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.

Mini-abortions are happening monthly!!!!!

In 1996, Senator Bob Dole ran against Clinton and lost. In 1997, he starred in a series of Viagra ads. Republican lawmakers wanted to require that insurance companies cover Viagra prescriptions and women's groups wondered aloud why it was that insurance companies would pay for Viagra when they were not required to pay for birth control pills.

As a result, more than half of states now require insurance policies that cover other prescription drugs to also cover all FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices, as well as related medical services. This includes Arkansas, where Jim Huckabee signed the measure into law. In fact, this was a Republican initiative, started in 1997.

Now, all of a sudden we have the "Life Begins At Fertilization" movement. Rick Santorum is saying that birth control gives people the ability to ignore the consequences of their actions (and here I thought that birth control allowed people to control the consequences of their actions and plan accordingly). All of the Presidential candidates have signed on to this, notwithstanding the fact that this puts them well to the right of the State of Mississippi, whose voters just overwhelmingly struck down a "life begins at conception" amendment to their constitution.

The Birth Control pill does the following: It prevents implantation of a fertilized ovum. That is how it works. Now, I'm not talking about the "Morning After Pill," which is just a stronger dose of the regular Birth Control Pill. Because of this, the Catholic Church has decided to call the pill an "abortifactant."

Nutcase Republicans are leaping on this term asserting, I suppose, that there are millions of "little abortions" being practiced monthly by women. This is why I find Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's little gathering Thursday, February 16th so repugnant. He gathered a group of old men together to discuss women's health. Not one woman was allowed to testify—not even Ann Coulter! Then he compared his work to deny women access to contraception through insurance to the work of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Huh? "Let my people go?"

He styled the hearing a discussion on whether contraception rule violates religious liberty and then only invited people to testify who already believe the rule violates religious liberty. There was no attempt to be fair, no attempt to invite any views not shared by chairman Issa.

If you are a woman, if you know a woman, if you understand anything about women, you'll be horrified by this paternalistic panel.

In El Salvador, if a woman has a miscarriage, she is placed under suspicion of murdering her child. If a woman travels outside of the country and has a miscarriage or (heaven forbid!) an abortion, she is arrested as soon as she returns to the country. For murder.

This is where Rick Santorum and, presumably, every other Republican running for the nomination to be their party's candidate for President wants to take the United States. The Pill will be outlawed. Women will be driven back to the 1950s to the time before The Pill. I'll bet condoms will be taken off the shelves of drugstores. And any woman who worries about "being late" with her period will be labeled a "slut," or worse. The concept of family planning will go out the window.

Please tell me I'm wrong here.