In the linked Andy Ostroy article, Andy asks,

My God, just what the fuck is wrong with Democrats these days?

Um,that's a really good question. Since it seems to be across the board, on almost any issue you want to mention, I think it's a bit deeper than cowardice, stupidity, abused-wife syndrome, being totally lame, or any other meaningless descriptor you can come up with.

Remember the 2004 election? Remember all those excuses for why Bush won that just didn't hold water upon serious examination?

Well, I think possibly, folks, we have the same situation here. All the reasons given for why the Dems are the ultimate cave-in-ers when they are supposed to now have power just don't hold water upon serious examination.

I cannot help but conclude that there is another explanation. I wish I knew what it was. All I know is they can't all be that chicken-shit, stupid, "bi-partisan," unwilling to offend, fooled into thinking they are helpless when they're not, self-destructive, etc etc etc.

So...what the fuck's going on here?

First they came for Van Jones, and the Democrats did nothing...

Then they came for ACORN, and the Democrats voted to defund them...

Next they came for...

Comment @2

First they came for Van Jones, and the Democrats did nothing...

Then they came for ACORN, and the Democrats voted to defund them...

Next they came for...

Brad my friend that was eloquent...

I also liked a comment on Conason's article at commondreams.org...

Acorn= poor-black-women-radical.

Empire=rich-mostly white-men-neo-liberal and neo-conservative.

Which one wields the power in our global world ?

We seem to be in the middle of Orwell's vision...the change happened while we were watching television and turning our thinking capacity to crap.

Enlightened people with vision for the good of us all are smeared, mocked and criminalized...while the greedy gangsters on Wall Street, Capital Hill and corporate boardrooms and the Pentagon are glorified with praise and filthy lucre...
It's an upside down, inside out world...

Goddess-God-Universal Intelligence HELP US...

We've let ourselves become stupid to the point where we've been bamboozled, run amok and led astray...

Ahhhh...I screwed up the html quoting...

the comment from commondreams.org is a quote...

We seem to be in the middle of Orweel's vision...those 4 paragraphs are me...

geez...anyway the words are good...the commondream commenter's and mine....

I was hoping to read a defense of ACORN. What you provided instead was a condemnation of Republican hypocracy - hardly the same thing. Of course, both sides can play the spin game, but why traffic in this sort of thing? It's basically dishonest and does the rest of us no good.

This typifies the situation very well...

David Ewing @5

I was hoping to read a defense of ACORN. What you provided instead was a condemnation of Republican hypocracy - hardly the same thing. Of course, both sides can play the spin game, but why traffic in this sort of thing? It's basically dishonest and does the rest of us no good.

Did you read Conason's article ?...or did you just read Brad's commentary on Conason's defense of ACORN ?
And I think as far as hypocracy goes republican hypocracy is a good place to start...
It's all a matter of degree Mr Ewing...
Hypocracy that has destroyed the U.S. economy, got us into 2 unjust wars, committed inhumane war crimes and stolen 2 elections...or
Some nefarious street theater that ACORN may have committed.

Mr. Ewing you tell me whose hypocracy has done the most damage ?

Do you blast house flies with a shotgun ?
While raccoons and vermin eat you out of house and home and you do nothing ?

Degree Mr. Ewing...degree...

If the Dems did nothing, it would be better than enthusiastically going along with whatever the Repubs want.

There's something happening here....

What's happening Lora is that the Dems and GOP are actually one party with 2 faces...

And no matter whose in power the outcome is the same...

The people get ripped off.

Yeah Bluehawk, but how did it happen? Power that corrupts? Money lining pockets? Fear of the attack machine aimed at family? Fear of a more powerful and dangerous attack machine? Media coverage that can make or break a political career tied to the choices they make?

IF we know what it is, we can do something about it. Right now it's somewhat of a mystery. We elect Dems; they promise change; they promise to help us; and then nearly all promises fall flat despite the power they appear to have.

I just want that pimp kid video maker to infiltrate Goldman Sacs discussing how to take out thier competitor Lehman and how to improve their high frequency skimming operations, Blackwater talking about how to milk billions more from murder and crusades, ESS/Diebold discussing how to make voting more corruptable, United Health Care discussing how to deny legit claims and get their Pacificare subsidiary 40 precent claim denial even hire, and local mortgage borker/fraudster lying to grandma about her HELOC and make sure those videos go viral too...

Acorn in their wildest dreams couldn't do remotely close to the corrupt damage to this country one scummy mortgage broker alone did let alone what the big corrupt companies have done. The worst Acorn is doing is telling ordinary people how to take advantage of the "system" and either hide their income from taxes or milk govt programs for money and advocating child prostitution. Think of how Blackwater has done all of this on orders of magnitudce larger...think about this, in all the how moral and financial corruption in the country, and Acron is the only one to get busted. WTF?
When a white person

I agree with Lora that there we don't fully understand what is wrong with today's Democrats. Saying the Republicans and Democrats are really one party (in terms of their basic policies) does not explain the the Democrats' panic whenever the loony right attacks. Why, for example, did President Obama feel the need to immediately fire Van Jones (at midnight!) following Glenn Beck's self-serving smear attack against Jones?

There is a fear among the Democrats reminiscent of the McCarthy era, and it is not clear where it is coming from.

Caleb @12...

If the Dems and GOP are actually the same party pursuing the same ends...then the Dems caving to GOP/right wing pressure at every turn makes sense.

President Obama firing Van Jones by using the convenient excuse of the right wing smears is simply a high level shell game. Obama is actually serving his corporate masters while paying lip service to the left.

My understanding of what's happening is becoming clearer by the day...

I invite you to read about President Kennedy's murder...which happened not long after he spoke of plans to dismantle the federal reserve, extricate the U.S. out of Vietnam and make a solid stance on civil rights.
The Corporate/Military/Industrial banking complex murdered Kennedy because of those plans...
Obama knows this and is acting accordingly.

ACORN and entities like ACORN are the targets of world class persecutions and media driven hit jobs in order to render them impotent in the face of the slavemaster elites.

We have seen the enemy....and he uses the airwaves to assassinate those who's views he despises.

The Dems are playing their role in this perfectly...they assume the stance of limp wristed and powerless even when they hold all the political cards. That's not a deep psychological condition, it's a well considered tactic to continue the rape of the people while corporate fascist interests line the Dem's pockets.

All that's changed since the last election is who got paid first...for 8 years the GOP got the bulk of the loot...now the Dems are first in the booty line.
That's why GOP are so shameless and angry in their opposition. Their pocket books are a little lighter now. Not much lighter...but that doesn't matter. They are simply greedy f*cks.

That's whats happening...

Domestic surveillance facilitates "persuasion" one might guess; surely there has been progress since J Edgar Hoover in our nation's capitol. Press like Pravda, politics like...

Isn't this the SAME "sting operation" players, posing as pregnant teenagers, trying to get Planned Parenthood defunded???

http://www.newshounds.us...for_andrew_breitbart.php

So, they throw as much shit against the wall as they can, NEVER being exposed as rightwing operatives, and they will try to defund anything they like one by one? With the Democrats voting to defund them???

Instead of the Democrats standing tall and NOT voting to defund ACORN, they're scared of FOX "news", James O'Keefe, and Andrew Breitbart!!!!!!!!

Big Dan @ 16

I've come to the conclusion that the Dems aren't scared...they're complicit.

Dems and GOP have the same operators...The Wall Street/Corporate/Military/Banking complex...

I think the Dems are scared. And greedy. And, perhaps rightly so in some cases, concerned that if they are the recipients of a media attack job and they are either forced to resign or lose so smuch face that no one will take them seriously, they will not be able to get anything they want. I think they make a deal with the devil and cave in on the big stuff in order to get a few crumbs.

Like being in a Mafia family, as long as you do as you're told you will be well treated and maybe even get thrown a bone or two. Step out of line and you're finished.

Kucinich and Feingold seem to do all right. But who takes Kucinich seriously anymore, besides me? Feingold though...maybe he should give lessons.

I love Lora's excellent question and the responses it has elicited. The Dems dual nature and increasingly infuriating tendency towards total capitulation to The Stupids is one of the most important questions of the last decade or two.

When Congress would not stand up for Christine Jennings in 2006 even though she "lost" her bid to represent Florida-13 by 369 votes despite the ES&S iVotronic machines losing 18,412 votes - I knew it was game over.

Re: FEAR - Initially speculating it was fear-based was our (our = The PEOPLE's) first naive supposition and misstep; a noble instinct we had not to assume the worst in our elected officials backfired again and again as their betrayals piled up like matchsticks. The speculations ie: "Rove's must have something on them" or even the less conspiratorial "They don't have the numbers they need in Congress effectively legislate" led the (thinking) voter to incorrectly pre-suppose "We just need to get MORE Dems in office and THEN they'll grow some backbone 'n sac..."

It has nothing to do with quantity. Math is moot.
Kerry's 2004 concession should have been the big tell. Our better nature blocked our better judgment - and we have such short, short collective memories.

2.Re: COMPLICIT (angling): Sure, BlueHawk, it's that. But I would go a step further and say it's active COLLUSION. So many competing outside interests, so much money, so much power. Feels like our future history is adhering to some bad spec-script written by a nihilist who still has an axe to grind about the 60+ year-old New Deal.

While it's a very cynical, depressing thought: What if the Dems exist just to move the plot forward? Patsies for the appearance of partisanship, their lines carefully constructed by ex-con/future-con neo-cons? After all, every story needs a counter-weight to be believable, every plot requires a flaccid foil.

Lora, I think your astute question "when" may coincide with the timing of the implementation of wide-scale, massive, election fraud on the equipment made by privatized, partisan corporations who count our votes in secret.

If they know, and I know they do, that elections are being manipulated, then they are no longer accountable to the voter.

This is why the story of stolen elections in the U.S. get no traction, (tho' Iran and Afganistan are splashed here and there on back pages across the Nation) and why Brad is a Hero.

BlueHawk writes:

"ACORN and entities like ACORN are the targets of world class persecutions and media driven hit jobs in order to render them impotent in the face of the slavemaster elites. We have seen the enemy....and he uses the airwaves to assassinate those who's views he despises."

Well put, BH. And it's killin' me.

http://biggovernment.com...unded-prostitution-zone/

(Saw this horror spray-painted at my bus-stop at UCLA this week and sobbed all the way to work...can't imagine the kind of money and influence ACORN is up against.)

Columbia Journalism Review did a great article yesterday comparing activism and journalism and the melding of the two in some instances.

Behind the News, Campaign Desk — September 18, 2009 05:44 PM
ACORN’s Family Tree
Was the Baltimore video journalism? Does it matter?
By Alexandra Fenwick

Brad?

First they came for Van Jones, and the Democrats did nothing...

Then they came for ACORN, and the Democrats voted to defund them...

Next they came for...

Rahm Emmanuel is starting to look pretty damned unprincipled to me.

Kerry's cave-in sure did look like collusion to me.

Jeannie, I HOPE it's more that they're afraid not to collude rather than they're willingly playing an elaborate part in the neocon grand scheme. I dunno, though.

But collusion --- yeah, good word. Word of the day!

After congress voted to defund Acorn, I am no longer a democrat. I would die before i vote repub. Count this former democrat out for 2010 and 2012. enougn acorn voter will sit home and make palin president 2012. American deserves Palin.

Nunya said:

Rahm Emmanuel is starting to look pretty damned unprincipled to me.

"Starting to"??

Where ya been, Nunya? Here's my one-line response to his being named CoS back in November of 2008.

The biggest glaring absence in all of this is: the "liberal media" not defending ACORN (thus further outing them as I keep saying as not being liberal) and the Democrats that just pissed all over the poor people.

They just SHIT all over the poor people of ACORN! The "liberal media" and the Democrats!

Brad came right out and immediately defended ACORN, unlike most "liberal media". Thanks, Brad! Brad's not worried about what the racists Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart and FOX "news" thinks of him.

The Dems gotta learn to quit reacting to the right wing bullshit and just call them out on it as soon as they bring shit like this up.

Don't react, defend.

Cowards.

Floridiot @28

That's the purpose...ACORN and the people are SUPPOSED to feel defenseless in their (our) struggle with corporate/fascist America.

The Democratic party is a vital piece in the Corporate/fascist program for the country. Jeanie Dean's well chosen term *collusion* describes the situation perfectly. Every grassroots people's campaign against this fascist system is under attack...ACORN is just the focal point at this time.

If ACORN gets taken down, then all organizations that speak for civil rights, economic fairness and human decency are threatened and indeed targets for media assasination...
That is the goal for the Corporatists...To render the voices for the people of no consequence.

Obama/ Rahm Emmanuel and the Dems are the Corporate lackies now...

The left and the People have no influence...none...no media voice, no poltical voice...nothing.

We've been used in the last 2 elections ('06& '08) and discarded like pampers...

I think you guys give O too much credit for what's going on, I don't think they've had their heads out of the books enough to give a shit what we think yet.

Floridiot @30

During the campaign Obama sure knew what was going on and ran on changing things....

Once elected Obama has caved or back slid on just about every promise he made to the people...
FISA, allowing corporate lobbyists in his administration, escalation of the wars, The public single payer healthcare reforms, holding banks and Wall Street accountable...those and many more campaign promises Obama has ignored, despite his being elected to deliver on those promises, or at least try to. Obama hasn't even tried to.
There's a reason for that...which I stated earlier in this topic thread.

Floridiot; Obama surely knows....It's just that he and his handlers could give a flying squat.

They only care about serving their corporate masters.

I think I know what's wrong with the Democratic Party!!! It's full of near sighted liberal morons who spend all their time wringing their hands and analyzing each other's blogs rather than working to correct our problems.

Seems the Guardian deleted my response to the article. Reposted here...

A message to my good friends and world citizens across the pond…

I am a conservative Republican living in Southern California. Since this good chap Brad has decided to have a go at a news item that is decidedly an issue here in the states, I thought it only right to have a go at him….or his position, which appears to be bent over, butt in the air, passing liberal gas with a reverence that only someone whose face is firmly planted in his own muck can muster.

First off, communism is NOT dead. It is only in remission at best. The real bogeyman in the US political scene is the creeping marginalization of institutions that have kept the fabric of this society strong, which is slowly, with the help of ACORN like organizations, giving way to socialistic ideals that can be proven as failed in experiments conducted around the world.

Yes, the ACORN organization has noble objectives, but that’s where it ends. One needs to have a thorough understanding of the progressive political movement in the US to understand the culpability of ACORN and the cancer it spreads into the communities it is designed to serve.

On the subject of voter registration fraud, like it or not, our system of bringing possible voters into the fold is different than yours, but that’s a conversation for another time. Under our laws, it is a crime to pay people based on the number of names they have collected. ACORN is guilty of this and other voter registration crimes, is being prosecuted in numerous states even by democrat attorneys general (it must be killing them) and has also been convicted of same in numerous states. That there have been prosecutions of republicans for the same crime doesn’t make ACORN’s actions OK. The key difference is that ACORN has institutionalized voter registration fraud with a focus to support a single political party, the democrats. In this country, if you take federal money and operate as a non-profit, this is not only illegal, its immoral. So to say that “Acorn has long been a target for Republicans, who have attempted to tar and feather it with accusations of "voter fraud", is to completely both mis-interpret and mis-represent the overwhelming reality.

On the current subject, the sting videos, uncovered, again, the systemic reality that exists in this organization. To attempt to pass this off as a few low-level bad apples is totally disingenuous. At what number of ‘bad apples’ in your mind constitutes a problem? And does it not make sense that the actions of these ‘low-level’ employees not reflect the attitudes and practices of management. Do you think these disparate employees, who probably didn’t even know each other in disparate locations, acted coincidentally in unison?

No sir, a single employee bathing in a Burger King sink is a bad apple, 5 employees doing it at 5 locations is a problem. But, not if you yourself enjoy bathing in places that others expect cleanliness. No sir, if you enjoy spreading your own DNA and fecal matter all over the place where others expect to dine in a germ free environment, then only you could tolerate and excuse an organization that also enjoys spreading its cancer into communities that are drowning in the very sewage that organizations like ACORN suggest they are there to help clean up.

And don’t even get me started on Abu Ghraib, since war is never pretty.

Good day to you sir.

The Democrats are corpratists. The Rethuglicans are corporatists.

I see, in 2012, in the face of massive electoral fraud, only one slim possibility for hope.

The Democrats will run Obama, on whatever platform he can create. He will be just slightly to the right of center.

The Rethuglicans will want to play it safe and try to take the White House, so they will run a candidate only just a LITTLE right of center. They will want to woo the "soft middle" and any angry Democrats and Independents who feel "slighted" (yeah, no kidding) by Obama's total failure to live up to any progressive agenda.

This will get the nutjob right-wing Neo-cons thinking that if they position a candidate just to the right of the Rethuglican candidate as an "anti-GOvernment" Independent voice, they can take a large enough share of the votes to beat both the Democrats and the Rethuglicans and win the White House.

THe opportunity? With an ultra-right candidate, a near right candidate and a middle-of-the-road Obama, there is a very wide LEFT SIDE with very strong liberal, progressive and even libertarian support. The left will never have a chance in a three-way election, but in a FOUR-way election, there is a tiny hope that we could collect our solid 20% and an additional 8-10%, to gain the majority of four.

Governing? Out of the question. But in the chaos that would follow, who knows what would come.

And, most importantly, in a four-way race with wide-open possibilities, the electoral fraud machine is not going to have any idea how many votes to steal, or for whome, and might either fail to corrupt the election, or expose themselves badly while doing it.

Just a thought.

hey morons 2+2 doesn't = 3

You are the stupidest group of "group think" morons I've ever had the misfortune of wasting 2 minutes of my time on.

my $.02 is you idiots should get together at Brads and drink the left over Jim Jones juice.....one of you clowns should have the address

TOCOF @ 33

You sling a wheel barrel full of crap...but leave nothing verifiable.

Are yours just the rantings of an angry man ? or do you have any evidence of what you spew.

No links..or articles....what ?

Just innuendo and biased conjecture ?
A lame attempt to muddy the waters...

No wonder the Guardian deleted your reply...it actually said nothing.

BlueHawk 36

Thank you for gracing my post with the benefit of your rant. It tells me that I am onto something when someone pens a response such as yours.

I included as many links and articles as the original article...None.

I included as many links and articles as your post...None.

Its not necessary to include any links and articles to state opinion, which is why the original article, and your post have none.

If you want links, articles and facts relating to ACORN voter fraud indictments, google it...it will keep you busy reading all those links and articles.

If you want links, articles and facts relating to ACORN voter fraud convictions, google that too, it will consume another day of your tortured life.

If you want links, articles and facts relating to ACORN employees demonstrating corrupt behavior on video tape, google it.

Is it conjecture that the employee actions represent systemic issues?... of course it is. If liberals relieved their rants of conjecture, they would be reduced to single word sentences...so what is your point? But on the intellectual side, what number of documented incidents of bad employee behavior do you need
to establish a pattern? How many such videos would be necessary for liberals to have in support of any of their claims, before their conjecture would proliferate all over the internet? History shows it would have started LONG before the fifth.

My post said quite a bit, yours on the other hand said absolutely nothing, refuted with no facts, links or articles and reveals your intellectual dishonesty.