Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The Bastille Day roundup

My former neighbor, born and raised in France by French parents, never celebrated Bastille Day since she felt that the French Revolution unchained such violence that she could not celebrate that. However, Mr. Bingley found some cheese worth celebrating.

Here’s the first section of Beauty and the Beast, one of my favorite French movies,

And it’s blueberry season, Summer’s superfruit challenged: Latin American blueberries found to be ‘extreme superfruits’; the wild ones, that is.

Mila Kunis Scores Big This Week in 3 Ways

In more serious mode,
US politics,
Charting America’s Ominous History Of Debt Ceiling Increases

Ace asks, Is The President’s Insistence on a Deal That Will Take Us Past The Elections an Economic Imperative, or a Political One?

Obama hits Chicago for 50th birthday fund-raisers at the Aragon

Matthew Vadum reports that ACORN Housing Owe $163,000 in Back Taxes

We’re in the best of hands

Latin America,
Adopted Argentine Media Heirs Weren’t Kidnap Victims

Media giant Grupo Clarin won at least partial vindication in a long-running feud with the government and human rights activists, when DNA tests confirmed that the adopted heirs of the company weren’t stolen from the families of two victims of a military dictatorship in the 1970s.

In the coming days, the DNA of Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera will be crossed against a broader genetic data base of people who were murdered by the government nearly four decades ago. But lawyers for the family expressed confidence that no matches would be found.

The test results Monday, which were reported by the official news agency Telam, could mark the beginning of the end of a nasty, decade-long case that has pitted Argentina’s leftist government and human rights groups against Clarin’s owner, Ernestina Herrera de Noble. During the 1970s, the military government “disappeared” and murdered between 10,000 and 30,000 people. Human rights activists allege that scores of children of victims were adopted by allies of the military government.

Venezuela’s Congress to investigate Williams F1 and PDVSA contract

Chávez Says His Cancer Could Need Treatment, as if it wasn’t already?
Here’s An Intestinal Connection

Honduras catches drug semi-sumersible craft believed to carry tons of cocaine

Did Operation Fast and Furious have a Tampa twin, Operation Castaway?

Canada,
Betsy:

Mark Steyn links to a picture of a public school in Toronto that hosts regular Friday prayers for its Muslim students. That isn’t what is surprising – plenty of schools accommodate students’ desire to pray during school. What is shocking is how the public school separates first the boys from the girls so that the boys can pray in front and go in through separate doors. But that isn’t the only thing – they also separate out the girls who are menstruating from both sets of children. Since when do public schools allow a religious leader to come in to schools and lead prayers to separate the children not only by gender but by menstrual status? The whole idea is despicable. This is the slippery slope we are on.

Blogging:
Jimmie Bise Jr. Is a Great Blogger, with his post Why I Suck at Blogging and What It Will Take For You Not To

All this and,
The Air Tattoo,

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Voter fraud in New Jersey

As you know, I am pessimistic on today’s election; however, John Fund has more troublesome news,
Chris Christie’s Next Case: Who Stole My Election?
Absentee voter fraud may play a significant role in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow’s Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn’t match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey’s secretary of state asking her “to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.” Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks “may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis” and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey’s highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

And then there are the messenger ballots,

Elsewhere, an investigation is being conducted into a report that people wearing Acorn T-shirts entered an East Orange hospital near Newark carrying blank absentee ballots and left with completed ballots. New Jersey law allows anyone to pick up an absentee ballot for someone else — these are called messenger ballots.

Not to be missed, the Service Employee International Union and New York’s Working Families Party are also here, ready for election day action.

Just another day in the endless swamp that is New Jersey politics.

h/t Instapundit.

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The Best Little Whorehouse in Philly, ACORN edition

With the ones in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Brooklyn, San Bernardino and San Diego, about the only thing to differentiate ACORN from the traveling Broadway show hit The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, is one… in Texas, but hey, they got one in Philly, just in case you were looking for it!

ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I

Here’s the video:

By the way,

We muted the audio of the ACORN employees on the video released today due to ACORN’s legal attack upon us. We call upon ACORN to state publicly now that it has no objection to the public release of any its employees oral statements to us. If they are interested in the truth, why wouldn’t they do so?

We’ll see what the unedited tape looks like once Breitbart releases it, but look at it this way, with the the ones in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Brooklyn, San Bernardino and San Diego, you can’t help but realize: These are your tax dollars we’re talking about. These are the people who, as “community activists” have no scruples at all to advise a pimp and a prostitute intent on bringing children illegally into the country to whore themselves.

And you’re paying them.

More from Doug Ross.

More posts on ACORN here.

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ACORN’s tentacles

Matthew Vadum has been studying ACORN and its labyrinthine connections, which include Obama’s close advisor
Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard signed a letter identifying himself as a member of the SEIU State Council and the Working Families Party; As Matthew points out, the ACORN website states,

“ACORN members spearhead[ed] formation of the Working Families Party, the first community-labor party with official ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years.”

Additionally, Moe Lane shows that Gaspard continues to assist the WFP in local elections.

American Power has more on the links between ACORN and Obama that point, in Stanley Kurtz’s words, to “a persistent and shared political-ideological alliance.”

And a thirst for power.

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ACORN files suit against filmmakers

ACORN files suit against filmmakers

ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office.

In the complaint, ACORN alleges that the filmmakers entered into the organization’s offices in July with a “hidden camera and microphone” and taped employees Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams. Both employees are listed as plaintiffs on the complaint, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

The crux of the lawsuit centers around a Maryland law which makes it illegal to tape someone without their consent – ACORN is alleging O’Keefe and Giles did so. ACORN is asking for $500,000 in damages to be awarded to each of the employees filmed by O’Keefe and Giles, and ACORN itself wants $1 million in damages.

Ace is all over this story, and has a couple of suggestions:

Bring ACORN In as Co-Defendant! I asked Zero about this and he wrote back:

Was writing a whole paragraph, then remembered the term: apportionment of fault (or that’s one term for it anway). [re: what I was calling contributory negligence, which isn’t the right term here, as this isn’t a negligence case — ace.]I had also veering off into left field since I was focusing on that — if that were the only issue, then it would be a tactical decision based on MD law, which I don’t know. But then I realized it didn’t really matter, because the smart thing to do actually would be to sue ACORN as a third party defendant (or something to that effect) up front, claiming that any damages for the emotional distress that might be assessed against the defendants should actually be paid by ACORN. It might not shake out that way in the end, but I think counter-suing ACORN as a third-party defendant would be a smart tactical move.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. ACORN caused at least some, if not most (if not all) of the damages to the individuals here, so why should ACORN not sit right besides Breitbart et al. as damages are figured and the relative fault of those responsible is assessed?

ACORN would be suing Breitbart for one purpose but a defendant along with Breitbart standing against the individual plaintiffs.

It would be… anarchy, really. It would be Thunderdome. Kookoobananas, baby.

Cleaning Up the Terminology: A lawyer writes:

Defendants can cross-claim against Acorn for equitable indemnity and ask for an apportionment of the damages. Also, Acorn also might have fallen into an anti-SLAPP trap.

I leave it to the lawyers, but it looks like disclosure on this case is going to be something else. Take a look at this:
ACORN’s Lobbying Shenanigans.

This is only the beginning, oh yes.

UPDATE
Watch me Get the ACORN Lawsuit Dismissed in 15 Minutes (or Less)

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The Best Little Whorehouse in San Diego, ACORN edition

Just when you think it doesn’t get worse, James O’Keefe has videotaped an ACORN employee giving explicit instructions on how to smuggle a dozen young Salvadoran girls (“thirteen to fifteen years old”) into the country,

ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in San Diego, CA

The ACORN employee claims to be a lawyer (which is a classic lie) and advises them to bring them in through Tijuana.

Then he invited them to an immigration event. Mi casa es tu casa.

Location of other ACORN casas
San Bernardino
Brooklyn
DC
Baltimore

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The Best Little Whorehouse in San Bernardino, ACORN edition

Here they are, again: ACORN advises you on to set up your whorehouse, again,

Allahpundit has the full video.

Whether that woman is serious, crazy or what, I leave for you to decide (and the cops to investigate). The fact is that she was the only ACORN employee running that empty office. The other three videos shows similar nonchalance when O’Keefe and Giles explained their prospective enterprise.

You must read Betsy’s Musings on the new ACORN video

Why is that the way they respond? Their reaction really lends itself to the conclusion that it is not the first time they’ve heard that the people coming to them for advice want to set up a criminal enterprise. Their interest is in helping their clients no matter what the people are doing. Maybe they just want to increase their numbers of how many people they’re helping. It seems to me for each video, the ACORN office is empty besides its employees and the videomakers. Maybe they aren’t getting much business so they have give especially good service to whomever comes in, no matter what they’re told the business enterprise is going to be. Or maybe they just are inured to criminal activities and just adopt a non-judgmental approach.

Betsy also discusses how the media continues to ignore these stories – go read the whole post.

But ACORN’s corruption is deep, and pervasive. John Fund discusses in his article, Acorn Runs Off the Rails
‘We’re just community organizers, just like the president used to be.’,

Last week, 11 of its workers were accused by Florida prosecutors of falsifying information on 888 voter registration forms. Last month, Acorn’s former Las Vegas, Nev., field director, Christopher Edwards, agreed to testify against the group in a case in which Las Vegas election officials say 48% of the voter registration forms the group turned in were “clearly fraudulent.” Acorn itself is charged with 13 counts of illegally using a quota system to compensate workers in an effort to boost the number of registrations. (Acorn has denied wrongdoing in all of these cases.)

A growing number of people once affiliated with Acorn want nothing more to do with the group. Marcel Reid, for example, was one of eight national Acorn board members who were removed last year after demanding an audit of the group’s books. She notes that Acorn received $7.4 million in contributions from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) between 2005 and 2008 but actively fights unionization efforts by its own employees. Ms. Reid also notes that Acorn was sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003 for illegally firing workers trying to organize a union.

In 1995, Acorn unsuccessfully sued California to be exempt from the minimum wage, claiming that “the more that Acorn must pay each individual outreach worker . . . the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire.” The decision to file that lawsuit was made by Wade Rathke, who founded Acorn in 1970 and was its long-time leader. He was forced by the group’s board to resign last year after it found that he’d engaged in a cover-up of a nearly $1 million embezzlement of Acorn funds by his brother Dale, then the group’s chief financial officer.

As for those alleging racism, let’s ask them a question: O’Keefe and Giles clearly explain that they will be prostituting girls as young as thirteen from El Salvador. Have any of the ACORN employees shown on these videos concerned about about those girl’s minority rights?

And while you’re at it, where are the children right’s activists?

Thanks to Dan for the link.
Prior posts on ACORN here.

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