You know how right-wingers really, really want to be viewed as victims? It seems to be a twisted variant on the old adage that the best offense is a defense. The claim is usually brought up to justify offensive behavior like the claim that offering a full healthcare package to your employees would constitute religious persecution since women might collude with their doctors to get contraception that not only encourages what these folks think of as immoral behavior, but might kill a zygote. We all know the drill by now.

Todd Akin, the former congressman from Missouri’s second district, used to excel at this game; his last legislative effort in the House was a classic example of the “if you don’t let me misbehave, you’re persecuting me” gambit. He offered an amendment to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that would have permitted abusive and discriminatory behavior on the part of servicemen and women toward their LGBT colleagues. He claimed that since hostility toward LGBT individuals is often based on religious beliefs, prohibiting its expression amounts to religious persecution. I guess that nobody ever explained to Akin that professional standards of civility make today’s diverse military workplace better for everyone – even the religious fanatics whose fanaticism is never, ever under assault just because they are encouraged to act like part of the team at work.

News from TPM is that Akin has given an interview in which he continues to try to vindicate himself after his laughable “legitimate rape” gaffe. What better way than to go the victim route, particularly if he can claim an equivalence to someone really important like Hillary Clinton. Seems that Akin thinks that Clinton deserves the same hold-your-nose treatment that he got because, in the course of her career as a lawyer, she defended a child sex-offender and, as she was legally bound to do, did her best to get him off. Nor did she come to the defence of the women the righwing hauled out to accuse her husband during his sex scandal, for which Akin accuses her of being anti-woman. I don’t remember that Clinton was accused of rape or any real sexual crimes – just fibbing about consensual sex and propositioning staff. Tacky stuff, but not the kind of thing that would inspire the wronged wife to come to the defence of the “other” women. But still, the fact that she isn’t being pilloried from the left must, in Akin’s world view, mean that he is the victim of bias and he really wants to whine about the injustice of it all.

Akin is not the only conservative who is confused about how our law system works. Another recent example has been the outrage sparked by Obama’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Debo Adegbile, who like Clinton, had the gall to do what a defence lawyer does: uphold that pillar of our law that entitles all individuals accused of a crime to as good a defence as possible. Conservatives, in general, seem to have real problems with the nature of judicial process as opposed to moral judgement, and rarely seem to grasp the moral nature of the obligation that demands that lawyers carefully separate personal emotions and beliefs from the process of fulfilling their vital role in that process.

So is there parity between Clinton and Akin that we need to acknowledge? Clinton did a job of work and, as an ethical professional, she did her duty towards her client – just as the prosecutors tried to do the best job that they could do to represent the interests of the victim. That’s the way it works in the U.S. Akin, on the other hand, simply made a few dunderheaded public statements that revealed his real beliefs about women and sexuality. Lots of women heard Akin expressing these beliefs and, along with most educated, civilized folks, were so appalled that they put him out of office.

What’s worse, Akin gives every sign that, despite the opportunity to learn from his errors, he still holds fast to the beliefs that got him into trouble:

“My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down, was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization,” Akin writes, as quoted by the Daily Mail. “This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google ‘stress and fertilization,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”
“The research is not conclusive, but there is considerable evidence that stress makes conception more difficult,” he continues. “And what could be more stressful than a rape?”

Reassuring to know that a lawmaker in the federal government looks so uncritically to Google for information. And that he then can’t even manage to understand the better articles. I performed the search he prescribes and learned that, overall, researchers do say that ongoing, systematic stress affects fertility over time – but not necessarily fertilization. And the key seems to be the systematic nature of the stress as opposed to a single traumatic event like rape. And even these possible relationships are not well understood.

So not only is Akin consistently wrongheaded, in his quest to deny the right to rape victims – and, ultimately, other women – to control their own bodies, he was and presumably is still willing to use political power to write laws that would widely promulgate such wrongheadedness. In contrast Hillary Clinton only conformed to her legal and moral obligation to do her job and represent a client to the best of her abilities. And if you’re still obsessing about Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes, she may have helped defend his presidency from individuals willing – or coerced – to kiss and tell.

Maybe it’s time for Akin to accept the inevitable and stop bleating about how he’s been wronged. Somewhere down the line he’s going to have accept the fact that “Akin” has become the byword for the backward Republican approach to women and reproductive issues. No matter how many books he writes this won’t change. Apparently, given the tone of this latest interview, there’s also no chance of humility or intellectual growth on the part of the out-of-work politician.

The post Todd Akin is back, whining and doubling down on “legitimate rape” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  U.S. Representative Todd Akin (R-MO).

“If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.” Texas gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams (R-TX), March 1990.

“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.” – 2012 Presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-PA).

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Rep. Todd Akin, and 214 other Republicans co-sponsored the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” which would prohibit federal funding of abortions except in instances of “an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest.” (H.R. 3, 112^th Congress, January 20, 2011)

I have a friend who is one of the strongest — yet most gentle and loving — souls I have ever known. She asked me to bring you her story. She doesn’t ask for your pity. She asks only for understanding. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, there are over 207,000 sexual assaults in the United States each year. Here is my friend’s story, in her own words.

Catherine’s story

I am a rape survivor.  I cannot speak for every rape survivor; I can only describe my own experience.  It is nothing like some of the recent politicians would like us to believe.

My name is Catherine Mary Redfern. I was 24 years old that day. I waited at the bus stop in my baggy sweats with my backpack, just having finished a long hike.  An approaching pickup truck slowed down. The driver asked me if I needed a ride. I said no. He continued down the road, then he turned around. He was out of the truck and dragging me into the bushes before I could react.

For me, this is what rape is:

It was screaming so hard and for so long for help that didn’t come.  Screaming that made me lose my voice for four days.

It was fighting so hard for myself, that when I was finally alone and could see, I saw that I had no fingernails left – just bloody nail beds where my nails had been from fighting and scratching to fight off my rapist.

It was tears running down my bloody face because I wasn’t strong enough to fight him anymore as he held me down and beat me into submission.

It was whimpering while praying as he thrust and pushed so hard against an unwilling participant, and calling on God to help me, wondering why he had abandoned me when I needed him the most.

I was raped – I did not experience the rapture of God’s intention to bless me with a child.

I was raped – it was not consensual, it was not legitimate, and my body certainly did not start working to shut down a conception process – it was too busy fighting for its own life.

I was raped – I am unable to categorize it as honest or dishonest rape.  I can categorize as violent, painful and cruel.  It was physically and psychologically scarring.

I was raped – it was unexpected; I did not ask for it; it certainly wasn’t planned.  Does that make it an emergency rape?

I was raped – for hours I fought for my life and the right to control who touches my body.  Although I lost that fight, I did not rape easy.

I was raped – I felt a lot of things when it became clear that it was inevitable.  I hated my rapist.  I hated myself.  I hated God.  There was no desire to relax, lie back and enjoy it.

Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, if you think men and women in this country are overreacting to a few comments taken out of context, sit for a moment and think some more.  Think hard about what your real, visceral reaction would be if your wife, mother, sister or daughter called you from the hospital to tell you she had just been raped.

Unfortunately, if your wife, mother, sister, or daughter were raped, you may never have the opportunity to feel a reaction, offer comfort or give support.  You may notice some intangible change in the vitality of the woman you love, but to spare you the pain and anger of knowing what happened to her without being able to do anything about it, she may not tell you.  Even if she wanted to, she may be afraid of what her family, friends, coworkers and society would think of her — because on some level, our society still blames a woman in part for being raped.  Why else are words like “honest rape,” “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” being tolerated as part of our lexicon about this crime? My rape was thirteen years ago. I have not yet told my parents.

I have always considered the United States to be one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to women’s rights.

That is why it angers me to see the word “rape” being used without thought and bandied about as a political ideological concept, rather than a word to describe a violent, abhorrent crime against women. I was raped. I am a survivor. I was fortunate enough to live in an age when I did not have to worry about bearing the child of the man who brutalized me. There are some in America who would force me to bear that child, in the name of some warped God-directed concept of respect for life

I ask you this: What god deserves worship who would “bless” a violent, soul-destroying act with an unwanted living reminder? What nation would allow a religion to write law that dehumanizes a woman into nothing but a vessel, as my rapist saw me?

I ask you this: Think of the women you love as you choose your lawmakers.

Thank you for reading my story.

The post A rape survivor tells her story. Think about it when you vote. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Missouri Senate race between Todd Akin (R) and Claire McCaskill (D) continues to make news with ever more astonishing statements from Akin, followed by McCaskill’s responses. Not long ago, he made waves with women of all political stripes with his offensive “legitimate rape” comment. This time Akin’s facing a challenge from a different direction.

On September 26th, the Missouri Democratic Party filed ethics complaints against Todd Akin. The complaints allege that Akin is guilty of coordinating with a Super PAC in order to garner campaign money. As Stephen Colbert has so comedically demonstrated several times this year,  super PACS are legally prohibited from coordinating with political candidates, even as they amass unlimited contributions.

It may come as no surprise to conscious Missourians that Akin is facing ethics charges. This is, after all, the same Todd Akin who may have broken Missouri election laws (in progress), has a long documented history of being one of the worst offenders regarding earmarks, but a recent history of being against them, and seems to have gone all in with his party’s war on women. Last year, he faced local scrutiny after it was discovered that he voted multiple times in the wrong town. Not exactly a paragon of ethical behavior.

The ethics complaints come after local news broke a story in early September regarding Todd Akin’s disappearing political ads, allegedly due to an inability to pay for them. At the time, Akin’s campaign disputed the story, but these new ethics charges may lend credibility to the claim.

With Todd Akin still in the race and yet another deadline gone by, the question is now whether and how these ethics charges will affect his already failing campaign. I look forward to hearing what Claire McCaskill has to say on the subject.

The post Akin faces ethics complaints appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It was 10 am on March 31, 2010, the filing deadline in Missouri to run for Congress.  My wife and I kept looking at the Secretary of State’s website to see if someone would step forward to be the Democratic nominee in the 2^nd District to run against Todd Akin.

At 10:30 am, no one had filed, we headed for Jefferson City to file, just in case no else would. No one filed as a Democrat, and when 5 pm arrived, I had immediately secured a win in the Democratic primary and the opportunity to run for Congress against Todd Akin.

Akin had succeeded in winning virtually every election he had entered, and doing it all under the radar.  He had a quiet but intensely committed core of supporters: the religious right, who believed that they were right about everything.  After winning a close Republican primary for the seat in 2000, because his supporters were more willing than his competitors to brave the rain, he has had one landslide after another.  When I ran in 2010, I became another in a long list of low-profile (or “no-name”) candidates to run against him.

Obviously, I didn’t agree with Akin about almost anything, whether political or in many cases ethical.  Akin was part of the Republican firewall in the House of Representatives that joined with Democratic Blue Dogs to fight most of President Obama’s progressive proposals. But Akin was truly a backbencher.  The legislation that he introduced, other than co-sponsoring anti-choice and other items in the Republican litany, were the renaming of post offices for Iraq veterans and trying to ensure that “under God” would remain in the Pledge of Allegiance.

But within his small circle of intense supporters, he said some true whoppers.  This was all available on-line in 2010.  Among them were:

“Finally, however, America is waking up!  Patriots across America are mobilizing, and Heaven is bombarded with the prayers of Saints who sense our national peril.  Once again America calls for true sons and daughters.   May the Divine Author of our lives and liberties give us strength  — He was always our great hope and He must be again.”

and

“Now, in short two years, our country is being destroyed by a one party rule of self-identified socialists, known communists, and other miscellaneous liberals.  National security is compromised and the economy is plundered.   Private enterprise is managed by Czars.  Job creation is almost at a standstill.  Red tape and taxes are the solution to every problem.  Socialized medicine has been approved and threatens to destroy our Healthcare as well as our Federal Budget.   The rate of federal spending will soon destroy our economy and Obama leadership’s incompetence is eclipsed only by its voracious appetite for centralized power.”

[Both quotes are from Akin’s 2010 front page]

I was aware of these statements, but I chose not to attack him on his prior gaffes, or should I say, beliefs.  His previous statements made his August 19, 2012 uninformed and indelicate comment about rape just a further example of how scary he could be.  It was just another example of “Akin-speak.”  But my campaign did not focus on him; rather it was an experiment in running a campaign that hopefully would set an example for how politics could be.

I looked at my candidacy as a unique opportunity.  My goals were essentially two:

– To diminish the role of money in politics by simply taking no contributions.  No money; not even three dollars.  I funded the campaign with my own money, using about the cost of sending one student to a top-level college for one year (about $50,000, or less than 1 percent of what some Congressional candidates spent).  I did not fear that I could be bought by small contributions; I just opposed them, because I strongly believe in public funding of elections, which creates a level playing field for all candidates.  In part, I communicated my wishes regarding contributions with a web-page button that said, “Don’t nate.”

-To elevate the level of debate or dialogue.  So much of political talk consists of nonsense ranging from platitudes, cliches and diatribes. Very little involves thought, self-questioning, logic, and seeing the other person’s point of view.  It was my goal to try to engage the voters, and perhaps Akin, in a dialogue characterized by give and take. I would learn from them, and hopefully, they would learn from me.  To the extent that I was able to reach voters, I believe that happened.

Like other Democratic candidates who had run against Akin since 2000 in the highly Republican district, I was soundly defeated.  Akin won 71 percent to my 29 percent, which sounds terrible. When we examined the data following the election, my performance was not that bad in comparison to other first-time candidates running against incumbents, but it was not enough to give Akin the slightest of scares.  In fact, he barely bothered to campaign.

I never personally saw the ugly side of  Akin.  I met him three times.  The first was at a community fair where I asked his staff if he would simply agree to meet me.  He did, and we chatted for about ten minutes, mostly about people we knew in common.  I asked him if he would be willing to participate in the forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. He said that he would have to check with his scheduler, which meant no.  We met two other times at meet-the-candidate gatherings sponsored by community organizations. We had small chats, and while I continued to ask him to participate in the League forum, he repeatedly declined. He admitted that he had a grudge against the League of Women Voters, which I saw as strange, since the League is generally about as non-partisan as a political group could be.

As the 2012 election grows closer, it seems likely that Akin’s faux pas will bring an end to his political career and may make him a pariah to anyone who wants to advance in the world of politics. I hardly will shed any tears over this development.  All the same, I will not regret taking a clean approach to Mr. Akin in 2010.  For him to self-destruct as he has in 2012, he would have had to vigorously engage in the 2010 campaign. He punted on that opportunity.

There was one other option in the 2010 campaign that might have brought his strange religious and ethical views to light.  The on-line St. Louis newspaper, The Beacon, graciously arranged for  Akin and me to write competing essays on several topics.  They included “How government can help small business,” “Assessing the Obama record vis-à-vis the military,” “Lessons from the Civil War & the Civil Rights movement” (to which Akin  did not submit an essay). With several weeks to go in the campaign, I asked the editors of the Beacon if we could do one more on religion and politics.  I thought that even if  Akin did not say anything strange, at least he would have had to clarify his positions.  It would have been particularly interesting in light of my agnostic views.  However, the Beacon said no.  I think that a chance was lost; not necessarily one that would have changed the results of the election, but one that could have given the public two more years to contemplate Akin’s unusual views.

Perhaps I should have challenged Akin more on his non-mainstream beliefs. But then again, mine were out of the mainstream as well, only in a different direction.  Missouri is an unusual state, and perhaps he has a chance of winning his current Senate race in spite of (or because of) his views on rape and other personal issues.  If he does, as a society we may have to redefine what is normal. I hope that doesn’t happen, and that he joins me in the 29 percent club.

You can read more about Arthur Lieber’s race against Todd Akin in 2010 in his book An Unlikely Candidate.

The post I ran against Todd Akin in 2010 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Where does Todd Akin get the idea that, when she’s raped, a “woman’s body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down?”

Here’s an Akin tidbit that offers a clue.

For many years, Akin held Fourth of July picnics for supporters and friends at his family homestead in suburban St. Louis. And at those parties, he would dress up in a three-cornered hat and other colonial regalia. Akin took his colonial-themed party seriously, and so did others. According to the Washington Post,

[Akin’s church pastor] “would read from Ecclesiastes, take off his colonial robes to reveal a revolutionary military uniform and then march off with George Washington to war.”

Akin’s magic-womb theory is an idea that was floating around during America’s colonial period.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

In those days, prior to modern medical understanding of conception, women were considered to be “more amorous” than men, and it was believed that both partners needed to have orgasms in order for conception to occur.

Nicholas Culpeper’s 17th century midwife manuals espoused that it was a woman’s “womb, skipping as it were for joy” that produced “in that pang of Pleasure” the “seed” needed for conception to occur. If both husband and wife were not properly in love and enjoying sex, conception would fail, he asserted, because “the woman, being averse, does not produce sufficient quantities of the spirits with which her genitals should normally swell.”

Obviously, Todd Akin simply LOVES the colonial era and all its trappings, including, it now seems clear, its quaint and scientifically bogus ideas about women and their mystical lady parts.

The post Todd Akin’s colonial-era ideas appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Dear Congressman Akin: When a man and a woman love each other and decide that the time is right, they call the stork. Nine months later, a little bundle of joy arrives on the happy family’s doorstep. That’s how pregnancy occurs when two consenting adults engage in intercourse, right?

No, Todd Akin, that’s not how it works. Your unfounded remarks about how conception takes place are exactly the reason why politicians should not make medical decisions about a woman’s body. It is extremely disconcerting that somebody like yourself, who clearly has no knowledge about the women’s life cycle, or how pregnancy even occurs, is attempting to legislate my medical decisions.

Let’s talk sex, Mr. Akin. Each month a woman ovulates, meaning that her ovaries release an egg. For a span of approximately 24 hours, that egg, if exposed to a sperm, can be fertilized. The catch is that sperm can live up to a week in a woman’s body. So if a man and a woman have sex, and a sperm enters the womb within a week of ovulation, there is a chance that the intercourse could result in conception. That chance is the same whether the sex is consensual or not.

It would be great if our bodies had some magical emergency valve where if we didn’t want to get pregnant, we wouldn’t. That would likely result in far less abortions than any type of anti-choice legislation conservative law-makers could ever cook up.

However, the female body does not have such a safety mechanism. The stork doesn’t skip over rape victims.

More disconcerting is your bizarre notion of “legitimate” vs. “illegitimate” rape. No means no. I understand that consent can sometimes fall within a gray area, especially when drugs and alcohol are involved. However, when a man or a woman is forced to have sex, against his or her will, he or she has been raped. End of story. The question of legitimacy has no place in this discussion.

Please tell me what an illegitimate rape looks like. “I’m sorry ma’am, it doesn’t seem that you were traumatized enough to make your rape legitimate.” “I’m sorry sir, it seems that the rape you endured wasn’t violent enough to meet our strict standards of legitimacy.” Victims of violent crimes need not be further victimized by our legal system.

Now, how to proceed? I think you should apologize, and acknowledge that you did not merely misspeak but that your remark was completely divorced from fact or science. If you truly want to atone for your remarks, you should back off, and leave our vaginas to the gynecologists. No other medical decisions are legislated. If masturbation or Viagra were illegal, we’d be having a different conversation. People who do not understand the female body should not create legislation that affects it.

The post The truth about sex and pregnancy, as told to Todd Akin appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Eve Ensler, the award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, was in the Democratic Republic of Congo when she saw Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” interview. She describes her work in the DRC as “serving and supporting hundreds, thousands of women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals fought on their bodies.” Ensler, herself, is a rape survivor. The ignorance and insensitivity of Akin’s views enraged her and inspired her to publish a letter [on Huffington Post] that vividly describes the reality of rape and of rape pregnancies that she has witnessed first hand.

Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent, insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering your body — the most personal, sacred, private part of your body — and violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart. Then imagine that stranger’s sperm shooting into you and filling you and you can’t get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing the mental or health background of the rapist.

Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that face.

..I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children who are the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are wrestling with their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto their child.

I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make. These are not your words to define.

Why don’t you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their destruction.

And by the way you’ve just given millions of women a very good reason to make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.

The post Dear Todd Akin: Get out of my body appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As annoying as robo-pollsters can be, it’s often worth picking up the phone, answering the questions, and sticking with it until the end, because you can never be sure exactly where they’re going, and the end can be quite intriguing. Case in point, the Public Policy Poll I answered tonight.

It started with a series of boilerplate political questions:

Do you have a positive or negative opinion of Mitt Romney? President Obama?

Do you have a positive or negative opinion of Paul Ryan? Joe Biden?

Do you approve or disapprove  of President Obama’s performance?

Etc.

Note that I got this call at 7:15 pm on Monday, August 20, while I was sitting in front of my TV, watching MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” the subject of which was, of course, the Todd Akin “legitimate rape” debacle.

I was tempted to bail on the call, but I’m glad I didn’t, because the final set of questions started with…”If Todd Akin dropped out…”   Wow.

So, less than 36 hours after Akin made his imbecilic remark on The Jaco Report, somebody—is trying to figure the next move by trying to determine who the best or worst opponent would be for Claire McCaskill.

And the choices were fascinating. The poll floated a plethora of Missouri Republicans who might get the nod from the MO GOP, if Akin takes the dive that every Republican leader in America wants him to.

Here’s the question, with the various  [less horrifying to Repubs than Akin] options, and my comments in ital.

“If Todd Akin dropped out, and the Republican candidate was…[option here], would you vote for the Republican or for Claire McCaskill?”

Sarah Steelman  [former Missouri State Treasurer. She finished third in the August 7 primary]

John Bruenner [wealthy businessman who spent $7 million of his own money on the primary. He finished second.]

John Ashcroft  [They’re trotting out former Bush-administration Attorney General Ashcroft?.]

Jim Talent [The incumbent US Senator that McCaskill beat in 2006.]

Jo Ann Emerson [Current US Congressman from Missouri’s 8^th District]

Personally, I’m hoping that this poll is rendered moot by an Akin decision to forge ahead, listen to God’s voice in his ear, and stay on the ticket.

The post Pollster asks: “If Todd Akin dropped out…” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Republican incumbent Todd Akin [D-MO] shared 30 minutes of his time with host Don Marsh and listeners of St. Louis Public Radio’s “St. Louis on the Air” on Monday, Oct. 4. I’m glad he was on the show, because it’s important that people actually hear what he says, and the “logic” behind his ideas. Many of his statements were the expected Republican boilerplate. But some of what he said was disturbingly illogical and extreme, but perhaps not as extreme as some of the ideas he expresses on his website, particularly his website pronouncements about the role of prayer in making our country better. I wonder if his constituents are fully aware of these views. If they aren’t, and if we all aren’t, we need to pay better attention. The lack of compassion is astonishing, particularly in the notion that charity is the way to solve the problem of uninsured Americans. [The excerpts are nearly verbatim from the radio interview.]

Driving with my windows open on a beautiful fall day, I’m sure that I startled several other drivers with my shrieks when I heard him say…

On Washington, DC…

“…[That I’m]…happy to be out of Washington is always a safe assumption.” [Author’s comment: Larry from South St. Louis, whoever you are, thank you for calling in and reminding Congressman Akin that he has a job to do in Washington that we pay him for.]

On healthcare reform…

“…In the last election the Democrats took an overwhelming majority of everything, so there’s not the normal buffering that goes on.” [Author’s comment: The party of no made sure that “buffering” actually did take place.]

“…Because the Democrats had a wide open playing field, they did what they wanted to do…You see extreme practices coming from the Democrat side…The idea of the Federal Government running health care. That’s a pretty extreme policy.”

“…If Medicare and Medicaid are broken are we gonna turn the rest of health care over to the government?”

“…Republicans believe that the private system is better. There certain have to be patches and fixes…. We passed a number of proposals to improve health care when we had the majority…Don’t scrap the whole thing and give it to the government to run.”

“..If you’re just a responsible guy…you’re a good citizen [author’s emphasis] and bought health insurance, and then you become uninsurable because someone in your family gets a pre-existing condition—in a few years you’re bankrupt…The best way to approach is to prevent more people from falling into that trap of not being insured.”

“…Charity: that’s the way they were always paid for in the past. The big tycoons originally built the hospitals. There’s still a lot of charity, but it’s being laundered through the government…The most efficient way to cover poverty is by charity. The government [can’t] step in to take care of people’s food, shelter, education and health care. Across the ocean, the government tried it and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. We can’t afford that. You can’t cheat mathematics… The government can’t provide perfect healthcare for everyone and housing and food and provide for the national defense. [We need to think about] what government should do, and what should go back to the states and local.”

On President Obama…

“…I think [describing President Obama] as a socialist is a bland description. Obama said he was a socialist when he talked to Joe the Plumber. He said that it’s the federal government’s job to redistribute wealth…”

On Social Security and on paying for health care via charity…

“…Politically, I think Social Security will be given more to the people who are more needy. And people who have others forms of security won’t get it. I don’t like it…I would prefer that we allow incentives for people to save on their own. At a minimum, if you have Social Security, let the money that people put in, let that be indexed to those people, so they own some of what they’re investing.  As opposed to giving it irresponsibly to government and they spend it all and then spend ourselves into a box like we’re doing now.”

“…if you’re relying on [Social Security] alone for your retirement, that’s pretty tough. Certainly, investments are risky, especially when Wash DC is asleep at the switch…”

“… If people get back in healthcare to where people are in buying other kinds of commodities…Say you’re going to buy and boat or car, you price shop and look at your income and your budget and you come up with a process where you work out a formula for where you are and what your income is, and what’s the best deal. In the insurance business, we’ve made it so there isn’t a bargain. You’re covered, so you say, I want the fanciest thing I can get.”

“… I wouldn’t rely on charity. I’d save my money and buy health insurance. People have to be responsible. If we don’t take responsibility for the decisions we make, we have a country that doesn’t work.”

“…What must the federal government do, and what are niceties we wish they would do? Medicare and Medicaid are a socialist kind of approach. It wasn’t done that way a long time ago. Charity was a big part of it. Charity built hospitals and libraries…Should the government mandate it, I’m uncomfortable with that, because then the government will dictate what the product is, and that takes out the variability that you have in a market system.”

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