So ACORN registrations aren’t *real *registrations because the registrants were only there in an off-hand and lackluster way. Dandy.
Do we also hold the same shitty opinion of the military recruiting drives? I mean, shit, if they wanted to enlist, they would. We don’t want any troops who enlisted in an off-hand and lackluster way, now do we?
Oh, the COMPANY did that, did they?
Why wasn’t it just the few workers that did it?
And you might focus your dominating intellect and perspicacious insight on this question: how did I change the subject? You’re free to ignore each and every post I make. You can discuss whatever aspect of this subject that pleases you.
But no. I make you bark. Hear the bell? Meat powder coming! Bark, little doggie! Woof! Woof!
Bricker:
You a very intelligent man. You must have been, in order to pass the bar. I’ve seen some of the sample questions they ask potential lawyers, and they are really fucking difficult.
I plead with you, kind sir, use your vast intellect to defend good, not to make absurdly tenuous arguments defending evil. This argument is a waste of your talent.
Thank you for the kind words.
But the problem here is not that I seek to defend Blackwater’s employees. It’s that I fight against the ludicrous and inconsistent standards my interlocutors here use in their own reasoning. I think each and every Blackwater employee responsible for these crimes should be imprisoned. I think the company should be liable for their failure to hire, train and supervise appropriately.
I also think that asserting ACORN has no wrongdoing to account for is ludicrous.
No one objects when I say the stuff about Blackwater. But when I say ACORN did something wrong, there are cries of denial.
Is it really “defending evil” to point out the error of that response? Really?
In terms that even Bricker, conservative apologist extraordinaire, should be able to understand:
Some Republican does something scummy! See Bricker run! See Bricker obfuscate and change the subject and focus on minutuae! See Bricker refuse to answer questions and sling insults! See Bricker compare a charity to register those lazy lackluster black people to a company ** that murders and gang rapes people.** See Bricker whine, whine, whine that the company didn’t know that.
Well, why wouldn’t they know? You know, this is just a shot in the dark, but maybe when you take at least some rejects from the various armed services who found the UCMJ a little too restricting and giving them umlimited ammo and carte blanche you ought to keep an eye on their trigger happy, raping little asses. Oh, but that’s right. Responsibility, in Bricker land, is not for Republicans and conservatives.
See Bricker ignore that the charity that benefits mostly black people is not the same as a company that murders and rapes people. See Bricker deny, deny, deny.
See Bricker for false equivalencies that he has to use because his cause is so morally corrupt.
[Quote=Starving Artist]
I myself think liberals are trying to destroy America. In fact, I think to a large degree they already have. All you have to do is look at the societal ills that plague this country today which were virtually non-existent sixty years ago to see the damage that liberalism has wrought within this country.
Still, that doesn’t mean I think liberals are evil. And it doesn’t mean I think they have malicious intent. I merely think they are misguided, wrongheaded, willful, unrealistic, indifferent to consequence, irresponsible and immature. But none of that equals “evil”.
[/Quote]
I gotta admit, that gave me a sardonic chuckle.
If you really feel that way, you ought to be out in the street with a 30-06, mowing down everyone whose car bears an NPR bumper sticker. That you are not shows you are completely full of shit, not that we didn’t know that already.
How racist! You’re the only person that’s said anything at all about black people. As a brown person myself, I’m offended by your assumption that poor people can’t be white. What, only brown people can be poor? How insulting!
Bricker, you’re better than this.
Why do I see it as 2 different situations? I’ve already explained it once, but somehow it was too difficult for you to follow.
What Blackwater did was acts of commission, initiated at the highest levels of the company and carried out by direction of the board.
What ACORN did was a failure to act, initiated by some of the highest execs, without the knowledge of the board, with no actions carried out by anyone who wasn’t in on the “keep quiet” direction.
You honestly don’t see a difference between the two? You don’t see a difference between a whole company doing something illegal and directing their employees to do illegal things vs. a company (yeah I know they weren’t a company; it’s shorthand, ok?) NOT doing something and NOT directing their employees to NOT do anything because directing them would have blown the cover of the few who were trying to NOT do anything?
At this point I have to think you’re just being obstinate. The difference is very clear: Blackwater directed people to do something while ACORN didn’t. One involved overt acts by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people directed to make those actions while the other involved a few people keeping information to themselves.
Your attempts to draw equivalence between the situations keeps failing, Bricker but for some reason you can’t see it.
Their very essence is different, the reasons for their existence at polar opposites. ACORN struggles for social and poliitical justice, Blackwater offers to commit violence for money.
I’ve met ACORN people, and I couldn’t stand them. So earnest they made my teeth hurt, so sincere they made we want to get drunk and play Grand Theft Auto. Because they embarrassed me. Sure, I was on the right side of things, working for a foundation giving away dead rich folks money to causes they would have loathed.
But these guys are out there, they walk the walk, they go door to door. I thought it was kinda quaint, this whole Saul Alinsky sort of retro-leftism. They taught me a lesson. If the Republicans hate and fear them enough to stoop to any means necessary…they must be effective. Sorry, Unca Saul, you were right and I should have listened.
But comparing ACORN to Blackwater is like comparing Dorothy Day of the Catholic Workers to a Shanghai waterfront whore. With a knife.
[QUOTE=Snowboarder Bo;13556309
What Blackwater did was acts of commission, initiated at the highest levels of the company and carried out by direction of the board.
What ACORN did was a failure to act, initiated by some of the highest execs, without the knowledge of the board, with no actions carried out by anyone who wasn’t in on the “keep quiet” direction.[/QUOTE]
I think the difference is that the actions of the ACORN execs were designed specifically to keep part of the management of the organization in the dark, to make it so that ACORN couldn’t have an opinion on the embezzlement. I generally assume that the board and highest-level executives are aware of the organization’s policies, unless I have a reason to think otherwise. In ACORN’s case, that reason exists.
You’re not even trying. That’s out of the ‘glaringly stupid Republican debating ploys’, copyright Rush Limbaugh, 1988, and the chapter entitled, “I know you are but what am I! I know you are but what am I?”
Perhaps a better comparison than to Black Water, and more relevant to Bricker’s orientation would be to compare the ACORN situation to the Catholic Church. Both are non-profit organizations that ostensibly do a lot of good. Both have had scandals. In my opinion the scandals in the Catholic Church are much more severe and go much further in terms of members of the hierarchy covering up misdeeds, a single case of embezzlement as compared to decades of child molestation. The Catholic church supports many causes that liberals find repellent (anti-gay, pro-life) just as ACORN supported many causes that conservatives object to. Thus far I haven’t seen any move in the direction of severing all ties between the government and Catholic charities. Bricker, why is ACORN different?
Except those aren’t just replellant causes or ideas. ACORN did not support bigotry. The Catholic Church does.
Basically, ACORN is a cause that Righties hate because it helped poor people, and most of those were perceived as black. Those are the people most likely to vote for Democrats. The scandal in this case is how determined anti-ACORN Righties are to inflate incidental issues into wrongdoing. The Catholic Church has for decades opposed womens’ rights and deliberately concealed and protected child molesters. The comparison is impossible.
Nice try - but Accenture split from Arthur well before the Enron scandal (as all of the Big 5 were shedding their consulting practices).
I am not going to read through the predictable nonsense that this thread will produce, but only respond only to this nonsense.
This miscreant didn’t “seek” to make NPR look bad. He did make NPR look bad.
The NPR executive worked for NPR! That NPR should take the “moral high ground” is laughable on its face as the NPR exec (representing NPR!) took NPR into the moral gutter. “Taking the moral high ground” is advice for someone wronged. NPR was not wronged. If pointing and focusing a hidden camera (and letting you run your mouth) is a “vicious attack” you’re delusional. (and even the actors didn’t do much prompting)
The “activist” is a sleaze and practicing sleazy yellow journalism, but it is mano a mano between 2 pigs; the sleaze ball activist and the sleaze ball NPR exec. We’re watching the merger between reality TV and news, a trend thats been going on for several years. (and it sucks)
No news report I saw indicated this guy was fired. He quit in advance of the bombshell this video would produce. He’s both a sleaze and a coward. Even if he was fired, any exec with an IQ greater than table salt would have fired him before losing $90M in federal funding. Please! Even if NPR did fire him, its a no-brainer. Only the brain dead would have tried to keep him. Painting it like some noble act is laughable.
raindog
avid NPR listener and fan.
Horse.
Shit.
The Blackwater BOARD ordered the assault and rape of women, did it?
My God, you’ve lost it. You don’t even care how crazy you sound now.
“What’s next on the agenda, gentlemen?”
“Mr. Chairmen, I move we adopt the rape and mutiliation proposal we discussed at our last meeting.”
“A fine plan, Simmons. All those in favor?”
While I admire your dedication to your civic duties, it’s not for you to decide how hard it ought to be to register.
[QUOTE=Buck Godot]
Perhaps a better comparison than to Black Water, and more relevant to Bricker’s orientation would be to compare the ACORN situation to the Catholic Church. Both are non-profit organizations that ostensibly do a lot of good. Both have had scandals. In my opinion the scandals in the Catholic Church are much more severe and go much further in terms of members of the hierarchy covering up misdeeds, a single case of embezzlement as compared to decades of child molestation. The Catholic church supports many causes that liberals find repellent (anti-gay, pro-life) just as ACORN supported many causes that conservatives object to. Thus far I haven’t seen any move in the direction of severing all ties between the government and Catholic charities. Bricker, why is ACORN different?
[/QUOTE]
We had a long thread about this, and IIRC Catholic Charities are not actually affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, although there are lots of the same people on their board(s).
Perhaps you could quote the passage I wrote where I talked about a rape occurring, either in this thread or in the other one you linked to?
Or perhaps you could admit that I never once talked about a rape with respect to Blackwater/Xe?
I am going to refuse to answer this point, because it’s too reasoned and logical for the Pit.
Look, I don’t say that defunding ACORN was the best answer. This entire line of discussion arose from the claim that ACORN had done absolutely, literally zero, nothing wrong.
But to answer your very valid comparison: the government would be justified in severing funding to Catholic Charities, even though “Catholic Charities” is not exactly the same organization as the Catholic Church. I would probably argue against that, but my resistance would arise from my prejudice in favor of the organization, not a neutral appraisal of the situation.
Of course not! There’s no money in that.