Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp's Underage Sex Ring

[Emet]

What I meant was, why are people on this board taking this serious as if it represents events as the actually occured?

Okay, thanks. My mistake.

 

[Upchurch]

Okay, thanks. My mistake.

...and my ambiguity.

We're under no obligation to view people as innocent until proven guily, and at this point, we should assume that any "sting" video coming from the right is 100% *********.

We not every vide coming from the right, but honestly. Line for line, this is right out of James O'Keefe's playbook:

1. Pretend to be a pimp with a prostitute by your side.
2. Seek help from a perceived liberal organization.
3. Drop hints that you are engaging in numerous illegal activities
4. Film the whole thing with a hidden camera
5. Repeat 1-4 at several different locations until you can get someone to say something stupid.
6. Creatively edit your raw footage to portray things in the worst possible light and/or to infer things that did not happen.

These guys literally followed steps 1-5. Why on Earth would anyone think they would stop at doing step 6? How many times do you have to be taken in before you start to question the source?

 

[Emet]

...and my ambiguity.

Thanks.

We not every vide coming from the right, but honestly. Line for line, this is right out of James O'Keefe's playbook:
<snip>

It's no wonder:

But like her mentor James O'Keefe, a conservative activist who took down community organizer Acorn through a similar video sting in 2009,...
(...)
Both Rose and O'Keefe were trained by The Leadership Institute, a conservative Washington organization led by Morton Blackwell, Reagan's youth mobilization coordinator.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Societ...ed-Parenthood-video-sting-is-about-revolution

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

@SkepticGinger

There are recourse to fight unjust law. One of them is to bring the law to various court and through process to get it repelled. The other is willful civil disobedience, which can and WILL land you in prison.

You may want to say that you are practicing civil disobedience with all the negative consequence it might entail, but you can't say that other moral/ethical obligation override the law (well you can asy, but I doubt the judge will take that into account).

ETA: as far as I can tell reporting is always mandatory.

I hate to pop your bubble here but I doubt you could find many health care workers who were given prison time for failing to report abuse.

And you are totally missing the real issue here which is these anti-abortion extremists are creating a completely distorted picture of the reality of health care workers hiding abuse and supposedly aiding and abetting the crime of statutory rape. The practitioner's goal is doing the best thing for the patient, unlike the goal of the extremists lying for their cause. Why would we not report abuse?

 

[Upchurch]

Incidentally, if Live Action really thought they were exposing criminal activity, is there any evidence that they reported that activity to the police? We know that Planned Parenthood did within a few days.

 

[Upchurch]

It's no wonder:



http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Societ...ed-Parenthood-video-sting-is-about-revolution

More

At the age of 15, Rose founded Live Action and began giving presentations to schools and youth groups. She and her friend, fellow conservative activist James O’Keefe III found inspiration in activist Saul Alinsky's grassroots organizing handbook "Rules for Radicals".

 

[A Laughing Baby]

Incidentally, if Live Action really thought they were exposing criminal activity, is there any evidence that they reported that activity to the police? We know that Planned Parenthood did within a few days.

This is a good point. LA clearly was going for a trial in the court of public opinion in the style of the ACORN debacle with an end goal of defunding.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

What I meant was, why are people on this board taking this serious as if it represents events as the actually occured?

Because the anti-abortion extremists are very good at creating propaganda.

 

[Emet]

Incidentally, if Live Action really thought they were exposing criminal activity, is there any evidence that they reported that activity to the police? We know that Planned Parenthood did within a few days.

No. And from their previous sting in 2008, (the one another poster mentioned a while back), AFAIK, some workers from PP were fired. No criminal charges were ever reported to authorities. Just edited videos posted.

 

[Noztradamus]

For that matter, by the argument presented here, priests should be obligated to report any crimes heard in confessional instead of offering absolution. Perhaps a video investigation is in order.

Ethically, he should consider doing so.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

Ethically, he should consider doing so.

I agree.

 

[Upchurch]

Because the anti-abortion extremists are very good at creating propaganda.

I don't care how good the propaganda is, there has to be a point where you say to yourself, "Hey, I've heard this exact same speil before and it was snake oil then. Maybe I should approach with caution."

 

[gnome]

I don't care how good the propaganda is, there has to be a point where you say to yourself, "Hey, I've heard this exact same speil before and it was snake oil then. Maybe I should approach with caution."

But, the people accepting and repeating this information really have no incentive to behave that way. True or not, it was likely to WORK and that's more important to some than whether the facts have been manipulated.

(putting myself in place of a zealous partisan) Why should I put this beautiful piece of propaganda at risk by finding out if it's true? As long as I don't know, I can repeat it and scare a lot of people.

 

[Lyrandar]

These guys literally followed steps 1-5. Why on Earth would anyone think they would stop at doing step 6? How many times do you have to be taken in before you start to question the source?

To be fair to Live Action, they did post what they said was unedited video from the New Jersey and Richmond videos at least. As TraneWreck has already pointed out, though, this was promptly used to show that the audio in the Richmond video was wrong. So I'm not sure whether to give them credit for being at least partially honest or just call them stupid and possibly also arrogant for thinking we're stupid.

Incidentally, if Live Action really thought they were exposing criminal activity, is there any evidence that they reported that activity to the police? We know that Planned Parenthood did within a few days.

I seem to recall seeing on their blog that they sent their own letter to the FBI asking for an investigation of Planned Parenthood's willingness to cover up abuse and trafficking. Not sure where that post is now, though (and I'd rather not spend any more time on that blog than I have to).

Incidentally, I ran into an account of three more videos on the Live Action blog (found here). That also mentions a report to the Virginia Attorney General. It also includes a quote from Rose regarding her view of the proper response:

The only acceptable response to encountering a self-identified sex-trafficker of underage girls is zero tolerance.

The only ‘professional’ response is to immediately call law enforcement to the scene and push for an arrest...

... Naturally, she doesn't provide any reason for why this idea will actually work.

 

[blutoski]

Of course, if it becomes known in that community that the women you spray with acid will go the hospital and you'll get arrested, they won't let those women have access to the hospitals. Now they're abused and don't get the burns treated.

Again: it's not the first time I've heard these arguments. When I was a kid in the 1970s it was that we shouldn't outlaw child abuse because then the beaten children won't be able go to school because their parents will be afraid the wounds will be reported. Ergo: it should be legal in the name of child education.

My thought is that the argument for nonreporting becomes a very strange inverse moral universe.

It's a dangerous Catch-22. I don't like putting physicians in the position of having to make those decisions.

Neither do I: that's the premise behind the mandatory reporting, though. Obeying the law is not a hard decision. They're off the hook, if you will. One example is that immigrant physicians have to demonstrate they understand the law of the land and not carry on with what used to be their SOP overseas.

The danger of mandatory reporting is that people won't seek medical help. Children don't have the ability to obtain medical assitance on their own, so manditory reporting for young children is a must. Obviously they become more liberated at some age, but that kind of violence perpetrated against such a young child has to be reported.

I'm confused, because it follows from your above reasoning that mandatory reporting for children would be a bad idea. It would follow that parents would not bring their abused children in to healthcare, lest the abuse be reported and they be held liable (see the anecdote from my childhood above).

I don't see why it would be different for children.

 

[blutoski]

I look forward to the thread where the people championing the firing of the PP workers argue just as passionately that Cheney and Bush need to prosecuted for war crimes since they both admitted to approving waterboarding.

The law is the law. We signed treaties that called it a war crime. There's no black and white, just strict adherence to the letter of the law.

I think you might find a good overlap, though. For example, I am very frustrated that those two politicians have not been prosecuted.

But I do agree that you've identified a difference between people who support the firing of the PP caseworker because she made a serious mistake vs simply because "it's the law" for some unexplored reason.

My impression is that the law was crafted by the experienced and considered social working and law enforcement communities. Which is to say: I always hesitate to go all-in with a criticism when I'm the amateur outsider questioning the decision of what appear to be dedicated and sincere professionals who have done more research than I.

 

[tyr_13]

I don't care how good the propaganda is, there has to be a point where you say to yourself, "Hey, I've heard this exact same speil before and it was snake oil then. Maybe I should approach with caution."

Point of fact, many people don't believe it was snake oil then. They are firmly convinced that ACORN was a completely criminal organization and O'Keefie did NOTHING wrong.

 

[Upchurch]

Point of fact, many people don't believe it was snake oil then. They are firmly convinced that ACORN was a completely criminal organization and O'Keefie did NOTHING wrong.

I don't believe that is the case for everyone in this thread, but I do agree that there are probably some who are working under that misconception.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Point of fact, many people don't believe it was snake oil then. They are firmly convinced that ACORN was a completely criminal organization and O'Keefie did NOTHING wrong.

Just to clarify, are you stating it's a fact people believe the lie, or are you stating the people who believe the lie somehow counters the evidence?


I am very familiar with all the facts in the ACORN case from John Fund's book of voter fraud lies to Federal Prosecutor McKay being fired for refusing to participate in the Bush/Rove abuse of the Justice Department for political gain. ACORN was falsely maligned and anyone who looked past the sadly effective propaganda campaign could have easily seen the fraud.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
My impression is that the law was crafted by the experienced and considered social working and law enforcement communities. Which is to say: I always hesitate to go all-in with a criticism when I'm the amateur outsider questioning the decision of what appear to be dedicated and sincere professionals who have done more research than I.

Well here's your problem, right there. Being familiar with many health care and worker safety laws, I can provide numerous examples of laws unduly influenced, not by fact, but by political squeaky wheels, and not written with expertise but by members of one profession (EG, a lawyer) writing a law about a profession they know little about, (EG, medical practice).

Laws involving homosexuals, abortion and sex education are particularly influenced by the moral police so some states have worse laws than others.