Obama to ACORN 12/07: "We're going to be calling all of you in, to help shape the agenda."

At the Heartland Democratic Presidency Forum, in December 1, 2007, in Des Moines, IA, a number of community organizing groups gathered through the efforts of Deepak Barghava, leader of the ACORN entity for community reinvestment and fair housing. Senator Barack Obama was in attendance. There is a Youtube video for the event, included at the bottom of the page. It begins with Barghava addressing the crowd stating:

All of this change is coming to a society that is still deeply structured by racism and sexism and unless we change course, these divisions and walls that still separate us will get bigger, not lower. And of course, [inaudible] of community organizing from which everyone in this room comes, which is the power of many, which can change the world

That is why we have created the Campaign for Community Values, bringing together hundreds of grassroots community organizations, from across the United States, to begin today, to continue through the elections to get justice in America for everyone."

Following this recitation, an unidentified woman questioned Senator Obama:

If elected President of the United States, would you agree to meet with a delegation of representatives of these various community organizations, [inaudible] would you agree to within the first 100 days to sit down with them?"

In reply Sen. Obama stated the following:

Yes, but first, let me just say, before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in, to help shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations, so that you have input into the agenda of the next Presidency of the United States of America.

This statement completely contradicts comments Senator Obama made on Tuesday, October 14, to reporters who questioned him about his relationship with the organization. Here is what he said:

Taking a break from debate preparations, Obama told reporters during a brief press conference this afternoon, "My relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward. It's probably 13 years ago when I was still practicing law, I represented ACORN and my partner in that representation was the U.S. Justice Department in having Illinois implement what was called the "motor voter" law, to make sure that people could go to DMVs and driver's license facilities to get registered. It wasn't being implemented. That was my relationship, and is my relationship to ACORN."

He said he had further interactions with the group through its Chicago office, in his capacity as a local elected official. "But they are not advising our campaign," Obama asserted.

Senator Obama, there is no avoiding saying, is one of the most slippery politicians to ever walk on two feet. Outright deceptions are hiding in plain sight in every direction on the mounting contradictions Mr. Obama himself has amazingly managed to perpetrate, with the direct aid of the media. Take careful notice that Sen. Obama stops just a nanometer short in his statement. "But they are not advising our campaign". We could do a, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is", considering the tortured, parsed language being employed. Perhaps ACORN is not advising Sen. Obama's campaign. But they have done staging and lighting, I mean, "get out the vote efforts" for his campaign to the tune of $800,000, or least their subsidiary, ancillary, or, let's all just face it, its front group has done so. And perhaps they are not advising his campaign but they will, he promised "have input" into his Presidency. If you examine the unbelievably careful wording here, you could actually say that Mr. Obama didn't technically lie. ACORN's subsidiary did get out the vote work for his campaign. ACORN and many other community organizing groups will help shape his administration's agenda. It just didn't or is not going to do both, at the same time. The diabolical kind of rhetorical foresight that must go into preparing these statements is both hard to ignore or deny.

But, as with everything else Obama, these associations have connections rather like the invisible yet rooted, tubular growth found in a mushroom's "fairy-ring" in the forest. Or perhaps it would be more apt to apply the analogy of cockroaches. For every one you see, there are about 80,000 of them hiding in the wall.

Senator Obama's site "Fight the Smears" has presented to its visitors a list of facts regarding Mr. Obama's relationship with the infamous ACORN, available, one must add, by using the handy "Not the Smear You're Looking For? Search All Smears" search box in the upper right hand corner of the site's homepage. By the way, I'm really not making that up. Besides the parody that title is, in and of itself, since when does a politician need a site dedicated entirely to all the "smears" against him, let alone an entire searchable database of them? If the consequences to the country of an Obama Presidency weren't so serious, it would actually be hysterically funny. "Not the Smear You're Looking For?" How many do there have to be, for the love of Pete? There is only one thing, really, that can be true: Either the "Republican Attack Machine" is so completely out of control in this election cycle that they are making up loads of smears (again, enough to fill a searchable database) about an opponent, or, there are so many troubling things about a candidate, that they had to dedicate an entire website to fending off the coming attacks.

Anyway, to las cucrachas. As noted, by using the handy "Search All Smears" tool, one finds that Sen. Obama not only plainly contradicted himself yesterday, to reporters, despite the tap dance act, he contradicts himself on his own websites by his own campaign's statements and those of his supporters."Fight the Smears" reports the following:

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995.

The "Obama for America" campaign site includes the option for visitors to participate in a "Community Blog". One of these posts, by a Sam Graham-Felsen, dated February 21, 2008, details, among other things, how Obama himself, addressing ACORN leaders, said the following in November 2007:

I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

Again, if one carefully parses the words used by Obama, he didn't technically lie with his own words. While claiming ACORN was "not part of Project Vote", he states they were "smack dab in the middle of it". This one's a little trickier than the "advising, campaigning, get out the vote, presidency", sleight of tongue trick, but it can be done and here's how: Technically, you could be in the middle of something and not be a part of it. You know, like, um, like,.....an Oreo cookie! Yeah, that' s it. The frosting is, smack in the middle of the cookie, but it's not technically part of the chocolaty wafer things on either side. They are, technically, separate entities. So one could, technically say, that the overall "cookie" here was the general get out the vote effort during the election cycle in question. But, the wafers (Project Vote) and the frosting (ACORN) were separate parts of that cookie, but not really together.

Something that is yet another root, tentacle, or cockroach, pick whichever analogy you want to use, is that at least at this point, Project Vote and ACORN are working together.

From Project Vote Home Page

The snapshot at the right is a blurb found on Project Vote regarding the large number of new voters the organization had registered, together. A search of the site doesn't give any informatoin on Project Vote's history with ACORN, just its inception date of 1982 and its general mission.

As with a number of these questionable associations, the tentacles reach in many directions, but trying to grab onto clear facts is difficult.

In any case, the diabolical planning here must just keep teams of rhetoricians very busy at the Obama campaign. Between those careful sentence crafters and the maintenance staff of the "Fight the Smears" site, there is absolute job security for anyone employed by Obama. Maybe that's why he thinks campaigning for President makes you qualified to be President. The rest of us just have no idea how hard it is to manage all of these people, afterall, it requires a very large staff.