Oh Dear: American Deja Vu & Madness

Victim Ke'Arre Stewart, 29

Sadly, here we are again. What a way to close out the month.

Another weekend dominated by the dark shadow cast by more senseless gun violence from yet another incident of home-grown terrorism.

As you've likely heard or read by now, this latest mass shooting began around 11:30am last Friday when 57-year-old Robert Dear entered the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs with an assault-style rifle and started shooting.

As widely reported the three innocent victims include a married 44-year-old police officer and father of two named Garret Swasey, a 35-year-old wife and mother named Jennifer Markovsky and Ke'Arre Stewart, a 29-year-old Army veteran (pictured left) who served overseas with the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq - along with nine other people who were wounded.

Earlier this morning Joan Malin, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in New York City appeared on a segment of The Brian Lehrer Show to discuss the impact of Friday's shooting on the organization's services, facilities and employees. 

During the interview she mentioned that Garret Swasey, the campus police officer who raced to the scene of the shooting to help other first responders, was actually a pro-life Christian who strongly opposed abortion; but yet he still went to the Planned Parenthood facility to try and help save lives - and ultimately gave his own.

That has stuck in my mind all day.

To me the scope of this latest horror is multiplied by a few disturbing things, first of which as I mentioned before is that this is just the latest in a string of incidents with troubling similarities.

John Russell Houser

It was only back in late July of this year when 59-year-old John Russell Houser walked into the Grand 16  movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana and purchased a ticket to a 7:10pm showing of the Amy Schumer comedy Trainwreck. 

He then sat at the rear of the theater for about 20 minutes before opening fire with a .40-caliber handgun - killing two women and wounding nine other people before turning the gun on himself.


Houser turned out to have had an extensive and documented  history with extremist right-wing views on topics like gender, immigration, race and politics.

According to Wikipedia:

"The July 27th issue of The Hollywood Reporter reported that investigators believed Houser chose to commit his attack in a theater playing Trainwreck due to its feminist themes and characters, as well as its lead actor's Jewish background. Houser was said to have been a misogynist and praised the actions of Adolf Hitler on online message boards."

Shooter Robert Dear

Like Houser, shooter Robert Dear seems to have been a troubled loner with extremist right-wing leanings who was motivated by the toxic extremist rhetoric manufactured by Republican politicians in Washington who turned the vilification of Planned Parenthood into a national obsession.

Only the modern conservative mindset could explain how in the world a provider of health care services like Planned Parenthood could be cast as the manifestation of evil in the contrived theatrical spectacle put on by Republicans earlier this summer and early fall on Capitol Hill.

Exactly two months ago to the day on September 30th, I blogged about the absurd Congressional hearings on Planned Parenthood held in Washington, D.C. at the height of a highly-politicized ideological frenzy generated by House Republicans.

To add to the absurdity, the manufactured political outrage vented by Republican Congressmen, Senators and 2016 presidential candidates was sparked not by truth or actual facts; it came as the result of a widely-discredited fake "sting" video that was intentionally and deceptively edited to misrepresent Planned Parenthood's involvement with fetal tissue research.

Despite evidence that the video was little more than anti-abortion propaganda and an extensive investigation by Missouri State Attorney General Chris Koster showed that there was absolutely no evidence found to suggest that employees of Planned Parenthood had mishandled fetal tissue samples, Republicans whipped themselves into a state of borderline hysteria over the fake videos created by the misogynist right-wing nut bag David Daleiden.

Republican House Oversight Comm Chair Jason Chaffetz

Remember the seething moral indignation from Republican House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (pictured left) as he grilled Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards?

His constant interruptions, shameless grandstanding and bullying set a new low for Congressional hearings.

The Utah Congressman even tried to present a concocted chart as evidence that Planned Parenthood had decreased cancer prevention and screenings as they increased abortions until Cecile Richards reamed him by pointing out that the chart was made up by a right-wing anti-abortion group and had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood's spending records.

Remember presidential candidate Carly Fiorina standing on the stage of a live, nationally televised Republican debate during the week of September 14th and repeating an outright lie about David Daleiden's fake sting video? She told this whopper:

“Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ ” 

Not true, Didn't happen.

In an act of defiant political lunacy, Republicans from the House Freedom Caucus sought to use the stripping of government funding for Planned Parenthood as a wedge issue designed to hold up the authorization of a budget deal.

Think about that for a moment.

Republican House Freedom Caucus members

Yearly budget spending intended to ensure that the government of the largest economy in the world would be funded so it can function was held up by Republicans based on a fake smear video put together by fringe anti-abortion activists.
        
The outrageous claims from the video were quoted repeatedly by Republicans eager to capitalize on the anger they sparked - stoking bogus claims that Planned Parenthood was dealing in "baby parts".

Now I'm not saying all this just to tee off on Republicans (well...), I think it's important to illustrate how these politicians with the help of conservative media saturated people like Robert Dear with toxic lies, distortions and half-truths about Planned Parenthood for weeks over the course of the summer.

Then tried to legitimize this bogus smear campaign designed to motivate the pro-life voter base by having no less than four separate Congressional committees "investigating" Planned Parenthood.

When police in Colorado Springs finally subdued Robert Dear after a lengthy standoff last Friday and began to interrogate him to try and understand why he'd murdered three people in cold blood and injured nine more, according to the NY Times, he reportedly told police, "no more baby parts."

Let's hope the anti-abortion wing are proud of their efforts to demonize a personal medical decision and pass laws making it harder for women to access critical health care services.

They (Republicans) were certainly successful in motivating the pro-life constituency of their target voter base; too bad they "motivated" Robert Dear to take the lives of a wife and mother, a church-going Christian campus police officer-husband-and father and an Iraq war veteran and father.

All in the name of the "pro-life" movement.

To quote director David Lean's 1957 masterpiece POW film The Bridge Over the River Kwai:

"Madness."

May the Farce Be With You: Who's Investigating David Daleiden?

Republican House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz

Tone deaf Republicans once again used the Capitol Building as a public stage to try and publicly tee off on women's reproductive rights, federal support of Planned Parenthood's women's health care initiatives and programs, and the head of the embattled organization. 

Despite the fact that a detailed investigation of the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster showed there was absolutely no merit to the widely disputed claims made in a series of "sting" videos accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally selling fetal tissue for profit, Republicans are proving once again that what they think and believe trumps the actual truth.

It strains credulity to think that an extremist group like the Center for Medical Progress could be the source of any kind of evidence that would initiate Congressional witch hunts investigations by four separate Republican-controlled committees.

According to an investigation by RightWingWatch.org, CMP has ties to violent anti-abortion groups with a history of harassment and intimidation of people seeking and providing legal abortion services.

Liar: David Daleiden of the Center For Media Progress

As detailed must-read research that was  conducted by People For the American Way reveals, David Daleiden (pictured left), the deceptive right wing misogynist responsible for creating the infamous bogus videos, approached Operation Rescue with his idea three years ago and met with (among others) OR policy adviser Cheryl Sullenger.

Sullenger spent time in jail in the 1980's for plotting to bomb an abortion clinic.

Remember folks, the current Republican movement to shut down the entire federal government over funding for Planned Parenthood wasn't driven by actual evidence of any illegal wrongdoing or a valid investigation conducted by law enforcement or any agency of the government.

This madness has been fueled by concocted evidence manufactured (not gathered) by delusional wing nuts like David Daleiden, Cheryl Sullenger and their ilk - and the Republicans took that phony ball and ran with it.

And they were up on the Hill yesterday, banging away like it was Watergate.

Cecile Richards tries to get a word in 

Any questions about whether Republican members of Congress might actually be remotely interested in hearing what Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards had to say were quickly put to rest.

As Jedd Legum reported in an article for ThinkProgress.org, even dedicated pro-life activists were shocked by the unfettered display of crass bullying and witch hunt hysteria put on by members of the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill.

Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz's rambling, tear-filled opening speech at the start of the hearings set the tone for yet another misogynistic display of uninformed Republican attack-speech that had almost nothing to do with facts or truth, and everything to do with contrived ideological theater.

As numerous outlets have reported, he tearfully suggested that if funds that went to Planned Parenthood went to cancer research instead his mother might be alive; obviously Chaffetz seems to have totally missed the point that Planned Parenthood provides pap smears, mammograms and other cancer prevention services for women.

The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis

Politically speaking, I don't usually agree with the conservative co-founder of The Federalist, Sean Davis, a Texas Tech grad who served as Rick Perry's former economic adviser. But he was just one of many conservatives who took to Twitter to lambaste the Republican's handling of the questioning of Cecile Richards:

"Can you imagine if this band of incompetent morons had been in charge of prosecuting the Nuremberg trials? My goodness what a farce."

Farce is right Sean.

Between the near constant rude interruptions of Richards as she patiently tried to answer the barrage of questions thrown at her, to the outright distortion of truth being peddled by a bunch of grandstanding preening clowns masquerading as lawmakers, it was a total disaster for Republicans.

One that may actually serve to boost the already strong public support for Planned Parenthood and further decrease the overall female support for Republican presidential candidates - a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday showed 52% of 1,574 respondents registered to vote opposed Congress cutting of federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

The not-fact-based "Chaffetz chart"

Chaffetz's attempt to pass off a simplistic hokey chart (pictured left) purporting to show that Planned Parenthood increased abortions while decreasing breast exams is a perfect example.

As Sara Jerde reported in article for TalkingPointsMemo.com, Chaffetz tried to pass off the baseless propaganda as having come from "directly from (Planned Parenthood's) corporate reports". 

Richards then informed him that her own attorneys said the chart was actually created by an anti-abortion group called Americans United for Life and suggested he check his source.

Seriously, this guy is the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee and he's bringing in charts made up by Americans United for Life?

That's like a Congressman holding hearings to scale back fuel efficiency requirements for cars bringing in a chart made by Exxon.

As Olga Khazan reported in The Atlantic back in July, AUL (founded in 1971) is almost chiefly responsible for writing the text of legislation for various state houses around the country that seeks to scale back abortion rights.

But give Republicans some credit, at least it wasn't just a panel full of men lecturing Richards.

Republican Congresswoman Mia Love

Chaffetz, who represents the state of Utah, did bring along the freshman Congresswoman from his own state, Mia Love, who represents a rarity on the Hill; An African-American female Republican who represents Utah no less.

If a unicorn walked into the room I'd be less shocked.

Love was just one of many of the GOP reps who lobbed over-the-top attacks at Richards.

She tried to make the fact that Planned Parenthood clinics usually outsource mammograms to other clinics or hospitals simply because the machines are too expensive to have in every Planned Parenthood clinic seem like some kind of subversive plot.

Leave it to a female Republican to try and make providing cost-effective mammograms to lower income women in America seem like a criminal act.

What is wrong with the GOP?

Only Republicans would use a series of deceptively-edited videos created under false pretenses to try and discredit a health care provider that focuses on the needs of lower income women.

Only Republicans would try and use this farce to shut down the government of the nation with the largest economy in the world; the clock is ticking but let's hope even Republicans have enough sense to not let that happen.

In the meantime I won't hold my breath waiting for Jason Chaffetz to summon David Daleiden to the Hill to ask him about his phony "sting" videos; as we've seen the Republican thirst for knowledge is situational at best.

And limited only to that which conveniently fits their ideology.