Obama continues effort to distance himself from ACORN

With members of President Obama's brotherhood of community organizers, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more commonly known "ACORN," caught on video while they gave advice on how to skirt federal laws to buy a home to use as a brothel and how to cloak the status of underage "sex workers,"  Obama renews his effort to distance himself from ACORN.

During Sunday's talk show Obamarama, the President acted as though he barely knew about ACORN. In an exchange with George Stephanopoulos, Obama said that ACORN "deserves to be investigated," but did not endorse recent votes in Congress to cut off ACORN's federal funding but did not endorse recent votes in Congress to cut off ACORN's federal funding:

STEPHANOPOULOS:  How about the funding for ACORN?

OBAMA:  You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely.  I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.

OBAMA:  You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?

OBAMA:  George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country.  It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to.

Does Obama really expect us to believe that because he was one of he Senators that did not bother to vote for The Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 that he did not know that it provided a mechanism to provide community organizing groups like ACORN federal funding? Does Obama really expect us to believe that he was not aware of the brouhaha over efforts to include even more federal money to community organizing groups like ACORN in the big $700 billion bailout bill that Obama voted for during the heat of the Presidential campaign?

There are a lot of connections between Obama and ACORN that Obama does not the public to scrutinize:

• ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has strong ties to the Obama White House

• Obama ran a voter-registration drive for ACORN partner Project Vote

• Obama represented ACORN

• Obama taught classes for future Leaders of ACORN

• ACORN endorsed Obama's presidential campaign

• Obama’s campaign paid more than $800,000 to ACORN - The 800,000 was allegedly for get-out-the-vote efforts, but the Obama campaign "mistakenly misrepresented" what ACORN was doing to The Federal Election Commission. Some found this "mistake" highly suspicious:

"Barack Obama's failure to accurately report his campaign's financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign's interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud."

• ACORN received thousands of dollars from the Woods Fund during the time Obama served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund (1993 to 2002) --$45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), and $40,000 (2002) [Donors Forum website - ifs.donorsforum.org, accessed 6/10/08].

• ACORN was caught over and over again engaging in fraudulent voter registration. Something NBC, CNN and John Fund documented.

• Then there are the attempts to wipe the web clean of potentially damaging articles concerning Obama's involvement with ACORN and the false claim, made on Obama's so-called fight the smears website, that Obama was never an ACORN trainer.

• Obama told community organizers they will shape his presidency

If I was Obama and my community organizer experiences were so closely tied to ACORN and all it's fraudulent and otherwise dubious activities as Obama's are, I'd try to hide the connections too.