Squirrelly on ACORN, Part II

Obama already gave full disclosure on this subject. We also need to hear a little more about Todd Palin and his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. This is something that should concern all of us. We are not hearing much about this because Obama is running a very straight forward campaign. By the way I have noticed that every thing I read from Jake Tapper is slanted in favor of the McCain campaign. His writing always reminds me of the Fox news network. That's not real journalism, It's pandering to challenged followers who will not take the time to research the information given to them.

HAVING PERSONALLY RUN A SUCCESSFUL VOTER REGISTRATION EVENT FOR 7 MTHS IN ONE LOCATION...WE SIGNED UP OVER 4,000 NEW VOTERS.WE WERE VOLUNTEERS AND WORKED IN A NON-PARTISAN FASHION.WE ALSO PAID FOR OUE OWN GAS TO GET THERE. I AVERAGED $285.00 PER MONTH.

DURING THE GENERAL ELECTION, WE WERE HARRASSED BY THE UNAUTHORIZED INVASION OF ACORN WORKERS. OUR POSITION WAS HELD EACH WEEKEND IN THE SAME SHOPPING MALL WITH AUTHORIZATION BY THE MALL OWNERS.

ACORN WOULD ENTER THE PREMISES WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. WE HAD THEM EJECTED BY SECURITY GUARDS EACH TIME THEY INVADED THE MALL. THEY WERE AGGRESSIVE AND SEVERAL SHOP OWNERS WERE INSULTED. THEY TRIED TO INTIMATE THAT THEY WERE WITH THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN IN ORDER TO GAIN ENTRANCE. WE KNEW BETTER BECAUSE WE WERE WITH THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN. OUR VOTER REGISTRATION EFFORTS WERE CONDUCTED WITH NOTHING BUT RESPECT AND HONESTY. WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO DISPLAY ANY OBAMA BUTTONS,SHIRTS,ETC...OR DISPLAY OBAMA CAMPAIGN MATERIALS.I LOVED THE NON-PARTISAN LEVEL BECAUSE IT GAVE ME THE CHANCE TO LISTEN TO OPINIONS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THIS VERY IMPORTANT AND HISTORIC ELECTION. I ALSO LOVED IT BECAUSE I AM WHITE, ABSOLUTELY DETEST RACISM...AND I HUGGED AND TO THIS DAY HOLD ONTO MY OBTAINED RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY. I LEARNED SOME LESSONS IN THERE..SO MUCH SO...THAT I TOLD A FRIEND..GOD HAD AN ACCIDENT WHEN I WAS BORN...AND DROPPED ME IN A BUCKET OF BLEACH. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO LOVED AS I WAS BY THESE AMERICANS OF A DIFFERENT COLOR.
JUST LAST WEEK...I LOST A 10 YEAR-WHITE GIRLFRIEND..WE HAVE BEEN THRU SO MANY MEMORIES TOGETHER..NOW...SHE HAS CALLED ME 'HITLER' BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN THIS BLACK MAN. MAY GOD HELP US ALL!

I LOVE SENATOR OBAMA AND HIS FAMILY WITH A PASSION. WE DESPERATELY NEED HIS VISION IN THE WHITEHOUSE. SENATOR OBAMA HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ACORN. IN FACT WE WERE AFRAID OF LOSING OUR MALL LOCATION DUE TO THE FACT THAT MALL GUARDS HAD TO SPEND SO MUCH OF THEIR TIME TOSSING THESE PEOPLE OFF THE PREMISES. THE MALL MANAGEMENT OFFICE LOVED OUR PRESENCE...BECAUSE WE BROUGHT ALL RACES TOGETHER WITHOUT PUSHING ANY SPECIFIC CANDIDATE DOWN THEIR THROAT.

Don't forget who stole the 2000 and 2004 elections and how it was done -- not by registering new voters, but by preventing legitimate voters from voting and monkeying with the voting machines.

We all know now that Joe the Plummer is actually a Republicans plant aka "Joe the Republican". This stunt raises questions about ACORN. What a convenient connection between ACORN and Senator Obama since he was a community organizer. It would be so easy for the Republicans to plant workers within ACORN to manufacture the fraudulent forms. This would create the appearance of a criminal activity and Obama connection. It is strange that we have not seen any actual ACORN field worker involvement. The workers who actually turned this fraudulent forms in. That could be easily tracked. The attempt is to put ACORN the organization on trial. So much could be accomplish by the Republicans from this new stunt; disenfranchise thousands of legal voters, tarnish the image of Senator Obama, and steal some key battleground states, won the election. If this ACORN mess is not resolve within the next 2 weeks, than this theory becomes something more. We all know what happen to our democracy in FL 8 years ago. Those facts are now clear. Most of our recent calamities have been man-made. These are the stunts that causes our calamities. If this is true, don't blame the Republican. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We got fooled once (2000 via FL) , than twice (2004 via OH) and now here we are in 2008 (via ACORN).

Fizziwig,

"It's another Rovian tactic:

Obama's strength is voter registration (hillary also did a lot for this during the primary. So go after that strength, and the fact that minorities and poor people are vilified all the better. Really Jake can you get down to what is really going on here. A distraction by the GOP. It started at their convention with the outcry against community organizers"

Exactly what I was thinking, too.

Obama/Biden 08!

mara,

"Thank you. The army of unemployed ultra conservatives who sit around and watch Fox News and listen to Rush all day are certainly getting a different story about ACORN. Rush somehow thinks there is vast conspiracy between the sub-prime lenders (say, Countrywide), Bill Ayers, Obama, and ACORN to turn America's children into anti=capitalists and destroy democracy."

Yes, I agree. The "conservatives" are getting loonier every day. Any organization that is perceived by them to help minorities is vilified. Sad that these are the ONLY things that get the republican base riled up. (And they wonder why minorities have left their party in droves!)

in one instance in ohio a group of 20 to 25 collage students rented a small house registered to vote as residents of ohio and most went home.went home as in one enterprising young man graduate of harvard from new york and now attending oxford in england,yea he is a real resident of ohio,if you believe that i have some beachfront property in phoenix id like to sell ya.btw ohio law says you cannot be a temporary worker or visitor and register to vote.legally that is.

With all the technology at our disposal, why can we not definitively identify people registering to vote and accurate count their votes?

We should all be demanding a better system and holding the politicians with their vested interest in re-election accountable. There are a lot of things that they cannot fix. This is one that they can.

Demand it of them. Your vote only counts if it is counted correctly.

If some of the voter registrations filed by hired staff of ACORN, they should be eliminated from voter rolls. There are checks and balances in place in most states to verify the authenticity of voter registrations.
There is a big difference between hired staff who are lazy filling in bogus voter registrations and an organized attempt at voter fraud. The investigation by appropriate Federal agencies will reveal what actually happened. In the mean time, the states should exercise care to make sure that only legitimate voters are allowed to vote. Just because a small percentage of the voter registrations were bogus does not mean you can disenfranchise an entire group of legitimate voters. Obama is on the record supporting measures to ensure the sanctity of the democratic process.

ACORN + Democratic party involvement = voter fraud in the US as bad or worse than in many 3rd world countries.

How can we criticize Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others when the voter fraud in the US is so bad?

Why is Jimmy "world wide election observer" Carter so silent on ACORN and its relationship to Democrats????

Jake, what do you mean by "voluntarily conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for ACORN's Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s."

Is that like two 1 hour training sessions, those two being 3 years apart? Or, two "courses" for an hour each that spanned 18 months each? The frequency and total time training is vague here. And what did the "training" sessions consist of? How to Commit Voter Registration Fraud 101, Strong Arming the Bank 201, Scam I Am?

TRW-McCain was one of two of the Keating 5 who were exonerated. The other three were sanctioned by the Ethics Committee. The other person exonerated? Democrat John Glenn, who introduced Obama at a rally last week.
Silly Democrat.

"ACORN has been around for three decades, and has done consumers a tremendous service in highlighting and challenging the predatory lending practices perpetrated against the poor and lower middle class in our society."

OMG, are you kidding me? They're at the epicenter of this entire economic crisis. Were you born yesterday?

Tapper,

You are misrepresenting the nature and use of the payments to CSI, as well as the distribution of the funds. CSI and ACORN have many of the same employees, and the ACORN 80K you report has no basis in economic reality as it was one division paying another. Also, you FAILED to mention Obama had to AMEND HIS FEC REPORTS to accurately state the 800K was for GOTV and registration efforts.

Using a corporate form to show distance is a petty attempt to throw people off - you are supposed to see through that, not buy into it.

"you left out a major part of the story in this article...that ACORN itself turned in the problematic registration forms and asked them to be investigated."

Sure, after they got caught. They've been collecting them since January. So the bogus ones just happened to be in the stack collected last week? Uh huh.

You know, maybe I will give a flying fig about this story when McCain sheds more light on his involvement in the Keating scandal and the nature of that relationship and whether he still profited financially after Keating was convicted.

Like 2,100 of the first, oh, 2,100 checked were fake?

Flooding the system with fake registrations weeks before the election won't have an effect?

Imagine the hue and cry if the Repubs did this.

When someone purporting to be Mickey Mouse shows up at the polls in Ohio and the entire starting line-up for the Dallas Cowboys tries to vote in Las Vegas, then I'll believe all this nonsense the GOP is spewing about ACORN.

Until then, it remains just that - utter nonsense, and the desperate work of unhinged Republicans on the verge of being swept aside by an increasingly disgruntled electorate.

Electoral fraud occurs at the back end where the votes are counted, and not at the front end where people try to cast their ballots. Voter fraud is not a problem; voter suppression is. You would do well, Jake, to focus your attention on the latter, and not chase after something that has been repeatedly debunked, and now approaches the level of smear.

ACORN has been around for three decades, and has done consumers a tremendous service in highlighting and challenging the predatory lending practices perpetrated against the poor and lower middle class in our society.

Rush Limbaugh is now trying to blame ACORN for the sub-prime meltdown and the current economic crisis. This whole ACORN business is nothing but a bunch of racist GOP crock.

you left out a major part of the story in this article...that ACORN itself turned in the problematic registration forms and asked them to be investigated.

The biggest problem out there is why we have 50 different state criteria for registration and even for who can vote, for FEDERAL elections. If there was ever
proof of how dysfunctional this country can be, this is it. Let's have one universal set of standards and requirements. Then we can work on "voter registration fraud"....including fraud perpetuated by political parties themselves.