You might want to read this article outlining the new CBS Pittsburgh Interview with Paul Ryan. Brief as it is, it's quite revealing as a portrait of a man desperate to avoid engaging with or even acknowledging the implications of his own ideas. Any sentient protein-based life form can see that there is no daylight between Paul Ryan and Todd Akin when it comes to refusing federal funding of abortion in cases of rape and incest. This is very important stuff. I think that for too long, even feminist discourse has tended to trivialize the issue at hand – it isn't simply about "choice" in some consumerist "which product should I buy?" sense, it's about the stripping away of a fundamental right: the right of women to control their own destiny, at least to the extent any of us can do that And if you can't do that, what the hell can you do?
In spite of the homey manner and the jeans on a fellow like Rep. Ryan, there's precious little daylight between the American Fruitcake Right and the Taliban when it comes to attitudes towards female integrity, autonomy and equality. Read the article – in it you hear an anxious young man confronted with the abominable language initially included in a bill he cosponsored: "forcible rape" (aka "legitimate rape" in case you're compiling a lexicon of the stupid-idiot-imbecile things Republicans say), the sheer arrogance and oblivious madness of which he tries to quell by repeating the new post-Akin-debacle mantra, "Rape is rape. Rape is rape, period. End of story." Nice try, asshole, but you're on record as an Akin man.
The Romney campaign has really stepped in it regarding this all-important issue of female equality and autonomy. Governor Romney, in his usual wanna-be slickster way, is trying to sidle away from what every sane person knows is his actual position, but he can't: he's got Paul Ryan, who's been legislatively "palling around" with American Taliban types like Todd Akin, and of course he has the GOP platform itself, which seems to have been borrowed from the overseas Taliban. (Perhaps the Taliban should file a copyright infringement suit over the pro-life extremist plank of the Republican Party. I suspect lawyers would find whole paragraphs lifted verbatim from that odious outfit's Great Book of Hating Perfidious, Whorish Womankind. Okay, I made the title up – but you get the idea.) Even Mitt, an ethical and ideational Houdini if ever such was, can't get out of this one: his and his running mate's stated, in-print or on-video ideas speak against the two like wicked deeds on the Day of Judgment.
Finally, what I find awesomely arrogant about Ryan's interview is the segment where he dismisses any attempt on the Democrats' part to – well, you know, distract women from the real issues of the day: “And I don’t think they’re going to take the bait of all these distractions that the President is trying to throw at them,” says the candidate as quoted in the linked article. Obviously, women's rights don't count in the Republican book as among those real issues. No, they're just a cheap diversionary tactic to keep us from realizing that B. Hussein Obama is a Kenyan communo-fascist who swore an oath over chicken-blood to destroy the Great Satan from within. And I think we can all agree, that's the only thing we should be considering as loyal Amurcans come election day. At least those of us who can still vote – you know, WHITE MEN.
Addendum -- with regard to the phrase "refusing federal funding of abortion in cases of rape and incest," I believe it would be more accurate to correct that to say the bill in question initially had to do in part with defining "rape" in a very restrictive way so as to limit what's covered under federal law.
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