Today's appearances of Barack Obama on several networks and the appearance of Bertha Lewis, Acorn CEO, on Fox News Sunday, revealed similarities in the way they both evaded questions. It was obvious that you can take President Obama out of Community Organizing, but you can't take Community organizing out of Obama.

The President is running the country like an organizer because it is his nature and it is proving to be a mistake. There is a lot of difference between organizing a disadvantaged community and organizing an entire country filled with people of diversity who cherish individuality, freedom, privacy, opportunity and personal values. It's much easier to organize groups of people who already have the common plight of being poor and disadvantaged, especially when you learn how to convince them with promises and persuade them with hope, real or false.

Of course you have to have the ability to convince and you have to be trained to persuade. Once you are a master manipulator, you know how to promise anything without being specific. You say what is necessary to gather followers. If it means lying, it really isn't a lie. It is an expediency — a truth for the moment. It seems obvious to me that this is the philosophy of both Acorn and the President. They are focused on "transferring individual preferences and resources into common interests." That includes getting what they want at almost any cost — like using election fraud to elect a candidate; or a promise to achieve reform, for example, that health care reform will be deficit neutral when it is obvious that it can't be.

So what was similar about the Obama and Lewis TV appearances? When George Stephanopoulos questioned the President about Acorn and asked him if he would agree to cut off funding, Obama would not commit. He avoided the question more than once by saying he didn't really follow closely, wasn't aware Acorn had received a lot of government money and that this was not the biggest issue. How could a President who trained about 700 recruits for Acorn and served as one of their attorneys in the 90's, not be aware of one of the biggest stories of the week? Obama did say that he "favored an investigation." Shouldn't he have said he would demand an investigation?

When someone doesn't answer a question, they don't have the answer or they don't want to answer, so they either minimize the subject, ask another question or the provide an answer that is not relevant to the question. Obama and Lewis followed the pattern.

When Chris Wallace asked Bertha Lewis if she would open the books so Congress and the American people could see where the money has gone, she responded with "I am willing to do the work I need to do . . ." She did not answer the ranking Republican Congressman from California, Darrell Issa, either, when he wanted to know if she would appear before a Congressional Committee.

I urge you to read the insightful July 23, 2009 Staff Report of the U.S. House of Representatives posted on Rep. Issa's government web site. Look on his home page, upper right corner for "Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?" 

From that report: "Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act."

There are many layers and players in the middle of this Acorn game and on the fringe, historically and now — a maze of characters and far left philosophies. It is impossible to track. Among the players is Harvard Professor, Marshall Ganz, once a National Organizing Director of the United Farm Workers and now advisor to political campaigns, unions and NGOs. He is trained in the same Alinsky techniques that Obama uses.

In 1968, Marshall Ganz joined the civil rights movement. He returned to his hometown of Bakersfield California and joined Ceasar Chavez as a farm worker organizer and was mentored by figures from well-known Communist-Marxist, Saul Alinksy’s community organizing movement. Ganz eventually returned to complete his undergraduate degree at Harvard, and then earned a PhD and become a professor. He designed voter mobilization strategies and his community organizing techniques were used in Obama's Presidential campaign. (Watch the Ganz video below for more insight into these techniques.) 

Three of Obama's mentors in Chicago were trained at the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation. The Developing Communities Project itself was an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, whose modus operandi for the creation of “a more just and democratic society” is rooted firmly in the Alinsky method.

Extremely revealing — One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method, Mike Kruglik, would later say the following about Obama:

"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."

For several years in the late 80's, Obama taught workshops on the Alinsky method. *

Obama is finding out that we are not recruiting targets — that he cannot source our pain, tear down our egos and then dangle a carrot like government run health care to make things better.

* Source: DiscoverTheNetworks.com a guide to the political left.