ACORN Falls From The Tree

The Patriot Post  -  Wed Chronicle – Wed 16 September 2009

THE FOUNDATION

“[T]here is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.” –James Madison

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

Undercover conservatives catch ACORN in a tight spot

“After Acorn workers were caught on tape in three cities allegedly abetting what they believed was a fraudulent-mortgage and sex-trafficking scheme, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the group of funding in the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. The amendment, offered by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, passed by an 83-to-7 margin and marked the third time this year that Republicans have tried to block the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now from feeding at the federal trough. Seven Democrats refused to do the right thing. The magnificent seven are Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; both Vermont Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, as well as both Illinois Democrats, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Roland Burris. This vote comes after the release of three hidden-camera videos showing Acorn housing staff in its Baltimore, Washington and New York offices apparently helping a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan to set up a brothel. (Insert stimulus joke here.) The Census Bureau immediately severed ties with Acorn, unconcerned that prostitutes and tax evaders might be undercounted in the 2010 census.” –Investor’s Business Daily

DEZINFORMATSIA

When the anchor misses the news: “I don’t even know about it. So you’ve got me at a loss, I don’t know. … I know we’ve done some stories about ACORN before, but this one I don’t know about. … [M]aybe this is just one you leave to the cables.” –ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson

You call that outreach?: “He [Obama] made outreach to his conservative opponents, while also refuting many of their ideas. At times, it was almost like the President were a principal and Congress a bunch of unruly school kids.” –ABC’s Jake Tapper on BO’s speech last Wednesday

Speaking “truth” to those out of power: “The fallout continues from that extraordinary moment in the United States Congress. Presidents appearing there as respected guests have been interrupted before by boos and hisses, but this was different. A Congressman last [Wednesday] night calling a president an outright liar to his face. Just the latest indication of how ugly the debate over reforming health care has gotten.” –CBS’s Katie Couric (Meanwhile, Obama has yet to apologize for calling his opponents liars in the same speech.)

“The insult heard ’round the world. … Leading off tonight, the gift. When Congressman Joe Wilson shouted, ‘You lie!’ at President Obama last [Wednesday] night he gave the Democrats a gift they hope just keeps on giving. Wilson was forced — and that does seem to be the word, forced — to apologize today. And his Washington office has been mobbed mostly by right-wing supporters. Democrats hope to turn Wilson into the Cindy Sheehan of the anti-health care reform movement. A clownish figure of ridicule who hurts his own side, more than he helps.” –MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle

“It’s all about race”: “I was at some town meetings this summer, most recently in Arkansas. And this is an awful lot about race. You just can’t avoid it.” –Time magazine’s Joe Klein

“You look at the image of the Republican Party, all white males with short haircuts. They look sort of angry. No women, no minorities, and it looks like they’ve sort of become unhinged.” –MSNBC’s David Shuster on the party that is run by Michael Steele, who is black, and featured a female vice presidential candidate in Sarah Palin

“Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.” –New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, one of many locos at the Times

Newspulper Headlines:

So He Is an Alien!: “President Obama Brought to Earth” –Daily Telegraph (London)

The 9/10 Mentality Personified: “Kerry Marks Eve of 9/11 Anniversary With Push for Climate Legislation” –Washington Independent

This Project Is Dead in the Water: “Kennedy Memoir E-Book Release Delayed ‘Indefinitely’” –USA Today

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Weather Creates Problems” –Tampa Tribune

News You Can Use: “‘Contraception Cheapest Way to Combat Climate Change’” –Daily Telegraph (London)

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Obama Steps Up Call for Health Care Reform” –CNN.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

INSIGHT

“Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.” –English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” –Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428-348 B.C.)

“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” — English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

UPRIGHT

“Taxpayers deserve to know how ACORN and its vast web of nonprofit, tax-exempt affiliates are using their money (40 percent of the group’s revenue comes from the government). The flagship group trains publicly funded ACORN tax advisers and mortgage counselors across the country.” –columnist Michelle Malkin

“Maybe August was simply a long dream (or nightmare, for some politicians). Our leaders spent the month in town hall meetings, hearing from citizens who want nothing to do with government-controlled health care. But with August over, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to say, basically, never mind what happened last month. ‘Now is the season for action,’ Obama declared, in the course of a speech that advanced few new ideas and could pretty much have been written in July, or even January.” –columnist Rich Tucker

“One of the secrets of being a glib talker is not getting hung up over whether what you are saying is true, and instead giving your full attention to what is required by the audience and the circumstances of the moment, without letting facts get in your way and cramp your style. Obama has mastered that art. Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince skeptics but to use words to help the gullible to believe what they want to believe. No message has been more welcomed by the gullible, in countries around the world, than the promise of something for nothing. That is the core of Barack Obama’s medical care plan.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“Can someone explain to me how President Barack Obama’s grandiose scheme destined to reduce the quality of the best health care system in the history of the world, force millions of people who choose not to purchase health insurance to purchase it, greatly increase medical costs, our deficits and national debt, ultimately reduce patient choice, and place health care decisions in the hands of heartless bureaucrats is somehow a demonstration of compassion?” –columnist David Limbaugh

“The president claims he has ‘no interest in putting insurance companies out of business,’ but that is exactly what will happen if the government forces them to expand the services they cover while simultaneously preventing them from charging higher fees, especially if the expanded pool of beneficiaries includes many of the least healthy individuals. … The president is beginning to sound like one of those late-night TV ad pitchmen. But no matter how many times he tries to repackage his product or promises the whole thing comes free, Americans aren’t buying what he has to sell.” –columnist Linda Chavez

THE DEMO-GOGUES

Nothing says “liberty” like a harness: “We must do more to harness the power of American ingenuity and productivity so that we can put people back to work and unleash our full economic potential.” –Barack Obama (“Rather than unleash it, wouldn’t it be simpler not to harness it in the first place?” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto)

Blame Bush: “Part of the reason I faced a trillion dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for — from the Iraq War to tax breaks for the wealthy. I will not make that same mistake with health care.” –Barack Obama, who walked in the door to a $450 billion deficit

Putting on the squeeze: “Half the bill will be paid for by squeezing excesses out of the [Medicare and Medicaid] system, and there is $500 billion dollars to do that and we’re looking for more. That can be achieved — waste, fraud, abuse, redundancy, obsolescence, whatever it is. Squeeze it out of the system; and that means out of the providers and the rest as well.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (This is otherwise known as taking water from the deep end of the pool and pouring it into the shallow end.)

The BIG Lie: “What this [health care takeover] plan will do is make the insurance you have work better for you.” –Barack Obama

The BIG Lie 2: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” –Barack Obama

“You lie”: “Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk-show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.” –Barack Obama, calling his opponents liars

Yeah, right: “I’m open to new ideas. We’re not being rigid and ideological about this thing.” –Barack Obama

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Racism is everywhere: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American. … That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people — not just in the South but around the country — that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.” –Jimmy Carter, who wasn’t qualified to lead this country, either

“No one who is sane would think the president was going to make a partisan speech to school children. And yet, there’s something about that, I’m sorry — I know it drives conservatives nuts when you accuse them of racism — but when you don’t want the president just talking to your kids? I grew up in an all-white town in northern New Jersey, yeah New Jersey. That’s what bedroom communities were after World War II. And I remember hearing parents talk when I was a kid, you know, they didn’t want black people just talking to their kids. That’s what this reminded me of.” –HBO’s Bill Maher

Downplaying the protests: “I don’t think [the 9/12 DC rally is] indicative of the nation’s mood. … One of the great things about our country is people can express themselves, even if they’re not representative of the majority. [A CBS] poll, which was taken after the president’s speech, suggests that they don’t represent a mainstream view of this health care plan, and so, uh, you know, I — I don’t think we ought to be, uh, distracted, uh, by that. My message to [the protesters] is, they’re wrong.” –Obama adviser David Axelrod

SHORT CUTS

“The little that was new [last] Wednesday night seemed taken from the scheme proposed earlier in the week by Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of one of the committees writing reform legislation. Mr. Baucus proposes penalties ranging to $3,800 on families without mandatory health care insurance. If the Baucus scheme works, it could be applied to other public policy dilemmas. We could cure homelessness, for example, by imposing stiff fines on the homeless who refuse to buy houses. (That would spur the housing market, too.)” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

“President Obama warned Congress Wednesday that people will die if we do nothing about health care. Of course, people will also die if we do something. If history proves anything it is that nothing is more recession-proof than the funeral business.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan — relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are? … Stupid enough not to be offended at how contemptibly stupid they think we are.” –National Review editor Rich Lowry

“It appears as if ACORN is not just into soup kitchens, daycare, voter fraud and town hall intimidation; they will also help a young wannabe Madame jumpstart a whorehouse. ShamWow, folks! Community organizing, indeed! I mean … what community is complete and feels truly organized without some hookers in the hood? God bless ‘em. It brings a tear to your eye, now doesn’t it? Hope and change, folks. Hope and change.” –radio talk-show host and columnist Doug Giles

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