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from the where's-a-muckraker-when-you-need-one? dept.
Okay, so, I wasn't going to submit these here because I've really had quite enough of politics for the year but it seems the mainstream media are having an absolute blackout on anything critical of Hillary, to the point of CNN has both coincidentally lost a sitting congressman's satellite feed immediately after mentioning wikileaks and tried to tell their viewers that even reading the wikileaks emails is illegal.
These two videos by Project Veritas Action, apparently with more to come, are the result of a year or so of actual investigative journalism and deserve coverage somewhere though. I don't personally care at all if you like Hillary or not but it's always better to know the truth than to stick your head in the sand, so here they are.
The first part in the series is titled Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies. It basically shows precisely what it says it does. Hidden cameras capture Scott Foval of Americans United for Change not so much admitting as bragging that they have operatives in numerous major cities that are actually trained in how best to incite violence at Trump rallies.
The second part of the series is again aptly titled Mass Voter Fraud. In this video Scott Foval is again captured going into minute detail on how not only go commit mass voter fraud but how to get away with it.
Scott Foval and Robert Creamer (also in the videos) are currently unemployed as a result of these videos. Whether Mrs. Clinton should be as well, that's for you to decide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:38PM
If project veritas has such good stuff,
their message would be stronger if they edited their video to just simply lay out the facts.
Instead, they ofsucatated things by hopping from one partial story to another to make things more sensational.
The result makes me wonder if they are nut cases or actually have a case.
I suspect a bit of both, but if they would clean up their act, they might have more impact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:07PM
For an audience of a somewhat more refined palate, I generally agree with you.
However, considering George Carlin's Observations on Average People, the two videos released are pretty well suited for the general populace. Remember, O'Keefe has promised more to come, which one would hope would include a lot more meat for the refined types to go along with the already-revealed bait.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:58PM
> The result makes me wonder if they are nut cases or actually have a case.
So, I went looking for opposing viewpoints. Turns out they've got a long history of shady-as-fuck games.
Here's an absurdly long list of their shenanigans. [mediamatters.org] Yeah, mediamatters, blah, blah, blah. But whatever you think about MM's objectivity, they are meticulous in the sourcing of their criticisms.
Like the time he released a video showing an ACORN staffer supporting child prostitution when in fact the guy immediately reported the encounter to the police, and the two main people behind veritas ended up owing the staffer $150,000 for libel. [mediamatters.org]
Or the time they released a video of themselves committing voter fraud using the registration of a dead person, but the un-edited video revealed they actually used the registration of a living person. [mediamatters.org] Veritas learned their lesson from that one - they no longer release the unedited videos ("Project Veritas does not release raw or unedited tapes or reporters’ notes of investigations" [themessinglink.com])
But if anything MM touches is just too untrustworthy, then look to some of FAIR's coverage:
NBC Still Doesn’t Know About O’Keefe’s ACORN Hoax [fair.org]
NPR Unstung? Once Again, O’Keefe Shows He Shouldn’t Be Trusted [fair.org]
What we ought to be asking is why the mighty buzzard would hold project veritas up as an example of trustworthy reporting being ignored by the mainstream media. How many times does someone get to cry wolf before they are no longer taken at face value?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:51PM
Remember, James O'Keefe and company didn't just produce the videos indicating support for underage prositution at ONE Acorn location, but at multiple Acorn locations. The possibility that O'Keefe screwed up in regards to one person he accused is indeed a valid and serious concern, but not something which can then be used to wave away all the other people who did indeed acknowledge O'Keefe's claimed underage prostitution ring, advised him to keep a lid on it, and then didn't call the cops afterwards.
(Laws forbidding activities between consenting adults in particular are both immoral, and in the USA, illegal. Kidnapping people and/or keeping them as involuntary sex slaves is another matter entirely: evil to the core.)
I also don't give a rat's ass about laws claiming to forbid recording a private conversation that the person making the recording is known to be participating in, since the person is already making a recording of it with their own brain. Particularly when corruption is thick, actual raw data can be used to avoid a he-said-she-said connundrum.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:13PM
> The possibility that O'Keefe screwed up in regards to one person he accused is indeed a valid and serious concern, but not something which can then be used to wave away
Calling it a "screw up" is deceptive. The guy deliberately went overboard with misleading editing. The $150,000 of judgment against him is just the most clearcut proof of his malfeasance with ACORN. It isn't about eyes being tightly closed, its about an extensive track record of purposeful deception. He is literally everything the extreme right accuses the lamestream media of being, turned up to 11 and lacking all the other boringly accurate reporting that lamestream media does on a daily basis. Reputation matters and the reputation he has built for himself is that he's not just unreliable, he's an outright liar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:30PM
It's like a shoplifter who drops a dime on the mob's best hitman: even if the messenger has unclean hands, the message may be of grave importance. However...
O'Keefe didn't give ACORN even one red cent due to a judgement or settlement. There was a $100k settlement paid by O'Keefe to one former employee of ACORN [mediamatters.org] who was fired after the release of the videos, perhaps unjustly as the settlement suggests. That alone negates none of the other recordings of ACORN people who acknowledged the supposed underaged sex trafficking ring and didn't do anything about it, nor the ones who actually gave advice to keep it quiet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:59PM
That alone negates none of the other recordings of ACORN people who acknowledged the supposed underaged sex trafficking ring and didn't do anything about it, nor the ones who actually gave advice to keep it quiet.
Sorry, no free pass on that. The raw videos have not been released. The edited videos clearly have cuts and even obvious over-dubs. It is convincing, if you want to be convinced. But that's about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:04PM
Of course there's cuts and overdubs in edited video. You seem to be claiming that O'Keefe made up the claims in the ACORN videos out of whole cloth. Well, I learned something today that I didn't know before: ACORN was destroyed by the videos. ACORN closed down because almost all of its funding both government and private ceased, and the only thing that came back to bite O'Keefe was the ONE settlement (emphatically not a judgement) with a single ex-ACORN employee, and some massively-corrupt garbage from California about it being "illegal" to record a conversation you are directly involved in without all-party consent.
Just as the $100k settlement signals there being something amiss with O'Keefe's presentation of the single ex-ACORN employee, so does the near instantaneous collapse of an entire nation-spanning "community organizing" group which originated in the 1970s. Something was quite likely rotten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:38PM
> You seem to be claiming that O'Keefe made up the claims in the ACORN videos out of whole cloth.
Half-cloth.
> Just as the $100k settlement signals there being something amiss with O'Keefe's presentation of the single ex-ACORN employee,
> so does the near instantaneous collapse of an entire nation-spanning "community organizing" group which originated in the 1970s.
> Something was quite likely rotten.
No, not even close. The $150k in judgments was the result of a hearing of the evidence in two courts of law. The cutting off of public funding was the result of hearing half-truths in the court of public opinion. The fact that you think congress reacting to a tidal wave of reporting a false narrative is proof that the narrative was actually true shows just how low your standard of proof is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:55PM
You seem to have an aversion to truth.
As I wrote and provided a citation before [soylentnews.org], James O'Keefe paid a $100,000 settlement to one ex-ACORN employee. (Another $50k was paid to the same ex-employee by O'Keefe's partner.) A settlement is reached before a court can make a judgement, even though it is commonly thought that settlements are usually paid because it is expected that a court finding will result in a loss and possibly a higher judgement. By your own standard now, no one should believe anything else you have to say.
As far as Congress, Congress doesn't listen to anyone unless they want to. Two hundred to one (on the low end) contacted their congressional "representitives" to demand that the TARP bailouts not be implemented, and for the private organizations that stood to lose out on bad deals be made to eat their own losses. Congress ignored the people they claim to represent and paid off their cronies. No, if the criminally-incestuous nest of government fraud, waste, and abuse drops a socialist organization like a hot potato, there was very likely a reason beyond the "reaction to a tidal wave of reporting a false narrative". That ACORN is still a dead, smoking hole in the ground years later is quite telling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:12PM
(Replying to myself to keep the thread intact [soylentnews.org])
According to a source hostile to O'Keefe [thinkprogress.org], the settlement (called a settlement from your own source) was in regards to O'Keefe recording the conversation between O'Keefe and the ex-ACORN employee, something California claims to be "illegal". The same source also claims that the raw footage of the ACORN sting was indeed given to California's Attorney General's office, so while I still know of no raw ACORN video you nor I can access, the "authorities" most certainly had it.
1. Not a judgement
2. Raw video possessed by CA AG
3. "Reputation matters [soylentnews.org]", and your reputation ain't looking good right now even when using your own sources. Judgement is harsh when it bites your own ass, eh?
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:28PM
The raw videos have not been released.
They have, quite some time ago. They are easy to find [projectveritas.com].
If you weren't buying into every lie MSNBC and CNN feeds you, maybe you could have found them yourself instead of making a fool of yourself.
The CA DOJ also released them a while back, but they've been taken down.
I am a crackpot