Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I was promised a recession.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Everybody saw this coming.

Bark louder, little dog.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

I really should read my own blog.

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Total control

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When the revolution comes, I do hope that establishment media “liberal” professional concern trolls are among the first up against the wall. Here’s one of the worst offenders — Amy Sullivan — defending Richard Mourdock while insisting she’s not defending him:

Let’s get one thing straight from the start. I am not defending Richard Mourdock’s position on abortion, including his opposition to a rape exception. So take that twitchy finger off the “send” button. However, I do want to examine some of the outrage surrounding the latest comments of a Republican politician regarding abortion and rape.

[….]

Despite the assertions of many liberal writers I read and otherwise admire, I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.

What’s the difference between wanting to control people simply because you want to control them and controlling them because you are insensitive and oblivious to their plight? It’s an awfully fine line, isn’t it?

If the point was “yes, he knows it’s fucked up to have to bear a child who is the product of rape, but he thinks that obeying the will of Lord Tebow overrides everything”, then fine, I’d see how maybe that’s different from hating or wanting to control women. But that’s not her point. She admits that if Mourdock were more sensitive, then he might think that the will of Lord Tebow is not quite so important.

And then to be shocked — SHOCKED — that liberals would dare try to get some political mileage out of some crazy shit a Republican said a few weeks before the election…what is the audience for this bullshit anyway? Why is someone paying Amy Sullivan a salary for this?

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  3. 3.

    localnebula

    What’s the audience? Ed Kilgore’s dumb ass. (On mobile so no linkie, but read Washington Monthly today for a heaping dose of stupid.)

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    Somehow I’m not surprised that someone who still attends a Catholic church is incapable of seeing the link between controlling women’s lives through rape and controlling women’s lives through lawmaking.

  6. 6.

    General Stuck

    What’s the difference between wanting to control people simply because you want to control them and controlling them because you are insensitive and oblivious to their plight? It’s an awfully fine line, isn’t it?

    All things are equal and okay when you have deeply held beliefs, and are a republican. The rest is liberal distortion.

  9. 9.

    Jewish Steel

    But it is one way of grappling with the problem of theodicy, trying to understand why God would allow bad things to happen.

    I for one am glad we can have this debate in the context of electing public officials. Seems like it will turn out well.

  10. 10.

    MikeJ

    Only marginally related:
    There was a thing a few few months ago about how some absurdly high number of states (25? 25?) don’t automatically disqualify rapists for parental rights. Meaning they could sue for visitation, even if they didn’t think they’d ever win, merely as a way to intimidate the victim. It was believable, and I think fixable.

    I’d like to know if my state is one of those. Is there a list of which states are like this? If Washington is on the list, I want to get legislation written and introduced in the next session of the lege to fix it. That should be easy enough since I’m one of those annoying people who knows which LD they live in and knows whose office to call every day.

  11. 11.

    JPL

    It’s been years since I have read Amy Sullivan but unlike Republicans she appears to be pro-life after the child is born. That is what the modern day repubs lack. We should really write about that. It’s an important issue.

  13. 13.

    Liberty60

    A lot of this sounds weirdly like the fundamentalist Muslims who insist that Sharia Law is actually protecting women from the ravages of overt sexualization- that tiny Venn Diagram place where radical feminst thought overlays with patriarchy.

  14. 14.

    Reklam

    The audience is the audience that thinks “well, someone in good standing is paying her for this. It is a respectable outlet [ignore Marty & Mike Kelly & Glass & Andy & now 4th most famous Facebook founder.] So I should consider this view and hold in check any outrage toward what seems to demand outrage from the common people. Now, where is my totebag again?”

    She’s getting paid to sling -Don’t get angry, get evenhanded- barnyard epithet.

  15. 15.

    scav

    So completely, ignoring and being completely indifferent to the potential existence of women as viable people with a legitimate interest in making decisions concerning their lives and afterlives is manifestly better than hating them. Women are just objects to be used while buying their way into their own afterlife. One or several steps below sexual objects, they’re holy-rollergreen stamps: ensure anough of them conform to your definition of morality (the little igorant dears) and you get a harp-halo combo without the fuss of maintaining you standards personally.

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    Are Amy and Andrew related? If yes, may be the stupid runs in the fambly.

    ETA: I think I remember now, wasn’t she the pro-life Time reporter on the religion beat or something? Its been ages since I have read Time. She is not related to Sullivan either, they are just cousins in stupidity.

  18. 18.

    BGinCHI

    I’m sure one of Amy’s friends or family members who has been raped gave her a nice hug and told her it must be really hard to be a pundit.

    Fucking idiots.

    More tumbrels and gallowses, plz.

  19. 19.

    Raven

    Ron Christie is slapping down a woman on Ed’s show because all this abortion shit is “small ball”.

  22. 22.

    redshirt

    Being neck deep in “Game of Thrones” I must say I see the charms of the feudalistic society the Republicans are working very hard to re-introduce. If I was a young Lord, of course.

  23. 23.

    Kane

    BJ arrows flung at a Sullivan, and it’s not Andrew! It’s only a matter of time before someone takes a swing at Ed.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    Unlike Ryan and Romney, Sullivan supports safety nets for the living. I don’t fault that. That’s a pro-life position I can support. Defending Murdoch was stupid though.

  27. 27.

    Percysowner

    I stopped reading Amy Sullivan years ago. She was liberal in many areas, but once you hit religion she went where I didn’t want to follow. She is very religious and pretty right to life and absolutely convinced that only religious people can be truly moral, or at least that is what I remember about why I quit reading her.

    Oh and by religious it meant strictly her religious viewpoint. Unitarians need not apply, they aren’t moral either.

  29. 29.

    JPL

    @Raven: duh.. I was also feeding the troll down below..so some days are like that.
    My job was to lick the green stamps and put them in books when I was a youngin.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    @Percysowner: Although I do not go to a Catholic Church, that used to be the teaching. As I mentioned, I don’t read her now but at least she is pro-life after birth too. There is an important distinction between her and the repubs and it needs to be noted. (Which is why I keep noting it)

  35. 35.

    Reklam

    @Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ: Not to sound like George Will bagging on Clinton for not finishing at Oxford but…

    She holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School, and pursued doctoral studies in sociology at Princeton University.

    “Pursued”? Didn’t even get the ABD Masters consolation prize? Not impressed with someone trying to impress.

  38. 38.

    Raven

    Stop and think, the motherfucker is going to keep it up. If you don’t respond he’s dead in the water.

  39. 39.

    Anya

    I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.

    Let me try that if that logic fits a different type of oppressive men.

    I don’t think that clerks like [insert the name of a woman hating clerk here] advice women to go back to their abusers because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who’s beaten and humiliated by her husband.

  40. 40.

    stratplayer

    Amy Sullivan should know better than to validate what she certainly knows is bad theology. Mourdock’s position is rooted in his belief in an infinitely omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God. Mourdock selectively credits God with the rape-induced pregnancy, but exonerates his all-powerful, all-knowing, universally immanent Lord from responsibility for the rape itself. Mourdock is obviously not smart enough to grasp the manifest defects in his reasoning. Ms. Sullivan has no such excuse.

  41. 41.

    Suffern ACE

    @Jewish Steel: why yes. It is not possible to figure out tax rates without first answering these big questions about where evil comes from. And the good news is that because we’re Americans, we can pretend that no one has thought of these issues before.

  45. 45.

    22over7

    The next step is to bump rape from a felony to a misdemenor. After all, the guys just can’t help themselves.

  46. 46.

    aimai

    I hate the way the Mourdock “chin pullers” and shirt tuckers ignore the fact that abortion, whether the product of rape or of consensual sex, is, in fact, legal in this country. The only reason it matters whether the Mourdock’s of this world think that “life begins at conception” or life begins at 40 is because they are proposing to change this to make abortion illegal under all circumstances including the life and health of the mother. I could give a flying fuck whether Mourdock is sincere, or sincerely misguided, or sincerely an asshole. Who cares? Only his wife and friends need to know. But he is proposing to make laws for all the rest of us and that makes his crazy or thoughtful statements useful guides to his ideas as a lawmaker. Why on earth that should be out of bounds for thoughtful discussion and outright attack I don’t know. The man has beliefs. They suck. He should be attacked for them, pilloried for them, mocked for them, and voted against for them.

    aimai

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @redshirt:
    I can see the charms if I were a young lord, except for the part where lots of them end up dying violently at the hands of other young lords. I’m just way more put off by the risk of dying violently than I am thrilled by the potential to kill violently.

  52. 52.

    planetjanet

    Here is what I think the apologists don’t get. Yes, I see Mourdock thinks he is threading a needle by being for the new life, but not condoning the rape. Certainly he feels very strongly about this conflict. But he really hasn’t thought very deeply about how this gift from God came to be. If God wanted that woman to have a child from a man she did not want to have sex with, God would have to facilitate the rape. But of course, we can’t admit that God would do such a thing. He is not bothered that there is no logical way for a rape to result in pregnancy without God condoning rape. Thinking is just not popular amongst Republicans. His opinion may be deeply felt, but not deeply thought. And he thinks his shallow opinion is superior to that of the victim. There are so many other levels on which this is just so horrifically wrong. Now I want to go on a rant about free will, but maybe its best that I stop.

  56. 56.

    Carl Nyberg

    “It’s not that people who favor slavery hate the Negro Race, it’s just that they can’t empathize with people they understand to be subhuman. It’s really unfair of Abolitionists to fail to take into account the perspective of our fellow countrymen from slave states.”

  58. 58.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    There are many fairly idiotic passages in that piece, but just to take another one in addition to the ones you covered:

    “Take a look again at Mourdock’s words: “I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And…even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The key word here is “it.” I think it’s pretty clear that Mourdock is referring to a life that is conceived by a rape. He is not arguing that rape is the something that God intended to happen.”

    So God intended the rape creating life to happen, but not the rape. Gotcha.

    Sort of like when they were insisting that God created Hurricane Katrina because of lesbians, because God creates everything. Except lesbians.

    They just draw the line wherever they want, is how these things work.

  59. 59.

    James E. Powell

    Amy Sullivan is one of those people who insist that we have to be nice to and allow room for religious fanatics who would ban us from participation in democratic government if there were a way they could do it.

  60. 60.

    Chyron HR

    Word on the street? Magical golden tablets are going to be discovered tomorrow prophesying Romney victories in California, New York, and Guam.

    Scared yet?

  61. 61.

    stratplayer

    @Bill E Pilgrim: The Sullivan we call Amy knows bloody well that Mourdock’s position is illogical but lets him off the hook because she thinks he’s sincere, so it doesn’t matter that he’s stupid. Amy Sullivan is not stupid, but she is as intellectually dishonest as they come.

  62. 62.

    danielx

    @Midnight Marauder:

    Um, what’s your point? Donald Trump is a douchebag, but what’s that got to do with this issue?

    @aimai:

    Applause. I don’t care if his beliefs are sincere or not, I don’t agree with them. I already knew Mourdock is a tool of biblical proportions, this was just more confirmation.

    I’m sure that whole meme about how “politicians shouldn’t be held at fault for sincerely held beliefs” comes as a huge surprise to the current occupant of the White House…

  63. 63.

    reflectionephemeral

    This morning, I had the following conversation with her on Twitter:

    reflection ephemeral ‏@R_Ephemeral
    @sullivanamy “want to control women” vs. “oblivious and insensitive” not meaningful distinction. And the theology is bad. Don’t see yr point
    Amy Sullivan ‏@sullivanamy
    @R_Ephemeral I can tell.

    I almost said, “I mean the point of your existence on Earth”, but I settled for being more polite, and calling her column the Platonic form of concern trolling. Your “Why is someone paying Amy Sullivan a salary for this?” gets at the point well enough anyway.

  65. 65.

    stratplayer

    You know, I’m starting to get pretty agitated about this. It seems to me that Ms. Sullivan is arguing that sincere religiosity should be given a free pass and not subjected to the same empirical and logical rigor that we mere secularists must observe.

  66. 66.

    schrodinger's cat

    Religious concern trolls are the worst, because they insist they are just being trying because they are trying to save your soul.

  67. 67.

    James E. Powell

    @stratplayer:

    The Sullivan we call Amy knows bloody well that Mourdock’s position is illogical but lets him off the hook because she thinks he’s sincere, so it doesn’t matter that he’s stupid.

    And she doesn’t even consider that he is evil. Forcing a woman who became pregnant as a result of a rape carry that pregnancy to term is evil.

  68. 68.

    scav

    Basing your actions on Personal indifference to the independent existence of others rather than hatred of them strikes me as equivalent to the distinction between bullhit and lying. The former is worse in both instences.

    And it’s their fucking GOD that supposedly gave everyone the free will to save or damn themselves so who are they toset themselves above their god and everyone else and take away that free will. You can’t force someone else into heaven and I wouldn’t suggest second-guessing a jealous omnipotent deity.

    Arrogant bastards presuming to speak for god and reign supreme over all others

  70. 70.

    James E. Powell

    @stratplayer:

    It seems to me that Ms. Sullivan is arguing that sincere religiosity should be given a free pass and not subjected to the same empirical and logical rigor that we mere secularists must observe.

    That is exactly what Ms. Sullivan and all the My Religion Uber Alles types argue. No, not argue, insist upon.

  71. 71.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @stratplayer: She may be dishonest but she also looks like an idiot trying to justify this kind of logic, even by ETLNR standards.

    If you follow a Republican fanatic down the rabbit hole, you should be prepared to come up covered in dirt…

  72. 72.

    jayboat

    A quick scan of the comments under Sullivan’s screed are testament that she is not alone. Those convoluted morans should work in a pretzel factory.

  73. 73.

    stratplayer

    @jayboat: I’m astonished at how many of them agree with her that Mourdock is being theologically consistent. He could not be more theologically inconsistent. That’s the whole fucking problem with his position. Sincerity born of ignorance and/or stupidity does not transform illogic into logic.

  75. 75.

    redshirt

    @stratplayer: One word explanation (with commentary follow up): Faith

    Faith is the catch all for any and all religious logical inconsistencies. For it is of the heart, of the soul, of the Godly. And reason need not apply.

  76. 76.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @stratplayer:

    I’m astonished at how many of them agree with her that Mourdock is being theologically consistent.

    I’m not. If you’re a fundamentalist, THAT IS consistent. Trust me on this. I’ve heard the sermon too many times.

  78. 78.

    rikyrah

    that muthafucka said that rape was ‘God’s PLan’.

    fuck ANYONE who defends him.

    tired of this shyt.

    these are misogynists of the highest order

  79. 79.

    Baud

    I know when I’m oppressed, nothing gives me more comfort than the ideological consistency of my oppressor.

  80. 80.

    Patricia Kayden

    Does Ms. Sullivan know that Mr. Mourdock also opposes insurance companies covering birth control? People like Mourdock don’t just want to control women vis-a-vis abortion.

  81. 81.

    kay

    There’s not going to be any such thing as a “rape exception” .

    When does this exception kick in? When the rape is reported? When they pick the rapist up? After he’s convicted? What if he isn’t convicted? What if he pleads to a lesser charge? What if they never find him?

    Are we going to be handing out “permission to abort” orders? Who issues one? How long does it take?

    The wholly mythical “rape exception” is just another lie.

    It’s fashionable to diss Roe v Wade, but you know what? Pregnancy is unique. There’s nothing else remotely like it. No one has ever come up with a better way of balancing those interests in a way that doesn’t put the woman dead last in the order of priority than Roe, and they never will.

  82. 82.

    Heliopause

    If the point was “yes, he knows it’s fucked up to have to bear a child who is the product of rape, but he thinks that obeying the will of Lord Tebow overrides everything”, then fine, I’d see how maybe that’s different from hating or wanting to control women.

    Yes, she’s right, that’s what they believe, and as Atrios frequently points out it may be a silly superstition but it’s at least coherent. It’s also coherent, if again superstitious and unworthy of a 21st century functioning adult, to believe that the Deity has planned everything that happens, including the rapes.

    Unfortunately Sullivan goes off on a tangent and misses an important point. If you read the Torah you’ll find that the deity known as Yahweh is in fact quite enthusiastic about mass rape, so Mourdock, probably unintentionally, was right in that sense. The real question here isn’t Mourdock’s supposed insult to the putative Deity, it’s what our social policy should be.

  83. 83.

    stratplayer

    I think there is an element of condescension in Amy’s insistence that the sincerely spiritual be granted a special dispensation to be stupid and irrational. She obviously doesn’t think Mourdock and his ilk are capable of higher order critical thinking. Irrational morons are God’s children, too, after all. And I say this as an Episcopalian (as is Amy) who attends church every fucking Sunday and sings tenor in the choir.

  84. 84.

    Democrat Partisan Asshole

    It seems to me that Ms. Sullivan is arguing that sincere religiosity should be given a free pass and not subjected to the same empirical and logical rigor that we mere secularists must observe.

    Or laws.

  85. 85.

    NonyNony

    @stratplayer:

    . Mourdock selectively credits God with the rape-induced pregnancy, but exonerates his all-powerful, all-knowing, universally immanent Lord from responsibility for the rape itself.

    Are you sure? There’s a particular breed of “Christian” that actually does believe that if bad things happen to you it’s because God wants bad things to happen to you.

    They’re sick, sick people – because they believe that and think “oh hey – that’s the kind of God that deserves praise and worship” instead of “oh hey – let’s find out where this asshole that calls himself ‘god’ lives and kick the shit out of him until he stops being an asshole”. Which is the more natural reaction to have.

  86. 86.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Raven:

    My wife said that he made it through Ed’s show without once uttering “The fact of the matter is…”. My wife thinks he is getting his Tourette’s under control. My wife also said that she wanted to kick him in what’s left of his manhood.

    Repeatedly.

  88. 88.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    O. M. G.

    Erick, Son of Erick, has a post up at Redstate that is titled “Cheap Tricks and One Night Stands” that’s about Obama wanting to pop the cherry of new voters.

    Fuck… crazy conservatives are some sad pieces of shit.

  89. 89.

    LosGatosCA

    It’s the old conundrum:

    Stupid?
    Evil?
    Lazy?
    Stupid and Evil?
    Stupid and Lazy?
    Evil and Lazy?
    Stupid, Evil, and Lazy?

    Also, too, Amy Sullivan is a liberal? Since when? Just because you aren’t goose stepping to the Koch Brothers does not make you liberal.

  90. 90.

    stratplayer

    I want to keep going with this thread but I think I’d be better off watching some soothing science show on tv and drifting off to sleep before obsessing about what an idiot fucking Amy Sullivan is gives me a stroke. Good night all.

  91. 91.

    kay

    I’d also like to thank her for mainstreaming this view.

    Ten years ago it was radical to say you wouldn’t consider a “health of the mother” exception. Now “health” is gone completely and we’re at LIFE of the mother.

    Ten years from now we’ll be holding earnest roundtables on whether the we should allow a “life of the mother” exception. Views differ. Both sides make some really good points.

  92. 92.

    magurakurin

    @Raven:@Raven:

    If you don’t respond he’s dead in the water.

    So, it’s like athlete’s foot fungus, if you scratch it, it’ll just get worse and spread to all your other toes.

    I can see that….but, but, just..one..little scratch won’t hurt…will it…

  93. 93.

    Democrat Partisan Asshole

    Erick, Son of Erick, has a post up at Redstate that is titled “Cheap Tricks and One Night Stands” that’s about Obama wanting to pop the cherry of new voters.

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I’m not outraged. Because this is all the poor fuckers have left. A used-car salesman and racism. Probably a car on blocks in the front yard too. What a shit life they lead, our conservative friends.

  94. 94.

    Unsympathetic

    This is beyond stupid/evil.

    It would be irresponsible not to speculate regarding the following: Was Amy Sullivan traumatized at some point? That whole article screams of the Stockholm Syndrome.

  95. 95.

    fuckwit

    The creepy thing is, the chances are high that someone you know very well has been raped– and probably has never told you about it. It’s scary how endemic it is in this society. And attitudes like this are probably why.

  96. 96.

    jefft452

    @Raven: “Ron Christie is slapping down a woman on Ed’s show because all this abortion shit is “small ball”.”

    I caught that, I would say he TRIED to slap her down — and failed

    But this “women’s issues are a distraction” crap tends to piss me off to no end, and not just because I’m not a wingnut asshole

    He went on to pronounce “this election is about the economy and the deficit”

    Well who the hell died and made him king? I base my vote on whatever issues I damn well please, and I wont be asking permission from some Republican flack so stupid he couldn’t even get a Fox gig

  97. 97.

    Ajaye

    Look I am willing to concede the point that IF fertilized egg=human being then any abortion is homicide, so NO exceptions because murder is bad and all. I guess a woman could argue that if her life were jeopardized then abortion is justifiable homicide because one does have the right to self defense. But the woman would have to have the abortion without medical assistance since nobody can play God and choose which innocent life to save, right? Oh fukkit. No abortions evah. Leave the whole shebang (ha ha) up to God. Everything’s God’s will ya know. Oh and also too we should leave it up to God to decide how many kids a woman has so ixnay the birth control while we’re at it! Who doesn’t love babies! Innocent little babies! God’s creations!

  98. 98.

    swbarnes2

    I don’t think her argument is about religion.

    She’s parroting the deeply held conservative belief that the feelings of men are more important than anything, including the lives of women.

    Same thing in the VP debate: the candidates were asked about their feelings, and their thought processes about abortions. It wasn’t deemed worthwhile to ask them to describe the effects of their policies on women.

  99. 99.

    MaryJane

    Their god says in the holey book that if no one comes forward to testify that a woman getting raped screamed for help, the slut gets stoned to death.

    Apparently, their god doesn’t give a shit that the fertilized egg goes with her.

  100. 100.

    Triassic Sands

    Sullivan may be correct that troglodytes like Mourdock don’t “hate” women, but she surely must be kidding when she says they don’t want to control women. Control is the whole point of patriarchy and nothing is more Biblical than a world run by men in which women have a God-proclaimed obligation to obey men.

    Of course, when you feel that way about women, a lot of what you do may look suspiciously like you actually do hate them, when in your divine innocence all you really believe is that women are here to serve men and do what they’re told. Mourdock is probably a firm believer in “the rule of thumb” — why, he’d never hit his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb.

    If I were a woman, I doubt I’d think a distinction between hatred and that kind of superiority was worth the effort. (As a man I don’t.)

  101. 101.

    Donald

    She’s explaining how some Christians think. Are there some serious problems with how they think? Yeah, and she says so. If she were explaining how fundamentalist Muslims think, Islamophobes would throw a fit that would resemble the one Doug is throwing.

  103. 103.

    JMonkey

    When the revolution comes, I do hope that establishment media “liberal” professional concern trolls are among the first up against the wall. Here’s one of the worst offenders—Amy Sullivan

    Hell, maybe one of the good people here will do us all a favor and pay a visit to her house, .44 in hand. Maybe they could shoot her in the head while she’ll holding her infant? And maybe while her husband Noam Schreiber is looking on?

    Or maybe you could fucking cool it with the death wishes, huh, Doug? I disagree strongly with her piece, but I don’t wish her dead. Christ. What the fuck is wrong with you?

  104. 104.

    Captain C

    I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.

    One definitely does not exclude the other.

  105. 105.

    J R in WV

    @planetjanet:

    There are a ton of “christians” who believe in predestination, that when you are born, God has already decided every event you would even experience in your whole life. So, he condones rape and murder, the holocaust, everything is his work.

    I dated a girl once (went to a movie) who, after the show, informed me about her religious beliefs, and how predestination was an important part of her church’s beliefs. I made a couple of stabs at internal consistency, freedom of action, good and evil, etc. Obviously once the “faith” was embedded in one’s being, no use using logic!

    These people don’t understand that their religious beliefs are repugnant to anyone who thinks about good and evil and the choices people make. Rape is a horrible crime, and it can’t result in anything good. Anyone who disagrees with that is an evil monster. The End!

  107. 107.

    low-tech cyclist

    What’s the difference between wanting to control people simply because you want to control them and controlling them because you are insensitive and oblivious to their plight? It’s an awfully fine line, isn’t it?

    Reminds me of back in the day when the Reagan Administration’s theorists, most notably Jeane Kirkpatrick, came up with (to them) an all-important distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships. Apparently those being tortured to death by the henchmen of authoritarian dictators were supposed to be thankful that they weren’t meeting that end at the hands of totalitarians.

  108. 108.

    hep kitty

    I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.

    Then they should be forced to watch Deliverance about 1000 times.

  109. 109.

    DonR9

    I heard her discuss this on an NPR show this morning. What she said was that, raised as she was in a very fundamentalist Baptist family, she could understand the thought process behind Mourdock’s comment. She also said she completely disagreed with him, that noone should attempt to impose his.her religious beliefs on others. See comment #102 above.

  110. 110.

    Bennett

    I read Sullivan’s article. Here’s the linchpin of the argument:

    “Take a look again at Mourdock’s words: “I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And…even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The key word here is “it.” I think it’s pretty clear that Mourdock is referring to a life that is conceived by a rape. He is not arguing that rape is the something that God intended to happen.”

    A disctinction without a difference. God intended the life, but did not intend the rape that precipitated the life. Strange (and strangely powerless) God.

    Personally, I think God would frown on this species of linguistic logic (and a convenient logic it is, too, for right wingers): God did not intend pre-marital sex, but pregnancies resulting therefrom were intended, so no aborting. It’s a specious logic where you get to choose your causes and effects based on which side of the equation you want the intentions of God to come down on.

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