Politicians who are legitimately stupid rarely get elected.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Sundae

George Galloway is not currently covering himself in glory.
Although I have more respect for his reasoning having looked into all the information available.

I haven't been keeping up with Gorgeous George's exploits much lately. Ever since he hooked up with the rightwing conservative muslims. What's he been saying?

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by classicman

Akin should be raped ... legitimately.
After that, maybe just maybe I'll listen to what he has to say.

But then his rapist would have to be tried and would be convicted and end up with a sexual offender tag forever. I wouldn't want anyone to go through that because of Akin. Heck, I wouldn't want to wish Akin, in any sexual manner, on anyone, not even his wife.

[Pico and ME]

Yeah, but I totally understand the sentiment. He's got no effin empathy for rape victims and women in general, because he doesn't ever have to worry about sharing their experiences.

[Pico and ME]

Ya know, I think this is all just a run up to the 'Personhood Amendment'. Im really really glad that I am no longer in my childbearing years. My rights as a person would be akin to those of a slave.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

And apparently, none of the statutory rapes or incest victims in Steve King's personal experience have ever gotten pregnant.

Holy crap. My goofy interpretation of Steve King's quote is actually what his spokespeople are going with!

Originally Posted by Steve King's actual spokesperson

“What he was saying was, he personally does not know a girl who was raped,” Brittany Lesser, a spokesperson for King said. “He never says, ‘I’ve never heard of that.’ There’s a fine line between ‘I’ve never heard of that’ and ‘I don’t know personally anybody who’s been raped. There’s a difference. There is a difference.”

[infinite monkey]

Good lord. Really? How stupid are we supposed to be? If any of this is damage control then they are completely misunderstanding the damage. "I'm so naive I didn't know such stuff actually happened."

See right through it.

[monster]

OK now that King guy IS stupid.

[BigV]

It gets better, people. And by better, I mean more insanely creative, the lengths to which the GOP talking heads are rationalizing and justifying and diluting and distracting everyone who has seen the emperor's shiny buttocks.

I give you Mike Huckabee.

According to Mike Huckabee, horrible rapes have created some extraordinary people.

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late American gospel singer. One-time presidential candidate Huckabee added: “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”

There's more, but really? What is the point? Akin's shown his colors, and people agree with his views about the whole deal, or not. No one's being persuaded. But there are a lot of people who now see clearly what was previously just beneath the surface.

[monster]

*sidetracking...... maybe.....*


so wait..... we shouldn't kill rape-babies because they might become good people, but it's ok to kill convicts because the chances are they probably did it and a few deaths of innocents is an OK price?

[monster]

um, and this is all posturing BS too ....


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19339362


To publicly urge a same-party candidate to resign, is all about the one doing the urging and not about the fuck-upper.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Akin

He described the response to his comments as a "little bit of an over-reaction", saying he had mistaken "one word in one sentence on one day".

from your link.

ORLY?

let me guess, that word is "legitimate"? no? "rape"? "woman"? "pregnant"?

I actually can't guess.

What *one* word would change this whole thing around?

[Cyber Wolf]

.

[henry quirk]

The Owner of The Couch forum posted this…

http://www.springerlink.com/content/wp5cnp43k6byxj4d/

…the abstract of which is this…


Is a given instance of rape more likely to result in pregnancy than a given instance of consensual sex? This paper undertakes a review and critique of the literature on rape-pregnancy. Next, it presents our own estimation, from U.S. government data, of pregnancy rates for reproductive age victims of penile-vaginal rape. Using data on birth control usage from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, we then form an estimate of rapepregnancy rates adjusted for the substantial number of women in our sample who would likely have been protected by oral contraception or an IUD. Our analysis suggests that per-incident rape-pregnancy rates exceed per-incident consensual pregnancy rates by a sizable margin, even before adjusting for the use of relevant forms of birth control. Possible explanations for this phenomenon are discussed, as are its implications to ongoing debates over the ultimate causes of rape.

[DanaC]

Wow. That's fascinating.

[BigV]

mornin hq

I didn't buy the paper for 40 bucks, so, I don't know what it says. But with respect to pregnancy from rape rates, I've heard from sources I found credible numbers around 5%. So, it's not vanishingly small. And by comparison, pregnancy from consensual sex might be the same or higher (conceivably lower--hehehehe I said conceivably), but, so what?

Poor brother Akin's remarks were not so inflammatory just because of the rate, which he apparently underestimates by a good margin, but because it reveals a huge gap between his understanding and reality. He compounds this error (ignorance is only an original sin, and curable) by doubling down in all his follow up statements. He does eventually say that people do get pregnant from rape, but this is really just the last veil stripped from his true belief. No abortion because the innocent child should not be punished.

That's a noble notion, but his claim that a fertilized egg is a child is unsupported by everything I know. The urge to cue Monty Python's "Every Sperm Is Sacred" as their theme song is almost as irresistible as the claim is ridiculous. Though I can't find a cite right now, it seems clear that this is Akin's position.