Major-league, Midwest, Republican stupid

Well, it seems Missouri and Kansas outdid ourselves in the last 24 hours.

As would happen, the "major-league stupid" is from 2 different, Right Wing, Conservative Republicans. You no doubt heard, right?

The first, from Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin when he said women aren't likely to get pregnant from a "legitimate rape"--his term, apparently--because the female body somehow blocks these, rocket scientist that he is.

Forget that he's not a doctor. Forget that there's no scientific, biological support for this very Right Wing contention, he put it out there, regardless.

The response, fortunately?

G.O.P. Trying to Oust Akin From Race for Rape Remarks

WASHINGTON — Fearing that a seat crucial to winning a Senate majority could slip away, the national Republican establishment on Monday unleashed a furious campaign to drive Representative Todd Akin, the party’s newly selected nominee, out of the race against Missouri’s Democratic senator.

Amid an uproar over provocative comments on rape and abortion that Mr. Akin made in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee declared that it would withdraw financial and organizational support for Mr. Akin, including $5 million in advertising already reserved for the fall. In the interview, Mr. Akin said victims of “legitimate rape” rarely got pregnant.

What too many people don't know, however, is that Mr. Akin's stance on this issue is far from solitary. He's not the only Republican who ever said or mentioned this very wrong idea as truth:

"The thing is, his comments were hardly some kind never-before-heard gaffe. Arguments like his have cropped up again and again on the right over the past quarter century and the idea that trauma is a form of birth control continues to be promulgated by anti-abortion forces that seek to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. The push for a no-exceptions anti-abortion policy has for decades gone hand in hand with efforts to downplay the frequency with which rape- or incest-related pregnancies occur, and even to deny that they happen, at all. In other words, it's not just Akin singing this tune.

Take Christian Life Resources, an educational site, for example. It reprints an 1999 article on the topic that seeks to make the same distinction between categories of rape as did Akin, and for the same reason. Wrote John C. Willke -- a physician who in the 1980s and early 1990s was president of the National Right to Life Committee -- in the piece, originally published in Life Issues Connector:

When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase 'forcible rape' or 'assault rape,' for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare."

So this gaffe by Todd Akin is informative, at least for me, if not for lots of us. Who knew a group of people actually thought women might not risk pregnancy if it's a "legitimate rape"?

What sexist pigs.

The second stupid thing to come out of the midwest Monday was, rather famously, from our own Kansas Representative Kevin Yoder when, again, rocket scientist that he is, he decides to skinny dip in the Sea of Galilee while on a very official trip, representing our own US federal government.

Man, I love these people.

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/republicans-decry-todd-akins-rape-remarks.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/08/20/159397067/issue-of-abortion-back-in-spotlight-in-swing-states#more

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/17/barack-obama/obama-says-ryan-supports-banning-all-abortions/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/20/legitimate-rape-an-old-right-wing-trope.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/chuck-winder-rape-abortions_n_1366994.html