"Oh, that mean, snarky, and divisive REPUBLICAN woman!"

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) competes for a loose ball as he plays in a 3 on 3 basketball game with Ja'Rob McCallum (L) and Kory McKay (R) during a campaign stop in Kokomo, Indiana, April 25, 2008.
REUTERS/Frank Polich

“I’ve been called worse on the basketball court,”
-Senator Obama in an 8 minute press conference Thursday, responding to ribbing he's received about being a community organizer

....and yet, the Democrat Who Would Be President seems to always feel the need to dignify any slights or insults with a response and with attacks of his own; even as he turns his nose up and puts on airs about being above partisan bickering and participation in the fray.

In wake of Sarah Palin's VP acceptance speech Wednesday night, the left is shocked! Shocked, they tell you, that the Republican VP nominee would dare attack "THE ONE", by supposedly slamming community organizers.

On the community organizer criticism:

"They [Republicans] haven't talked about the fact that I was a civil rights lawyer; they haven't talked about the fact that I taught constitutional law; they haven't talked about my work in the state legislature, in the United States Senate," he said. "They're talking about the three years of work that I did right out of college as if that's-- I'm making the leap from two or three years out of college into the presidency."

[Actually, Republicans have been mercilessly, attacking his Senate record, both state and U.S., as well as his time spent at Harvard Law the University of Chicago Law School:

A New York Times article on his years at Harvard Law, where he was editor of the law review, said, "In dozens of interviews, his friends said they could not remember his specific views from that era, beyond a general emphasis on diversity and social and economic justice." A similar piece on his years teaching at the University of Chicago Law School said he notably did not participate in its intellectual debates.]

But we digress....

Obama added though that his work as a community organizer was relevant to who he is and the kind of people he's "fighting for."

"Why would that kind of work be ridiculous?" Obama said. "Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? They think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the presidency? I think maybe that's the problem -- that's part of why they're out of touch and they don't get it 'cause they haven't spent much time working on behalf of those folks."

And more:

“What did you guys expect?” he asked, smiling, “This is what they do. They don't have an agenda to run on. They haven't offered a single concrete idea so far in two nights about how they would make the lives of middle class Americans better. They've spent the entire two nights attacking me or extolling John McCain's biography, which is fine. They can use their convention time any way they want.”

If it's "fine", then why'd you bring up the last points, Senator? That description could just as well describe what went on at the DNC which described the last 8 years as a failure, and attacked President Bush and Senator McCain, and slammed conservative-Republican ideology. So who's being divisive again?

Wednesday night on stage in St. Paul, both Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani belittled Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago in the 80s. Obama called the reaction “curious,” as if he were trying to jump from a post-college job to the presidency.

“The question I have for them is that why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for?” he said. “I think maybe that's the problem - that's part of why they're out of touch and they don't get it because they haven’t spent much time working on behalf of those folks.”

What Senator Obama doesn't seem to get with all of this, is that it's not community organizing that's being attacked; it's

1) his beefing up his executive experience (he has none) resume by hawking out that he was a community organizer

and

2) a humorous response to the belittling of small towns by Obamapostles in order to diminish Governor Palin's role as governor of Alaska, and previously as mayor.

Obama and his supporters are oversensitive and knee-jerk touchy on the executive experience issue, because they know deep down despite the denials, that Palin has more executive experience and has accomplished more in her time in public office than Obama has.

It's amazing that when you Google check for Sarah Palin's zinger, what comes up on all the sites and articles expressing indignation, is this:

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,”

But the greater context is this:

I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

"Progressive" liberals are comforting themselves with the smarting they've received by calling Sarah Palin a "cash cow" and "the gift that keeps on giving", as team Obama raised another $10 million after the night of Palin's speech.

Actually, what I think that shows, is what gullible cash cows Obama disciples are, as they got milked by David Plouffe in a late night e-mail expressing feigned indignation over the community organizer zingers by Palin and Giuliani.

Michelle Malkin:

Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw.

And what does Gerald Kellman, the community organizer who interviewed and hired a young Barack Obama in 1985, have to say about Obama's experience and effectiveness?

It is clear that the benefit of those years to Mr. Obama dwarfs what he accomplished. Mr. Kellman said that Mr. Obama had built the organization’s following among needy residents and black ministers, but “on issues, we made very little progress, nothing that would change poverty on the South Side of Chicago.”

When he ran for the Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama told members of the community organization that had employed him that “when I left to go to law school, I couldn’t tell exactly whether I had gotten more out of this than the people I was working with.”

Read the rest to the end.

It's quite amusing that the current narrative has been shaped to be "Palin vs. Obama", rather than "McCain vs. Obama" and "Palin vs. Biden".

I found nothing at all mean-spirited in Sarah Palin's one-line and multi-line zingers. It was just spirited ribbing, brought on by Democratic criticism, to which she hit back, above the belt. Rather than admitting to the bruising they received, Democrats would do well to simply smile and not draw more undue attention to Senator Obama and his paper-thin resume. And the Senator himself would do well to not making this presidential race about skin.....


.....as in: being too thin-skinned to take a joke. It's a way of vetting him for late-night comedians, should he become, God-forbid, 44th president of the U.S...not that he has anything to fear from them, anyway.

Obama's apostles would do well to read this post to the Obamessiah, for his own good. That shouldn't be too hard to do. After all......


Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), listens to cheers welcoming him at a rally at Washington High School in South Bend, Ind.
Alex Brandon - AP

He's all ears!

Cross-posted at Flopping Aces