Allow me to repeat something I wrote around this time in 2010:
Don't you people remember what got us into this mess? Everybody was up on the fantail of the USS Grand Old Party, playing shuffleboard and rearranging the stem cell and gay marriage deck chairs while the stokers down below were shoveling great big bundles of $100 bills into the boilers as fast as they could, and things got so bad that the Democrats took Congress running on a platform of fiscal responsibility! The people who think that money is something you give to community organizers, union leaders, and Robert Mapplethorpe were appalled at your profligate spending! Remember that? Get your heads out of your arses, people, and keep your eye on the ball. It's. The. Economy. Stupid.
Small government. Constitutional government. Low taxes. Save the other stuff for the tent meetin'.
46 comments:
There is no way either of the two major wings of the Party of Treason is going to go for that. And it's past time for folks to stop believing in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and that Republicans stand for small government.
What Don said. I've pretty much given up hope that the coming crisis can be averted. I'm just hoping the outcome doesn't make Thunderdome and The Postman look like documentaries...
Don,
I do not believe that the Republicans stand for small government.
I do believe the Republicans say they stand for small government.
Sadly, I also believe that Libertarian electoral failures are caused by the fact that the average member is a socially maladroit aspie who couldn't spell "nuance" if you spotted 'em every letter up to the 'c'. ;)
As a resident of Missouri, I'd like to apologize, but I stopped making excuses for the idiots in my state when they passed that idiotic gay marriage amendment to the state constitution. I would like to thank Akin for allowing me to vote Libertarian without being afraid that doing so might keep McCaskill in the Senate. You couldn't drag her out of there with a whole herd of horses now.
Unfortunatly, it seems we're going to get rid of,and/or wise up asswipe politicians only one way. Windage. Elevation. Fire for effect. Just sayin'.....
Before you start advocating politics-by-gunfire, Mr. Courageous Anon, I'd advise you to remember what happens when a politician of national scope gets murdered. JFK's party used his memory as a banner to get bills passed that were far more liberal than anything he would have supported. JFK was more conservative than most Republicans in our current Congress, and we have his assassination to thank for that.
I've become completely disgusted with the bunraku that passes for political discourse nowadays. Wake me to go vote (I want to support my choice for County Surveyor), and I'll read about the returns the next day.
Between now and then they can all go piss up a rope.
gvi
At least the GOP appears to be trying to get rid of this ass-wipe. When was the last time the Dems tried to get rid of one of their moon-bats.
The Republican Party is not serious about banning abortion nor banning abortion except in cases of where the "human life" is not a human life, like rape, incest, or whatever.
If it was, we would have had it in that period when the Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.
The Republican Party is trying to hold together a coalition that includes, to no small degree, Evangelical Christians, so it winks and nods. Abortion is a good issue for this party to continue to run on because it brings the Evangelicals to the voting booth.
The Democratic Party, however, is serious about its stated leftist agenda. See how Obamacare passed when the Democrats had control of the whole kit and kaboodle for a scant two years, and it was passed against the popular will through arm-twisting, vote-buying, and Parlimentary-tricking?
The Republican Party want to get elected. The Democratic Party wants to rule.
That's enough of a reason for me to vote for Akin in November and then throw a pile of money and effort at his primary challenger, who should form an exploratory committee now.
What is disheartening is that this IDJIT has been elected to Congress SIX TIMES before he won the Primary. So I'm sure that he's espoused his "Gynecological Expertise" before now. So there's no reason why the Party Leadership in the Show Me State didn't Nip this Fool in the Bud a long time ago.
I hope Ms.McCaskill enjoys her next 6 years in Office.
I'm also shocked that any Republican is even allowed to talk about anything besides the economy. I don't care about the other random stupid thoughts in their heads.
There seem to be a lot of people who are responding the press distortions of what Akin said, rather than what he actually said. The Obsfuscation is SO great that it takes a dedicated search to find an actual, in context, Akin quote.
He's hardly the first politician to say something stupid. Sadly, He's one of many crucified by a press eager to distort and attack, and a public far too ready to believe everything they read.
I think it's sad that so many are playing into the hands of a bunch of statist propagandists who would go to the supreme court over a bait fish, but think nothing of killing off tens of millions of humans.
Ask yourself, REALLY ask yourself: What kind of person kills their own child as a matter of convenience?
Anonymouse 10:22,
"There seem to be a lot of people who are responding the press distortions of what Akin said, rather than what he actually said."
I goddam PROMISE you I can read a transcript just fine. I'm so fluent in English that people actually pay me to write in that language.
I understood what he said, no matter how much ;lipstick you'd like to smear on that pig.
The tone-deafness of the defense is just gobsmacking, bordering on "Why bitches get so mad when you call 'em hos?"
(Where'd that semicolon come from? Stupid laptop. I can't wait to get home.)
As if he was the only person ever to say or do anything stupid. I know people who consider it a virtue. I may be one of them. Hell, I may be two of them.
It isn't that someone says something ignorant, it's the shit sandwich the press makes out of it. Fuckem all, I never listen to those window lickers anyway.
argumentum ad theydidittooum ;)
I have two comments to make so I'll separate them, sorry if that clutters things up.
1:
I happen to believe him when he says that he meant "forcible" instead of "legitimate" but that seriously wasn't anywhere near the core point to what he was saying. Which is why it was stupid to say anything about the different kinds of ways folks can violate each other.
His core issue, is one the Republican party has as a main plank, the protection of unborn children. Which I know both small and big 'L' libertarian type folks tend to get squeamish discussing but its really quite appalling that we allow such violence to be perpetrated against our most innocent citizens.
Or as one of my friends said:
"How can anyone think that the manner in which a child is conceived should determine whether they should live or die?"
2:
We need to decide as either members of the Republican party (like me) or the more general conservative/libertarian right (like some of yall unaffiliated types) that we are going to freaking win elections.
Letting the media and the left crucify this guy and then joining in the flogging is NOT winning elections, its participating in a popularity contest. And we on the right side of the dial are ALWAYS going to lose popularity contests with the left.
Should a Dem. have said such a thing as this (or worse and they have) they would circle the wagons, protect the guy and win the freaking election. Because they as a greater party want to forward an agenda at a national level and they understand that to do that, you have to win and sometimes you have to help people who aren't that articulate win.
So we as a greater right of center people, who care about even love our country and the foundational ideals that made us who we are. Have to decide we are going to cowboy up and get our agenda forward at the national level no matter what. Which means winning elections, even when we have to help people win who aren't that articulate. Because we can see the bigger picture and because we understand how national politics work. All of which I have yet to be convinced of for most of the L(l)ibertarian right.
Right... thats what I have to say flame on or whatever.
"argumentum ad theydidittooum ;)"
No, he did it to himself. They just put a big damed magnifying glass on it. Pity they don't
a: use it on everyone, and
b: use it to focus the sun's rays on the idiots.
FWIW, I now read that Romney and the GOP are pushing Cletus to leave the race; hopefully, his primary opponent from the Tea Party will start his (her? I dunno, I'm NOT from Missouri) campaign back up, and win on a write-in basis.
I read somewhere (it was on the intert00bz, it must be true!) that the point he was trying to make was that statistically, pregnancies from rape are rare, not that a woman's body will somehow shut down the getting preggers mechanism in case of rape.
As Trent pointed out @11:09, IF one believes that abortion kills a human being, then killing that child because it was conceived through rape does, indeed, become problematic, and his point was a valid one. (Not trying to defend what he said, still less that the fracking idiot said it at all, just pointing out the internal logic.)
Finally, I keep wondering what the reaction on the left would have been if he had said "Y'know, RAPE rape..."
"We need to decide as either members of the Republican party (like me) or the more general conservative/libertarian right (like some of yall unaffiliated types) that we are going to freaking win elections."
I get this, and I think sometimes it does apply. Like, if you're trying to get a Republican elected in San Francisco, (s)he probably isn't going to be running on a platform as Right as the Republican running in Tuscaloosa. You got to take what you can get.
That does make some sense, but if we carry the "play to win" strategy too far, we abandon the principles that make it worth winning in the first place.
You also get the situation where people do not police their own party - where 49% of the country will vehemently support a child molester, so long as he's got the right letter in parentheses after his name. We'll never run the worst of the scoundrels out of town if we only light up the torches and break out the pitchforks for the scoundrels on the other side of the aisle.
And I'm no longer certain I recognize 'conservative/libertarian' as an extant entity. Seems to me as a matter of practical electoral politics, we have the choice between two different brands of authoritarianism. Both parties agree they can tap my phone without a warrant, and they can throw me in prison forever or simply kill me, without any kind of judicial process, if some faceless bureaucrat decides to call me a terrorist. Sorry, but I'm going to need something a bit stronger if I'm going to append '/libertarian' to something.
Alath
Carmel IN
I agree with Trent (I think). If Akin truly believes that abortions should be forbidden in all cases, then the voters of MO should know that and vote accordingly. He won the primary fair and square. Let him run in November. Akin gave a clumsy explanation of why he thinks abortion shouldn't be allowed for rape, but that shouldn't drive the GOP away from him, assuming that the GOP wants to eliminate abortion in our country. If it turns out that the majority of voters in MO don't quite see it that way, then they don't have to vote for Akins, and whoever else wins, wins.
Hey, if I ran for office I'd be all for the liberalization of gun rights and wouldn't hide it in order to get elected. If people are squeamish about carrying in churches, schools and bars, or overturning the silly import restrictions of the 1968 Gun Control Act, then they don't vote for me. I'm not going to conceal a strongly held belief just to be able to vote to close down the SEC.
A concise summing up of the 2012 Missouri Senate Race
Mike James
Finally, I keep wondering what the reaction on the left would have been if he had said "Y'know, RAPE rape..."
Damn, somebody beat me to it. At least I'm not the only one who remembers that bit of idiocy.
All this over an issue that is not going anywhere. Like it or not people, Abortion isn't going to move.
Like Tam says. IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!
Damn, I want that on a t-shirt.
s
A) I am not interested in opinions on rape or abortion from a goddamned idiot who believes in fairy tales about conception. If your only choices on election day are a socialist or a moron, you already lost the election no matter who wins.
B) Abortion, just like guns, is not going away. Congresses who ban it will go away, just like Congresses that ban guns.
Does it "stop a beating heart?" Yes. The same way the same mother does four summers later when she leaves the kid locked in the car to cook while she gets her nails done.
You can't save 'em all. If you won't carry that child to term yourself, shut up and start helping with the *wanted* babies; there's still plenty of them lost and you won't be trying to coerce the unwilling.
What I remember of the time of Roe v. Wade was that there was abortion, in horrific numbers, before it was legal. After abortion was legal, there were fewer deaths, near-deaths, and fewer made infertile by botched, unregulated abortions.
I don't want to see a return to that kind of era; the account of the abortion in the movie "Dirty Dancing" was all too realistic. The "state of the art" at the time was properly referred to as "butchery".
My own feeling is that I hope no one I know ever needs an abortion; but I pray that it is available if they do need one.
I find the reference to Sharia law all too appropriate to the discussion. I am convinced that the argument against abortion is mere camouflage for religious condemnation of women outside the home, of sex outside (church sanctioned) marriage.
I could wish every anti-abortion protester were signed up to adopt any random child born unwanted, with no choice in the selection. That, to me, would be honorable. What the anti's are doing smacks of the passive-aggressive suppression of others such as by censorship and stone throwing -- safe attacks that don't risk getting involved in the consequences of their destructive behavior.
Blessed be.
As far as one of Akin's primary opponents running a write-in campaign, Missouri has a sore-loser law that basically says they can't. Someone on another site (I can't remember where) actually suggested bringing Kit Bond out of retirement. Since I live in Kit Bond's hometown and have actually met the man, I can honestly say I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that.
Tam, I apologize if you don't want to have a full on abortion debate in your comment section but I've got to respond to Brad.
Brad,
Claiming its Sharia law like to not believe in abortion is a non sequitur. It follows this way: I believe a child is human being from conception and possesses all the natural rights any other human being has. Ergo, therefore, because of that, I believe that abortion is always murder, except in the extremely exceptional cases where the pregnancy is literally going to end the life of the mother, in which case it is justifiable homicide. Religion has nothing to do with it. We actually see all human beings as equal, the only difference between that child in the womb and the one learning to drive is size, location, and level of development.
You have to understand that it is this belief that motivates 99% of us in the pro-life movement. So you must understand that I quite frankly don't care what used to happen to mothers who murdered their children before it was legal to do so in sanitary conditions. That is like complaining that too many folks carry guns cause a mugger might get shot or even killed.
Your last paragraph is just mean spirited and absurd and you know it. We do need a better system of private orphanages to support our society but one of the foundational parts of being a conservative is individual responsibility and a child is one of the possible consequences of sexual activity, whether that activity is within marriage or not. Life is tough, but infanticide isn't the answer to make it easier.
"foundational parts of being a conservative is individual responsibility and a child is one of the possible consequences of sexual activity, whether that activity is within marriage or not. Life is tough, but infanticide isn't the answer to make it easier."
Zackly....
""foundational parts of being a conservative is individual responsibility and a child is one of the possible consequences of sexual activity, whether that activity is within marriage or not. Life is tough, but infanticide isn't the answer to make it easier.""
You know what, never mind. I was going to go on and on about rape and incest not being "sexual activity", but then I remembered something. The right will always believe in ideals that I do as far as spending and guns goes, but they're still stuck in the 3rd century when it comes to women being people instead of property.
Angry comment deleted as unhelpful.
Akins ain't going to quit, so we will just have to write-off his position to a socialist.
As one who normally considers himself a 'conservative' I think one of the biggest difficulties concerning the abortion debate is the fact that 'conservatives' want to stop it, but they refuse to recognize the fact that if they DO then they are going to be paying/financing/sponsoring a large group of poor parenting skilled, poorly educated children/single jobless women (men seldom take responsibility for these situations) who become yet an ever increasingly larger drain on the public treasury to the exclusion of all governmental needs.
And arguing against this fact is truly pissing in the wind.
No political theory is completely idealogically pure in either cause or effect any more...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Brian, I was very definitely NOT freaking speaking about rape etc. when I wrote that paragraph, and I would expect that you as one of the readers of Tam's blog, who I generally expect to have a somewhat higher level of reading comprehension and argument tracking would bloody well know it. What you wrote is a straw man argument plain as day.
Frank,
I fail to see how the logical alternative to the problem you laid out is to make infanticide legal, normal and morally acceptable within our culture!?!
The basic argument is, and must remain around the issue that abortion kills a human being with all the rights and privileges that the rest of us have for no good reason. And just because they are inconvenient doesn't mean that it is OK to slaughter them!
Oh, I concur, Ma'am, but what's funny is that one of my Great-Great-Grandfathers was one of the founders of the oldest continuously-existing Methodist Camp Meeting in the State of GA, started sometime in the 1830s. That would be Shingleroof Campground in Henry County. They have a Web site.
I am still officially a Methodist, but have been attending Anglican services for years and years. The Anglicans seem more indulgent about my tendency to Drink Moar.
Trent: I understand your position, but the practical result is in many areas, not just urban inner cities, is a situation that swamps the counties financial ability to handle those unwed, teenage mothers with no education (not even high school), no job (not even a fast food job), no parental support and no means to make ends meet.
The result is you create welfare dependents that have continued for more than 2 generations now.
I would view this debate differently if those who are anti-abortion would include this growing segment and problem of our societies into the argument and propose a non-governmental solution THAT WOULD WORK.
Abortion and welfare reform are directly linked whether anyone wants to admit it or not.
Talking Morals without a Practical alternative is pie-in-the-sky preaching from an empty pulpit from yet another religious viewpoint that in the end is only there to collect donations from their supporters...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Funny how when you look at the country's history, the inflation vel non of money is the constant issue.
The few and usually disastrous departures from that issue- big wars, the welfare state, segregation, prohibition - have pretty much always been the result of camp meeting issues getting into government. The Civil War and maybe the Second World War being the only possible exceptions, in my view.
I always thought that the best way to reduce the number of abortions would be to minimize the number of unintended pregnancies, and that it would be logical for folks on both sides of the abortion debate to work together toward that goal.
Or does that make too much sense?
A Fistful of Rape
A somewhat humorous podcast on l'affair Akin by Ace of Spades commenter Empire of Jeff ...
Arguing that anti-abortion proponents in general are "3rd Century" slavemasters or that they are impractical merely because they do not agree or do not propose a solution to all the social ills related to unwanted babies is itself incoherent.
1. The issue is not whether females have property rights over their own body. The issue (to pro-lifers) is at what point a developing baby is a person and has a right not to be killed for someone else's convenience or happiness. If the fetus is a person, then its right not to be killed trumps your property rights -- just as you can't up and shoot people who embezzle from your business. (Likewise, the opposition to “rape or incest” exceptions by many pro-lifers; regardless of the crimes of one or both of the parents, the fetus has committed no crime. We do not execute people for “corruption of the blood”.)
On the other hand, if the life or physical health of the mother is reasonably threatened, and abortion is the only practical way to save it, then HER right to life comes into play, under the concept of self-defense.
2. It is neither incoherent nor impractical to oppose abortion because one believes that the fetus is a person, merely because the abortion opponent does not also provide an immediate solution for other social ills related to unwanted children. I can state, unequivocally, that it is WRONG to round up and liquidate the insane, the mentally disabled, those whose medical bills drain society, those populations where poverty and crime are rampant -- even if I do not have a good solution to high crime, generational poverty, high health care costs, and problems in our mental health care system.
To abortion foes, the situations are directly analogous – it’s not OK to kill people because they are expensive or inconvenient, and they see fetuses as people.
Note what these have in common? The elephant in the room is NOT property rights, women’s rights, welfare reform, contraception availability, or anything else that gets thrown back as reasons to support abortion.
The burning issue is “personhood” – when does a gamete, zygote, embryo, fetus, or baby become a person in the eyes of the law? Simple question – on one side of the line, it’s a person with a legal right not to be killed out of hand; on the other, it’s just living tissue with no legal rights whatsoever.
Roe v. Wade explicitly acknowledges this reality in the majority opinion: “A. The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument.”
Further, it states that since at that time, the Court was aware of no consensus (and they stated it was an issue for physicians, philosophers, theologians to decide, and in other places discussed the weight of the general feelings of the people), any decision where to draw the line was arbitrary.
From the majority opinion: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
The thing I don't get is that the left is falling all over itself in their hurry to put idiots lime akin in control of every persons healthcare! OS it cognitive dissonance? What is going on in their stupid heads?
Geodkyt: your statement while true idealogically and according to up-to-now legal opinions; but it is disingenuous, scantimonous and hypocritical when you examine the real world results.
Say what you will but those who deal with these problems on a daily basis are privately thinking what I so politically incorrectly stated out loud.
yes, it smacks of eugenics and fascism, but don't tell me it isn't the prime mover in the real world of today and the main reason why anti-abortionist are not getting any traction....
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Frank,
I'm not trying to have a fight, but it is, in fact, disingenuous, sanctimonous, and hypocritical to insist that one can only hold the opinion that "killing people for personal convienience is bad" if and only if they simultaneously solve all the social ills of poverty and unwanted children.
Your implication is that the only thing keeping us from being overrun with criminals, drug dealers, and the perienially unemployed is that enough poor people have abortions that it keeps the herd in check.
By that reasoning, infanticide should be legal, especially for children permanently damaged by their mother's poor lifestyle choices that result in life-long disabilities that the State will end up paying for. heck -- we could apply that logic to ANY person who is a drain on society, and ship them off to "Quality of Life Centers" for their euthenasia shot.
Over and above the fact that claiming a right to kill inconvienient people to save dollars can be reasonably viewed as "being a bad thing", it still misses the issue.
We don't allow lynchings, even when it's cheaper than a trial. We don't (anymore) send out military units to depopulate an area for the benefit of white businessmen by rounding up the legal (nonwhite) inhabitants and giving them a choice of being gunned down, starved, or locked in concentration camps.
If there was a reasonably broad consensus as to the line for the beginning of personhood, the answer to the abortion issue would be obvious, and unmistakeably clear to anyone who thinks the euthenasia of walking, breathing people who aren't wanted would be wrong.
Geodkyt,
I am not Frank, I don't speak for him. But I feel a need to respond to your disrespect.
I grew up on a farm, in a time when a corn crop coming in short meant that you sold some of the livestock you might have made money on, because you just wouldn't have the resources to do it all.
Plan badly, overextend, and we went hungry.
What I read in your message was an underlying assumption of unlimited access to someone else's money.
I find that pernicious and arrogant.
We had 20th century examples of all the killings you outline, for reasons of defect, of unproductiveness, of expense to the state -- of distorting the purity of the favored national blood lines. Hitler's atrocities included euthanasia on those of his own people with birth defects, and mental so-called "defectives". We know what evil is. You don't have to paint the bloody picture.
You might not be involved with the poor in your community. Or with the middle class that is rapidly being demoted to poverty. Divorce, layoffs, a shrinking economy and job force, (padded union pensions, profligate government spending,) these are gutting America's ability to support generous public assistance programs.
And the presence of public assistance programs have vastly impaired the assistance safety nets that some communities had operated in earlier times.
What I want to say is that abortion is bad. But banning abortion probably ruins more lives, and actively causes deaths, that needn't have occurred. When we talk about what a community can "afford", we are not talking about the money spent to repaint the stripes on Main Street every year vs. every three years. What we are talking about is whether paying for a desired abortion now will mean the ability to keep some number of people from starving in a few months or years. That is an unsavory choice. If you haven't raised livestock in a constrained, limited economy, you likely have never faced anything near that kind of life-and-death choice.
I do not advocate abortion as a good choice. I defend it because, sometimes, it can avoid greater harm.
Let me be even more clear.
I DON'T CARE if it's cheaper to kill people than let them live. Period.
People are NOT your bloody livestock. Period.
This nation is not a 19th century lifeboat full of shipwrecked sailors adrift without food for months. Period.
We are not a pre-radios-and-airplanes Inuit village whose food stocks are low, so Grandma gets to take the Final Ice Flow Ride, whether she wants to, or not. Period.
The real question is not whether abortion is cheaper than other alternatives. The real question is, "Are these little people at this time, or just lumps of meat that might turn into people?"
Killing people because they are expensive is evil, wrong, and something that is so counter to our Constitution and Western civilization as to be automatically branded as unambiguously so. . . except if that person hasn't drawn a breath yet.
Eliminating a lump of flesh that is potential a person, but which, by general consensus AND law, is not a person at this time, is ethically neutral. Do whatever you like with your lump of meat in your body.
It’s all in WHERE you draw the line on personhood. Once that line is drawn and generally accepted by society, then the issue as to when abortion is should or should not be permitted is almost completely settled. Some minor issues will remain such as whether a minor can give her own consent for an elective abortion (it is, after all, a medical procedure, and kids cannot normally authorize elective medical procedures on their own), and how much of a maternal risk justifies a “post-personhood” abortion.
If you actually mean that as far as you are concerned, the line of personhood is “X”, then say so. But don’t be hypocritical about it – killing innocent “people” for convenience or economy is murder, and it is evil. Whether or not a sovereign adult may eliminating a lump of meat that is not a person, but will cause them discomfort and isn’t wanted, is none of your damned business – her meat, her choice.
By saying that “abortion is wrong, BUT we should allow it for these elective* exceptions. . . “, your argument is one of two things:
If you think the fetus at that stage is a person, an argument that elective abortion should be permitted for pragmatic reasons is LITERALLY no different than advocating the infanticide of poor children who have already been born. **
If you think that the fetus at that stage is NOT a person, your complaint that abortion is “bad” is just meaningless moralizing akin to wagging your disapproving finger at the lifestyles of smokers, sexually active singles, people with tattoos, or the 400lbs Wal-Martian who just SuperSized their Bucket O’Lard meal.
* Note “elective” – life saving interventions are not “elective”. Saving the life of the mother, even by abortion, is not elective.
** If population reduction to save resources (hey, it’s your “cull the herd” analogy) is your goal, a more ethical choice would be expanding and speeding up capital punishment of violent felons – at least they chose to be societal malignancies.
I'll be honest, this is the first time I've seen Malthusian arguments used to support elective abortion, by someone who claims he feels abrotion is "bad".
Wow.
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