Month: August 2012

A public comment I’d like to see

by David Atkins

Small men with smaller minds and big, big mouths. They like to hear themselves talk. Judge Tom Head of Lubbock, Texas is no exception:

Please, if you know someone in Lubbock, Texas, beg them to get video of this public hearing. Unlike after the re-election of the President, that really would be a riot.

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I love Move-On, but this isn’t good:

You know, I don’t actually think progressives should be talking about which exceptions should be restored. We don’t think politicians should be in the business of banning abortion in the first place. The last I heard we all had a right to it under the constitution.

Update: 8/23

Move-On changed their petition language. It now states:

Romney and Ryan: “Remove the abortion ban for rape survivors–and all women–from the Republican Party platform.”

Excellent.

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Daddy knows best

by digby

Why do I have the feeling that most right-to-life zealots have no problem with this?

[N]ine months after my rape, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. You could say she was conceived in rape; she was. But she is also so much more than her beginnings. I blissfully believed that after I finally had decided to give birth to and to raise my daughter, life would be all roses and endless days at the playground. I was wrong again.

It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states — 31 — men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy. When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child.

When faced with the choice between a lifetime tethered to her rapist or meaningful legal redress, the answer may be easy, but it is not painless. For the sake of her child, the woman will sacrifice her need to see her once immensely powerful perpetrator humbled by the court.

I know it because I lived it. I went to law school to learn how to stop it.
[…]
Today, it seems we may face a new and unbelievable challenge: convincing legislators that women can conceive when they are raped.

Make no mistake, my efforts and the efforts of others to persuade legislators to pass laws restricting the parental rights of men who father through rape will be directly impacted by Akin’s recent comments. Whether these efforts will be helped or hurt, however, depends upon us as a society.

And who’s to say, really, if the rape is legitimate rape or honest rape or if the lying slut is just trying to play the rape card again(like all those women in messy divorces do.) Since they presumably lie about this all the time in order to get abortions, why wouldn’t they do it to deny decent men the right to their progeny?

When you peel away the layers of all this abortion, rape, contraception nonsense you end up in the same place: women are inveterate liars who will deny men their inherent right to their bodies and their offspring if their sexuality isn’t tightly controlled by the church and the state. (It’s not as if it’s really about darling babies — they’re torturing women by making them go through childbirth even if their baby is dead.)

You just can’t trust the beyotches. Never could:

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And the hits just keep on coming.

The Republican Party has officially endorsed its backing for Arizona-style state immigration laws, adding into its platform language that such laws should be “encouraged, not attacked” and calling for the federal government to drop its lawsuits against the laws.

That language and other provisions were widely approved by the party after being introduced by the co-author of the Arizona law, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R).

“I was pleased at how overwhelming the majorities were, it was a voice vote and I think there were maybe 80 percent supporting it,” Kobach told The Hill shortly after the hard-line immigration language was added to the party’s official platform. “The Republican Platform is now very strongly opposed to illegal immigration.”
The official party position now reads that “State efforts to reduce illegal immigration must be encouraged, not attacked,” and says the Department of Justice should immediately drop its lawsuits against controversial state immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina and Utah.

That language is likely to please immigration hard-liners — but it could further damage the party’s standing with Hispanic voters, a key voting bloc in a number of swing states. Many Hispanics see Arizona-style laws as discriminatory.

“I think it’s an expression of support for Arizona-style laws,” Kobach said. “The platform also encourages states to create laws in this area.”

Kobach’s amendment, which is now official party policy, also includes calls to withhold federal funding for any universities that provide in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants as well as “sanctuary cities” that refuse to enforce state and federal laws on immigration, and calls for the government to complete construction of a fence along the Mexican border that Congress authorized in 2006.

If there has been any doubt that the GOP is a shrinking party of cretinous throwbacks and xenophobes, this week has surely dispelled it. I don’t know who they think is going to vote for them in the future but I guess they’re pinning their hopes on the procreating power of the Romneys and the Duggars.

“Might as well give him fallopian tubes”, or the conservative Id

by David Atkins

Kevin Williamson writes at the storied, Burkean moderate publication National Review:

hat do women want? The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse…

You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched. Son of the same, father of more. It is a curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters. Romney has 18 grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is basically a tribal chieftain.

Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.

From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote. You can insert your own Mormon polygamy joke here, but the ladies do tend to flock to successful executives and entrepreneurs.

These guys really understand the human spirit, don’t they? Oh, but he’s not done:

Some Occupy Wall Street types, believing it to be the height of wit, have begun to spell Romney’s name “Rmoney.” But Romney can do better than that — put it in all caps: R-MONEY. Jay-Z can keep his puny little lowercase letters and the Maybach: R-MONEY doesn’t own a flashy car with rims, R-MONEY does billion-dollar deals with Keystone Automotive and Delphi. You want to make it rain? R-MONEY is going to make it storm, like biblical. Rappers boast about their fat stacks: R-MONEY’s fat stacks live in a beachfront house of their own in the Hamptons, and the bricks in that house are made from tightly bound hundred-dollar bills. You have a ton of money? R-MONEY has 200 metric tons of money if he decides to keep it in cash.

This sort of sneering social darwinism is why countries have revolutions. All these people know and care about is money and power. Literally every other human virtue in the world is opaque to them.

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Todd Akin’s Senate soul mate

by digby

The Mustache of Understanding shows his deep engagement with the reality of American politics once again:

Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on debt was set by Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has challenged the no-tax lunacy of Grover Norquist and served on the Simpson-Bowles commission and voted for its final plan (unlike Ryan). That plan included both increased tax revenues and spending cuts as the only way to fix our long-term fiscal imbalances. Give me a Republican Party that says we have to put real tax revenues and spending cuts on the table to solve this problem, and you’ll get a deal with Obama, who has already offered both, although not at the scale we need.

Yeah, Coburn’s a real economic brain trust. Recall this interview with Ezra Klein:

Klein: To go back to Krugman, if he were sitting here, he’d say in this crisis there’s been no evidence anywhere that cutting deficits leads to growth. We’ve not seen it in the euro zone or the UK. And he’d say the Reinhart/Rogoff story is a correlation story. It doesn’t prove that high debt always and everywhere hurts growth.

COBURN: Go look at Sweden. Here’s what Sweden did. They cut their spending and their taxes. They have the best growth rate in Europe. They had a surplus this year. They had growth at six-plus percent. They actually did a Reagan style approach to their problem by cutting spending and cutting taxes. And they’re the fastest growing with a decline in their debt-to-GDP ratio.

Klein: But correct me if I’m wrong, but if I recall, Sweden’s monetary policy went towards a very sharp devaluation, they’ve been driven by export growth, and alongside Israel, they’ve been more aggressive than any other central bank in the world. They’ve done stuff that if we did it here, people would lose their minds.

COBURN: I think there are monetary parts to that. But their finance minister put in place tough stuff. They had people who left Sweden because of the tax ratio. Now they’ve moved back. And it’s not a perfect example, but it’s an exception to the Krugman story.

Influential Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) “decided to take a break” from the bipartisan “Gang of Six” budget negotiating team Tuesday, citing an impasse in the effort to agree on substantial spending cuts…

The aide said that Coburn had been extremely close to agreeing to a deal before a recent two-week recess, but returned with five new demands that hadn’t been discussed before. On Monday, the aide said, Coburn asked for an immediate $130 billion in cuts to Medicare, on top of the $400 billion that had already been agreed to. Democrats refused and Coburn left the talks as a result, said the aide.

And lord knows we need more people like this in the Senate:

“Show me where in the Constitution the federal government is responsible for your health care?” Coburn said.

He went on to say that government programs such as Medicare are primarily responsible for rapidly rising health-care costs, and that Medicare has made the medical system worse.

“You can’t tell me the system is better now than it was before Medicare,” he said.

Coburn agreed that some people received poor care – or no care – before Medicare was enacted in the 1960s, but said communities worked together to make sure most people received needed medical attention.

He also conceded that doctors and hospitals often went unpaid for their efforts, or accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.

Earlier, in Langley, Coburn partially deflected criticism of President Barack Obama – and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke – by blaming the country’s financial woes on Congress. He described his colleagues as “a class of career elitists” and “cowards,” and at one point, talking about his frustrations, said, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

But Coburn also said most members of Congress are good people with good intentions.

Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama “wants to destroy America,” Coburn said the president is “very bright” and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is “goofy and wrong.”

Obama’s “intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him,” he said.

“As an African-American male,” Coburn said, Obama received “tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs.”

Tom Coburn is a cretin just one step removed from Todd Akin. In fact, he’s not even one step removed:

You know, Josh Burkeen is our rep down here in the southeast area. He lives in Colgate and travels out of Atoka. He was telling me lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?”
Tom Coburn, 8/31/04

And this:

In 1999, social conservatives in Congress initiated a new strategy to further their moral agenda of promoting abstinence outside of marriage as official government policy—claiming that condoms do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Led by then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a physician and staunch proabstinence opponent of government-funded family planning programs, they were successful in attaching an amendment to the House version of the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act mandating that condom packages carry a cigarette-type warning that condoms offer “little or no protection” against an extremely common STD, human papillomavirus (HPV), some strains of which cause cervical cancer. Although this directive was removed before the bill was enacted, Coburn and his allies were able to secure a requirement that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reexamine condom labels to determine whether they are medically accurate with respect to condoms’ “effectiveness or lack of effectiveness” in STD prevention. They also were instrumental in convincing the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—along with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—to convene a workshop in June 2000 to evaluate published evidence on condom effectiveness.

At the time, Coburn’s anticondom views were widely considered extreme. Certainly, they were, and continue to be, out of step with mainstream public health prevention efforts. But in the intervening few years, the political landscape has changed radically. Coburn and like-minded colleagues are now ensconced within the Bush administration, and with the imprimatur of government and the report of an NIH workshop on condom effectiveness to cite, a campaign to disparage the value of condom use is in full swing, itself the cornerstone of an effort to undermine the very notion of sexual risk-reduction, or “safer sex.”

In today’s GOP, I guess that’s as close as you get to a rational conservative. But that doesn’t mean he is one. And the fact that influential centrists like Tom Friedman (and yes, Barack Obama) are out there pushing him as a mainstream, “center-right”, man of good sense and decency is just plain terrifying.

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Akin’s Accomplished His Mission

by tristero

“No exceptions” is no longer extreme; it’s standard policy of a major national party. What’s extreme – ie, not batshit crazy, just extreme – is believing that “legitimate rape” doesn’t result in pregnancy.

Thus a restricted rape/incest exception is now a reasonable. moderate position and so Romney looks like the height of sober, serious, and thoughtful conservatism, safely in the middle of the controversy, if not actually to the left. And abortion on demand, for no reason other than that is what a woman chooses? It’s so not on the table, beyond serious discussion by serious people.

Akin’s won: the discourse has been shoved even more violently right than it already was. The country has lost, especially women. This is what happens when you engage extremism in the mainstream discourse instead of simply mocking and denouncing it – the unthinkable becomes plausible.

Blue America chat: Dr Syed Taj

by digby

This week Blue America is endorsing that pragmatic progressive Democrat, Dr. Syed Taj running for the open seat in swing district MI-11 and he’ll be joining us for a live chat at CrooksandLiars.com today at 2pm (ET). Normally we meet our candidates on Tuesdays but Dr. Taj informed me he meets with his patients on Tuesdays at that time. The excuse says a lot about who he is and what motivates him.

His opponent, Kerry Bentivolio, is an accidental candidate who wound up on the GOP line when the incumbent, Thaddeus McCotter, was forced to resign to stay out of prison after a series of election fraud scandals. Horrified, Establishment Republicans tried running a normal candidate but it was too late and they got stuck with Bentivolio, a reindeer rancher who made some extra money as an actor in a low-budget conspiracy film that blamed George W. Bush for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has a vision for obstruction and turning the clock back to the Nineteenth Century. He thinks the Ryan Budget is just a good start and he would go further in gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the social safety net that we have fought so hard to build.

“My opponent,” Dr. Taj told us this week, “will not just be another vote for Speaker Boehner. He will be a ringleader for efforts that build on the type of hyper-partisan zealotry the House Republican Caucus has come to use as their standard operating procedure. In short, my opponent has the potential to be one of the worst Members of Congress in history. That may sound like hyperbole but even his ultra-conservative primary opponent took to calling him ‘Krazy Kerry’.”

Dr. Taj is running to make sure we never have to worry about “Krazy Kerry” causing Americans problems by a stint in Congress. Dr. Taj has worked for over 40 years as a physician and understands the vital roll that programs such as Medicare and Social Security play in everyday people’s lives. He told us he not only understands how important it is to keep the Affordable Care Act in place but that we urgently need to iron out the wrinkles, improve and expand it’s programs and insure that every American has access to quality health care without undue financial burden.

“I came to this country because of the great opportunities and freedom that it provides. My family and I have lived the American Dream. That is why it pains me to see the dream slipping away from so many people. These are good folks, they’re my neighbors and friends that played by the rules and worked hard but through no fault of their own now find their American Dream turning into a nightmare. I will fight to insure that our economy works for everyone, that we use every option available to spur job creation and continue to grow our economy. Here in Michigan we are proud of the work President Obama has done to save the auto industry and reinvigorate American manufacturing. My opponent opposed the GM and Chrysler rescues that have proven to not only have saved those companies but also our state and national economy. I support American manufacturing and real fair-trade that protects workers and the environment here and across the globe. I am running to provide voters a choice between going back or moving forward.”

However, Dr. Taj needs our help to make sure every voter in the 11th District knows just how stark the differences are between him and the crackpot running against him.

“When the people of my district know all the facts they will make the correct choice and vote for me. The National Republicans and the Ron Paul Super PACS know this and they will spend limitless amounts of money to obscure the facts and play to people’s fears. I need your support so we can counter these attacks and layout the real choice that voters will have to make.

This task will not be easy, because as you may have noticed I do not have the most average name. Nor do I practice the same religious faith as most Americans. But only in America could an immigrant from India that proudly attends a mosque be able to run for Federal Elective Office. This is the greatness of our country and why I know that with your support we can win this election.

So, please consider making a contribution to my campaign, we cannot afford more obstruction– we truly need a ‘Doctor in the House’.”

For reasons that are obscure, the party is not supporting Taj, despite the fact that the district is a swing district and the Republicans are stuck with another looney-tunes Todd Akin Jr accidentally running on their ticket.

Stop by C&L at 11p/2e to see what he has to say.

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Ryan jumps “over the pail”

by digby

Ryan was questioned about his horrendous record on women’s rights and abortion yesterday. And he proved what a hot potato it is with his lies, obfuscations and non-denial denials:

“His statements were outrageous, over the pail. I don’t know anybody who would agree with that. Rape is rape period, end of story,” Ryan told KDKA Political Editor Jon Delano.

Ryan, like Romney, distanced himself from Akin’s remarks, but in Congress, he joined Akin in opposing abortions even when a woman has been raped.

Delano: “Should abortions to be available to women who are raped?”

Ryan: “Well, look, I’m proud of my pro-life record. And I stand by my pro-life record in Congress. It’s something I’m proud of. But Mitt Romney is the top of the ticket and Mitt Romney will be president and he will set the policy of the Romney administration.”

Despite Ryan’s views, Romney says he will allow exceptions for rape and incest. Ryan also seemed to back away from earlier views on types of rape.

Delano: “You sponsored legislation that has the language ‘forcible rape.’ What is forcible rape as opposed…”

Ryan: “Rape is rape. Rape is rape, period. End of story.”

Delano: “So that forcible rape language meant nothing to you at the time?”

Ryan: “Rape is rape and there’s no splitting hairs over rape.”

As for the president’s claim that Romney-Ryan will restrict birth control, Ryan calls that ridiculous.

“Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” says Ryan.*

First of all, what the hell is “over the pail?” I thought it might be some Wisconsin cow vernacular that I’d never heard, but it doesn’t come up on google. Neither does “over the pale.” So it would appear that he meant “beyond the pale” which means that Mr Ryan has more in common with his predecessor on the wingnut VP circuit, Sarah Palin, than we realized.

Anyway, that’s hardly important compared to everything else he said, which is bullshit. He’s obviously running from his clear record as a hard core anti-abortion zealot and these local reporters aren’t going to be able to pin him down on it.

But the birth control answer is such a straight up lie that I can hardly believe he didn’t start smirking like Beavis and Butthead when he said it. Both he and Romney have promised to shut down Planned Parenthood, they both agree that no insurance plans should be forced to offer it, they are both in favor of allowing “conscience exceptions” to anyone who can’t bring themselves to participate in contraceptive evil. Basically, he’s saying “sure you sluts can have your birth control — if you can find it.”

Just because he has boyish looks and a winsome smile doesn’t mean he isn’t a hard-core wingnut crusader with a record to match Todd Akin’s. It’s going to be interesting to see if the Democrats and their allies are clever enough to successfully hang him — and the GOP generally — with it in the eyes of the public.

Ryan, of course, is against the exceptions for rape and incest, but says he’ll defer to Romney’s views — which are frankly bizarre in light of the fact that he’s in favor of “personhood” which would render any abortion murder. But then he’s not exactly known for his philosophical consistency.

*That portion of the interview was not included in the Think Progress clip. You can see the whole thing here.

Presidential debates: A grandiose spectacle set for so few

by David Atkins

In just a few months the Presidential debates will be upon us. I remember being a teenager and looking forward to Presidential debates as deeply consequential, pivotal events in our democracy. Now, of course, my view of the debates has been altered with the appropriate dose of cynicism.

But it’s not just that the debates are largely vapid exercises in personality and body language assessment combined with gotcha zingers and deliberate dodges. It’s also that they simply matter less and less than they used to.

I’ve been noting frequently of late how static the electorate has become, with a very small and shrinking set of undecided voters. The reality is that by the time the first debate takes place on October 3rd, 95% or so of Americans will already have made up their minds whom they will vote for.

Even the schedule of the debates makes a mockery of their relevance to a huge section of voters. By the time the third debate wraps up on October 22, an enormous number of voters will already have turned in their mail-in absentee ballot.

That’s not to say the debates can’t sway the election. They most certainly can. That’s bound to happen in a country so evenly divided that a victory with 53% of the popular is considered a landslide.

But it is remarkable that such a grandiose spectacle of democracy is being put on for the benefit of so few voters who may actually change their minds after witnessing it.

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