Obama’s Inexperience Tough to Ignore

janelle

Washington Insider with Ronald Kessler


Obama’s Inexperience Tough to Ignore

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:56 AM

By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size




A close look at Barack Obama's career reveals it has been even more mediocre than generally recognized.

Before being elected to the Illinois state Senate, Obama worked as a community organizer and a lawyer in Chicago.


In his memoir, Obama says being a community organizer taught him how to motivate the powerless and work the government to help them. His chief example is an effort to remove asbestos from Altgeld Gardens, an all-black public housing project on Chicago’s South Side.

But those who were involved in the effort say Obama played a minor role in working the problem and never accomplished his goal. A pre-existing group at Altgeld Gardens and a local newspaper, the Chicago Reporter, were working on the problem before Obama came on the scene, yet Obama does not mention them in his book, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.”

“Just because someone writes it, doesn't make it true,” says Altgeld resident Hazel Johnson, who had been pushing for a cleanup of the cancer-producing substance years before Obama showed up.

Rep. Bobby L. Rush, D-Ill., says it was Johnson's work, along with asbestos testing by the Chicago Reporter, that got Chicago officials interested in the issue. Rush, who launched an inquiry into the situation when he was a member of the Chicago City Council, says he is “offended” that Obama did not mention Johnson in his account.

“Was [Obama] involved in stuff? Absolutely,” says Robert Ginsburg, an activist who worked with Johnson and Obama on the problem. “But there was stuff happening before him, and after him.”

After three years working as an organizer, Obama could say he helped obtain grants for a jobs program and got asbestos removed from some pipes in the project. But as the Los Angeles Times has noted, the “large-scale change that was needed at the 1,998-unit project was beyond his reach.” To this day, most of the asbestos remains in the apartments.

Fruitless though his efforts were, Obama devoted more than 100 pages to his experiences at Altgeld Gardens and surrounding areas. Michelle Obama has said his work as a community organizer helped him decide “how he would impact the world,” assisting people to improve their lives. Yet, in a revealing passage in his book, Obama wrote, “When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly.”

Instead, he said, “I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.”

Thus, Obama admitted that he accomplished little but that he was able to cover that up with fancy talk about change.

After going to Harvard Law School, Obama returned to Chicago, where he briefly headed a voter registration drive and then became a lawyer. While Obama’s campaign has touted him as a civil rights lawyer, “Over the nine years that Obama’s law license was active in Illinois, he never handled a trial and mostly worked in teams of lawyers who drew up briefs and contracts in a variety of cases,” according to David Mendell’s “Obama: From Promise To Power.”

A review of the cases Obama worked on during his brief legal career “shows he played the strong, silent type in court, introducing himself and his client, then stepping aside to let other lawyers do the talking,” the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.

“A search of all the cases in Cook County Circuit Court in which Obama made an appearance since he graduated from Harvard in 1991 shows: zero,” the article said.

Instead, his practice was “confined mainly to federal court in Chicago, where he made formal appearances in only five district court cases and another five in cases before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a total of 10 cases in his legal career,” the paper said.

If Obama had virtually no impact as either a community organizer or as a lawyer, he was even more invisible in the state Senate and later in the U.S. Senate.

In both bodies, Obama had a reputation for voting “present,” thus avoiding controversial decisions that could be used against him later. In the U.S. Senate, he has missed more than one in five votes.

Only one of the measures Obama has sponsored as a U.S. senator was enacted: a bill to “promote relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Contrary to Obama’s portrayal of himself as a unifier, on every bipartisan effort in the Senate to forge compromises on tough issues, Obama has been missing in action.

In sum, it would be difficult to imagine a more mediocre record. Most candidates for dog catcher have contributed more to society. Yet with the help of adoring reporters, Obama has managed to parlay extraordinary speaking and political skills into a presidential campaign built on sand.

The idea that America might entrust its security and future to someone who has never demonstrated an ability to get anything of significance done is scary.

Look for John McCain to begin exploiting this vulnerability after Labor Day.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
e-mail. Go here now.


http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/Obama...15/112909.html

Jolie Rouge

Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. 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:

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.


http://townhall.com/columnists/Miche...&comments=true

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Read Obama's own words
What he done as a community communist agitator, or organizer if you prefer.

After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois
(c) 1990 Illinois Issues, University of Illinois at Springfield
ISBN: 0-9620873-3-5

Chapter 4 (pp. 35-40) of After Alinsky
By Barack Obama
(c) 1990 Illinois Issues, Springfield, Illinois


http://www.edwoj.com/Alinsky/Alinsky...hapter1990.htm


Alinsky Proud of Obama
From the letter of Saul Alinsky's son published in Boston Globe on 8-31-08, "Son sees father's handiwork in convention":

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ed...pinion/letters /articles/2008/08/31/son_sees_fathers_handiwork_in_conventi on/?s_campaign=8315

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

speedygirl

Not saying what I agree with this one way or the other, just equal opportunity posting. We get slanted interpretations from both sides. Gotta give them both their fair turn, lol. Just an email I got.


I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....



* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're

"exotic, different."



* If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers,

you're the

quintessential American story.

--------

* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.



* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and

you're a maverick.

------------

* Graduate from Harvard law School and be President of

the Law

Review, and you are unstable.



* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating,

you're well

grounded.

------------

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer,

create a voter

registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters,

spend 12

years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years

as a State

Senator representing a district with over 750,000

people, become

chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human

Services committee,

spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing

a state of

13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and

serving on the

Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and

Veteran's Affairs

committees, you don't have any real leadership

experience.



* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4

years on the city

council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less

than 7,000

people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only

650,000

people, then you're qualified to become the

country's second

highest ranking executive.

-----------------

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19

years while

raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant

churches,

you're not a real Christian.



* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich

heiress, and left

your disfigured first wife and married the heiress the

next month,

you're a Christian with high moral values.

--------------

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex

education,

including the proper use of birth control, you are

eroding the

fiber of society.



* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate

abstinence only, with

no other option for sex education in your state's

school system

while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant (just

like you

were), you're very responsible.

--------------

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave

up a position

in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment

of her inner

city community, then gave that up to raise a family,

your family's

values don't represent America's.



* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude",

with at least one DUI

conviction and no college education, who didn't

register to vote

until age 25 and once was a member of a group that

advocated the

secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is

extremely

admirable and patriotic.



OK, much clearer now.

__________________
"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion."

YNKYH8R

You guys reeeeeeeeeeealy hate this guy huh?

Has there ever been a democrat you liked?

__________________
"The world will look up and shout save us; and I'll whisper no." R U WE TAH DID?

wobblypops

Yeah, I liked JFK since 1964.

__________________
Nikita Khrushchev, 1962: "We will take America without firing a shot"

Jolie Rouge

But how many are LEGAL voters ?

You might want to look at ACORN a little closer before tooting that particular horn ...

For more background on ACORN see 7 charged with voter registration fraud


If Howard Dean had run instead of Kerry in '04, he would have had my vote. Bush got it instead because I didn't Kerry was the man for the job. Had nothing to do with "party lines" and everything to do with competance to hold the Office.


You forgot Bristol and Piper ... so we have a sport, a tree, a town, a musician and a math subject that most high school students dread ...




I don't plan on ordering one ... but this is pretty funny http://www.cafepress.com/punditmama.301964344

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Things that make you go hhhhmmmmm....


Neglected Mysteries of Obama's Background
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/..._of_obamas.php

It's a shame mainstream journalists are too busy trashing Sarah Palin to look into Barack Obama's background. Riehl World View offers some fascinating leads they might pursue regarding the trip he made to Pakistan before transferring from Occidental to Columbia:


They had to resort to fraud on the application, because they lacked visible means to pay the rent. Where did the money come from? Why is so little known about this part of his life? Why doesn't the media look into it?

Strike that last question. The answer is obvious.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

janelle

So that is why they are yelling so much about Sarah Palin's background. To deflect people into looking into Obama's background. Now I get it. Should have known it from the start. That is the oldest tactic there is.

speedygirl

You're right about that but it's just not dirt on Palin, there's dirt being dug up on Obama as well. Half of these posts are about that kind of stuff. I don't know if that's completely it but I do know these politicos have always tried to deflect us away from looking at the issues. If you notice more then half of what people talk about are the candidates personal stuff. They speculate, tell half truths and some of the American public is gullible and eats it up.
It's happening in McCains campaign as well as Obamas and people are falling for it like a pack of lemmings. If we fall for this tactic then we deserve the crap we get.

__________________
"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion."

YNKYH8R

And......more Obama stuff.

Who are we swaying today?

__________________
"The world will look up and shout save us; and I'll whisper no." R U WE TAH DID?