Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe, BigGovernment.com and Andrew Breitbart all partners in framing ACORN

Old Barn in Winter wallpaper

It turns out that amateur filmmaker and pimp James O’Keefe along with his friend Hannah Giles lied about what was on the ACORN video tapes. Those lies were echoed far and wide across Wingnuttia, including Andrew Breitbart’s GigGovernment.com, Michele Malkin, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and every little right-wing conservative blog. The echo was if nothing else an abject lesson in the sheeple mentality of the conservative movement. In the irony of all ironies anyone that wanted to compare the video that O’Keefe edited and then shown at BigGovernment could also compare the video to the transcripts that were also posted. Certainly none of the name brand right-wing conservatives bothered to view, read and compare. Why examine the evidence when that would simply delay the lynching by media. To date no one has had access to the full unedited videos. Right-wing conspiracies are rarely dark and hidden. Why go through all the trouble when conservatives are not proponents of an honorable opposition political philosophy, but more like a cult that swallows any and all disinformation dispensed by its leaders. Need an opinion on global warming. Don’t ask a climate scientist, ask Sarah Palin who after attending six colleges finally got a degree in journalism. Need some expert advice about foreign policy. Ask the walking picture of insanely poor judgment, Dick Cheney. Conservatives cannot tell the difference between facts and opinions. Nor are they remotely aware that informed opinions are based on facts, not beliefs. On with the ACORN story. H/T to Bad Attitudes for this link,  SURPRISE, SURPRISE! ACORN Framed! The excerpt is from a pdf available at the link – sorry about the formatting ( the small numbers refer to the appendix)

What the Transcripts Show About the Doctored ACORN Video Tapes
The following is an analysis of the heavily edited videotapes and partial transcripts posted on
biggovernment.com by O’Keefe and Giles based in their undercover visits to ACORN and ACORN Housing offices. Below the analysis, an Appendix provides key excerpts from the posted transcripts.

1. Transcripts reveal that O’Keefe and Giles said they needed ACORN’s help to protect Giles from a
violent pimp—but they carefully edited this out of their videos1. O’Keefe and Giles used clever editing and
voiceovers to hide a key fact that the transcripts show to be true in each case: In each office, the duo claimed that 20-year old Hannah was being threatened by a violent abusive pimp. They pleaded for ACORN to help protect the prostitute (and in some cases underage girls as well) from the pimp by helping her get a place to live.
O’Keefe and Giles edited this out of the video given the news media and the public, but neglected to remove it from the transcripts.
Remember, for example, the tape of the NY ACORN worker advising the prostitute to hide money in a tin can, presumably to evade taxes? The transcript shows it was so the pimp “can’t get it from you if he wants to come and rip up the place.” And the prostitute told the loan counselor that her pimp had “ all these 13, 14,15 year old girls from El Salvador and that’s what—I need to protect them like I know what its like and I have to protect them and like give them somewhere to live.” 2

2. While their press releases claim they were posing as a “prostitute and a pimp,” the transcripts show
that O’Keefe consistently introduced himself as Giles’ boyfriend trying to protect her.3 While we have seen videos of O’Keefe’s ridiculous “pimp” get-up, with Chinchilla cape, hat, and walking cane, these are all outdoor visuals. In the actual videos in the offices, every view of O’Keefe shows him dressed in normal casual business attire.

3. In each of the cases, the ACORN staff advised the prostitute to pay taxes, not to evade them. They correctly advised, as any tax lawyer or properly trained tax preparer would have, that the IRS requires taxes to be paid even on income from illegal activities, but does not require disclosure of the illegal activity itself. 4 For over half a century, this is the way the courts and the IRS have reconciled the right not to incriminate oneself with the obligation to pay tax on illegal activities. Indeed, among the IRS codes from which filers must select, there is none for prostitution, and the closest codes are for entertainment or personal services.

4. The San Diego office reported the duo to the police. In the San Diego office, where O’Keefe/Giles raised the topic of smuggling underage prostitutes across the border, the ACORN worker called the police,5 as did Acorn workers in Philadelphia

5. The San Bernardino video was a scam on the duo. In the San Bernardino office, the ACORN worker,
finding their stories ridiculous, met them with her own outrageous tales. The ACORN worker spins tales of a sordid past, including murdering her husband. While Giles and O’Keefe had the tapes for a month before releasing them, they never conducted any kind of check of the claims. Within 24 hours of the videos’ release,the police had confirmed that no such murder had taken place, and that the worker’s two ex-husbands were alive and well. San Bernardino resident Jim Miller, who lives near ACORN’s office and is also featured in the video giving business advice, said he thought the “whole thing was a preposterous production.

Considering the state of the economy – the real economy on Main St, not the McMansions of the Wall St crowd, the urban myth industry that has grown around health care reform, liberals upset over Obama’s continuation of many of Bush’s questionable national security policies in regards to Constitutionality and sending more troops to Afghanistan its amazing that Obama’s poll numbers are as high as they are, Gretchen Carlson’s Advice For Obama: Just Lie And Say You Don’t Look At Polls — Like Bush Did. Gretchen also has a degree in journalism from what I understand. When she looks at Dubya’s poll numbers for December 2001, you know a few months after 9-11 when regardless of political affiliation you showed support for Bush because you supported the president of your country in a time of crisis; did she just not think or chose not to do a simple enough analysis.