In a World of Gray: the ACORN Fiasco is Black and White

It was disturbing if not surprising that earlier in the week ACORN filed suit against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart. The videos the first two shot and the third put on his web site have sent the group into a tailspin. They are desperate and they are lashing out.

I saw Hannah Giles on the Fox News show Red Eye a couple weeks back. She told the host, Greg Gutfeld, that she never dreamed that the folks at ACORN would ever take her up on her offer to give tax advice to hide her "job" as a prostitute. I found this assertion to be a bit diplomatic and disingenuous. After all, if she didn't think that ACORN was corrupt, she wouldn't have shown up in their office on a sting to root out corruption. She had an instinct. She followed through on that instinct and she exposed some really bad behavior.

ACORN, meanwhile, immediately dug its heels in. They initially lashed out at the filmmakers. They tried to marginalize them. They lashed out at Fox News, which helped drive the story. They did everything but accept any responsibility for the tapes. As soon as the tapes came out, ACORN must have known that their entire operation was threatened. They began doing everything to make sure that ACORN wouldn't disintegrate.

Worse yet, ACORN often defended itself by pointing to all the good works it does: foreclosure prevention, health care for poor, tax services, etc. There's nothing worse than when a group or individual minimizes bad behavior by pointing to the good works they do. How many times did you hear someone defend Reverend Wright by saying he did a lot in the community? That's what ACORN was doing here.

Then, when the media offensive had little effect, ACORN really got desperate. They sued. This is another standard defense for the guilty. If you don't like the message, you shoot the messenger. Of course, in this case, Giles, O'Keefe, and Breitbart all need lawyers. That costs money, it causes stress, and ultimately no matter how strong your case there's always a sense of unknown in our legal system. So, while suing has some stragegic value, it also has real human costs.

In the first season of 24, Jack Bauer described the slippery slope of not doing the right thing.

You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all your doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once.

That's the problem for ACORN. They did the wrong thing once and then again, and soon, that's all they were doing. The problem with doing the wrong thing is that you have to do other wrong things to perpetrate the first wrong thing. Soon, all you're doing is the wrong thing. That's the moral dilemma that Jack understood. It's the position that ACORN is in now. They are rotten to the core, and in order to survive, they have to do everything possible to hide their rotten nature. Their rotten nature was exposed by the video, but by then they had compromised too much.

That's the position that the O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart found themselves in when confronting ACORN. They exposed them long after the group had compromised so much that they didn't know anything else. It was too late for ACORN to do the right thing. All they could do was cover up for the bad they had already done. In the process, they also had to take down the three as well. It wasn't about right and wrong but survival.

The world is full of gray, but not in this case. In this case, there are clear good guys and clear bad guys. O'Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart were acting as enterprising journalists and entrepeneurs and their ultimate agenda was to bring the truth to light. ACORN's ultimate agenda was to subvert the truth. Each one of all their actions reflected their guiding agendas. One side was set on the path of good and the other on the path of bad.

Council Winners

The Council winners are up. My entry took a distant third but as always, it's an honor just being nominated.

Winning Council Submissions
First place with 2 points! – Bookworm Room - A reminder to join the Navy League
Second place with 1 2/3 points – Joshuapundit - Tossing Little Green Footballs Out Of The Game
Third place with 1 1/3 points – The Provocateur - Dr. Anna Chacko the Disruptive Physician
Fourth place with 1 points – Right Truth - Headbangers United Against Obama
Fifth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Rhymes With Right - Questioning Our Patriotism — Again
Fifth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – The Razor - Strike a Grand Bargain with Russia
Fifth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Soccer Dad - The goldstone standard
Winning Non-Council Submissions
First place with 2 points! – Z-Word - Gaza: The Overcrowding Myth
Second place with 1 2/3 points – Hans von Spakovsky – The Corner on National Review - Jimmy Carter’s Race Problem
Third place with 1 1/3 points – (T*) – The Nose On Your Face - The Obama Czar’s Song
Third place with 1 1/3 points – (T*) – Doug Ross Journal - ‘I am become government, the destroyer of worlds’
Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Gates of Vienna - Kissing Cousins
Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Big Government - Propaganda, Health Care and ACORN: Full Context of NEA Conference Call Reveals Disturbing Pattern
Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Nile Gardiner @ The Telegraph UK - Barack at the UN: Was this Obama’s most naive speech ever?

The Recent Afghan Elections are a Trojan Horse

News media is citing the recent Afghan elections as the main reason why the Obama administration is taking another look at its Afghanistan policy and is considering not giving General McChrystal the troops he's about to officially ask for. As we all know, there have been widespread reports that there was mass fraud in these elections. I wasn't on the ground so I can't speak to their veracity however I will say that it wouldn't surprise me.

Yet, to change our policy based on fraudulent elections is nothing more than a trojan horse. Afghanistan has no highway system. It's one of the five poorest countries in the world. It spent nearly two decades in the midst of war prior to our arrival. Even if we are successful, it will be decades if not centuries before that country is full turned around. Corruption and fraud are trademarks of any third world country.

So, is anyone really surprised that there was widespread fraud in these elections? In fact, democratic revolutions that follow dictatorships often fail because those governments ultimately wind up corrupt and then they aren't trusted by the people. Ironically enough, Hamas largely won their election, domestically, on an anti corruption platform. Hezbollah also uses that theme in trying to get votes in Lebanon.

So, to look at the Afghan elections and be shocked by fraud is sort of like the famous line in Casablanca. One of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan all along is trying to turn around a nation that was so devastated by years of war, poverty, and corruption. The fraudulent elections are just one in many by products of a problem that we've been dealing with since we got there. It should be noted that the government in Iraq is not without its share of corruption and that corruption poses problems for our effort as well.

The Afghan elections were no turning point. It's long been known that Karzai had allied himself with several folks of dubious character, including his own brother. Yet, the administration is treating the elections as some sort of a water shed moment.

The calls to testify come as the Pentagon has asked McChrystal to delay his request for more troops while the administration rethinks strategy in the wake of last month's Afghan elections, which have been racked by allegations of fraud.

That's nothing short of a trojan horse. The elections were fraudulent as a result of several factors and dynamics that were in place when then Candidate Obama called the Afghanistan the right battlefield. If he couldn't predict then that the structure of government was prone to mass fraud in the next election, then we are all in real trouble.

That's not to say that the fraudulent elections aren't a serious problem. They are. Fraudulent elections mean a government that isn't legitimate in the eyes of the people. The key to any counter insurgency is winning the hearts and minds of the people. A corrupt south Vietnamese government was a factor in our ultimate demise in Vietnam. The point is that this should have been known all along.

Yet, the Obama administration is suddenly looking at a policy review six months after implementing its policy. Its coming when he'll have to make the politically difficult decision of putting more troops on the ground. It's clear, he'd rather not do this. If he's not committed to victory despite making victory in Afghanistan one of his foreign policy pillars, that's bad enough. To trot out this trojan horse and try and use it to excuse losing is even more shameful.

The "Shocking" News on Iranian Nukes

This morning the president, along with the leaders of France and Britain, "stunned" the world with this news.

President Obama, along with the leaders of Britain and France, demanded Friday that Iran immediately allow international weapons monitors to inspect a nuclear facility the Islamic Republic acknowledges it has been secretly building for years.

Obama, joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the opening of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, warned Iran that it will be "held accountable" to an impatient world community if it does not fully disclose its nuclear ambitions.

So, it appears that Iran has had a secret nuclear plant and has been developing uranium there for years. I say the news was "shocking" because you'd have to have been really gullible to believe that Iran had disclosed its nuclear ambitions fully.

This is, according to President Obama, the third violation of UN resolutions related its nuclear ambitions. What's also not surprising was that all three leaders said that Iran "must be held accountable" and that this a moment of truth, yet again.

The language following this announcement was frankly no different from what we heard from President Bush over and over again regarding Iran. The former president proceeded to do little but talk tough toward Iran. He was able to orchestrate a few meaningless sanctions and did little beyond that.

Any sanctions that go through the UN would face a roadblock with both Russia and China. Earlier in the week some said that there was a breakthrough with Russia when its "leader" Dmitri Medvedev said that sanctions toward Iran were "inevitable". Some called this the first sign that the president's outreach was working. Now, that will have its first test. Most astute observers of Russia know that Vladimir Putin is the real leader of Russia, and it's unclear what Putin will do.

Garry Kasparov, the main opposition leader in Russia, believes that Putin makes every move with a desire to artificially raise oil prices. That's dropped precipitously since its highs about two years ago. A confrontation between Iran and the rest of the world would certainly push oil prices up in the short term, and so it's unclear that sanctions would benefit Putin.

I expect the world to talk tough for a few weeks. I expect some meaningless sanctions and then everyone will forget about it for the time being. Israel, however, has no such options. So, maybe, the threat of a regional war in the Middle East will force some to act. We'll all have to wait and see.

Morning Market Report

Following good news from jobs front with the release of better than expected weekly jobless claims yesterday morning, there was bad news in the housing front. Sales of existing homes fell unexpectedly in August by 2.7%.

Sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly fell last month for the first time since March, signaling the housing recovery will be slow to gain speed.

Purchases dropped 2.7 percent in August to a 5.1 million annual rate, the second-highest level in the last 23 months, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. The median price dropped 12.5 percent from August 2008. A government report showed unemployment claims declined.

This number was not only surprising but somewhat inexplicable. Sales have been boosted by the first time homebuyer's credit and rates were still relatively low in August. It's yet another number to watch as we guage to recovery that all the so called experts say is beginning now.

In any case, that number drove the three indices down yesterday. The NASDAQ was down 1.12%, the S&P was down .95%, and the Dow was down .42%. The Dow which reached above 9900 following the Fed minutes announcement on Wednesday will likely test 9600 sometime today. This morning futures are down slightly further. Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, came out with its quarterly earning and they were disappointing. That's also weighing down on the tech heavy NASDAQ this morning. The University of Michigan consumer confidence index for August will come out just before 10 AM Eastern Time.

Meanwhile, Treasury bonds continue their intermediate term rally. The ten year U.S. Treasury bond is now at 3.37%, the lowest it's been in weeks. The spread between the two and ten year has also tightened to 2.40%. Oil has dropped precipitously over the last few days as well. It's currently trading at $65.55 a barrel. That's down about $7 a barrel from recent highs.

Both Europe and the Far East were both down nearly across the board. In the Far East the Hang Seng was down .13%, the NIKKEI in Japan was down 2.64%, and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was down .17%. Meanwhile, in Europe, things were only slightly better. The FTSE was up .2%, the DAX in Germany was down .43%, and the Spanish index was down .74%. The Italian index was up .18% however that, along with the FTSE, were the only two European indices that were up.

The Dollar, meanwhile, is somewhat mixed this morning. It's up .05% against the Euro, up .64% against the British Pound, and it's down by .98% against the Yen.

Video, Quote, and Word of the Day

acrid

bitter

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
Lord Macaulay

Amateur Hour On Health Care Continues

The House is getting to the difficult business of combining legislation and putting together a final product. We can all figure out the direction based on who's leading in crafting the final legislation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to present a unified, redrafted health care reform bill next week, the head of the House Democratic Caucus said Wednesday.

Chairman John Larson said the new bill would meld together parts of legislation written and approved in July by the House Education, Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees. But Larson cautioned against people reading this as the last step in a long health care journey for the House.

So, it appears that we'll have health care reform San Francisco style. Already, there's word that Pelosi is backing away from a deal with the Blue Dogs.

Speaker Pelosi is backing away from a deal she cut with centrists to advance health reform, said a source familiar with talks.

Pelosi’s decision to move away from the agreement that was made with a group of Blue Dogs to get the bill out of committee would steer the healthcare legislation back to the left as she prepares for a floor vote."

Pelosi is planning to include a government-run public option in the House version of the healthcare bill.

Putting myself into the shoes of Speaker Pelosi, I can understand what she's thinking. She's on the cusp of achieving her lifelong political ambition. She's about to engineer a massive liberal health care transformation. She will milk it for all it's worth and squeeze out every possible liberal policy point she can get. Why compromise on anything that will only water down her liberal fantasy?

Yet, this is totally politically brain dead. Mara Liasson described this dynamic perfectly. No liberal Congressperson will lose their seat if they vote for a moderate health care reform package. Meanwhile, 90% of the moderates will lose their seats if they vote for a liberal bill.

I understand that every politician wants to fulfill their liberal fantasy but they should all think about their nightmare. Speaker Pelosi is upon hers. She's about to create a bill that will not receive enough support to pass. Crafting a liberal piece of legislation that shuts out the Blue Dogs means that most of them won't vote for it and that means it won't pass.

Meanwhile, on the Senate side, chaos also continues to reign. The biggest news of the day was the dust up between Senator Kyl and Senator Baucus. The real news though happened at the end of the day. Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller plan to present an amendment that will introduce the public option. Now, Baucus has long said that he's taken out the public option because it won't pass. Senator Snowe won't sign on if the final bill has the public option. So, why include it?

The Democrats voted down an amendment that would allow the final bill to be available on line for three days prior to a final vote. Do the Democrats have any self awareness? All those promises of transparency were worthless. This is exactly why people hate politics. All the Democrats do by voting this amendment down is reveal themselves for the duplicitous and opportunistic politicians they are.

Most importantly, the Finance Committee is nowhere near agreement on anything. We can only imagine what will happen when the public option amendment will get voted down. Will the liberals revolt? That's just one minor problem. The bill keeps changing so much the CBO can't score it. Meanwhile, the Democrats are looking to schedule a vote before the CBO has a chance to score it. All of this only creates even more tension to an already tense process. Worse yet, it costs votes. The Democrats will barely pass this as it is and yet all they do is create roadblock after roadblock that will make it even more difficult to pass. It's truly amateur hour right now in the health care debate.