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Fox & Friends teamed up with Laura Ingraham this morning to pretend that Planned Parenthood’s annual report shows a huge “growth industry” in abortions because they got an increased amount of government money. They blatantly disregarded the fact that abortion services account for about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities and that 96% for such medical services as STI/STD testing and treatment, cancer screening and prevention, prenatal services and contraception. The Friends also blindly accused the organization of ignoring restrictions on using federal funds for abortion. Instead, Ingraham cried, without challenge from any of the three hosts, “This is carnage!”

Steve Doocy started off by giving the false impression that at least a substantial portion of the money Planned Parenthood receives from the government goes to abortions. He said at the beginning of the discussion that Planned Parenthood received “more government money this past year than ever before… $542 million. That is a lot of abortions!” Given that Planned Parenthood is forbidden from using federal funds for abortion and that only 3% of its services are for abortions, Doocy almost surely knew he was promoting a distorted picture of the situation.

Not that anyone else cared to correct the record. Ingraham said,

“It’s a growth industry, right?...It is a heartbreaking and searing problem we have in this country where tax dollars are going to an organization that makes about, I believe $400 million-something off of the abortion procedure… We talk about big oil? This is big abortion. And they make big money off of it.”

Wrong. As Media Matters pointed out:

Ingraham's claim that Planned Parenthood makes $400 million from abortions is completely incorrect. According to its annual report, the organization actually received $311.5 million from non-governmental sources for the health care services it provided in 2011-12. According to Politifact, anti-abortion activists generally claim that Planned Parenthood receives far less than $400 million for abortion services, and even if their claims are correct, Planned Parenthood receives only 13 percent of its total revenue from abortion services.

But instead of balancing the falsehood with truth, Doocy, along with Ingraham, went on to accuse the organization of circumventing the restrictions on federal funds. “It all is movable money,” Ingraham alleged off-handedly. Nobody asked for nor provided evidence for such an accusation.

Meanwhile, Gretchen Carlson piled on by suggesting that abortion is the real business of Planned Parenthood. She said, “Remember, that was a big fight as to why they should… get this funding, was because they offer other services. Well, apparently, those other services are – as cancer prevention – have gone down.”

But they weren’t done with the misinformation. Ingraham said, “Remember, they don’t do mammograms at Planned Parenthood. That’s not a service they provide.” Well, not directly. But Planned Parenthood does provide access to mammograms as well as provide other breast cancer screening services. Another fact nobody provided.

Then, to add inflammatory rhetoric to distortions and smears, Ingraham concluded by saying:

And one of the grossest things about this report is that (Planned Parenthood president) Cecile Richards said, ‘We’re very proud of the work we’ve done.’ Think of those children, the smiles, the laughs, the lives they might have led. This is carnage.

.

Via Huffington Post:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) urged state lawmakers Tuesday to pass more restrictions on abortion, and proclaimed that his end goal is to outlaw the procedure entirely.

"To be clear, my goal, and the goal of many of those joining me here today, is to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past," Perry said at a press conference organized by Texas Right to Life. "While Roe v. Wade prevents us from taking that step, it does allow states to do some things to protect life if they can show there is a compelling state interest. I don’t think there is any issue that better fits the definition of 'compelling state interest' than preventing the suffering of our state’s unborn."

Perry has already signed several bills into law that make it more difficult for women to access abortion services, including a mandatory ultrasound law and a bill that excludes Planned Parenthood from the state's subsidized women's health program. On Tuesday, he urged legislators to pass a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, which is two to four weeks earlier in a pregnancy than the fetus would be considered viable outside the womb.

"Last session, we passed, and I’m proud to say I signed, a law that prohibits abortion without the mother first having a sonogram, because we believe that unborn children deserve the respect of recognition before their lives are tragically cut short," Perry said. "This session, I’m calling on the legislature to strengthen our ban on the procedure, prohibiting abortion at the point a baby can feel the pain of being killed. We have an obligation to end that kind of cruelty."

See, it's only cruel when the child is unborn. Rick Perry sees no cruelty in denying that child food or a roof over its head or a decent education or health care. Because once the child is born, it's no longer Perry's concern.

Love the fetus; hate the child. What a bumper sticker motto to have.

Poor, poor pitiful me. Poor, poor pitiful me!

This is just delightful. I can't imagine a better choice to carry the banner for the new Republican party, the one that minorities and women will flock to embrace:

Karen Handel, the former Susan G. Komen for the Cure executive who drove the charity's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, is considering running for U.S. Senate in Georgia, according to one of her former aides.

“She’s considering it,” Rob Simms, a Republican campaign consultant who worked on Handel’s unsuccessful run for governor in 2010, told the Weekly Standard.

If she ran, she would be going up against Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), whom Roll Call reported may be vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right, given his "willingness to reach across the aisle and his comfort with the idea of compromise."

Imagine. She's to the right of Saxby Chambliss, that pile of dirt!

According to the Weekly Standard, Kay Godwin, the co-chairman of Georgia Conservatives in Action, also said she is hearing that Handel may challenge Chambliss in a primary.

As a top executive at Susan G. Komen, the largest breast cancer charity in the country, Handel spearheaded the effort to stop sending breast cancer screening grants to Planned Parenthood. After a public uproar, Komen reversed its decision and Handel resigned.

In her recently released book, Handel lashed out at Planned Parenthood for her downfall, calling members of the organization "a bunch of schoolyard thugs."

Before joining Komen in April 2011, Handel ran for governor of Georgia on an aggressively anti-abortion platform. She wrote in her campaign blog that she "do[es] not support the mission of Planned Parenthood." Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Handel because of her opposition to reproductive choice.

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I think there can be no question that the real Barack Obama stood up in Tuesday night's debate. If anyone thinks he didn't present a fierce argument for why he should be elected, I suggest watching the whole thing again. But in this particular segment, Barack Obama came out blazing with reasons why voters should think carefully about who they'll mark as their choice in the Presidential race. In the process, he gave Mitt Romney a whole new name.

But you should pay attention to this campaign because Governor Romney has made some commitments as well, and I suspect he will keep those, too. When members of the Republican Congress say we’re going to sign a no tax pledge so that we don’t ask a dime from millionaires and billionaires to reduce our deficit so we can still invest in education and helping kids go to college, he said me too.

When they said we’re going to cut Planned Parenthood funding, he said me too.

When he said we’re going to repeal Obamacare, firsts thing I’m going to de, do spite the fact that it’s the same health care plan that he passed in Massachusetts and is working well, he said me too.

That is not the kind of leadership you need but you should expect that those are promises he is going to keep, and the choice in this election is going to be whose promises are going to be more likely to help you in your life make sure your kids can go to college, make sure that you are getting a good paying job, making sure that Medicare and Social Security will be there for you.

Later in the debate, Mitt Romney was asked about the differences he might have with George W. Bush. His answer was vague and mushy, but the president's wasn't. Here's how he summed it up:

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There seems to be no end to the depths right wingers will go to try and smear Planned Parenthood, and it seems they've settled on a strategy, this time employing the anti-Planned Parenthood group Live Action. Live Action tried to sting Planned Parenthood back in April by attempting to trap them into admitting they perform sex-selective abortions. It didn't work then, and it's not going to work now.

Via Huffington Post:

"She showed up unannounced at our office on a Wednesday, claiming that she wanted to make a sizeable contribution to our electoral efforts. That raised a red flag right away," said Beth Shipp, political director of NARAL Pro-Choice America. She said NARAL sent lower-level staffers from its development team to meet with the woman at a Caribou Coffee in Washington, D.C., on October 5 because it was a "high-trafficked public place."

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president for communications at PPAF, said the woman raised PPAF's suspicions by asking "kooky questions" about abortion policy that a donor would not normally ask. "We're focused on birth control and protecting Roe v. Wade and making sure your boss can't take away insurance coverage, and she's digging on these very obscure policy topics," Laguens said. "That was an alert."

PPAF became so suspicious of the woman that they set up a second meeting with her to get a better image of her face on the security camera. When the woman returned, the security guard asked for her identification, and she presented a Costco ID that listed her name as "Wendy Wilmowski." Laguens said PPAF was then able to confirm that Wilmowski was working with Live Action and that the website listed on her business card was a hoax.

"[Live Action has] a history of hoax videos, but now they've added that they will even impersonate a medical provider and mislead people out in the world with this fake website," Laguens said.

Let's not even laugh too hard at the fact that the photo ID this woman produced was a Costco card. I don't think you can use a Costco card to vote, but for purposes of this story, that's probably not relevant.

No, what matters here is that they went in to Planned Parenthood with the express intent to set them up in order to smear them. Fortunately, their targets were smarter than the average bear, but that doesn't mean they aren't concerned. They are.

None of the organizations are worried that the people with whom Wilmowski met on their donor teams said anything that could be used against them, but they did express concern that Live Action would heavily edit the videos before releasing them to the public as it has done in the past.

This where I take a moment to remind everyone that Mitt Romney, current head of the Republican party and candidate for President, profited from the business of disposing of legally aborted fetuses. You might think that would bother some people enough to stand down on Planned Parenthood, but no.

I guess if Republicans can't win on ideas, they'll try to win by framing an organization helping women get access to health care. Seems like a shady way to try and win an election, but it wouldn't be the first time. I think we should call on Mitt Romney to denounce these techniques and stop relying on dirty tricks to win.

Day One of the Democratic National Convention started right out of the gate at a gallop, which is great unless you've got blisters on your feet and are schlepping around a tripod and camera along with the backpack. It's definitely an exercise in endurance, but I was faithful to the end, even hanging around waiting for the promised phantom hotel shuttle until somewhere around 2:30 AM. I had plenty of company, though. Lots of cops, bus drivers and cab drivers.

By most accounts, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is a devoted father, dedicated family man and committed church leader. But as his record sadly shows, Romney's family values often take a back seat to his presidential ambitions. Just last week, he cast aside his father George Romney, the man whose rags-to-riches success story Mitt uses as a proxy for his own, all in the name of keeping his mysterious tax returns secret. His wife Ann Romney, the woman who now heads his Women for Mitt Coalition and who her husband says "reports to me regularly" regarding what American women care about, has been hung out to dry over issues including Planned Parenthood, abortion and the family's personal finances. And as it turns out, Mitt's betrayals hardly end there.

In his interview with David Muir of ABC last week, Governor Romney trotted out a new defense of keeping his secret tax returns secret:

"From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."

Put another way, if you paid a penny more to Uncle Sam than you could've, you're not just a sucker; you should be disqualified from becoming President.

Just like Mitt's dad, George Romney.

Mitt's idol didn't merely establish a precedent by releasing 12 years of tax returns during his failed 1968 presidential campaign. As Paul Krugman recently reminded voters, the auto magnate and Michigan governor not only paid a lot to the U.S. Treasury, but probably much more than he needed to.

Those returns also reveal that he paid a lot of taxes -- 36 percent of his income in 1960, 37 percent over the whole period. This was in part because, as one report at the time put it, he "seldom took advantage of loopholes to escape his tax obligations."

(The contrasts between father and son hardly end there. As Rick Perlstein documented, George Romney didn't merely develop an innovative profit sharing plan for his employees at AMC and return bonuses if he thought them too high. He also believed that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.")

But if Mitt Romney has turned his back on the legacy of his late father, he has similarly shown no compunction about tossing his wife Ann overboard when political circumstances dictated.

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Conservatives this week were quick to mock the Obama campaign's "The Life of Julia," an online slideshow highlighting how government investments in education, health care, small business and retirement security help enable the children of working families to climb the ladder of social mobility. Republican critics dismissed that common path to the middle class as the "condescension" of "cradle-to-grave, government-supported existence" supposedly championed by Democrats.

It is only fitting, then, that the Romney campaign offers its alternative vision. So here is "The Life of Mitt," a tale of a winner-take-all America in which government exists to ensure a privileged few stay that way.

Age Minus 9 Months: The son of American Motors magnate and Michigan Governor George Romney, Mitt fondly recalls being with his father for Detroit's Golden Jubilee. That celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the American automobile occurred on June 1, 1946, "fully nine months before Romney was born." Years later, Mitt would similarly "remember" seeing his dad march with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Age 8: Young Mitt Romney is living his American Dream; that is, being born to a father who achieved his own. "Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car." In Michigan, Mitt learned to love cars and trees which were the right height. He also begins to soak up valuable life lessons from his dad, like "Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage." As for the millions of Americans unable to pay theirs, Mitt later concluded:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Despite his filial devotion, Mitt forgets his father's warning that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

Age 12: After attending a public elementary school, young Mitt is sent to the prestigious Cranbrook School in elegant Bloomfield Hills. This experience leads him to declare he's just "a guy from Detroit," one who happens to support school vouchers and tax breaks for home schooling, while slashing funds for public schools.

While Mitt Romney would certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin. It's no wonder he chides his former home town in 2008, declaring, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Age 16: In 1963, Mitt confronts personal tragedy, as "dear, close family relative" Ann Keenan dies as a result of an illegal abortion. As he later explained during a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, it was that searing experience which made him a pro-choice Mormon:

"It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that."

Age 19: In 1966, Stanford student Mitt Romney takes part in his only college protest, one in favor of the Vietnam War. But thanks to the generous 4-D exemption from military service, Mitt like many Mormon young men of his age was able to secure multiple deferments in order to perform his church mission. During that two and half year period when other American men were fighting in the rice fields of Vietnam, Romney faced hardships in the vineyards of France. These apparently included pooping in a bucket during his of roughing it in a palatial church mansion in Paris. As he revealed in a 1994 interview with the Boston Herald, Romney was not exactly racked by guilt as the war raged in Southeast Asia:

"Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father," the newspaper wrote. "'I was not planning on signing up for the military,' he said. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted I was happy to be with my wife and new child.'"

Thirteen years later, candidate Mitt Romney explained he passed on that tradition to his five boys:

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

Age 24: In 1971, Ann and Mitt Romney head to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, Mitt starts a "terrific" four year program to get his JD and MBA at Harvard Business School, completing both degrees 37 years before accusing Barack Obama of spending too much time in the Harvard faculty lounge. Even with small children and Mitt in school, Ann avoided the "dignity of work" because "Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt's father."

That history might explain why Romney offered this advice in March to college students struggling to pay for his education:

"If you can't afford it, scholarships are available, shop around for loans, make sure you go to a place that's reasonably priced, and if you can, think about serving the country 'cause that's a way to get all that education for free."

Pell grants, schmell grants.

In 2012, Mitt tells college students to borrow money from their parents to start a business, advice his son Tagg took to the tune of $10 million.

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You know how you can tell when we're winning? When the wingnuts go completely off the reservation and start lying through their tiny little teeth about their opposition. In this case, Planned Parenthood is the target, but they end up making themselves look like the fools and hypocrites they are.

Kristan Hawkins is Dobson's cohort in this radio clip. Kristan is the executive director of Students for Life, an organization dedicated to spreading guilt and hate ahead of its alleged message of love and peace for those Chosen Followers in The Light.

Here's why people like Kristan and Grampy Dobson drive me crazy. First they lie, and they extol liars like Lila Rose, who lied through her teeth and edited video dishonestly to make Planned Parenthood look like the Satan they think it is.

Here is Righteous Kristan's rant about what Planned Parenthood's true motives are, and Dobson's response.

Hawkins: I think the videos of Planned Parenthood have really helped to focus and to shed the light on Planned Parenthood because they are the abortion Goliath, I always refer to them as the abortion Goliath, they are the big man on campus, they’re the ones with the lobbyists, they’re getting the government funding, they’re subsidizing their abortions, they’re the ones making the money off all of this. I think the videos are very, very important in exposing their real agenda. You know Planned Parenthood sounds like a nice name, ‘ooh Planned Parenthood, and they’re providing free condoms to me, ooh yay,’ but then when you start peeling back, you know, what’s their method?

We have this new postcard, we make these little flashy postcards and they don’t really give students the answer but they’re there to raise controversy and drive people to our website where they can find out more information. It says, Planned Parenthood’s plan for you: One, give you the lowest ranked condoms that are available on the market today, the lowest ranked by Consumer Reports condoms, so you think Planned Parenthood’s great, they’re giving you bad condoms, then they’re going to give you birth control that can cause breast cancer, they’re going to give you low-dose birth control, and then they’re going to give you an abortion, and this is their plan to make money.

Dobson: If you scratch around anywhere near the Planned Parenthood message and the function of Planned Parenthood, you see wickedness; you see evil.

Um, ok. So let's look at Kristan's statement and see if we can find facts.

According to the NIH, there is a higher risk of breast cancer with oral contraceptives, but a lowered risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers. Further, the risk associated with contraceptives disappears 10 years after use is discontinued. So to be clear, there is a risk of cancer associated with any oral contraceptive, low dose or otherwise, and women should know this and be aware of it before using them. On the other hand, there's a risk of being hit by a bus while crossing the street, but that's not Planned Parenthood's fault. Should we condemn streets, or buses? Or just be aware and look both ways before crossing a street?

Hawkins' claim about condoms seems to go all the way back to this 2005 report published on LifeNews.com. I'm certain there was no bias there, but I'd like to reassure Hawkins that since that 2005 report, Consumer Reports has done another review of available condoms and found that all 500 brands they studied passed their minimum requirements for reliability. Strange how she didn't bother to check that before going on about it, much less suggesting that Planned Parenthood is using cheap condoms in order to build a free market for abortion.

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Earlier this week, President Obama released a special message to Planned Parenthood and women. It didn't get a lot of attention in the mainstream at all, but it's important nevertheless. I confess to being so preoccupied with the Supreme Court arguments I let it get away from me.

Here's the transcript:

For you, and for most Americans, protecting women's health is a mission that stands above politics. And yet, over the past year, you've had to stand up to politicians who want to deny millions of women the care they rely on, and inject themselves into decisions that are best made between a woman and her doctor.

Let's be clear here: Women are not an interest group.

They're mothers, and daughters, and sisters, and wives. They're half of this country. They're perfectly capable of making their own choices about their health.

So we're grateful that, through it all, you never forgot who you're fighting for: The woman with a new lease on life because a mammogram caught her cancer in time; the woman who can sleep easier at night because of a cervical cancer screening; the woman who is able to choose when to start a family, because she could afford contraception.

So when some professional politicians casually say that they'll "get rid of" Planned Parenthood, don't forget what they're really talking about: Eliminating the funding for preventive care that millions of women rely on, and leaving them to fend for themselves.

That's why, last year, when Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government unless we stopped funding Planned Parenthood, I had a simple answer: No.

But we know this debate is far from over. We must continue to send the message loud and clear: If you truly value families, you shouldn't play politics with a woman's health.

It's why I know that Planned Parenthood will continue providing care, no matter what. I know you'll never stop fighting to protect the healthcare and the choices that America's women deserve.

As long as I have the privilege of being your president, neither will I. Thanks.

Planned Parenthood appreciates the support, and if you want to show your appreciation, they have a petition here.