# Senate nominee from Missouri Todd Akin is a feeble-minded moron. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 19, 2012, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993 "2012-08-19T19:50:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/261 "2012-08-23T12:30:36Z")
Where does the alluring tap-tappity of dress shoes in bathroom stalls fit into all of this? ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/262 "2012-08-23T12:39:42Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I think a legal deadline for taking his name off the ballot passed just a day or two after he made this particular idiotic comment. In practical terms, yes, it would be hard to replace him and have a credible shot at winning. Actually no: A legal deadline for him to file paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office to remove his name and have the party select a replacement passed a couple days ago. However, he can get a court order to have his name taken off the ballot through Sept. 25, at which time the party would have 28 days or until Oct. 12 (whichever comes first) to choose a replacement. Akin (read - the party) would also be liable for any costs required to reprint ballots. And in practical terms, given that he’s still polling even with McCaskill, it doesn’t seem that incredible that an untainted replacement would have a tough chance of winning. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/263 "2012-08-23T12:50:45Z")
That’s right, thanks. It’s a little difficult to see him believing it’s in his best interest to quit now, considering. And I don’t think he’s really still polling even with McCaskill. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/264 "2012-08-23T12:55:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, that didn’t take long . . . [Akin has already been topped.](http://www.examiner.com/article/gop-official-says-god-chooses-to-bless-raped-women-with-pregnancy) I don’t want to live in Missouri any more. Anyone in, I donno, Oregon have a spare bedroom? ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/265 "2012-08-23T13:16:30Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > I don’t want to live in Missouri any more. Anyone in, I donno, Oregon have a spare bedroom? Try Texas. MUCH better. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/266 "2012-08-23T14:16:38Z")
Some Republicans are now busy trying to explain that the no-exceptions anti-abortion plank in the party platform doesn’t really mean _no_ exceptions. And to be fair, Romney does support exceptions for rape and incest, but the statement of “general principles” is entirely against all abortions. Are they going to have to rewrite this? If so, thank you, Todd Akin! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/267 "2012-08-23T15:17:09Z")
Rasmussen has a poll out that shows Akin down by 10 points. I think they’ve been dinged for their methology and maybe for leaning Republican in the past, but still, I think this is much closer to the truth that a dead heat or Akin up a point. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/268 "2012-08-23T15:23:33Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Some Republicans are now busy trying to explain that the no-exceptions anti-abortion plank in the party platform doesn’t really mean _no_ exceptions. And to be fair, Romney does support exceptions for rape and incest, but the statement of “general principles” is entirely against all abortions. Are they going to have to rewrite this? If so, thank you, Todd Akin! I saw a Jeff Greenfield piece online recently that said, basically, that candidates say one thing, the party platform says another, and nobody has cared since Calvin Coolidge. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/269 "2012-08-23T16:04:14Z")
I would make the point here that “words mean things” at the start of the United States all men were NOT created equal. But, because it was written as “We, the people” and not just “We, the white land owners” It could be said that nobody cared for the less wealthy, the women and minorities, but they eventually were included in the law of the land. Do not discount the fearsome probability that the more people vote for a party that has such reprehensible platform that they will never see it fulfilled. They do expect that some day it will come to pass, and the current Republican party is not the past one where just pandering was the order of the day. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/270 "2012-08-23T16:12:56Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > I saw a Jeff Greenfield piece online recently that said, basically, that candidates say one thing, the party platform says another, and nobody has cared since Calvin Coolidge. I take your point, but it looks like people might care about this now. And the Democratic Party platform is going to include marriage equality this year, so there’s something else people might pay attention to. ---
**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/271 "2012-08-23T16:53:31Z")
Part of me wonders if the GOP has sent off their expendable candidates to say stupid things in order to deflect from Akin. In addition to Miss “Rape’s a Blessing” up there, we now have a politician saying [it’s virtually impossible to get AIDS from heterosexual sex](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/26/gop-lawmaker-virtually-impossible-to-get-aids-through-heterosexual-sex/). > [@](#): > > “Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community,” he told Michelangelo Signorile, who hosts a radio program on SiriusXM OutQ. “It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.” > > “My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.” ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/272 "2012-08-23T16:55:57Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > There are a couple of problems here. The first is that she’s quoted as saying rape is a blessing, which is at best deeply insensitive. Taking the position in context it’s less offensive, but it’s dumb for an elected official to wade into this. So her ststupid phrasing just helps keep this argument going, which is not what the Republicans want here. And her comment really does not have much to do with what Akin said. Akin and Huckabee believe what Barnes said, but that’s not what Akin was trying to say. He was saying rape victims don’t get pregnant, not that rape victims shouldn’t have abortions. I think we are in agreement about what they both meant. I just think saying that pregnant women couldn’t have been raped (and therefore are lying if they claim they were) is more “insensitive” than saying raped women were blessed. I mean, neither suggests a lot of empathy, but I don’t see Barnes’ remark as “topping” Akin. There’s a whole nother level of misogyny in Akins’s statement. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/273 "2012-08-23T17:25:40Z")
> [@DiosaBellissima](#): > > Part of me wonders if the GOP has sent off their expendable candidates to say stupid things in order to deflect from Akin. In addition to Miss “Rape’s a Blessing” up there, we now have a politician saying [it’s virtually impossible to get AIDS from heterosexual sex](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/26/gop-lawmaker-virtually-impossible-to-get-aids-through-heterosexual-sex/). > > > [@](#): > > > > “Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community,” he told Michelangelo Signorile, who hosts a radio program on SiriusXM OutQ. “It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.” :eek: Great day in the morning, that’s some of the most jaw-dropping fuzzy memory combined with no logic filter that I’ve ever seen. This guy somehow encountered some version of the findings that [simian immunodeficiency virus crossed to humans to become HIV, via some African communities butchering primates for food](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0612_030612_hivvirusjump.html) (NOT through having sex with them, for mercy’s sake :eek: ). Then he combined that with a garbled version of the history of [AIDS “Patient Zero”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas), a gay flight attendant who was one of the earliest (though probably not the first and certainly not the only) hyper-promiscuous transmitters of HIV into the North American gay community. And that became “an airline pilot screwing a monkey and then having sex with men”. :rolleyes: You know, I can understand how someone could initially mentally **create** such a muddled version of facts by mixing up various vague memories—happens to me all the time—but I just don’t get how they could voluntarily make a complete ass of themselves in public by deliberately recounting their muddled version to a media interviewer without bothering to check a more reliable source. But I suppose somebody who manages to acquire even that much information about AIDS yet apparently still doesn’t realize that it’s frequently transmitted through heterosexual contact is pretty much beyond hope so far as the War on Ignorance is concerned. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/274 "2012-08-23T17:37:36Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I just think saying that pregnant women couldn’t have been raped (and therefore are lying if they claim they were) is more “insensitive” than saying raped women were blessed. I mean, neither suggests a lot of empathy, but I don’t see Barnes’ remark as “topping” Akin. There’s a whole nother level of misogyny in Akins’s statement. Yeah. Telling a pregnant rape victim that she’s been “blessed” with an opportunity to nurture new life would indeed be amazingly inconsiderate and tactless (along the lines of telling a bereaved person that the deceased is “better off in Heaven” or what have you). But just maintaining as a general principle that pregnancy is always a blessing, even when resulting from rape, or that death is always a gateway to an eternally happy afterlife, is not _a priori_ objectionable or offensive. Maintaining that rape victims can’t get pregnant unless they actually desired the rape, on the other hand, is not only tactless but profoundly demeaning and insulting. It’s effectively telling pregnant rape victims that they’re not actually victims but rather sluts and liars. That’s a hell of a lot more offensive than just exhorting them to think more positively about their pregnancy. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/275 "2012-08-23T18:05:19Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I just think saying that pregnant women couldn’t have been raped (and therefore are lying if they claim they were) is more “insensitive” than saying raped women were blessed. Is it me, or does this statement sound like a review of a debate between two medieval clergymen instead of a discussion of 21st-century U.S. politics? We are talking about some real ass-backward nonsense here. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/276 "2012-08-23T18:21:32Z")
If life begins at conception AND we do not prosecute women who miscarry, can a pregnant woman get a life insurance policy for her fetus as soon as she finds she is pregnant, just in case? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/277 "2012-08-23T18:40:22Z")
Very often, a fertilized egg will fail to implant and be flushed out by Aunt Flo. Would they require that a funeral be held and a death certificate (long form) be issued for every period? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/278 "2012-08-23T19:53:44Z")
The only rape victim who got pregnant that I know of was a lesbian who decided to have the baby and raise it with her long-time partner. The advice of the anti-abortion crowd? Oh, it’s good for you to have it, but you should let the baby be adopted by a real family. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/279 "2012-08-24T05:10:53Z")
There is some good out of this. We’ve got the perfect answer if sex education should be part of schools and should it be mandatory. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993/280 "2012-08-24T22:18:29Z")
Akin is in Tampa, where he just hosted [a press conference](http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/24/13461203-akin-were-going-to-be-here-through-the-november-election?lite) to announce (again) that he intends to stay in the race. At this point, I think it’s just plain old stubbornness, compounded by the effects of living inside a like-minded bubble of fellow ignorami. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-nominee-from-missouri-todd-akin-is-a-feeble-minded-moron/631993.md?page=15)