Bloodthirsty Liberal

Or just the usual pork?

Senator Roland Burris is claiming credit for a provision in Harry Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” unveiled Saturday morning, that could funnel money to ACORN through the health care bill.

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Burris told THE WEEKLY STANDARD: “It was the disparity provision that was put in, which we had something to do with, in terms of making sure that diabetes and the other diseases that are affecting minorities are really studied by HHS in all of these pilot programs.”

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According to a Senate legislative aide, the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now could qualify for grants under this provision. ACORN would also qualify for funding on page 150 of the underlying Reid bill, which says that “community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups” may receive grants to “conduct public education activities to raise awareness of the availability of qualified health plans.”

Burris, Reid, ACORN, Obama—there are so many clowns in this story, maybe I should have titled the post “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

At his blog, Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson notes the cluster[bleep] of epic proportion (he uses the expression “perfect storm”, doubtless out of modesty) that got us here:

How amazing is the number of circumstances which caused this perfect storm, without any one of which we wouldn’t be on Obama’s precipice: Massachusetts changes its rules for a second time to allow appointment of a Democrat in Kennedy’s place rather than having to wait for the special election; Al Franken outmaneuvers and out-litigates Norm Coleman to steal the Minnesota race; Rahm Emanuel recruits “blue dog” Democratic wolves in sheep’s clothing and people fall for it; the media covers up the Obama agenda during the campaign, portraying Obama falsely as a moderate; [added] George Allen says “Macaca,” and so on.

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Update: A couple of commenters correctly have pointed out that I should have included Ted Steven’s defeat as another element in the perfect storm. Remember that Steven’s conviction later was dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct, but the Democrat who won the election remains in office, as I posted previously….

None of these events is an “accident”: all required anti-democratic maneuvering, especially in Alaska, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. Obama and Emanuel didn’t just win an election; he committed a putsch.

Small business woman seeks a loan to expand business and create jobs.

Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, Mike Schmidt, David Brenner, and the New Black Panther poll patrol. Now, all have to make room for ACORN—which is so busted, again.

The sting team was never kicked out, never challenged on setting up a whore house, never confronted about smuggling underage Central American girls as prostitutes, as the media so cravenly reported based on ACORN false witness.

In fact, they were given over half an hour of valuable, taxpayer-funded time.

In Philly, the ACORN falls very far away indeed from the tree of liberty.

For an oak tree to sprout, a squirrel needs to eat and s**t an ACORN. Make of that what you will:

ACORN may be down, but don’t count it out.

The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.

The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense — it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.

But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN’s activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.

Stories are showing up about ACORN’s diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN’s ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.

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Obama’s conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies — the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday — is unprecedented.

The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.

He had me at “elaborate propaganda apparatus”, but with mention of the dereliction of the media, I know I’m in the presence of greatness.

That is what underlies all that is wrong with this administration. They couldn’t get away with any of their socialist sleaze if the media weren’t a wholly owned subsidiary of David Axelrod. To say that they are in the bag for Obama is an insult to bags everywhere.

Oops

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The political advocacy group ACORN and a former supervisor were ordered Wednesday to stand trial on charges that they illegally paid canvassers to register Nevada voters during last year’s presidential campaign.

Evidence heard during more than six hours of testimony left “a lot of issues that have to be answered” before trial, Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen said.

In a related story, they are apparently pulling out of Florida.

- Aggie

This seems serious to me

With no fanfare and no roll call vote, not even a speech — the Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved an amendment by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-NE, that bars any funds from the Defense spending bill from going to ACORN.

Johanns promised to introduce a similar amendment on every spending bill Congress considers this year, until the chamber takes up his broader bill that would impose permanent ban on ACORN receiving any federal funds.

It took the Senate a little over one minute to consider the measure.

What took them so long?

- Aggie

NY Times on why they didn’t cover the ACORN tapes

Phew, this is weak. Very weak. I’ll just summarize. They were busy. They didn’t notice. Other news stories were happening. Conservatives are trying to impugn their dignity, their noble record. They got around to it eventually.

You can read it yourself for the details.

- Aggie

Producer of Dateline sends email

Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.

When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”

Go to the link to see the shot of her blackberry.

Why is it ok to do this to Jewish people? Would she still have her job if she’d used similar bigotry towards any other minority group?

This is the comment from the group that received the email:

Americans for Limited Government does not contend that NBC or its parent company GE, are anti-Semitic. What is highly disturbing, however, is that there clearly is a culture at NBC that has allowed this person who clearly has issues to go unchecked.

Ms Stone claims she did not send the offensive email. If that is not the case, we at ALG call upon her to help ascertain who did send it using her Blackberry and her email address. If Ms Stone did, in fact, send it, we at ALG call upon Ms Stone to apologize to Mr. Rosenwald, and we call upon the NBC hierarchy above Ms Stone to join her in issuing that apology.

If the shoe fits, wear it. If someone in a position of power, such as the producer of Dateline, sent this, then yes, NBC is anti-Semitic. If she let’s anti-Semites fool around with her blackberry, she is known by the company she keeps. It is kind of hard to imagine that someone lifted it out of her pocketbook on the subway, sent the nasty email, then put it back. Right?

- Aggie

Point:

ACORN, taking a break from its apology tour, said today that it’s filing suit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.com.

The complaint: “The video and audio footage was taken without the knowledge of Williams and/or Thompson and in violation of Maryland’s Courts and Judicial Proceedings Code §§ 10-402(a) and 10-410, which requires two party consent to all electronic surveillance. Violation of the law is a felony, and entitles parties whose rights were violated to sue.”

Counterpoint:

Treasury Department Inspector General, J. Russell George agreed to comply with a request submitted by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-Maine) to conduct a review of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and of the IRS’s oversight of nonprofit organizations.

“The lack of an appropriate firewall between ACORN’s charitable activities and its political arm has raised significant questions regarding the appropriateness of their status as a taxable nonprofit corporation and their management of federal dollars,” Issa said. “Cutting ties with ACORN is a good first step for the federal government, but since they have been the recipients of taxpayer dollars, we have an obligation to investigate to discover whether or not those dollars were misused in anyway.”

I believe the legal expression is “bring it on, bi-yotch”. ACORN won’t have a pot to piss in (or smoke) by the time the IRS is done with them (unless Eric Holder is in charge).

President Obama told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he was too busy with pressing global matters to pay attention to what was going on with ACORN.

Never mind that he’s grown too big for his britches and doesn’t remember the people who helped him along the way—I just want to see what’s been keeping him so gosh darn busy.

President Barack Obama walks with aide Reggie Love as they cross the street from their hotel to play basketball in New York, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009.

I’m sure he kept it brief: P-I-G, instead of H-O-R-S-E. What else?

President Barack Obama laughs with host David Letterman during a break at a taping of CBS The Late Show with David Letterman, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.

Yeah, well, see, Letterman’s an expert on health care and Sino-Soviet relations, so I’m sure they had a lot to talk about. But did Obama stay for the whole show, kissing Suzanne Sommer on the cheek applauding the stupid pet trick while moving further down the sofa? Or did he flounce out like a big shot after his segment was over?

Anyway, Letterman and hoops—that’s a big day for anyone. Even the Almighty rested on the seventh day.

What the heck, so does Obama:

NerObama piddles while America spurns.

When first we elect this duplicitous schmuck:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But have your — have some of your allies made it easier for — handed your opponents some ammunition, like ACORN, for example…

OBAMA: Well, look, the — you know, I think that — are there folks in the Democratic camp or on the left who haven’t — haven’t always operated in ways that I’d appreciate? Absolutely.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Congress said they should cut off all funding for ACORN.

OBAMA: Is — is — is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: … all funding for ACORN. Are you for that?

OBAMA: Is that true on the other side, as well? Of course that’s true.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?

OBAMA: You know, it’s — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.

OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re not committing to — to cut off the federal funding?

OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to.

“Is — is — is…” What is it with Democratic presidents and the conjugation of the verb “to be”?

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

Bill was getting conjugation from Monica under the desk in the Oral Office. President Obama expects nothing less from the adoring acolytes in the media. At least Stephanopoulos used his purty mouth to ask a pertinent question.