A little ACORN humor.

0:58 video

Bertha Lewis, ACORN Chief Organizer, explains that independent filmmaker James O’Keefe’s videos showing Baltimore ACORN employees offering assistance in applying for a federal loan to be used to import underage girls for prostitution are unfair.

Lewis asserts that some ACORN offices may not actually have been helpful, and charges the filmmaker with committing an unspecified crime of some kind by subjecting ACORN’s staffers to this kind of test.

9:50 Baltimore video 1

8:15 Baltimore video 2

The James O’Keefe videos appear at the Big Government blog.

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America. This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated. But it is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist “filmmaker” O’Keefe and his partner in crime. And, in fact, a crime it was – our lawyers believe a felony – and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators.

But it seems that more videos, made in Brooklyn, New York, show that that employees at that ACORN office, too, were willing to assist tax fraud in aid of underage prostitution.

Fox News

9:37 New York video 1

6:05 New York video 2

Tom Hoffman, at American Thinker, says that not only can it happen here, it already has.

Remember when “B1 Bob” Dornan lost his House seat to a woman named Sanchez? The election was stolen by Hermandad Nacional Mexicana a group that made a concerted effort to register illegal aliens. Since then, the art of rigging the vote has been refined and perfected by the likes of ACORN and other community activist organizations.

The modus operandi is clear. First, there must be a team of lawyers to challenge any efforts to determine voter eligibility. What we end up with here in California is “motor voter” registration. This means DMV workers urge anyone getting a driver’s license to go ahead and register to vote. Lawyers and Democratic state legislators have made it illegal to require documentation regarding immigration status; it’s the honor system. If an illegal feels uncomfortable lying to a bureaucrat at the DMV, he or she can apply by mail and receive an absentee ballot. This way they need not even have to show up at the polling place; just mail it in.

It’s just too easy to cheat. Of course, at the polling place there is no need to prove who you claim to be; honor system again. Sign in and vote with no questions asked. The lawyers and legislators paved the way for the “undocumented worker” to vote like a native born citizen by doing away with need to document anything, let alone citizenship. All that is necessary is a mailing address; and, no kidding, the same culprits are busy doing away with that so the “homeless” can now register.

Registering as many fraudulent votes as possible and making it as difficult as possible to disqualify voters is only front end of the strategy. Once an election has been made close enough to allow for disputes and recounts, whole new machinery has been put in place. Here is where the big money comes into play. The secretaries of state, whose duty it is to oversee the election process, must be beholden to the community activists. Large campaign donations to the secretary of state candidates assure the community organizers a voice in all “recounts”. Their squads of well-trained lawyers will likely get sympathetic rulings in their efforts to disqualify eligible voters and qualify the ineligible.

Is it any wonder that, as the rules get watered down again and again, the number of “get out the vote” organizations has multiplied? There has always been some fraud in our electoral system: but until recently, the scale has not been sufficient to succeed in stealing a national election. We’ve passed that line. Once passed, the line can never be redrawn.

ACORN is but one instance of a well financed nationwide effort to institute voter fraud. It is the financing of the likes of George Soros and the organizing skills of the likes of Bill Ayers that assures us of rigged elections from now on. Take the recent U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. The community activists registered thousands of new voters. Given that ACORN has already admitted to voter fraud (by mistake of course), it is certain a fair number of these were fraudulent. It is also certain that nearly all were Democrat votes. The Republican still managed to win by a few hundred votes on the initial count. The margin was too close to rule out a recount; mission accomplished for ACORN and their ilk. In come the lawyers to disqualify Republicans. With the full sympathy of the secretary of state, the radicals manage to turn the tide in favor of the Democrat; game, set, match.

With a proven game plan and large numbers of “community activist” organizations spread out across the country, all that is necessary to rig state and national elections from now on is a large and reliable source of funding. That has already been assured in the “Stimulus” bill. George Soros will now be helped by the U.S. Taxpayer; helped big time. Community activist organizations will find themselves flush with taxpayer cash. …

I suppose we could get Jimmy Carter to certify the fairness of the 2010 elections.

The Philadelphia Bulletin reports that a Pennsylvania attorney recently (3/19) told the House Judiciary Committee that the New York Times spiked a story last October which could have had a significant impact on the election had it been reported.

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”…

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”

Barack Obama recently told the press that he thought about it for some time before deciding to go ahead and unleash attacks on AIG employees receiving contractually-specified compensation for job performance or as retention incentives. Doubtless, the president talked over whether it would be a good idea to use the White House as a platform to whip up public emotion into outraged anger directed at ordinary private citizens with his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Rahm Emanuel, as the Chicago Tribune reports, had at the time already long since collected his own bonus for passive collaboration on the board of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation “Freddie Mac” in the policies directly responsible for the mortgage default crisis, unlike Jake DeSantis, for example, who would soon be nationally targeted despite having no actual real connection.

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort. …

The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker…

He was named to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000 by Clinton, whom Emanuel had served as White House political director…

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board’s working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.

ACORN probably won’t be busing any demonstrators over to Representative Rosa DeLauro’s house (where Emanual lives in the basement) to threaten him though, will they?

Don Surber admires the fair-minded impartiality of the Bridgeport (Renamed: Connecticut) Post.

Not that after 30+ years in this business that I know anything about newspapers. I mean, after all, I do not think that the most important news story in the state of Connecticut would be the agitprop theater of federally financed lefties (ACORN takes grants) protesting executive salaries.

That involved 40 people including some from Washington. This is what they do for a living. They are professionals.

AP originally reported the reporters and news crews outnumbered the Paid Protesters 2-to-1.

The Conn Post gave this item two big pictures, a main story, and a side story.

Buried inside was a story of 300 people in Ridgefield staging a Tea Party against the entire $700 billion bailout and the subsequent $787 billion stimulus.

An actual grassroots movement was brushed off with “Tea Party’ protests spending to stimulate economy.”

The reporter assigned to the story, Eugene Driscoll, had an ironic line: “The difference here: many of the protesters were political conservatives who had never felt it necessary to take to the streets before.”

One of the classic examples.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

The traditionally earliest place to vote in America, Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, has been gleefully reported by the MSM to have delivered a resounding 15 to 6 victory for Obama.

But wait a minute, as Mark Steyn observes, Dixville Notch has 19 registered voters…

As goes Dixville Notch, so goes the nation? Thanks a lot, ACORN.

Republican candidates like John McCain and Sarah Palin encounter hostile, adversarial questions based specifically on opposition talking points all the time. Joe Biden, of course, is not used to facing anything like that kind of questioning, so when he ran into tough questions from Barbara West of Central Florida’s WFTV-Channel 9, he was understandably thrown off-stride.

5:05 video

Faced with West’s first question on ACORN’s pattern of voter registration fraud, Biden could only lie and deny the existence of a relationship between the Obama Campaign and ACORN.

West: “Aren’t you embarassed by the blatant attempts to register phony voters by ACORN, an organization that Barack Obama has been tied to in the past?”

Biden: “We are not tied to it (ACORN). We’ve not paid them one single penny to register a single solitary voter.”

Pittsburgh Tribune Review (Aug 22):

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for services the Democrat’s campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

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West: “You may recognize this famous quote: From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. That’s from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends ‘to spread the wealth around?'”

Biden: “Are you joking?… Is this a joke?… Is that a real question?” (false laughter)

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As Fox News reports the Obama Campaign soon retaliated by canceling an interview with Mrs. Biden, and cutting off the station from further access to the democrat candidates.

Later in the interview West questioned Biden about his comments that if Obama wins the election next month, he would be tested early on as president and wanted to know if Biden was implying America was no longer the world’s leading power.

“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden asked her.

The Obama camp then killed a WFTV interview with Biden’s wife Jill, according to an Orlando Sentinel blog.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign, according to the Sentinel.

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Hal Boedecker of the Orlando-Sentinel quotes the Obama Campaign as complaining that Barbara West was “unprofessional and combative.”

The poor little democrats.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the City of Brotherly Love has joined Indianapolis (677,401 Registered out of 644,197 eligible) in the “more registered voters than residents” category, courtesy of ACORN.

Republicans also have questioned the validity of thousands of new registrations, in Pennsylvania and across the country, collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, known as ACORN.

A senior Philadelphia election official said yesterday that the city had discovered about 1,200 possibly fraudulent voter registrations – almost all of them submitted by ACORN – and had turned them over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for criminal investigation. …

In Philadelphia, the number of registrants, 1.1 million, actually exceeds the census count of the eligible population. The city has identified 58,000 “duplicate” registrations, and the actual number of eligible voters on the rolls is probably closer to a million, said the election board’s Bob Lee.

Rob of Say Anything notes that the Obama campaign’s $800,000 payment to ACORN seems to be producing visible results.

According to STATSIndiana, In 2007, Indianapolis/Marion County had an estimated population of 876,804. Of that number 232,607 were below 18 years of age, for a total of 644,197 people in Marion County/Indianapolis 18 or over and thus eligible to vote. (Indiana allows felons to vote as long as they are not incarcerated).

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

Sean Hannity last night, on Hannity’s America, did a lengthy survey of Barack Obama’s radical associations and relationships.

Part 1- 8:16 video

Part 2- 6:22 video

Part 3- 8:11 video

Part 4- 7:38 video

Part 5- 6:38 video

Part 6- 6:33 video

ACORN protester

Mona Charen highlights the special place of community organizers in the current crisis: they had a lot to do with causing it, and they may well yet still reap yet more power and money as the result.

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.

ACORN does many things under the umbrella of “community organizing.” They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course). Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren’t especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history. …

ACORN recognized very early the opportunity presented by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. As Stanley Kurtz has reported, ACORN proudly touted “affirmative action” lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of “dragging banks kicking and screaming” into dubious loans. And, as Sol Stern reported in City Journal, ACORN also found a remunerative niche as an “advisor” to banks seeking regulatory approval. “Thus we have J.P. Morgan & Co., the legatee of the man who once symbolized for many all that was supposedly evil about American capitalism, suddenly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN.” Is this a great country or what? As conservative community activist Robert Woodson put it, “The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN.”

ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff — the very people who would later descend on Chicago’s banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto. Obama was not just sympathetic — he was an ACORN fellow traveler.

Now you could make the case that before 2008, well-intentioned people were simply unaware of what their agitation on behalf of non-credit-worthy borrowers could lead to. But now? With the whole financial world and possibly the world economy trembling and cracking like a cement building in an earthquake, Democrats continue to try to fund their friends at ACORN? And, unashamed, they then trot out to the TV cameras to declare “the party is over” for Wall Street (Nancy Pelosi)? The party should be over for the Democrats who brought us to this pass. If Obama wins, it means hiring an arsonist to fight a fire.