When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
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Dipshit Todd Akin has recently re-emerged in the public sphere to defend his claim in 2012 that women who were victims of “legitimate rape” could not get pregnant. In a phone interview with St. Louis Dispatch, the former congressman compared himself sympathetically to Sen. Joe McCarthy, who spearheaded an infamous Communist witch hunt in the 1950s. Akin argued that McCarthy was another victim “assassinated by the media.”
“I use McCarthy as an example of someone who was assassinated by the media, so he had no credibility,” Akin told the Dispatch, drawing parallels to his own experience with what he believes were “intentional and dishonest” misreading of his statement. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down,” Akin said in 2012 in response to a question about allowing abortions in the case of rape or incest.
McCarthy has become synonymous with anti-Communist hysteria after he led a series of hearings targeting government workers and artists considered to be left-leaning or suspected of homosexuality. Because of his crusade, hundreds were jailed under suspicion of Communist ties with no evidence. Many more lost their jobs.
Akin rescinds his apology for the offensive and inaccurate remarks in his new book, “Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom,” insisting that the liberal media and certain conservatives ganged up on him to sink his campaign. Akin reiterated this belief to the Dispatch, saying, “It wasn’t that the Republican Party left me wounded on the battlefield. They came out on the battlefield and tried to dispatch me.”
The Republican establishment did try to publicly distance itself from Akin as his campaign floundered, though a sizable number of right-wing groups kept funding him. In an attempt to prevent another debacle this campaign cycle, the GOP has tried to train candidates to stop talking about rape and start being more conscious of female and non-white voters. Despite these efforts, the GOP’s 2014 candidates have already opined on what counts as legitimate rape and argued that marital rape should be legal.
Toddy, you are today's asshat of the day. Congrats numbnutz!
Since rape seems to be the topic of the week - Remember facts? Remember facts about rape? Because it turns out that a whole lot of people know less than nothing about the subject. Indeed what they think they know is a whole lot of something that is wrong and dangerous to women's heath, safety and well-being. Below are 50 facts about rape.
1. Low estimate of the number of women , according to the Department of Justice, raped every year: 300,000
29. Percentage of military victims who get an "involuntarily" dischargecomparedto percentage of charged and accused who are discharged with honor: 90 percent involuntary to 80 percent with honor
44. Chances that a woman in the U.S. is raped versus gets breast cancer: 2 to 1
45. Chances that a victim is "Emergency Raped" by a strangerversus percentage of victims who consider their rapes emergencies: 7 percent versus 100 percent
47. Prison sentences for four men found guilty of participating in gang rapes of two teenage girls in France over two years: one year, six months, suspended sentence
48. State where in 2012 a doctor is facing the loss of her medical license for providing an abortion to a pregnant 10-year old incest rape victim: Kansas
49. Country where doctors (but not the rapist) were excommunicated for performing a life-saving abortion to nine-year-old incest rape victim: Brazil
Had enough? Me, too. And, believe me, this is the Cliff Notes version. Some people are offended by frank conversation about violence, especially sexualized violence. I'm offended by the tolerance for these assaults, scientific denialism, entertainment at the expense of people's safety, bodily integrity, and shame-infused legislation that hurts children and women - and is based on the belief that all pasty white men of the GOP are animals at heart.
Lets face it NFTOS women readers, under the American Taliban regime you're less than a third class citizen. If ye thinks not, watch the below four videos, and if it doesn't sink in, watch them until it does.
Obviously I am not a female, but this fecal matter disgusts me to know end. Women and only women - should be deciding the fate of their own person, their own body parts, and what to keep and what not to.
I find myself in wonderment, that circa 2012, that pasty white men still think it's OK to control a women's right to her own body. Yes, straight out the 1950's radiation bomb shelter to your vagina ladies.
I wonder where this mentality is derived from, is it the gene pool, do they learn this from their parents growing up, do they learn this at their Southern Baptist bible revivals? How can any man say that a baby conceived from rape is "GODS Will"!? This is understood as a crime to most humans, but is considered by the American Talibanas the "immaculate conception".
Why does an American female support the very beings that want to keep them down, barefoot and pregnant if you will? Like the Samuel L. Jackson video, hey women "wake the fuck up"!
I pray every day of my life that God shrivels up all republican mens penis', like a slug, when you pour salt on it. Remember GOPers, please remember to breed responsibly, as there is no life guard at the gene pool.
Ladies, your lifestyle is in jeopardy as you know it if you vote for "Binders Full O' Women". The decision is yours, and its your vote that decides whom garners the key code to nuclear weapons, the key to your vagina, and the key to you getting equal pay for an equal days work.
Could the teapublican party face an impossible Catch-22 when it comes to excising the crazy from their party? This is a party, after all, that has numerous candidates who are running for office on a platform of ending the direct election of senators. It’s a party whose most prominent voice in the media goes around calling women “sluts,” and one with a Senate candidate who talks nonsense about the biology of rape. Most notably, it’s a party with a presidential candidate who simply parrots back the party’s conventional wisdom (47 percent!) — who sounds totally out of touch and which is very insulting to most voters. So what’s next?
One month removed after banning Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin from their national convention, teapublican leaders are welcoming him back with open arms, his trespasses forgiven, if awkwardly unforgotten. Led by RNC chair Reince Priebus, whose stoical about-face on the issue has been worthy of the royal guard, members of the GOP top brass are gradually stepping forward, one by one, to say that the interests of the nation are now such that it is important to elect Todd Akin to the Senate - all the bad and rather unfortunate things that were said about the man last month notwithstanding
The American Taliban/GOP wants you to think Missouri Senate candidate Todd "legitimate rape" Akin is some totally "out there" guy, but his policies are practically identical to the rest of his party - to include Romney/Ryan.
Many GOPers defected away from Akin when he mentioned the not so infamous "womens bodies can reject a rapist sperm" - then reality set in, that being that, hey we do believe this, and most importantly - that for the GOP to throw in the towel on the Missouri Senate seat, as the party's national leaders once appeared to be doing, would probably mean losing the Senate.
Akins legitimate rape statement implies two things. One, if a woman claims to be raped and gets pregnant she is lying. Secondly, he implies there are ‘legitimate” rapes and also other kinds of rapes.
The rape comment is not the only “Akinism.” In the last couple days, Akin suggested that businesses should be allowed to pay women less than men as a matter of “freedom.” At a recent rally a man asked him, “You voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Why do you think it is okay for a woman to be paid less for doing the same work as a man?
Akin said he didn’t support the idea that government should be telling people what you pay and what you don’t pay. Akin added, I think it’s about freedom. If someone what’s to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that’s fine, however it wants to work. So, the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things has gotten us into huge trouble.
The American Taliban has a severe problem. The very fact that they are sneaking back in to support Akin means they support his extremism. Teapublicans have always been hypocritical and insincere - at best douche bags, at worst Aleister Crowley's in disguise.
This about face is both predictable and worthy of NFTOS "worst persons in the world' award. Akin's trespasses have been forgiven. Best case scenario is that the teapublicans think winning a Senate seat is better than having principles, more disgustingly, they all secretly agreed with Akin at the time, and were just pretending to be outraged. Lets assume that one has been living under a rock on Mars for the last 40 years - then one could assume it's the former.
The resurgence of support for Todd Akin’s U.S. Senate campaign proves, at least among the current crop of teapublican leaders, that “enlightenment … is very narrowly dispersed.”
By reversing their decision to withdraw their support of Akin, teapublican leaders are putting partisan gain ahead of Akin’s warped views of a woman’s reproductive process — and exposes a level of political dishonesty that’s more insidious than that of Democrats who dragged Scopes into a courtroom in 1925.
“Legitimate rape” is great birth control. So says Todd Akin, and he oughta know. If we are raped we can rest unafraid, ‘Cause we can’t get pregnant if forcibly laid.
Our female bodies are clever that way, We only get pregnant when we say “okay.” Doctors have told him, so it must be so, The stork only comes if we don’t say “No!”
Rape won’t make babies and that is a fact; There’s no global warming; the Earth’s really flat. We heard it on FOX News so it must be true. Well, Mr. Akin, we say “FUCK YOU!”
A whole host of pissed off grannies tunes exist here. Raging Grannies.
Is there anyone within the confines of CONUS that the teapublican
2012 Republican Platform To Advocate Abortion Ban Without Rape Exception
Todd Akin is wrong on his rape stance, but understand that he is not alone in this disgusting radical ideology of legitimate rape.
Teapublican politicians have been falling over themselves to condemn from Rep. Todd Akin, the Teapublican Senate candidate in Missouri, who said Sunday that women who have experienced “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” The Romney-Ryan campaign called Akin’s comments “insulting, inexcusable and frankly wrong,” in spite of Ryan’s close working relationship with Akin on a number of radical anti-abortion and contraception bills. A Romney spokesperson added that the “Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”
But embracing a rape exception for abortion rights would put the campaign at odds with the Teapublican Party’s longstanding platform, the newest iteration of which will be officially unveiled at the Teapublican National Convention in Tampa. In spite of the massive public outcry from the right over Akin’s comments, the official GOP platform committee drafted a provision Monday supporting a “human life amendment” that would outlaw abortion without specifying exemptions for rape or incest. The platform reads:
Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.
Heading the committee is Gov. Bob [Transvaginal Bob] McDonnell (R-VA), best known for his “mandatory ultrasound” law requiring any woman getting an abortion to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound. Transvaginal Bob also revealed his regressive position on women’s rights in his college thesis, which slandered working women, contraception, and “fornicators.” It’s no surprise, then, that under his guidance, the Teapublican Party will reaffirm its support for a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortion and likely many forms of contraception.
In saying they would not oppose a rape exception, Romney and Ryan are both changing their tune. Romney said in 2007 he would be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions, and Ryan has been staunchly anti-abortion in all cases, even attempting to restrict abortion access to victims of “forcible rape” only.
The human life amendment has been a tenet of the Teapublican Party platform since the dawn of the Reagan era in 1980. It has survived for 32 years and nine presidential elections, even after former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pushed hard in 2000 for an explicit exception for rape and incest. McCain ceded the language to party officials during his own run in 2008.
The “you-can't-get-pregnant-from-rape falsehood” is apparently something that enough people believe that Planned Parenthood includes it on its pregnancy FAQ page.
The problem with all this is - unlettered republicans, and this is why watching faux news is a no-no, and why higher education is so important.
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare... If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Republicans are furious at the extremist running for the Senate in Missouri, but yet are thrilled with the one running for Vice President. Both Ryan and Akin represent the same ideology on rape, incest, and personhood. No surprise here, what is the surprise is the hypocritical oath by these tea baggers. Not okay for Akin but for Paul [Eddie Munster] Ryan all is kosher.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association on Monday insisted that Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) was right to claim women could not become pregnant from “legitimate rape.”
“What Todd Akin is talking about is when you’ve got a real, genuine rape. A case of forcible rape, a case of assault, where a woman has been violated against her will through the use of physical force where it is physically traumatic for her,” Fischer said on his radio program.
“Under those circumstances, the woman’s body — because of the trauma that has been inflicted on her — it may interfere with the normal function processes of her body that lead to conception and pregnancy.”
Fischer said the trauma from rape interfered with normal physiological processes that occur during conception, which “may make it impossible for her, or difficult in that particular circumstance, to conceive a child.
Where in the hell do these idiots morph from? Common sense is knocking at the GOP’s door, and they evidently are not answering.
Senate Candidate and Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) told a local television station on Sunday that “legitimate rape” rarely produces pregnancy because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin cited conversations with unnamed doctors for the bizarre claim.
Akin sponsored legislation that would redefine rape in federal law to limit funding for abortion providers and has a long track record of uninformed and extreme views about women’s health. He has a consistently radical anti-choice voting record in the House, wants to ban the morning after pill, and has expressed concern that criminalizing marital rape gives women “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” during a divorce.
Akin’s crusade against women’s access to medical services fits with his broader worldview, which is heavily influenced by a particularly virulent group of fundamentalist thinkers described as “Christian supremacists” by the Anti-Defamation League.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who is going to face Akin in November, responds:
“The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. “
Akin responds to the controversy, says he “misspoke.” He does not apologize. Full texthere.
The Romney campaign releases a statement: “Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”
