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Saturday, November 28, 2015

Et Tu President Obama? POTUS Fails to Mention Planned Parenthood in Statement

I discussed in a previous post that there is such hostility of a woman's right to choose in our country-and I personally have had conversations that show even many women seem to be shaky about this discussion; I was attacked by many female followers on Twitter as well when I pointed out Biden's terrible record on abortion. One claimed that as a man I was trying to force women to have abortions!

In the aftermath of yesterday's awful attack on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, Hillary was attacked for simply saying she stands with PP. None of the GOP presidential candidates have even mentioned the mass shooting which has left 3 dead and 11 injured.

The media has pretended that we don't know the motive-gee, whatever could it be?

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-planned-parenthood-attack-silence.html

There seems to be a conscious desire to edit out that this was an attack on Planned Parenthood and that death threats have spiraled against it an other clinics since that phony video about selling organs

So we hear about the police officers slain trying to end the attack and about local businesses and motorists endangered, but the fact that it was at PP is treated as almost incidental.

I'm sorry to have to say that President Obama's first statement was in this meme.

"President Barack Obama on Saturday said that "enough is enough" in a statement released in the wake of the mass shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic."

"The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence -- people who woke up in the morning and bid their loved ones goodbye with no idea it would be for the last time. And yet, two days after Thanksgiving, that’s what we are forced to do again."

His statement noted many details of Friday's attack in Colorado Springs, which left three dead and nine injured, were still unknown, including the shooter's motive.

"What we do know is that he killed a cop in the line of duty, along with two of the citizens that police officer was trying to protect. We know that law enforcement saved lives, as so many of them do every day, all across America. And we know that more Americans and their families had fear forced upon them."

"This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this -- if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience -- then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough."

"Obama has been forthright in his criticism of federal and local gun laws and has urged Americans who want to see tighter gun control to become "single issue" voters"

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/barack-obama-statement-mass-shootings-216231#ixzz3snkglXAC

Gun violence is to be sure a very contentious issue. But at least you are able to discuss it as he did there. To even admit that this was an attack on clinics that provide abortion services to women, is considered to explosive to even acknowledge.

You know me if you have read me for any length of time. I will fight to the death to defend the President. But here, this is a glaring omission.

I'm hoping the President later expands his comments.

UPDATE: It looks like this Politico piece left out the full statement of Obama which does mention PP.


8 comments:

  1. Mike, I haven't paid much attention to this story until just now. I heard about it yesterday on the car radio (NPR). Just a few minutes. I think the standoff was still going. But it was 100% clear it was a Planned Parenthood clinic that the gunman was inside.

    Then this morning, I checked Google News, and it was again 100% clear that it was PP. PP was in pretty much every single headline that I saw.

    Like I say, since yesterday's brief radio update, I didn't see anything till just now, but there was zero lack of clarity about the gunman staging his standoff from inside a Planned Parenthood.

    What IS unclear (after reading multiple articles just now) is who was shot and who was killed... only the police officer's name was released AFAIK.

    I also noticed a lot of stories like "motives unclear" etc.

    My impression so far is not that this is a cover up, but that just maybe the situation is a little unclear. You quoted an article that said the gunman said three were killed and others shot INSIDE the clinic. It was unclear to me who you were quoting, but nowhere else have I seen a description of who was killed and where they were located. One article implied that at least some of the people were shot in a shopping mall nearby.

    So I thought the easiest way to cut to the chase on this was to look up who was killed and where... (for example, if it said "abortion doctor and nurse killed" then I'd know exactly what was going on)... but so far nothing.

    I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt (the news orgs that is) and assume they don't wan't to turn speculation into a false headline.

    My conclusion was to come back at the end of the day when they can give us more details on who was shot and where they were located when they were shot, and some details about the order of the shootings.

    Did he kill PP personnel right away (doctors and nurses or patients?), and then barricade himself, only wounding others in the mall in his shootout will police outside?

    Did he directly target people in this mall? Are the other two who died mall shoppers?

    It doesn't seem I'm getting info from Google news type sources about this right now.

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    1. Also one story quoted a person who was inside PP saying the gunman was "calm but crazy" ... muttering nonsense to himself.

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    2. Even Fox News has "Planned Parenthood" in the headline.

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    3. It occurs to me though just how complicit the right is in shootings like this:

      1. Fight public funding for mental health
      2. Fight background checks and other gun controls
      3. Lie about fake abortion videos and do all they can to demonize Planned Parenthood (even in the case of presidential candidates, which is utterly abhorent)
      4. Drive people in general away from facts and reality and towards violent conspiracy theory driven paranoia.

      So the do all they can to make people crazy, keep them from getting help to be less crazy, arm the crazy people, and drive them into a violent paranoid rage.

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    4. The NY Times has a good / map of the area, showing the layout of the parking lots, medical buildings, PP, and the shopping mall and nearby roads.

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  2. Im less displosed to take them at their word. All I know is that certain kinds of 'terrorism' don't prevent the media from speculating-like when that Russian plane was sunk, Chris Todd and friends kept asking about ISIs before the facts were clear.

    Apparently in restrospect it was ISIS but the media was willing to connect the dots then and not nearly as careful as they are hear.

    It has seemed that they have wanted to really demphasize the possibility that seems most likely-that his is an anti abortion extremist who was inspired by things like that video.

    Similarly with the Paris attacks. All I'm noting is that the media is usually much slower when it's domestic terrorism than when it's the Jihad, Muslim variety.

    I'll have to check the details but from what I understand-from what some of those working at PP said, the guy broke into PP.

    In the shootout with police a cop was murdered and others injured.

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  3. What you find is the media is far less shy speculating over foreign, Jihadic terrorism, than the domestic variety-which is often Right wing.

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  4. And then besides the media;s extreme caution to blame abortion opponents for what happened you have the clear agenda by the Right to lie and pretend this was a bank robbery gone bad or anything but an attack on an abortion clinic.

    http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/11/28/3726130/planned-parenthood-bank-robbery/

    So under these circumstances I'm not going to rule on the side of trusting the media.

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