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 of a few of Todd’s golden oldies, a couple of speeches from among those he delivered on the House floor over the past few years (and I absolutely know that there are more out there).

Akin holds forth in the earlier (2005) of the speeches caught on the videos on the evils of stem cell research, which, Marcotte notes, he seems to think will result in harvesting organs from living humans grown for the purpose. I kid you not!  

It is the related topic of abortion, though, where Akin has the most potential to do immediate harm. And it is in this 2008 speech that Todd reveals that what he lacks in information he makes up for with his imagination. It employs so many of the favorite, paranoid metaphors of the right, slavery, terrorism, etc., that it must be savored in its entirety:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?clipid=4001030

Apart from characterizing doctors who perform abortions as terrorists, the funniest part is when he feels free to wax eloquent on aspects of abortion about which he clearly knows nothing:

Who wants to be at the very bottom of the food chain of medical profession? And what sort of places do these bottom-of-the-food-chain doctors work in? Places that are really a pit. You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things, misuse of anesthetics so that people die or almost die.

You read that right: Todd thinks that abortion doctors routinely give abortions to women who aren’t pregnant! As Marcotte notes:

It is clearly lost on Akin that the image he’s invoking – of dirty clinics that operate illegally and misuse pain medication – is the reality he’s trying to create. He wants to ban abortion, which is a surefire way to get a whole bunch of  illegal, underground clinics that aren’t held accountable to standard medical practice. If you want clean, safe abortion, you need it to be legal.

It also helps if the clinic is not barricaded by a bunch of hysterical anti-abortion freaks – like those with whom Brother Todd was arrested twenty-five years ago. Of course, folks like Akin don’t really want clean, safe abortion. They want the Jezebels who have abortions to suffer and then suffer some more. How else will you ever keep the harlots under control?

P.S. After reading this, you may marvel that Senator Roy Blunt and ex-Senators Kit Bond and Jim Talent have decided that they can turn a blind eye to Akin’s unseemliness. They’ve all announced that no matter how far his foot is jammed down his throat, he’s their boy. It’s hard to see what Bond and Talent have got to gain from this aside from kudos for putting party first, but for Blunt, who is already clawing his way up in the Senate GOP hierarchy, it’s got to be very, very important that the GOP retain control of the chamber. One can only hope that in return for their cynical gesture, they all end up appropriately besmeared.

Previously: Campaign Finance: Attorney General Chris Koster (D) has a really good day (March 12, 2011)

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C031159 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER [pdf] 3/13/2011

James E Stowers

400 W 49th Terrace

Kansas City , MO 64113

American Century Investments Founder

3/13/2011

$75,000.00

[emphasis added]

Attorney General Chris Koster (D) has another very good fundraising day.

James Stowers? Ah, yes, that’s right. Stem cell research.

Chris Koster in Independence, MO (March 30, 2008)

…Why did I switch parties? Probably three reasons. As much as I, there are two big ones. The biggest one might be stem cell research. Um, when I walked in to the Missouri Senate I walked…first of all, when you’re a prosecutor you’re really not a Democrat or a Republican. I mean you run with a letter after your name but you apply the laws equally. So I never really had to exist in a partisan whirlwind until I got down to the Senate. Everybody knew that I was a centrist when I ran for office. Walked in, and as soon as I walked in, we hit the stem cell debate on the floor. Everybody who’s been watching my career, um, and who believed that there might be opportunities some day to advance said to me, “Stay away from this. You don’t want to touch this thing. If you touch it is, if you touch it as a Republican it could end you.” Couple of issues. One, it’s the Stowers Institute. Okay. Stowers Institute has a three and a half billion dollar endowment. Within ten years after Jim and Virginia make their final gifting to that, meaning after, which is a polite way of saying after they make their final gifting [laughter], uh, you know, this thing is going to be as much as a ten billion dollar endowment and will be the most well endowed medical research facility on the planet Earth. Um, Washington University has a five billion dollar endowment. It took them a hundred years to put it together. Stowers has a three billion dollar endowment, it’s been up and goin’ for a decade now, and it’s going to ten. And Washington University’s endowment is split between education and medicine and Stowers’ endowment is totally focused on stem cell research.

By the end of my lifetime Stowers Institute will be as important to this city as Washington University is to St. Louis. As..I think everybody in the room knows there’s a hundred acres that Stowers has under contract in the state. What everybody might not know in the room is that there already exists a plat map of what that hundred acres is gonna look like. And, there could be as many as ten facilities the size of the current Stowers Research Institute on that hundred acres. Ten research facilities, six hundred thousand square feet per research facility, state of the art, world class scientists coming to Kansas City and doing research that is recognized around the planet.

It was not an issue that you just backed away from.

I mean, if you’re in politics..I think anybody who’s worth their salt in politics is looking for some hill that’s worth dying on. Every hill’s not worth dying on, but if no hill is worth dying on then you should just go practice law. This was a hill worth dying on..

So Bartle and I had our day out there. It was an extraordinary experience, I remember it like it was yesterday. I worked my tail off preparing. I had an hour long presentation, that I probably spent forty hours working on and, I dunno, three months researching. One of the cool things was the Stowers Institute gave me access to the finest scientists in the world as I prepared my  floor speech. So I got to talk to people in London, Paris, Harvard. It was incredible. So Bartle and I do our thing. It goes on for about five hours and, and we won that year. That was 2005 and so, you know, the rest of the thing has rolled forward with Amendment 2 and all. But, you know what? The political handlers were right. It created a breech between myself and the Republican Party that never healed. And it was never going to heal. And, you know, they put a target on my head after that. The, the, the conservative wing of the party put a target on my head to make sure that no one who held these beliefs would advance. Okay, so that was reason number one. That I basically became fed up with that attitude. Because they are willing to take the Stowers Institute and send then to San Diego. As if though, somehow that enhances the, the morality of the planet. It just doesn’t. We should be proud to have them here. I bet that most of the people in this room are proud to have them here. And people make all the difference to keep them here…

Happy December 26th ! I hope you had a lovely Christmas or at least a happy gastronomic experience !!   A few weeks ago, while cleaning out old files, I came across a copy of the Post Dispatch editorial from 12/25/04.  I knew right away why I must have kept it.  It’s a great summary of how Christmas traditions have changed over the centuries.  I emailed the editor of the paper and asked him to re-run it this year.  Which he did, on 12/24.

I think it’s even more relevant now than it was five yrs ago because the “believers” are getting ever more intimidating and demanding.  When I see signs here and there saying “Jesus is the reason for the season,” etc., I want to find the person who wrote that and invite him/her for a cup of coffee and a chat.  No, actually, Jesus isn’t the reason for the season, at least not until very recently (to historians, “very recently” means within the last 100 yrs or so.)   I celebrate the solstice and return of the light just as my German and English ancestors did centuries ago. I also enjoy giving gifts to families who aren’t as lucky as I am materially.  To me, Christmas is a secular holiday celebrating the passage of time, an opportunity to recall happy days of childhood and a time to pretend that most people really do want a world full of peace and love.  

Although I haven’t been to one in many years,  madrigal dinners are still a popular entertainment in many parts of the world with lots of music, feasting, wassailing.  And for millions of people around the globe, 12/25 is just another day of the week.  I read an article recently about Jews and Muslims in Detroit who combine efforts to do community service projects on 12/25 in an attempt to get to know each other better and as a way of honoring their Christian friends. Wow, I’m impressed, especially since members of the three  Abrahamic religions  have been killing each other for a millenium and a half.

At a children’s church service I attended two nights ago, a couple with a baby played the part of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.  The baby was an adorable chubby fair-skinned boy.  After the service, in the refreshment area, a woman said to the father, “That’s exactly how Jesus must have looked.”  Say what?  What are the chances that a Jewish couple from  what we now call “the Middle East” would have a chubby, blonde baby?

 I know this sounds picky, but my point is that our culture is becoming more and more subservient to “beliefs” and less grounded in science, historical fact and rational discussion.  It may not matter when it comes to how we celebrate or don’t celebrate 12/25, but it does matter when it comes to issues of importance like climate change, evolutionary biology, civil rights and medical research.

While other countries are spending their economic and human capital on preparing for the consequences of global warming and researching new technologies, we are arguing about whether store clerks can say “Happy Holidays” without offending someone who insists we join them in their fantasy world.  We’ve been so harassed and intimidated by “believers” that we’re afraid to say “Enough already.”  

The last straw for me was reading about how the CEO of Build-A-Bear, Maxine Clark, had to apologize for a totally appropriate and inspired children’s video about protecting the North Pole from global warming.  She wanted to “inspire children” and encourage them to “make a difference in their own individual way.”   Horrors !! Educating children about how the melting ice is affecting polar bears is now “fear-mongering.”  Clark’s critics said she was “politicizing” the issue of climate change.  No, it’s not a “political issue,”  it’s a life-threatening issue.  The climate change deniers may not base what they believe on religious dogma, but they are just as  irrational and dangerous as the “end times” cult.  They can deny all they want, but the science is irrefutable.  Millions of human beings are already being displaced as ocean levels rise. The Pentagon has  focused for over a decade on climate change and environmental problems as a real national security issue.  This is REAL, folks, and we’d better start responding vigorously in defense of science and scientists.  Corporate power + misinformed masses = a tragic chapter in world history.

I suggest choosing an issue and getting behind the leaders in that field.  Missourians for Life Saving Cures is a good place to start because there are already several attempts to overturn the decision by Missourians who voted in support of stem cell research.   Or rally to the defense of scientists such as Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden who have been publicly attacked for teaching others about the consequences of of climate change. There are dozens of ways we can organize a push back effort.  Speak up.  Don’t wait for someone else to write that letter to the editor or attend that rally.  Like it or not, the name of the game is showing up and being counted.  It’s called democracy, and ours is being diminished daily by people who would drag us back into the Dark Ages.

I will respect someone’s “beliefs” as long as they respect my right to access  solid scientific information and the freedom of decision makers to form policy  based on facts and informed opinions.  This shouldn’t even have to be an issue, but it is.  How we deal with it is literally a matter of life and death.

It’s such a treat to watch Republicans form a circular firing squad instead of wincing as we do it. They’re currently cocking their pistols over stem cell research.

Jo Mannies reported last week that Matt Blunt, who had received a bundle of boodle from a pro-stem cell PAC in Kirwood, had been forced, because of the resurrected limits ($1350), to return most of it. The PAC, Supporters of Health Research and Treatments, had given him a quarter of million dollars, as a reward for his pro-stem cell stance in ’06.

So when Blunt sent the PAC a check for everything over the limit–basically all of it–they, in turn, sent the Republican Governor’s Association a check for $250,000. You know: if they couldn’t reward him one way, they’d do it another. They knew full well that the RGA would send that money right back to Blunt’s campaign.  

But oops. Blunt withdrew from the race. And lo, the two gubernatorial candidates–Hulshof and Steelman–are anti-stem cell research. Those people in Kirkwood had to be thinking, what a bite. We shell out a quarter mill and it’ll be given to our opponents?

Not to worry, though, because the anti-stem cell people are throwing a fit at the notion of Hulshof or Steelman taking money from those people.  Fired Up! reports that the “anti-cures, anti-hope, anti-research community” considers any money the RGA might give their candidates “tainted” because of those pro-stem cell PAC contributions.

So whoever wins the GOP nomination for governor will be faced with a difficult choice.  Hulshof or Steelman will have to decide whether to accept funding from the RGA –a critical source of campaign cash and independent expenditure support– and face losing the support of thousands of anti-progress partisans from the Republican base, or to honor the wishes of research opponents and forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and expenditures from a key Party organization.

[Insert smug grin here.]

But the grin turns grim when I remember that the a-single-cell-is-worth-the-lives-of-thousands-if-I-say-it-is fanatics are collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment “limiting stem cell research.” “Limiting” they call it. “Limiting”, huh. The petition ought to read “reversing the stem cell research amendment that we couldn’t stop two years ago.” They want to call creating stem cells “cloning” and then ban cloning.

I wish those inflexible, judgmental, I-won’t-give-up-until-everybody-does-it-MY-way ideologues much joy of their high flown principles. Not only do I hope they fail in their sneaky, sore loser quest to undo the amendment allowing stem cell research, I also hope their stubborn refusal to allow Hulshof or Steelman to take “tainted” funds sinks the Republican nominee next fall.  

Consider Missouri’s anti-science activists: whatever else you might like to say about them, you’ve got to admit they’re tenacious buggers.  We just passed a constitutional amendment legalizing stem cell research in this state, but they’re trying to upend it.  Their attempt to do so in the legislature went nowhere, so now they’re going to try a ballot initiative.

If they get the necessary signatures (eight percent of the voters in 2/3 of the congressional districts), we get to waste energy and money fending off these medievalists one more time.  No, the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, and no, transplanting some cells into an unfertilized egg isn’t tantamount to cloning Dolly or–gasp!–a human being.

Stopping them shouldn’t be all that difficult.  We covered all this territory last year when Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment preserving the right of scientists to perform any kind of stem cell research here that is legal under federal law.  In fact, the amendment specifically bans cloning. 

It’s not easy to say what the anti-science, anti-cures people actually hope to ban.  The ballot language is vague.  Its proponents focus on the cloning issue.

Dr. Lori Buffa, of St. Peters, Missouri, filed proposed ballot language with the Secretary of State’s office….

“The Missouri Constitution currently allows for human cloning. It allows for the same cloning method that created Dolly the Sheep,” said Buffa, who serves as chair of CWC. “This initiative will ensure this dangerous, unproven, unnecessary practice is prohibited, and allow us to focus on safe research that leads to lifesaving cures and treatments.”

I would say “Knock yourself out, since cloning is already illegal.”  (And I would add that adult stem cells are a puny substitute for embronic stem cells.)  But who knows how these wingnuts would choose to interpret their own vague language if they got their amendment passed?  So we can’t just ignore them.  But you needn’t fret much. 

Last year, proponents of amendment two and the voters of Missouri passed it by splitting the Republicans.  We couldn’t have succeeded without the support of the Republican business community.  In fact, their backing created a rift in the Missouri GOP, and Matt Blunt, forced to choose sides, went with the moneyed interests.

The governor must be cursing and sweating now that his own side has put him in the same odious spotlight that we shined on him last year–and just when he was getting some fences mended.  (He recently denied MOSTEALA funds to two Missouri universities, on the off chance that the science buildings that money would have funded might have been used for stem cell research.)

Blunt’s maneuver went for nought, though.  His gesture to placate social conservatives will be forgotten in the coming clash.  His spokeshole is avoiding saying the obvious:

Jessica Robinson, a spokeswoman for Blunt, did not say specifically to Post-Dispatch reporter Matt Franck whether Blunt would oppose the petition effort. But she did note that he has been firm in his support of somatic cell nuclear transfer.

“His position on this is well known, so you can draw your own conclusions,” she said.

Apparently, they’re not going to have the governor this time around either.

You anti-cures people are surely batting your heads against a wall on this one.  Having fun, are you?  Let me just remind you that all those ladies with granddaughters suffering from diabetes aren’t going to vote your way, even if they do attend church.

Meantime, you’re deepening the rift and hurting Blunt’s chances.  Maybe I shouldn’t be complaining that–shades of concealed carry!–you’re trying to undermine the will of the voters again.  Maybe what you’ll undermine is your own party.