Taking Down Planned Parenthood -- Know Your Enemy

The headline from two days ago on Politico was, "Human Tissue Firm Cuts Ties with Planned Parenthood after Videos."  The article also says that the company, Stem Express, is a small biomedical tissue procurement company, does a small amount of business with Planned Parenthood which follows clear and correct ethical guidelines.  The company announced its plan to end ties with PP after being questioned by no less than two congressional committees.

What we hear is a company distancing itself from a potentially bad actor.  What actually happened is a small firm was threatened with congressional inquiries and bad publicity and due to that pressure ended a small, legal and proper business relationship.  That's the part most of us don't hear.

In yesterday's blog, I mentioned the demolition of ACORN.  It turns out that there is more than a passing similarity between the two smear campaigns.  The Daily Beast describes decades' long attempts to attack Planned Parenthood with associates whose paths criss-cross in their nefarious schemes.  James O'Keefe, whose similarly twisted and edited videos took down ACORN, had also had a hand in planned videos with Planned Parenthood as the target.  The bad actor in the current assault is David Daleiden, head of the naturally ironically named Center for Medical Progress, who set up a fake biomedical research corporation as a cover to pose as buyers so that they could tape interviews with Planned Parenthood staff.

And then edited them.

What worked in taking down ACORN appears to be working with Planned Parenthood.  Members of Congress also hard at work investigating Hillary's emails have positively leaped at the opportunity to use false evidence obtained under false pretenses to poison the public and mount pressure to take down Planned Parenthood.  Yesterday I referred to killing the organization with the death by a thousand cuts.  Associates pressured by adverse publicity and backed to the wall by less-than-esteemed members of Congress forced to cut ties with PP.  Media showing over and over the doctored videos, burning the images into the minds of viewers.  And corrupt and evil organizations like the Center for Medical Progress spreading lies to serve its twisted objectives.

If you google Stem Express, that small company that has been caught in the crossfire, you will find along with the search results the following "reviews:"

Reviews

"This company buys body parts and harvested organs from aborted babies."

"Late term abortions are illegal as well."

"This company it's officers and the company (Planned Parenthood) performing..."

When there are enemies that have spent much of their lives plotting against their warped idea of women's reproductive health services and services created to particularly help the poor, how do we fight back?  When the hate is so visceral and irrational, where does morality and truth get a foothold?  When our political leaders are either part of that rabid mob of bullies or on the other side cringing and hoping to bargain their way to peaceful coexistence, the odds of survival appear to be slim.

As I said yesterday, what it will take will be to be as loud and passionate, as uncompromising, as unrelenting as those who have chosen to be powerful by attacking women, attacking the poor, attacking by lying, and will not ever stop.

When this quote is featured in an article about the outrage over the allegations:

“Unborn babies are being tortured as they’re being sucked out of the woman’s body,” said protester Laurie Hertzberg.

it is hard to believe that we can shout loud enough to be heard.

If It Worked for ACORN...

Have you heard the scandal about the surfer on Food Stamps?  If you haven't you aren't paying attention.  Crime fighters at Fox News are all over it.  They found a guy who is proud of the fact that he is cheating the government.

And James O'Keefe played a pimp in order to kill ACORN.

We have become a country far too easily duped.  This is the place where Wall Street Banks break the law and figure by the time they get caught they will have made millions (or billions).  This is the land of corporate welfare, where the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart write the rules so that they can legally pillage and plunder.  And create a nation where the numbers of poor and hungry grow each year.

Ronald Reagan invented the welfare queen, and the tall tale worked so well for him that the republican party -- funded by corporate America -- has fed off it ever since.

Because of Reagan's dream, shared by corporate America and the right wing, hard working Americans have been seeing their dreams dashed.  Less likely these days to wish for wealth than health care, insecure Americans prove an easy target for the myth of the welfare queen.

Just as with the other battles we are fighting for what should be our rights as Americans -- the right to vote, the right to a living wage, the right to medical privacy -- as long as we are struggling just to keep from losing those battles, we are unable to focus on the real financial criminals in our society.

As long as Fox News and Markwayne Mullin can get us riled up about the Food Stamp recipient that eats steak, we won't even notice that our children's future is being stolen by the wealthy and powerful.

So we need to keep reminding people of where the real corruption lies.  Maybe surfer Jason Greenslate really exists, or maybe he's another wannabe James O'Keefe.  What he is not, is the person who is draining our economy and living high off our tax dollars.  You will need to look to our Congress and folks like Wal-Mart's Waltons to find the real guilty parties.

Let's help focus on the real problems, and get the American people back on track.

James O'Keefe -- One of the BAD Leprechauns

I would like to take this opportunity to say, "Happy St. Patty's Day".  I don't care how much the holiday reflects stupid stereotypes and alcohol, to me it is a day of celebration.  Of anything.  It is inclusive -- we all know anybody can be Irish on St. Patrick's Day.  There may be St. Patrick's Day sales, but only an idiot would waste the day shopping.  Any other day of the year I can complain about food coloring and other additives  poisoning us for no reason other than to make food look pretty, but on St. Patty's day, I'll take my beer green.


But there is a dark shadow I need to talk about on this March 17, and that is the creepy hero of the right-wing, James O'Keefe.  We liberals don't like to believe that people are evil, but I would pretty much bet that this twerp would take candy from a baby.  And because we don't want to believe in this jerk, he has been getting away, not just with ruining lives, but committing criminal acts.


And then he stands up and takes a bow.


Why not?  It appears he is president of a non-profit organization called Project Veritas -- I kid you not.  There do not exist italics that do justice to the irony of that last sentence.


We all -- even Glenn Beck -- know that O'Keefe sets up phony situations, and then falsifies the phony interview by tampering with the tape.  The kind of set-up he has become famous for may not be illegal, but then falsifying the tape and presenting it as fact is certainly libel.


And yet he was able to provide the impetus for dismantling ACORN, an organization that on a shoestring has done great work organizing the poor and disenfranchised, which, of course, is exactly the point of O'Keefe's harassment.


Even after he was charged with attempting to tamper with Senator Mary Landrieu's telephones, the media still reports his episodes as truth, not fiction.


When NPR executive Ron Schiller was framed by O'Keefe, I would think by this time the media -- especially NPR -- would have taken a closer look.  But once again, it cost good people their jobs, and, given the typical lemming-like behavior of many Democrats, will no doubt result in the eventual defunding of NPR.


And James O'Keefe?  He calls his reporting "powerful" and "honest".  But do we laugh at this pathetic and amateurish character?


Surprisingly, Scott Baker of Glenn Beck's blog, The Blaze, decided that O'Keefe does not in fact practice journalism.  That he lacks the ethical values to which journalists should aspire.


I would have liked to write this column on April Fools' Day, but it couldn't wait.  However, in the spirit of April 1, I end by observing that, indeed, Beck's blog is today advertising St. Patrick's Day sales.