Posted on 09/17/2009 4:49:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
I would not go see the film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" because I found more cruelty than humor in deliberately exposing unwitting civilians to the easy ridicule of smug sophomores.
Now the right has its own Borat-style entertainment. Equipped with a video camera, conservative activists James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, sought the answer to this question: "What if a 'prostitute' and her alleged law school boyfriend walk into ACORN seeking housing for an underage brothel to fund his future congressional campaign?"
The answer, they discovered, was that some of the folks who work at ACORN (the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were overly adept at looking the other way -- even after O'Keefe and Giles told them that Salvadoran girls as young as 12 would be working as prostitutes in their brothel.
One ACORN worker told the couple they could list the under-aged prostitutes as dependents "because they live in your house, especially if they're under 16." Some organizers emphasized that it was not their job to judge others. A Baltimore worker tried to sign up the couple as dues-paying ACORN members.
ACORN has reacted by charging that the videotapes were "doctored" and charged O'Keefe and Giles with trolling for damning material. ACORN also claims the couple is not airing tape from offices where they were shown the door. The Philadelphia Daily News, for example, reported that the local ACORN office kicked out O'Keefe and Giles and filed a police report.
On Saturday, ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis said in a statement that she would not defend actions of the now-fired workers. She also charged that O'Keefe and Giles broke the law -- "and we will be taking legal action against Fox (News) and their co-conspirators."
But what of CNN and other new organizations that have reported on this story? The prank is paying off. On Friday, U.S. census director Robert M. Groves terminated the bureau's (nonpaying) partnership agreement with ACORN.
On Monday, the Senate voted 83-7 for a measure by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., to prohibit granting federal housing funds to ACORN. California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- yes, Barbara Boxer -- voted for the measure.
This is progress. As recently as March, however, the Senate tabled an amendment banning federal funding for ACORN -- which has received $53 million directly from Uncle Sam since 1994 -- despite several state investigations into ACORN voter registration. Last year, ACORN was forced to acknowledge that election officials rejected 400,000 of the 1.3 million people the group had tried to register.
Congress should pass a measure ending federal funding for ACORN, and President Obama, who represented ACORN in a 1995 lawsuit, should sign it.
But I won't join those who are hailing the enterprising O'Keefe and Giles for doing the sort of work "60 Minutes" should have done. But there was so little fact-checking in this exercise that Fox News' Glenn Beck ran a video in which a San Bernardino ACORN organizer said she had killed her husband -- when she had not.
Conservatives, beware. Any activist can grab a camera, head for a church or a campaign, and record some stupid quotes. When they do -- and they will -- the right will complain that it is wrong to brand a cause by the careless comments of a handful of disciples.
The difference here is this group is tax payer funded. Sure any activist can shove a camera in your face and get you to sound stupid, but we're not taking tax money.
Sounding stupid and breaking the law are two totally different matters. If this was just ACORN sounding stupid, the video would have been up on youtube and we'd all be laughing about it.
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:02:59 PM by ETL
This morning, the ACORN scandal was raised to Charlie Gibson in an interview on WLS AM Chicago’s “Don Wade & Roma Morning Show.”
TRANSCRIPT:
Don: Ok here’s my question, Senate bill yesterday passes cutting off funds to this group called ACORN. Now we got the…we got that bill passing, we got the embarrassing video of ACORN staff giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 year old hookers. It has everything you could want corruption and sleazy action at tax funded organizations that’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story why?
Charlie Gibson: (laugh) I don’t even know about it. Uh, so you got me at a loss, I don’t know. Uh, uh, but, but My goodness if it’s got everything including sleaziness in it we should talk about it this morning.
Roma: This is the American way…
Charlie Gibson: Well maybe, maybe that’s one you just leave to the cables.
Roma: Well I think that this is a huge issue because there’s so much funding that goes into this organization and it’s a multi…
Charlie Gibson: Well, I know we’ve done some stories about ACORN before but uh, uh this one I don’t know about.
Roma: Jake Tapper did some blogging on it. I know he’s at least blogged once on this scandal.
Charlie Gibson: You guys, you guys are really up on the uh on the website.
~~
Footage of the San Bernardino investigation was not available at the time of the interview.
Thank you to WLS AM Chicago for providing the audio.
Listen to the audio here:
[begins about 5 minutes into the audio clip. More incredible audio clips from the new Acorn videos later in the audio (apprx 11 mins into it) - total length of audio: apprx 35 mins. you can slide the bar over to the 5 min mark]
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/MediaPlayer/AudioPlayer.aspx?ContentGuid=8e38a801-07a5-41be-b6a1-fac443716e71
If that's the case, Debra Saunders has really made herself look bad with this ridiculous column. That San Francisco atmosphere must have addled her brain while she wrote this. And she goes on to say this:
Congress should pass a measure ending federal funding for ACORN, and President Obama, who represented ACORN in a 1995 lawsuit, should sign it.
She praises the action the Senate took against ACORN, then recommends the above, while condemning the investigative, sting operation that exposed ACORN and created the current anti-ACORN atmosphere, and made any action at all possible. A dumb column.
Isn’t this guy missing the point?
It isn’t the fault of the filmaker - or Glen Beck that this chick’s husband is still alive.
She is the one who ran her mouth - and did not recoil in horror at the “pimp and ho’s” plan to engage in human trafficking.
She did not call the police.
So while it’s true other offices kicked them out - it is still troubling that others didn’t - going so far as to offering advice and trying to get them to join ACORN.
whoops - not a guy.
Isn’t this chick missing the point?
He gave a warning about it. He said that they tried to verify information with the State of California, but CA wouldn’t talk to them. So he said to use your own judgment regarding the claim.
The ACORN employee who confessed to the premeditated murder of her husband and said that she had been a madam herself was unbelievable. What a liar! She was bragging about her ill deeds. Sick sick sick!
The REALLY BIG story is this;
How many sub-prime mortgages has ACORN facilitated over the past decade and what % of those mortgages are now in default?
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 10:39:11 AM by ETL
The financial markets were teetering on the edge of an abyss last week. The secretary of the Treasury was literally on his knees begging the speaker of the House not to sabotage the bailout bill. The crash of falling banks made the earth tremble. The Republican presidential candidate suspended his campaign to deal with the crisis. And amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN.
ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and “direct action” that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members. ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn’t get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes. This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we’re in.
Obama, ACORN, the (Marxist) New Party and the Working Family Party (an Acorn front group)
numerous sources
Posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 11:08:18 AM by ETL:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2337249/posts
Inside Obama’s Acorn:
By their fruits ye shall know them
Stanley Kurtz, May 29, 2008
“What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI
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Bailout Politics: The Congressional Dems who enabled this crisis are now being trusted to fix it?
Thomas Sowell, September 30, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWE3OWU3OTExYzNlNTUzMzY2YmJmOWZjMzcwN2M1NjU=
http://archive.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/barack_obama_sought_the_new_partys_endorsement_knowing_it_was_a_radical_left_organization
__________________________________________________
NOTE: As of today, Sept 11, 2009, DiscoverTheNetworks.org/FrontPageMag.com profile doesn't (yet?) include the latest revelation that (President) Obama was actually a member of the New Party. HOWEVER, he does link to several articles on the left side of the page that apparently do go into it in detail.-ETL
PROFILE: NEW PARTY (NP)
* Marxist political coalition
* Was active from 1992-1998
* Endorsed Barack Obama for Illinois state senate seat in 1996
Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials -- most often Democrats. The New Party's short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.
Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party's Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members.
The New Party's modus operandi included the political strategy of "electoral fusion," where it would nominate, for various political offices, candidates from other parties (usually Democrats), thereby enabling each of those candidates to occupy more than one ballot line in the voting booth. By so doing, the New Party often was able to influence candidates' platforms. (Fusion of this type is permitted in seven states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont -- but is common only in New York.)
Though Illinois was not one of the states that permitted electoral fusion, in 1995 Barack Obama nonetheless sought the New Party's endorsement for his 1996 state senate run. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.
In 1996, three of the four candidates endorsed by the New Party won their electoral primaries. The three victors included Barack Obama (in the 13th State Senate District), Danny Davis (in the 7th Congressional District), and Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in the 7th Subcircuit Court. All four candidates attended an April 11, 1996 New Party membership meeting to express their gratitude for the party's support.
The New Party's various chapters similarly helped to elect dozens of other political candidates in a host of American cities.
One of the more notable New Party members was Carl Davidson, a Chicago-based Marxist who became a political supporter of Barack Obama in the mid-1990s.
In 1997 the New Party's influence declined precipitously after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that electoral fusion was not protected by the First Amendment's freedom of association clause. By 1998 the party was essentially defunct. Daniel Canto and other key party members went on to establish a new organization with similar ideals, the Working Families Party of New York.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7434
__________________________________________________
Obama - file 41: Obama Was a New Party Member-Documentary Evidence
By Trevor Loudon October 23, 2008
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-file-41-obama-was-new-party.html
How many 100's of millions of those bailouts can be tied back to ACORN facilitated loans?
When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGC7zm
hmmmm...I wonder how long that info you just provided will be accessible on that site?
I understand. The 2-page Ken Blackwell article I posted goes into it in some detail.
An ACORN Falls from the Tree
By Ken Blackwell
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2Y5MTc0ZTAyMmE1Mjk3NGE3OWRiY2FkMjZlN2YxYzc
You're right. Time for a screen shot of the page?
However, FoxNews has recently discovered the Obama quotes and have been using them in various segments. Not sure where they got them from, but I've been posting them here for a long time now.
Let's conservatively assume that:
Acorn facilitates 2,000 sub-prime loans per year for 10 years. That's 20,000 loans.
Lets assume that each loan is vauled at $50,000. That's $1,000,000,000.
Let's further guess that 20% of those loans failed. That's $200,000,000 these charlatans stole from us. The biggest crime of the century.
I think a class action lawsuit may be in order.
Killing a wife-beater when he's coming after you is not murder. Preparing to defend yourself against a known violent person is not a criminal act.
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