gr wrote:i will freely admit that i know not a whole lot about what Obama did as a community organizer. can anyone point me to a reasonable website that outlines this? something with some sort of even-handedness. not his memoirs, something report-based.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.[11][13] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[14]

gr wrote:i will freely admit that i know not a whole lot about what Obama did as a community organizer. can anyone point me to a reasonable website that outlines this? something with some sort of even-handedness. not his memoirs, something report-based.

WilliamC wrote:

Rev_Beezer wrote:

WilliamC wrote:We definitely alienated the Pastoral vote.

I'm fairly sure that "Traditional Denominational Christian" is an area that doesn't have a lot of concern for either party.

I was just kidding. Obviously, I hope.

I know you have an open mind, by far the coolest Rev I've ever come across.

Aside from my Pastor Walters.

jerseyhoya wrote:Peggy Noonan seems less than thrilled that her private conversation was made public and taken out of context.

swishnicholson wrote:

gr wrote:i will freely admit that i know not a whole lot about what Obama did as a community organizer. can anyone point me to a reasonable website that outlines this? something with some sort of even-handedness. not his memoirs, something report-based.

Well, there's this from wikipedia, which appears to have somehow ended up fairly neutral after (and during) the tug-of-war that must go on:

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.[11][13] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[14]

I would imagine this description is one reason the republicans decided to attack his work. While on a very small scale, it shows he actually did "run" something in an executive capacity, rather than just going around knocking on doors.. Since one of the repeated messages by the McCain campaign is that Obama has never done that, it's necessary to diminish the nature of the work

accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[14]

WilliamC wrote:
Lots of community organizers shouldn't be President.

dajafi wrote:

gr wrote:i will freely admit that i know not a whole lot about what Obama did as a community organizer. can anyone point me to a reasonable website that outlines this? something with some sort of even-handedness. not his memoirs, something report-based.

I doubt such a thing exists. Anybody and everybody who would write about this, would have an opinion on it. You could do a web search for features detailing that period of his life (the New Yorker has had a couple long-form pieces about Obama's years in Chicago). But if you're inclined to categorize stories by the perceived leanings of the publications they appear in, that won't work either.

It's an open question whether "even-handed" exists anymore, if you define it as something that most partisans on both sides would agree is credible and neutral. This is why most of Fox and at least a chunk of MSNBC is so blatantly partisan: it's what the market seems to want now.

WilliamC wrote:What exactly has he accomplished while a Congressman or Senator?

The whole "experience" debate is silly. Under our system of government, there is only one job that gives you both executive and foreign-policy experience, and that's the one McCain and Obama are running for. Nevertheless, it's a hardy perennial: If your opponent is a governor, you accuse him or her of lacking foreign-policy experience. If he or she is a member of Congress, you say this person has never run anything. And if, by any chance, your opponent has done both, you say that he or she is a "professional politician." When Republicans aren't complaining about someone's lack of experience, they are calling for term limits.

Section 1 of Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that a President must:

* be a natural born citizen of the united States
* be at least 35 years old
* have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years

gr wrote:yeah, i forgot to mention that i've read his entry a time or two, so i've seen that passage.

and

accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[14]

*i've* done those things myself. commendable work, but not hard. i sure hope there's more to it than that.

gr wrote:i mostly meant i didn't want obama's first-hand account of it. i find autobiographies and memoirs to be a waste, mostly.

gr wrote:"BO has touted community organizing as part of his qualifications. we should take him at this word about the opportunity such work holds. across the country, many people work in their communities to help folks [do whatever, etc]. i'm sure we'd all appreciate it if BO would give us just one thing he did as a community organizer that brought about the Change he promises. And please, be specific."

dajafi wrote:

gr wrote:i mostly meant i didn't want obama's first-hand account of it. i find autobiographies and memoirs to be a waste, mostly.

I generally agree with you, because they're self-serving. But I read "Dreams From My Father" last summer and thought it was terrific. First of all, Obama's got the edge on most political memoirists because he actually can write--but maybe more to the point, since that book wasn't intended as a campaign prop,* I don't think he went out of his way to airbrush himself.

From what I recall of the chapters on his community organizing time, he admitted a few missteps and blunders--though that wasn't the point either. It might be useful for what you're interested in simply because it's descriptive rather than self-adulatory.

*This is the reason I haven't read, and have no plans to read, "The Audacity of Hope." Like, I gather, most of McCain's books (though I've always been curious about "Faith of My Fathers"), that one very clearly was intended to serve a political purpose.

pacino wrote:

WilliamC wrote:

cshort wrote:I've been watching CNN and MSNBC, and with the exception of the lesbo on MSNBC, the commentators all seem to think she did a good job, and she may create problems for the Obama campaign.

Also, seems like they can take the gloves off of Biden, and should make for a good debate. And while he may beat her up on some issues, I wouldn't be surprised if she handles her own. This girl is no wallflower.

That is why Biden is going to have a tough time. She is no wallflower at all, but if he treats her like one(which I think he might because he don't want to look like a dickhead and have people saying look at how he treats this lady) he is going to be TKO in the first couple rounds.

I think that was part of the strategy and I kind of like it. He can't treat her like a wallflower, but he might be forced into it due to the voters mindset.

It's a win-win either way.

so to you it's not what they debate about, it's HOW they debate it.

gr wrote:Palin & Guiliani tonight definitely missed an opportunity to address the "community organizer" question in an effective way. they used it for punchlines, which had an immediate payoff, but could come back to haunt them. this party is supposed to value work of any kind, if it's truly work (see: welfare reform, etc).

the issue is that no one really knows what "community organizing" is, probably even people who live in communities that have that type of work. a better way to address this would have been:

"BO has touted community organizing as part of his qualifications. we should take him at this word about the opportunity such work holds. across the country, many people work in their communities to help folks [do whatever, etc]. i'm sure we'd all appreciate it if BO would give us just one thing he did as a community organizer that brought about the Change he promises. And please, be specific."

it's only my opinion, but it seems better to put the burden of proof on someone, as opposed to going for cheap laughs.