Walking In Circles: Where Right Meets Left
The prolonged fantasizing over the breadth and impact of the weekend tea-bag fest on the D.C. mall continues unabated. A self-desrcibed “near-successful” screenwriter at Pajamas Media has now “scientifically” proven that at least 850,000 people showed up (not the 70,000 or so that credible news sources report). That would mean more people showed up to impersonate G.I. Joe or Yankee Doodle than did those who came from across the country to watch the inauguration of America’s first black (and apparently socialist) president.
Right. And I counted 11,456 people at my last book-signing.
As I mentioned in the post below, in the end, I think this is worse for Republicans than it is for the Republic. And, lo and behold, the L.A. Times has a front-pager today on how mainstream GOP’ers are really starting to worry that their party is going to be highjacked by the fringe-balls. Take a look at this slide show and you’ll see what they have to worry about.
Why so much rhapsodizing by the right that it could bring out and concentrate the whole “patriot” crowd that apparently is so patriotic that they hate their own government? Truth is, the right has little experience in understanding the connections and the gaps between street demos and political constituencies.
Reprising what I said in a comment thread in the previous post: Here’s one difference between right and left and I’m not kidding. The left has a lot more experience in organizing protest rallies like the right wing tea party of last week than the right does. Several reasons why: the left is historically more in opposition than the right, the latter generally being closer to the holders of state power. The right is often a defender of the status quo and usually sees no need to come into the streets. The left is young and activist. The right is older and full of folks who disdain mixing with the sweaty hoi polloi in the streets. The right gets things done by its closer relationship with the powerful. The left is more powerless and believes it must pressure from without.
That’s why every odd time the Right pulls off a successful street action — be it from the astroturf media show of the Minutemen a few years ago (a total of 500 people and 600 gawking media folks!) to last weekend’s showing of, what, 83 billion people on the mall, it gets all giddy and ecstatic. By doing so, the right actually thinks it’s leading a MASS movement, a silent majority of tens of millions. It’s a real high for them. Maoist groups think the same thing when they bring out 1500 people to sit in the streets for Mumia.
In this regard, the right ought to spend a bit more time debriefing veterans of a more mature left. The left, at least the more intelligent sectors of the left, know just how meaningless and impotent those street demos can be if you don’t do the political work to build a bigger constituency behind them. From 2002-2006 there were SEVERAL much bigger anti war demonstrations staged by the left than the 9/12 tea bag party and, in the end, they added up to a hill of a beans. Last time I looked, there were still 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
A more cogent example is Howard Dean’s crash and burn campaign in Iowa in 2004. I went to those as a reporter and they were HUGE and boisterous and often ten times the size of a Kerry or Edwards rally. Problem was, the latter two had plenty of quiet supporters sitting at home ready to vote. Dean came in third. What the Deaniacs didn’t figure out, until too late, was that the people who showed up at his rallies were near the totality of his supporters. No one else was left.
Tea baggers beware. There are millions of Americans quietly watching, keeping their fingers crossed, hoping Obama will relieve their burden on health care. They have little desire to be in the street with ding dongs waving rebel flags, and holding up posters alluding to Hitler and Stalin. They rallied last fall at the ballot box. And this time around, for better or for worse, they are actually the Silent Majority. What we saw on the weekend was a modest rally of the losers — to be diplomatic. That’s no reason for the other side to be complacent. Political momentum can shift, and radically. But, in the short term, I find it unlikely that a mass movement is going to be built by waving around flags with M-16′s on it.
Didn’t The Beatles record a song about this around 1967 or so?
UPDATE: Here’s a dissection of just how Michelle Malkin invented the 2 million attendance figure. Hilarious.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Are they taking bets in Vegas on whether or not a real health care bill will be passed by…say May of 2010?
Is it illegal to take bets on a blog?
September 14th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Another example of street protests by an array of people with varied and conflicting motives, and little political outcome, is the anti-globalization movement.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
This is actually a brilliant example, Michael. I covered the Battle in Seattle in 1999 and wrote it about rather enthusiastically for The Nation and the L.A. Times. By a year or so later, I was tussling with The Nation to get in a piece that was critical (but supportive) of the “movement.” I argued that tactics were running way ahead of strategy and that handcuffs and tear gas were being fetishized by those on the receiving end. The disruptive demos that followed the G8 summits around the globe made for dramatic theater but little policy impact. By comparison, Public Citizen (and the Teamsters among others) were doing all the real heavy lifting… you know all that inglorious face to face lobbying on Capitol Hill trying to win majorities against Fast Track and PNT status for China. No tear gas. Just lots of hard sweat.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Marc, in addition to your points about the Right being congenial with power and the Left having won experience with protests, I’d like to offer another observation.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that, when I find fault with something a right-wing person does– an affair, coziness with lobbyists, some conflict of interest– the _inevitable_ and _immediate_ response is that “the liberals do it too.” And maybe they’ll even have an example that applies.
Now, it’s true in the general sense, but after a while it begins to sound like a child who’s been nabbed in the schoolyard: his first reply is that some other kid was doing it as well. And what comes out is a kind of envy, for the “privileges” that the kid imagines other kids have.
So yeah, when the Right manages to pull off a bare-bones “protest march,” they see it as a personal triumph, that they’ve just proven that they can do what they envy others for doing. They really think that “the Left”is glamorous, more free, less subject to restrictions and responsibilities, and they can’t understand why they can’t do what they see Liberals doing.
And they _resent_ this, very deeply, like some racist fuckhead who can’t understand why _he_ can’t use the word “nigger” even though “they call each other that all the time.”
They _envy_ us, and when they work up some crippled imitation they _demand to be respected_ for it.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
All of you do realize, don’t you, that we’re not going to get the original Democratic health care bill, which was prepared completely behind closed doors to block Republican input, nor are we even going to get the government option. These conservative protestors, whom you discount, have been heard and have made an impact.
Dems seek to play down role of public option idea
and
Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine said there is “no way” a health-care overhaul that includes a public option can pass the Senate.
Also, illegal immigrants would have been included in the original plan, as the White House ultimately confessed, and now that has changed, too.
If that’s failure of the tea party protests, then let’s have more of it. In the meantime, continue pretending that everything is going your way.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Nuts. Here’s that first link again. — Dems seek to play down role of public option idea
September 14th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I read and reread your post, but I couldn’t find anything resembling truth in it, Woody. Only slanted Republican talking points and outright lies that have been debunked.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Well, Woody, we’ll see how it all shakes out in the end. Senator Snowe is what your friends call a RINO and anyway may turn out to be irrelevant to the final process.
And I wonder how y’all measure your success in getting what you want out of the health care bill? Would winding up with 46 million uninsured like now and with the median policy costing $13,000 a year be considered TOTAL victory? That was the Bush policy. Wonder why anyone would think the Republicans have changed their views?
In the end, the Democrats probably will kill the public option. That’s been clear for weeks. There will still be a health care bill. And Republicans will still oppose it and vote against it. That will be very stupid and short sighted. This will come from the geniuses who brought us record deficits, the war in Iraq and who actually thought Karl Rove was smart. LOL
September 14th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
More “failure” from conservative protestors:
September 14th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Marc, health care was not a Republican issue. Iraq was, and we (our nation) won that mission despite claims by Reed and Obama that we had lost before it started. Are you guys still making fun of the blue fingers?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Marc – I’m predicting there’ll be a public option trigger clause – it may be weak, but at the least it could be an effective tool to keep the regulation of private insurers “honest”. I’m betting even Snowe might go along with that – given her constituency – and that it will satisfy enough “Blue Dogs” and progressives to keep most Democrats on board. The driver on this is how much discipline the congressional progressives can maintain and whether Pelosi will fight on this. I’m betting there’ll be a push and some kind of compromise as I’ve described. The public supports it by a significant margin.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Come on, Woody. Give it a rest, pal. I have no doubt that ACORN, like most organizations that consist of human beings, has the taint of corruption. That seems clear. You think that’s a major problem we face? ACORN versus the Bush SEC which allowed the biggest financial firms in the country to fleece all of us? You think there’s a moral equivalent between a $10 an hour canvasser who signs up some ineligible voters to make a few bucks and the CEOs of the big brokerages who make tens of millions to manipulate and wreck the credit and housing markets? Oh, wait…. I forgot… the latter aren’t the problem. The problem is all them liberals in Fannie and Freddie who sold houses to high-risk negroes and mexicians, rigtht? That’s why the average foreclosure this month in California is in the $750,000 range, right? Typical price range for an llegal alien getting a Fannie mortgage/ Silly me.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Woody – Iran is going to be the outside power to “win” the Iraq war. Only totally ill-informed idiots argue otherwise. THis is inevitable. That’s going to be one hell of a “blue finger” in your face when you finally realize what has happened.
I’ve said this for years and have been vindicated on every turn. Just like I predicted that the “worst nightmare” for al Qaeda would be when the Sunni warlords no longer found them useful for their ends and turned on them. Without that strategy, the surge would have been even a short-term failure, as opposed to the stop-gap it’s turned out to be. Maliki is saying bye-bye to us and looking toward his buddies in Tehran.
Obvious for years…but you’re a dimwit so you’ll be yammering about this “victory” for maybe two or three more years before you start screaming about the Iraqis not appreciating all we did for them. As predictable as the sun rising.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Reg– Yes. Probably a trigger…. which means the public option is out for the moment. The conservatives, of course, are correct when they say real reform (which the oppose) will inevitably lead to an expanded government program. Obviously.
But, remember, our conservative patritotic American friends hate the American government — unless it is conducting a war, or snooping on the citizenry or unless it is employing them as congressman or paying them a bloated pension a la Dick Armey. I’d love to have the perks, salary and pension of a former US congressman and spend all my time denouncing government. What kind of a moron do you have to be to fall for that sort of rank duplicity?????
September 14th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Dick Armey is a bad pun these days…
And John McCain has, to my knowledge, not lived a day of his life without government-provided health care. Not a day.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Glenn Beck puts number at at least 500,000, but says he would have considered 200,000 a success.
You heard it from Beck himself. Since the real number was closer to 70,000, it wasn’t a success.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200909140047
September 14th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Indeed, Reg. This reminds me of Chile. When Pinochet came to power, at bayonet point, he literally dismantled the national health care service AND the social security system, replacing it with privatized systems (which have both subsequently and utterly failed). EXCEPT, ready for this? The great free marketeer Pinochet maintained the state health care system AND the state pension system and the state housing system for the armed forces! Even better… he privatized all of the heavy industry and commerce that had been nationalized by Allende…except for the rich copper mines… he left them under state control but earmarked all revenue for the Armed Forces. Fabulous, no?
How many of those tea baggers are currently on medicare or in the v.a. system? I would guess percentage wise about 3-4 times the natl average.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
“blue fingers”
I thought they were purple. I moved my investments into purple ink suppliers. crap.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
And John McCain has, to my knowledge, not lived a day of his life without government-provided health care. Not a day.
Even when he was a fetus.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
“A poverty-rights group that has drawn the ire of conservatives suffered another setback in Washington on Monday when the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to deny it access to federal housing funds.”
So we should be happy that the poor have no voice and continued to get screwed? That’s not what I heard last Sunday.
Anyway, when’s the party? What is appropriate to bring to a ‘yeah, poor people suck!’ party? I think our Walmart has some confederate themed stuff left over from labor day. Do you need some table cloths?
September 14th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Whatever the number in attendance was, that’s what the number is, when all of the facts come out. I find it interesting that there are no official counts from law enforcement and the MSM.
There is enough empirical evidence to get to a true count, soon.
I also find Josh Marshall’s slide show interesting–for its fairness. I also realize that left-wing religionists believe that pictures of 2nd Amendment supporters and fat Americans in tacky red white and blue outfits damn the cause. They don’t. The snobbery and provincialism of American left-wingism can never be over-estimated.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Marc, reg, you’re both might be understating an important fact in re health care. As things stand now, without some sort of reform/re-set of the system, nearly 4 million Americans have been added to government-run health in the past couple years as a more and more corporations shed this benefit (…or they jigger the hours so that an employee never makes it to full time status — Wal-Mart has been doing this shit for years). If the Dems’ (take your pick Pelosi or Baucus) reforms fail, we’ll conceivably have the likes of Woody to thank for pushing more Americans on government-run health care.
Image that.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
reg writes:
“Iran is going to be the outside power to “win” the Iraq war. Only totally ill-informed idiots argue otherwise. THis is inevitable.” (and so other stuff)
Inevitable?
We should come back to this at another time.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Biff —
I thought pix #33 pretty much summed up the roots of this astro-turf movement…
September 14th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
reg: “Iran is going to be the outside power to “win” the Iraq war.
Then, we can blame Obama for that.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Yeah, Rob – I’m certain it’s inevitable. It’s pretty much already happened. Ahmedinijad could go give a speech in Baghdad with relatively modest security. No American President could, not even Obama. Certainly not Bush. What is our political “base” in Iraq? Nothing to match the Shia fundamentalist base that already controls large parts of Iraq and can impose Sharia law. The Iranians and the Iraqi Shia shared a common enemy (Saddam) for so long and the religious and cultural affinity is so great, I don’t even see why this would be controversial. Also, I don’t personally have a problem with it at this point – although it was surely an argument against the war from any “national security” perspective. It’s “normal” – Shiite domination of the Persian Gulf, based on a strong alliance of Iran and Iraq. Why wouldn’t this be the natural course ? (Did any prominent Iraqi politicians condemn the Iranian elections ? I’m not aware of any – although I’d love to hear that it happened.) I’m not saying that there won’t be friction or that there will always be an identical set of interests, but the two countries became very close in the wake of Saddam’s ouster and the fall of Saddam coupled with the inability of the US to leverage the military “victory” beyond the very shaky situation in Baghdad has been very, very good for the Iranians.
I love that Woody can’t really deny the liklihood, so he blames it on Obama. LOL !
September 15th, 2009 at 5:09 am
Sidshow Bob: So we should be happy that the poor have no voice and continued to get screwed?
This is what gets me about you liberals. People should get away with murder if they’ve accumulated enough liberal chits because they help the poor (or women or children).
These folks weren’t helping. They are institutional crooks that commit fraud, misuse tens of millions of taxpayer money, and teach “the poor” how to commit fraud, launder money, and cheat on their taxes.
If ACORN is the best that liberals can do to help the poor, then the poor are better off without that kind of help.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:15 am
reg, Bush is no longer President. He has no control over what happens in the mideast. Obama has total control and is doing a terrible job with Iran (actually doing nothing) and Obama, during the campaign, put forth great solutions for Iraq — like cut-and-run.
No President is handed a perfectly clean slate to run the country. If Obama can’t do the job and can’t accept responsibility, then the wrong guy is in office.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Out of all those thousands on Saturday, I have yet to see one person of color.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:30 am
It’s interesting to drop by once in a while and see that how little has changed.
Me, I just read polls. Interestingly, about 55% of Americans polled seem to want the public option when they are briefed a little on what the term means. When it’s elaborated as “like Medicare”, but for everybody rather than limited to those 65 and older, the number zooms up nearly to 70%. You just picture grandma saying, “What? You mean my granddaughter could always get what I get, if private insurance was too much? Oh, goodness, you should have said so in the first place!”
But I suppose the public option will have to be traded away, in the end. And why? So that certain GOP congressfolk can go back to certain districts in certain states of the former Confederacy and claim they were able to fend off a total government takeover of everything medical by a socialist Kenyan who had, somehow, almost by accident really, become dictator of the U.S. Yes, let’s help hold the Union together! We are all one American people! We can get through this dark–er, I mean, “difficult”–period.
Keep your powder dry, people, and see you again in six months or so.
Or maybe not.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:46 am
ACORN get funds from HUD, STIMULUS (better known as Democratic walking-around money), NEA, UNIONS, etc, etc plethora of liberal organizations, to organize housing and other free stuff to whoever asks for it apparently.
This includes pimps, hoes(not for gardens to grow your own food of course), child trafficers, and who knows what other illegal shit, in order to address the heartbreaking problem poverty, but not poverty of the soul. One wonder how much of the former is caused by the latter.
Our neighbor organizing dollars at work, both at the street level and the governments poverty of competence in doing anything about waste, fraud, and abuse of all they pass out at FREE SHIT CENTRAL.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:01 am
And speaking of those truly independent government watchdogs, reporters working for News Organizations that pay them a professional salary to do the job, forget about it.
Increasingly it is your unpaid independent unprofessional reporters that make any difference at all. All the ‘pros’ are left to report is the results of real reporters work….and not even that if it might maline
their preferred political party.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Mr. Turner — good hearing from you.
Don’t be a stranger.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Tits have grown on the bulls. Balls are out of fashion.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Woody yammers on…ignoring reality and refusing responsibility.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:19 am
That he does, reg. That train left athe station some time ago.
Ahmadinejad visited Iraq 18 months ago to a veritable hero’s welcome. We know who was president 18 months ago and it wasn’t Obama.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:08 am
“Frances Grant Says:
September 15th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Out of all those thousands on Saturday, I have yet to see one person of color.”
John Boehner didn’t show up ?
September 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
R&r, Saddam Hussein was overthrown as Dictator of Iraq to let Iraqis choose their own future, and we know who was president then, and it wasn’t Obama.
So, what’s Obama going to do without Saddam Hussein to push him around…let Iran do it with North Korea joining in?
- – -
I have yet to see one person of color….
Which means absolutely nothing since the protest had nothing to do with race, unless you mean to imply that blacks and Mexicans don’t pay enough taxes to care about them.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Which means absolutely nothing since the protest had nothing to do with race, unless you mean to imply that blacks and Mexicans don’t pay enough taxes to care about them.”
Damn Woody. You can throw a good punch now and then.
You know your hitting where it hurts when they have to resort to dealing from the bottom of the pile.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
An example of why I am more qualified to report current happenings than Charlie Gibson….
Woody
Charlie Gibson
See. I add value here.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
R&r, Saddam Hussein was overthrown as Dictator of Iraq to let Iraqis choose their own future, and we know who was president then, and it wasn’t Obama.
Still didn’t respond to the facts.
In the 1980′s Saddam Hussein was strengthened as dictator of Iraq and we know who helped him out: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
You know your hitting where it hurts when they have to resort to dealing from the bottom of the pile.
That’s where Woody is most at home.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
So, Reagan didn’t support the Ayatolla. Good for him at that point in time. Carter just let everyone push him around. Obama is like Carter.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
So, Reagan didn’t support the Ayatolla.
Your historical memory is weak. Reagan sold missiles to the Ayatollah.
He supported the dictator. He could have stayed out of it.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Even better! Let them destroy each other while we make money on the deal.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
This is why I can’t take you seriously.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Woody’s turning into a pretzel…
September 15th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Any thread in which “Woody” comments constitute over 20% of the responses is presumptively pointless.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I bet national health care in 2027, Anna and others. Hey, only 18 years from now.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
We’ll also be (just) out of Afghanistan and Iraq by then.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Michael, when 20% of the comments are from me, then the other 80% of the comments repesent you guys personally attacking me rather than discussing the topic.
I suspect that none of you could bring yourselves around to admit that, contrary to the title of this post, the Tea Party protestors had done more than walk around in circles but had made a difference that resulted in delaying and changing any health care reform — for the better, I might add.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I suspect that none of you could bring yourselves around to admit that, contrary to the title of this post, the Tea Party protestors had done more than walk around in circles but had made a difference that resulted in delaying and changing any health care reform
Maybe if we had someone open our skulls and pour acid on our brains.
The depth of your sphinctertude is a true marvel.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Woody’s turning into a pretzel…
Indeed. First he praises Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power then praises Reagan for supplying to both Saddam and Iran so that these people could kill each other.
One wonders if its the narcissism or the denseness.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Or the desperation…
September 15th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Well, my last remark represents 25% of the latest set of comments, and attacks on me represented the other 75%, which is pretty consistent with what I said.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
What about the criminals we are paying to work at ACORN? Is ACORN a criminal organization? Could our tax money, now being used for criminals to provide other criminals tax subsidized housing, be better used for give them free health care instead of housing?
Or should be buy both from them while they help criminals to make whores out of our daughter while we are at work to pay for the whore house and the criminals that set them up with it? Are these question even important in comparison to the need to pass another free shit bill to help those who need it, which apparently now will include the scum of the earth?
Discuss.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
You dish it out plenty. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Hilarious, Jim. ACORN is a penny ante non profit whose goal is quite laudable… registering voters in a country where only half the eligible are registered. People who work for acorn make about $25k a year. I have not bothered to research the accusations of fraud because I assume, that while the Right is hyping them, they are basically true. And so what? I simply do NOT believe that you really believe this is a major problem besetting America. Every human organization is corrupt and rife with cheaters. That’s the way humans work. But this penny ante stuff with, yes, a whiff of race and class issues given your selective outrage. The ACORN folks are but gnats compared to the voracious locusts of AIG, Wells Fargo etc etc. These $50 million a year drunks and frauds are NOT scum of the earth? Pimps and whores look good compared to them. Get real and dont insult our intelligence.
Woody: By the way…. Charlie Gibson is a long time conservative. Maybe ABC implanted a liberal diode in his neck, though, when they made him an anchor
You guys are really out to lunch. Unlike the rest of the commenters, I dont get mad at you nor do I fear you. I just wonder in what sort of a fishbowl world u live in.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Has anybody actually watched those videos? Here’s what happens: a guy walks in with a woman dressed as a hooker, and he tells a puzzled staffer that he’s in law school, and he wants to run for political office, but he’s facing discrimination by banks in this business he wants to get into: running a whorehouse. These ACORN staffers are clearly bored, and decided to have a little fun with them. (At one point, the staffer even criticizes the banks for being “liberals”, “bleeding hearts”, too politically correct, not open-minded enough.)
They play along, because it’s hilarious. At one point, the staffer says that maybe voters will be more accepting of how this guy earns his campaign funds from underage prostitution if he has the girls on 401(k) plans.
The video gets played by Fox, as if it were in dead earnest. Well, who looks stupid here? Anybody who takes these charges seriously after seeing the videos, and anybody who thinks they can just take a Fox headline like “Shocking revelations from ACORN worker in California” at face value, and don’t have to watch the videos to make up their own mind.
But stupidest of all? Anybody who watches these videos and thinks that ACORN was officially offering advice in dead earnest to a young guy walking in with a women who the staffer first guessed must be a “stripper”, who complains of lending discimination just because he wants a housing loan to set up a whorehouse, and openly admits to wanting to use the funds for financing a political campaign.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Oh, and my contribution above? That was before I saw the FOX News clip where the staffer tells the video crew that “everyone in town” knew that she had shot her abusive husband to death, AND then Glenn Beck pretending (rather elaborately) that he actually *believes* her.
Or is Beck as stupid and gullible as his audience? Can’t rule it out, no, not these days.
Has Fox News become the National Inquirer of TV networks? I mean, imagine this ACORN staffer, going full-bore to try to get these spoofers to finally crack up and laugh and admit they’ve been outmatched in the put-on department, saying “Oh, I was a 13-year-old prostitute myself once, and I was perfectly OK with it”. Would Fox be reporting *that* with a straight face?
Yes, I can see it: “FOX Scoop: Most recent clip 10 times worse: ACORN run by former teen prostitutes who loved doing deep throat on drunken, stinky middle-aged construction workers who hadn’t even showered beforehand.”
Woody, Jim R: you guys are a major laff riot. But it’s sad, too, because you’re both clearly intelligent. If it weren’t for your ideological blinders, you, too, might have been able to see the joke in the first 10 seconds, and to become part of a chorus of serious and intelligent conservatives asking their leadership to lay off on the ridiculous and demeaning demagoguery they are so clearly engaged in. You might actually be able to help save the GOP from this kind of credibility death-spiral, where they marginalize themselves in perpetuity as the Party of Dim Bubbas and Snake-Handling Wackos. That marginalization is certainly happening — recent polls indicate that interest in a third party has never been higher, and a lot of that sentiment must be coming not just from Ron Paul die-hard nut-jobs, but from slightly right-of-center Independents and moderate Republicans who wish they could declare a party affiliation without embarrassment.
Oh, but wait, no, I take it all back. This just in from FOX News: “Powerful super-anti-oxidants — you can live to be 116 years old — available only in micro-nutrient extracts from Newt Gingrich’s dick cheese.”
The accompanying video says it gives you rock-hard erections, too, and cures premature ejaculation. Oh, look: my Google News Alert for this just now supplied slam-dunk corroboration from Investors Business Daily, an impeccable source — look how they did on the Stephen Hawking NHS story! Go for it, guys. And forget those “extracts” — an inside source close to Ann Coulter says it’s better to go straight for the source, as the smegma is being excreted. Fresher, y’know?
September 16th, 2009 at 5:45 am
I have a solution for the federal court order to empty 40,000 prisoners from California prisons. Give them all jobs at ACORN. They have proven that they have the necessary qualifications.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Damn Michael – I was all excited there until I read the part about Newt Gingrich’s dick cheese. That’s kind of off-putting. Oh, well. I guess I’ll wait and see if the Death Panels allow this new drug under Obamacare before I consult with my chiropractor.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Right, Marc. You say that Charlie Gibson is conservative and that ACORN has “quite laudable goals” (not results), but Jim R and I live in a fishbowl. I know that you’re just jerking our chains, but reg, Randy, and Michael actually believe you.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:15 am
“But this penny ante stuff with, yes, a whiff of race and class issues given your selective outrage. The ACORN folks are but gnats compared to the voracious locusts of AIG, Wells Fargo etc etc. These $50 million a year drunks and frauds are NOT scum of the earth?”
Interesting response Marc. Were you not coming down hard on Anna a few posts back for smelling a whiff of racism off you for criticizing Van Jones? Pathetic argument, especially since the racism seems to be coming from ACORN’s hiring practices. Criminal behavior is criminal. What exactly does race have to do with this.
No one has criticized the white collar thugs more than I here. It is again pathetic a petty criminal can get jail time for a bank robbery netting $1000 or less in most cases, and we are not able to get one of these inside criminal bastards, who rob in billions, doing the duck-wall in shackles. How does this absolve other criminals exactly?
ACORN has 30 indictments against its employees already, and one of the founders of the farce skimmed a million dollars off the top of your $25 year employees. This white collar criminal walked away also.
ACORN is a corrupt organization hiring criminals to continue to victimize law abiding society and their voting rights. Only in this case, they are being funded to do it right out to the pockets of the voters and victims, and political Washington, as usually, cannot manage waste, abuse, fraud and criminal behavior within their own Grand Society plans.
We are sick and tired of it.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Especially sick and tired of the political divisions that create the knee-jerk circle-the-wagons response to the disgusting behavior of our political leaders preventing any kind law enforcement…especially against the financially and politically powerful.
Some good news: A judge has rejected a pantie-waist handslapping plea agreement between the crooks at Bank of America and the SEC regarding hiding billions in payouts to the departed last set of criminals. Where is Obama’s Attorney General. Talk is cheap. I want to see the money returned and those responsible hooked together in chains as they do the duck-dance shuffle to the sweet music of justice.
Some bad news: Even though the new bosses promised to clean up the criminal behavior of the last bosses, surpise, they are turning out to be just like the old bosses. Their promise was only for the party were criminality is recognized. Charlie Rangle, the tax cheat and subsidized housing profit maker, who heads the most powerful committee in the House, is still writing tax law to collect the tax money to pay for the debt Washington is adding to our credit cards. Nancy will do NOTHING.
So bottom line Marc. As long as excuses get made by each side to protect their own, all the rest of us, the majority paying for all this shit, will continue getting screwed by the criminals at all levels….top to bottom.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Only 75% of a “set” of comments are attacks on Woody? C’mon folks. We can do better than that !!!!
(Woody – you’re an accountant, so tell me how many comments are in an official, properly enumerated “set” so I can start keeping score.)
September 16th, 2009 at 9:25 am
JR,
Thank Bill Clinton for that judge.
Funny, I didn’t seem to hear much from you when Bush’s SEC Chair, Chrisopher Cox was thwarting investigations:
I’m glad that you’re outraged. The least you could do is put the blame where it actually belongs.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Jim R – you are promoting dangerous class warfare.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
An official in a company embezzles some money. The crime is discovered by management. The individual’s overseers now have an uncomfortable decision to make: they can make a public criminal case of it, but only hurt their public image as customers and other stakeholders see the evident failure of internal controls. Or — they can get the money back from the embezzler (if it hasn’t all been blown on whores and blow), and hush up the whole thing.
As I understand it, the latter choice is by far the most common one made, and accounts for the overwhelming majority of settlements in white collar crime, throughout the economy. (Hey, Woody: care to corroborate that? You’re the accountant, after all.)
Now, when it happens at an outfit like ACORN, but gets exposed why is it worth a zillion times more media attention than the last five times it happened at, say, your bank, or at your employee pension fund, or at your insurer? This, I do not understand.
ACORN is huge. It’s been around for decades. And — rightwingers’ fevered imaginings of a tight, cult-like, criminal cabal notwithstanding — it really is something more like an Association of Community Organizations for Reform. It would be amazing and incredible if nothing untoward had ever happened there, financially, or in its field operations. The questions are: (1) how significant is this misbehavior, against the background of the larger picture of the organization? And (2) how significant is it, against the larger picture of corruption in much larger and more important institutions in American society?
The answer is … available only to those who act now and call RIGHT NOW (operators are waiting!) to get a brain-power-boosting dietary supplement (not available in stores!) that’s been formulated from limited supplies (which will not last! Order now!) of an anti-oxidant compound available only in Newt Gingrich’s dick cheese.
Only then will you know the truth. And the truth will set you free.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Jim R., Marc doesn’t believe that ACORN is only a gnat with penney ante corruption. He knows what they are and that they are even worse than the corrupt unions. He’s simply trying to get our goats.
- – -
Michael Turner, the CPAs and SEC would know about material inside crime being swept under the rug and would have something to say about it – like disclosing it.
- – -
reg, once again you show your ignorance by admitting that you don’t know what a “set” of comments represents. But, why should I try to help you? You would just call me a liar.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Michael Crosby:
Any thread in which “Woody” comments constitute over 20% of the responses is presumptively pointless.
I wrote some scripts to scrape the comment logs for statistics summarizing number of replies to each post, how long they were, etc. I was having some trouble deciding how to present the results, so I stopped. Perhaps this would be one way.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
(Of course that first graf was a quote from MC, and the second was my reply. The old tricks for getting quotes in don’t work any more…)
September 17th, 2009 at 5:15 am
“Michael Turner, the CPAs and SEC would know about material inside crime being swept under the rug and would have something to say about it – like disclosing it.”
Quite right at least about CPAs.
But … why didn’t FOX News report this videographer to the police? Oh, obviously: he wasn’t committing any crime, just exercising his free speech rights! But wait — ACORN people aren’t able to figure that out themselves? Clearly, they were able to figure it out (because the guy was obviously not serious, any more than the ACORN people’s own responses to him were serious.) So why should ACORN be on the hook to report this guy to the police, but FOX News wasn’t? Because he was running a sting on ACORN? But … maybe that sting story is just his after-the-fact excuse? Right? Maybe he really believed that he could use ACORN to get a housing loan to get a house for underage prostitutes to pay his way through law school and fund a political campaign –
No. Obviously not. Oh, but ACORN people couldn’t see through that, and therefore must have been offering him advice in dead earnest?
Interesting double standard you’re running there, Woody.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:05 am
This video
http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/17/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-san-diego-ca/
is really quite amazing.
Take the first video first. (Not to suggest that it was actually shot first.)
Now, let’s say that this guy working for ACORN really had heard that Hannah, the videographer’s sidekick, was a prostitute, that they were planning to smuggle underage prostitutes into the U.S. Let’s say that, upon hearing this, he then offered his help in that enterprise.
If so, it would have been child’s play to simply supply the unedited version that made that charge incontrovertible.
But that’s not what you’ll find there. You’ll find a bunch of clips in no clear order, that don’t even firmly substantiate that he was offering to help anyone illegally crossing the border.
What I mainly see here is a guy who, when he’s finally told that some girls that will be shipped across the U.S-Mexico border are underage, VISIBLY RECOILS IN SHOCK. They play that one twice, and in each case, well, how amazingly convenient that the video clip ends right at that point.
Without knowing the order in which these clips were shot, there’s basically nothing here that supports the charges, from what I can tell. But watch it all the way through, and judge for yourself. For all we know, the way their story was first pitched to him, it was that they wanted his help in intercepting a shipment of underage sex slaves, possibly buying off the smugglers.
Now watch the second video. It’s continuous, but nowhere in it does Hannah say that she was working as a prostitute to make the $2500 in a few days, as she claimed. Even the part where she talks about harassment by Mexican cops might only have been a reference to the fact that she was working illegally IN MEXICO. Beautiful women actually can make amounts of money like that, just hostessing at private parties in Cabo San Lucas, I don’t doubt.
I could move on through this collection, but the modus operandi is pretty clear. The EASIEST thing to offer — an uncut version that would prove their charges — is precisely what they don’t have. And what’s the most plausible reason why not? Because they don’t have it.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:12 am
My morbid interest got the better of me.
Here
http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/14/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-new-york-ny/
our bouncy faux/Fox pimp-ho pair seem to have a staffer at ACORN tell them at one point to advertise their services in their new house as prostitution — but then she asks if prostitution is illegal in New York. This is toward the beginning of video #1 of this two-parter, but it could have been toward the end. This woman sounds like she hasn’t even been in the U.S. very long. Note that the other staffer, behind and to her left, appears to be in total shock during the obviously more shocking statements these two make.
Some ways through the second video, there’s mention of a need to protect some underage girls, but no mention of a plan to prostitute them.
In the “Rule #x” captions inserted, the word “Prostitute” is inserted where the staffers aren’t using that term — most likely before the word was even spoken in real time, as opposed to Breitbart Edit Time, where almost anything becomes possible. (These people are careful to leave out the quote marks in those cases.)
Interestingly, the site quotes Bertha Lewis as saying: “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.”
So, in other words, the videographer and Hannah had to try for months before they could get find ACORN staffers as ignorant and gullible as your average Glenn Beck fan.
Otherwise, it’s the same video-clip blender treatment, so we have no idea what these staffers were being told in what’s been edited out, or in what order they were being told. We can’t even be sure it was all taken in the same visit — the apparent amicable departure, during which they are assured of confidentiality, might have been just before the couple returned and bombed them with this pimp-ho story.
Much of it is consistent with the ACORN staffers having first been told (perhaps) that “Eden” is a stripper, with a lot of undeclared cash income. Well, that certainly goes with the neighborhood this ACORN office was in, and they were probably used to dispensing such advice about how to move from undocumented income to a more above-board style of operation, perhaps hoping that they could help some to a better life.
There’s another interesting quote in this blog entry, from Saul Alinsky: “Alinsky Rule #10, “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”
It would seem that Breitbart has taken a page from that book. But Alinsky also wrote “The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.” With public trust and credibility of the GOP at an all-time low, I guess they have decided that it’s perfectly moral to reach even lower, to prevent imminent defeat. Alinsky was, I think, talking mainly about how ethics and morality will be *abused* by unethical, amoral political actors. This ACORN teen prostitute video mashup series will probably become a textbook case of such abuse, in the end.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I can’t help it — it’s like eating potato chips.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/washington-dc-acorn-video-child-prostitution-investigation/
A little more red meat here, but not much.
In other videos, Hannah has had a dangerous pimp after her (presumably James, the upright law student, is now protecting her, and they need the house as a stronghold and hiding place.) In the 1st video of this two-parter, that situation is alluded to only with her saying “I might end up dead.”
But watch the video clock (if you believe it). There are gaps right about where you’d expect that part of the story to be told and re-told. So, much of the remaining dialogue might have been advice about how to launder past income from prostitution into a more legitimate-seeming front operation, BUT ALSO under a stated assumption of Hannah moving on to other lines of work (stripping, modeling).
Without the complete unedited video, we might at worst have some ACORN staffers advising people how to get out of a dangerous and illegal situation. This advice might itself have been illegal, and these staffers should have been disciplined at the very least (firing them might have been appropriate).
But is this solid evidence of ACORN staffers complicit in helping set up an underage prostitution operation? It would be so easy: just release the entire video, unedited. But if they don’t do that, I just can’t imagine that it’s for any other reason than the simplest one: they don’t have that.
By scouring the field, ACORN, with some 1200 offices, turned out to have some poorly trained staffers who gave some advice that reflects pretty poorly on ACORN’s recruiting policies. But look: nobody’s required to call the police about a crime they know of only by word of mouth, from distinctly non-credible sources, and even if you believe them, in neighborhoods like these, it’s entirely possible to put people (and yourself) in even greater danger than they (and you) might already be in, by calling the cops if they haven’t done so themselves. That’s a ghetto survival skill. Finally, these staffers might have just thought, Well, these people are obviously putting us on, but let’s just be cool, play along, and laugh about it afterward. That a ghetto survival skill, too.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Give it up Turner.
Shouldn’t you be charging ACORN for this semi-professional spin?
September 17th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Micahel Turner, you’re quite the pimp for ACORN, aren’t you?
- – -
While we discuss gnats, Obama is getting our country screwed over in world and defense matters. Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, Cuba, and Venezuela all see that Obama is weak and are taking advantage of him and us. This carries a price larger than any phony stimulus or socialized medicine plans…or, the Iraq War. This is pretty serious business.
Why don’t you guys quit being cheerleaders for this incompetent, over-his-head President and start caring about our country and that Obama’s going to leave us as a second rate power? When’s the last time that anyone saw our Secretary of State?
Don’t you have anything to say about international affairs or are you just concerned with swiping money from those who earned it?
September 17th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Jim R, Woody — it’s so simple: just show me the unedited videos that prove these staffers were complicit in setting up a house of prostitution featuring underage illegals. Or even anything half that bad.
Surely, if Pimp James and Ho Hannah had that, they’d would have turned it over to the police, and those staffers would be behind bars today, right? Surely, if they had that, it would be easier to supply it to us than to supply these edited versions, right?
If you can’t show me that, you don’t have much, except insults like “pimp for ACORN” to throw around. And everyone here can see it.
You’re getting nowhere with this tack, so, of course, you change the subject. OK. What’s the Obama administration doing about military technology links leaks to China? Throwing people who leak sensitive information in jail, for one thing.
When’s the last time anybody saw our Secretary of State? Well, just the other day, in fact, warning Venezuela on its arms import policies.
Oops. I guess you’ll have to try another angle. I guess you’ll have to move along to yet ANOTHER subject. While loudly pretending there’s no evidence that contradicted anything you said. Maybe fling an insult or two as you move on. That seems to be the default GOP propaganda strategy these days. The Grand Old Party isn’t so Grand anymore, I guess. But it’s sure getting old. Fast.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
In addition, the guy who said that “Obama isn’t worried about fighting terrorists” needs to broaden his information sources just a bit.
If you can’t show me that, you don’t have much, except insults like “pimp for ACORN” to throw around. And everyone here can see it.
That is all they’ve got.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Michael,
Woody’s ongoing problem is that he doesn’t know the difference between an opinion piece and a bit of reportage.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Reportage … reportage … oh, wait, is that the kind of journalism where you waste time fact-checking when you could be slanting the piece a little more?
Don’t make me laugh. That’s gone the way of intelligent right-wingers you could feel real some respect for.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:38 am
I have to say that it’s refreshing to see Michael Turner come around again (don’t be a stranger, Michael!).
September 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am
What Kyle said.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
“…just show me the unedited videos”
The House and Senate have them. Or, maybe the same edited version you think you saw, but with an overwhelmingly different conclusion.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
You’re surprising me MT. You are usually the level headed logical one here.
I want the old MT back.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
So let me get this straight: Woody links to three opinion pieces by two known wingnuts, who if Obama literally saved their lives, they would probably condemn him for screwing their family out of survivor benefits and MT links to two bits of reportage, yet you try to make the argument that MT is not levelheaded and logical.
Obviously you have no idea what that is.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I might add that JR and WM didn’t seem to get their knickers twisted about this last year.
Why am I thinking of beams, motes and eyes right now?
September 18th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
dead silence from the right on this.
September 18th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Heh, good one, Randy. Especially about how they got people to register Republican by making the signers think they were signing a petition against child molesters.
Jim R and Woody also didn’t comment on my link above about where the treasurer for the GOP was found to have embezzled far more money from his own party than any ACORN insider had ever filched from ACORN.
When you put it all together, well, the GOP doesn’t look a whole lot better than ACORN — IF you attribute all misbehavior by individuals to the organization itself. But would that be fair to the GOP? Of course not!
At least, I wouldn’t do that. In particular, I would never take seriously the notion that the GOP is “intentionally structured as a criminal enterprise,” just because of a few bad apples, even if some of those bad apples were bobbing up near the top.
But that such calm, level-headed, fact-based, benefit-of-the-doubt reasoning appears to be something that Darrell Issa is apparently incapable of.
Of course, the conclusions of Issa’s report colimb down quite some distance down the flagpole from the wife-beating charge implied by its flapping banner of a title:
“On the basis of this Report, the legal protections distinguishing ACORN and its affiliates must be ignored because the ability to ascertain whether federal moneys are being walled off from ACORN’s political activities is impracticable. As a result, ACORN and its Council of affiliates represent a politically partisan lobbying organization. ACORN and its affiliates’ nonprofit exemptions and receipt of federal grants must therefore bear greater scrutiny.”
OK. Bring it on, Darrell. But think carefully about the end product of any equitable, apolitical, nonpartisan application of justice along such lines. Which side of the aisle will end up looking worse, in the end, if the corruption yardstick is the obvious one: how much money bought how much juice?
September 19th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
In short, sow the wind, but be prepared to reap the whirlwind.
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