St. Louis – Roughly 40 protesters, including union members, seniors, women’s health advocates and students, turned out to greet Congressman Todd Akin, R-MO, Phyllis Schafly and other right-wing extremists at the Renaissance hotel in downtown St. Louis recently as Akin launched a “common sense” bus tour across Missouri as part of his race for U.S. Senate.
Common sense is something Akin seems woefully short of, and the protesters were quick to point out what Akin is really spouting – nonsense.
There’s no shortage of examples:
• Akin opposes having any minimum wage – at all.
• He said America should “get out of the business of Medicare and Medicaid.”
• Akin said student loans are a “Stage III cancer of socialism.”
• He also said he “doesn’t like Social Security” and he’s against the school lunch program.
• On women’s health? More nonsense. Need we mention “legitimate rape?”
As expected, Akin let pass the final deadline for his withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race last week, and even predicted to supporters that he will beat incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill on Nov. 6.
For her part, McCaskill who has been mostly silent about Akin’s outrageous remarks last month that “legitimate rape” seldom causes pregnancy, unleashed an ad attacking him.
“Todd Akin said only some rapes are legitimate,” an announcer says in the McCaskill ad. “What will he say next?”
Whatever he says next, you can bet it will be wrong for Missouri, and wrong for working families, said Shannon Duffy, business manager for United Media Guild, TNG-CWA, Local 36047.
“Todd Akin should not be our U.S. senator from this state,” Duffy said. “He is wrong on every single issue that affects working people and their families.”
Judith Parker, field mobilization consultant for the Missouri Alliance for Retired Americans, said Akin, who voted in support of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s budget plan, would not be good for seniors or children.
Ryan’s budget calls for privatizing Social Security, and turning Medicare into a voucher system.
“If the Ryan budget plan was passed, nearly all of the social programs would be descimated,” Parker said
Cathy Sherwin, Midwest Field Communications director for the AFL-CIO said it’s important for workers to support candidates that support working people. “Everybody in Missouri needs to know what this guy thinks,” she said.
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I think Akin got bit by something we all have bireud in our memory. Call it urban legend, old wives tales or just slob knowledge. Things that were told to us that we took as true without any question or data. As an example we need 6 to 10 glasses of water a day or we will get dehydrated . Most people just except that and repeat it without ever seeing any data from tests. Akin just repeated one of those slob knowledge bits about rape in an interview and, being a professional politician, should have known better.