Washington, DC – 52 year old Robert Freed was blind-sided today when he walked into work and found a pink slip taped to his locker. After 23 years as an assemblyman at the GM truck plant in Dearborn Michigan, he never expected to be the last man left working in America, and now, finally, the last man laid off.
“I guess I’m lucky since I was the Union President and held onto my job longer than the rest of the guys. I mean, what could I do…Strike?”
With unemployment now at 100%, President Barack Obama has decided to keep all Americans on unemployment compensation indefinitely, and promises to further investigate the popular idea of having everyone just work for the government in the future!
“I kinda like being the boss,” says Obama after signing a bill that leagalzes the KGB and Gestapo as an official investigative arm of the Treasury Department’s IRS. “I also like that I’m getting paid real big bucks too, and you’re not!”
All across America, everything has stopped and everyone is staying at home. Banks have stopped sending out foreclosure notices since all employees are now a thing of the past! Credit card companies are closed. The phone companies stopped functioning months ago.
Fire, police, and civil employees wait for unemployment checks that will never arrive simply because mailmen have been laid off as well, and no banks are in business to cash checks!
From his vacation home in trendy Martha’s Vineyard, Obama has promised a large fireworks celebration in a ‘Keep American Spirits High’ celebration that is expected to draw large crowds, even though the government hasn’t explained where the fireworks are coming from and how people are supposed to see the celebration with all power off and mass transportation at a standstill.
First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the current situation by having her staff send a bouquet of fresh, imported roses to Mr. Freed, relaying her condolences and promised as soon as she gets back from her month long vacation in Paris, she’ll invite the Freed family over for a luncheon at the White House. The luncheon is to be exclusively catered by the famous makers of SPAM, who will demonstrate to all who attend the luncheon that the potted meat can be successfully used as a turkey replacement this holiday season.
The First Lady regrettfully won’t be in attendance as she has a prior luncheon committment with singer Barbara Striesand.
News agencies are reporting, that for the first time in history, people are crossing the Rio Grande southward. Millions have trekked from the North in massive migration waves looking to find work in Mexico, and are driving the Mexicans crazy with their English-only demands.
In response to the mass flight, Obama has directed the remnants of the ACORN organization to set up ‘Administration Lemonade Stands’ at border crossing points to offer humanitarian help to those with parched throats. The lemonade is not free, since ACORN is charging $10.50 per cup….Cash only!
Homeland Security is helping with all southern migrants. There is a departure tax of $100.00 being leveled on each person who crosses the Rio Grande. The TSA, citing humanitarian reasons, has promised to forego all body searches and the use of strip x-ray machines for those traveling southward, but forbids removing more than $500 US per person which will violate recently instituted monetary laws.
The Administration claims it will now be outsourcing all future citizenship once dissatisfied Americans leave and head south. The first influx of replacement citizens is expected to arrive by boat from places like Bengladesh, North Korea, and Sudan in mid-November. Obama cites ‘too many people always complaining about something’ for his action on forcing out all unemployed and complaining citizens. Obama promises a speedy road to a Green Card, and agents are actually passing them out, along with little American flags, as immigrants step off the boat.
Administration and White House aides have placed the blame squarely on FOX News for the influx of citizens leaving for Mexico, citing the devisive nature of their reporting and the recent government accounting of having ‘way too many blonde reporters’ as well.
FOC has promised to hire some of the Sudanese immigrants to raise the Darker Threshold mandated by the Administration.
At last report, Mr. Freed found the SPAM delicious and took home a few free cans, as well as, a few choice pieces of White House silverware.
No offense taken. Funny is the objective of satire sites afterall.
I apologize if I was out of line. Just wanted to get the funny back is all. I do respect you guys. You all seem to be quite passionate in your beliefs and that’s what makes a great debate. Don’t need to sanitize, but funny, yeah, I can go for that!
Putting other people down is the funnest sort of humor, isn’t it Bargis?
OK, I guess we’ve beat this horse to death, brought its zombie back and hacked it to pieces again, Beckert. The next time we get into this kind of sport, we’ll keep it funnier, and sanitized for your safety.
I still think rfreed is funny! You know…funny ha ha, not funny the other way, unless…………………..
It is interesting though.
Sorry, but you guys are all starting to bore the hell out of me. You’re all very intelligent, we get that. But I’m pretty sure this is still a satire site. Isn’t there some other site where you can take this conversation? I don’t wanna be a spoil sport, but you started it…
L-T– Not knocking “the estabishment” for being the glue, either. Don’t think that the balance of disruptive elements from that time fall squared on “one side” or “the other”. I do not entirely discount your direct line from some aspects of social acceptance into the plague of addiction, but I think that line is spurious. Incidentally correlated, but a root cause or factor. I don’t think social acceptance doesn’t lead people to drugs as much as desire for intoxication. Many of the farm houses you speak of made moonshine for generations. That is hardly a poster child of abstinence prior to the 60’s.
But drinking oneself to death used to at least carry a local stigma that isn’t as effective against a quicker, more addictive drug like meth. So your ‘ethos creep’ philosophical point
has an element of truth, theoretically…not sure how much that enters into the practical nature of rural and inner city addiction. But it’s worth some thought. To obliquely paraphrase Whitney Houston’s perspective, “If people had better finances, they could do coke and not crack.” So I could blame the economy and poverty for not allowing certain segments of the population to do the top shelf drugs, and THAT’S what’s caused the meth epidemic.
What I think we both agree on is that the type of “substance’ is more destructive AND more available. Once again, “availability” (those are driven by market forces and improved technology) is not the fault of the 60’s, straight line or no on the acceptance factor.
But your point is well taken regarding prohibition versus ostentatiously violating the law. You view this as a breakdown in personal and civic responsibility. OK, maybe it was.
Rfreed, ya nut! I still owe you a response on your atrocity point.
Kilroy, I only brought up the disgraceful treatment of elderly Kazan to give example of people some would call ‘of note’ who are stuck in another decade.
In my belief there’s a straight line between 1960’s and meth/crack, I know people have been using brain altering chems for millenia. I know early 1900’s patent meds contained opiates. Just trying to be honest historian here.
Is true that per capita, a minority were using drugs in the 60’s. But they were a very influential group of people. It became chic to flout the law. Prohibition was different, my opinion. Late 1920’s people had grown up with legal alcohol, now all of a sudden it was illegal.
Marijuana had never been legal in the lifetimes of Jimi Hendrix, etc. So to my imperfect analysis, the idea that it’s cool to break the laws about controlled substances, started in the 1960’s. That’s just my belief; I’m not damning hippies for their lack of prescience.
I simply say what I’ve long said about 1960’s drug culture. What is harmless for a bunch of trustfund babies in a Yale dorm? Ain’t gonna look that harmless once that ethos filters down to trailers in rural Arkansas or housing projects in Detroit.
Kilroy, a lot of things I’d probably agree with you about, on the 1960’s. Your use of ‘throwing baby out with bath water’ ironic, since that’s how I see the very influential minority in that era who launched a war against the ‘establishment.’ Segregation was a filthy thing and great heroic people gave much to end it. Other than that, to me anyway? A lot of the ‘establishment’ was the glue that makes things work right!
Hee, heee, heee……..
Bhwaaaa, haaa, haaa, ha!
I’m going to introduce all of you denouncing the 60’s to my friend Elmer….
Haa, haa, haa, haa.
Elmer was a survivor of the 60’s…..sort of…
Part of him survived anyway……
Part of him is still there….and never came back……
Bhwaaa, haaa, haaa, ha!
Elmer was….is rather, a master of psychedelics and all the other items that get you high and even a few that keep you there.
Elmer reached many higher planes of consciousness on his trips.
Unfortunately a few lower ones to. Those lower ones tend to hang on to you.
Heee, heee, heee, ha!
Elmer likes to meet new friends and show them how to ‘experience’ the 60’s Hendrix style. Elmer doesn’t have many friends. Most of them are in rehab, out of the body or DOA. Therefore Elmer has to always make new friends.
Haaa, haaa, haaa, heeeeeeeeee!
I’m one of Elmers few friends who still is in contact with reality…..sort of……
I’ve given Elmer all of your addresses. He’s going to come by and visit you and make friends.
Probably when you’re asleep. Elmer is really good at hooking up ‘special’ connections to your house’s water intake and ventilation system.
Elmer will help you re-experience the 60’s the way they were meant to be ‘Experienced’.
Sweet hallucinations….I mean, dreams!
BHWAA, HAAA, HAAA, HAAA!
L-T, what happened with Kazan is what happens when old politics and acrimony persist into the future. Exacty what we should be getting away from.
And the 60’s are no more or less a mixed bag of achievement than the rest. Take the 90’s…great decade for technology and investment, the worst in the same vein, due to over-inflated IPO, worthless stock with no value and a gold-miner investment mentality.
The 60’s brought us color TV, the first “non-entitled” generation of middle class people to massively aspire to and realistic have a chance at a college education, man on the moon. Heck, first man in orbit, so you still think there’s nothing of merit from the 60’s? DNA research broke through into real possibilities. There was more exposure to all the ‘hippie stuff’ on TV, not in the lives of ost people, so despite all the politics in existence, it didn’t affect most people. TV hype…what if the 80’s were over-hyped the same way by scenes of people knocking each other over for Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Dolls? Yeah, well the 60’s was bigger than that, too. see you point on SOME aspects of the 60’s, but aren’t you at risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? This is from a history affcionado, not one longing for the past.
And just for discussion, I still give the 20’s-30’s credit for the drug culture. A lot more people than Armstrong were smoking pot, cocaine was an elixor and codeine was was highly abused. That traveling medicine man was the first dope-dealer. Suspicions of massive drug use in the 60’s by more than a small segment of society were over-hyped. If you change the camera angle form the hippies to society itself, it wasn’t all that wild. You may as well pre-judge wide-spread violence in the 21st century from video shot at a Juggalo Gatherng…and that’s all the footage you have. More people used drugs in the disco era than the 60’s, because it was a sign of ‘wealth’ and “cool”. But, I’d go further back to the creation of the “drug culture” to the late 1800’s. Google “ether” and you may come across how it’s current use was discovered…while being used as a party drug at a high society get togethers of the scientific elite. Naw, you can’t blame the “drug culture” on the 60’s…people have always been addicts. And it continued to grow in dual directions of increased acceptance and the wide-spread destuction of addiction. Sorry.
Your perspective is interesting, though. I think if a lot people in the 60’s knew how their actions would be seen by the future, they’d have been a little humbler in their efforts to “change the world”. And I’m not just referring to hippies, either.
Kilroy, I trace meth & crack directly to the 60’s because that’s when a sizeable group of the young first began thinking it was cool to use illegal substances.
Yeah, I know Louis Armstrong was smoking pot back in the 1920’s.
People of note still stuck in the 1960’s? Depends on how u define ‘person of note.’ None of them have showed me much worth taking note of.
When Elia Kazan got his lifetime achievment Oscar 1999, I saw some movie stars refuse to stand & give a great director his due, all over his HUAC testimony. So I guess those celebs are even still stuck in the 1950’s.
I really do think there’s a lot of mythologizing about the 1960’s on the Left. Didn’t intend to say it’s unanimous.
Actually, I’d say the only people who haven’t left the 60’s are the people who keep bring it up. Some moved on, others are still on the porch shaking their fist at shadows of things long past. Else why would they constantly center their arguments there as a model of Liberal failure (during a time of Nixon, nonetheless…that just makes no sense at all to call it a “liberal decade” of any kind).
Just why would anyone be nostalgic of the 60’s except (“obsessed” is more like it when it comes to the distractors) except for that’s when they turned 18? The 60’s was turmoil, the draft, the national Guard, police brutality, speed traps, inner city blues, etc. etc.)
I’d like one example of a modern person of note still stuck in the 60’s. That assumption is pure rhetoric.
Like the people nostalgic for the 80’s. They’re nostalgic for a time of their youth, not ideology. Methinks someone tries to paint an overly simplistic reason for a more mundance phenomena, all for the sake of disparaging it. That isn’t objectivity, it’s obsession. IMO.
L-T….Yeah so correct.
The super-left’s time was the 60s and they haven’t left the ozone since. Afterall, with a leader like LBJ and his myriad of socialist programs that bought time for the cities from the threat of the blackman’s torch. Upheaval at university’s across the nation that disrupted education, denied the opposition its own right of free speech, and in turn his grand social upheaval in turn devalued some degrees. Social experiments that bordered on the bizarre, such as communal living, free love, group families, drug abuse disguised and misbranded as a mind awakening, and finally, the ongoing promotion of evading one’s own personal responsibilities that even today pervades parts of this forum.
Most 60-ites should remember the stupid adventure of open university enrollment programs like NYC’s ‘anyone can attend’ instituted by the gradest liberal of them all, Mayor John V Lindsay, that bankrupted the city and turned it into a ghastly place to live for many years… and now we have a trip down memory lane by another happy-happy revisionist re-painting the glory of the 60s by the likes of that terror from the sky ‘paratrooper’ Kilroy. (Gotta wonder though, and no disrespect, but why didn’t his bell bottoms pants inflate on the way down?)
Ah well, those to young to remember will have a chance to see that transcendental mediation, (or is that really medication,) hippydom had its 40 year cost that we’re all still paying for.
I’d say the 60s sucked. We still haven’t recovered fully from the forced social impact. The programs that have continually dragged our nation downward still exist and are furthered onward by gutless politicians buying votes, only to become a subterranean nation of wealth termites all its own.
Not going to explain it to you Bargis if that’s such a mystery to you. ironic, you appeared so knowlegable a few replies up.
L-t, I think you grossly underestimate the “1980’s” for the crack and meth. But that’s common mistake…blame the 60’s for the bad stuff the next generation actually messed up during ther ‘greed is good’ period. The ROI was really good then, rememeber?
And one more thing…the ‘drug culture’ was actually started during the 20’s and 30’s as oyu may recall. I wish they hadn’t happened either, but not because of the drugs. A few things like the dust bowl, the Crash and the okie migration come to mind ahead of that.
And seriously, the Left pining for the 60’s? Who told you that, because you sure didn’t ask us. I’m more of a 90’s man.
Good one Rfreed! Can’t respond at the moment, but good one sir!
We’re all just words on a screen to each other. All you top shelf smartasses should be able to take on one another in marketplace of ideas pretty well. Just give people benefit of doubt on their stated bios, would youse?
An insurmountable divide between Conservatives and Liberals will always be the 1960’s. People like me think, other than Civil Rights advances and some good music, I wish the 60’s never happened.
I understand the Left often views the 60’s as a time when they made a big difference and changed this nation. Well yeah, but look what ya changed it into!!! Sexual revolution has led to epidemic rates of illegitmacy among the poor. Drug culture led to meth and crack. Women’s Liberation, oh goody! Women now get to work outside the home, and then come home to cook, clean and laundry. June Cleaver had a better deal.
No malice intended in the statement. I understand the Left takes great pride in the 1960’s. I ask Liberals to understand why Conservatives think otherwise. I’m a private sector biz guy. When I run the numbers on the 60’s I don’t like the ROI.
I see, and we are such angels ourselves. Wasn’t there something called My Lai way back when? At the start of the Korean War there was a bridge underpass near the border where the American soldiers were ordered to shoot ANY Korean civilians passing through it without trying to distinguish whether they were Northern or Southern. When it comes to civilian atrocities we cannot claim any moral high ground. When it comes to war I don’t think anyone can. Every country has a streak that thinks it is holier than everyone else. That is a big self delusion. We can scream and holler about 911 but we have 911ed Iraq 10 times over the civilian body count easily. And I don’t want to hear that we went over there for their freedom or ours. Bullshit only carries so far.
And, to save yourself some breath, I am aware that many communist and socialist regimes are no saints either. Self delusion isn’t limited to any state’s philosophical creed.
Really now? It would be impossible to be a two-termer draftee in the airborne unless of course you don’t know what you’re talking about which I suspect anyway. Pol Pot huh….That accusation is close to forum flaming and I’ll pass on a deserved reply Brian might think twice about that if I did. I’ll think lightly about you’re ‘Airborne’ claims. The rest of your ramble is merely yada yada yada..B-O-R-I-N-G.
You said a mouthful there, Bargis. I’ll try and be economical in my response. You bring up Fonda as an example of the left during those times. Fair enough. I present George Wallace, the south’s best state’s rights advocate, arch-conservative and segregationist. Only, by the end of his life, he had profoundly rejected the philosophy of Lott/Thurmond’s failed vision. Score one for common sense.
As a two tour airborne infantry draftee serving at Ft. Benning in the 60’s, I won’t even dignify your attempt to portray yourself as an authority on dead bodies, Vietnam OR the South circa 1965-68. That’s not exactly an insult, but after my experiences, it could get ugly up in here. So let’s agree to disagree on that one.
But as you might recall since you lived down there in the south as did I, the sordid history surrounding “the stench of dead bodies” isn’t the exclusive domain of failed systems like communism…Nazi Germany, anybody??…and the stenches of dead bodies (up to and including the 60’s) in the South are a testimony that barbarianism doesn’t politely confine itself to one ideology while shunning the rest. Rather ridiculous point to try and make, no matter how many bows you out on it. Allow me to paraphrase; “Only the left has bad apples and that make ’em all bad. Bad, I tell ya!’ Shake your fist and complete the scene and I’ll move on. And please refresh my memory…it’s been a while…are you suggesting that the atrocities in ‘Nam you witnessed up “close and personal” were CIVILIAN in origin? You must have taken a left at Laos and ended up in Cambodia long after the war was over (ole Pol Pot and you probably got along…ideologue, rigid in his ways and he certainly couldn’t take a joke either).
And I also stand by my refusal to paint the SDS with a board brush of a few ultra-radicals. I didn’t know any radicals (we were a little more focused on zoning, believe it or not); and apparently, you only read about a couple of SDS members and knew none. Furthermore, what we did was nothing that compares to examples you are offering. Period. So unless you have a functional crystal ball in your pocket, I seriously doubt you have any personal experience to relate there. That’s why you have Google, but refine those search parameters a bit and something else may pop up that might surprise you.
So where my GI Bill apparently lead me to tolerance and a free education, it seems to have lead you right up the clenched rear end of failed policies from the past, unchanging, rigid and every bit as totalitarian as Stalin and yes, Mao.
That ‘Follow me” infantry statue on main base at Ft. Benning meant something…leaders leading under fire. But, I don’t recall seeing Cheney in the front OR back of the pile. I hereby proclaim him a “bad apple” and a draft-dodger with the same conviction. So he is to responsible leadership what Hayden is to the responsible social leftist agenda: a radical not the “mean average”. An outlier point. Bad data. Your “Weathermen equals SDS equals bad” to my “KKK still exists, bubba, and they vote Republican”. A revisionist Mississippi senator trying to rewrite history of what many of us still alive saw with our own eyes, not read in a pamplet….versus ACORN. Small, innocuous organization that never killed anyone, discriminated against anyone and may have had some bad apples. Full circle discussion wise.
Not a bad satire piece, BTW, but your defense is a little more than subjective and highly selective. That’s a small world, afterall, Dude.
Actually Kilroy, its right there next to the Hanoi Jane Fonda montage…You know, those silly B&W photos of her laughing her skinny little ass off as she sat in a Russian ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun pretending to shoot American airmen from the sky. Was a great propaganda success for the communists, I believe the SDS was partly responsible in supporting that action, at least the distribution of it being some kind of ‘patriotic act.’ I guess the communist regime in the north thought so, because they plastered the photos all over the world and praised their fellow ‘comrades-in-arms living in the United States.’
Yeah, Tom Hayden’s SDS….His domestic matters criticized racial discrimination, economic inequality, big businesses, trade unions, political parties all except the communist party which they refused to criticize publically. Later on Mr. SDS married none other than …Yup, you guessed it! Hanoi Jane Fonda!
rfreed…I saw up close and personal the benefits of the so-called democratic people’s socialist systems at work. Yeah, you can call it other names like communists, socialists whatever flavoring you want to smear on top to make it palatable and attractive. The only flavoring we had to use was bags of quick-lime to cover the stench of their civilian attrocities.
Surely you jest, Bargis.
SDS stood for ‘Students For A Democratic Society’ meaning a fair society for all. Their basic manifesto sought:
International peace, a reshaping of the existing two political parties for greater democracy, more power to the individual, more participatory democracy and advocated the use of non-violent civil disobedience. Much the same characteristics that the early Americans wanted when they sought independence from the British, and they were vastly misunderstood too.
A lot of the patriots today are paper patriots, they have ulterior motives for their waving of the red, white and blue- military pensions, lucrative government contracts, a political status to maintain. I am sure it is easy for gun contractors to be patriotic, after all, that is where their bread and butter and multi-million dollar homes come from.
Lived there for years and based on your remarks, you didn’t, really. Sorry. Rhetoric not experience. As for the SDS, do they taint the “leftist” apple bunch has much as draft dodgers like Cheney, and non-patriots like Thurmond and Lott who denied returning WWII black soldiers the “rights’ they earned with the segregationist rhetoric Trent espoused at the party? That “idle’ remark at a birthday party as you naiively put it was not exactly patriotic either. So, enlighten me how that works and not discredit that entire political philosophy and not fall into the same ACORN “guilt by association” you push as factual. I’m all ears. SDS versus Thrumond…who would today’s draftable youth graivitate to if THEY were directly involved? As presented to one who’s never had a draft number OR experienced Trent’s wet dream. Enlighten me.
Kilroy, personally, I think you might want to re-vsit those history books. Like L-T said, your timeline is off by about 8-10 years. I know, I lived in the south during that time and alot of it was bad history.
Ahhh the SDS. Yeah, there’s a patriotic group. I believe in Hanoi they have a special acheivement monument erected to those guys. Unfortunetely, when I was in country I was a tad too busy to visit.
Thanks for the insights Kilroy. Very interesting and unexpected.
And I appreciate you’re being open to seeing both sides of the issue, LB. There aren’t many who do that these days.
Strictly speaking, yeah the “laws” had been forced out of legitimacy by the Feds by then. “Revisionist history” correspondent? I want a piece of that gig! Might start with when Kennedy pulled that sword out of the rock in 1960. And don’t tell me you don’t remember that.
Kilroy, depends on your definition of ‘Jim Crow’ I guess. When I say Jim Crow I mean laws that segregate by skin color. All that stuff was mostly gone by 1965 uber-dude.
I can’t make people treat each other with respect in 2010, so I sure couldn’t have done that in 1968.
Hmmm… maybe I should apply to become Glossy News revisionist history correspondent? I’ve just been inspired towards some scribbles!
You’re right on most all counts Liberties-taken (time line compression wise…1925 through 1970). That’s great attention to detail. My compliments. Opinionwise, you’re also correct with regard to the amateurish sting. It was designed to bring the paticipants in the sting attention…and it worked. However, with regard to Jim Crow’s supposed demise circa late 60’s-1970’s was greatly exaggerated. During the time of SDS, Jim Crow was still alive and well in the Deep South. That’s why I went to California. But your point is well taken.
Just providing food for thought…and you think.
I’m willing to let my previous comment stand…
Kilroy in his admirable passion has timeline compressed, methinks.
Jim Crow’s back was already broken by the time SDS was making news.
Strom Thurmond diddled the maid decades before he entered politics.
I brought up Trent Lott as victim example of a successful partisan hit. His blather at Strom’s 100th b’day party, statement of his core principles? You’re crazy if you think Lott has ANY core principles.
My opinion, what happened to Lott is about same as what happened to Shirley Sherrod.
On ACORN, I don’t think video sting was an organized effort. Doesn’t appear to have been well funded. And the casting was amateurish.
AFTER the video hit, blood was smelled and instinct took over. ACORN was a DEM-friendly org, and that was enuf for some to work OT to see it fall.
Pleasecallow me to retort Bargis:
I find it funny that you would bring up the SDS with no real idea of who they actually were. I used to be one of those SDS dudes back in the day at Southern Cal. Throwing bombs and those wacky Weathermen were as far removed from our day to day activities (i.e. STUDYING)as logic is from Palin. We did put a halt to professors being able to flunk a person if they wore a peace sign t-shirt or an afro or even a pants-suit to economics 101)…..so it’s a ‘bomb’ only metaphorically.
During the time of the Weathermen and SDS was the Jim Crow South that Trent Lott longs for and Thrumond was fighting for…all while he was busy getting a “Negro” woman pregnant and extolling the virtue of segregation between getting “jiggy wid it”. The poor were still getting shipped off to ‘Nam while others (maybe considered “bad apples”) were the Fortunate One getting deferments. When you open up the ugly Pandora’s Box of past extremism, you best have the proper perspective of things…else you risk looking…uninformed.
In that context, ACORN looks like Doctors Without Borders compared to many of those old men (who were young then) screaming for its current demise, and whilst having their third wife iron out their hood and robes for the next klan meeting. Ironcially, these are the same hypocritical “old men” who are trying to paint Obama as an old style “Black Panthers” radical. I knew Panthers…that dude is NO Panther, else he’d give them something to fillibuster.
But historical revision is the new fad in the U.S….take Texas (please) taking Jefferson out of the history books as a liberal. Revisionist history has been quite popular historically all the word over; Mao did it, Stalin did it, Chavez is doing it. Hell, the Simpons did it. See a pattern here?
Here is the basic Wikipedia description of ACORN. One can use the filter of ones own mind to determine whether they are evil or not.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues.
ACORN’s priorities have included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, and other social justice issues. ACORN pursued these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation
It looks like Wade Rathcke was an organizer for draft resistance for the SDS which is a long way from bomb throwing. Sticky fingers? Oh, it happens, and it is not right. As a matter of fact, there is a gentleman going to jail right now for that whose name is…..let me think….Tom DeLay, and he was with..um.. oh, heck….what famous organization was he with that always consider themselves so righteous?
Fascinating! BTW, Weathermen didn’t really evolve from SDS; it was a splinter group dissatisfied with SDS civil disobedience tactics.
That cat who stole $950K from the poor box; whoa that’s bad karma!
But Tryhol/Rfreed brings up interesting topic. When should reasonable people apply the ‘few bad apples’ rule?
United Way does some really good work, but they had a finance scandal in front office. Catholic charities do some wonderful things, but there are a few Catholic priest child molesters.
To me, it’s reasonable ACORN had some very worthy projects at store front level, and a crook in leadership, and some loons with bad judgement too.
I don’t believe ACORN fell as an organized conspiracy, for several reasons. But now I have to make lunch and go to work.
Oh that ACORN!
I thought you meant the one founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke. You know, he was a leading member of the that loopy 70’s radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)which morphed into the Weather Underground. They were real good at bombing stuff if I recall. When he wasn’t nuturing turmoil and throwing hand grenades at draft offices, Rathke went on and formed the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO)…Yeah, I guess back in the 80’s you had to keep welfare recipients organized and paying dues, instead of just finding them a job.
Finding success and a following as a ‘community organizer'(sound familiar?), Mr. ACORN went on and formed his very own union for those who were kicked off of welfare back in the early 90’s (welfare reform).
The union, SEIU, has been accused of gross voter manipulation for the past three national election cycles.
MR. ACORN has a brother who worked with ACORN for some time. His name is Dale Rathke. Dale has sticky fingers it seems, since $950,000 of ACORN money went bye-bye in 1999, but brother Wade (Mr. ACORN) decided to handle the matter ‘in house.’ It was revealed later on in 2008 by an insider who blew the whistle on Brother Dale (who still worked there!)when a national spotlight was turned on illuminating the ACORN rat hole. I guess 9 years wasn’t long enough to get to the bottom of the money situation with Brother Dale. Maybe a memo would’ve helped.
ACORN received national monies and also depended on subscribers dues as a form of it’s finacing. Congress pulled the money plug and all the poor people who subscribed figured they had had enough.
Whew! You had me fooled there for a minute.
Food banks…GOOD! FIRE BAD! And that’s the extent of my conceptual cognisance.
I’ll put aside being a wise-ass for a minute and relate my Acorn experience:
Back in the ’80’s a New York friend of mine (definitely feminist, probably liberal) told me of her experience coming down to volunteer for Acorn when it was still just in Arkansas.She worked on a project against a bad slum lord who was also a big politician in the area. In an effort to clean up the slums they made public how bad the living situation was and worked up a political campaign against him. After he lost he came up to her face and told her it would be good for her health if she were to leave Arkansas. She did.
I think this serves as a microcosm of what happened to Acorn in the 2000’s. Certain moneyed and political powered people saw Acorn succeeded in waking people up to what was going on and they reached into their bag of dirty tricks and gave them the kabosh.
In better news, I found today a connect with food pantry in my new town, so I can start helping them. Would encourage everybody, Conservative or Liberal to help your local food pantry as you can. You betcha. My big thing is making sure people have enough to eat and no-kill animal shelters have the money they need to keep doing their good work. I also encourage everyone who has to means to do so to remember their favority charity this holiday season and all year round as well.
Hmmm interesting scenario there Mr. White! I’m not much a broadcast media consumer, but I saw some of the hidden cam videos.
It sure sounded to me they were explaining to that ACORN lady about some teens from Guatemala who’d be sex workers, and I didn’t see the lady throw them out of the office.
Could’ve been the video was messed with; I never heard anybody from ACORN make that claim though.
In better news, I found today a connect with food pantry in my new town, so I can start helping them. Would encourage everybody, Conservative or Liberal to help your local food pantry as you can.
I heard the entire tape. It WAS a nice set up though, have to give ’em credit. The rest of the public heard the Hollywood version with all the FX addded and bought the con. As far as Trent Lott there’re more skeletons in that closet than simple birthday jibba-jabba. But nobody heard (or read) all that.
Did you hear the unedited tape?
They weren’t dressed as pimp and ho when they went in, they were dressed in normal clothes. Are you sure they were trying to buy a house? The rest of the setup was they said she was trying to get out of the business, but couldn’t without help. She needed her own place and couldn’t get one without listing income. They called the income self-employed or whatever, so she could get out of being a street hooker.
Is there such a thing as a right-wing community outreach program?
I really don’t know what ACORN’s main function was, so I’ll take Rfreed’s word for it.
As to the video sting, I think it was a clean kill. How those two college kids managed to convince ANYBODY they were pimp & hooker just amazes me. And I really did hear the ACORN worker advising them how to buy a house for underaged illegal alien prostitution.
Did the sting justify disbanding an entire org? Oh, of course not. But there was that guy Trent Lott, lost his job as Senate leader over some bland talk at Strom Thurmond’s 100th b’day party.
My point is there are some at both ends of the Right/Left spectrum who believe politics is bloodsport, and they behave that way.
Common knowledge, Tryhol, common knowledge.
Unless you never go outside and learn about the world through Fuchs News.
Geez rfreed….Did you work for ACORN? Or were you an advisor?
Should have paid the toll…uh, I mean TROLL, RFreed. As far as the underwear…you can afford underwear?????
K- Are YOU the one who grabbed my leg the other day as I walked over?
I’m still trying to clean the stains out of my underwear.
Well, now feel like the Omega Man, the last man with a job. Not that charging people to cross my troll bridge is “work” per se…but it’s a living. And the rent is free. A little damp but who’s complaining.
And the broken record plays on…
“Obama bad”…
screeeetch!!!!
“Obama bad”…
screeeetch!!!!
“Obama bad”……
screeetch!!!!!!
“Obama bad”….
screeetch!!!!!!
And Acorn used to be one organization who went out and genuinely helped poverty stricken people in the poorer areas of the country in real ways until a couple workers made mistakes and the arch Republicants (spelled correctly) made sure that everyone saw them as black hearted evil and that they were burned at the stake as witches.