Treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Grahib, to pick two of many examples.
Dude, in less than ten hours, this thing has gone to four pages, and probably 20,000 words. Sorry if I missed a few of yours.
Calm the fuck down, fer fuck’s sake.
We have more than enough evidence to suggest that treatment at Gitmo, anyway, was condoned and probably approved at the Cabinet level, from my understanding. Even the right-wingers are questioning the value of pursuing it in the court system rather than questioning whether it was approved by the administration. Abu Ghraib is harder to pin down, but it certainly went higher than just Lyndie England and her crew…whether it stopped at the administrative level of the prison itself or went beyond is less certain than in the case of Gitmo.
Do us all a favor and describe up front just what constitutes the Gotcha you’re after this time, okay? It will save us all a lot of guessing.
And that makes Bush and Cheney guilty?
By the way, just for the record, the second video does not involve child prostitution, but just garden variety, adult prostitution, which…who gives a shit.
It certainly doesn’t rule them out. Nobody’s saying “Export them to the Hague immediately!” (Not seriously, anyway.) But there’s enough smoke to make an investigation to see if there’s fire logically appealing.
They’ve pretty much both acknowledged that they knew about the torture. Cheney, in particular, appears to have been heavily involved in it. He was desperately trying to torture somebody into saying that Iraq was involved with 9/11. He was unsuccessful.
I tend to disagree about the cop example. A few “stings” where cops are caught taking bribes are distrubing for exactly that reason - they indicate a corporate culture which tolerates bribe-taking.
There is simply no other way that such an issue could come to light, as it is very unlikely that all cops would ever be caught taking bribes.
A few such incidents indicate, but of course do not prove, there is a widespread problem.
That being said, it is of course a far cry from a “sting” by actual internal investigators, to have some shady political mooks with a hefty ideological axe to grind cobble up a heavily edited tape or two and claim it is proof of their victim’s wrong-doing. But assuming the tapes are not deliberate distortions (a big assumption), they do raise questions about the organization’s corporate culture - whether the target is the cops, the Republican party, or ACORN.
Yes, I understand that. My point is that they have put incentives in place which guarantee the poor people they hire will attempt to pad the roles. They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselves and only paying for the valid ones. Or by requiring 3rd party witnesses. Or even by spot-checking the registrations handed in and refusing to pay anything if any are found to be fraudulent.
Yes, they’d still have to hand the fraudulent ones in, but the fact is that either through negligence, idiocy, or intention, ACORN has set up an incentive system for their vote registration drives which maximizes the possibility that workers will try to game the system.
So keep your rolleyes to yourself. It’s not my problem if you’re refusing to look at the issue from any perspective other than the most simplistic one that bolsters your case.
See my response to ElvisL1ves. Your are intentionally avoiding the larger point in order to stick to your script that portrays them as unwitting victims of the process.
ACORN could take all sorts of steps to minimize the number of fraudulent registrations they accept in the first place. They refuse to do so. They know their policies increase the probability of fraudulent registrations being turned in, and they refuse to change them. Therefore, they are liable.
Furthermore, they appear to have a policy of turning in these registrations as late as possible, which puts a heavy burden on election officials to validate them. Either they are doing this on purpose, or they are a completely incompetent organization that can’t get its act together and turn in registrations in a timely manner. Either way, they suck.
Actually, I bet I can find ten posts onthis board saying essentially precisely that, with no indicia of lack of seriousness.
But I agree that there’s no evidence to investigate them – I have for a long time. I just don’t agree there’s enough evidence to declare them guilty.
Here, we have much the same situation. I think there’s enough evidence here to warrant a further probe into ACORN’s practices.
They are not allowed to validate or invalidate the registrations themselves.
They are required, by law, to submit all of them. They are not allwed to make a determination as to what they think is valid, only what they think is suspicious.
This is discriminatory, and ACORN has no authority to impose such a road block to a citizen registering to vote.
This is basically day labor. They aren’t going to be able to wait until months down the line to determine who deserves to be paid what. They also can’t hold every worker responsible for people who submit fraudulent regstrations without their knowledge.
They have set up the system which is the most cost effective and timely, and which does not allow for any real chance of voting fraud.
Irony.
There’s no reason to do so. Fraudulent registrations are little more than a paperwork nuisance. They don’t matter. They don’t lead to voter fraud. Any remedy would be worse than the disease.
Cite they they have such a policy?
That claim is not at all consistent with your yammering about their “liability”. It’s all up there for anybody to read, you know.
Bzzt. No, you don’t understand how it works. Validation is an official government function. No private organization has that authority.
No, you don’t get it at all. Not, that is, unless you can cite something, anything, that shows there is a significant number of bogus filings and that ACORN is responsible for them. But of course you can’t, so let’s not bother even asking.
Log, eye. :rolleyes:
You’re manfully trying to support the RW-blog case you’ve swallowed whole that ACORN is an evil tool of the Democratic Party, but it just ain’t working, is it? But will you reconsider that case? Will you consider the possibility that your favorite “news” sources are misleading you? Will you consider the possibility that you just don’t quite know how things work in a foreign country as well as the people who live there do? Will you even stop just making up assertions as if they were fact? Of course not.
Now go educate yourself before spouting off just for damn once, willya?
If this group was closely associated with the Republicans, you can bet there would already be a half dozen Congressional investigations ongoing, computers seized, and funding cut off…
Really? Lay it all out for us, then, Counselor. Do a side-by-side listing of the evidence for a probe into Bush and Cheney authorizing torture too, if only for entertainment value.
You’re welcome to make yourself look as foolish as you want there, of course. Your choice.
Diogenes and Elvis, when Sam is talking about validation by ACORN, he’s not talking about validation for purposes of registering voters or not, but for purposes of payment. As in, if a form for Batman comes along, flag it, refuse to pay for it, but send it along anyway as they’re legally required to do. I don’t know how well that would work, but your posts don’t seem to make that distinction.
I do think that, unlike the topic of the OP, the fake registrations are endemic to ACORN. The nature of the reimbursement encourages it. Whether or not it’s a problem worth worrying about, however, is a different matter.
Let him say that himself, then. Along with some kind of cite for how that huge mass of crap is crippling the system, too.
Nor do his.
He did.