If that were all that was on his resume, hell no.
But Obama’s resume is fuller than that, and you know it, so you can drop the pretense now.
Then your point is rather pointless. Do you honestly believe a member of the PTA is more qualified than a member of the United States Senate? It’s disingenuous for either side to pick single items from a candidate’s resume and pretend that they represent the whole of a person’s qualifications.
Obama’s experience has been minimized and denigrated by his rivals throughout his campaign. By choosing a potential vice president (and, by extension, a potential president) with an arguably thinner resume, McCain violated his own stated criteria. When this is pointed out, his people snap back with “Yeah, so are you!” which misses the point by a country mile. The Obama campaign has never claimed that extensive executive experience was of paramount importance.
In a perfectly abstract sense, I would say it depends on the mayor and on the community organizer. I would prefer a fabulous organizer to a shitty mayor. It’s not the engine; it’s the engineer.
Yeah, because that’s the only thing he’s ever done.
Steph, if I thought you actually gave a damn or had the slightest interest in a fair dialogue, I’d keep engaging you. But you aren’t, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that the commuvity organizers are not trying to perform miracles or permanently eradicate entrenched social problems. That’s an asinine standard. That’s like saying that if there is still crime on the street that police departments haven’t accomplished anything.
You set certain goals and you do the best you can. I was trying to keep kids out of gangs and get them to finish school. Gangs still exist and kids still drop out of school, but not too long ago I saw a young guy working at a bank who I used to help with his math homework after school, and throw a football with, and who I talked out of getting into fights once or twice. He wasn’t the only kid I did that suff with. He was one of many, but I remembered him. He’d graduated high school, gone to college and was working as a teller at the bank. He remembered me as “Mr. S.” If I hadn’t given him a place to hang after school and helped him with his homework, would he have still stayed out of the gangs and gone to college? Maybe. But if I had anything to do with it, then I consider that program a success. I’m sure as hell not going to be sneered at by you.
You have to admit, Obama being Batman would be pretty cool.
Nobody ever said it was. Obama has never said that it was. Palin comparing her Mayorship of Moose Cock, Alaska to Obama’s days a community organizer were a false point of comparison. The more analogous parallel would be comparing Palin’s mayorship to Obama’s time in the IL State Legislature. What Palin did was the same as if Obama had tried to compare being in the Illinois State Legislature to being in the [sniff] PTA (yuk yuk yuk).
Nobody’s saying that being a community organizer is a per se qualification for President (that would certainly not be true in my case), but that doesn’t make it ok to mock everybody who does it. Most of those people are really well-meaning, often (as I said before) religiously motivated, sincerely compassionate people who get very little reward or recognition. Why do they all deserve to be spit on?
Of course not. He’s a Democrat.
In 2004, Kerry’s Purple Heart was the Big Joke. Those Republicansreally know how to have fun!
I had mixed feelings.
Pros: I thought the speech started out well enough. She addressed some of the controversy about her like her experience level. And she was a decent speaker - certainly a better speaker than McCain. And she came across as fairly no-nonesense. She promoted McCain fairly well, at least in terms of his character.
Cons: Once she started turning her comments to Obama she came across as really petty and mean. She should have kept things on a higher level and just explained how her team would do great things, or at least, why her team’s positions were better than the other team’s. But she made it more of a personal attack, and made some quite sophomoric comments. It really belittled her. And oh boy, did her comments about civil liberties scare the living shit out of me! And besides all that, she never really gave any kind of solid idea of what we are voting for other than “actually I have some experience, Obama is a n00b, and McCain was tortured so he deserves your sympathy vote.” OK…what about actual policy positions? What about plans that address current national concerns? Hello?
Señor Huerta, which “white Americans” do you represent?
I don’t claim to represent whites, or really to represent anyone but little old me. I’ve done some observing of how whitey acts in his native environment. Nor would I question a black poster’s reality-based observations of what blacks, whites, Hispanics, tend to like or dislike, if they jibed with what I’d seen in my life.
Thanks. Do you applaud Obama’s efforts? He put in much more time and effort and sweat than I did. I think he should be respected for that.
I find your question strange for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t think anyone has claimed it makes him more qualified, so where is that coming from?
Second, I thought Republicans were the party of charity and community and self-help. Why is it that all of a sudden it’s only government jobs that show worth?
I’d call that political but not partisan, Dio.
Only if he’s prepared.
Exactly. God help us if they win. If you think Iraq is a quagmire now and the economy is bad, just hand control over to McSame and see what happens.
Yesterday’s Varvel cartoon is very good.
Really? No one has an opinion on this? Sorry for the selfbump.
I suspect that I have spent more time observing white people in their native environments (plural) than you have. I’ve also spent more time observing blacks than most white people do. I don’t find it helpful to generalize much about what either whites or blacks like or dislike.
Now I live in a neighborhood with many cultures – especially Kurds, HIspanics and whites. I still can’t generalize about any ethnic group.
But as a whole, I find that there is always a certain subset of the population (it doesn’t matter which “race” or ethnic group) that is incredibly intimidated by the use of the words “power” or “empowerment” when they are used by any “other.” That “other” could be another person, gender, high school, race, ethnic group, country, sports team…well, I’m sure you get the idea. It is as if anyone in this subset cannot comprehend that “the other” can become empowered without taking power from the subset.
Community organizers teach people how to help themselves so that they will not be dependent on others. Independence gives people a sense of empowerment – especially those who have never had independence before.
It took me a while to understand that some white males, especially men who have been financially successful from very early in their lifetimes, don’t identify with the need to feel empowerment. They had never been without it and didn’t know what non-empowerment was like. Therefore, they didn’t even recognize what enpowerment felt like. So when they heard women and some ethnic groups talk about it, they took it to mean something that it didn’t.
The misunderstanding itself made them more suspicious of women and other ethnicities.
Then there is another subset who seem to offer only the most strained view of humanity. Their arguments seem tedious and stale. They must be miserable. I don’t know if it is worth trying to get their votes. I don’t think they will ever relax or change their minds. I don’t know if they can.