Leave it to the Associated Press to drive the establishment media’s attempt to portray ACORN’s serious impairment as almost entirely the product of the Republican Party.

Never mind that Democrats control the Senate, which voted 83-7 to pull HUD funding from the group earlier this week, meaning that the vast majority of Democrats supported the measure. Never mind that the House, including about 70% of Democrats, yesterday voted to totally defund ACORN by 345-75.

In the world of Jim Abrams and the Associated Press, it must be almost all the GOP’s fault that this happened. Check out the headline (frequently used elsewhere, as seen in this Google Web search on the exact title in quotes) at the reporter’s story:

In AP’s partial defense, the headline without the final six words is at links such as this one with the same time stamp of 1:40 a.m. this morning. In AP’s complete non-defense, what’s with the word “strike” in the first sentence, even if it’s not in the headline? It was a GOP “move,” because the Republican Party can’t “strike” anything, let alone get the majority indicated, without getting a lot of Democrats to throw their weapons (i.e., votes).

Abrams waited until the 5th paragraph to describe the video undercover work of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. To the AP reporter’s credit, he didn’t reflexively tag O’Keefe as conservative, instead going with O’Keefe’s self-description as an “activist filmmaker.”

A big miss by Abrams is in this later paragraph:

ACORN said Wednesday that it is ordering its own independent investigation of the incidents, while stressing that they were isolated cases.

Isolated, schmisolated. After the ACORN announcement, the BigGovernment web site released similar O’Keefe/Giles vids out of San Diego (teased on Wednesday evening; fully released very early Thursday). ACORN’s contention crumbled further, and Abram’s failure to report it Thursday evening is pathetically weak journalism.

Make that two big misses by Abrams. O’Keefe and Giles have been so relentless, I almost forgot to mention their adventure in San Bernardino, California. Abrams totally forgot.

But look at the bright side: AP is only 36-48 hours behind in the news cycle. That’s better than the five days of ignorance Charles Gibson displayed earlier this week.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Jay Leno ridicules “A-Porn” — er, ACORN – at Breitbart. He could have hit much harder. See the next item.

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OUTSTANDING — Doug Ross busts the Obama campaign’s “Fight the Smears” web site bigtime (“Obama campaign scrubbed its website to hide ACORN lies”). Why is that lefties always seem to be the ones who have to do the scrub-a-dub-dub?

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The American Spectator’s Bob Tyrell, who owns the “Boy President” moniker hung on Bill Clinton (yours truly is the proprietor of the sadly dead-on “Punk President” in referring to the White House’s current occupant), has a useful history lesson in reference to a third Democratic Party president:

“There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president,” said this smug little malcontent. Actually that is a fiction. “Hardly anyone thinks that,” says the polling expert Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and she cites a 2008 Gallup finding that 94 percent of the country was willing to vote “for a well-qualified person for president who happened to be black.”

Moreover, Jimmy is no paragon on the question of race baiting. At least two of his biographers — Betty Glad, three decades ago, and Steven F. Hayward, four years ago — record that Mr. Carter played the race card in his early days in Georgia politics. His 1970 campaign for governor went so far as to distribute racially charged literature to the Ku Klux Klan. One could argue that Mr. Carter is playing the race card again, this time playing to the sense of black grievance. In both instances, he has encouraged ugly passions.

You know me. I just had to check it out — and Tyrell’s take, as of course expected, checks out (near the bottom of the page at link from Steven F. Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter):

Biographer Betty Glad scoured the records of the Sumter County school board, discovering that in 1956 Carter offered the motion to delay construction of a new school for blacks after white parents complained that black and white students would be taking the same roads to their respective schools. On another occasion, Carter supported buying new typewriters for white schools but used typewriters for black schools. On the other side of the ledger, Carter supported building a new black elementary school in Plains.

I don’t agree with the author that Carter’s support for the new black elementary school is “on the other side of the ledger.”

Note that the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, which unanimously opined that segregated schools are unconstitutional, was decided in 1954. Sticking with constitutional protocol, it’s virtually certain that the Georgia Legislature hadn’t repealed any of its Jim Crow laws relative to schooling two years later. While there was thus nothing “illegal” about what Carter supported, it would clearly have been nullified if anyone had chosen to challenge it all the way to the Supremes.

Further, openly supporting a new black school in the wake of Brown is in my opinion more properly seen as an overtly defiant and racist “in your face” gesture made to a judicial system that had just opined that segregated schools shouldn’t even exist in the first place. It’s also worth asking whether the “new” school got new or used typewriters.

And there’s more, at Page 60 of the same book:

(While Governor in the early 1970s, Carter) wrote to a constituent, “I have never had anything but the highest praise for George Wallace …. I think you will find that …. George Wallace and I are in agreement on most issues.”

Since Carter didn’t take office as Georgia’s governor until January 12, 1971, his effusive praise of Wallace had to have been penned after Wallace’s ugly, overtly racist 1970 gubernatorial campaign.

During his political ascendancy, the best you can say about Carter is that he was a cynical, career-advancing opportunist lacking any core convictions. I don’t believe that has ever changed. Sometimes, it works out for the betterment of many. On the race relations side, he has been and continues to be absolute poison to sensible people of legitimate good will.

From Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati:

Updated 2:12 AM Thursday, September 17, 2009

A special ceremony was held at Great American Ball Park for Hall of Famer

Through the hum of storytelling and laughing behind him, Tom Browning shared his first Hal McCoy memory.

“I remember the first time I ever crossed Hal McCoy’s path, we were still training in Tampa,” Browning said at a gathering of family and friends in McCoy’s honor at Great American Ball Park. “(Another writer) and Hal, they would sit in the bleachers sunbathing while we were trying to win ballgames in spring training.”

That was about the only relaxing McCoy did during the baseball season. And for that work, 37 years of covering the Cincinnati Reds for the Dayton Daily News, McCoy, who announced last month that he would retire at the end of the current Reds season, was honored before the Reds game against the Houston Astros on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Hal McCoy Night included an autograph session at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, a gathering with family, colleagues, former colleagues and friends and an on-field ceremony with broadcaster Marty Brennaman serving as master of ceremonies.

It was a night, those gathered said, well deserved for a reporter who dedicated those years to covering some of the most respected teams in Major League Baseball history — and also some stinkers.

During the ceremony, McCoy sat with his wife, Nadine, next to a podium while Brennaman and other speakers talked about his career and presented him with gifts. Then, before the game, McCoy threw out the ceremonial first pitch to former Reds and current Astros infielder Aaron Boone.

“It was my life and my passion,” McCoy said from the podium. “My wife Nadine hates it when I say this, but I love three things: Baseball, writing and traveling. I got to do all three for 37 years, and I got paid for it.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

After a summer swoon, you would think that the evening newscasts of the Big 3 networks would start to recover a bit now that many Americans are back from vacations, kids are back in school, and fall routines are getting established or re-established.

So far, you would be wrong.

It’s early, and there’s still plenty of time this fall to recover, but during the time period after Labor Day, the broadcasts primarily anchored by Brian Williams at NBC, Charles Gibson at ABC, and Katie Couric at CBS:

• Are down a combined 28.5% from their peak in late January during the first full week of Barack Obama’s presidency.
• Have lost a combined 37.7% of their audience in the  25-54 demographic during the same time period.
• Are down year-over-year compared to September 1, 2008, the week after Labor a year ago, by 8.9% overall and 18.1% in the 25-54 demographic.
• At 19.55 million, are basically drawing audiences no larger than they were during this past (for them) miserable summer.

What follows are related graphics (source material comes from posts in the Evening News Ratings Category at Media Bistro’s TV Newser.

Here’s the overall, down from 27.36 million during the week of January 26 to 19.55 million during the relevant days this past week:

Here’s the by-network look, where ABC can take a tiny bit of comfort in having passed NBC during the past week — but only because NBC lost about 500,000 viewers:

Finally, here’s a chart comparing this past week to the January 26 peak week and the analogous week from a year ago:

There’s little point in denying that Big 3 Nets supported and heavily invested in Barack Obama’s electoral rise and ultimate victory, risking large-scale alienation of what remained of its already-shrinking audience. From a ratings and presumably financial standpoint, it’s pretty hard to argue that it was worth it. The Internet doesn’t cause almost 30% of an audience to disappear in less than 8 months. More recently, as documented frequently at NewsBusters, all three networks have bit on the “subtle racism” meme and, until recent days, totally ignored James O’Keefe’s and Hannah Giles’s unmasking of the seamy side of ACORN, more than likely driving even more viewers away.

Although the 500 employees getting laid off at NBC (after buyouts were offered to “virtually everyone”) would probably agree that the complete sellout has not been worth it, it wouldn’t surprise me if the hardened ideologues with the smiley faces at the Big 3 networks consider such actions unfortunate and inconvenient collateral damage.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

It will go up at about noon on Saturday here at BizzyBlog (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

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UPDATE: ACORN’s decision yesterday to “suspend advisory operations” was accompanied by an announcement that its “Independent Advisory Council” would conduct an “audit.”

The “Independent Advisory Council” is a collection of strident, partisan, leftist, beholden hacks (HT Hot Air):

The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.

As summarized by a Hot Air Tweeter: “A Soros hack, an SEIU thug, someone who pleaded to lying to the FBI, and a Kennedy.” Hot Air’s Allah added: “All that’s missing are a few pimps and prostitutes for ‘technical expertise.’”

Uh, no. Heck no. H*ll no. This is outrageous, and totally unacceptable.

There are four private entities qualified to comprehensively audit ACORN’s operations and its hundreds of entities from top to bottom. They are, in alphabetical order:

• Deloitte
• Ernst & Young
• KPMG
• PricewaterhouseCoopers

The firm chosen must be assisted by FBI agents that for the duration of the assignment are independent of the influence of Attorney General Eric Holder. The auditors and the G-men must have unfettered access to all records at all offices of all ACORN and ACORN-related entities. The G-Men will have to take charge of anything the auditors find that appears to be criminal in nature.

Only these firms can bring sufficient resources to bear at the necessary speed. Bring in the GAO auditors as additional low-level staff if necessary.

While the anti-ACORN momentum is strongest, offended congresspersons of both parties must insist that a truly independent audit be undertaken, and they must fund it appropriately.

This is a proven criminal enterprise we’re talking about here. Nothing else will suffice. If the audit costs millions, so be it. Given what’s at stake, especially over the long-term, the auditors should metaphorically be given an unlimited budget, and be allowed to exceed it if necessary.

From Michelle Malkin:

Home Invastion Robbers Pose as ObamaCare Activists

This man is wearing scrubs, but he’s not a doctor.

He was part of a ring of violent thugs who posed as Obamacare supporters to pull off a terrifying home invasion robbery.

This is why we allow our “poor-man’s butler,” Mr. Remington, to “screen” all visitors.

After all, you should never let a good crisis go to waste.

From Owosso, Michigan:

September 16, 2009

OWOSSO, Mich. — An anti-abortion activist gunned down in a drive-by shooting was praised Wednesday as an unwavering worker for his cause, even if some people didn’t agree with his approach of holding a sign depicting a dead fetus.

More than 250 people, including family, friends and other activists, gathered at an Owosso football field to remember James Pouillon, who was shot last week while holding his sign at one of his usual spots across the street from the school.

“You may not have agreed with his tactics or his methods. But you could not — not — miss his commitment or his passion,” pastor David Knox of Abba’s House, a local church, told those gathered at Willman Field. “Jim shouted to the world what he was living for.”

Pouillon was the first of two people shot and killed Friday by 33-year-old trucker Harlan Drake, prosecutors said. Drake found Pouillon’s methods irritating, especially when he’d protest near the high school, police said.

Drake is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Pouillon and 61-year-old gravel company owner Mike Fuoss. Drake’s family says he suffers from depression and was having trouble with his medicine.
Some of those who attended Wednesday’s service here about 70 miles northwest of Detroit wore shirts emblazoned with anti-abortion messages.

…. Matthew Trewhella, 49, and his wife Clara drove six hours from Milwaukee with nine of their 11 children. He last saw Pouillon in August at an abortion protest at the Woodward Dream Cruise, a popular event near Detroit that celebrates car culture.

“If every town had a Jim Pouillon in it, like Owosso did, abortion would be illegal,” Trewhella said. “Most people play bingo at his age, but here he was using an oxygen tank and speaking for the unborn.”

…. For more than 20 years, Pouillon protested outside schools, City Hall, the library and even the athletic field where he was remembered. The Vietnam veteran’s activism began in 1988 when he traveled to Atlanta to protest abortion, his daughter, Mary Jo Pouillon, said before the service.

Mary Jo Pouillon said she harbors no ill will toward Drake.

“He needs Jesus just like I do,” she said. Her father’s body was cremated earlier this week.

Go here for the full story.

At BigGovernment.com right now, where Numbers 2 through 12 are a result of Number 1:

God bless James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart, and protect them from harm.

UPDATE 1: “New ACORN Video: The San Diego Sting.” UPDATE 1A, Sept. 17: The long version.

UPDATE 2: Why the prayers? This is why — “ACORN ‘Chief Organizer’ Says ‘We’re Gonna Go After This Videographer and Fox.’” As pointed out earlier this month, “Gangsters play for keeps.”

UDPATE 3, Sept. 17: New, via Breitbart TV — “Senator (Roland Burris) Flees Fox News Reporter Asking Why He Supports ACORN.” Burris specifically responded that “I support ACORN in Illinois.”

UPDATE 4, Sept. 17: Associated Press — “House Votes to Cut Off Federal Funding to ACORN” (roll call vote).

…. I once knew.”

Update: Brian @ One Oar in the Water points out an even more egregious aspect of this bill and make no bones about calling like it is (go to the link):

I didn’t beat around the bush, I called this straight as written in the bill; this was a back door infiltration for the pedophiles. We can talk about the constitution issues and private property rights, which are all valid concerns and accurate, but contained in the bill is a small clause opening the door for pedophiles, which means that no-minds like Debbie Phillips just let child predators gain protection and have access to our schools.

Ohio HB 176 passed yesterday with a 59-36 vote.

This bill was tabled over the summer and resurfaced rather quickly (shocker). While it will unlikely pass the Senate, the bill was successful in its original intent which was to raise “fight the good fight” money for the LGBT community.

How do I know this? Because people who claim to be fighting the conservative “good fight” do it all the time…

Local patriots who obviously know Ohio’s Constitution were Danny Bubp, Joe Uecker. Jeff Wagner rocked and of course strong conservatives like Seth Morgan (watch for this rising star) and Josh Mandel voted appropriately.

A video of the nonsense is here.

Still, the bill passed thanks to spineless Republicans like Cliff Hite and Peggy Lehner (who almost cried on the House floor); both of whom prefer to “feel” instead of “think.”

Please join me in emailing your displeasure with these morons.

As passed, HB 176 lists the following directives:

• Prohibits discriminatory practices on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” under many of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) Law’s existing prohibitions against various unlawful discriminatory practices.
• Provides that the Ohio Civil Rights Commission must exercise certain of its existing powers and duties also with respect to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Provides that nothing in the OCRC Law’s provisions that govern Commission hearings on alleged unlawful discriminatory practices may be construed to authorize or require any person to observe the proportion that persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity or persons of any of current law’s covered characteristics bear to the total population or in accordance with any criterion other than the individual qualifications of an applicant for employment or membership.
• Adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of covered characteristics that are specified in various provisions of current law that prohibit persons or entities from discriminating on the basis of most of the covered characteristics.
• Adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of covered characteristics that are specified in various provisions of current law that require certain functions or duties to be performed without discrimination, require certain documents to include statements pertaining to nondiscrimination, or pertain to discrimination on the basis of most of the covered characteristics.

Sounds good, right (/sarc)?

Maybe… if you’re an inconsistent idiot. Let’s reason together, shall we?

The bill provides that religious organizations are precluded from the anti-discrimination aspects of this bill (not being forced to follow the mandates of hiring/firing GLBT’s due to their beliefs that homosexual behaviors are morally wrong). So individual property/business owners should not benefit from the same constitutional rights to religious freedom & freedom of association?

Let’s take a look at what should be every State Representative’s “bible” when considering – let alone voting – for any bill…

In the Bill of Rights of [Ohio's] Constitution, Section 1.7 declares (emphasis mine):

“All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almight God according to the dicatates of their own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any form of worship, against his consent; …nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted.”

Hey Cliff, Peggy…have you read the Constitution you were sworn to uphold?

Wait! It gets even better! Under Section 4112.04, the bill allows for the same kind of nonsense that Mitt Romney permitted in Massachusetts. It – well here, you read it…

The bill instead requires the OCRC to prepare a comprehensive educational program, in cooperation with the state Department of Education, for Ohio public school students and all other Ohio residents that is designed to eliminate prejudice and discrimination in Ohio, and to emphasize the origin of prejudice and discrimination, their harmful effects, and their incompatibility with American principles of equality and fair play. (R.C. 4112.04(A)(9).)

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your property tax dollars at work.  Pssshh, little Johnny doesn’t need reading, writing and arithmetic… he needs to be taught how to claim “discrimination” if he wants to use the women’s bathroom at work when he gets older…

Three words: No. More. Levies.

These points only scratch the surface. Read the whole thing and if you are so compelled, follow in the footsteps of this citizen warrior who expressed his discontent with the “I don’t know my own Constitution” Cliff and “Not Constitutionally proficient” Peggy” (with permission):

Dear Representative Hite:

I am not a voter in your District, so you may feel free to disregard my comments. But as a fellow Christian, I feel you should pay heed.

I believe that you exercised poor judgment in voting for this bill. I can understand sentiment that wants to make life “fair” and “tolerable” for all Ohio citizens. But the normalization of the deviant and dangerous behaviors as defined in this legislation in Section 4112.01 does no one any favors, neither the participants nor the public. I would hope that your study of the Scriptures would inform you that God warns us not to take part in homosexual behaviors. I would also hope that you would take the time to acquaint yourself on the sorts of behaviors that homosexuals indulge in that makes these practices so dangerous to themselves and to the general public.

Ask yourself: why is it that no blood bank in any country in the world will knowingly accept donations of blood from practicing male homosexuals? Are they merely discriminating against male homosexuals as the result of “prejudice,” as Section 4112.04 of this bill would have you believe? Or are the blood banks following sensible medical and public health protocols?

What happened to the time-honored American principles of property rights and freedom of association denied by the provisions of Section 4112.02 of this bill? Since all organizations and enterprises are, at their fundamental essence, founded and operated by individual people, why is it that “religious organizations” are exempted from the limitations on freedom imposed by this bill as long as they are “non-profit” while profit-making enterprises and organizations must give up their rights?

Do you truly believe that the Founders of our nation intended that sodomy, perversion, promiscuity, and adultery be elevated to the status of a “civil right” as established by Section 4112.04 of this bill? That the taxpayers should be forced against their consciences to pay for a commission and other apparatus to enforce such pretend “rights” ? That the public schools would be enlisted to instruct primary and secondary school pupils to accept and embrace such aberrant and dangerous behaviors, also mandated by Section 4112.04?

My hope is that, if you really care for people and children, you will do some study on what comprises the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender lifestyle, will publicly admit your error, and will work to preclude passage in the Ohio Senate. I realize that I am asking a lot–people hate to admit error or lack of judgment–but now and then we are surprised by honorable action.

I’ve grown weary of Republicans using our money to advance the Left’s agenda. Vote the bums out…

Larry Kudlow at IBDeditorials.com — “Market Says: Public Option Is A Clunker.” I hope the market’s instinctive assessment that the public option is, to quote a line from the Wizard of Oz, “not just merely dead, but most sincerely dead” is correct.

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Here’s a great vid from Republican Whip Eric Cantor (direct link) Constitutionally Speaking, a site I just added to the overcrowded BB blogroll:

As CS asks, “If nothing is required, how come it shows up 84 times in the current bill?”

Perhaps the statement by President Obama (“Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have”) is technically accurate, because YOU won’t be required to change it.

But it’s irrelevant, because if everyone else involved — employers, insurance companies, the states — is required to change things, they will be changed for you, and more than likely not for the better.

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Say what you want about the 9/12 rally in DC this past weekend, but in the picture on the right below, as seen at Gateway Pundit, they at least know how to clean up after themselves — or, more accurately, not make a mess in the first place. But, appropriately placed on the left, a picture from the inauguration shows that cleanliness wasn’t exactly present when His Godliness was sworn in — twice:

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Can’t make it up — “Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions.” After all the “Bush and Cheney are evil” grief over this ….

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From IBDeditorials.com (bolds are mine):

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

Pfft — What the bleep do they know? (/sarc)

The willingness of a professional organization to betray its own members’ interests is the real story here.

From KVOA.com in Tucson (story also has link to a video):

(from September 12, 2009)

From one crisis to another, a Tucson man talks about what it was like to be in the World Trade Centers when they were attacked, serve a tour of duty at Camp Fallujah in Iraq, and now, return to school at the University of Arizona.

8 years ago, Mark Finelli, now 33-years-old, was on the 61st floor of the South Tower when a plane flew into the opposite tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46am.

“And all of a sudden the building next door exploded. All you could see is dust and papers. I ran to the stairs just started running very fast. I’ll never forget one fireman his face will permanently be etched into my brain; I’m running this way when he was running that way.”

He said it was that firefighter who saved his life.

Running for his life, Finelli had descended 50 floors in 15 minutes, but had only made it to the 11th floor when a plane struck the tower he was still inside.

“It wasn’t until I got to the Hudson River that I took time to turn around then I saw both buildings were smoking.”

Soon after the terrorists attacks, Mark Finelli walked into a Marine Corps recruiting office, saying if you want to fight a war you join the Marine Corps.

“I did a tour in Camp Fallujah 2005-2006 in the infantry and I got to patrol the areas between Baghdad and Fallujah.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.