Fantasy language
In the world of Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana Wen, supporting abortion is "being pro-life."
That was her take anyway in a chat with Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill and Hillary Clinton, in Interview Magazine published last week.
Wen commented in response to the declaration by Clinton - ever the unbiased interviewer - that she will always refer to the pro-life movement as "anti-choice."
"Our nurses and our clinicians are all here because we believe in life," she said. "Being pro-choice is being pro-women. It's being pro-family. It's being pro-community. It's being pro-life."
But in Wen's black-is-white world, she made abortion sound like a routine trip to the dentist for a cleaning.
"An abortion," the president of the nation's largest abortion provider said, "is a normal, common experience that we need to talk about. It's one of the safest medical procedures, and working as a doctor, I have seen women choose to have an abortion under all kinds of circumstances."
The only problem with Wen's up-is-down language is the only one not allowed to be pro-woman, pro-family, pro-community and pro-life is the aborted child.
Leftist violence OK
Just as the right-wing attack on Jussie Smollett was falling apart last week, a video surfaced of a conservative activist being assaulted and punched in the face on the University of California Berkeley campus while training members for Turning Point USA.
The attack on the field representative from the Leadership Institute was captured on video, which was sent to Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, who posted it on Twitter.
"Imagine if the attacker was wearing a MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat," he said in the tweet, "[this] would be national news."
Kirk said Turning Point USA students on more than 1,400 campuses experience similar hate every day.
The student who did the filming, Alex Szarka, said he first witnessed the aggressor flip over a Turning Point USA table, then several people got into the faces of the Turning Point USA students, one of whom had been holding a sign that said, "Be aware of false hate crimes."
"Unfortunately, I'm not exactly surprised at what transpired," he said. Afterward, he said, "I heard a guy say something like, 'Yeah, violence is not OK, but he was effectively asking for it by being provocative. He was referring to the sign [allegedly] about Smollett."
Who They Are
An Ohio music shop owner said he'd rather starve than serve supporters of President Donald Trump, and he placed a sign in the window of his Willoughby, Ohio, business saying so.
"Dear Trump sympathizers,"the sign said, "I am truly sorry, however, I feel unclean and dirty accepting money from you. Please politely shop somewhere else. Sorry, I would rather starve and close the store than participate in wrongdoing. Many blessings to you. I hope you understand."
The Joe Music Shop owner said he'd gotten dozens of calls protesting the sign but a few congratulating him for having "principles." Yet, he said it was not publicity stunt.
"I did not do this for attention," he said, " I have posted things before about President Trump, so I didn't expect this response."
He told an Ohio television station he doesn't care for the president's politics and is tired of the rhetoric surrounding his presidency. Yet, he said, while he hates the president's politics, he still supports the president.
Huh? How's that again?
Java jive
U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, got Twitter all atwitter last week when he posed as a brave member of the Trump resistance by posting a selfie - complete with snow flurries in his hair - as he bypassed a cup of coffee in the Trump Tower to walk "to an alternative."
The 38-year-old congressman and Trump critic - committed to a Russia collusion narrative, whatever the facts may show - fancies himself a 2020 presidential candidate and, as a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees and a former county prosecutor, believes he has the gravitas.
This is the same Swalwell who, in one of his 16 trips since 2017 to Iowa (home of the first presidential caucus), had a film crew accompanying him when he stopped to help push a woman's car from the snow.
Anyway, the coffee caper drew 25,000 responses, many of them mocking.
"Why would you do something so controversial yet so brave?" asked Alex Griswold, a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. And he also posted this: "Only a Californian would demand accolades for walking a block in the snow."
Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, posted a map for Swalwell.
And another clever user wrote, "Swalwell later froze to death as slowly he came to the realization that most of NYC's cafes are run by a rival presidential candidate" (Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz, a potential 2020 independent candidate).