GOP Is Still Beating A Dead Horse (ACORN)

(Image is from the Photobucket page of RosaBella75.)

It makes no sense, but the House Republicans have once again added a provision to the latest Department of Defense appropriations bill that says none of the money appropriated "may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries".

Why does it make no sense? Because ACORN doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist, it can't have any subsidiaries. The group disbanded in early 2010 -- which means it has not existed for more than three years now. But that hasn't stopped the Republicans from defunding that nonexistent organization in each of those three years.

When asked why the GOP keeps defunding an organization that no longer exists, a spokesperson for Speaker Boehner said, "These provisions are typically carried every year in appropriations bills."
Frankly, that makes no sense. Does that mean they just "cut and paste" from previous bills without any regard for change or reality? That sounds to me like a pretty silly way to write a bill -- especially a bill as important as an appropriations bill.

I suspect they are just playing to their base voters -- knowing that most of their teabagger base is not smart enough (or is too ill-informed) to know that ACORN disbanded years ago. Hating ACORN was a good tool for the GOP to whip up their base back in 2008 (with false accusations of impropriety), and they're just not willing to give it up.

I'd like to suggest they also consider defunding the Society for the Preservation of Multi-Colored Unicorns (SPMCU), and the Equal Rights for Fairies and Gnomes Association (ERFGA). I'm sure they could save just as much money by refusing to give money to these also imaginary groups.

More Stupid People

The picture above is of some activists that belonged to an organization call ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).   There were some right-wingers who thought President Obama won in 2008 because of voter fraud perpetrated by ACORN.   Of course the accusation was ridiculous.   ACORN was not large enough or powerful enough to affect an election with many millions of voters, and there is no evidence that any fraudulent voters registered by them actually cast a single vote.

But reality really doesn't mean much to a lot of people -- stupid people.   Take for example a recent survey done by Public Policy Polling between September 10th and 13th.   Among some more serious questions, they decided to toss out a silly question to just see how people would answer it.   They asked people if they thought ACORN would steal the coming election to keep the Democrats in power in Congress.   Here are the sad results:

Yes...............20%
No...............40%
Not sure...............40%

It's bad enough that 40% of the population weren't sure (maybe they've been living in a cave for the last year and heard no news).   But I'm absolutely appalled that 20% of the people answered yes.   And it wasn't just the Republicans.   Of the people who voted for McCain in 2008 about 23% said yes, and of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 about 18% said yes.

OK.   Let me straighten out some of you amazingly stupid people.   ACORN cannot steal the upcoming election for anyone because ACORN DOESN"T EXIST ANYMORE!!!   The organization has not existed for many months now.

Good grief people, read a newspaper or watch a news program once in a while.   Your ignorance is embarrassing the rest of us.

Are Republicans Really This Stupid ?

I knew there was a segment of the Republican Party that really wasn't too bright. All you have to do is look at the teabaggers to know that. But I have to admit that I'm shocked to see that the stupidity extends to more than half of the party.

Public Policy Polling has revealed that in it's poll 52% of GOP voters think the urban community-activist organization ACORN stole the 2008 election for Barack Obama. How could they possibly believe that? ACORN doesn't have enough members to affect even one-half of one percent of a national election.

Obviously, these Republicans have been listening to too much Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly, who have gone out of their way to demonize a community organization that does a lot of good work in large urban areas -- like helping people file their taxes, register to vote and find employment.

I seriously doubt that ACORN has enough members and volunteers to even steal an election in a large urban area, where most of their members and volunteers are. I would especially like to know how acorn pulled off this great theft in states where they have little or no presence, but where Obama won. Take North Carolina for example. That state went for Obama, but has only 8 ACORN members in the whole state. Please tell me how those 8 members pulled that off.

But it goes further than just Fox News and the far-right media. The mainstream media has done a very poor job of covering the mostly false ACORN accusations, and have left many people unfamiliar with ACORN with a false view of the organization. These media, who are supposed to dig out the truth, are guilty of presenting only one side of the ACORN story to their great shame.

Peter Dreier and Christopher Martin of Occidental College (in California) have released a survey regarding this poor media coverage. They found that most stories about ACORN's involvement in voter fraud was lacking in that:

• 82.8% of the stories failed to mention that actual voter fraud is very rare;
  
• 80.3% of the stories failed to mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as required by law;
• 85.1% of the stories about ACORN failed to note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its (mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems;
• 95.8% of the stories failed to provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use allegations of "voter fraud" to dampen voting by low‐income and minority Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with the politicization of voter-fraud accusations—firings that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

If you want to see an election that was stolen, look back to 2000 when a candidate with a minority of the vote was handed the election by a right-leaning Supreme Court. In 2008, Barack Obama won the election fair and square with a huge majority of the vote -- both the popular vote and the electoral college.

Anyone who can't see that is either stupid or in complete denial. It's pathetic that this includes a majority of Republicans.

ACORN Is Not Committing Fraud

For the last few days, the Republicans have been trying to paste a label of voter fraud on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN is a community activist group that works to promote the rights of poor and working families and individuals. They have taken it upon themselves to register as many people to vote in this election as possible.

They have been very successful in this effort, registering 1.3 million mostly poor people this year. But the Republicans would have us believe ACORN's effort is nothing but an organized effort to commit voter fraud. They would like to have all the new registrations thrown out, because voter suppression is the only avenue they see to victory in the coming election.

The whole thing springs from the fact that some of the workers hired to get people registered turned in some phony registrations so they could be paid more. One of the most egregious examples of this was in Nevada, where many members of the Dallas Cowboys football team were put down as new registrants.

But this was the act of a few dishonest people -- not an organized effort by ACORN to commit fraud. In fact, ACORN pointed out to voter registrars many of the phony registrations when they turned them in. Why did they turn them in? Because many states require ALL registrations received to be turned in. ACORN was following state law.

In the debate last night, McCain called this "one of the greatest voter frauds in our history". That is just ridiculous! In fact, the registrar in Clark County, Nevada said, "I don't think Acorn consciously sets out to turn in fraudulent forms." He went on to say he doubted any of the fake registrations would have resulted in fraudulent voting.

This is just the latest example of what has been in the last few years a Republican tradition -- voter suppression. As the number of Republicans shrinks, they know the only way they have a hope of winning this year is to somehow keep millions of voters from voting, or at least see to it those votes don't get counted.

They should be ashamed of themselves. They know this is not an organized fraud. They're just trying to steal another election.