Anti-ACORN blogger dies

Just in, from investigative reporter Matthew Vadum:

Nancy Armstrong, an ardent researcher of all things ACORN, has died. No cause of death has been reported.
Armstrong ran the MsPlacedDemocrat blog. She lived near Wichita, Kansas, and was only in her mid to late 40s. Her family posted a notice about her passing on her blog.

Our sympathies to Ms. Armstrong’s family and friends.

Vadum tells me via phone that Ms. Armstrong, like our friend Cynthia Yockey, was a Democrat for Hillary until the Apotheosis of Hope finally enlightened her to the true nature of the Evil Coalition Of Liars and Fools. This should remind all our brothers and sisters that even a belated repentance can do good for the cause of Right and Truth.

Stand by for Homelessness by Fall

by Smitty

Bertha Lewis, national president of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), issued a news release yesterday repeating a claim she has previously made that “every 13 seconds another American family loses its home.”

Household loss rate (1/13sec)	0.076923077
seconds per year	31556926
households in US	105480101
seconds remaining of US housing	8,113,853.923 sec (househods * loss rate)
years of housing left	0.257118007 years, say 3 months (8,113,853.923 sec / 31,556,926 sec*year^-1)

This Fall, the entire country could be out on the streets. But I think I know somebody who may have a job opportunity:
“Hola, amigos! You say you want me to work on your senseless?“

Update:
Calvin Dodge correctly identifies the flaw in the comments.
So, am I an idiot, or is this post nothing but a troll, or both?

Sign the ACORN petition

by Smitty (h/t Malkin)

The petition

Since 1994, ACORN has received more than $53 million in direct federal funding. And, over the years, ACORN and its employees have also been the subject of investigations, indictments, and consent decrees in states all across the nation for election-related activities that run afoul of the law.

It goes on further. Please consider signing.

Video: Glenn Beck to ACORN: ‘Get the hell out of my studio’

Via Hot Air, how to deal with cheap liberal accusations of “racism”:

Kathy Shaidle might have just fallen in love. She’s gotta at least be breathing heavily.

ACORN/SEIU axis?

The Washington Examiner’s Kevin Mooney has a story about ACORN, quoting Matthew Vadum on something I hadn’t heard before:

While the organization’s complicated structure makes is difficult to determine how many affiliates and subsidiaries are tied in with ACORN’s vast apparatus, its connection with organized labor, especially the Service Employees International Union, is well-established, Vadum observed. SEIU Locals 100 and 880 are identified as allied organizations on ACORN’s web site. U.S. Department of Labor LM-2′s (financial disclosure forms) point to over $600,000 in transactions between these same SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for “membership services.” Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, the LM-2′s reveal.

Obama has very close ties to both SEIU and ACORN, and this evidence of direct coordination between these two left-wing groups is quite interesting. I wonder if Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other Democrats who got steam-rollered by the Obama juggernaut in the primaries understand what it was that hit them.

Judge ACORN: Obama’s 1st nominee

(BUMPED; UPDATE BELOW) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The Capital Research Center’s Matthew Vadum reports that President Obama’s first appointment to the federal bench carries an oversized piece of baggage. U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton of Indiana, nominated to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, worked as a fundraiser for the liberal activist group ACORN, now being scrutinized on myriad voter registration fraud allegations. The Judicial Confirmation Network calls Judge Hamilton “an ACLU liberal.” That’s evident in Hamilton’s 2005 ruling, overturned on appeal, that barred prayers that mention Jesus Christ to open daily sessions of the Indiana House of Representatives. Next!

Read Vadum’s article at The American Spectator. His investigative reporting prompted a group of prominent conservatives, led by former Attorney General Ed Meese, to issue a denunciation of the Hamilton nomination:

President Obama’s nomination of David Hamilton to the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit represents a choice based on the merits of political ideology instead of competence and impartiality. Hamilton, Obama’s first judicial nominee, has none of the judicial expertise or experience required, but all of the ties to left-wing special interest groups and a record of activist rulings reflecting his personal views that only a liberal ideologue could hope for.

Oh, Michelle . . .

UPDATE: Moe Lane marvels that Obama didn’t save the Hamilton pick for a SCOTUS seat. Moe also notes that Feddie is rolling his eyes at the claim (by CNN, inter alia) that Hamilton is a “moderate.” Feddie links to a story at LifeNews.com about Hamilton’s radical pro-abortion views.

Meanwhile, But As For Me links my AmSpecBlog post, and Memeorandum creates a thread.

UPDATE NOON 3/23: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers! Woe unto the Republican senator who approves of the Hamilton nomination. We might turn his worthless hide over to Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.

Linked by Obi’s Sister. And Teh Resistance says:

Leftists know that decent people would never support their agenda if they knew the truth about it. So they have no choice but to lie, lie, lie . . .

Yeah. Somebody should write a book about that . . .

UPDATE 4:30 p.m. 3/23: A new Memeorandum thread as the blogs on JournoList are trying to knock down this meme: Salon, Right Wing Watch and Steve Benen join in on the Jedi mind trick: “These are not the droids you’re looking for . . . move along.” Their objective, of course, is to make sure that Associated Press, Washington Post and NY Times don’t ever include “Steve Hamilton” and “ACORN” in the same story: “How dare you repeat such a right-wing noise machine smear against this respected moderate jurist!”

UPDATE 7 p.m. 3/23: “The president finally shows some loyalty.”

Will ACORN help me . . .

. . . if I don’t make my car payment? See, the finance company keeps calling me, saying I’m way behind on the note, and every time I hear a truck on my street, I look outside to make sure it’s not the repo man coming to tow my car.

Anyway, since ACORN’s all about civil disobedience on behalf of people whose homes getting foreclosed, I’m wondering if they will come do a picket line around my car to protect me from those predatory lenders who expect me to make my payments.

Because I have a right to a 2004 Kia Optima. It’s for the children! No justice, no peace!

I am a victim. And please hit the tip jar, because maybe I’m not joking. And even if I am joking, this is some funny sh*t, right?

(H/T: Ace of Spades and Michelle Malkin)

UPDATE: Welcome, Jawas! Just throw $20 in the tip jar to fund my next crusade: Your right to premium cable. Let’s face it, why should you be treated like a second-class citizen — riding the back of the cable bus — while these predatory cable providers oppress you by denying you access to HBO, Showtime and those PPV porn channels? Hope! Change! Equality!

By the way, have you heard about the government program to give free cell-phone service to the poor? That’s NOT a joke!

UPDATE II: Smitty suggests Keb Mo’s “Soon As I Get Paid” for the theme song:

ACORN fighting over the spoils

ACORN is riven by an internal feud, investigative journalist Matthew Vadum reports at The American Spectator:

When the extortion and vote fraud conglomerate ACORN isn’t staging sit-ins to pressure banks to lend to high-risk borrowers, busing schoolchildren to the nation’s capital to protest proposed tax cuts, campaigning for big government policies, or raising the dead from battleground-state cemeteries and leading them to the voting booth, it is at war with itself.
Months after the radical left-wing group gave the bum’s rush to disgraced founder Wade Rathke last summer, leaders of the normally cohesive Association of Community Organizations for Reform’s network began aligning themselves with internal factions.
The process accelerated in October when ACORN national board members Karen Inman and Marcel Reid were unceremoniously booted from the board for asking too many questions. They wanted to know more about a nearly $1 million embezzlement that senior ACORN officials covered up for eight years. . . .

Read the whole thing.

ACORN & the subprime crisis

Investigative reporter Matthew Vadum reveals ACORN’s role in causing the subprime mortgage debacle:

In a circa 1999 document, “To Each Their Home: Success Stories from the ACORN Housing Corporation,” the ACORN affiliate called the American Dream a sham and bragged about undermining banks’ underwriting standards. . . .
ACORN Housing took credit for developing “several innovative strategies” to get around pesky traditional lending guidelines, which were unfair because they “were geared to middle class borrowers.”
Instead of using passé measures of creditworthiness such as, say, credit history and having an adequate income, ACORN convinced lenders to adopt “more flexible underwriting criteria that take into account the realities of lower income communities.” Henceforth, some banks serving inner cities would accept “less traditional income sources such as food stamps.”

You read that right: ACORN pushed banks to count food stamps as income in determining mortgage eligibility. Think about that when you get your next 401(k) statement. Your investments are in the toilet and the world’s financial system is teetering on the verge of meltdown because of these left-wing poverty pimps. They’re promoting “equality” only in the sense that all Americans are getting equally screwed.

Dear media: Please ignore this

Greta Van Susteren notices that Wade Rathke, the guy who founded ACORN and also founded Local 100 of the left-wing labor union SEIU, got his start as a college draft-resistance activist with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organization from which Bill Ayers created the Weather Underground.

It is vitally important that major media organizations ignore this. Do not look into this possible connection between Rathke and Ayers. Also, don’t anyone at the New York Times or the Associated Press get any clever ideas about trying Googling search terms like “Rathke ACORN embezzlement” or “Rathke SEIU Soros” or “Rathke Soros Obama.”

No news to see here. Move along.