Are Independents Against Obama Racist 'Fringe Elements'?

Here's another smear on conservatives as racist, at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, " ‘Fringe element’ Could Easily Upend America’s Racial Progress" (via Memeorandum).

Okay. Right.

Actually, the ranks of the "fringe element" are expanding. See, Allahpundit, "NBC poll: For the First Time, More Independents Disapprove of Obama Than Approve":

An eight-point swing in just two months. This is not the centrist “pragmatist” they thought they knew.

For the first time, independent voters—who delivered Mr. Obama the White House and Democrats control of the Congress—disapprove of the job he is doing, 46% to the 41% who approve. In July, 49% of independents approved of the president, against 38% who disapproved.

New doubts about the president have coincided with new hopes for Republicans, who appeared flattened by the election nearly a year ago.

As the 2010 election cycle heats up, independent voters now favor Republican control of Congress by four percentage points.

“For a party walloped two cycles in a row with independents, I think those are very important stories,” said Bill McInturff, a partner at the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, who conducts the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

His approval rating’s flat at 51 percent overall. More anti-statist backlash from the crosstabs: For the first time since 1997, more people say government is doing too many things rather than not doing enough (49/45) and more are worried about the exploding deficit than the need to “boost” the economy with new spending (62/30, up from 58/35 in June) ....

Check the post for the graph. I wonder how long it will be until Obama shills start attacking independents as racist!!

See also, Political Pistachio, "Why The Left Calls The Right Racist."

Cartoon Credit: William Warren at Americans for Limited Government.

Mark Levin on Glenn Beck: 'Mindless', 'Incoherent' (AUDIO)

Not the most attactive YouTube, but it's worth a listen. Mark Levin's actually combining his own attack on John McCain with a condemnation of Glenn Beck's endorsement of "The One" over "The Maverick." Robert Stacy McCain's got a long but interesting analysis, plus more at Memeorandum:

See also, Right Wing Nut House, "IS GLENN BECK 'THE ENEMY'?"

Breitbart Scores Again: White House Responds to Charges of NEA Corruption

Roy Edroso's been consolidating his idiocy-creds this last couple of days with a pair of ridiculous posts on the NEA progressive conference call "non-scandal." As he notes yesterday:

Andrew Breitbart's follow-up to his child prostitution stings on ACORN -- the revelation that the Obama Administration talked to artists about its social programs -- is not shaking the earth, despite the inclusion of a Hitler dog whistle ("Riefenstahl-esque"). Patterico has even taken to explaining to readers that "it would be a mistake to dismiss this story as unimportant" ...

The notion that it is being used to promote a leftist agenda will strike most of their intended audience as dog bites man.

Ah, time to yank the head there, buddy. This just in from ABC News, "After 'Inappropriate' NEA Conference Call, White House Pushes New Guidelines":

An August 10, 2009 National Endowment for the Arts conference call in which artists were asked to help support President Obama's agenda -- a call that at least one good government group called "inappropriate" -- has prompted the White House to issue new guidelines to prevent such a call from ever happening again.

"The point of the call was to encourage voluntary participation in a national service initiative by the arts community," White House spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News. "To the extent there was any misunderstanding about what the NEA may do to support the national service initiative, we will correct it. We regret any comments on the call that may have been misunderstood or troubled other participants. We are fully committed to the NEA's historic mission, and we will take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no further cause for questions or concerns about that commitment."

Plus, from the Washington Times, "NEA Chairman Admits Mistake on August 10 Conference Call." Yeah, admission of mistakes along with some blanket denials. According to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman:

The former NEA Director of Communications acted unilaterally and without the approval or authorization of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell.

Hey, way to pass the buck, Rocco!

And Roy, dude, that's some hella "dog bites man" story!

Plus, in late-breaking non-scandal news, "Serve.gov Scrubs ACORN Listings from Its Site."

(Via Memorandum.)

MoveOn's Dishonest Public Option Spoof

Via Kathy Shaidle, here's Michelle Malkin with, "Hollywood & MoveOn.Org’s Insurance Industry-Bashing Video":

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

What bugs me about this video is how blatantly dishonest it is.

It reminds me of Jane Hamsher's bogus claim that "75 percent" favor the public option. Hamsher was citing a finding from June that Americans favor choice of either a private or government plan. It's bogus, naturally. See YidWithLid, "Rasmussen: America to Congress --> NO PUBLIC HEALTHCARE OPTION."

See also, New York Daily News, "Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Among Celebrities, Speaking Out in Spoof PSA to Protect Insurance Companies."

NEA Cover-Up? Obama's In-House Propaganda Shop (AUDIO)

Last night, Sean Hannity broadcast audio-clips from the White House-NEA-progressive conference call:

Plus, there's lots of new material at Big Government: See, Publius, "BREAKING: White House Officials to Make Sure ‘Inappropriate’ NEA Conference Call ‘Never Happens Again’."

Also, Matthew Vadum, "NEA Conference Call: Who is Buffy Wicks?"

And, at the Jawa Report, "If the White House Isn't Employing the World's Largest PR Firm to Use the NEA to Astroturf their Agenda ..." (via Memorandum).

Obama Fiddles on Afghanistan

The main story's at the Wall Street Journal, "Pentagon Delays Troop Call." See also, Leslie Gelb, "Obama's Befuddling Afghan Policy: Why is the President Hesitating On More Troops to Fight His 'War of Necessity'?"

Victor Davis Hanson offers some strategic analysis on why things are going the way they are, "Two-Front Wars — Theirs and Ours." And Bill Roggio reports on General Stanley McChrystal's threat to resign if the administration doesn't send more troops: "McChrystal to Resign If Not Given Resources for Afghanistan."

I don't have too much to add, except to say I'm not surprised. I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year when the administration pledged an additional 20 thousand troops to the deployment. I even gladly said at the time that I supported the administration (strange for someone like me who knows that Obama's an inveterate liar). But with Obama's wavering now, he's completing the ideological circle that has formed his radical platform. It's kind of a bait and switch concession to the antiwar activists, and no doubt many of them were just waiting for Obama to come around to their side in any case.

Dr. Sanity has the title piece this morning, "PLENTY OF TIME FOR OBAMA & CO. TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY":

Is President Postmodern about to take his eyes off the ball in Afghanistan? His indecision and waffling on the subject makes it seem like he is getting cold feet. Not to mention the absolute horror of a Democrat doing something that goes against the polls. Remember--because it's easy to forget--that Afghanistan was always the Democrats "good war"--i.e., a way they could pretend to be strong and tough on national defense... you know, without actually having to be strong or tough.

See also, PoliGazette, "Liberals’ New Obsession: Afghanistan." Plus, check Thunder Run for real stories from soldiers and families in the fight, "From the Front: 09/21/2009."

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Searching for Bobby Fischer's Brilliance

I'm not sure if parents of chess prodigies are among my readers, but I'm pleased to share this piece: Bobby Fischer's story is an unparalleled tale of Cold War competition and personal eccentricity. Today's Los Angeles Times featured one of those articles that used to make it exciting to pick up the newspaper in the morning. It turns out that there's been a long mystery on Bobby Fischer's paternity. Times reporter Peter Nicholas admits his interest went well beyond the chess mania following Fischer's 1972 victory in Iceland:

I read everything I could find about him, replayed his most famous games and talked with friends of his who frequented the Marshall Chess Club in New York, scene of some of his triumphs.

In time, my interest shifted from Fischer's chess to a much murkier aspect of his life: the identity of his father.

Paul Nemenyi (National Archives and Records Administration) - Paul Nemenyi's petition for U.S. naturalization, including a 1940 photo.

**********

The full story is here, "Chasing the King of Chess":

Bobby's life story, like his behavior, was bizarre and complicated. At the height of his powers, he abandoned the game and went into seclusion, surfacing periodically to spout paranoid, anti-Semitic screeds and to denounce the United States. He died last year at 64 in Iceland, the only country that would have him.

It seemed to me that if I was to get a better grasp of this elusive figure, I needed to know more about his origins.

Bobby was born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn by a single mother, Regina Fischer. She told people his father was a German biophysicist named Gerhardt Fischer. The couple divorced when Bobby was a toddler. That's about all that was known.

The dearth of details about Gerhardt and his role in Bobby's life whetted my curiosity. What was he like? Did he share his son's intellectual gifts? What kind of relationship did they have?

My wife, fellow journalist Clea Benson, came to share my interest, and before long it morphed into something of an obsession.

We became part of a subculture in which Fischer fanatics dissect his old games like sacred scrolls, pay tens of thousands of dollars for his old notebooks and argue ceaselessly about whether later champions could have held their own against him.

In search of Fischer arcana, we've been to the Chess Hall of Fame in Miami, whose dominant architectural feature is an oversize rook. We've pored over records at the New York Public Library. We've hired Hungarian translators and sifted through 70-year-old letters stored at the National Archives in Maryland.

In 2002, I even made a pilgrimage to Reykjavik to see the chess board where Fischer and Spassky squared off 30 years before.

That same year, I resolved to get more serious about my research on Gerhardt. Enough amateur sleuthing. Now I would use my reportorial skills to gather every available fact about the man.

Read the whole thing, here.

The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise

Dana Loesch provides a fabulous analysis of White House's implication in the NEA communist funding scandal: "Conference Call Transcript Implicates Fed Art Agency in Government Co-Opt of Arts Community." (Via Memeorandum.)

But the ACORN scandal's far from resolved. See also, Peter Roff, "The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise." Here's the key passage:

This latest round of problems for ACORN may be the best documented, but they are not the first nor, for that matter, are they the most serious. A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct."

Among the findings, the report said, ACORN:

• Engaged in tax evasion, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a cover-up of nearly $1 million embezzled by Dale Rathke, brother of group founder Wade Rathke;

• Committed investment fraud, depriving the public of the right to "honest services," and engaging in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce;

• Conspired to defraud the United States by using taxpayer dollars for partisan political activities;

• Submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor; and,

• Violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.

Any one of these is a serious allegation. Taken together, they give ACORN most every appearance of being some sort of massive criminal enterprise worthy of a federal investigation of the sort made under the terms of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act—or RICO. In fact the group and its affiliates are currently the target of more than a dozen lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election alone.

As a result of the increased public scrutiny of its actions, the Obama administration has "severed it ties" with ACORN, at least as far as allowing it to participate in the 2010 Census. The U.S. House and Senate are both voting as fast as they can to cut off federal funding of the group and more than one coalition has been created to ask state legislatures and governors to do likewise. ACORN's response began as a militant defiance of the criticism, likening it to the use of "Willie Horton" in the 1988 presidential campaign.

Except that talking about Mr. Horton, a convicted murderer sentenced to life in a Massachusetts prison without the possibility of parole who walked away from the last of nearly a dozen unsupervised furloughs he had received to commit additional crimes in Maryland, was not a political dirty trick as certain liberals and Democrats continue to insist; he was proof positive that former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis held views about incarceration, crime and punishment that were well outside the mainstream of American thinking. Likewise, the folks at ACORN who think they can mount a racially-tinged, aggressive offense to deflect attention from what is on those tapes are likely to be disappointed.

Glenn Beck: 'John McCain Would Have Been Worse than Barack Obama'

Katie Couric's got an interview with Glenn Beck (via Memeorandum).

I've been inspired by Beck all year, as readers might have noticed. I don't, however, consider Beck a "conservative." He's libertarian, and while I've yet to hear Beck speak much on foreign policy this year, I'd be quick to disagree with him if he started to sound like Ron Paul or the idiot "paleocons."

I mention this especially with reference to Peter Wehner's essay, "Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement":

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Beck. In the past I assumed he was a typical figure in the pundit and cable-media world. Only recently have I watched portions of his television program, as well as interviews with him, and heard parts of his radio program. And what I’ve seen should worry the conservative movement ....

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.

I omitted some of the passages at the center of Wehner's post, so check that for more substance.

Outside of the hot neocons (VDH, the Kagans, Charles Krauthammer), Peter Wehner's probably my favorite online commentator. This particular essay is bothersome, however. He's coming off like David Frum here, and that's about as bad a put-down one can get these days. Folks need to talk Glenn Beck for what he is: an entertainer and a lightning rod for popular discontent, and he's not hurting conservative by mobilizing the small-government lumpen-electorate (they'll turn out for the GOP). Not only that, right now it's all about the tea parties, the town halls, and resisting the socialist abomination that is the Barack Obama White House. Who's been doing a more thorough job in taking on the ACORN-Democratic-Obama complex? I mean, c'mon give it up for Fox News, where Beck is at the forefront of the conservative/libertarian resistance. Yeah, he's a little far-fetched sometimes, but hardly as bad as the Van Jones-ACORN-NEA edifice that's just now tumbling under its own contradictions. Karl Marx, six-feet under at Highgate, has to be rolling over at that one.

(P.S.: As bad as John McCain was for many conservatives during the campaign, I can guarantee you he wouldn't have been near as bad as Obama - and remember, we'd have Sarah Palin in the vice-president's mansion right now!)

(P.S.S.: Edited.)

'ACORN High School for Social Justice' -- WTF!!

I'm seriously freaking on this one, from Gateway Pundit, "ACORN Community High School: Where Your Child Can Learn Social Change Techniques to Solve Real Life Problems."

Yep, it's true. Following the links we're taken to: "ACORN High School for Social Justice."

And then, a quick Google search turns up this quote, "4 year graduation rate: 41.9%." And "0% white students" attend the school. And according to Inside Schools:

JANUARY 2008 UPDATE: Joseph Parker, principal at the time of Insideschools' visit, resigned in late December after sustained protest from parents, and ACORN, the community group that helped create the school ... they alleged that under Parker's leadership, gang violence went unchecked, students failed to graduate ...

The Inside Schools website is kinda sketchy, but it links to this New York Sun article, "Parents Press for ACORN Principal's Ouster." The piece includes this beauty of a fact:

Morale is so low, the report says, that at last year's graduation the valedictorian, Sharifa Noble, stood up and declared: "ACORN has let me down." The remark prompted a chorus of boos aimed at the principal, Joseph Parker.

Here's the long blurb from the school's website. This is the case for home schooling - I'd never send my children there:

ACORN High School for Social Justice is “A Star that Shines in Brooklyn”. In addition, our school is distinctive because it is:

• One of three community initiated NYC public schools affiliated with the powerful Acorn Organization.
• A Landmark building with turn of the 20^th century neoclassic Architecture which was once a Lowe’s theater where Jackie Gleason (a renowned entertainer) performed.
• The first NYC DOE school to have an Executive Principal.
• The first NYC DOE school to pilot an Icareers Academy.
• Selected as one of a few New York City public schools to become an AVID school. The Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) program is a rigorous college awareness and preparation program for students who will be the first in their families to attend college.
• Success in attracting and keeping teachers from the NYC Teaching Fellows.
• We also include an additional course in Social Justice, a course on the Civil Rights Movement (Sojourner Project), and double periods of English and Mathematics at the 9th and 10th grade levels.
• International Teachers Programs. We now also have a partnership with Columbia University as a site for Peace Corp Fellows to complete their teaching internships.
• Support for the development of our teachers through a unique PD model. All teachers meet for common planning daily. Their assistant principal of supervision attends the common planning sessions at least twice weekly. The school’s schedule was modified to include two preparation periods per day for each teacher instead of one per day which is the norm in most NYC public schools.
• September 2008 will be the launch of state of the art Film/Media and music recording studios that will be centers of premier art programs including a Television Show in collaboration with Entertainers4Education Alliance.
• An emerging honors program including honor level classes, Advanced Placement courses and College Now. We are working on an Associate Degree program as well.
• Unique utilization of technology to deliver instruction and to assess academic performance. All teacehers will be provided with school laptops for use in lesson planning and delivery and they all have access to LCD projectors and smart boards. A writing lab is planned for school year 2008-2009.
• Annual College Tour to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We will be initiating Ivy League and baby Ivy League college tours as well. 98 students participated in this year’s tour.
• Implementation of an excellent library program that will bring community members, actors, singers, and leaders into the building to speak with students and to participate in events such as Black History Month, Hispanic History Month, Poetry Month and Women’s History Month.
• A diverse after school program, in collaboration with our Community Based Organization, Acorn, comprised of academics, sports, the arts, and community service experiences for our students.
• A school’s website including WebPages for all teachers to promote greater communication with students and parents.
• Administration of the Acuity periodic assessments in English and Mathematics.
• Students will have access to the world of work through partnerships with law firms and corporations through participation in our Legal Careers Academy or Icareers Academy.
• A number of sports teams including a winning PSAL Boys Varsity Basketball Team, going as far as the PSAL Division B championship this school year. Our students participate in other PSAL varsity sports as well as intramurals.
• Strong student government with a council in each cohort. The council is comprised of elected officials and other student leaders from the cohort who act as peer mentors for other members of their cohort.
• The Asset Program, a community based organization, is supporting this endeavor. Students are given opportunities to participate in all aspects of the school including working here as members of the Ladies and Gentleman Club.
• Great results with the use of School Island. School Island is a web based program that allows teachers to post assignments on line for students to complete.

What is 'Extremist Rhetoric'?

Melissa Clouthier put up an interesting post this morning at Right Wing News: "Violence Serves The Left." But it wasn't the discussion of political violence that caught my attention (although Melissa's right to note the total hypocrisy in leftist slurs of tea-partiers as "violent" mobs). No, I really liked this section asking, "What is 'extremist rhetoric'":

What I wonder is this: What is “extremist rhetoric”? Ironically, almost anything Glenn Beck says is viewed as “extremist rhetoric”. In fact, anyone who disagrees with neo-liberal orthodoxy is considered an extremist.

Carrie Prejean? Extremist gay hater.

Glenn Beck? Extremist Obama hater.

Rush Limbaugh? Extremist race baiting hater.

Mark Steyn? Extremist Muslim hater.

Ann Coulter? Extremist self and women-hating hater.

Michelle Malkin? Extremist illegal alien hater.

Glenn Reynolds? Extremist Tea-Party loving hater.

When center-left Obama-voting Democrats like Ann Althouse are accused of hating, really who isn’t a hater?

I’m sick of the p.c. rhetoric police. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, and all the whacked out lefty pundits can say anything. The word is a tool and a sword. They wield it with impunity and want the conservatives to stay muzzled.

So, somewhere between psychotic, crazy loud-mouth libs and meek muzzled, passive, submissive conservatives there’s a balance. Incite violence? No. Stir to positive action, yes.

Yes, violence serves the Left. So does a silent majority. They’ve had it both ways for too long.

So true.

Check Melissa Clouthier's blog as well. Tonight's feature, "Breitbart: NEA Conference Call, Your Tax Dollars, And Artistic Coercion."

Republicans and the Social Media Revolution

Back in February, interestingly, I thought Meghan McCain had a good point when she argued that "Republicans don't get the Internet."

Not any more.

With Americans witnessing the dramatic impact of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which along with Fox News has been the main outlet breaking the ACORN prostitution scandal, we're really seeing the power of conservative online politics hitting home. The Washington Times featured an item yesterday describing Breitbart as a "conservative rebel with a cause." And because the leftist press is irked at their comeuppance at the hands of a couple of brilliant young conservatives, they're now sliming James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles like only true dirtbags know how.

That's why I find this piece at the Los Angeles Examiner puzzling, "GOP Fails to Recognize Power of the Internet." The author, Jim Kouri, argues that "Say what you will about the left-wing bloggers and left-leaning Internet web sites, they are a power to be reckoned with, according to a growing number of conservatives." Yet Kouri provides no quotes from conservatives to support the statement.

No matter.

This is something I've been thinking about this last couple of weeks amid the Big Government ACORN rollout. I recall earlier arguments that the party out of power will be most adept at deploying new social media for political action. Daily Kos, once the granddaddy of radical left wing blogs, is now a shadow of its former self. Daily Kos' traffic numbers in 2009 are down substantially. Jon Henke wrote a dramatic post in April comparing Kos' numbers to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air (a difference of 15 million visitors in Hot Air's favor over the March-April timeline). As Henke added then, "I suspect we'll be rediscovering something we had previously learned in the 90's and 00's: the Internet is good for insurgencies and opposition."

This is a good social science topic, by the way. Facebook and Twitter have been driving conservative mobilization all year, and while much of the activism is explicitly non-partisan (protesters are mad at both parties more often than not), events will clearly benefit the GOP when next year's elections roll around. Conservatives not wanting to waste a vote will rally to the Republican banner in the years ahead. And if the GOP doesn't learn the lessons of 2008, when small-government conservatives got pushed aside by the nomination of John McCain, the party may as well sit on the sidelines of power for a couple of more cycles.

An interesting related essay: "The Obama Roadblock: Why He's Sagging Online" (via Memeorandum).

Obama on Letterman: 'I Was Actually Black Before the Election'

I have no plans to watch it, but folks might get a kick out of the video:

Also, at USA Today, "Obama to Dave: 'I Was Actually Black Before the Election'."

White House Sponsors Communist Arts Collective

From Patrick Courrielche at Big Government, "EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda":

Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement

**********

The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

But some have claimed that the invite and passages, pulled from the conference call that inspired the article, were taken out of context. Context is what I intend to establish here.

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some “specific asks” that will be delivered later in the meeting.

The rest is here. Buffy Wicks, pictured above, is quoted thus: "I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda." The full audio and transcript of the NEA conference call is here. The call is organized and moderated by Michael Skolnik. He identifies himself as a filmmaker and political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons in New York.

Here's a snippet of interest from the transcript:

This is Mike Skolnik. I am based in New York. I am a film maker for the past ten years but currently serve as the political director for Russell Simmons. I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country. So as we hear everyone's names and locations and companies, this is extremely humbling to be in all your presence on the telephone. It's a remarkable group that is on this phone. I thank you for your time ....

I want to start off by saying a few things ... I heard somebody from Shepard Fairey's team introduce themselves, and I think Shepard and the Hope poster obviously is a great example, but it's clear as an independent art community as artists and thinkers and tastemakers and marketers and visionaries on this call, the role that we played during the campaign for the president and also during his first some odd days of his presidency and the president has a clear arts agenda and has been very supportive of using art and supporting art in creative ways to talk about some of the issues that we face here in our country and also to engage people. And I think all of us who are on this phone call were selected for a reason, and you are the ones that lead by example in your communities. You are the thought leaders.

You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what's cool and what's not cool. And so I'm hoping that through this group and the goal of all this and the goal of this phone call, is through this group that we can create a stronger community amongst ourselves to get involved in things that we're passionate about as we did during the campaign but continue to get involved in those things, to support some of the president's initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the president and push his administration.

And the first thing that I thought we could all come together on and begin this collective of artists around the country was United We Serve or is United We Serve, and United We Serve is the president's call to the country to get engaged in meaningful community service, and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to hear more about the United We Serve from the folks who are running it as well as hear from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yosi Sergant, who many of us know has been a true champion during the campaign of the arts and as what he's doing over at the National Endowment for the Arts, and how we can all work together to promote and to engage our country in service as well as use art in doing so ....

The passages cited roughly overlap with those that Courrielche has highlighted with yellow and red at the draft.

This report constitutes a crushing idictment of the administration's corrupt propaganda progam. Especially interesting is the mention of Shepard Fairey, the famous communist-propagandist who struck gold with his iconic image of Obama "Hope" during the campaign. Below is Fairey's drawing of communist Angela Davis, who is retired from UC Santa Cruz as a professor in the history of consciousness. The Obama administration's NEA is engaged in the glorification of radical iconography; and we know now that taxpayer funding is supporting the production of this kind of communist-inspired art.

See also, the New York Times, "The Revolution Will Be Illustrated."

ACORN, NEA, and Andrew Breitbart's PWNING of MSM

The rollout of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog, and its attendent exposé bombshell reports, has nearly had the effect of a category 5 hurricane on American politics this last couple of weeks. I mean, seriously, the tea parties and town halls have been an incredible experience for people all year, but now with Big Government's role in breaking the Hannah Giles/James O'Keefe undercover ACORN sting, folks are exclaiming that Breitbart's "making it fun to be a conservative again."

I met Andrew Breitbart briefly on April 15th at Santa Ana's Tax Day Tea Party Event. He's seen here with his father-in-law, Hollywood actor Orson Bean.

Breitbart was the headline speaker at the Santa Ana event, and I saw him again at the Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally a few weeks later. The guy's an all-American entrepreneurial hustler. An electrifying speaker, he's also a political pugilist of the first order. He knows that big media is how conservatives will get their message out, and if the big MSM's not in our camp, conservative just have to construct their own. Hard to pin in one place for very long, I had a sense of a man with a mission the first couple of times I interacted with him.

My hunch was pretty accurate. Breitbart gave the political world a big heads-up on September 7 with his Washington Times essay, "Couric Should Look In Mirror": Offering a damning indictment of the media's non-treatment of the Van Jones scandal, Breitbart argued that exposing revolutionaries in the White House was just the beginning:

Two more stories demonstrate how the Democrat-Media Complex, the natural alliance of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, is more concerned with trying to figure out how to destroy Glenn Beck - "he's nuts!" - than to follow his methodical, accurate reporting. This dynamic - used against all potent critics and off-the-reservation journalists - shows that not only is the media ignoring all the negative things coming out about the Obama administration, it is acting like President Richard Nixon's henchmen, making life difficult for its whistleblowers.

One of the stories is that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a massive radical organization, is poised to receive billions from the Obama "stimulus" ....

Another story not making the evening news is that of artist Patrick Courrielche, who has shown that the National Endowment of the Arts is seeking to use government funds to promote Obama administration initiatives. On Sunday's "This Week," George Will pierced the mainstream media veil.

"Recently there was a conference call arranged by the National Endowment for the Arts, with a representative of the White House, for potential grantees or actual grantees of the federal government, getting subsidies - the theme of it was how the arts community could advance the president's agenda. Now I don't know how many laws that breaks, but I am sure there are some."

What are you waiting for, Katie Couric?

Needless to say, Ms. Couric didn't run with the story. But Breitbart and the conservative alt-media did. The Hannah Giles/James O'Keefe ACORN prostitution sting broke a few weeks back. The story's been a phenomenal follow-up to the Van Jones resignation, and the MSM is still catching up. The Breitbart enterprise continues to break stories and its latest exposé is the rightly-promised investigation into the NEA's corrupt art-propaganda ring that's shilling for the Obama administration. Patrick Courrielche reported at Big Hollywood on the NEA on August 25: "The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?" The Courrielche piece was an early indication of the timed-release of damning investigative reports. And this week promises to be no let-up.

Andrew has a new piece up at Big Government, "Planting the Seeds: The Politicized Art Behind the ACORN Plan." As he argues:

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.

Once the American public saw with its own eyes the grotesque, common practices of ACORN’s housing offices, Mr. O’Keefe and Miss Giles could no longer be a legitimate focus of media scrutiny. Kill the messenger doesn’t work with the American people when they realize that the message is so devastating and honest. I think the video exposed the misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of “helping the poor.”

If Mr. O’Keefe dumped the videos on YouTube, the political powers would have killed the expose before it got traction. I half-joked that he should secretly tape pitching the major television networks exclusive use of his videos for their nightly news broadcasts. But a simpler, less controversial method proved as fruitful.

I told him that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O’Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com.

Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.

Well, Breitbart's extending the multiplatform strategy this week. Here's this at Big Hollywood this morning, "Pregame Report: The NEA Conference Call." Read the whole thing. Breitbart's enterprise has exposed the corrupt propaganda machine inside the National Endowment of the Arts. As noted:

Among the Obama Administration officials on the call were Buffy Wicks, Office of Public Engagement and the lead White House official on the President’s Serve.Gov initiative to promote national service. Also on the call was Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for Serve.Gov. One of their main goals on the call, it seems, was to encourage artists to produce works that would reinforce the President’s call for service; specifically through the Serve.Gov web-portal.

As Dana Loesch recently reported at Big Government, the Serve.Gov portal funnels citizens to volunteer or service projects connected with ACORN and other leftist groups. The taxpayer-funded website is evolving into a cyber-recruitment tool for the progressive movement.

Dana Loesch's essay is here, "Taxpayer Funded Serve.gov Filtering Activists to ACORN." All of this is devastating. What Breitbart and friends are doing is pulling together the strings of communuism and corruption that tie together the entire left-wing progressive infrastructure of the ACORN-Obama-Chicago-communist regime. And it's working fabulously. No wonder some folks are now more excited than ever about being a part of the conservative movement.

More at Gateway Pundit, and Memeorandum.

ACORN's Shocking Radicalism is Nothing New

According to Matthew Vadum, "ACORN is sleazy, criminal, and dangerous and the tabloid style of storytelling is ideal for explaining what the group is all about."

He's referring to the new piece on ACORN at the New York Post, "Sowing the Seeds of Destruction: ACORN's Shady Tactics Made Headlines Last Seek. But Their Shocking Radicalism is Nothing New":

Just how nutty is ACORN?

Very, say longtime watchers of the extreme leftwing group that sprouted out of a radical 60s anti-government movement.

For decades ACORN has presented itself as a grassroots network dedicated to improving the lives of the poor.

But there's more to ACORN than its do-gooder veneer.

Just ask the banks, corporations and politicians who've been the target of ACORN's shameless shenanigans over the past 40 years.

Here's how the tiny seed of 1960s radicalism blossomed into a well-funded, national organization with political connections reaching all the way to the White House ....

Be sure to read the whole thing, which has a useful background chronology of ACORN's crooks, liars, and thugs. Can't resist the conclusion though:

THE FUTURE?

ACORN's altruistic façade came tumbling down — possibly for good — this month after a series of videos showed staffers giving an undercover pimp and hooker tips on defrauding the government, laundering money, cheating on taxes and obtaining a mortgage to open up a home-based brothel.

The damning display put ACORN on the defensive again and even rocked its once solid base of support among Democratic lawmakers.

Both the House and Senate have passed bipartisan bills calling for an immediate halt to federal funding to ACORN, which a Republican tally puts at $53 million since 1994.
Governor David Paterson on Friday placed a hold on all state contracts with the agency's local chapter, and the US Census Bureau kicked ACORN off its upcoming 2010 population count.

Yet ACORN needs more than just a slap on the wrist for encouraging people to commit mortgage and tax fraud, according to Von Spakovsky, a former Department of Justice investigator. The activist organization has yet to be held accountable for most of its actions — past and present, he said.

"Nobody knows for sure how many subsidiaries ACORN has, but many investigations have shown they're mostly shell groups, used to transfer money around," said Von Spakovsky.

"We'll only know the true extent of their wrongdoing when the Department of Justice does a forensic audit, and we find out where those millions in federal funds have gone," he said.

Check also, Roger L. Simon, "Stephanopoulos and ACORN: Obama Lies Again."

Related: "Obama's Watergate: Could ACORN Bring Down a President?"

Obama's Watergate: Could ACORN Bring Down a President?

I kinda broached the possibility in one of my Glenn Beck entries the other day.

Could the ACORN scandal bring down the Obama administration? It's seems like small potatoes, really. ACORN's under the radar for most folks, but considering the importance of the group in the president's political ascendancy, yeah, it's pretty serious. And of course it's sweet to see the hard-left community organizers getting hammered. These folks are crooks and thugs, and Bertha Lewis is slapping down the race card like coins in a nickle slot-machine. Of course, ACORN's ties are clear to anyone's who's followed politics the last year-and-a-half. And things are getting hot at 1600 Pennsylvania, for sure, or we wouldn't be seeing the president lying like he was today (See, "You Lie! ... President Obama: 'I Didn't Know ACORN Was Getting a Whole Lot of Funding'").

Thus I'm getting a kick out of Brian Leach's essay, "Could ACORN become Obama’s Watergate?":

President Obama in his media blitz on September 20 claimed he wasn’t keeping up with the issue because more pressing matters were at hand. “You know, if – frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely,” said Obama. “I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.”

Watch as Obama tries to distance himself from the ACORN group over the next few weeks. He cut ties to Reverend Wright when the association no longer was politically beneficial. But the fact remains that during the election campaign and before, Obama made repeated speeches to the group and even said he would consult with them on how to reorganize the country in 2007 ....

Read the whole thing.

What did Tricky Baracky know and when did he know it?

You heard it here first!

You Lie! ... President Obama: 'I Didn't Know ACORN Was Getting a Whole Lot of Funding'

Is President Obama lying again? His statement to George Stephanopoulos today: "I didn't know ACORN was getting a whole lot of government funding." (Via Memeorandum.)

If this isn't an outright lie, I don't know what is. As one of the commenters at Lucianne notes:

Just when you thought that this mans credibility could sink no further, he makes this incredibly stupid statement:

"I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money."

The Apollo Alliance wrote the darned Stimulus Bill that has $4.19 Billion earmarked for the ACORN umbrella. You know, Van Jones’ organization Apollo Alliance, he’s a good friend of Valerie Jarrett like the BFF kind. Come on man, that statement is an insult to every American's intelligence [spelling corrections appended].

Absolutely.

The New York Times reports that Senate Democrats met with President-elect Obama in January to discuss "the proposed $800 billion economic recovery plan ... on track for passage by mid-February." The measure included funding for neighborhood stabilization and community development block grants. As House Minority Leader John Boehner noted in January, "ACORN Could Get Billions from Democrats' Trillion Dollar Spending Plan: 'Job Creation' Bill Offers Taxpayer-Funded Bonanza for Organization Reportedly Under Federal Investigation."

Plus, at the Washington Examiner, "Stimulus Bill Funds ACORN Despite its History of Corruption." And, Puma-Eyes, "ACORN Positioned for Billions of Obama Stimulus Scratch."

And this statement comes from the House conference committee bill itself:

The conference agreement provides $3,000,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 is appropriated for the Community Development Block Grant program and $2,000,000,000 is available for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This funding is provided instead of the $5,190,000,000 proposed by the House. Funding was not provided in the Senate. The Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding will assist states, local governments, and nonprofits in the purchase and rehabilitation of foreclosed, vacant properties in order to create more affordable housing and reduce neighborhood blight.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis denied that her group was receiving neighborhood stabilization grants, but according to Eric Brown:

ACORN has basically denied that it has received or plans to seek the $2 billion in “neigborhood stabilization” funds provided for in the stimulus bill. The bill, however, also contains $1 billion for “community development block grants” and $2 billion for the “provision of emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes” (page 103 of the PDF). ACORN seems to be involved in this program. ACORN is hardly the stranger to public funds some have suggested; a search for ACORN-related information on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website alone yields over 500 hits, including clear indications that ACORN Housing Corp. receives public funds.

Check the full text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 here.

In February, the White House trumpeted the initial distribution of block grant funding from the bill, "Fighting Foreclosure and Homelessness":

Just a week after President Obama signed the Act into law, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today allocated 75% of its recovery funds -- $10 billion -- to create green jobs, to revive housing markets with high rates of foreclosure, and curb homelessness ....

The money opened up today includes:

$3 billion to develop, finance, and modernize public housing; $255 million for Native American and Native Hawaiian Housing; nearly $100 million for lead hazard reduction; $2.25 billion to kick-start the production of stalled affordable rental housing projects under the Tax Credit Assistance Program (TCAP); $2 billion to undertake much-needed project improvements to maintain the quality of critical affordable housing; $1 billion to rehabilitate affordable housing and improve key public facilities under the Community Development Block Grant Program; $1.5 billion to reduce homelessness, and prevent it among those facing a sudden economic crisis; and a temporary increase to the loan limits of mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

Here's a screecap of the White House page, just in case:

All we're missing is a direct statement from the president showing that his comments today are blatantly dishonest. But for good measure, Fire Andrea Mitchell adds this:

ACORN of course received over $800,000 from Obama during his presidential campaign, has received over $54 from the government over the last 10 years or so, and was set to receive about $8.5 BILLION from the stimulus package this year. Obama also was an attorney for ACORN during the ’90s. Obama’s first big “community organizer” jobs involved ACORN in 1992. He has been working along side ACORN since before he became an elected official. Obama also trained ACORN employees. There's also a famous soundbite of him now telling Acorn how they “will have a seat at the table” once he got elected [spelling corrections appended].

The ABC report is here, "Obama on ACORN: 'Not Something I've Followed Closely' Won't Commit to Cut Federal Funds."

Are You Freaking Stupid? has more, "ACORN Latest Group Thrown Under Bus. But Obama is Not Really Aware of Them." Also, Gateway Pundit, "Obama On ACORN Scandal: 'Not Something I've Followed Closely'," and Hot Air Pundit, "Obama On ABC This Week Reacts To The ACORN Videos."

**********

UPDATE: Linked at Patriot Room!

Obama Paid $800,000 to ACORN Subsidiary - Media AWOL

Where is the media reporting on Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN front-group that received $800,000 from the Barack Obama campaign in 2008? See, "Obama to Amend Report on $800,000 in Spending." And from Flopping Aces, "Connecting the Insidious Obama and ACORN Nexus":

Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN (see Memeorandum) are not incidental nor are they casual ...

The money given to ACORN through one of its front companies–CSI–was not a simple clerical error. The Obama Presidential campaign deliberately tried to hide its relationship to ACORN and funneling almost $1 million dollars to ACORN by using a group with no experience doing the task that it was ostensibly hired to do. The story is pretty simple–it is about Citizen Services Inc., a Nigerian director of CSI [Citizens Services Inc.] living in Minnesota and false campaign financing report.

If you want to understand why ACORN offices across the country are able to give crafty advice on avoiding taxes, fooling the police and setting up child prostitution businesses then you must first understand why the campaign of Barack Obama gave almost $1 million to an organization with no track record in doing the electioneering work they were hired to do.

See the full report, here.

Cartoon Credits: Wordsmith.

Islamic Jihad Goes to Capitol Hill

From Hummers & Cigarettes, "Islam On Capitol Hill: How Will The MSM Cover It?":

As you can see in the promotional image of the event, the organizers are hoping for 50,000 attendees. In light of the 9/12 March on Washington event last weekend, I promptly started to wonder how this one will be covered by the mainstream media. It will be interesting to see how favorably or unfavorably the attendees will be portrayed: radicals? whack jobs? honest folks exercising their freedom of speech? Will numbers of attendees be accurate or suppressed or exaggerated? Will the MSM be shocked and insulted by religious hordes gather at Capitol Hill, or will the fact that these are Muslims result in being given a "pass" by the press? If it were Christians gathering, let alone Catholics, would the event even be covered or would the people be ridiculed for believing in God?

Well, great questions. I'm not holding my breath, obviously.

The event's program includes two top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik Muhammad Jebril and Sheik Ahmed Dewidar. See, Atlas Shrugs, "September 25th, National Prayer Day - Leader of 'Islam on Capitol Hill' said: 'The White House Will Become the Muslim House', America is 'Controlled by the Jews'."