Planned Parenthood

Today, in the United States Congress, the Republican party is squaring off for a fight. They plan to shut the government down again. This is very much like a little child stomping off when he doesn't get his way, but the effects of a government shutdown won't be good for our economy and won't be good for America.

Lo, let us put this plainly: Republicans do not want what is good for America if they vote to shut down the government.

But let us examine this further: What is it that Planned Parenthood does? Planned Parenthood is a national franchise of clinics that are funded with donations and government funds to offer free healthcare to anyone who walks in. Most of their patients are woman and most of those women are not well off. Where does the money they get go?

By and large, as you can see from the chart above, Planned Parenthood is spending the bulk of their money—76%—on STD testing and treatment as well as contraception. STD treatment and testing reduces the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, which can cripple. Some STDs can also sterilize women, so if you think that women ought to be able to have babies, you should be in favor of Planned Parenthood. 

Bristol Palin cannot seem to practice what she preaches

Then there is contraception. Since contraception tends to reduce abortions and you do not like abortions, you ought to be in favor of Planned Parenthood, unless your position is, like Bristol Palin, that abstinence is the only acceptable to not get pregnant. Unfortunately, for Ms. Palin, that does not seem to be working out very well for her, as she is pregnant once again—out of wedlock with her second child conceived while she was telling others to not have sex. I think that is a big problem for her, even though Planned Parenthood also offers services to married persons as well as single persons who want family planning options.

Here is what the opposition to Planned Parenthood is, more than anything else. It is about denial of the same kinds of health services that wealthy people have to the poor.

Carly Fiorina can afford an abortion. It is legal, it is available and there are still physicians in the United States who will do the procedure. The wives of all of the other Presidential candidates can afford an abortion and they can get one any time they want to. They can also get contraception, cancer screening, STD testing and treatment and any medical service their heart desires.

Carly Fiorina wants poor people to not be able to get healthcare

But Carly Fiorina and the rest of the Republicans do not want poor people to get any of these services. They don't like the fact that poor people can walk into a free Planned Parenthood clinic and see a physician, get medical services and go on with their lives.

You can see this clearly in the way that Republicans absolutely oppose Medicaid expansion in all of their states (with very few exceptions) because they want to punish poor people by reserving healthcare for the very rich. Under the Republican philosophy, poor people are to be denied any access to competent physicians and other healthcare services because they are poor and it's all their fault. Republican policies had nothing to do with this, either (they believe that the teacers' unions caused the 2008 economic crisis and not the banks, the investment bankers and the policies espoused by Republicans since Reagan.

This leads me to a theory howard Zinn proposed in his book, A People's History of the United States. He suggested that, the reason why the wealthy people wanted poor people to stay poor is so that they could pit them against the people they really didn't like—black people. I have to suggest that, after the constant rhetoric I hear coming out of Donald Trump (and not refuted by any of the other Republican Presidential candidates) this extends to Chinese people and Mexican people (as well as those with those ancestries) also.

So, in order to keep the "nonwhites" down, we must have lots of white poor people, whose position is that, at least they have no African, Mexican and Chinese ancestry. These poor white people will have nasty, short, brutish lives without any possibility of ever seeing a physician.

Now, that is a pretty extreme stance, but, as I look at the current Republican rhetoric, I have to wonder if it is really true and that Republicans really want to build an America like that. I would love to see some well-researched refutations of this.

How Trump Works

I think that the GOP would just as soon Donald Trump would have melted down by now but, to their surprise, he is going strong. We are headed into the second Republican debate and he will, once again, be in the center, leading the pack.

I want to note a few things that Trump seems to be all about. He, apparently, hates Hispanic people and seems to characterize all of them as Mexican nationals, no matter where they are from. And all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. This kind of rhetoric caused a lot of companies to decide to quit doing business with him, including the PGA tour, NBC and one of the Spanish-language television networks, Univision. Trump decided to sue Univision when they dropped coverage of his Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.

Since Univision does have a large Hispanic viewing audience, their news division wanted to interview candidate Donald Trump about his statements concerning Mexicans living here in the United States and his apparent issues with them. Their polls show that Trump enjoys a 75% negative rating with Hispanics and the network believes that he cannot win any national Presidential election if he does not have a great deal of Hispanic support. I know what they do in news departments. They task someone with calling twice a day every day to ask for an interview. Someone from Univision has been calling the Trump organization every day for, at this writing, three months. The person making the call may not be a top reporter and certainly is not their national news anchorperson, but these calls are being made. Were anyone from the Trump organization to suggest that Donald Trump would be happy to take an interview request from Univision, the follow-up would be at a high level.

So, after Donald Trump has refused any question from Univision for three months now, evening news anchor Jorge Ramos decided to attend a press conference held by Donald Trump.

I happened to turn on the television at that time—not to listen to Donald Trump but, rather, to see what was happening and to rest from a trying day. And, in tuning around, I noted that CNN, MSNBC and Faux "news" were all carrying the news conference live. I found this fact, alone, interesting. They do not do this with any of the other candidates. And, I think that with Donald Trump, he says such outrageous things that there is some fascination.

I had flipped back to MSNBC when Jorge Ramos stood up. I heard Ramos' questions—CNN did not have good audio on Ramos' questions (I found that out later). Donald Trump saw the Univision anchorman stand up and immediately turned to the center and tried to call on another reporter. The reporter Trump called on did not ask a question and, instead, listened to the exchange between Jorge Ramos and Trump. Ramos was asking how the United States could afford to deport 11 million persons in the United States who had overstayed their visas or entered this country without proper paperwork. He also asked how Donald Trump was going to build a wall over the entire US-Mexico border (knowing that many of the undocumented aliens in this country come by air and other means) and how Donald Trump could claim that he would get the Hispanic vote when a vast majority of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

Each of these questions are fair questions, because all of this information is the kind of information Donald Trump shares with the press and the American people every time he gives a speech. But the situation was interesting. Jorge Ramos was conducting an "ambush interview." And attempting to ambush someone is also fair, as Donald Trump and his organization have refused to offer an interview with Univision for three months. Trump knows this, because he tells his people to ignore their requests.

Rolonda Watts

In an "ambush interview," often the goal is to simply show the response to the ambush of the person being interviewed. In 1990, I edited a number of "ambush interviews with Inside Edition and I became quite familiar with how they work. Ambush interviews are the staple of investigative reporting on television, where the interviewee often does not wish to be interviewed. In 1990, I edited the report by Rolonda Watts with Byron De La Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar Evers. Apparently, De La Beckwith had kept the murder weapon in his home and it was discovered in 1990. Watts telephoned him from New York and asked for an interview. She told me that De La Beckwith told her over the phone that Inside Edition was not to send a "nigger, jap, Jew or a spick" to interview him. Rolonda, who is black, told him that she would personally do the interview so that he could tell his side of the story.

Inside Edition had two cameras rolling as De La Beckwith threw Ms. Watts off his property. I recall we had to "bleep" out considerable profanity from De La Beckwith. We aired the ambush pretty much as it happened.

A few of my friends have suggested to me that Jorge Ramos was being rude, that he was not recognized, that he spoke out of turn. Not true. Every single reporter in the room knew what was going on. And so did Donald Trump. Trump thought he could simply refuse to call on Ramos and that would settle the issue. But Ramos was all set to jump in as soon as Trump drew a breath and went looking for another "softball." And the rules of decorum change in an ambush. This is an ambush that Donald Trump set up as soon as he decided to ignore Univision for three months.

Jorge Ramos

For my readers who are not Hispanic, that is like throwing Lester Holt from NBC or David Muir from ABC or Scott Pelley from CBS out of a press conference. You don't do that. You take the question and you try to maintain some dignity if you think the news anchorperson is going to make things hot for you. Instead, Trump revealed his real feelings for Hispanic Americans. He glanced at his bodyguard, who all but shoved Ramos out of the room and as that was happening, Trump told Ramos to "go back to Univision."He couldn't say Mexico because he knew the rest of the reporters in the press conference would immediately all start asking questions about his latest insult to Hispanic-Americans. Once out in the hallway, Trump's bodyguard said "Get out of my country" to Ramos, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 2008. Ramos is a respected, award-winning journalist and deserves treatment as such. Donald Trump treated him like he would like the United States to treat everyone of foreign origin.

That treatment is the reaction that Ramos' questions created in Donald Trump and, just as in the case where Byron De La Beckwith threw Rolonda Watts off his lawn, demonstrating his extreme prejudice, Trump demonstrated exactly the same prejudice with Ramos.

I would say that the score is Univision 2, Trump 0.

Now, Trump, realizing what just happened, did invite Ramos back to ask his question, whereupon Trump wanted Ramos' question to be all about Trump's lawsuit, but this would serve to be more mistreatment. At one point, Trump announced that he "liked Ramos." But he also said he did not know Ramos—even though he had refused to take a question from him, had him ejected from a press conference and also told him to "go back to Univision." Trump does something outrageous and has a meltdown in front of live crowds (throwing red meat to the isolationist radical racists in the Republican party) and then acts like it's all in fun.

I am hopeful that these meltdowns become more frequent so that America can really see who the Republican front-runner is. This says a whole lot about the Republican Party in general that they would accept Donald Trump as a candidate. I don't think America wants to hire such a volatile person as President.

The Trump Card

So, The Donald has decided to actually run for the Republican nomination. And he was immediately dismissed by that party as "not a serious candidate." Then, to everyone's surprise, his candidacy took off. Polls show him—even after his little spat with Faux "news" personality Megyn Kelly—leading all other candidates.

At first, this was amusing. It was so amusing that Arianna Huffington decided that all coverage of the Donald would be in the Entertainment section in the Huffington Post. True to form, he launched an attack on the Huffington Post, Ms. Huffington and on all media coverage in general. More red meat for the masses.

But the dustup with Megyn Kelly seems to have been "important." One of the things that Donald Trump called her was "a lightweight." and he said "she was reading from her little script." And this points something out. We were not actually watching a Presidential debate. The men (and they were all men, because Carly Fiorina was relegated to the "Kiddie Table Debate") played a role and acted as if though Faux "news" actually does news and has real journalists. And the people from Faux "news" played the part of serious journalists, by carefully reading serious questions that were given to them and designed to actually challenge the candidates. This caught several of the candidates off-guard, especially Donald Trump, because they are all used to the softballs thrown at them by Faux "news" personalities.

Megyn Kelly is a "lightweight," just as all of the personalities on that network are. Despite the fact that she worked for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV, she is permanently blacklisted from ever working in any capacity as a real journalist again. Anyone accepts a job from Murdoch is permanently blacklisted. You will never see one of their personalities hired by CNN or any of the broadcast networks. This is because they do not make news, they do not report it, they do not hold to any of the standards of journalism, they have no ethics and they do not appear to know the difference between what they are doing and real news gathering and news reporting. Real news organizations do not exist to train people up—that is what you are supposed to have done in college.

What you saw on that network was a "reality show," or "reality-based television." where everyone is an unscripted actor (save, perhaps, the Faux "news" personalities reading from their scripts). And, since the ratings were nice and high, Roger Ailes "made nice" with Mr. Trump after having surprised him with the questions asked, because he knows that Donald Trump is the reason why the viewership of this reality show was so high. He wants more ratings like that.

So, now, let's get to the whole reason why Donald Trump is able to run on the Republican ticket.

Donald Trump knows that he needn't be specific as to what policies he would espouse as President. He need not be specific because the Republican candidates do not debate each other. Instead, they launch attacks on a President who is not running for office and try to attack the person they think the Democrats will nominate. And the reason why Republicans are so light on specifics is because the party's platform is specifically designed to harm the majority of the voters, so they would rather talk about their opponent than what they plan to do.

So he ran knowing he would never be asked what he would do if he were President. He can always side-step all of these questions very easily, because none of the other candidates will ever call him on this and because he can always attack the press. Attacking the press is not informational. Attacking Democrats or the President is not informational. When you go on the attack, you cease to state what you will do. Anyone who questions Donald Trump will face a personal ad hominum attack from Donald Trump. And this is exactly why Roger Ailes gave Megyn Kelly the script that called for her to ask about how women see Trump. He knew right away that her ratings would increase after the spat and Ailes is all about the money he can make by having a non-news network.

The Third Party

The United States system, from the very beginnings of our partisan Republic under President Washington, has tended to be run by two parties. The first two were the Democratic Republicans, who tended to follow Jefferson and the Federalists, who tended to follow Alexander Hamilton and helped our second President, John Adams (but not enough to get him re-elected for a second term).

Some years I read a lot about this in a very good book entitled American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns. The book's author, Richard N. Rosenfeld edits together excerpts from the Philadelphia Aurora, a newspaper that was published by Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Bache, and later by William Duane, this newspaper was certainly not on the side of President Washington and absolutely dead set against John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. You also read articles from the opposing newspapers of that era, offering rebuttals and supporting their side. The book is listed by Amazon as "out of print, which is a real shame. People should be reading it now to better understand the rise of "faux news" as the Murdoch empire promulgates it. Another parallel was the pressure on the Press of that era to make enough money to survive. The Philadelphia Aurora received printing jobs from the Democratic-Republicans, while opposing newspapers, such as the Gazette of the United States received printing jobs from the Federalists. Were it not for the extra money earned from printing everything from official documents for the United States to commissioned pamphlets, these newspapers would have failed.

Today, we have a government that has tended to create a two-party system. When Jefferson won his first election, most of the states had decided on a winner-take-all system for electors (because they opposed Adams) and this continues to this day, denying third parties the Presidency with regularity. And, in Congress, since the end of Reconstruction, there have been a total of 31 U.S. Senators, 111 Representatives, and 22 Governors that weren't affiliated with a major party. That's not a lot since the 1870s.

But today, we have a third party that is involved in affairs in the House of Representatives and is also a threat to Republican members of Congress. It's the Tea Party. The Tea Party has its own sources of funding. And they have their own grass roots movements. But they're acting, not like a loyal segment of the Republican Party, they're acting mostly on their own. And they're refusing to cooperate with Speaker Boehner's agenda, for the most part.

Here is how the Republicans can stop this:

They can declare the Tea Party not loyal and not Republican, refusing to allow their candidates to run against Republicans in primaries. After all, registered Democrats cannot run against Republicans in primaries, so why should Tea Party candidates? This keeps Republican seats safe from primary challenges and takes the fear away from them.

And Speaker Boehner can declare his Republicans capable of dealing with either of the two smaller parties in the House of Representatives. So if the Tea Party freshmen won't back him, he'll just cross the aisle and compromise with the Democrats. Either way, he leads. Either way, he wins. And since the Tea Party cannot run against him or any Republican candidate in a primary, they're able to campaign as the center movement in America. Not lefties like Democrats, not hard-line Nazis like the Tea Party.

For too long, the Press has not seen the Tea Party for what it is. It is its own entity. It is not Republican and it is not Democrat. And one thing I have noted is that the Tea Party platform favors something that only one other political party in the United States has ever favored: The complete dismemberment of American government. The party that favors dismantling our government, along with the Tea Party is the Communist Party—though after the fall of the Soviet Union, I have to wonder if they still have any members left.

So I would invite Speaker Boehner to see the Tea Party as their own thing and not caucus with them. He can do more and win more by compromising with the larger, Democratic, Party and push this radical group into the corner, where they belong.