ACORN and Breitbart: the plot—and the videos—thicken
There are lies, and then there are really stupid lies.
The following video would seem to represent the latter on the part of ACORN, for instance. It appears to contradict ACORN’s claim that they had turned the filmmakers away in Philadelphia:
Ah, but since ACORN had already filed suit against the makers of these videos, accusing them of violating Maryland wiretapping laws, it’s a good guess that ACORN thought it was safe regarding the Philadelphia incident, and that the relevant video would never see the light of day.
In fact, they may be correct, because I’m sure that if you’ve watched the tape you’ve noticed that the ACORN worker’s audio is blanked out. If you watch this Fox News video (oh-oh, Fox News, must be a lie) you’ll hear that the ACORN audio was omitted “for legal reasons.”
But not so fast. If you watch that Fox video, you’ll also see there’s evidence that would tend to back up ACORN’s claims, at least partially: ACORN appears to have filed a contemporaneous police report alleging that video-maker James O’Keefe had created a verbal disturbance in the Philadelphia office that day. So if all had gone so swimmingly during the interview with O’Keefe and Giles, as the two allege, then why the ACORN complaint?
Just because ACORN has lied already many times doesn’t necessarily mean it’s lying about this one. So I await the full video, and the passage of time and more information. For example, here’s a comment that asks some pertinent questions about ACORN’s police report, such as:
The police report I have seen online does not support ACORN’s claims about them calling the police for what James and Hannah were doing (prostitution, child trafficking, soliciting tax fraud assistance, etc). It simply says the problem was that he ’caused a verbal disturbance…
’The police report names James O’Keefe by name. In the other tapes I have seen, Hannah uses a pseudonym. Did James really use his own name, or does this indicate the police report was filled out, at least partially, after the tapes were released?
Only James is mentioned in the police report- not Hannah…Did this police report actually come from the police department, or is this from ACORN?
How and when did ACORN get his name to put on the report? Did he really give them his real name?
Is it possible that the report actually left the name of the culprit blank, and ACORN filled that in later, after learning the film-maker’s name?Is it *possible* that this report isn’t even about James O’Keefe at all? Is it possible some other guy caused a ”˜verbal disturbance’ and then left, ACORN filed a report, and then, when they learned of James O’Keefe’s work and his name, added that to the report?
The only light I can find so far find to shed on any of these questions is that CNN claims it got a copy of the police report from ACORN. Here’s the report (I can’t read it very well, but perhaps you can)
The truth will out (maybe—unless Fox News is silenced first). And please note, President Obama and that charming troika—Dunn, Axelrod, and Emanuel—that not only is Fox News reporting the Breitbart side of the story, but it’s also mentioning the ACORN police report as well. Sounds pretty fair and balanced to me.
I would have thought one of the most basic rules of lying would be: don’t lie about something you know is on videotape.
I have said that they are using a play book whose techniques rely on the fact that we forget and that anyone who remembers and clips articles and such facts becomes a tin hatter.
what your missing is that what doesnt work on you, DOES work on some. you can tell some people that what they saw is not what they saw, and they will believe what you said.
even more if you tell them that, and others pretend its true, the person will more likely cave to the lie and pretend its real.
so in essence, such a thing helps not theri cause ni the bigger pictuire, but helps their cause in the trenches where they are losing people.
so much of what they do is saying what others want to hear in each context without any kind of care that the two references will be matched up.
in the past this worked very well.
after all most of the theory work you can read on all this is stuff that is derivative from the era of radio! maybe updated for TV..
certainly not updated for everyone carrying their own personal camera that can film and transmit film without ever moving from the spot.
its why they hate uncontrolled news. manipulation only works when everyone is in on it, or rather works best.
when parents tell kids that santa clause is real, they have not ony others around the kid, but they also have a tv message to.
think of a new acorn person as a kid being told that there is a santa clause, and between the people talking to them telling them how it works, tehre is also media veracity too.
its sculptin reality for those who are receptive.
to those who are not, it seems like an idiot thing to do.
however, this group that does nothing but idiot things has marched without failure for 75 years. it has remolded our culture, changed our values, confused our people, and there is no way to go back since the bridges that would let you are burned.
way back i used teh german word for it, which i forgot, it was a latch system that allows the system to move forward freely, but backwards only incrementally to the last stop.
its a process, its been refined. you can see things borrowed from FDR, you can see lots from hitler, and you can see stuff from stalin (though not so much since his stuff is more in play once you no longer can pretend to be nice).
for a group doing a lot of stupid stuff, thy have succeeded with stupid better than you or i succeed with smart.
artfldgr: actually, I’m not forgetting that the Big Lie (or even the small one) is a tried and true technique. But the proliferation of personal media (such as cell phone videos, for example) has made at least a dent in such things—on occasion, anyway. I agree, however, that those who want ACORN to be right (and that’s a large number of people) will always be able to counter any evidence to the contrary.
Compare the times of the report ticket by the police officer, and compare the times the vids were made.
one thing you will see on the report is that the time OUT is before the time IN.
time out is 10:** am and time in is 11:05 am
other than switching them around, h g wells would be needed.
the time of occurance though is 10:40
date of occurance is in AUGUST not SEPT when the report was filed. 7/24/09
the words of the report says that
“the below man was not on location and the compl was revised”
so now you know how the name was added.
next to the name is the ‘date’ of the change, which is quite illegible. [in general dishonest people write numbers that are hard or vauge to read. others do too, but in handwriting honesty generally shows an effort at clarity]
i would guess that your right that they are trying to attribute another incident to this incident.
the reason is pretty easy to understand.
rk dist bus. (business district)
the above **** called police after the below man had come to the above loc. to apply for low incom housing and was causing a verbal disturbance with the employees of Acorn.
was the two of them there to seek low income housing, or was their speil sufficiently different that a person telling the story in truth would have left out?
think of this for a second, they are complainig of a disturbance, and the worst thin they can think of saying about the incident was that they were there seeking low income housing… and not mention child prostitution, prostitution, tax fraud, or anything more serious than “disturbance”.
someone came in, argued with them when they found out that they were too bad off even for acorn to help, caused a ruckuss and left.
they didnt know who he was, etc.
sad part about this politically correct invident form.
there is no place to require any information as to the description of the person that they were dealing with.
in essence it says. there was a man at the office, he was a disturbance, go get em.
if the ticket was allowed to have descriptive information, and it wasnt so PC, we may have found them talking then of a minority man, which would have prevented applying the cloudy history to another man.
as beria said
show me the man, and i will show you the crime.
It’s possible to obtain police incident and accident reports directly from the City of Philadelphia, as I learned not long ago when a family member was involved in a traffic accident there. They can be obtained online. Of course, there’s a fee involved, but one would think that some enterprising reporter could fairly easily find out whether the police report that ACORN gave to CNN corresponds with one that’s actually on file.
Whahhhhhh, a community organizing organization could be suspected of fabricating documents (whether they did or didn’t)?
How dare you be so racist you…you…you….neocon!
If you read the report, it seems to say “The below male(?) [meaning O’Keefe] was not on location and the compl [meaining the ACORN employee] was advised”.
If O’Keefe was indeed “not on location”, how did the officer know his name, unless the “compl” had been given it during the “disturbance”?
From the Big Government post of the video: Alinsky Rule #1: “Power isn’t only what you have, it’s what the enemy thinks you have.”
It strikes me Breitbart is targeting the press with this video as much, and perhaps more so, as ACORN. Essentially, they have to respond to it in some way, but they aren’t sure what Breitbart has (and remember, law or not, releasing the audio wouldn’t lead to much more than a fine, so he might even go that route if the audio is damning enough).
As you pointed out in your last post, police complaints are probably public record so Breitbat probably already has a copy of it. Breitbart has the audio and who knows what else on tape. He’s laid down the gauntlet for the press — cover this straight of get caught up in the ACORN implosion. Heck, even the timing — so soon after the “Fox isn’t news” schtick out of the WH plays into this video release.
I think he’s been slowly and deliberately boxing in the legacy media.
artfl:
The complaint wasn’t “revised” and the “date” isn’t a date; it’s O’Keefe’s description: 30/w/m, 30 year old white male.
But it’s still strange that O’Keefe is described as “not on location”.
Look at the handwriting of number “2” and “3” in the report.
Remember Breitbart’s target: the MSM.
Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe targeted ACORN. Breitbart, however, in advising them, is targeting the media, and has enlisted Giles and O’Keefe into his war on the media.
After the first videos: why why why would media credulously report ACORN talking points as if the talking points were truth? And yet, that’s EXACTLY what WaPo and Philadelphia Inquirer did; EXACTLY what cable news talkers did. Breitbart, by holding this video until now, humiliates the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer; blatantly exposes the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer to be gossip rags with overt rooting interests.
In his latest video, Breitbart says the videotaped actions of ACORN are “Abu Ghraib for the Great Society”. LOL. True dat.
why why why would media credulously report ACORN talking points as if the talking points were truth?
Gee, I dunno – why would the NYT and WaPo credulously repeat CPUSA talking points about Whittaker Chambers 60 years ago?
Michael: …Now we got newspaper people on the payroll don’t we, Tom?
[Tom nods]
Michael: Well they might like a story like that
Tom Hagen: They might, just might.
The last times I checked, in Texas, you could record audio if at least one party in the conversation was aware it was being recorded. (Not a lawyer- not for certain if that is still the rule)
This situation in Maryland where apparently all parties have to be informed, in my mind, is an attempt by the “law” to protect organized crime.
I had a job once where I carried a recorder in my boot with a mike in my shirt trying to get evidence of something I thought was going on illegally at a place I worked. Did this for several weeks as I recall. Did’nt catch the fish though.
Note that the police report is dated two months before the first ACORN video appeared, so ACORN could only have known O’Keefe’s name at the time unless he told them (which is hard to believe). The alternative is that someone added O’Keefe’s name months after the event, once he became publicly known.
Given ACORN’s consistent prevarication, and manifest desperation, I plump for scenario “b.” Still to be heard from: the cop who took the report.
stumbley,
the last lines of the report says it was revised..
though i couldnt figure out what the other thing was… hats off to you knowing that was a description!!!!!!!! i was stumped 🙂
artfl:
I still think the word is “advised”. Check out the other “R’s” in the report; most of them are open, with no connection between the vertical “leg” and the curve forming the rest of the “R”. The “D’s” are likewise mostly triangular in shape, as is the “d” in what I’m reading as “advised”. The “A’s” are also mostly closed, as is the “A” in what I’m reading as “advised”.
YMMV. We really need to hear from the cop, as Occam suggests.
stumbley Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 4:30 pm
artfl:
The complaint wasn’t “revised” and the “date” isn’t a date; it’s O’Keefe’s description: 30/w/m, 30 year old white male.
30?!? I’d be shocked if he could walk into a club without being carded. (He’s actually 25, BTW.)
http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/21/unsolved-mysteries-and-irreconcilable-differences-for-mr-scott-harshbarger/
MAN that cop’s handwriting is as bad as mine….
I thought his handwriting was pretty good, myself! /g
Looks like “advised” to me as well, after using Windows magnifier on it; doesn’t look like enough space for two letters. “Advised” makes perfect sense in context; the other party to the altercation was no longer there, so the complainant was advised (i.e., given advice), and that was that.
If the report had been “revised,” surely the date of such revision and the officer’s initials would appear. Going back and changing reports after the fact without noting such would seem to be highly improper, especially in the criminal justice context.
I speak Philadelphia police report. This report is known as a “75-48”; it is the lowest/most basic level of report that can be generated by Philadelphia police. This report appears to be internally consistent; i.e. not tampered with or forged.
Time in/out means that the officer took himself/herself out of radio contact, so that’s not wrong. R/C means received a radio call.
The compl., “complainant” was “advised”, which in this context would usually mean that they were advised that if they wanted to pursue this further, they would have to file a personal criminal complaint themselves. That is, neither the police nor the district attorney would initiate charges where a misdemeanor is alleged to have occured out of the presence of police.
What is very worrisome is the fact that Pennsylvania has an outdated, draconian statute regarding recording someone without their knowledge and permission.
Press conference now up 4 parts:
http://www.breitbart.tv/part-i-filmmakers-show-video-of-acorn-sting-in-philadelphia/
Correction, 5 parts.
Does the law in question apply against recording someone without their knowledge if they are acting illegally?
Think of it this way – if you saw some thugs breaking into a home through a window and recorded it, and recorded them taking property out through the window in a surreptitious manner and managed to get their voices on tape using each other’s names – would this law still protect them as they didn’t know they were being recorded?
From the news conference they said they needed her consent to publish the audio, she is in quite a spot. She obviously lied to media matters. Looks like they are getting good legal advise.
The intercepted communications law in Pennsylvania is very harsh. I haven’t looked into it lately but the last time I did, it was simply cut and dried that you cannot “intercept”, let alone record, a person’s words. This includes something as tame as picking up an telephone extension and listening. It’s illegal to intercept, even if one person to the conversation consents. If you want to put someone on speakerphone, you have to inform them of that before you do or it falls afoul of the “wiretap” act. I seem to recall that this also applies even to criminal acts—if someone is calling and threatening you, you can’t secretly record it even though the words constitute a crime. You can keep a threatening voicemail, though, because the caller implicitly consents to being recorded.
RigelDog,
What about the circumstance of someone dialing 911, and the 911 operator recording the ensuing actions without the consent of the perpetrator?
The police could literally record a murder in progress.
That would seem to fall into the same catagory as you described the law detailing.
Why is it that states with long histories of mafia involvement or politician concentrations have this law? hmmmmm wonder if Chicago has one, bet they do..
i will believe that they are rooting things out when i hear an indictment of the ford foundation…
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