Maybe It Wasn't a Legitimate Purchase

Rep. Todd Akin’s effort to continue his bid for the Missouri Senate seat is now faced with a new challenge: Paying the campaign’s bills for TV ads on time.

The Akin campaign’s TV ad buy with the NBC affiliate in Columbia was canceled by the station, according to CBS radio in St. Louis. The campaign had paid the first half of the buy, but the station did not receive the other half. The TV station also said that it has confirmed that other stations have been put in the same position.

The Akin campaign told CBS radio that the payment problem was a scheduling mistake, and the next checks are on their way.

TPM

Enjoy the short respite there in Columbia, sis.

Anatomy Lesson

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Oy!

Jean sends word that in Boone County, Missouri - Todd Akin's state - the GOP voted on whether to ask him to stand down, and the nays won. She reports that one woman gave her reason as: if abortion is allowed in cases of rape, then women wanting abortions will just claim that they've been raped.

Presumably because all women are as utterly ridiculous as she and unable to follow through a thought process about the consequences of making such a claim.

Abandon hope.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I'm Sorry, We Just Can't All Be This Rational

I know I'm not the only person to point this out, and heaven knows I'll never be the first, but the real semantic questions here are a) what, exactly, is Mitt Romney, and the rest of the Republican establishment, objecting to, beyond being saddled with their own positions, suitably in a nutshell? and b) how is it we do not recognize, and pummel, public figures such as Akin who so obviously are not conversant with the issues they spew about, or even the "principles" they suppose us to imagine they hold? Akin's hardly the first religious maroon to get hisself elected to Congress. The question is how we've gone forty years without the Right to Lifers being questioned, philosophically, theologically, or scientifically? Akin could only be that unclear on the concept if he'd never been required to answer an essay question. He didn't erroneously substitute a word, except that he fumbled his lines. He substituted patent nonsense for thought. And neither is original with him.

And it just happens, then, that he slid all the way down the slope. If there's no exception for rape, according to the Republican party, no exception for incest, none for viability, genetic disaster, or the life of the mother--until it's the mother of Rick Santorum's children--then say so. If there is, then on what basis? If there is, then the termination of a pregnancy is not murder.
  Doghouse Riley

Helen Weighs In

[The] current platform held by the Republican Party calls for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It also says the Republican Party supports a “human life amendment” to the Constitution. Akin was simply reading from the talking points.

[…]

What Akin actually said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

[…]

He gives absolutely no thought to the woman – just the man and the “child”? And where does Akin get his opinion on the reproductive system of a woman, or as he calls it “that whole thing”. Clearly he’s a few credits shy of being a gynecologist, but he does have a degree in management engineering. I guess on the weekends, he manages to hang out with doctors and discuss how that whole female reproductive system thing has been engineered to protect itself against rape. Honestly, Margaret, where do they find these asshats? Is it just me, or is there a different Republican each week with his head up my whole thing? What exactly are they looking for up there – a tax refund?

Margaret & Helen

Science in the Hands of Misogynists

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association on Monday insisted that Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) was right to claim women could not become pregnant from “legitimate rape.”

“What Todd Akin is talking about is when you’ve got a real, genuine rape. A case of forcible rape, a case of assault, where a woman has been violated against her will through the use of physical force where it is physically traumatic for her,” Fischer said on his radio program.

“Under those circumstances, the woman’s body — because of the trauma that has been inflicted on her — it may interfere with the normal function processes of her body that lead to conception and pregnancy.”

Fischer said the trauma from rape interfered with normal physiological processes that occur during conception, which “may make it impossible for her, or difficult in that particular circumstance, to conceive a child.”
  Raw Story

See? If you get pregnant from a “rape” it's because it wasn't really rape. It wasn't traumatic. You enjoyed it.

Expect this to be the new ignoranant meme running through beauty parlors, barber shops and conservative blogs. Expect it to be spouted across national airwaves by the scourge of humanity, Rush Limbaugh.

Is There Any Other Kind?

“Nobody wants to own your mistake … and that why I’m apologizing,” he said. “On the other hand, there are certain basic principles that we believe in and that I’m just completely committed to. And that is the fact that people and that life are tremendously valuable. That’s what has made America such a unique country, it’s because we believe that life is something that comes from our creator, we’re made in His image, and all across America you see Americans that have a respect for life.”

“I remember in Sept. 11th, there were rescue workers running into the buildings that were about to collapse. They grabbed somebody in a wheelchair, pick them up, they don’t check their ID to see whether they’re important or not. They just take them to safety and run back for more,” Akin pointed out.

“That’s the very special thing about our country. And that’s what we have at risk right now, and we have to defend that.”
  

I made a mistake, but ... 9/11!!

Yeah, sorry, but I'm not getting how firefighters rescuing someone from a collapsing building is in danger of going away.

And while we're on the subject of “respect for life” ….My arse.

Let us agree to stop calling people "pro-life" and start calling them what they really are: "anti-choice."

The next time someone tells you he or she is "pro-life" please challenge the assertion. Ask what (s)he thinks about capital punishment. Ask what (s)he thinks about waging war. Ask what (s)he thinks about food subsidies for the poor. Ask what (s)he thinks about free meals for school children.

Find me a pro-lifer who doesn't think the first of those two is just fine, and the latter two are an infringement on his/her right to spend his/her own money. Oh, excuse me. The latter two are government stepping in where it doesn't belong.

These folks are not "pro-life" at all. These folks are purely and simply "anti-choice." Let's call them by their rightful name.

Immaculate Misconception, or Return of the Dark Ages

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” [Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)] said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
  NYT

Someone should start a PAC called Legitimate Rapists For Akin: “Let the body say no because sometimes the first twenty or thirty no’s are just not enough“.
  TBogg