Yes We Can Sell Out

"A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!" -- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

It's been more than 24 hours since BigGovernment went live with their report on how the Obama administration used the National Endowment for the Arts to push their agenda, specifically for health care. I don’t know about you, but this turns the hair on the back of my neck straight up. We all know that money sometimes wrongly gets funneled to “charities or corporations of choice” during any administration. Bush was accused of improperly funding Blackwater and Haliburton, Obama has ACORN and Community Organizers. But using the NEA to push a certain agenda focus smacks of propaganda.

Wait...didn't hear about it?  Of course you didn't.  The Old World Media has kept it under wraps pretty well. 

The last time BigGovernment broke a story that was unfavorable to the Obama Administration *cough ACORN *cough  it took days for the Ostrich Media to report it or  in some cases nearly ignore it.

So we here at The Hippos Ass decided to track how long it takes for the media to actually cover this story. We decided to track the web sites of ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS and The New York Times, as well as explore what other websites are covering this story.

Day 1 Search for National Endowment for the Arts

CNN      Nothing
MSNBC  Nothing
ABCNews   One story (Charlie Gibson probably didn't want to be embarrassed again)
CBS News One Story  CBS's story is very much a CYA story from the administration)
The New York Times One story...same story as CBS. Hmmmmmm
The Washington Post is covering...O'Keefe and Giles?

So going into day two of the Media Blackout Finals we have CNN and MSNBC.  Stay tuned.

There is a certain creepiness behind this whole scenario. Take the opposite stand if you will for one moment.  Imagine if President Bush, in the run up to the Iraq War, had asked the NEA to create Pro War art and songs.  The whole mess would never have gotten past the initial email invite before there was an uproar from the liberal community and the press. They would be justified as well.  This is not the purpose behind the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artists have always been looked upon as pushing the boundaries of the status quo, forcing us to look outside the little boxes we live in and view reality from a different angle.  Art does have a very prominent place in a well educated and cultured society.  All the more reason for the Federal Government to stay the hell out of it.  The fear of Government funding has always been that one administration or other would seek to control the funded organization for some nefarious purpose.

The transcripts from BigGovernment.com show all too well that this was a coordinated attempt to use art to help push through the Obama Administration's agenda. The art community seem to have found it easy to sell out for a few pieces of the Government Pie.

A pie that you and I pay for.  And right on the heals of the media ignoring the ACORN and NEA Scandals, we find that the Obama Administration is open to the idea "aid" for newspapers...(find out more in tomorrow's Hippos Ass).

It may be time to pull out my well worn copy of Orwell again.

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TODAY Show Runs Out of Quality People to Interview

We've been wondering why NBC has devoted hardly anytime to the snowballing scandal surrounding ACORN.  What could be preventing them from covering one of the hottest topics in the past seven days?

Well, Thursday morning, police in Connecticut were sitting outside the apartment of Raymond Clark, III, getting ready to arrest him for the murder of Annie Le, the young Yale graduate student who dissapeared a week ago.  Her body was found inside a wall in the research laboratory where she worked.

NBC's Today Show, with Meredith Vieira, was right there to bring us the latest with this exclusive interview of a neighbor, er... ex-neighbor. Their crack research staff, obviously pulled off the ACORN investigation, pulled out all the stops to get the exclusive to this first hand report "inside the mind of Raymond Clark, III"

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

An exclusive into the mind of a killer...?  Ann Marie Goodwin knows, cause eyes are the window to a person's soul...or something.  Well, he owned 2 pit bulls...who yelped all day.   And he didn't like the apartment.  This was the best TODAY could come up with? An Ex-Neighbor? The look on Meridith's face at the end of this interview is truly a classic. 

Meanwhile, the near media blackout of coverage on ACORN continued.

Except on Twitter.  #acorn was a trending topic the past two days, beaten only by such earth-shattering  topics as #kaynewest, #jackass (which is code for Kanye West) and #happybirthdaynick, who I find out later was not for Nick Lachey, but for Nick Jonas from the Jonas Brothers.  Imagine MY embarrassment....

Yesterday afternoon the Republicans slipped the Defund ACORN Act into the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, which passed 345 - 75.  All 75 nay votes were Democrats, including Detroit's own Momma Kilpatrick herself, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick from Michigan's 13th District.

Momma Kilpatrick's son Kwame Kilpatrick, the former Mayor of Detroit, who pled guilty to two felonies, was removed from office and served jail time. He now makes $10,000 a month in Texas working for a Compuware subsidiary, lives in  a monster house, drives a Cadillac Escalade and owes the City of Detroit $6,000 a month till he pays off the $1 million he cost the city.  He recently petitioned the courts to drop his payment to $6 a month.  I   KID    YOU   NOT! 

Just an FYI for any young reporters out there looking for something to do...Detroit has a local ACORN Chapter.

Just saying.

The Ball is in Nancy's Court

What was virtually improbable a week ago, the Senate voted 83 - 7 to add an amendment to H.R.3288 (Making appropriations for the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies) that would cut funding to ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The Johanns Amendment is #2355 to H.R. 3288.

Johanns cited the BigGovernment.com sting videos as evidence that ACORN cannot be trusted with government money:

“Until a full investigation is launched into ACORN, no taxpayer money should be used to fund its activities. A vote in favor of my amendment is a vote in favor of the taxpayer and a vote against the status quo.”"

Only seven Senators, all Democrats, who are being called the Child-Whoring Pimp Assitance 7 voted to continue funding the organization whose employees gave advice to a fake pimp and prostitute looking to import underage girls for exploitation, get a house loan without a job and looking to avoid paying taxes.

Ladies and Gentlemen...The Child-Whoring Pimp Assistance 7

• Burris (D-IL)
• Casey (D-PA)
• Durbin (D-IL)
• Gillibrand (D-NY)
• Leahy (D-VT)
• Sanders (I-VT)
• Whitehouse (D-RI)

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said the following after learning of potentially being cut from the taxpayer's teat:

"We're disappointed that the Senate took the rare and politically convenient step of supporting eliminating some federal funding for a single organization, one that has been the target of an historical political assault stemming variously from the Bush White House, Fox News, and other conservative quarters," said Bertha Lewis, CEO of ACORN, in a statement after the Senate vote. "Fortunately, ACORN derives most of its income from its members and other supporters, so the decision will have little impact on overall operations. Tonight's vote will burden the families who benefited from ACORN's important work to improve housing conditions in the United States."

Wait...What?? It will have little impact but it will also be a burden? Whatever... Cutting federal funds and forcing this non-profit organization to raise their own money from members is a good thing. If ACORN can't sustain themselves without TRUE public support, then they do not deserve to be around.

The amendment will now go before Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives. Will they bury the amendment, turn it down, ignore it or do the right thing: Pass it by an overwhelming majority. I can't wait to see who votes against this.

Or will "the powers that be" kill the whole thing, like he/they did when Rep. John Conyers tried to investigate these crooked organization earlier this year?

Last night, CNN.com, as of 10:00 pm had yet to post any story at all about the vote, ACORN, or the videos.

Stay tuned to #thehipposass or follow @thehipposass on Twitter for updates throughout the day. If you like what you read, make us your friend on Facebook or reblog us.

New Zealand Tops CNN in ACORN Reporting

You know it’s Autumn when every time you turn around, acorns are falling from the tree. You have to be vigilant: if you leave them there on the ground, they will 1) ruin the grass that you worked very hard to maintain and 2) sprout more trees that will take over your yard.

Big news of the day? Kanye West made an ass out of himself at the MTV Video Music Awards last night. I didn’t see it, but how do I know it happened: It was one of the top stories on the TODAY show this morning.CNN featured the "incident" on their web site. In fact, as of 1:00 pm this afternoon, it was the lead story of the day until President Obama started admonishing Wall Street again.

A quick look on Google’s News search at the time resulted in more than 2,288 hits from such reputable news sources as:

• TIME
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• ABC News
• Associated Press
• Washington Post
• The Huffington Post (O.K….my bad, this one shouldn’t fall in with the reputable group, but they still mentioned it.)

The other big story of the day? For the third time is less than 6 days, a video showing ACORN workers giving advice to a pimp and a prostitute was released by the good folks over at BigGovernment.com. This video features New York City ACORN workers giving advice on how to hide prostitution profits in a tin can buried in the back yard, how to lie when applying for a housing loan and ways to shelter the money for tax purposes.



The number of hits on Google search at 4pm this afternoon? 58.
Some of the news sites that covered the story?

• Fox News
• The Baltimore Sun
• The New York Post
• Examiner.com
• The San Francisco Chronicle (the article was actually defending ACORN against the evil people that exposed them)
• And THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD???

No Kidding...True Story. The New Zealand Herald actually put out a story on the third video before CNN did. (The last article on CNN.com about ACORN was four days ago.) Not only does New Zealand make a great setting for Middle Earth, they also know when to call a scandal a scandal, unlike some of our more prominent news organizations here in the United States. Seriously, when was the last time you read about a scandal in New Zealand?

Hell, looking up Blackwater Contractors will give you more than 1,000 hits from various news sites.

What is it about ACORN that the media turns a blind eye towards? What are they afraid will happen should they do some real investigative work on this organization that stands to get billions of taxpayer money and has been involved in numerous incidents of voter registration fraud, the housing scandal and now these videos? It certainly is a tough nut to crack. (sorry)

Good thing you have The Hippo’s Ass to report on these stories. Otherwise you’d be left talking about Lady Gaga’s outfit from the VMAs.

(Should I know who she is???)

We here at The Hippo's Ass have a feeling that this is not the last of the ACORN videos to surface. Should any more come to light, you know where you can turn to get the news other outlets refuse to cover: The Hippo's Ass....and The New Zealand Herald.

ACORN is a Criminal Enterprise

ACORN was trying to register Mickey Mouse during 2008 Election

Each week we look forward to the Friday News Dump, that special time when the Government "dumps" a news story that will be unfavorable to them should it be well publicized. The theory being the public will be too busy to pay attention to the news during the busy weekend and when the news cycle begins on Monday, the "dropped" story will be old news.

Yesterday, Obama Administration literally dropped one of its biggest supporters: ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

The week didn't start out so well for ACORN. First they announced they had to fire several workers in Florida for registering false names during the last presidential election. (Imagine that...pitty someone didn't warn voters about them last year.)

Then a very damaging YouTube video was posted by BigGovernment showing ACORN workers in Baltimore giving advice on how a prostitute and a pimp could avoid paying taxes on the underage El Salvadorean sex workers the couple were going to import.

ACORN quickly fired the workers, saying that it was an isolated incident and that it was just a smear campaign by Conservatives.

In what can only be called a classic "one-two" punch, a SECOND video, this time showing District of Columbia workers doing the exact same thing.



Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN Regarding Recent News Reports:

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America.

Three Scandals in one week to an organization that was connected in the last election to our current President and nary a word on the major news sites. Well it's a good thing you follow The Hippo's Ass. We report what the main News Sites fail to cover.

Which brings us to the Friday News Dump. The Administration announced that ACORN was being dropped as a "participant" in the upcoming census. MSNBC's response? They showed an in-depth report on whether ShamWow really works or not.

Shouldn't someone be investigating these "community organizers" who stand to reap millions in tax payer dollars as part of the TARP bills recently passed to "help" the economy? Rep. John Conyers of Detroit was supposed to, but mysteriously he dropped the case one day before his wife Monica Conyers, a Detroit City Council member was brought up on bribery charges. Rep. Conyers claimed "powers that be" put the kibosh on the idea. Hmmm..... Anyone in the media care to follow that up? Didn't think so.

The kicker of the whole story? You have a National Community Organization that is connected to the President of the United States, being involved in voter registration tampering, tax evasion advice at TWO locations and counciling a prostitute how to hide underage El Salvadorean girls and what happens?

The State of Maryland may prosecute the FILMMAKERS who exposed ACORN as the Corrupt Organization they really are.

An you wonder why more than 1 million people marched on Washington D.C today?