@bo_sox - "attempting to say I'm an idiot (or anything remotely close) because of my thoughts is completely irrelevant - and of course rude, but people tend to be rude in politics. "

I never called you or implied you were an idiot except to equate you "refomr equals abandon" with the dummycrats. If you aren't a dummycrat, then I apologize. I will not, howver, stop using dummycrat as several of the dummycrats on here are found of calling Republicans "repugnicands". Until that stops, dummycrat it is...

Now, for fighting, whose fighting? We are having a discussion. sometimes heated, yes, but not a fight. and your knife fight dtory (real or BS, I don't give fuck) doesn't impress me worth shit. I'm a US Marine, son. I learned how to disarm men with sidearms in MCMAP. A knife ain't shit to me. Hasn't been for the last 28 years. If your close enough to pull a knife on me, your close enough for me to kill barehanded. Now, let's shake hands and agree this prick measuring "fighting" shit is useless and has nothing to do with the political discussion(s) at hand.

Back to the topic(s) at hand. You insinuated that Ryan's mom was rich. She isn't. Her net worth is probably less than mine and I'm only in the top 8-10% of the US, income wise. And as far as the rape issue was concerned, I already denounced that asstard who made the comment in the media and, as a moderate who is pretty typical of American "conservatives" (social liberal, fiscal conservative, believer in the rights of the individual over the state except where the individuals rights threaten the life, liberty, and/or pursuit of happiness of another), I could never vote for that braindead fucktard.

And onto your new topic, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress. The House impeached him but the Senate didn't remove him from office. But I agree that the media made a shitstorm of it (mostly trying to make the Republicans look bad, but it didn't play well for him either) and the Republicans did their fair share of stupidity by even pursuing it. Had it been a Kennedy and a movie star, everyone would have cheered his getting some in the Oval Office. But I digress. The Republicans pursued Clinton for the wrong reason (sexual morals have jack shit to do with how one runs a nation) and the media made a shit storm of it making both look bad.

I think Clinton was decent as the President but his reputation definitely suffered based on that. He was the president I was born under, and while I know a good bit of US history, most of it is hidden between the lines in textbooks that don't want to expose that we've been bad people too. When something interests me, I try and research it outside of class. Haven't gotten far into Kennedy.

My knife story isn't BS, that's what happens around a lot of places in Indy. I don't care if it impresses you; that's not the point. The point is to say that I've been in real fights and that politics aren't a fight to me. I applaud you for serving; I know I never have and never will have the guts to do so.

As far as it concerns me, Ryan's mom was nothing but a cosmetic item. There is no way that Romney and Ryan can win Florida no matter what your politics are. Cutting(/reforming over a long period of time) Medicare is not exactly appealing to people that are using it. I don't see how that will pan out.

I'm glad you're rational in saying that Todd Akin is pretty damn stupid. If he misspoke, I wouldn't say that, but he said the same thing in 1991 and in 2011. This time he got caught for it. No excuses left for him. I might donate to his opponent.

Yet people around here still claim theres no difference between the parties.... Ryan cosponsored one of Akins rape bills. This is a mainstream prolife view. This is how nuts the prolifers are.

@Putin33: To be fair, we aren't _all_ quite that nutty.

No, Putin, it is *not* the mainstream pro-life view. It is an extreme view only held by those pro-life who believe life begins at conception *and* are deluded into thinking women can somehow control their bodily functions with the Force or some similar shit (a little too much George Lucas in their Netflix queues I'd say).

Mainstream pro-life comes in two real forms. Life begins at conception (but not whacked out enough to believe women can control that even subconsciously) or life begins somewhere between conception and birth (brain waves, pain, fingers and toes, viability outside the womb, whatever). Then there is you who thinks smashing a kid's skull as he is being born is OK.

Ryan holds this view and is at the top of your ticket. They get this quack science from mainstream prolife orgs.
.

Romney is at the top of the ticket.

Way to avoid the point ^

But it's still Ryan on the ticket as well, Invictus--

If Biden's a target, so is Ryan, and vice versa.

Either both are off limits, or both are fair game.



In other news, the deadline for Akin to withdraw from the race so the GOP could name another candidate for the race in Missouri just passed...it will take a court order now, CNN reports, to force Akin to withdraw, which is not likely.

So.

Akin will only embarrass himself by continuing. Every time he speaks, someone's going to bring us all back to those comments. He can't campaign without it coming up.

So McCaskill gets the Show Me State. Huzzah.

@Putin33: linky?

I've been lurking and after this post will continue to stay away. What Akin said was incredibly stupid. He shouldn't leave the race, since he won the primary, but I don't expect he'll win. I'm even hoping he does lose, to tell you the truth, since it would just mean six years of distractions with him in the Senate.

What he with regards to a woman's body rejecting an embryo after a rape is not mainstream. Go ahead and oppose him for it, but don't claim other people believe it.

But please, continue wasting your time here. No one's opinions change on abortion because of something they read on an internet forum.

Being English I really don't get, with so much going on in the world, the economy in a mess, etc, why people keep bangin' on about abortion. Is it really the topic that will decide who makes it to the White House ??
For educated people surely this is a non-issue.

@NigeeBaby: I think human rights related issues are still legitimate points of discussion, regardless of the state of the economy. Certainly, they aren't the only issues, but I suspect they don't disappear from peoples' radars, totally, because people feel very strongly about them.

I must disagree, Nigee:

Abortion, on the one hand, ties in with value voters, both for those who are for and against it...

And on the other, allowing abortions and its part in Obamacare IS part of the issue in November.

@Willtor:

Exactly.

NigeeBaby and everyone else out there…

Roe v. Wade said in 1973 that women have the RIGHT to an abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Since then, not only have things become clearer, but they've also become safer. We all know this.

I capitalize "right" because a right is an entitlement given to someone that is not to be taken away. It's not a privilege to get an abortion. It is a moral issue, and I hate to break it to the GOP members on here, but the country is quickly swaying to the liberal side and that means that abortion will be a full right at some point. As will gay RIGHTS and women's RIGHTS and minority RIGHTS.

Rights are not meant to be debated. I don't know why we do.

@bo_sox48: I don't think that's what's at issue for most people (although, probably for some -- but I'll let them defend their own viewpoints). The issue is not quite as cut-and-dry as that when the decisions one person makes can adversely impact the life of another person.

I would never argue that, all else being equal, a person should not do as he or she please with his or her own body, excepting that there are externalities. Externalities are the issue at stake, here.

Now, if you don't think that an unborn child is due rights, that's one thing, and it really is cut-and-dry. On the other hand, if you do, the issue is much more murky.

Roe v Wade gave no such rights. It granted a freedom but did not enshrine anything into the Constitution. Rights are enumerated in the constitution. Freedoms are not and are alwayw open for debate and revisitable by the courts.

To continue with Draugnar's point, actually, Rights come from the Creator, not from the Constitution. Unalienable rights cannot be taken, nor even given away. Abortion, as Draugnar aptly pointed out, is not a Right, it is a freedom based upon a legal grey-area in which on the one hand you have the right of the mother to pursue her happiness, and to do with her body what she wants, and the right of the unborn to be protected from harm. There isn't an "correct" answer, as is the case in many legal instances. Having studied Roe v. Wade in law school, I have come to the conclusion that the court, reluctantly, felt that women were going to get abortions whether is was legal or not, and that health risk in doing so, outweighed the rights of the unborn. I think abortions are horrible, but, I understand the legal and medical arguments behind their necessity. What I find sad is that this issue is, for many women, central in their political ethos. As if the right to kill an unwanted child somehow makes women, those that are supposed to nurture and care of children, powerful politically. I understand why the issue is so divisive, but not why those that want it legal feel that it is something to revere.

What MM said... And MM note that I said they were enumerated, not granted, by the constitution. Enumerated means written down for posterity and clarification. The constitution enumerates and then protects. God or mankind or whatever granted them.

I have to say, this is ridiculous. How far does a view have to go before it is considered "Mainstream" a mainstream political view? to the house? Apparently not, so the senate then? Still no apparently. The white house? I guess that remains to be seen.
Far right republicans have this great thing going for them, where they get themselves elected to power, say whatever nonsensical, racist, sexist, homophobic what have you, shit they want. Then all the other republicans will gently disavow them, and say "oh well their views aren't mainstream." This idea is then used to dismiss as unimportant, any criticism leveled against those views, and the Republican party itself gets away scott free without sanctioning the idiots who say this stuff, or even with publicly opposing those statements. If you want everyone else engaged in politics to know that the republican party doesn't hold this view, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY needs to punish the people who do express them. But we all know they won't because the republican party forms some of its base out of people who really do think like this, and can't afford to lose that support. And that's OK, so long as a few other people keep saying "those views aren't mainstream."

The Rnc is putting in their platform a no rape exception constitutional amendment. Anyboody who denies this is the mainstream view is lying.

Want to provide a citation for this accusation Putin? If not, it is *you* who is lying. Also, a lie is willful deceit. If I am wrong, I am just mistaken, not lying. Oh and a democrat run website isn't a valid citation. Show me a letter or something from the RNC if you want to prove you are right. Elsewisr you are spreading dummycrat propaganda like the mouthpiece you are.

@ mafiaalligator, the only people who know about that anagram are you and anyone else who follows Patton Oswalt on twitter.

This, by the way, is what you get from a couple of generations of people who have abandoned science because it doesn't support their fables about an invisible sky wizard.

http://whitehouse12.com/republican-party-platform/

"Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all 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 we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children." No mention anywhere of exceptions for the cases of rape or incest. That's the fun thing about a no-exception policy on abortion. All you have to do is mention the ban and not say anything about exceptions and it becomes hard to frame it in terms of those exceptions.
When asked by Businessweek about whether or not language about possible exceptions to the abortion ban would be in the platform though, head of the platform committee and Governor of Virginia Robert McDonnell said “that’s not the level of granularity you are going to see in this platform”. He then went on to say things like that should be decided at the state level, but the fact remains, if states decide not to allow for those exceptions it is a blanket ban, without exceptions.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-20/republican-platform-won-t-protect-mortgage-tax-deduction

Whatever the motivation, what Putin said was factually true. The RNC platform is calling for a blanket ban on abortions, and this same document does not include any language which suggests or allows for exceptions of any kind.

Also, Bob, I don't follow Patton Oswalt on twitter.