| Last night my brother and I went to our favourite dive bar to discuss the Senate races, Dodd-Frank, the presidential polls, and Todd Akin. There was never a question that Akin wouldn't bow out. For him, there's no up side to doing so. He's not running for his House seat, he has no other job, and he believes his position is in line with what the Republican platform says. (Oh wait -- he's correct on that last point. In spades.) The GOP, which worked against him in the primaries, would have to offer him something really special to get him to voluntarily withdraw. So anyway, when we got there, the bar was relatively quiet, but after a few hours passed, there was a lot of chatter fighting with the sounds of some ball game. He asked me to not get involved with the conversation across the bar. I hadn't been listening, and we left quickly, but the people were discussing (I kid you not) that they believed that Todd Akin was correct in his biological assessment. I always wonder why people vote against their own self-interest. But I guess if you never passed 8th grade science, you don't know what your own self-interest actually IS. I cannot understand how anyone would seriously believe that women's reproductive systems had some sort of magic feature that allowed them to turn off cycles to meet a bad situation. Objectively, it makes no sense. But here was a bar full of people, none of whom had been drinking that long, agreeing with Akin. This all makes me even MORE committed to making sure everyone is registered, and that they know the facts and get to the polls on 6 November. I've had many discussions over the years about what constitutes intelligence, and whether being smart matters. I would like to believe, I would VERY MUCH like to believe, that when people vote, they choose the smarter candidate. I know better....face it, when people support the current crop of teabag Republican co-opters, they are supporting people who not only don't know science, but have a world view that disdains education and looks for ways to deny funding so children will never learn science. It's shameful and shocking. Please - get out there and speak truth. I leave you with this link of who famous people are endorsing this cycle. You can either scroll through, or hide the captions and guess for each one. An interesting array. |
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