Like the ACORN mobs who would barge into banks to demand that they not foreclose on homes, our country is being community organized by our “Alinsky-ite in Chief” Barack Obama. The “Rules for Radicals” disciple knows that it is more important to cause a ruckus with a loud and angry mob than it is to have the truth and the will of the people on your side. That’s why, in his nationally televised address to the nation, he called on Americans to call Congress on his behalf to intimidate and bully a capitulation from the GOP.  All that was missing were the whistles and the screams for “justice”.

The stories in the Washington Post and other compliant media outlets were damning:

The Capitol switchboard was on the verge of being overloaded with calls from across the country Tuesday morning after President Obama called on Americans in an address to the nation Monday evening to contact their members of Congress about the high-stakes debt battle playing out in Washington.

Of course, as the stories unfolded, it turns out that a whole lot of those calls were from Americans warning their Congressmen not to cave-in to the President’s demands and to hold firm on the debt ceiling and the tax increases Obama desires. So much so that by the end of yesterday afternoon, the 80-strong freshman class (who were sent to Congress largely by the Tea Party voters intent on finally changing Washington and the establishment GOP) held strong and withheld support for Speaker Boehner’s debt plan. The President’s plan to intimidate a tax-laden compromise out of the House backfired.

Clearly, the wrong people got the message in the President’s speech and somehow those Tea Party extremists learned how to use a telephone.

This will never do. Don’t you people realize that when the President calls on Americans to contact members of Congress, he’s really just talking to his radical and dedicated base? Don’t you realize he really only means that the agitators and “No Justice, No Peace” radicals are the ones who are supposed to make noise and push the agenda?

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When Sarah Palin asked America if they really wanted a community organizer as president, some Obama acolytes posited that Jesus was a community organizer.  In addition, these self-proclaimed theologians stretched it further by stating that the man who ordered Jesus to be crucified, Pontius Pilate, was a governor like Sarah Palin (see Representative Steve Cohen(D-TN)).

Others counter that Pontius Pilate tried to free Jesus.  He gave a crowd what should have been an easy choice:  free Jesus or free an infamous murderer Barabbas.  Upon this offer of freedom for Jesus, several community organizers incited the crowd to yell: Crucify Jesus!  Free Barabbas!  These people argue that these community leaders acted like Acorn-styled community organizers like the organizers in Wisconsin and other states. (more…)

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan announced to the American people that the United States had begun bombing Libya. In his statement, President Reagan referred to Libyan dictator, Muammar al-Qaddafi, as a “monstrous murderer.” Here, he described Qaddafi’s heinous crimes against the Libyan people, Americans, and citizens of other countries.

Qaddafi has continued his reign of terror throughout the past 25 years, yet, as of March 1st- just a few weeks ago- the United Nations’ Human Rights Council was set to adopt a report which praised Libya for its human rights record. UN Watch, a nongovernmental organization based in Geneva, documented the path of the report, and ultimately urged the Council to reject it. The organization exposed the words of praise for Libya, in the report, from countries such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba, among others. However, in his review of the report for the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto sarcastically recommended that the council “ignore UN Watch’s advice and approve the report praising Libya. For it tells us a lot about the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

Indeed, UN Watch Director, Hillel Neuer, observed that while the Human Rights Council was praising Libya, the U.N. Security Council was simultaneously approving a tough set of sanctions against the Libyan regime.

As the various councils of the United Nations operate at cross-purposes, so, too, does the current United States President, who holds the organization at the highest level of esteem. So much so, in fact, that President Obama has involved the nation in a third Mid-Eastern war, with no clear mission and no exit strategy. Yet, these serious deficits seem lost on the American president who would prefer to have the permission of the U.N. over that of the United States Congress to utilize the nation’s human and financial resources in an act of war.

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Wednesday afternoon, Barack Obama trotted out his favorite “document of negative rights,” The U.S. Constitution, and used it to chart a course that will do away with the Defense of Marriage Act.  According to the President, the act signed by Bill Clinton is unconstitutional, and he’s ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending it in court cases.   Holder has agreed and will cease defense of the law, which states marriage is between a man and a woman.

There’s so much wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to start.

First and foremost, the President has no right to declare something unconstitutional.  You don’t have to be a “community organizer” turned “constitutional scholar” to know this.  Heck, anyone who’s seen even five minutes of Schoolhouse Rock is probably aware of the three branches of government.  The Judiciary branch is responsible for determining constitutionality, not the Executive.  Pronouncing the law unconstitutional, without due process, is a gross overextension of Presidential authority.

Second, both the President and the Attorney General have sworn an oath to uphold the nation’s laws.  It’s not their place to determine which ones they view as being worthy of defense of implementation.  If the Legislative branch chooses to pass a law doing away with the Defense of Marriage act, that’s their prerogative.  The President can sign it as he sees fit.  Otherwise, Holder is there to enforce and support the laws as they exist, not as his boss wishes they did.  In refusing to defend the law as written, both Obama and Holder are willfully derelict in their duties.

Finally, since when is Obama so concerned with Constitutionality?

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John Hickenlooper, the Denver Mayor and Democratic Party candidate for Governor of Colorado said this about Obama in 2006:

Let me say, let me say very quickly that anyone who’s read his 1995 memoir, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ know that he is part-philosopher, part-sociologist, part-historian, but 100 percent community activist. Let me introduce one of the greatest men alive in America, Senator Barack Obama.

Since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up on April 20, President Obama has been rightly and roundly criticized for his lethargic, passionless, and ineffective response to the crisis.  We’re now into the 7th week of this catastrophe, and the president still looks weirdly disengaged: not only that he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or isn’t that interested in the crisis.  It’s that he looks like he doesn’t belong in the job.  He looks like a little boy stomping around the house wearing his father’s suit and shoes.

Stung by the attacks on his competence, character, and emotionlessness, Obama contrived some “passion” the other day.  In an interview with the “Today” show, he said, “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar.  We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Oh no!  Anything but a Bama ass-kickin’!  The terror of that prospect I’m sure has BP shaking in its boots. (By the way, running college seminars is ALL the Bama knows how to do, so he probably should be doing that.  Maybe some college senior somewhere has a Descartes-inspired idea on how to plug the damn hole.)

Rule #1 in politics:  Do not try to be something that you’re not.When President George H. W. Bush was running behind Bill Clinton in 1992, he went into a grocery store and pretended to love beef jerky.  You know: to demonstrate that he was just a regular guy.  The problem was: he wasn’t just a regular guy.  He was Andover and Yale and the Eastern establishment.  His father had been a U.S. Senator.  Bush didn’t even know what beef jerky was, for crying out loud.  He lost the election.

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Okay, it’s time to finally admit it:  Barack Obama hates businessmen.  Not just certain businessmen, mind you, but the entire profession.

Of course President Obama will deny this.   He told Businessweek magazine in a recent interview that he is not anti-business and that he believes in the private sector.  But the evidence is overwhelming,  and it helps explain why he is pursuing kamakazi-like economic policies that will damage the private sector in America.

Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America.  Through the 2008 campaign to the present,  he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few.  In each case he has dinged them for greed, taking excessive profits, and failing to put people first.  His criticisms have not been over minor matters but over their basic core functions, and their values or lack of them.

Obama demonstrates almost complete ignorance about the private sector and it’s no wonder:  he has so little experience in it.  He has spent his adult life in college, teaching college, and organizing communities.  The one private sector job he has held, for a consulting firm in New York, he recounts as a terrible experience.  In his memoirs he describes the experience as working for a private business “like a spy behind enemy lines.”  He also recounts in his memoirs that the multinational corporations in the Indonesia of his youth were propelling the average worker “into deeper despair.”  He likened the presence of corporations in his native Africa to a form of “neocolonialism.”  Michelle Obama has beseeched young people, “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we are asking young people to do.  Don’t go into corporate America.  You know, become teachers, work for the community,  be a social worker, be a nurse….move out of the money-making industry, into the helping industry.”

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A pimp, prostitute, underage human trafficking and now a self-professed murderer; what could be next for the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now?!?

Margaret Williams, Maryland ACORN board member and Sonja Merchant-Jones, Baltimore ACORN President both reported that the low level ACORN employees caught on tape in the Baltimore office were immediately terminated for behaving unprofessionally; but yet, senior staff members who assisted and concealed a million dollar Rathke embezzlement remain employed.

The ACORN 8 commends these board members’s decisive action, but find it extremely ironic since the board of directors do not actually control ACORN employees. According to ACORN’s by-laws that authority is exclusively exercised by the “Chief Organizer,” formerly Wade Rathke and now Bertha Lewis. This fundamental disconnect between an actual functioning board of directors and senior management is the true problem and real scandal within ACORN. It causes low-income members and staff to become mere pawns of senior management.

Ultimately, ACORN’s low-income workers are simply trying to meet and fulfill unreasonable membership quotas set by senior staff. This undue management pressure results in fraudulent voter registrations, tax assistance for “pimps and prostitutes” or worse. Poor governance and lack of accountability are the real problems. Voter fraud or rather voter registration fraud are just symptoms of a far greater problem. And that is the lack of meaningful control and accountability by the membership. So don’t fault poor workers – blame the board!

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SEIU Local 880, based in Chicago, is one of the largest SEIU union locals. It was founded and has been long controlled by ACORN and Wade Rathke. This recently uncovered video shows presidential candidate Barack Obama discussing his long and close ties to SEIU. This is not your typical political pandering. This is someone who feels at home, talking to close friends and family.

Part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) rotten core includes a very cozy relationship with Big Labor.  In fact, in many instances ACORN and Big Labor are one and the same.  In 2008, Big Labor funneled ACORN millions of dollars for so-called organizing activity.  But, that is only the tip of the Big Labor iceberg.

ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations.  ACORN created and controls SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas).

ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke referred to mega-union SEIU 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.”

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN’s Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.

In addition to Rathke’s and ACORN’s SEIU involvement, Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE Local 100, was Secretary-Treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees union organizing committee.

A search of financial disclosure reports (UnionReports.gov) filed with the U.S. Department of Labor for the years 2000 and 2006 disclosed the following positions that Rathke held in labor unions while he concurrently served as ACORN’s Chief Organizer:

Wade Rathke DOL Reported Union Positions (2000,2006)

ACORN’s connections extend to several other Big Labor funded organizations such as the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN), Site Fighters, and Community Labor Organizing Center (CLOC).

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And then, we drove down to DC…

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Read the full transcript and listen to the audio here.

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A famous community organizer once said, “The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules.  If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them.” Impossible demands can irritate modern leftists in ways nothing else can, whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.

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The scenario we posed the ACORN Housing employees in Baltimore is due to the application of similar power tactics. We gave ACORN a taste of its own medicine.  ACORN was alleged to be thug-like, criminal, and nefarious.  This criminal behavior was evidenced by a video of Baltimore ACORN community organizers breaking the locks on foreclosed homes.  Instead of railing against their radicalism, it is best to bring out this type of radicalism. Hannah Giles and I took advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply–which they did without hesitation.

Additionally, instead of focusing on foreclosure itself, which has become seemingly as politicized as abortion, we focused on crimes more difficult for the left to defend: trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion. The first group represents the severely disadvantaged, the second a threat to the distribution of wealth. (more…)