Subject: Organizing
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Let’s take a closer look at GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s record on community organizing. It seems, as I said in my previous Rooflines post, that she was for community organizing before she was against it. From the State…
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Very enlightening : I came across an article today on the Minnesota Independent, an online news source, titled Palin’s Maligning Aside, Alaska’s Rife with Community Organizers. Among other tidbits, we learn from reporter Chris Steller that Palin’s state government is…
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In a column on September 14, titled “Community Organizing Changed Fishery,” John Corrigan, the fishing writer for the Concord Monitor, explained that “anybody who has caught a fish at Sewalls Falls over the last two decades has witnessed the value…
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Here’s a great example of the law of unintended consequences: The McCain campaign’s sour, distortive targeting of community organizing in an attempt to marginalize Barack Obama as “un-American” — or as New York Gov. David Paterson and others have suggested,…
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Am I the only one who’s eager to see the outcome when John McCain appears at the same forum with Barack Obama on 9/11 to discuss “their views on service and civic engagement in post-9/11 America”?
Yes, it’s the same John McCain whose nominating convention in St. Paul featured one speaker after another in an orchestrated series of snide, slanderous attacks on Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago.
Dubbed a “Presidential Candidates Forum,” the gathering at Columbia University is sponsored by ServiceNation, a nonprofit group that describes its mission as follows:
ServiceNation is a campaign for a new America. An America where citizens unite and take responsibility for the nation’s future. An America that restores the great tradition of citizen service, and honors the profound sacrifices made by so many Americans who have passed before, from the small band of Founders to the millions who have fought for equality and justice at home, and defended our freedom abroad. ServiceNation is about an America that is ruggedly idealistic, compassionate, and above all committed to the idea of shared sacrifice in pursuit of America’s boldest promise: liberty and justice for all.
I certainly hope that the moderators — PBS senior correspondent and political editor Judy Woodruff and Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel — press McCain on his campaign’s assault on community organizing and how it jibes with the convention’s theme of “service.”
It also behooves ServiceNation’s Leadership Council — an impressively bipartisan, interfaith group, ranging from well-known progressives to religious and political conservatives — to ask one of its members, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, why he took part as a featured speaker at the GOP convention in that evening of smears against Obama’s record of working at the grass-roots level to serve his fellow Americans.
Observing the convention, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart quipped that the sea of signs Republicans waved reading “service” referred to their desire for some from the wait staff at the Xcel Energy Center. Maybe Huckabee’s confused about the mission of the organization on whose board he, umm, serves. more
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I kind of knew it before, but watching John McCain’s speech as I write, it’s easy to see how the GOP VP pick Sarah Palin’s speech on Wednesday was planned to be the shock-paddle portion of the McCain campaign.
But holy smokes. Despite the “USA” chants, the senator’s pitch seems a predictable snooze.
But not Gov. Palin’s. Hers got the crowd — dutifully positioned front and center at the Xcel Center by party handlers — all buzzed and rowdy.
She got the best lines — I guess. Overall, from what I can tell, the GOP-ers evidently want us all to believe that community organizing really means sitting around in the Inner City and hanging out. Or something.
Former Gov. George Pataki: “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”
Rudy Giuliani: “On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”
Ha ha: Rudy Giuliani talking about resumes. He who has turned 9/11-based “security consulting” into his own cottage — er — mansion industry. more
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The pushback from around the country is bracing. No sooner did NHI president John Atlas post on Rooflines, setting the record straight on community organizing, we started to hear from incensed readers from around the country. It looks like the…
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As John Atlas has pointed out, the GOP strategy on Wednesday night was to have vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani try to discredit the purpose, effect, and overall worth of community organizing…
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Ronald Reagan famously said the government is the problem, not the solution, and touted the importance of our civil society. Now we hear the party of Reagan touting government experience over that of community organizers — the people who strengthen…
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I came across a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe written by L. David Alinsky, son of community-organizing pioneer Saul Alinsky. It’s worth reading what the son has to say about his father’s disciple, Barack Obama: All the…
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Bill Clinton stepped up the other night and did what he needed to do if the Dems want to win this election: he threw down for Barack Obama and said unequivocally that Obama belongs in the White House. He also…
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The last few months has seen a number of articles, editorials, and interviews about the lack of financial responsiveness and accountability in the private and public sector. In recent years, we’ve read about financial scandals at institutions as diverse Halliburton…
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Barack Obama’s decision to opt out of the public financing system for this fall’s general presidential election has all the Sabbath Gasbags buzzing. The Obama campaign undoubtedly weighed the pros and the cons and certainly knew that, regardless of perception,…
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This post started out Thursday thinking about an interesting factoid related to the Obama campaign. But since the big Obama news Friday has been about Obama’s rejection of public financing, this post can’t just blow by that, so a thing…
Remember in the first Austin Powers movie, when Doctor Evil, recently thawed out from a couple of decades of suspended animation in orbit, gets hold of an A-bomb and threatens the U.N. with it? And he says he wants money…
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Now it’s on! — woohoo! — between Barack Obama and John McCain, who has already morphed into McNasty.
A CBS poll on June 6 showed Obama six points ahead of McCain among registered voters. The accompanying story wondered how many Clinton voters would go over to the Republican side.
But what about not-yet-registered voters? Seems to me Obama’s got a lot of the voters who are not even voters yet.
I’m looking at you, Obama Girl! more
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I’m not. Call me smug, but I’ve been saying since Barack Obama’s 2007 announcement of his candidacy in Springfield, Ill., that he would take the Democratic nomination. At the risk of sounding like the pre-shock-and-awe Bush/Cheney chorus, it was a…
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It’s still the most popular show on television, but “American Idol” has seen its ratings plummet this season. While a record number of Idolators texted or phoned in their votes in last night’s epic David-off — the season finale contest…
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