I was personally sickened while watching the RNC as they mocked community service as if it was a meaningless endeavor.
To think, these folks are supposedly the "party of God", and Palin is supposedly some type of "fundie" Assembly Of God parishioner.
Let's take a look at what Barack did as a community organizer.
Starting at age 23, Obama ran a faith-based charity called the Developing Communities Project.
It was made up of eight Catholic parishes when he got there and had one staff member. He was its director, meaning he was in charge. He made decisions about it, including staffing, budgets, etc. And when he left in 1988 to go to law school, he had grown its budget from $70,000 to $400,000, its staff from 1 to 13 people. More important, he created a job training program for this community and a college prep tutoring program. As mayor built a hockey rink/rec center using eminent domain (because apparently there just isn't enough land in Alaska).
Now for the attacks on this Catholic sponsored social action initiative. At the Republican Party National Convention, Palin and ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani mocked the work Barack Obama did for this 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. As for Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer, Giuliani even sneered "I don't even know what that is." Palin, who was baptized but not raised Catholic and sought "re-baptism" in a Protestant Church can be forgiven for knowing little of the Catholic Church’s admirable witness for the poor and socially marginalized. But even a lapsed Catholic like Giuliani should know of the Catholic Church’s concern for the poor and oppressed.
Joe Klein’s take on this: This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man's decision "to serve a cause greater than himself," in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate's favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service--the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other--as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.
America magazine, the national Jesuit weekly, shared in the shock at this repeated attack on Catholic Action.
A Midwestern Catholic leader wrote: In an stunning insult to 76.9 million Americans, another politician continues the republican bias towards Catholics. Sarah Palin's acceptance speech scoffed at work that her opponent had done 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. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has operated the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, its domestic anti-poverty and social justice program, since 1969. In 1986, the Bishops issued Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy, which said, "Human dignity can be realized and protected only in community." Senator Obama worked in several Catholic parishes, supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, helping to address severe joblessness and housing needs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of Chicago.
Hmmmm. So in actuality, Barack was doing God's work and the "sub-humans in that convention hall mocked and laughed like the adolescent high school kids that they are.
These folks have little minds and definitely know little about the Bible they espouse to know and love.
Obama/Biden '08