Just too horrible to contemplate

Like many, I'm tempted to blow off Todd Akin's comments about pregnancy as the product of rape being impossible.  It's so obviously stupid that it's hard to know how to respond.  This has given me some insight into how anti-choice politics work.  Akin probably has a hard time believing something so horrible could just happen to someone who was raped (something already horrible having happened to her).  I concur that it's difficult to comprehend.  Once in a while, you hear about something so bad that it just can't be the case that it ever has happened or ever will.

Except it did happen and will happen again.  People do things to mitigate the horror of an unfair world.  In the case of rape producing pregnancy, most people tend to agree that the best thing we can do to mitigate the horror is to let a woman opt for aborting the pregnancy.  But if you live in a tidy world where there is always a correct, not-just-acceptable-but-good choice, you just don't get pregnant when you're raped.  If you're pregnant, you were obviously not raped, so STFU.

If the world were just, we wouldn't have to enforce justice on it.  If our leaders can't handle that, they're irresponsible vermin who should slink back into their fetid caves and hide until we've forgotten about them.

The last people who we need in charge are the ones who have not asked the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" because they think bad things don't happen to good people.  

Throw Away the Key

In some ways, I am totally baffled by Romney picking Ryan as veep.  I agree with the analysis that Ryan's presence on the ticket shifts focus from Romney's strong issues (self-reliance, business, Obama Bad) to his weaker ones (social programs, taxes).

For a while, I've had a theory about vice-presidential selection that I think the GOP might be using: it's a great way to contain a weirdo.  Who's less relevant in Washington than the veep?  The conventional wisdom about a VP balancing a ticket hasn't really shown itself to be true.

When I do that thing liberals do - fantasize about what it would have been like if Gore'd gotten into the oval office - I think about how great it would have been to keep Lieberman locked up in the vice presidency.  

This again? Why won't people be serious about guns?

Florida is (again) trying to ban pediatricians from asking the parents of their patients if there are guns in the household.  This was already struck down as unconstitutionally-restrictive of the doctors' rights.  And it pissed me off royally, since people are always trying to regulate what doctors tell women about abortion, but see this as an intrusion on the second-amendment right to bear arms.

What?  Seriously?  A doctor asking if you have a gun in your home is making it hard for you to keep a gun there?  (Well, after you find out that if someone dies at the end of that gun, it's most likely going to be part of your family, you'll probably be a little less stoked about gun-ownership.  But God and the NRA forbid you learn that kind of thing from your doctor.)

It's one thing that this is stupid legislation.  It's quite another that it's being pushed again after a couple of high-profile gun crimes.

Just what about senseless gun violence makes Americans think it's time to pretend like we don't know they're dangerous?

I can usually ignore the gun control issue, but I'm getting riled up over how hard-headed Americans are when it comes to their guns.