoever they wouldn’t be conservatives in the first place.
Original Lee
@Cassidy: He almost certainly knows someone who was raped. Approximately one out of 25 girls under 16 has been sexually abused or raped. The girls in his child(ren)’s school graduating class(es) would have at least one rape survivor if there are more than about 50 girls. Rape and incest are not cocktail party conversation, but given his public statements on related issues, I’m not sure anyone would try to have that conversation with him, hence his ability to claim lack of personal knowledge.
AHH onna Droid
I@JGabriel:o I very much doubt that. Of Rand had honestly been raped, swidt, she could not have been so glib about it.
The internet is a wonderful teacher. Thanks to fandom, we now know that 99% of rape fics written from the pov of the victim are written by sexually frustrated 12-14 yo’s. According to Rand’s bio she was overlooked by the opposite sex until she got the Objectivism circle going. (Then she used her influence to steal someones man, Joseph Smith style. What a country.)