I have tried to stay away from politics with this blog, but today a politician made it impossible for me to do so.
Todd Akin, Republican candidate for Senate from Missouri, said a woman can’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape.” He did apologize for the statement by later stating he meant “forcible rape.”
One particular political party seems to have policies based on not thinking things through. They even have a lot of “think tanks”, which have thunk and thunk about their policies.
Politicians say stupid and cruel things all the time. Sometimes they can apologize for them and they will go away.
But how do you apologize for not understanding biology? How do you apologize for making public policy based on your misunderstanding of biology?
Science does count.
So if politicians say they don’t “believe in evolution” ask them how women get pregnant.
If they say global warming is some kind of conspiracy, ask them how women get pregnant.
We really need to know if they know the answer…
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The roused bear 
You’re absolutely right Harlan. Akin is a moron who holds absurd views based on spurious facts. I’m amazed the guy has the mental capacity to tie his own shoe laces.
I wonder if he knows what ‘rape’ actually means and what in his tiny mind he considers to be a ‘legitimate rape’. I heard over here in the UK that the day after this he was still 1% ahead in the polls in Missouri. Is that true? If so, I despair for all the right thinking folk of that state and question what is going wrong with the education system there.
I wish it was just one idiot, but it is not. The reason the Republicans came down so hard on Akin is because he has been a leader in pushing the conservative policies, very much like the vice presidential candidate. The thought process on those policies is pretty similar to what Akin articulated.
That sounds like a very frightening place for the US to be heading to. Why has there been such a lurch to ultra right wing thinking by the Republicans in recent years? What’s driving it?
To adopt slash and burn economic policies to cope with the financial crisis is one thing, but when their manifesto also encompasses such views on social issues such as abortion then it becomes a whole different ball game. Not dissimilar to the ideology of the Taleban.
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