26th
Guns and Butter, Troops and Negroes
James “Encyclopedia Brown” O’Keefe was arrested today trying to bug the New Orleans offices of Louisiana Senator Mary Landreiu. He was probably after his latest half assed masterpiece of uh…really nothing.
You probably have no idea who James O’Keefe is, which means that you are a balanced individual with things to do during the day and a family to take care of at night. But if you are basement dwelling, teeth grinding, talk radio listening wingnut, James O’Keefe is a hero. A saint. An eternal martyr for good. See, James O’Keefe is the guy who walked around from ACORN office to ACORN office dressed like a white guy’s version of Venus Fly Trap until he was able to get someone to say something stupid and incriminating into the hidden camera he had concealed in his, uh, “pimp stick” or whatever.
He then triumphantly sent his footage to Breitbart, who published it, and then a printout of that got picked up off the floor of a urine-soaked padded cell by Glenn Beck, and then it got picked up by Hannity, Rush, Fox News, O’Reilly, et al.
So based on what one employee in one office said about prostitution that was completely imaginary, ACORN was all of a sudden the biggest criminal enterprise in the United States. Helping low income people secure housing loans? They HAVE TO be lining their own pockets. Registering people to vote, and BLACK PEOPLE at that? It HAS to be a massive voter fraud conspiracy. That explains why Obama is in the White House. “Community Organizing?” That sounds leftist to me. Plus they all happen to be black. How many of our hard earned taxpayer dollars are going to this mafia?
Once all of this speculation got out, hundreds of right wing bloggers, journalists and radio screamers suffered severe injuries when their erect penises slammed into the bottoms of their desks at ninety miles an hour. Nothing gets these guys more worked up than the idea of bringing down the Head Negro. (Never mind that Obama’s relationship with ACORN was tenuous at best. He helped handle some legal stuff for them in 1995, and paid for their services in get out the vote rallies while he was running for president. Hiring third parties is something that conservative candidates do as well. But see, Obama is black. ACORN is black. And aren’t you guys all cousins or something?)
The idea of “Widespread Voter Fraud” was floated a bunch, but this was torpedoed as inaccurate by Factcheck.org. Yeah, there were some voter registration cards that had “Mickey Mouse” or “50 Cent” on them, but you know who found these cards and then turned them in? Members of ACORN themselves. Nobody named “Mickey Mouse” or “P.Diddy” ended up successfully voting in the 2008 election.
There was an embezzlement investigation which went all the way back to 1999, which revealed that a guy named Dale Rathke had embezzled just under a million from ACORN. He got caught and was made to pay it back. And while it is surely bad when people embezzle from charitable organizations, ACORN isn’t exactly the first. A guy named William Aramony was sent to jail in 1995 for skimming 1.5 million out of the United Way. But nobody is calling the United Way a criminal enterprise. But then again, the United Way doesn’t do things like register black people to vote.
Another big stink occurred when it came out that ACORN was going to get just under a million dollars for what was called a “firefighter grant.” Cue right wing outrage boner:
“With fire departments all over Louisiana – and the rest of the country – struggling to make ends meet and get the equipment and training they need to protect their local communities, the idea of a million dollar grant going to ACORN is unsettling, to say the least,” said Vitter. “ACORN’s continued contempt for state and federal laws has placed their entire organization under a cloud of serious scrutiny, and this grant should be rescinded and awarded to a more deserving group of first responders.”
If all you are going by is that, here’s the narrative: “Our brave firefighters are going to have to charge into burning buildings without protective gear so the ACORN welfare queens can have spinning rims on their Cadillacs and fried chicken dinners.Give the money to the real heroes, like the ones in my district. You know, the white ones.”
Ok, in the first place, that money wasn’t “taken away” from anybody, fire department, municipality or otherwise. In the second place, that money is meant to go for things like working smoke detectors and sprinkler systems in low income housing, which, if anything, should make the lives of the big brave strapping firefighters a hell of a lot easier. Would they rather try to put out a fire in a poor neighborhood with no smoke detectors or sprinkler systems? Maybe we should ask them and see what they think,
Knowing a big, honking bleating scapegoat when they see one, everybody on the right went completely batshit over ACORN for about six months, so much so to the point that there was actually a bill on the floor of the house that was literally called “The Defund ACORN Act.”
Everything was cruising along with this bill, right up until the folks who were running it through realized what the language might actually mean:
This bill, designed to block any federal funds from going to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), was approved in the form of a motion to recommit with instructions to the House’s student loan bill (H.R. 3221). It has been noted that the bill is written so broadly that it could apply to organizations besides ACORN, including defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Whoopsie. Lockheed Martin? Northrop Grumman? Defense contractors? Our best buds?
Shit. Uh…well…maybe we should re-think this whole thing.
After all, the bill calls for the blocking of funds for any group or company who “has filed a fraudulent form with any federal or state regulatory agency.” So that makes the whole F-22 Raptor thing a little sticky, huh?
And if the real source of outrage is the whole “imaginary hooker” thing, then that means that DynCorp must be in a whole shit heap of trouble, right? Because those guys were using taxpayer money to actually run real live hookers. But nobody is going to take away Lockheed or DynCorp’s money, right? I mean, in terms of federal government loot, DynCorp made in a year what it took ACORN a decade to get a hold of, even with the freaking embezzlement case.
So here’s the difference, in case you haven’t figured it out. Halliburton can charge $1500 a plate to feed the troops, and that’s ok. ACORN shouldn’t receive government money because they register black people to vote, and that’s not ok. DynCorp can receive government money to run a Bosnian hooker ring, and that’s ok because DynCorp helps the troops. ACORN shouldn’t get any money because one employee said the wrong thing to a half assed investigative reporter about imaginary prostitution. But again, ACORN helps black people, and you know how those people are when they vote. Pretty uppity, huh?
It’s a big massive conundrum, isn’t it? Is it hypocrisy? Is it scapegoating? All depends. Do you sell weapons and ammo and logistics and things that go boom? That makes you a pillar of free enterprise and a defender of freedom, even if you engage in fraud, overbilling and prostitution. Do you help poor black people improve their lot in life and help them with jobs and housing but make a few mistakes that eventually turn out to be nothing? Then you’re a nigger. No money for you.
I really hope this guy O’Keefe has a chance to do some real in-depth research on corrupt liberal organizations from the depths of Angola Prison. Go ahead, buddy. Tell your cellmates all about how rotten ACORN is. They’ll be trading your ass for cigarettes within 48 hours. Why don’t you make a movie about that?
