At last week's convention, both Sarah Palin and Rudy 9iu11ani went out of there way to demean Barack Obama's record of community organizing -- indeed, they seemed to mock the very idea of grassroots movements aimed at uprooting the status quo. Today on ABC's This Week, Obama responded forcefully.

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"It's curious to me that they would mock that, when I, at least, think that that's exactly what young people should be doing.

"I worked with churches, who were dealing with steel plants that had closed in their neighborhoods, to set up job training programs for the unemployed and after-school programs for youth, and to try to deal with asbestos in homes with poor people -- community service work -- which John McCain has been talking about, putting country first and extolling the virtues of national service. I would think that's what we want all our young people to do. I would think that that's an area where Democrats and Republicans would agree." 

On Face the Nation this morning, Senator McCain was asked what he has against community organizing. 

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Heather writes:

When McCain is asked about Rudy and Sarah Barracuda mocking Obama being a community organizer, his excuse is that it was just her responding to them saying something about her being a mayor of a small town but of course he doesn't think it's a negative to be a community organizer. If he really thinks that, didn't he even have any control over his own convention?

Apparently not.

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The Washington Post yet again manages to produce an op-ed only fit to wrap fish in, as neocon Michael Rubin - ex of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an advisor to Rummie, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and unpaid hack for propaganda articles produced by the Pentagon's PR firm, the Lincoln Group - blames Joe Biden for eight years of Bush administration foreign policy failure in a desperate attempt to label Biden as "Iran's favorite Senator".

Here's how Rubin's logic works, as explained by Ilan Goldenberg of Democracy Arsenal:

Rubin makes a convoluted and nonsensical argument that A.  Joe Biden supported engagement with the reformist Khatami government of Iran during the late 1990s and first half of this decade.  That B.  During that time trade between Iran and the EU increased.  That C.  A National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  From this he deduces that it's Biden's fault that Iran has moved ahead on its nuclear weapons program because it used increased trade with Europe to fund a nuclear weapons program.  What???

... Rubin basically takes a bunch of unrelated facts and uses them to conclude that Iran must have spent 2000 to 2003 working furiously on its nuclear weapons program and that it did it with money from Europe that somehow Joe Biden was responsible for.  Yup, putting those rigorous analytical skills that he learned that the Office of Special Plans to work.

Rubin also forgets to mention little details.  Like the fact that under this Administration trade with Iran has actually increased ten-fold and is at its highest levels since before the Iranian revolution.  Or the fact that the 2007 NIE concluded that Iran did in fact stop working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was still years away from building a bomb.

Rubin then claims that Biden's vote against Kyl-Lieberman was partisan politics because Biden said that he didn't trust this Administration.  Ummm.... Trying to prevent war with Iran is not exactly a partisan activity.  It's not partisan to fear that an administration that has a track record of escalating conflict and misleading the American public might do it again.  That is in fact the exact opposite of partisan if you believe that war with Iran is against America's interests.

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  (caglecartoons.com)

Smear. Rinse. Repeat.

The same publisher that distributed the 2004 best-seller that took aim at John Kerry’s Vietnam service is planning a summer release of what’s scheduled to be the first critical book on Barack Obama.

Conservative journalist David Freddoso’s “The Case Against Barack Obama” will offer “a comprehensive, factual look at Obama,” according to Regnery Publishing president and publisher Marjory Ross.

But the book’s subtitle makes clear its perspective: “The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate.”

Ross contends that the mainstream media has offered insufficient scrutiny of Obama and likens the goal of Freddoso’s book to that of “Unfit for Command,” the scathing assessment of Kerry’s war record that rocketed to No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list.

Although wingnut welfare will likely propel this screed to the top of the NYT best-seller list, I'm not very concerned that it will be as damaging as Unfit for Command was to John Kerry. Barack Obama has proven time after time that he won't fall victim to these kinds of slimy attacks, and you can be sure his rapid-reponse team will be all over this from the get-go.

HuffPo has obtained exclusive video from an interview McCain gave two years ago in which he implied that he would be willing to work with Hamas.

James Rubin, the reporter who interviewed McCain writes:

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

We can't go around the world claiming to "spread democracy" and then demonize the groups that get elected when we don't agree with them. Hamas certainly needs to change it's tune before we talk to them, but it doesn't change the fact that they were democratically elected. And as Rubin says, it's the height of hypocrisy (or a serious senior moment) for McCain to attack Obama when it turns out that Obama's position is even harsher than one McCain espoused just two years ago.

Just further proof that Senator McCain and Presidential Candidate McCain are two entirely different people, I guess.

No need to worry though, guys...he supports us on everything else.

Greg Sargent has more:

When Wolf Blitzer pointed out that Obama also labels Hamas a terrorist organization, making his position the same as McCain's, Lieberman said, "that's true," adding that Obama "clearly doesn't support any of the values and goals of Hamas."

Then, with depressing predictability, came the inevitable caveat:

But the fact that the spokesperson for Hamas would say they would welcome the election of Senator Obama really does raise the question, "Why?"

And it suggests the difference between these two candidates.

This ridiculous guilt-by-association crap needs to stop already. Ed Schultz made a great point the other day: What if someone in, say, the KKK came out and said they would welcome the election of McCain over Obama? Does that have bearing on McCain, his candidacy or his beliefs? Of course not. But we wouldn't then go around, adding the caveat, "Why does the KKK support him?"

Only desperate neocons stoop that low (see: Joe Lieberman, above.)