Definition of Community Organizer

I swear the Republican Party is on crack and wants to win at any cost. They are sleazy, lying scum bags. I don't think I've ever felt so pissed of during a presidential campaign. One of the points they keep trying to make is when discussing executive experience for governing, Palin and McCain have it, while Obama has only been a "community organizer" (wink wink). The constant reference to it, first by Mr. 9/11 Rudy Giuliani, and then repeated often by Palin, is deeply offensive in so many ways. Joe Klein on Time's Swampland blog laid out just what Obama did as a community organizer:

What a Community Organizer Does:

This morning, I received a press release from a group called Catholic Democrats about the work--the mission, the witness--that Obama performed after he got out of college. Here's the first paragraph:

Catholic Democrats is expressing surprise and shock that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's acceptance speech tonight mocked her opponent's work in the 1980s for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.  She belittled Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer in Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago, work he undertook instead of pursuing a lucrative career on Wall Street.  In her acceptance speech, Ms. Palin said, 'I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.'  Community organizing is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to end poverty and promote social justice.  

So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn't know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed--job training, help with housing and so forth--from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord's work--the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a 'task from God.')

(Via TIME: Swampland.)

Sounds like a faith-based initiative to me. What also upsets me about this is that our son has been developing a very high sense of social justice, and I can see him doing something like this as he moves through college, or even after. He's even talking about joining the Peace Corps. You just have to hope that vomit like this doesn't end up turning the young idealistic people of today away from public service.

I hope people wake up in time to call bullshit on the whole lot of them.