A weblog by Knot O'Reilly

This video is a fine example of Beck and a co-conspirator trying to re-kindle McCarthyism.

They try to claim Barack Obama is denying knowledge of ACORN receiving public funding, I guess they must not have a very high opinion of their audiences perception abilities. As they play a clip of an interview in which the President says “I didn’t know they were getting a whole lot(of federal funding)” which is true, ACORN’s operating budget is covered by donations and grants, and the federal money they recieved they passed out to communities.  When the interviewer asks if he knows the senate had voted to cut off funding, Obama says ‘I know”

Glenn and his hatchet man then proceed to act surprised that the President would deny knowledge, when he had done no such thing.

They ramble on with John Fund saying ‘Barack Obama’s campaign spent over $800,000 with an ACORN affiliate to get out the vote, you know, voter registration.” Two very different things, which they then attempt to blur the distinction between.

When I first started watching Glenn Beck I thought that his frequent referrals to ‘our republic’ were his way of slipping in his allegiance to the republican party, which he distances himself from, even though he helps set their agenda, and spouts their talking points.

After watching him for a month, I am starting to think that it is because he is anti-democratic. He targets groups with an anti-poverty agenda, groups that seek a more evenly balanced representation in government, and groups that strive for a diversification of media and a restructuring of the energy industry. Now I think he is a Republican that believes they should always be in power, even if it means bringing down a democratically elected government.

It is becoming more and more obvious who butters Glenn Beck’s bread, and just how far he is willing to go to promote their agenda. Here is an very detailed and well researched article and a video clip on the idea that FOX has turned from a broadcaster into ‘the voice of the opposition’, once again from Media Matters.

This comes from factcheck.org and came out almost a year ago. I assume that in Glenn Beck’s mind if a smear has been shown exagerated and wrong, after a year you can bring it back again.

Obama: Burying ACORNs

The ad says that “Obama’s ties to ACORN run long and deep” – that he “taught classes” for the group, paid a “front” $800,000 for get-out-the-vote efforts, and was endorsed by ACORN for president. That last one’s true – ACORN’s political action committee did offer an Obama endorsement. It’s also true that Obama has worked with the group in the past. In 1995, Obama helped represent ACORN in a successful lawsuit to require the state of Illinois to offer “motor voter” registration at DMV offices. Obama has said that this is his only association with ACORN, but that’s not the case – he has had other, though less direct, interactions with the organization.

When Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, the foundation gave grants of $75,000 in 2001 and $70,000 in 2002 to ACORN’s Chicago office. The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee cite an additional grant of $45,000 in 2000. The Woods Fund has not responded to our calls about their 2000 grants.

The Obama campaign also paid Citizens Services Inc., a group affiliated with ACORN, more than $800,000 for get-out-the-vote (not voter registration) efforts during the primary election. The nature of CSI’s services was initially misrepresented on the Obama campaign’s disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, which the campaign describes as an oversight. The Obama campaign says it has not been involved with ACORN during the general election.

In addition, after law school, Obama may have had contact with ACORN when he directed a Chicago registration drive for Project Vote in 1992. According to Sanford Newman, who was the program’s national director at the time, ACORN may have been one of dozens of organizations that participated in registration drives that year with Project Vote personnel like Obama. But Project Vote didn’t begin contracting exclusively with ACORN until after Obama worked for the group in 1992. “Working for Project Vote at the time was by no means working for ACORN,” Newman told us. ACORN had no influence on Project Vote policy and no representation on its board.

As for “teaching classes” for the group, the McCain campaign cites a March 2008 Newsday article, which says that ACORN organizer Madeleine Talbot “initially considered Obama a competitor” when both were working to get asbestos insulation removed from a Chicago housing project, but that “she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff.” Newsday does not say whether Obama accepted the invitation. An article by Chicago alderman Toni Foulkes says that “we [ACORN] have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year” between 1992 and 2004, when the article was written. The Obama campaign says that Obama participated in two, one-hour trainings in a volunteer capacity. Foulkes could not be reached for comment.

Neither ACORN’s Chicago office nor CSI has been accused of voter registration irregularities.