"About Our Children" is a  town hall forum featuring Dr. Bill Cosby and presented by Michelle Bernard that will be aired on MSNBC on September 20, 2009.

Michelle Bernard, President and CEO of the Independent Women’s Forum, will be the moderator of the event which will also host active DNC member and President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. The AFT represents 1.4 million education professionals. Since being elected, she has led the development of the AFT Innovation Fund, a groundbreaking initiative to support sustainable, innovative and collaborative reform projects developed by members and their local unions to strengthen our public schools.

Weingarten issued the following statement on September 10, 2009:

WASHINGTON—Congress needs to hammer out a comprehensive healthcare reform bill without delay. Now that President Obama has spelled out the basic outline of a plan to insure all Americans and hold down costs, it’s time for Congress to step up to the plate. We need to get beyond partisan politics, which has managed to distort the truth and delay progress, and finally give Americans affordable, accessible high-quality healthcare coverage.

Contrast Weingarten’s statement with the statement being made by Bernard and the IWF:

The Independent Women's Forum is the organization that has been running a malicious ad that focuses on scaring breast cancer victims into rejecting any of President Obama’s reform initiatives. The Independent Women's Forum shares its premises and resources with Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity is the organization that created Patients First and Patients United Now, groups that have been critical to disrupting the health care debate in an effort to sidetrack the entire process.

I wonder how the participants of the California Teacher’s Study feel about Michelle Bernard’s breast cancer ad. The California Teachers Study (CTS) is a large cohort of 133,479 female professional school employees (in California) who have participated in a series of questionnaires and have been followed for cancer incidence since 1995. According to the California Breast Cancer Research Program, within California, rates of breast cancer have tended to be higher in the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area and in the southern coastal area (Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties) than in the remainder of the State. I wonder how many of those teachers or their family members are represented by the American Federation of Teachers.

"About Our Children" is intended to be a forum focusing on, "parenting, education and health issues facing the poor in America" and has been organized by Bernard and the Independent Women’s Forum, who (in alliance with Americans for Prosperity)  have repeatedly and disgracefully played on the fears of vulnerable Americans. The American Federation of Teachers fully supports the President and through a statement by Weingarten, has appealed to Congress to move swiftly toward a bill and to abandon " partisan politics, which has managed to distort the truth and delay progress".

Will Michelle Bernard get away with the scare tactics her organization and its neo-con allies are using to try to defeat health care reform or will Randi Weingarten and the AFT teach them a thing or two.

Sounds like a straight-up, SMACKDOWN to me …

Will Weingarten call Michelle Bernard and the IWF out? MSNBC, where Bernard is also an analyst, has failed miserably to do so. It’s time for somebody to step up – I think Randi Weingarten could be that somebody.

***UPDATE*** 

Weingarten vs Bernard:  SMACKDOWN CANCELLED

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