NY Times profiles ACORN videographer James O'Keefe III http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/us/19sting.html?_r=1
Are you an English teacher? Get a petition to include debate at the Olympics. Form a US team, join it. Bring home the gold. It's gotta be a sport, right? It involves competition. Still don't know why/how that is relevant. If you want to be the fan that sports a bumper sticker with past scores or cover yourself in paint, be my guest. Just don't get mad when I laugh at you. Where did that come from? And yes, the latter of your rant would be normal. Last year it was 4, now its 5.
Is there a bottom line here? Acorn has never had a national impact, and will continue to not have a national impact. why is this a story?
Is this a serious statement? Do you really think those are mutually exclusive? Do you honestly believe that people cannot simultaneously take larger, societal ramifications into account when making personal decisions about themselves or their family and friends? To be clear -- I'm not disagreeing with your second statement. My family will always come first, full stop. But that does not mean that I, or millions of other people I'm sure, don't take larger considerations into account when making personal purchases, voting decisions, community activities, etc.
I just thought some people were taking themselves and their insignificant contributions to the betterment of society a little too seriously. I was just advocating lightning up a little. I was thinking about getting a petition together to include political debate in the special olympics. then watch me bring home the hardware. but then I realized there was already a forum for idiots debating politics - called Congress.
Yes, you are indeed very persuasive on these boards. I admire how you are able to make points without trying to put down those who think different. It really does make a difference, in terms of getting people to think. Keep it up!
For the life of me - I don't understand how killing ACORN will change anything, one way or another. I also don't know how they negatively affected the political life of this country in general.
It is big news because they are a high profile organization that makes news every election cycle. Google them and see how often they are in the news. You'll see that they do generate a lot of interest. Sure, because they tend to register more democrats than republicans, and are known as a 'liberal' organization, somebody at FOX might make more of it than is warranted, but on the other hand I think others are trying to hush it up for the same reason. To me the story is significant in a human interest sort of way because it shows how an organization devoted to helping victims can deteriorate into helping the victimizers. Imagine if some guy with a camera found ushers in several pentecostal churches around the country offering to help pimps. You can argue that it's just volunteer ushers and somebody might defend the US pentecostal organization by saying it's probably just coincidence, but it's still a shocking story, because we don't expect a church to be helping pimps. Likewise, I don't expect an organization like ACORN to be helping pimps. I can understand as logical that a few workers of ACORN working under pressure might decide to fake some voter registrations in order to meet their quota, and so I didn't make a big deal of that. But on the other hand, when you hear that several people belonging to a high profile advocate for victims like ACORN talking about helping pimps, and one of them went as far as to offer to help them smuggle minors into the country to become sex workers, how can you say that it is not a human interest story? You really don't see a story at all in here?
A Story? Sure. But I don't see it as a national story. I follow the news quite a bit, and I honestly hadn't heard of Acorn until a few months before the Election. And then it wasn't even a major news paper or anything. I agree that it is a human interest story - what I don't understand is why it is made out to be this huge victory for conservatives in their war against Obama and the Democrats. They didn't deliver a win for them, and as far as I can tell don't make a significant impact upon our political world.
Probably they see it as an opportunity to claim a win because they haven't had any wins lately, and they need to get whatever they can to rally the faithful. But I agree that ACORN's impact is probably minor. Their registration drives might help Democrats win a few districts here and there, that's probably about it, I think. But I'm not an expert on this, so who knows?
You don't win wars by constantly going toe-toe with your opponent. You undermine their ability to wage war. Case-in-point: WWII & oil.
But that's my point - should the MSM be covering it as a major news story? They aren't supposed to pick sides remember? Beyond the human interest portion - why would they pick this up right now, when there are other, bigger stories out there?
FFS!!! I've already TOLD you why political support has been draining away from Acorn... because the attention it's been getting, (for a few, frankly, non-stories about some people that work there not being particularly bright or particularly moral), has made it difficult for those that basically support it to continue that support.
Asked whether the left-leaning documentaries of Michael Moore do not do the same, Ms. Farkas said: “Michael Moore goes after the rich and powerful. James isn’t doing that. He goes after low-level bureaucrats and people who are trying to help low-income people.” Well, quite! This guy goes after the low-hanging fruit in these organisations. People too dumb to get into positions or influence them in any major way. Moore takes a look at the bigger picture... how tens or hundreds of thousands of people are effected by decision made, often by just a few individuals and then goes after THOSE individuals.
If a strategy has worked in the past, keep doing it until proven otherwise. Truth be told, I can only hope that they win in 2010. A Republican Congress and Democrat President seems to be work quite well - absolute power leads to implementing agendas.