What kind of woman supports Rick Santorum?

I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created— in the sense of rape—but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.

We don't know, so we had to imagine. Rick is still seen by some as a promising candidate, supportable by right wing fundamentalist leaders. This enthusiasm is only dampened by the fact that nobody outside of right wing fundamentalist leaders particularly gives a flying fuck about Rick Santorum.

But as his campaign flounders awkwardly along like—Oh, I dunno—a man-on-dog sexual pairing trying to jog mid-tryst, it's a good time to be reminded: There are piggish elements within our body politic who will always, always, always abuse women's rights for political gain. And that Rick Santorum's "google problem" was never just Dan Savage's brilliant gag, it has always been the things that he actually says and does.

Frothy lube may stain your futon, but Santorum stains the American political landscape—until such time as his well-established inability to win actual votes brings the Santorum slide to a messy end.

DOWNLOADS: (1078)

PLAYS: (2164)

Embed

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum really dropped a load on CNN last Friday night when he said rape victims should accept their babies as gifts from God.

In an interview with Piers Morgan, the most socially backward conservative candidate in the GOP field remained unyielding in his opposition to abortion, even in cases where rape is involved.

Morgan pressed Santorum on the issue and asked how he would feel if his own daughter came to him begging for an abortion after being raped. Santorum said, “I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created - in the sense of rape - but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.”

He added that rape victims ought to “make the best of a bad situation.”

That's right, Lil' Ricky wants the government to force pregnant rape victims to accept the "horribly created," because "God" gave you this "horribly created"...um, "gift" via a brutal attack against your will.

Because he's a "compassionate conservative." Cough.
Transcript of the segment follows.

Continue reading »

Tanya Somander at ThinkProgress brings us, from the floor of the Indiana House, the keen insights of Republican Rep. Eric Turner of Marion:

TURNER: With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.

I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.

The best part of this video, though, is the rebuttal from Democratic Rep. Linda Lawson of Hammond:

LAWSON: I was a sex-crimes investigator for six years for the city of Hammond, Indiana. And I want to tell you what it looks like and what it sounds like when women are raped. Or six-year-olds are raped. Or 18-month-old babies are raped. Or 97-year-old women are raped. They don't make it up!

Then they have to go to court. They have to stand in a courtroom, and they have to face the person who did it to them. Women don't make this up! My goodness! This is the state of Indiana!

Obviously, Rep. Hammond did not get the memo that, under the current regime of our new Alien Overlords from Planet T-Par-T, all victims of crime are now considered suspicious characters at best and likely criminals. If there wasn't something wrong with them, God wouldn't let anything bad happen to them, right?

Especially when it comes to accusing men. What were they thinking?

Because, of course, the bill that Turner was defending was his own HB 1210, which among other restrictions would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, and require abortion providers to tell patients that abortion carries risks, including the possibility of breast cancer. And they obviously listened to Turner's logic, such as it were:

The House also voted 42-54 against an amendment by Rep. Gail Riecken, D-Riecken, which would have exempted from the bill women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom a pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm.

Naturally, it passed the Indiana House shortly afterward. It's a lock to pass the Senate, too, and to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

[H/t scarce]

This was a truly horrifying thing to watch, and even more upsetting to wonder what's happening to this woman now as a result of telling foreign journalists of her ordeal. And of course, there's always the possibility that this is an attempt to draw the United States deeper into war in Libya:

It was just another breakfast time at Tripoli's smart Rixos Al Nasr hotel, sleepy foreign journalists helping themselves to cereals, rolls and terrible coffee in the restaurant, looking out over a neat garden unusual in the dour capital city.

But the Groundhog Day conversations – more overnight coalition air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces, rebel advances in the east, how to escape the minders – were suddenly interrupted when a distraught woman burst in to describe how she had been repeatedly raped by government militiamen.

Iman al-Obeidi was quickly manhandled and arrested by security officials – an extraordinary spectacle for the journalists staying in the luxurious hotel-cum-media centre, hemmed in by severe restrictions on their movements and fed barely credible information.

The scene – filmed by several of those present – unfolded when Obeidi entered the Ocaliptus dining room and lifted up her abaya (dress) to show a slash and bruises on her right leg. "Look what Gaddafi's men have done to me," she screamed. "Look what they did, they violated my honour."

Distraught and weeping, she was surrounded by reporters and cameramen. Libyan minders pushed and lashed out at the journalists, one of them drawing a gun, another smashing a CNN camera. Two waitresses grabbed knives and threatened Obeidi, calling her "a traitor to Gaddafi".

Obeidi said she had been arrested at a checkpoint in the capital because she is from Benghazi, stronghold of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion in the east. "They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up. They peed on me." She said she had been raped by 15 men and held for two days.

Charles Clover of the Financial Times, who tried to protect her, was pushed, thrown to the floor and kicked, and Channel 4 correspondent Jonathan Miller was punched.

Obeidi was frogmarched, struggling, into the lobby and driven away, shouting: "They say they are taking me to hospital but they are taking me to jail." Minders again tried to stop journalists taking pictures. It was impossible to verify her account. Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said he had been told Obeidi, apparently in her 30s, was drunk and suffered from "mental problems".

The incident made a powerful impression on journalists who have heard of, and occasionally seen, brutality but are subject to stringent controls to prevent them reporting independently and have a frustrating sense of being manipulated for crude propaganda purposes by the authorities.

"There was a desperate sense of our failure to prevent the thugs taking her away," C4's Miller said afterwards. "There was nothing more that we could have done as we were overtly threatened by considerable physical force."

An American TV cameraman said: "I think she probably was raped, otherwise I can't see her having the courage to put herself at such risk to let us know what the regime is doing. We see the fear in people all the time. But this is the most blatant example of the vicious way the regime treats the Libyan people."

DOWNLOADS: (554)

PLAYS: (3292)

Embed

I am new to Crooks and Liars. Last Friday when Open Left, where I had blogged previously, sadly closed down, John emailed me that very afternoon to ask me to blog here. My answer was that "I would be thrilled," and so I am.

I have had decades of activism and involvement in women's rights women's abortion rights. Abortion rights are absolutely the integral to the ideas and attainment of freedom and equality for women. Without them, they can not be free or equal, or even safe.

This is part 3 of my series on HR #3 which I began at Open Left. Given the rapid onslaught of anti-abortion legislation being produced by the radical Republican right (the only jobs they seem to be producing are for clerks who have to write up the legislation), I will be writing more. Here are the prior two posts in this series.

An Anti Abortion Bill and lots, lots more

HR #3: The Whole Bill is Rape - Not Just the Rape Provision

David Waldman (aka KagroX) wrote an excellent post at Daily Kos last about just how potentially big a net the theory underlying this bill could cast. Very wide, wide enough to get a whale.

It's titled, "H.R. 3 hides even bigger dangers than redefinition of rape". Again I quote him:

" Take the rape provisions out, and you're left with a bill that paves the way for using the tax code to select every American's health care options for them, direct from Washington."

The bill lays the groundwork for the radical right to target every social and economic advance that they don't like. And they don't like much. They are redefining the purpose of the tax code. Taxes are meant to raise money and to apportion fairly the burdens and benefits of government. Taxes have been used to promote innovation like the R&D credit. Or not, like the oil depletion allowance or agricultural subsidies. The tax code has been used to allow religious groups to sustain their mission - to worship and to make the world a better place.

The tax code, as we can see from the church/synagogue/mosque-friendly provisions, have long served social goals as well. But that can now be used to go after social goods.

More after the fold from me and I quote David

Continue reading »

I’m you, dear readers. Well, actually, I’m not. But I’m also not a witch, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

The above is of course a reference to Delaware’s favourite Wiccan of Wilmington, Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, who began her most recent television advertisement by assuring viewers that she, indeed, is “not a witch.” In past political years this might have been considered a bit low-brow, to actually have to assure the voting public you didn’t spend most days at dusk swooping over the heads of the Lollipop Guild.

The bar has been raised among this year’s crop of weirdos and wackadoos seeking higher office in America. If you don’t have the Second Amendment tattooed on your buttocks or actually think you’re The Walrus, don’t even try and claim to be among the craziest third of aspiring politicos on the current American landscape.

For Jay Leno may have once called politics “show business for ugly people.” But the larger truth these days is that a run for political office is a surefire way for those seeking a moment in the spotlight, but lacking any discernible talent or a handle on the truth, to have their hour in the headlines. It’s show business for crazy people.

Continue...

DOWNLOADS: (943)

PLAYS: (3277)

Embed

Gossip Boy -- which has been all over the case of onetime "Oath Keepers" figure Charles Dyer, arrested for the rape of a 7-year-old girl -- is reporting that the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, is running away from Dyer as fast as he can.

Rhodes, as you can see in the video from his Oct. 21 appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, tries to project a straight-shooter image, even though the underlying beliefs of the Oath Keepers' "oath" is a swamp of bizarre conspiracies.

So now Rhodes has scrubbed any mention of Dyer from the Oath Keepers site, and is claiming to have had no association whatsoever with him:

“Charles Dyer never became an actual member of Oath Keepers. I met him when he attended our April 19, 2009 gathering at Lexington, and back then I considered him for a position as our liaison to the Marine Corps, but I decided against that when he made it clear he intended to train and help organize private militias across the country when he got out of the Marines. I considered such plans to be incompatible with the Oath Keepers mission and goals, and certainly incompatible with any leadership position within this org. He understood and agreed with my decision to not have him become officially involved with Oath Keepers. All of that was long before we even offered official memberships. So, he was never a member, and never in any leadership position.”

One little problem with this explanation, as Gossip Boy explains, is the evidence from our friends at Google cache:

Yep, that's the same Stewart Rhodes announcing that Dyer would be representing the Oath Keepers at the July 4 Tea Party in Broken Arrow.

Indeed, the reality is that Dyer has been a significant figure for the Oath Keepers all along. His first video, released in March, in fact put the Oath Keepers on the map Internet-wise by going viral.

As we noted, at least Dyer's friends at American Resistance are standing behind him. You can't blame Stewart Rhodes for wanting to cut and run, but he's not exactly helping his cause by being the opposite of forthcoming about it all.

DOWNLOADS: (869)

PLAYS: (11274)

Embed

We first noticed Marine Sgt. Charles Dyer, aka "July4Patriot," back in March, when we ran one of the first reports on the "Oath Keepers" bloc of the Tea Party movement -- an organization devoted to recruiting military and police-force veterans into a Patriot-movement belief system predicated on a series of paranoid conspiracy theories, especially the notion that the federal government intends to begin rounding up citizens and putting them in concentration camps.

Dyer played a prominent role in connecting the Oath Keepers to the Tea Party movement, speaking at a July 4 Tea Party rally in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. And he's been involved in organizing militia "maneuvers" in Oklahoma.

Dyer cropped up again in the news -- this time in the police blotter for allegedly raping a 7-year-old girl:

An ex-military man has been arrested on charges of rape of a child and forcible sodomy.

Charles Alan Dyer, 29, of Marlow, was arrested Tuesday afternoon by Stephens County Sheriff’s deputies, said Sheriff Wayne McKinney. Dyer served in the United States Marines in Iraq.

Oh, and guess what police found when they searched his home:

During the search the sheriff’s deputies noted several firearms and a device believed to be a Colt M-203, 40-millimeter grenade launcher, a complaint filed in the United States District Court of Western Oklahoma by Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco Special Agent Brett Williams said.

As the story from KAUZ-TV notes, Dyer had a history of making bizarre claims in his videos -- as well as violent fears of being arrested.

“We come home and those bastards want to talk about how we’re domestic terrorists and a threat to this country. It makes me so angry,” said Charles Dyer, who has been accused of committing rape.

... More incriminating evidence against Dyer has surfaced in a YouTube video. The video shows Dyer, a former U.S. Marine, talking proudly about domestic terrorism. “Join the military?”, said Dyer. “Depends on what you want to do with it. Me? I'm going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that you’re so afraid of from the DHS reports.”

... “I’m certainly not going to be hiding from my command anymore. I’m not hiding from ATF. Not hiding from FBI. Any organization. If they want to come get me I’m not going to be afraid,” Dyer said.

“Patriots, we are not overpowered. If we united under one banner and fight for our children’s liberity and the constitution, our resolve is invincible to any standing army,” Dyer said.

GossipBoy is reporting that the rape victim was a close family member. They also report that Dyer had been in touch with a fellow militiaman linked to explosives dealing, and that when bomb-sniffing dogs searched Dyer's home, they indicated explosives had been stored there recently.

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the folks at American Resistance Movement -- a group Dyer was also prominently involved in -- are claiming that Dyer was set up, and the girl who accused him was "programmed" to do so. Accordingly, they've set up a "Free July4Patriot" fund, with a little button on their front page so you can donate.

Also, Dyer's YouTube page remains active.

Every movement attracts its freaks. But the Patriot movement attracts an inordinate number of them -- and particularly people with a pedophilia problem. (I can list at least 10 different prominent figures in the Northwest's Patriot movement in the 1990s who had a history of being charged with abusing and abducting children.) Evidently, being a pedophile leads to resentment of the government -- probably for its desire to lock you away.

We'll reserve judgment on Dyer's guilt or innocence for after the trial. But let's just say that the predictable claims that he's been arrested as part of a government plot to silence him are not exactly compelling in this case.

[Thanks to Susie for her help with this post.]

This really isn't new, although the Pentagon would like to pretend it is. There has always been sexual harassment and rape of male recruits, who are usually targeted during basic training for being "weak" or effeminate. (I have a friend who's a VA counselor, which is how I know about it. Like me, you probably didn't know that VA hospitals offer support services for male rape survivors.)

I bring it up to show this isn't a problem caused by allowing women to serve in combat zones. More to the point, the military culture seems to condone violent sexual impulses by refusing to actively pursue the perpetuators:

A Pentagon-appointed task force, in a report released this month, pointedly criticized the military’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse, citing the “unique stresses” of deployments in places like Camp Taji. “Some military personnel indicated that predators may believe they will not be held accountable for their misconduct during deployment because commanders’ focus on the mission overshadows other concerns,” the report said.

That, among other reasons, is why sexual assault and harassment go unreported far more often than not. “You’re in the middle of a war zone,” Captain White said, reflecting a fear many military women describe of being seen, somehow, as harming the mission.

“So it’s kind of like that one little thing is nothing compared with ‘There is an I.E.D. that went off in this convoy today and three people were injured,’ ” she said, referring to an improvised explosive device.

By the Pentagon’s own estimate, as few as 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported, far lower than the percentage reported in the civilian world. Specialist Erica A. Beck, a mechanic and gunner who served in Diyala Province in Iraq this summer, recalled a sexual proposition she called “inappropriate” during her first tour in the country in 2006-7. “Not necessarily being vulgar, but he, you know, was asking for favors,” she said.

She did not report it, she said, because she feared that her commanders would have reacted harshly — toward her.

“It was harassment,” she said. “And because it was a warrant officer, I didn’t say anything. I was just a private.”

AMERICAblog News: White House thanks Lieberman for blocking president's reform promise, criticizes Dean for defending it. Enough...

Economist's View: Cutting wages won't help

TPM LiveWire: Franken rape amendment included in Defense Spending Bill

Oliver Willis: No longer just a handful of crazyass fringe dwellers, the John Birch Society is BACK!

Constitution Project: We welcome the enhanced transparency recommendations from the Obama administration. The rules for handling “controlled unclassified information” would standardize the system and increase government transparency, but stronger enforcement mechanisms are needed.

Bitch Ph.D.: My 3 least favorite holiday ads