Bill of No Rights

This Texas abortion bill take on a Schoolhouse Rock classic is the best thing you'll see all day.

Meet the New Ass, Same as the Old Ass

Today's column for the Daily Banter expands on the topic of Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith and his unfathomable comparison of pregnancy from rape to pregnancy out of wedlock. It not only pulls back the curtain on the pre-Enlightenment mindset the Republicans gleefully wallow in these days -- it also gives up quite a bit on what they think the subject of rape is really all about.

Here's the opening shot:

"When it comes to presenting a unified, impenetrable messaging front, there's nothing more fearsome or impressive than the GOP talking points machine; the Republicans simply know how to stay on point and move as one when they're dishing out their own branding. With that in mind, they really have to sit down with Lucifer, Mammon & Rove or whatever the hell their PR firm is named and come up with a stock answer they can give, without question or deviation, whenever some smart-alec reporter brings up the subject of rape and pregnancy. They desperately need an alternative to what they're doing right now -- mostly because telling the truth is getting them killed."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"Put yourself in a father's position. Yes, it is similar."

-- Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith of Pennsylvania

So, what's he comparing? Having a child out of wedlock with having a child produced by rape. Really.

See, Smith was speaking to the Pennsylvania Press Club and said that while he disagrees with Todd Akin's recent comment about "legitimate rape" and the fact that a woman's body can shut down pregnancy in instances of rape -- the latter being especially amusing seeing how there's nothing to agree or disagree with since it's science -- he still doesn't believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. When a reporter then asked him how he'd personally respond to a daughter or granddaughter having to carry a child created by rape to term, Smith said he'd already gone through something similar within his own family and that the person in question made the right decision by "choosing life." When pressed, Smith explained in detail: His daughter had gotten pregnant even though she wasn't married. To Smith, that's very close to having his daughter be raped.

You don't have to put yourself in a father's position to understand the comparison.

You have to put yourself in the position of a sociopath with Down Syndrome.

I wonder how Tom Smith's daughter feels about her child's grandfather implying that he or she may as well have been the product of rape. And I'll bet Smith's daughter would absolutely know the difference between her specific pregnancy and one caused by rape -- just a hunch.

Pussy Riot

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a look at the less incendiary thing Todd Akin said on Sunday, but the more thoroughly insane -- and how it's just the latest example of the right's ongoing anti-intellectualism and its willingness to gleefully wallow in absolute know-nothingness.

Here's the opening shot:

"I’d really like to be surprised by Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s breathtakingly contemptible comments about “legitimate rape” and the inner-workings of the female reproductive system, but doing so would mean that I haven’t allowed myself to be completely overcome by cynicism and disgust at the state of American politics in general and the Republican party in particular — and believe me, I have. By now you all know what Akin said, you’ve heard his half-assed non-apology for it and you’ve felt the seismic backlash it’s unleashed; it’s rare that the mainstream GOP attempts to behave like a sane political entity anymore, so when even the normally tea-bagger-beholden mouthpieces of the party release the Outrage Kraken on you and demand that you submit or else, you know you’ve done something indefensible."

Read the Rest Here

No Choice

This is being circulated far and wide today and with very good reason. As Cesca rightly says, it's the most important -- certainly the most infuriating -- thing you'll read all day.

Published in the Texas Observer, it's the very personal story of the torment and heartbreak -- the heartbreak on top of heartbreak -- that a woman and her family were forced to endure at the hands of Texas's despicably draconian pre-abortion sonogram law.

This is what a growing number of Republican lawmakers are trying to do. This is their idea of smaller, less intrusive government: forcing their way into the space between a doctor and a woman, and into the most personal and often emotionally devastating decision a woman will ever make.

But remember, you can always just close your eyes.

The Texas Observer: "No Choice": One Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law/3.15.12

Quote of the Day

"You just have to close your eyes."

-- Republican Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett's advice to women on how to deal with the mandatory pre-abortion ultrasound being proposed in his state

You know, I'm all tapped out of clever today -- can we please just jam a baseball bat up this man's ass?

Just close you eyes, Tom. You won't even feel it.

Jesus Christ, he even sounds like a rapist.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Obama lost ground with women. I can’t begin to tell you the dismay and the shock and probably panic that exists in the White House and in the salons of the elites of the Democratic Party over this. They didn’t even consider this a possibility. This never entered their mind. This was going to be the end –- not just of me, folks, the end of talk radio."

-- Rush Limbaugh, reveling in a poll that shows President Obama's numbers down slightly among women and inexplicably linking it to the furor over Limbaugh's attacks on Georgetown student Sandra Fluke

I'm seriously beginning to think Limbaugh is the highest-level, deepest-cover double-agent the Democrats have ever had. Either that or his brain is riddled with holes from the syphilis he picked up in the Dominican Republic a few years back.

Picture of the Day

(From Lian Amaris, via Daily Kos)