markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalNYT Editorial: Vindication for Planned Parenthood (and my comment posted to it)
Here is a comment I posted to the editorial (a link to and excerpt of the editorial follows after my comment):
It is certainly past time for politicians to back off their attacks on Planned Parenthood. But isn't it time also to ask why we continue to allow these scams involving videos that purport to show wrongdoing by some agency or official, videos produced by activists with a known agenda, to be perpetrated on the American public? Isn't it time to call out media outlets who run with these stories, at face value, without undertaking their own independent investigation of their veracity? And is it not time to demand accountability from politicians who opportunistically seize upon any video that surfaces, irrespective of its source and before knowing whether or not what is presented is accurate, in furtherance of a political agenda, wasting millions of taxpayers' dollars on pointless investigations that serve no public purpose, but merely provide a vehicle for political posturing?
The Planned Parenthood "baby parts" scam followed, play for play, the game plan that was used to falsely discredit ACORN and to slander Shirley Sherrod: (1) a person with a known, right-wing agenda comes forward with a selectively and misleadingly edited video; (2) one media outlet runs with it with no attempt to ascertain the truth of the story; and (3) Republican politicians immediately demand expensive investigations aimed not so much at discerning the truth of the video, but at smearing the person or organization targeted by the video. How many times must we go through this?
And here is the excerpt of the editorial itself:
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - JAN. 26, 2016
One after the other, investigations of Planned Parenthood prompted by hidden-camera videos released last summer have found no evidence of wrongdoing. On Monday, a grand jury in Harris County, Tex., went a step further. Though it was convened to investigate Planned Parenthood, it indicted two members of the group that made the videos instead.
The Harris County prosecutor, Devon Anderson, a Republican who was asked by the lieutenant governor, a strident opponent of Planned Parenthood, to open the criminal investigation, said on Monday that the grand jurors had cleared Planned Parenthood of any misconduct.
Yet despite all the evidence, Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said on Monday that the state attorney general’s office and the State Health and Human Services Commission would continue investigating Planned Parenthood. This is a purely political campaign of intimidation and persecution meant to destroy an organization whose mission to serve women’s health care needs the governor abhors.
Fortunately, in the Harris County case, the jurors considered the facts. David Daleiden, the director of the Center for Medical Progress, which released the videos, and Sandra Merritt, an employee, were indicted on felony charges of tampering with governmental records, probably connected to their alleged use of fake driver’s licenses to get into a Planned Parenthood office.
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Bernie responds to Chelsea . . . with far more grace and class than her scurrilous remarks deserved
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/01/13/bernie-sanders-sotu-and-gun-issue-bash-intv.cnnAn argument I wish the President had addressed last night
Just had a chance to watch the President's town hall on guns, which aired last night. All I can say is, if people watch this, and still think President Obama seeks to take away their guns, then they are believing that because they want to believe it, not because there is any rational basis whatsoever for that belief.
Personally, I wish the President had taken on the "protection" argument, although I understand why he didn't. One woman who questioned him recounted her story of having been raped in her home, and how she now wants a gun to protect herself. Here's the thing about that belief -- and this is a point the Australian comic, Jim Jeffries, makes so brilliantly in his Netflix special, "Bare" -- in order for a gun to be of any use for self-protection in such a circumstance, that gun would have to be both loaded, and be within reach of the person, AT ALL TIMES. I don't know anybody who carries a loaded gun with them 100% of the time, even as they go about the house. And if a person keeps a loaded gun lying around the house and readily accessible, then the risk that a child or someone else might get their hands on it rises exponentially, and that person has thus voided any claim to being a "responsible gun owner." It may be that the woman from the town hall who had been raped derives some sense of security from having a gun on hand, but as a practical matter, that sense of security is entirely illusory.
Posted this to FB today, in response to accusations that the President's tears were "an act"
Posted after a distant relative (among many other folks) made a comment that "He should get an Oscar for that performance." (The context was a post of mine in which I shared an exchange with another NY Times reader. That reader commented: "Can you imagine a JFK or FDR with tears streaming down their faces during a press conference?" My response: "Some of us find it refreshing to have a President unconstrained by the emotional dysfunctions of the privileged class of a bygone era!"
Here is a video of the President's speech yesterday. If anybody can listen to it and still level an accusation that the President was "acting," then it says a whole lot more about the person making the accusation than it does about the President. And frankly, regardless of whether or not you agree with the President, if the thought of those 21 5- and 6-year-olds at Sandy Hook, along with the dozens and dozens of others whose live have been cut short in mass shooting after mass shooting, doesn't evoke a strong emotional response within you, then you seriously need to check your own humanity, or lack thereof!
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