Acorn Nuttiness...

"I ain't afraid of Acorn... I've got squirrels!"

~Niceguy Eddie

And, OK... not the most original post title, I'll admit it.

Ever since then Senator Obama won the nomination, we've been hearing a lot about ACORN. And, for the most part, what we've heard is nonsense from the Right trying to convince us that Acorn is a dangerous, subversive, criminal, fraudulent, traitorous, communist/socialist/fascist/etc... organization who's primary goal is to destroy America.

So... What's the deal?

OK. First off, it is important to understand that the Right has hated Acorn for YEARS. Why? Well, among other ways that they try to help the poor (and the Right HATES it when people help the poor) they REGISTER them to VOTE. And the Right, HATES is when poor people vote. That's about it. It's a ridiculous accusation, though rather fitting with all the conservative "up-is-downism" that we've seen recently, to say that they even have an Anti-Republican agenda, let alone an anti-American one! Registering people to vote - PERIOD - should ALWAYS be considered a good thing. That they happen to focus on registering the urban poor... well they might vote overwhelmingly Democratic, but does that make Acorn anti-republican? More likely it makes the Republicans Anti-City, Anti-Poor and Anti-Minority (after all, poor whites tend to vote Republican, though I'll never understand why.) (OK I know why, but the reasons are STUPID, and I'll probably explain why in my next post - so stay tuned, you're gonna LOVE it!)

So, basically... few things will get you to the top of the Republican's shit-list faster than HELPING POOR PEOPLE.

The next question: If they hate them so much (and if they were such a threat to God, America and Apple Pie) why I have I never heard of them before now?

It's related to the fact that you never heard the words "community organizer" on TV before. And thus there was no rational way to tie the organization to a candidate, even by the conservative's lax standards of rationality. But then Senator Obama made much about the fact the he once worked as a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER! Ah! So now, we have a connection! (Becuase that's sort of what they do!) And all we have to do is CONNECT THE TWO, and we can get the benefit of smearing Senator Obama, when we smear Acorn! Kill two birds with one stone!

So from then on you heard how Obama and Acorn were like Bacon and Eggs. They probably spent more hours on television driving this message home than Obama ever spent working for Acorn. But whatever, the two must be linked! (Or else.... this won't work! So LINK THEM!)

Now that they're LINKED, it's time to smear! What to use, what to use, what to use... I KNOW! VOTER FRAUD! We'll accuse them of trying to steal the election! Just like those damned liberals have been accusing US of doing for the past eight years! (I mean... putting aside that, you know... we actually DID and all!) So they did some digging and found that, OMG!, there were some irregularities amongst the tens of thousands of registrations they submitted! NOW WE GOT 'EM!

Well... not quite. In the minds of the brainless zombies who have no reason to vote republican but do anyway, and the rich folks who pretty much don't care about the truth if the lie will help them get a tax break, perhaps... But back in th ereal world, "voter fraud" requires... oh, um... what's the word I'm looking for... um... oh, yeah:

VOTES!

Now, was it ever demonstrated that so much as a single fraudulent vote was cast in this last election as the result of an irregular registration by Acorn? No. It hasn't. In fact ACTUAL voter fraud in this country is extremely rare. If you took every proven fraudulent vote ever cast in the history of presidential elections in this country and gave them all to McCain in the state tat he lost by the narrowest margin, it would not be nearly enough to flip even that one state. (And let's not forget: He lost by about 10 states!)

What some Acorn employees WERE accused of was the crime of Voter REGISTRATION Fraud. The thing is... real crimes should have a victim. Did this one? YES. Who was the victim? ACORN ITSELF! Don't believe me? Don't buy that? Consider this scenario:

Let's say the "New Life Baptist Church" has raised some money and wants to have a voter registration drive. They know their community leans heavily Republican and each Registration means a likely vote. And since they support the Republican agenda, they want to create as many votes as they can. So they get all the necessities lined up: They recruit people to go door, they ordered all the forms, they put the word out... Time and money are spent. They even paid the volunteers $100 each for their work if they turned in, say, at least 100 registrations. The thing is.... they've got this... one guy. He's kind of lazy, and a bit of a drunk. He turns his 100 forms in, and takes his $100 (and probably goes to buy booze.) But when the Church reviews the forms, they find that almost all of them are bogus: I.P.Freely, Coca Roach, G.I.Lovemoney, etc... Now, the law requires them to turn in ALL forms (that foiled their plan to just throw away all of the ones registered as 'Democrat') but being good citizens they put this one guy's forms aside and notified the registration board that they were suspect.

At this point, I think it's clear that the town drunk has basically stolen from the church, right? He took his hundy, and at the end of the day, not a single vote will be generated. So the church's money was wasted, and their candidate harmed - or at least... he'll come up 100 votes shorter than he would have if their money was spent on someone who actually did their job! Now... is anyone reading this and thinking that the CHURCH is the bad guy here? No?

Well...

Switch "New Life Baptist Church" with "Acorn" and switch "Republican" and "Democrat" around and you'll have the EXACT thing that happened to Acorn. And YES, it was in fact ACORN that alerted the authorities to the bogus forms in the first place - even a recent FOX piece admits this. (Thought they do so in the very last paragraph, almost as an afterthought. I mean, why let the facts get in the way of good right-wing propaganda, right?)

Fast forward to this past week. Video's coming out about Acorn employees helping pimps and hookers get homes! OMG! I'm not going to let THIS PASS, am I?

Well, I got this real moron thing I do, it's called thinking? So let's think for a moment.

Again, what crime was committed, exactly? Someone was going to help a Pimp get a house. Wow. That's it? So if I want to sell my house, and the higehst offer was from a pimp, I can't take it? Don't pimps and hookers need housing too? OK, obviously I'm joking a but here, but seriously: we're talking about four or five (and I don't care if it's FIFTY, and I'll get to why in a sec) employees who helped these clowns (BTW, paid Right-Wing undercover sting operatives, mind you) with some paperwork, even though they said they were a Pimp and a Hooker. (I guess it's not much of a stretch for a couple of conservatives to pose as Pimps and Whores!) It looks bad, sure, and makes good play on Fox. But there's really no substance here.

Do the acton of these individuals mean that ACORN is a CRIMINAL organization? WTF? Hell NO! These people were FIRED. FIRED because the organization DOES NOT WANT their employees helping pimps and hookers! DUH! If they came out and defended them? FINE, I'd be right with you saying, "WTF?" But those people are GONE. Out on there asses. And the one girl who, after saying on taped that she murder her husband (and no, she didn't!) said, "[She] was just playing along, because [she] knew these two bozo's were bogus?" Well, if that's true, she should consider suing from wrongful termination. She probably won't win, but either way, if anything Acorn overreacted. Otherwise they did what ANY organization would do if a few of it's employees were accessories to crimes. THEY. FIRED. THEM.

Now, what these two clowns with their dad's video camera did was NOT journalism, any more than it was law enforcement, or time-travel for that matter. If they had wanted to practice journalism, this kind of investigation may have taken a year or more. They would have had to go to nearly ALL of the Acorn offices. They would have had to divulge how many places turned them away. They would have to have interviews with Acorn officials, show them the tapes, get an official explanation... They would have had to gather WAAAY more evidence to show that this was a sytsemic problem, something that Acorn was doing as a matter of policy, and not just the incompetence of four or five (or fifty) employees. That kind of investigation takes detetive work, and research, and hours and hours of interviews, and finally some solid write-up presenting ALL the evidence. These idiots just don't have the chops for it. They're ameteurs, and they should have been laughed of the set for such shoddy work. But hey, this was Fox, who never lets a proper investigation get in the way of good right-wing propaganda.

Now, ACORN has over 1200 offices, and THOUSANDS of employees and volunteers. So the actions of four or five, or even FIFTY, at different offices does not mean that we simply disband the whole organization. At least... If you're a conservative, you REALLY don't what to start applying that logic with any consistency. (But then when have conservatives ever had consistent logic?)

Why not? Well... THIS, for a start.

Give it a GOOD, LONG READ. It'll take some time, it's quite a list.

I guess if you've got an organization with so many swindlers, thieves, criminals, and deviants in it, it's just got. to. go. Right? Hey, I'm all for it, just say the word. I've got no use for any of these scumbags anyway.

And my favorite part? Just to answer the inevitable question from some con who doesn't bother reading down very far for himself...

Why not a list of Democrat Offenders?

(from the site:)

I promise, if you’re a Republican, you don’t want a list of Democratic Offenders. Without it you are able to protest a valid point. I agree, without a comparable list, there’s no comprehensive way to judge. I prefer the list to speak for itself. These are prominent Republicans. I did not make a list of every republican criminal. These are the leaders of the Republican party.

During my research the Justice Department provided a great resource for all federal offenders and I could easily observe that prominent Republicans produce 3 to 5 times more federal indictments than Dems. It may be higher. But that’s not the embarrassing part for conservatives. So far, I have only found a few prominent democrats that are pedophiles. It’s a huge discrepancy. If I had enough time to research specific clergymen and examine their political affiliations, the numbers of republican pedophiles would skyrocket. If you haven’t looked into clergy and sexual abuse, do a few dozen google searches and take the time to open your eyes to the problem. It’s not just the Catholic church.

Even a short poll of prominent sexual deviants shows a strikingly large number of Republicans of all religious denomination breaking the law. If you doubt me, please, by all means, do the research yourself. It’s not difficult. I did all of my work with Google and caffeine.

So conservatives, look... it's very simple. Two principles really, that I think you'll find helpful in your day to day lives...

1) Treat others the way that you wish to be treated, or treat yourself. If you don't think that the Church did anything wrong in the above scenario, stop saying that Acorn did.

2) If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. (Or walk around naked.) Bottom live? You're like people living in thatched huts, made out of shit, complaining about a few cookie-crumbs on the kitchen counter in the modest suburban home of a few Democratic supporters.

Oh yeah... and one more thing:

About the sadly bi-partisan vote last week to cut of all of Acorns funding and federal projects? Every democrat who voted for that was a traitorous, cowardly, unprincipled COWARD. They were every bit the SCUMBAGS that every Republican was who voted for it. Only thing is, I expected better of the Democrats.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have though...

The problem of this country can be summed up in eleven words:

The Republicans have no brains
and
the Democrats have no balls.