Sure...who cares that they're advising people how to set up child prostitution rings, cheat banks, and evade taxes if they're helping the poor?
Of course, nobody on the panel pointed out that the Democrats currently control both Chambers of Congress as well as the White House.
Alas, facts are never important to these folks when they get on a roll (video embedded below the fold with rough transcript, h/t our dear friend Ms Underestimated with assistance from Jeff Poor):
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: So the fallout continues over the filmmaker who posed as a pimp and visited offices of community outreach group ACORN. Now Sean Hannity showed this clip last night of the filmmaker asking how to get underage prostitutes across the border. Take a look. [...]
GOLDBERG: So, just, you couldn't understand what they were saying. Here is the gist of what happened. ACORN is a group that is a group of community organizers. They have several places across the country and they work with poor folks and disenfranchised folks for housing, for medical health and all kinds of stuff. The Republicans have always felt that there was something a little off about ACORN and no one could actually put their finger on it. So now two young filmmakers who say that they're conservatives went out to show the kinds of people that are working for ACORN and to give credence to the ideas that, you know, this is not a good organization. I think my --
BARBARA WALTERS: It's like saying that prostitutes can...
GOLDBERG: ...by showing that you can talk, they talked to five different places and they talked to five different people who all -- they asked questions like how do we run prostitutes or how do we set up crack houses or whatever, just stuff that you know you don't want to see. So there's now a lot of discussion in Washington whether they should take away ACORN's funding, whether they should see it dismantled, see it disappear?
JOY BEHAR: I understand that they have taken their funding away already.
GOLDBERG: Not all of it.
BEHAR: Well, a lot of it. It was voted in Congress to take it away. 87 to a few others. I don't know.
GOLDBERG: But here is my question. So, we have seen over the last couple of years boneheads in all organizations. We've seen them on Wall Street, we've seen them in the banking system, we've seen them in Washington, we've seen them all over. Do we dismantle the Senate and the Congress and all of Wall Street and all of these places because there's boneheads -- you know what I want to say really badly but I can't -- in all of these places. So here's my question: who suffers when ACORN disappears?
BEHAR: Poor people.
GOLDBERG: So maybe it's not a good idea to throw the baby out with the bath water. It's better to --
WALTERS: Keep, change things, which ACORN is trying to do. They've shut down all the branches that were compromised, I'm reading, they're conducting staff training. They are ordering independent investigations. We gave some of the banks a chance, didn't we, until they found their way. For heaven sakes - I mean, Whoopi and I have, gove them a chance. Let them try to do what they're supposed to do and don't hurt the poor people that don't have any chance.
SHERRI SHEPHERD:: Because you've had these are isolated incidents.
BEHAR: More oversight on all of these things.
GOLDBERG: Everything, I mean, you know, there are boneheads in all organizations. We've worked for them. We know that they're there. But do you kill the whole thing? And I don't think so. A lot of people think that you should kill it. But you can't answer, you can't tell me where those people who become even more disenfranchised go. Because we know the Republicans aren't going to take care of them. Cause we see that doesn't work anymore for them. So now where do they go? I am sick and tired of people dismantling stuff and saying, "Oh, we're for the people," and then leaving the people this. Because they don't care. Find a way to fix it.
BEHAR: They haven't dismantled the Catholic Church and they have some boneheads in there.
GOLDBERG: This is true.
Amazing.
