WillyK Posts

One of the pollsters, I forget which, has pointed out that part of Barack Obama's diminishing poll numbers has to do with the fact that his support among Democrats is squishier (83%) than Romney's support among Republicans (90%).* Several commentators have also noted that this fact may well reflect the general hysteria, compounded by a less than justified media narrative that attended Obama's imperfect, but far from disastrous performance when confronted with Romney's serial liar on steroids performance.
Talking Points Memo ran a few comments from readers last week that addressed th...

Todd Akin's got some celebrity support lined up. The Duggar family of the TLC realty based show,"19 Kids & Counting," are lending their "fame" to bolster his campaign. If, like me you aren't familiar with the Duggars, they are proponents of the Quiverfull movement which,

The latest Romney campaign maneuvre is the formation of state-based Farmers for Romney groups. While understandable in crucial swing farm states like Iowa, they may not be so critical in states like Missouri that are probably securely in Romney's pocket no matter what. Consequently, the Missouri Farmers for Romney group that Roy Blunt debuted this week seems somewhat like an afterthought. Nevertheless, Blunt is out doing what he needs to do to beef up rural Missouri's red...

Maybe thinking he was safe in friendly territory with a group of Tea Partiers, Rep. Todd Akin held forth Thursday on the topic of evolution:
I don't see it as even a matter of science because I don't know that you can prove one or the other. ...
I imagine that must come as a surprise to most scientists who tend to believe that all biological science depends on the theory of evolution. (Yes, I said theory - and if you want to know just what theory me...

A few things from last week's presidential debate to keep in mind while you watch the Biden/Ryan VP debate tonight:

As the narrator says, this list is not exhaustive. I can think of a couple off the top of my head. Will Biden be able to cope if the lies comes this fast and furious? Could anyone?
What does it say about us all that a majority of Americans think that the debater who lied himself silly won the debate?
...

Refresh your memory and review the trio of ads dealing with emergency contraception for rape victims that Claire McCaskill just debuted. Then take a look at how the ads were reported by KMOV TV (Channel 4) in St. Louis (h/t Think Progress - transcript available there):

Probably just sloppiness, but this is the same station that took the op...

Thank God for Bill Clinton. At last - somebody willing to tell it like it is when it comes to the piece of performance art that Mitt Romney delivered last week:

I do have to admit that I was probably just as horrified by Romney's jumpy, overly aggressive style as I was by his flip-flops and fibs. Not only have I actually been playing attention for the past year, I've also been following Steve Benen's regular Friday feature at the Maddow Blog where he's been collecting Mighty Mitt's prevarications under the title Mitt's Mendacity (

A doozy of a letter appeared in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The writer took exception to the decision of the Post-Dispatch's editorial board to endorse President Barack Obama for another term. So far so good; disagreement about the reasons for the endorsem...

Dave Spence spent what probably amounts to a pretty big pot of money to run an ad that is likely to be more notable for the fact that it misspells "governor" as "Spenceforgoverner.com" than for its content. Rep. Todd Akin has also run into problems with spelling and grammar when assembling campaign ads. They're minor errors, and, God knows, with my propensity for t...

Remember last week when videos from 208 surfaced that showed Rep. Todd Akin indulging in still one more of those characteristic statements that manage to excite horror and laughter at the same time? I'm referring to his statement that evil abortion doctors give abortions to women who aren't pregnant.
In spite of ridicule that this statement excited, Akin held firm. He even tried to substantiate what I am sure he truly believes by referencing a lengthy report printed in the Chicago Sun-Times ...

You read the title right. Jesus. The PBS Newshour did a segment on the Missouri Senate race this evening. The piece quoted one Rev. Stoney Shaw of the Ferguson Baptist Church on his support for Todd Akin:
Some of my family was -- my children: Dad, you're not going to support him, are you? Everybody is turning against him. I said, well, there was another guy that everybody turned against, Jesus Christ. But he prevailed.
Is Rev. Shaw implying that exciting the outrage of civ...

Over the past few years I've written many posts here at SMP about Rep. Todd Akin, detailing his bizarre pronoucements and what I often assumed was his typical GOP mendacity. Akin's behavior during his current campaign for the Senate, however, has convinced me that he actually believes his own BS, or, in the few cases when he doesn't, he thinks he's serving a higher purpose. He's really just that dumb ...

While President Obama quizzically looked on during tonight's debate, a jittery and aggressive Mitt Romney (over caffeinated perhaps after his sleepless night?) tried, once again, to say little of substance about his own proposals while hectoring the President noisily and at length. Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you to slow down and give somebody else a chance to talk? Well, Mitt needed a few words from Mother tonight.
There were so many questionable assertions in Mitt's barr...

Yesterday Monday I noted that Todd Akin's recent outrageous public statements were just par for the course for Akin over the past few years - at least to those of us who've bothered to pay attention. And lo and behold, today Slate's Amanda Marcotte managed to dig up some CSPAN videos...

Rep. Todd Akin hasn't changed. His recent "gaffes" are no different from scores of similar incidents during his decade in the House - and, in fairness, to call them gaffes is to mispeak since the congressman seems to be doing no more than expressing his essential self and deepest beliefs. If he's generating lots more media noise right now it's because the level of attention accorded to an insignificant, mostly do-nothing, House member differs from the spotlight that is shone on a candidate for a significant state-wide office. The new situation in which he finds himself is also heightened by th...

On TPM today:
When Akin said in remarks published Thursday that McCaskill did not act "ladylike" in their first debate, both Republicans and Democrats shook their heads. They may have slapped their foreheads when just a couple hours later, it was revealed that Akin's referring to McCaskill as a "a wildcat out of the cage."
If Akin really wants crucial support and resources for his campaign, Republican strategists told TPM, he just has to stop saying stuff like that. The NRSC on Wednesda...

So what is new in Todd Akin's campaign for the Missouri Senate? Lots of sheepish Republican movers and shakers, that's what. An enthusiastic Newt Gingrich led the way, Jim DeMint followed, flourishing a check-book, and now Roy Blunt, rather obviously holding his nose, is back on board with Brother Todd:

If you take a listen at the video of "Women for Akin" rally (h/t the Turner Report), the most notable thing you'll hear is that lots of women really were making their voicees heard - only the ones speaking up weren't actually rallying for Akin. If you can't manage to make it out, about 40 protesters are regaling the 100 or so attendees with the chant, "rape is rape":

Otherwise, what you'll hear if you take the time to listen to Akin's remarks is his standard, rightwing Christian take on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For example, he unhesitatingly declared that if "you take a look at the Declaration of Independence, it is built on the brilliant idea that God intended you to have life, liberty and to pursuit happiness." I'm sure that this would have come as a surprise to it's author, the deist Thomas Jefferson, as well as to the other signatories, many of whom were not bible-believing Christians despite what Todd Akin and his revisionist Christian Nationalist pals would like us to believe. Of course, when you consider that when Akin talks about life, his biggest concern is abortion - he doesn't approve - and, similarly, when he talks about liberty, he seems mainly concerned about taxes and government regulations - you know, the things that keep your food safe, and keep the banks from robbing us blind -  you begin to realize that it isn't only history that he finds confusing.

Were his audience inclined to actually think about what he had to say, though, they might have been puzzled by the images he used to express his sense of American exceptionalism:

Let me just ask you a question. Do you like America? Let's take a look about America and kinda see what it is we like about it. You remember we won two World Wars. We didn't annex any territory, we didn't crown any king or emperors, but what we did do is vote to tax ourselves to rebuild our enemies. How often has that happened in World history? We have the oldest written constitution, and the world over is blessed with the innovations and technology that have come from America and if you really think about, if you think about the times there's a tsunami or earthquake or something like that and what do you remember? A gray hole with the Red, White and Blue behind it full of medical supplies and food to help people all over the world. And you know what? That's who we are. That's what America is - we give back; we help other people. ...

This could almost be a bleeding heart liberal extolling Americans who taxed themselves to rebuild Europe and Japan, deliver disaster relief, and just generally help people. But this generous soul is also the same fool who says he would have refused to vote for the Farm Bill that would deliver disaster relief to American farmers devastated by this summer's drought. The reason why? It also offers food aid to poor and working families who have been flattened by jobs lost during the Bush recession.

The contradictions are almost too painful: The women rallying for Akin were only concerned about doing away with reproductive choice for other women. At the same time the Todd Akin who stood on the Missouri Capitol steps and extolled the governmental decisions that resulted in the Marshall plan is the same fool who thinks that the only safety net Americans need is what they can beg from religious and private charities. It would be laughable if it weren't so sad.

P.S. Akin's also wrong about what country has the oldest written constitution. This guy can't even get the easy stuff right.

Numerous news outlets are reporting that Rep. Todd Akin will support an earmark ban in order to get some campaign support from U.S. Senator Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund. I appreciate that beggers can't be choosers, but wasn't it just a month or two ago when Akin was vociferously defending his earmarking practices?  I think he even produced an ad contending that his wise earmarking saved lives. (Of course, the subject only came up because John Brunner was making the claim that Akin's judicious use of earmarks also made the Akin family a little bit richer.) As the Post-Dispatch notes, Akin explicitly defends earmarks on his congressional Website:

Some believe Congress should be prohibited from designating where money should be spent. While well-intentioned, such action violates the Constitution and shifts important spending decisions from elected representatives in Congress to unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.. This is not the right path. Rather, such spending decisions should be carefully vetted  during the committee process-a process that is open and transparent to the public.

Contrast that with a recently posted statement on Akin's campaign Website that purports to "set the record straight":

Claire McCaskill has questioned Todd's position on earmarks. For the record Todd's position on earmarks has been clear and consistent and is not in conflict with Senator DeMint's ban on earmarks.

I've always known that Akin was logic-challenged, but come on! Not even the divinely inspired Todd Akin can be against something and for it at the same time. Especially after he defended that something for years by arguing that it's a constitutional mandate.

That's probably why Akin's statement is so vague, and, on the theory that the best defense is offense, veers post-haste into an attack against Claire McCaskill's hypothetical earmarking practices. It seems that, according to Akin, McCaskill - who introduced legislation to ban earmarks - is a hypocrite because she voted for the stimulus, and Akin is an advocate of the theory that the stimulus was chock-full of wasteful earmark spending. Of course, whether or not the stimulus contained earmarks is debatable and depends largely on how one defines earmarks.  Even Politifact, which identified a few earmarks in the bill, conceded that "It's worth noting again that Obama managed to get a bill that was largely free of earmarks."

To summarize: Akin believes that earmarks are the best thing since apple pie (and he may have even pocketed some of that metaphorical pie), but he has no problem supporting a ban and thinks it's consistent with his beliefs. His opponent, however, who has never taken an earmark, and consistently worked to get them banned, is an earmarking queen because she voted for a stimulus bill that was largely free of earmarks. Laughable? Maybe, but I bet it'll go over great guns with Akin's hardcore supporters who've been well trained to howl when they hear the word "stimulus."

Relative to which, there was another prong to the Akin attack that hinged on citing some of the items in a list of "wasteful" stimulus projects bandied about by several GOP congressmen a couple of years ago. Here Akin's logic seems to be that earmarks are often characterized as wasteful, so if you can show that there was waste in the stimulus, it must be because it was full of earmarks.  

Unfortunately for Akin's logically twisted agenda, there may be some problems when it comes to demonstrating that the stimulus was larded with waste. NewsWeek's McKay Coppins looked at five of the items from the GOP list, two of which are cited by Akin as examples of wasteful stimulus spending, and found that they mostly did what the stimulus was supposed to do - create jobs. One would suspect, given the partisan rancor that obviously inspired the list, many more of those "wasteful" spending projects did so as well. And, in fact, an audit of the program reported in 2010 that:

...  Of the nearly 200,000 prime and sub contracts that the Recovery Act awarded, just 293 led to "consequential investigations" of fraud. That's 0.2 percent-i.e., two-tenths of a percent. Given the amount of money we're talking here, that's astonishingly clean, even by private sector standards.

Lest you think this is just the Obama Administration whitewashing its own record-and me whitewashing their whitewashing-the General Accounting Office has reached the same conclusion, calling the amount of waste and fraud minimal. ...

A small price to pay for saving us from another Great Depression.  

Want some fun reading? Those who enjoy the excesses of St. Louisian Dana Loesch should take a look at Jeremy Stahl's reprisal of her on-again, off-again support for Rep. Todd Akin since his "legitimate rape" gaffe. In Stahl's words, "Loesch's Twitter account was like a real-time barometer of Akin's falling position within the party, but appearing on a weird 24-hour delay."

Loesch's response to  Stahl was in line with what we have learned to expect, shrill while managing to avoid substance. According to Stahl:

Loesch and I got in a little [Twitter] tiff in which she ultimately concluded that I was an "illiterate" moron and potentially "high" on drugs

The upshot, though, is that it's highly likely that Loesch will be following Newt Gingrich back into the Akin sheep-fold - nor do I expect that she'll be the last GOPer to shamble on over if/when it becomes clear that Akin isn't going anywhere  - at least not until after November 6. After all, what are they going to do - sit back and let McCaskill run away with the election after they worked so hard to get the state riled up over the healthcare and death panel mongering socialist in the White House? A successful snow-job is a terrible thing to waste.