gdp's Comments

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 10:45:47 +0000

Yeah. Wasn't Van Johnson great in 30 Seconds Over Tokyo?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:57:12 +0000

Weasel out of what, Roger? So, Roger, as you see, James and Ben go way back. Collaborators.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:29:37 +0000

PP1-- Pond scum? Why would you say that? Why do you project all these odd motives onto people? PP2--No, that's not O'Keefe's channel. He's veritasvisuals on YouTube. And, um, that's not actually James O'Keefe in the video you've linked. That's a parody video making fun of him, utilizing footage of some random slightly O'Keefish dude. I believe--I only watched a few seconds. Roger. Serious. He and Ben Wetmore did the video. Here, let me be your Google monkey: http://www.youtube.com/user/veritasvisuals#p/u/23...

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:43:52 +0000

They filmed it. It's on O'Keefe's Youtube channel. You know, a filmed prank. It's kind of what O'Keefe does. If you are such a defender of his, why do you not know like nothing about the man?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:24:41 +0000

Well, prior to all this O'Keefe has called Wetmore a mentor, and the two applied to get gay-married in Massachusetts.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:19:40 +0000

Your first paragraph: I have absolutely no idea what this means. You seem to have difficulty constructing coherent sentences. I would like to suggest responding to your conversational partner's actual words rather than trying to guess at some underlying motive. Your second paragraph: No. In California there was an Acorn employee who claimed to have killed her husband and there was a second Acorn employee who called the police. Two different employees. Two different offices. Two different cities, in fact. Your third paragraph: You and I are in agreement that Acorn had problems. While you, I think, believe that Acorn was thoroughly corrupt, I believe that it was a case of baby and bathwater. I don't want to discuss fraudulent voter registration in the Midwest because I want to discuss O'Keefe, Giles, and their sting operation, which had nothing to do with the Midwest and almost nothing to do with voter registration. Did O'Keefe and Giles misrepresent their undercover visits to us, the public? Did they edit to the point where there was no context? Did they out-and-out lie? Yes, yes, and yes. They can't be trusted.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:06:46 +0000

No, I don't want you to do that. But I still hold out hope that you will directly address any of the points I bring up. You are aware that there were only eight offices visited by the two of them, right? Only a few employees did anything at all. There was no one employee who called the cops and was bizarre enough to claim she was a murderer. That was three separate offices and three separate people in two separate states.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:33:42 +0000

Let's deal with basic facts before we get into ethical arguments. You're the one who keeps bringing federal funding into the mix. I'd like to discuss the videos (unedited) and the aftermath and whether or not it matched up with what O'Keefe and Giles claimed. And they don't. Staff did not all have the same reaction. They had wildly different reactions, ranging from actual answers to their questions to telling them that Acorn couldn't help them, to referring them to other agencies (domestic violence shelters, Legal Aid, Program for Torture Victims), to playing along, to calling the cops. And if employees were fired, why should I _not_ agree that employees were not trained and coached to respond in, uh, the particular way each employee responded in. Why proof do you have? Actually, I am very doubtful that employee would indeed be trained and coached in how to deal with young couples fleeing pimps and importing teenagers. Seriously. How could any employee code of conduct be expected to cover that possibility?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:45:59 +0000

You came back! I knew you couldn't stay away. Yes, because that's exactly what happened, and exactly how Congress responded, although truthfully, I do not knew if the reports were known to the public at the time Congress responded. The Philly report, yes, but not Vera's action. If you are saying that this did not happen, you are accusing three police detectives (one American, two Mexican) of lying and at least one phone company of falsifying records. Please tell me where in your grand conspiracy theory Verizon Wireless has incentive to lie to aid Acorn.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 03:05:49 +0000

I'm only a very occasional liar ("Wow, it's so good to see you! You look great!") and I haven't lied once during our conversation. But adieu. I shall leave you with a second link, which no doubt you will not read. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/...

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 02:39:10 +0000

I bet you every WalMart in this country has had at least one episode of employee theft. This is not evidence that WalMart is organizing crime rings. What in that list of petty crimes you link to indicates anything other than what I said above? Anyway, Roger, Vera's actions?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 02:25:16 +0000

As far as the voter registration fraud, what evidence do you have that Acorn as an organization was organizing fraud, as opposed to experiencing quality control issues (a.k.a. poorly trained or inadequately screened low-level workers effing up)? Compare the Acorn sitch to Sproul and Associates.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 02:18:59 +0000

Yes, calling and reporting them. You know, like Vera did. Any thoughts on that?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 01:53:15 +0000

It could; however, in the case of what Acorn did, it was unlikely. Unless you have some grand sinister conspiracy theory. Me, I'm an Occam's Razor girl. Why couldn't a normal, decent person pretend to be a murderer if two other normal decent people could pretend to be a pimp, a whore, and a couple of human traffickers? Hey, O'Keefe and Giles even pretended to be interested in committing voter registration fraud. And Kaelke didn't tell a pimp she was a murderer. She told a non-pimp pretending to be a pimp whom she believed to be a liar (she was right) she was a murderer. Oh. Calling the police is the right thing to do? Then what issue do you have with Vera? That's what he did (as well as the Philly Acorn office, although of course that's not covered in the California report). Throwing them out is the right thing to do? Isn't that exactly what Harris did? Or do you not consider that a throw-out since he was polite? Isn't throwing them out exactly what Stewart did when she walked them out of the office, telling them that Acorn couldn't help them?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 00:43:22 +0000

More sense than what? Um. Yes, actually. That same report discusses (not "cover") the voter registration fraud (Yes, voter registration fraud--it's different than voting fraud). Starts page 21. If you're going to keep talking about it, you really should read it.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 11:26:01 +0000

Okay. So you haven't read the report, and yet you have an opinion. Interesting slip when you ask how Acorn's innocent of "everything O'Keefe did again." Well, yeah, Acorn's totally innocent of everything O'Keefe did. Imma try one more time. Yes, they heard them say that Giles (not "he") wanted to buy a house for illicit purposes. That's why Stewart said "Acorn doesn't do that" and tried to refer them to an agency that could aid the fictional smuggled girls. That's why Vera played along and then passed on the information to the police. That's why Harris cut them off every time they mentioned something illegal. And that's why Kaelke totally messed with them.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 02:06:39 +0000

Wait, what? Did you read the report? Wasn't it a lie that O'Keefe portrayed himself as a pimp, or that he wore the pimpwear into the Acorn offices? Wasn't it a lie that no Acorn worker turned them away when Stewart told them "Acorn doesn't do that" and referred them--actually, physically led them to the door of--the Program for Torture Victims (an appropriate agency to aid trafficked sex workers)? I'm not sure exactly when O'Keefe and Giles knew that Vera had reported the alleged child trafficking to police, but the very minute they found out, they should have been in the media hailing him as a hero. As far as I know, neither party has addressed this. Also, Kaelke? She's sort of my hero. Yes, yes, pretending to be a murderer and calling O'Keefe a sexy Princess Diana lookalike was completely unprofessional. But really, she seems to be just as much of a merry prankster as O'Keefe and Giles, and her just making it up on the fly. Maybe she's the one who should be set loose with a hidden video camera. And, that sort of sums up all three Acorns visits in California, doesn't it?

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 12:01:04 +0000

Here's the California Attorney General report: http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1888... Direct quote from the "The video releases were heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees and to omit some of the most salient statements by O’Keefe and Giles [...] Giles and O’Keefe lied to engender compassion, but then edited their statements from the released videos." Complete accounts of the events are described within the document.

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 11:55:59 +0000

Wikipedia's a good link mine, always. It's a nice place to go for a list of potential sources. But here's a pdf of the Cali report on the ca.gov site. http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1888...

Big Government : Statement Regarding CNN

Tue, 5 Oct 2010 19:24:02 +0000

The person who sent him that email is his long-time collaborator who has been active in conservative causes for years. So your theory's not so much crazy as unlikely.