Your Daily Trump––The Anti-Science Candidate

Trump’s and the GOP’s hatred of science may doom our civilization.

Reported in Scientific American

Reported in the New Yorker

Of course many Republicans fervently and sincerely believe that if we screw this world up badly enough Jesus will come.

An excellent set of charts which show how bogus the nay-sayers' claims are

This Republican congresswoman believes if she says it it must be true.

Instead of working to limit the enormous damage of global climate change Republicans have spent billions making sure communities who will never be threatened by foreign terrorists are expensively protected from foreign terrorists. Reason? Weapons manufacturers demanded higher profits.

Reported by the National Memo

Is a journalist guilty of bias if he or she believes the honest and well-informed candidate and doesn’t give equal credence to the uninformed dishonest candidate?

A discussion (as if we needed to discuss this) of why it is wrong to give equal weight to honesty and lies

Meanwhile in a wonderful twist of karma some superchristians who’ve been saying weather disasters are God’s punishment for homosexuality have had their homes flooded by the most recent weather disaster… Most of the citizens of southern Louisiana do not deserve this, but these godbotherers might.

Reported in the Independent

The High-Low On The American Economy

Here’s what Robert Reich had to say this morning about exorbitant executive pay in America:

"Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex W. Tillerson is delivering bad news to shareholders: Profits were down 63 percent in the first quarter financial results, announced yesterday. They were down by half in 2015. Low petroleum prices have forced Exxon Mobil to cut spending, reduce capital outlays, and borrow to meet dividend payments. This week Standard & Poor’s downgraded the corporation’s credit rating.

"But don’t cry for Tillerson. He’s scheduled to retire next March with a nest egg of $218 million in Exxon stock plus a pension plan worth $69.5 million. His salary this year alone is about 500 times the median U.S. household income.

"Even when big corporations and their shareholders lose, their CEOs seem always to come out winners. Isn’t it time CEO pay was capped at, say, 100 times the income of the median household? Shareholders should set this standard, and the government shouldn’t allow a company to deduct any executive pay in excess of $1 million. Alternatively, as I've suggested before, tax corporations in proportion to the ratio of their CEO pay to the typical U.S. worker's pay."

The Washington Post reports on how the CEO of EXXON earns many millions whether the company has a good year or a bad year. How fair is that?

The departing CEO of Yahoo! (is that company still around?) is being paid $55 million to go away.

How we got to where we are now: The Washington Post reports on how "high finance" thinking has warped our values and our policies.

What makes it worse is how our policies are shaped by Big Money and their lobbyists and superPACs. These forces are far more powerful than organized labor, which is shrinking every year, more powerful than the Republican controlled Congress, which the lobbyists carry around in their pocket. Bloomberg reports on how hard the US Chamber of Commerce has pushed our tax policies to the extreme.

This disparity in power is more significant than the disparity in pay. Americans have bought into the myth of Rugged Individualism, that each of us is better alone than as a part of a group. (Because groups are communist…unless it’s the American Legion or the Rotary or the Chamber of Commerce.)

This is a distortion of American tradition. The tradition of barn raising and helping your neighbor, of standing together the way the original colonists did, despite their differences. This idea of individualism has helped the 1% reduce the voice of the rest of us to nothing. It has persuaded millions of working Americans to rush to get the anti-union bargains at Walmart. It has organized the workers to break up the unions that won their parents a middle class life.

Salon explains the rise of individualism and the decline of America's sense of teamwork.

Meanwhile, at the high end of the economy the members of the owning class are paid more in an day than ordinary workers are paid in a year. Some are paid that much every hour.

The Wall Street Journal reports that CEOs now make 373 times what average workers do.

If you wonder why healthcare keeps costing you more, look at the multi-millions their CEOs are paid each year.

At the low end, working people get next to nothing. Millions of low end jobs don’t pay a living wage, so people have to work two jobs, and the workers are subject to rampant wage theft. Still, Republicans block every proposal to raise the minimum wage.

The Wall Street Journal, the favorite newspaper of America's 1%, published a story blaming the sluggish growth in the U.S. economy on the refusal to raise working people's wages. After 30 years of suppressed wages and nothing growing but CEO salaries and investment bubbles you'd think it would be clear that economic energy doesn't come from the people who spend at Cartier and the local Jaguar dealership, it comes from the broad spending of ordinary working people...when they have enough money to spend.

Even the middle class is feeling insecure, a story told in this month's Atlantic.

But the working poor and the unemployed have it much worse.

Why not do what the Republican gods Hayek and Friedman both proposed: have a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans? Why not? Because people who earn money from their money, who own for a living, dislike anything that shares their luck with other less fortunate people. The people who own for a living don’t want to give anything to the people who work for a living. VOX explains the idea of a guaranteed minimum income and how it would work.

The rich are always discussing how they wish the poor were better people. Who really needs to fix that problem? The rich do. They are extremely lucky but they believe luck had nothing to do with it. If they were reminded where their fortunes came from they might be less arrogant and less greedy. They might become better people, to the benefit of all of us. Robert Frank (author of the new book Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy) discusses this at VOX.

Kiss Up, Kick Down. The Money Politics of Cruz and Trump and the GOP.

Ted Cruz is as perfect a demonstration of the corrupting power of money in politics as we are likely to see. He bragged about his personal sacrifice and opposition to Wall Street but secretly took a million dollars from Wall Street banks to gain office. This is called hypocrisy. The lie makes it worse.

VOX explains the special deal Ted Cruz secretly obtained from Goldman Sachs, his wife's employer.

People with large fortunes dominate our politics. They can afford to run for office or else they fund other people’s campaigns, people who will further their interests. We have a religion of money in this country. We are told every day by our media that the rich earned their riches, that entrepreneurs are braver and bolder and smarter than humble working people. They are often smart and usually better educated because they can afford to be, but are they bolder and braver? They are depicted as swashbucklers who dare to take risks, but they aren’t risking much. They take these risks with a large margin of safety their wealth provides, and their losses are seldom catastrophic because they can afford to hedge everything. They can escape losses entirely the way Trump did via multiple bankruptcies, leaving others holding the bag. When they win, they collect; when they lose, we all pay.

From QUARTZ, the myth of the brave risk-taker. It's brave to be born rich, apparently.

Working people who use our democracy to demand changes to improve their lives are called greedy. The hard won privileges that are taken away from them are called “entitlements”, which is an insult because, of course, only rich people are entitled to things. Working people must prove themselves worthy every hour of every day. The rich? The born rich? They take special privileges for granted but questioning those special privileges is dangerous.

From the NYTimes, the special tax evasion system that keeps the rich rich, and lets us pay their bills.

We live in a period when working people are fed with crumbs that fall from the tables of people who own for a living.

From PACIFIC STANDARD, a useful IMF debunking of Reagan's trickle down fairy tale.

Meanwhile we’re sold this fairy tale of brave independence, the lone American who doesn’t need government. This fairy tale is sold to us by monied interests who live off government contracts or are dependent on government subsidies. Who evade taxes but accept bailouts. The fairy tale is very popular, especially in the West, where public lands are used by private operators, who sometimes resent the privilege and refuse to pay. If the land were owned by mining or timber interests how much more would they pay? The libertarian argument is riddled with contradictions and magical thinking.

From PACIFIC STANDARD, a description of how dependent the libertarian Bundys are on government handouts.

USUNCUT lists five government freebies the Bundys live off of.

This is the Right Wing’s big idea: give all public land and public infrastructure to private businesses to profitize, but when they cheat or fail or harm the public or poison the environment let the government clean it up.

From REUTERS news service, a report on how Michigan's governor shifted public responsibilities to private operators, who then cut corners to earn profits and wound up poisoning a whole city.

From THE WEEK, a shorter summary of what Governor Snyder and his private enterprise cronies did to the city of Flint, Michigan.

What people forget about the “corporate model” is that it was first invented to allow individuals to avoid responsibility for their failures.

They are called “limited liability corporations.”

They privatize profits and socialize risks. When they win, they pocket the cash. When they lose, we all pay for their failure.

Being able to fail and go on to try again is not a bad idea. It’s based upon the notion that we need to share each others risks and help each other succeed. We shouldn't leave anyone behind... but increasingly we do.

Increasingly the ability to fail and try again is limited to the monied classes. It has been tailored to protect property above all. It is a right given to people with property rather than people who work. It favors those who own for a living and ignores those who work for a living.

Kiss Up. Kick Down.

The Civil War Never Ended

I came across this NYTimes essay today, which says the Civil War persists to this day. It's less simple than you think. The Civil War changed more than the slave issue; it recast our nation as an economy in which larger players dominated. Those who lost out economically were instructed to blame the freedom of the black man for their reduced status. The old hatred was recast and became very useful. The battlefield was still in the South.

The pleasure of old hatreds explains a lot about our present dysfunction. Hatred is a great business model; consider FoxNews. Disinformation is another wonderful profit engine, and Fox knows that too.

Here’s an example of how people’s ignorance and easy gullibility can be shaped into an eager and militant constituency.

A Union Soldier's grave allegedly predicted the disaster of having a black president.

What this dead Union Soldier and Republican did not know (and this ignorant readership would rather not know) is that the Democratic Party that favored slavery in the 19th century would repudiate racism in the 20th and that his and Lincoln’s beloved Republican Party would seize the opportunity to invite those white racists to become Republicans. Nixon’s White House would formally devise The Southern Strategy, which adopted all those unhappy worshippers of the Old Confederacy and made them diehard Republicans, who would vote down their own economic interests for the pure joy of suppressing black and brown people (…and women… and foreigners… and non-Evangelical Christians… and Muslims… etc.) “I may be poor and ignorant but I still get to feel superior to somebody!”

That is the legacy of the perpetual Civil War. Today’s Republicans are actually the New Confederacy. As a recent Washington Post essay pointed out.

It’s worth noting that Nixon, whose minions came up with the Southern Strategy also invented FoxNews.

The Washington Post reports on the invention of FoxNews by Nixon's backroom boys.

Bloomberg on the invention of the Southern Strategy.

The Republican Clown Car

Our news media forces itself to make “all things equal” when reporting on politics and policy.

The frequent stupidities of the pols on the Republican side are downplayed and underreported. If they were all reported it would make the mainstream media appear biased. Can’t have that. And the rare occasion when a Democrat goes slightly left of center calls for a media-wide news alert. Democratic stupidity is as rare as Republican stupidity is commonplace, but it’s the job of the media to balance the two, to make the two parties appear equally intelligent and equally right about everything.

It’s always best to err on the side of judging Democrats more harshly. It’s become a national habit. There’s a mindset that says Republican = Grown Up and Democratic = Radical. That hasn’t been true since we learned how radical and unevolved Nixon was and how consistently Democrats are on the right side of nearly every pressing national issue.

Here are a few bits I saw in the news stream today:

Lindsey Graham’s announced that he would order drone strikes on American citizens in this country if they “even thought about” getting involved with a terrorist group. "I’m not going to call a judge. I’m going to call a drone, and we will kill you.” He did not specify whether he thought the biker gangs who shot up that restaurant in Waco were terrorists. It would be safe to assume he’d restrict his drone kills to Muslims and persons of color. Senator Graham is running for president.

As reported at Slate.

Reported at Talking Points Memo.

David Brooks is the Right Side talking head in just about every two sides panel on radio and television. It’s his job to disagree with any policy proposed by any Democrat and to justify every policy enacted by every Republican. Which is why he’s never stopped loving George W. Bush’s War in Iraq.

David Brooks as Salon tries to make sense of him.

When Jeb Bush tried again to explain whether he’d invade Iraq, knowing what we know now, he said No, but carefully explained that his brother’s White House were unlucky and got bad intelligence about Saddam.

Which isn’t really true. Bad intelligence was all that they would accept. All they wanted was intel that told them to invade immediately and that our troops would be greeted as liberators and that it would be a cakewalk. Candy and flowers. (Candy and flowers are what you give your spouse when you’ve committed an unforgivable sin. I put the Iraq War in that category.)

Jeb Bush's very very bad week explained by Mother Jones.

Of course most “serious” news sources are more focused on whether he was able to dissemble skillfully. A well-told falsehood is more admirable than a sound foreign policy. If one Republican makes a fool of himself it’s always necessary to come up with one who didn’t.

The Hill does its best to put Jebbie's stumbles in context. (It's always inside baseball stuff in their minds.)

The really scary thing you don’t hear on the nightly news is this: Jeb Bush’s stellar foreign policy brain trust are the same idiot who brought us the Iraq War. They’re also the same guys who traded arms for hostages with Iran and illegally funded right wing death squads in Central America.

The Washington Post has a very useful Venn Diagram to explain why Republicans keep making the same mistakes and loving the same stupid policies.

And they’re also the same idiots who didn’t see 9/11 coming, even though the CIA was ringing the alarm bells for months.


FirstLook puts its finger on the crux of our problem, the biggest idiot of them all, the eminence grise behind the eight year train wreck we call the Bush presidency. (It should really be called the Cheney presidency.

Monsters Inc

An Alaska congressman offers “a modest proposal” (From CBSNews)

Arkansas Republican believes government help is worse than child molestation (From Raw Story)

What we have is a political party who think facts and math and science should fit their superstitions

(The anti-truth wing of the Republican Party explained via Alternet)

The Creationist Wing of the Republican Party (the part with the steering wheel) would be hilarious if they weren't so scary. "Were you there? Then you can't say!" (From Raw Story)

Lincoln Would Be Expelled From Today's GOP

Lapham's Quarterly posted an interesting bit of historical rhetoric. Words from Stephen Douglas when he was debating Abraham Lincoln. Reading them today they seem very much like the modern Republican mindset.

I’ve been saying for a while that the modern Republican Party thinks, acts and moves like the old Confederacy. The resemblance is so remarkable it’s surprising that newspapers and commentators haven’t picked up on it. It’s probably just too insulting and awful to say out loud. It’s considered impolite. Liberals are certainly too tolerant to say such things.

Lincoln was a great president, but by modern standards he’d be called a failure. He was so unpopular when elected that half the country seceded. How would CNN play that? For most of his four and a half years in the White House he was in charge of a war that was costing hundreds of thousands of lives and going very badly. The enemy was running rings around his generals. Lincoln’s emergency security measures were draconian and widely hated. And in the middle of this horrible crisis he decided to champion the rights of millions of another race who were not even voters, not even citizens of the nation he was president of at the time. He was laughed at for his powerlessness, his coolness, his laconic nature, his unfashionable intelligence and his patience. Lincoln was widely joked about until the day he was shot. It’s only in retrospect that we realized what a hero he was.

Lincoln had one significant advantage. Most of his enemies had seceded. Obama’s equally determined and intractable enemies are in control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Today’s virtual Confederacy also has the full and energetic backing of Wall Street’s trillions. Today’s Republican Party is the old Confederacy in a more muscular and aggressive form, minus the gentility and honor, minus the honesty about its deeply racist motives and objectives.

When Lincoln’s armies defeated the Confederacy the nation bound up its wounds and forgave the treason. The South never forgave the North for recognizing the full humanity of the former slaves and the new Confederacy is itching for revenge on this old score. The current president embodies all that they once felt superior to.

What can we call this old order of things? Was it a feudal system of serfs and masters? Somewhat, but worse. The collaboration with Wall Street gives the new Republicans a more fascist character. Mussolini defined fascism as an alliance between corporations and government that is so close you cannot slip a cigarette paper between them. That is the system the modern Republican Party would like to impose.

They’ve already done so in many ways. Will a war be profitable for their client companies? Then we shall have a war. Do their client companies want a large undocumented workforce who can be forced to work at below legal wages for longer than legal hours in illegal conditions and be immune from Social Security obligations? Then they shall have that work force. Do their client companies want to launder their profits overseas to avoid taxes? They shall be allowed to do so. Would their client corporations like to engage in massive market manipulation and fraud and not be imprisoned for it? Not a problem. Would their client billionaires like to be free to manipulate the public and rig elections and control our political system without any restraint? Fine. The Republican Party and its Supreme Jurists will declare that corporations are people and their billions are protected speech and their income is immune from taxation. It is hard to tell whether the race baiting side of the Republican personality is the dominant half or if it’s just the ugly side that comes out when it’s convenient, like the brownshirts who beat up the Jews on the street but didn’t attend the official parties when polite society was invited. The climate today has more than a passing resemblance to the 1930s in Germany. Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South had more than a family resemblance; they were twins.

But, of course, it is impolite to say this. If it offends anyone to make this comparison, then the comparison had better not be made. It would be like repeating and giving credence to the lies said about President Obama. Saying that he is a Kenyan socialist Muslim is simply code for what the Republican half of the country would like to call him, a term which broadcast codes prohibit. Race hatred is a convenient excuse for enabling fascism. It gets the mob to march for you. Ugly emotions and ancient racial loyalties become handy tools during anxious times. But to point out the way they are being deployed would be hurtful to the ones deploying them. We mustn’t be impolite to brutal people because they might decide to be brutal to us, and they are very powerful. What they say and do is law.

The GOP and Bowe Bergdahl

It’s shameful when a political party uses war to make its own motives seem nobler. And to disparage and question the loyalty and rubbish the reputations of others who disagree with them. There is something cowardly and genuinely evil in this. In recent years we’ve seen one political party that engages in this kind of underhanded behavior and another that doesn’t. One party that accuses others of cutting and running when they themselves cut and ran. And in doing so created all the negative consequences that came after. (Article about Reagan's Cut and Run in Foreign Policy Magazine)


We have one party that condemns the president for “negotiating with terrorists” when the great hero of their party did the same thing. Worse, in fact: he traded missiles to those terrorists to obtain the release of hostages, and funneled the money left over to extremist gangs of his own in Central America. It was all against the law and contrary to his own policy. (How Reagan traded arms to Iranian terrorists in exchange for hostages)

(When questioned about it Saint Ronald said he didn’t remember what he’d authorized. But, heck, just about every president has negotiated with shadowy and downright evil enemy groups. Our own Minute Men were called terrorists during the American Revolution. Labels get us nowhere. Negotiation sometimes works where war does not.)


Republicans accuse others of cynical trickery when they own the patent on it, delaying the release of American prisoners in order to win an election, not once but twice. Nixon won a close election by scuttling peace talks in Vietnam. Reagan won in 1980 by making sure Americans remained in captivity for several months till he was safely elected and sworn in.

(The New York Times article about how the Reagan Campaign kept Americans in captivity in Iran so he could win the election.)

(The Smithsonian Magazine article about how Nixon derailed peace in Vietnam so he could win election in 1968, and keep the war going for another six years.)

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised how low Republicans have gone to turn the traditional exchange of POWs at the end of a war into a shameful, even an impeachable, act. They were all in favor of it till President Obama got it done.

(SLATE article about how Republicans supported Bergdahl's release until the president got it done.)

They were demanding it until it happened. Then it became an impeachable offense. Did the GOP delete its thoughts and prayers for Bergdahl and his family? How's that done exactly?

(USAToday article detailing how GOP politicians deleted the Tweets they'd posted demanding the White House get Bergdahl released.)

Think you know all about Sgt. Bowie Bergdahl? You should read the Rolling Stone article about him, published in 2012. He was a serious, idealistic, brave, confused soldier who grew disillusioned with the mission and felt dishonored by the shabby disrespectful way his platoon mates treated the Afghan civilian population. In other words, he was a lot like a lot of other GIs in previous wars. Maybe after reading this you ought to pick up Joseph Heller’s WW2 novel Catch22 or Tim OBrien’s Going After Cacciato or The Things They Carried. War is hell. Or read The Red Badge of Courage. Those who haven’t been in war have little idea of it.

(Rolling Stone's excellent and thorough article about Bowe Bergdahl's military career.)

Oliver North, the pardoned felon who violated the law to trade arms to terrorists for hostages and used the extra cash to fund death squads in Central America, should know as much about ransoming hostages as anyone, but he’s been a political hit man a lot longer than he was a soldier.

(Salon article about Ollie North's slippery changeable position on dealing with terrorists.)

He’s saying the crime in the Bergdahl case was in NOT covering it up. I guess Nixon made an impression on someone.

The Cheney/Rove/Cruz/Palin/Limbaugh/Hannity anger machine would rather you not read the Bush White House memos that gave legal cover for this kind of transaction.

(Ironically, the jurist who wrote the Bush memo justifying torture also laid the legal ground for getting Bowe Bergdahl back.)

As if the exchange of prisoners at the end of hostilities ever needed legal justification. It’s simply always been done. Not doing it would put you in the same club with North Korea and whoever it was that imprisoned the Count of Monte Cristo.

John McCain demanded the White House do all it could to obtain Bowe Bergdahl’s release…. until the White House obtained his release. Then McCain condemned it as a shameful, treasonous and foolish act.

But wars always end in controversy and disagreement. John Kerry was crucified by other vets, envious of his heroism and resentful that he later opposed the war in Vietnam. They were fortunate to have wealthy Republicans bankrolling them.

McCain has been accused by less well-funded veterans’ and MIA groups for his scornful treatment of their concerns.

(Some of McCain's fellow Vietnam vets find his record in that war to be despicable and treasonous. But they weren't funded by wealthy backers of his political opponents so they haven't been on the nightly network newscasts.)

Which was surprising since McCain was a POW himself… Some who were in captivity with him have accused him of treason. Perhaps the charges are flimsy, perhaps not. The passage of time has forgiven a lot of former warriors for what they did, and sometimes what they did was done because of what was done to them.

(An alternative weekly in Arizona published this article about McCain's checkered military career. The man lives in a glass house.)

The point is… it’s objectionable to question other soldiers’ loyalty when your own loyalty and behavior under fire has been questioned.

It’s worse when politicians who have never put themselves in harm’s way in the service of their country are seating themselves in judgment of the motives or actions of actual soldiers and captives and their families. It’s shameful.

War makes even the bravest men and women disillusioned.

(The Guardian's article about the GOP's favorite Iraq War hero, Pat Tillman.)

(NPR's story about Tillman, when the Tillman biography came out.)

None of this is new, so why are we outraged? Because of the FoxNews outrage machine. But that machine is aimed at the wrong outrage. War is an outrage in itself. There are certainly good wars undertaken for noble reasons, but war is Hell, as General Sherman said. And there are a lot of shabby motives for it. As General Smedley Butler, America's most decorated veteran, once said.

(General Smedley Butler's famous "War is a Racket" speech.)

You may remember Smedley Butler's name. He was the war hero who certain Wall Street executives tried to hire to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt. He wanted nothing to do with it and told reporters and Congress all about the plot.

(The BBC did a documentary about the Wall Street Coup. For some reason the story got little play in this country. Perhaps because President Bush's grandfather was one of the plotters.)

Reagan Economic Advisor Debunks the Biggest Tax Myth

Former Reagan economic adviser Bruce Bartlett only needs a minute to debunk the prevailing notion that keeping taxes lower on rich people creates growth and jobs.

Low taxes on the rich do NOT result in growth and jobs. That's a myth.

Well, actually it's a lie. An expensive lie paid for by the rich who had their taxes lowered by G W Bush, which contributed to the economic crisis. A lie perpetuated by the Romney campaign, possibly because Romney and Ryan are extremely rich and prefer to have their tax rate lower than ordinary working people.

Higher taxes on the rich do NOT result in economic decline or recession or loss of jobs or growth. Quite the opposite. Reagan raised taxes in 1982 and the economy did better. Clinton raised taxes in 1993 and the economy boomed. It was the longest peacetime boom in American history.

So saying low taxes on rich people is a good idea is a myth. A lie. A big lie. A dangerous lie.

Think about it. This isn't the opinion of some socialist elitist European professor. It's the evidence based argument of Ronald Reagan's economic adviser, Bruce Bartlett.

Why aren't the pundits and the newspeople on TV listening to him or considering the mass of evidence? Maybe because they are rich and prefer to have their taxes lowered.

Share this information with your Republican or independent brother-in-law. It may persuade him. Or it may cause his head to explode, which would make him ineligible to vote in this election.

Republicans' Rationalizations for Rape

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Todd Akin, Republican Senate candidate from Missouri.

Right now Akin sits on the Republican majority's side of the House Science Committee but he has no clue about the science of human reproduction. Nor does his Republican House colleague Steve King.

Republican Congressman Steve King: "I’ve Never Heard Of A Girl Getting Pregnant From Statutory Rape Or Incest"

Todd Akin and Steve King coauthored a bill in Congress last year that would limit a rape victim's access to abortion to women who were victims of "forcible rape". In other words a woman or girl would be expected to carry her rapist's child to term if he didn't break her arm or her nose, or maybe if he said thank-you afterwards.

The other co-sponsor of HR3, this draconian restriction of reproductive rights that redefined rape? Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate.

Today's Republican Party (which is writing these issues into their national platform as we speak) values a fertilized egg (in many cases an egg that has not even been fertilized yet but may if contraceptives are not available) values its rights above those of women and girls who have been assaulted. A single cell, a sperm cell, a infinitely small bundle of cells, created by a criminal assault, trump the rights of a living person. Women and girls have a lower status than their male assailants in the estimation of this modern Republican Party. Rapists' rights to parenthood are sacred to the GOP.

It isn't only Republican men who hold these medieval beliefs. This prominent Republican said rape can be a blessing from God.

"If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it." Sharon Barnes, Vice President, Membership Committee, National Association of Republican Women and a leader in Missouri Republican politics. Rape a blessing?

When asked what she would say to a young girl who has been raped by her father, Nevada Republican and Harry Reid's opponent in 2010, Sharron Angle said carrying her rapist's child to term would be like making lemonade when life gives you lemons.

This narrowing and redefining of rape is nothing new to Republican politics. Republicans have a history of rationalizing and excusing and defending rape and rapists, basing these rationalizations on old myths and good-old-boy fairy tales. They've carefully instructed their candidates and spokesmen to use certain terms that put the burden back on the rape victim and narrow her rights and her options, that make the rape victim responsible for the crime.

"When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase "forcible rape" or "assault rape," for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare." John C. Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee, 1999

Untrue. He should have known better then. We certainly know better now.

"A series of state lawmakers have made similar arguments since at least 1988, when Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephen Freind (R) argued in a debate on abortion that the odds of pregnancy from rape are "one in millions and millions and millions," because "when that traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion which has a tendency to kill the sperm."

The Republican Party is spending its billions of dollars advertising myths and false beliefs. Their objective? To revise our medical standards back to the middle ages.