ACORN "pimp" arrested for illegally accessing Senate office; tampering with phone system

[CannyDan]

@elucidator

And, as everybody knows, failure to apply a rigorous system of supervision and training is precisely the same as culpability. Are you quite sure you want to attach yourself to this standard? And are you also quite sure that you want to raise “inappropriate” to the level you imply, suggest, and insinuate?

You know Bricker, I’ve been reading these boards since long before I ever paid to post on them. I’m more an analytical guy than a confrontational one, and mostly I enjoy watching debates ebb and flow before me. A poster offers an assertion and I mentally “attaboy!” because I might have made a similar one. Another poster contradicts it and I re-evaluate and formulate my mental riposte. Rarely though do I feel a compulsion to actually enter the fray. (Hence my post count.)

And over the years I’ve come to value you as one of the more cogent and coherent posters. I appreciate your command of language and your ability to communicate your thoughts. Even more, I am often grateful for the professional insights you provide into sometimes complex legal issues. Further, I admire your ability to separate the brightly drawn letters of the law from the personal wishes or desires that frequently cloud such debates. I may not always agree with you about what the law should be, and I (layman that I am) may even sometimes disagree with you about what the law actually is, but I respect the difference. And so I usually can enjoy watching you debate regardless of my level of agreement with you.

I also know firsthand that it can be fun to engage in a game of “let us take an already thin premise and see how absurdly far we can stretch it before it breaks into tattered shreds of incredulity”. This kind of intellectual exercise, especially when properly lubricated with flavored alcohol, produced high entertainment value during both my undergraduate and graduate days. Heck, it can even still be fun today.

And I can speculate that a professional advocate might have some occasional need for a proficiency with this ability, perhaps in a courtroom or maybe a contract negotiation or something. So I tell myself that I understand and accept your forays into this style in other threads. Even here, to a point, it makes for a not-too-unreasonable hijack.

But please let me tell you, I swear without a trace of snark or offense intended (we really need a “I’m tellin’ ya ‘cause you’re like a brother, dude!” emoticon), that this time you’ve slipped a cog. Really, this is the thinnest and now the most protracted construction of irrelevancies ever to grace a triviality.

I hope you’ll give it over. Not necessarily admit defeat, as someone said above, but just drop it. It’s become painful.

It would really do my heart good to have you quaff a half pint, kick back, and say “You know, I find this to be an intellectually intriguing argument. I’m enjoying playing this game. If there was anything to litigate, and if O’Keefe offered me a nice fat retainer, I think I might like to take a stab at this in a real courtroom. It would be fun, and I might even cover some bets on how successful it could be. But between you, me, and the lamp post there – and you know I’ll deny it if you ever quote me –I really do think that guy is a slimy lying little cocksucker after all.”

C’mon, Bricker. We’re all pulling for you out here!

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Bricker

So ACORN’s employees did inappropriate things, but not ACORN.

I don’t even agree with that much, but that’s the most that was concluded by any invsetigation yes. Once more, ACORN qua ACORN didn’t do anything wrong.

And ACORN itself suffered from longstanding management weaknesses, a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision, but none of that is inappropriate?

No, that’s just a normal function of underfunding.

[gonzomax]

@Bricker

So ACORN’s employees did inappropriate things, but not ACORN.

And ACORN itself suffered from longstanding management weaknesses, a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision, but none of that is inappropriate?

ACORN had aver 400,000 members in 1200 offices. They hired temporary workers during elections. I suppose you believe if any of them did something wrong, it is a black mark on the whole agency.
That standard would hurt every large business, because every business has some degree of problems with employees.
You keep setting up impossible standards for organizations that you disagree with. Your lack of fairness is grating. Even after a whole organization got killed by lies, you are still not satisfied.
I have never seen serious articles claiming ACORN employees were not adequately trained. After the rightwingers caused them trouble they did some retraining to try to silence the unfair criticisms. It did not work ,as you prove daily.Even killing a huge organization that dedicated to helping the poor and oppressed is not enough for you. Lots of people lost jobs. Lots of people can not get help, that ACORN provided. I hope it makes you all warm and fuzzy.

[Bricker]

@CannyDan

" But between you, me, and the lamp post there – and you know I’ll deny it if you ever quote me –I really do think that guy is a slimy lying little cocksucker after all.”

You haven’t read the thread, have you?

Would it surprise you to learn that I have already, more than once, posted such sentiments in this thread?

Obviously it would, given that comment.

I have no interest in defending O’Keefe qua O’Keefe. He’s scummy.

What I object to is the reluctance to say that Moore is scummy. I’m perfectly willing to call the guy putatively on “my” side a scumball. Why isn’t the other side equally willing to do the same thing to “their” guy.

[Fear_Itself]

@Bricker

What I object to is the reluctance to say that Moore is scummy. I’m perfectly willing to call the guy putatively on “my” side a scumball. Why isn’t the other side equally willing to do the same thing to “their” guy.

Because that is not what what this thread is about. There is a perfectly good Moore-bashing thread in the Pit. Your attempts to continually make this thread about Moore are childish. Go to the Moore thread, you will see plenty of people criticizing him. But for some reason, you won’t be satisfied until this thread is also devoted to bashing Moore.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@Fear_Itself

Because that is not what what this thread is about. There is a perfectly good Moore-bashing thread in the Pit. Your attempts to continually make this thread about Moore are childish. Go to the Moore thread, you will see plenty of people criticizing him. But for some reason, you won’t be satisfied until this thread is also devoted to bashing Moore.

Bricker has been told this and told this and told this ad infinitum.

[Bricker]

@Fear_Itself

Because that is not what what this thread is about. There is a perfectly good Moore-bashing thread in the Pit. Your attempts to continually make this thread about Moore are childish. Go to the Moore thread, you will see plenty of people criticizing him. But for some reason, you won’t be satisfied until this thread is also devoted to bashing Moore.

Not exactly.

In that thread, there are also people DEFENDING Moore. And some of those same people refuse to apply the same standards to O’Keefe.

[CannyDan]

@Bricker

Not exactly.

In that thread, there are also people DEFENDING Moore. And some of those same people refuse to apply the same standards to O’Keefe.

So you require 100% affirmation? I hate to break the news, but somehow I don’t think an intarweb message board is gonna reach 100% agreement on anything.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Bricker

Not exactly.

In that thread, there are also people DEFENDING Moore. And some of those same people refuse to apply the same standards to O’Keefe.

Prolly because, as has been pointed out to you quite a few times in this thread, the two men are engaged in different activities.

[elucidator]

Are you trying to hi-jack this thread away from the central issue of liberal hypocrisy?

[MaxTheVool]

All joking about hijacking aside, the last several pages of this thread have fairly clearly been a comparison of Moore vs. O’Keefe, with several of us claiming and arguing they’re quite different, and Bricker responding. It’s his turn to respond. Please stop distracting him with hijacks-of-hijacks-of-hijacks about whether ACORN is 100% blameless or not.

[CannyDan]

@MaxTheVool

All joking about hijacking aside, the last several pages of this thread have fairly clearly been a comparison of Moore vs. O’Keefe, with several of us claiming and arguing they’re quite different, and Bricker responding. It’s his turn to respond. Please stop distracting him with hijacks-of-hijacks-of-hijacks about whether ACORN is 100% blameless or not.

Max, he *did *reply. To me. It looked like this.

@Bricker

You haven’t read the thread, have you?

Would it surprise you to learn that I have already, more than once, posted such sentiments in this thread?

Obviously it would, given that comment.

I have no interest in defending O’Keefe qua O’Keefe. He’s scummy.

What I object to is the reluctance to say that Moore is scummy. I’m perfectly willing to call the guy putatively on “my” side a scumball. Why isn’t the other side equally willing to do the same thing to “their” guy.

That’s what I get for being polite and reasonable.

Fact of the matter Bricker is that I *did *read the entire thread, beginning with the OP that you keep dragging us away from, and ending up here, six hundred something posts later, still debating your hijack.

If you did make such a statement about O’Keefe, somehow I missed it. Pardon me. In my defense I suggest that it was buried in the sheer volume of your unwarranted speculations about what he did or didn’t do, based upon a lack of sufficient clear, unambiguous evidence to totally satisfy your personal evidentiary standards, because the little scumbag hid the evidence, withheld the original tapes, and lied about how they were obtained in order to produce a political hatchet job out of whole cloth. I would think this enough to declare him a scumbag, in and of itself.

So hooray to you for condemning him. Golf clap for finally clearing that up. As for getting any special points for him being putatively ‘your’ scumbag, well, that’s a whole other sack of shit. The fact is that O’Keefe did this to advance the fortunes of the Republican Party, by damaging an organization that was registering more Democrats than Republicans (at the expense of the country as a whole, I submit, if ‘community works’ like broadly based voter registration are actually of value to our country, as I believe they are). Just because you belong to the Republican Party (if you do) or simply because you support some or all of the planks of its platform (again, if you do) does not mean that you necessarily support scumbag efforts like his. Reasonable people know this; no one from ‘my’ side tried to hang O’Keefe around your personal neck. You could have easily disowned him for his scumbag actions, accepted the accolades due you, and stopped there. But no, you had to declare defense by comparative wrongdoing, and drag in Moore. And here we are.

Even now, even as you unambiguously declare O’Keefe a scumbag, you insist on continuing the false equivalence. First, Moore isn’t any special pet of ‘my’ side. The other thread contains sufficient evidence that even lefties like me see and proclaim much about Moore and his work that is deserving of criticism. He isn’t our tin god, and we don’t follow his every action or statement as gospel. We are variously sometimes entertained, sometimes annoyed, and occasionally disgusted with some parts of his works. We recognize that he has an agenda, and that his documentaries are editorials advocating his position. But however far his editing may carry his works into the realm of propaganda, and however much or little I or other lefties may agree with him on any given issue, there has never been an implication (let alone a demonstration) that he has deliberately hidden evidence, refused to declare sources, and lied about how his video was obtained.

In point of fact Moore has a large body of work. Some of it is rather good, and some is arguably less so. Yet out of all of these hours and hours of video by Moore on a great range of topics you’ve come up with a couple of brief snippets that you hold up as conclusive demonstrations of Moore’s perfidy. Even if I were to grant you your point on those instances (although I do not), they remain but a small, even a microscopic fraction of the totality of his work. This despite the fact that his films have been a favorite target of conservative critics for years. Scumbag O’Keefe on the other hand has but a single significant work in his career, that being his ACORN ‘expose’, and it is in its entirety a great steaming lump of bucolic end product, as has been pointed out ad nauseum in this and countless other threads.

So although I’m pleased that you’ve finally made a simple, declarative and unambiguous condemnation of O’Keefe, I’m still not going to declare Moore a scumbag. Not because he’s ‘my’ guy, not because I always agree with him, not because he’s done no wrong, but because Moore and O’Keefe are not equivalent.

Now can we finally get back to bashing the little scumbag for the telephone caper?

[margin]

@Bricker

Not exactly.

In that thread, there are also people DEFENDING Moore. And some of those same people refuse to apply the same standards to O’Keefe.

How do I say this? So…if somebody does something scummy, it’s okay for you then? Ethics are ethics. You don’t get to be a jerk because somebody else is.

[margin]

@Bricker

If you didn’t see that, then… well… you’re not very smart.

Or not a very good reader, at least.

Your point is: O’keefe picks on the poor; Moore on the rich. That’s exactly the point I was ascribing to your side above: it’s not the actions, it’s the target of the actions.

I have said that many times. Here is a sample:

You’re being intellectually dishonest here and it’s extremely disappointing. For whatever reason, by God, you have a burr in your butt about the NRA and Michael Moore and you just want to make sure we can’t discuss how James O’Keefe got people fired, committed crimes, and a whole long laundry list which you’ve been hit with time and time again.

I bet you try and compare Ann Coulter to Michael Moore, too.

[MaxTheVool]

@CannyDan

Max, he *did *reply. To me. It looked like this.

I think that was a reply about a separate issue, which is whether he actually has condemned O’Keefe. Which, in fairness, he has. It was in his second or third reply to me (if not also elsewhere). I can dig it up if you like.

That was not a reply to my most recent post, nor to (for instance) Banquet Bear’s post #586.

[ElvisL1ves]

@margin

For whatever reason, by God, you have a burr in your butt about the NRA and Michael Moore

The burr is really about admitting either that he’s been wrong, or that his institutional loyalties to the Republican Party and the Roman church are absolute and blind.

[MaxTheVool]

Bump for Bricker, since this seems to be the key point of disagreement:

@me

So in one case, you start with an honestly felt accusation, one that is not hugely sensationalistic. You then find a true fact in the public record which you think supports your position. And then you display it somewhat out of context, claiming that it supports your position, but leave out enough details that a fairly dishonest view ends up being presented.

On the other hand, you start with an organization you dislike. You then make up out of whole cloth an accusation against them (or, in the most charitable possible interpretation, you take an honestly held position (“ACORN workers will cut corners in order to help those they view as in need, even if that ends up violating the law”) and stretch it to a sensationalistic extreme (“ACORN workers support sex trafficking”) ). So then you go around and use your hidden camera to generate new footage by filming people in lots of different places, the vast majority of which in no way supports your accusation, but you poke enough cameras in enough places that you finally get some footage that does, when spliced together in an edited fashion, with edited voiceover, and if you ignore the fact that the employees may in fact have just been playing along before calling the police, does in fact appear to lend some credence to your fabricated and sensationalistic claim; and then you release just that bit of footage.
Those two things really seem equivalent to you?

[Fear_Itself]

O’Keefe fumbles plan to embarrass CNN:

A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating “palace of pleasure” and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O’Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show.

…

Among the props listed were a “condom jar, dildos, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs” and a blindfold.

According to the document, O’Keefe was to record a video of the following script before Boudreau arrived: "My name is James. I work in video activism and journalism. I’ve been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort…

"Instead, I’ve decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I’m going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I’m going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she’ll get seduced on camera and you’ll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath. "

[Brown_Eyed_Girl]

Good god, that dude is creepy.
And juvenile.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

The stupidity of this plan is mind boggling. Did he really think he was going to be able to seduce her? I don’t know what’s more obnoxious, O’Keefe’s fantastically delusional arrogance in thinking he could get the time of day from this reporter, much less “seduce” her, or the staggering misogyny inherent in his words. She’s an award winning journalist. What makes her a “bubble headed bleach blonde” (and if he really has a problem with those, has he ever seen Fox News)?

And his entire justification for the stunt was based on a completely baseless allegation that CNN was out to get him somehow, that “I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort…” First of all, he’s already done a great job of portraying himself as all those things (let’s not forget about the white supremacist rally he helped organize and where he was photographed manning a table of neo-nazi literature), and second of all, he had no basis at all for deciding that CNN was going to be unfair or inaccurate about him. Frankly, I think he’s lucky his own confederate tipped off the CNN reporter about what he was planning to try because he was setting himself up for potential sexual assault charges. What a fucking slimeball this kid is. Just a diseased, mentally ill, little worm. it’s only a matter of time before he lands himself in jail again.