Illinois State Senate

“In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.” Link
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United States Senate

He has continued this inclusive and productive style of work in the U.S. Senate: “In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars are spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.

Foreign Policy

Obama’s foreign policy experience includes graduating from Columbia University with a degree in political science with an emphasis on international relations. In the U.S. Senate Obama is unique among Senators in that he serves on three of the four Senate Committees dealing with foreign policy issues including the Foreign Relations; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Veterans’ Affairs committees and is the Chair of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Relations which is responsible fore U.S. relations with European countries, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (i.e., NATO). When comparing Obama’s foreign policy experience with other candidates for President you have Democrat Joseph Biden who is Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Hillary Clinton who is a member of the Armed Services Committee and John McCain who is the Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee yet there is no Senator except for Barack Obama who serves on three of the four committees that deal with foreign policy.

Foreign Relations Committee

Obama service on the Foreign Relations committee has placed him in an unique position in that he is the Chair of the Subcommittee on European Relations and serves on the Subcommittees on African Affairs; East Asia and Pacific Affairs; and International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection. This cross-section of subcommittees places Obama in a unique position of having knowledge about Asian, African and European issues. The only other member of the Foreign Relations committee who is running for President is Democrat Joseph Biden who is Chairman of the full Foreign Relations Committee yet unlike Obama he does not serve on any of the other foreign policy committees and his experience is limited to foreign policy issues covered by the Foreign Relations Committee.

Obama has also traveled extensively in his capacity as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and has visited Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan in Asia; Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, and the Palestinian Territories in the Middle East; and Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa in Africa. Obama has also co-sponsored the “Lugar-Obama Act” with Republican Senator Richard Lugar who was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations at the time. This act was a bi-partisan effort to increase U.S. security in terms of the elimination of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. This legislation came out of Obama’s trip with Senator Richard Lugar to Russia, the Ukraine and Azerbaijan.

Obama has also sponsored legislation such as the “Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act” which was signed into law by President Bush on December 22, 2006. Obama has co-sponsored immigration related bills related to his service on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee including the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. His extensive foreign policy experience exceeds that of every other Presidential candidate including his trips abroad in the performance of his official duties as a member of committees dealing with foreign relation issues.

While some have criticized Obama’s foreign travel claiming that he is the most traveled freshman Senator in doing so they often fail to mention that as a result of his extensive trips abroad is legislation such as the Lugar-Obama Act instead preferring to make the political connection between his travels abroad to his run for President yet others will recognize the experience he has gained as a result of his foreign trips and recognize that as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he is expected to travel extensively and that his travels often were with the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Among the three top freshman who have received attention along with Obama in terms of foreign travel you have Barack Obama who serves on three committees dealing with foreign policy, Republican Richard Burr who serves on the Select Committee on Intelligence and Republican Tom Coburn who serves on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and it must be noted that such travel was part of an official delegation and was approved and paid for by the Senate.

Veterans’ Affairs Committee

As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America’s addiction to oil, he’s working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.”Link

Ethics
“Obama has made ethics reform a central part of his political career. Two years into his first term in the U.S. Senate, he has had limited opportunities to leave a mark at the federal level, especially as a member of the minority party. But he has worked with Republicans on new good-government laws. He co-sponsored one, signed in September, that will create a federal spending database so Web users can track all grants, loans and awards greater than $25,000. He also pushed to limit the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s authority to award open-ended, no-bid contracts in the wake of major disasters — a reaction to post-Katrina abuses. More to the point, last year Senate Democrats tapped Obama as the chief negotiator for their caucus in talks over post-Abramoff ethics reforms, though those negotiations faltered. Ethics reform was one of Obama’s signature issues in Springfield, as well. Beyond the Gift Ban Act, he helped push Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s 2003 ethics reforms. The gift ban law, the first broad ethics reform in Illinois since the Watergate era, prohibited politicians from using campaign funds for personal use, barred fundraising on state property, established ethics commissions, curtailed fundraisers in Springfield during legislative sessions and mandated online reporting of campaign finances. The 2003 ethics package created independent inspectors general with subpoena powers to look into abuses by legislators, statewide officeholders and their employees. It further clamped down on the types of gifts lawmakers can receive and prohibited lobbyists and their spouses from sitting on state boards and commissions. Obama also touted publicly financed judicial campaigns, an idea that was approved by the Illinois Senate but languished in the House.”Link

Read more about Obama’s work in the U.S. Senate on Obsidian Wings

Life Experience

This experience in public office is just a taste of what makes Obama ready for the presidency. He has had a goulash of a life. He was born to white a woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya in Hawaii, then moved to Indonesia for five years with his step-father from ages six to ten.

After returning to Hawaii for middle and high school, he went Occidental College, a liberal arts school in L.A. After a couple years at Occidental, he transferred to Columbia University, where he majored in political science with a specialization in International Relations.

After graduating, he went to work as a community organizer in Chicago. Following three years of helping some of Chicago’s poorest residents recover from a steel mill closing through job training programs, he went to Harvard Law. There, he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Instead of seeking a high paying job upon graduating from Harvard, he returned to Chicago and went back to the neighborhood communities by organizing and helping to register 150,000 voters. He then began working at a civil rights firm and went on to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He did all of this before his career in politics began.

His ability to understand and earn respect from political opponents while being a genuine progressive; his success in the classroom and on the street; and his unparalleled background have helped him become the intelligent, fair, and courageous leader he is today.
Before the war in Iraq in 2002, he exclaimed: “Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power…. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.” Link

For a short overview of his years in the Illinois State Legislature check out his wikipedia page or our building collection of transcripts from the Illinois State Senate.

What you will not find on his list of accomplishments is his ability to remember facts about his own life. He claimed that a 1965 civil rights march led to his mother and father getting together, getting married and then eventually bearing him as their son. Of course, this doesn’t explain how it is that his birth certificate reads that he was born in 1961. There are a host of such lapses in his memory or misrememberings that are too numerous to mention here. (This is not my blog, you know.)

Nor will you find on Obama’s list of accomplishments military experience and judgment like that of John McCain, who can, amongst many things, chock up the fact that he (not Obama) advised Bush to increase the number of troops in Iraq…thus leading to our being on the verge of victory today. Even Obama recently admitted that John McCain’s strategy for a troop surge worked…thereby making Obama, Reid and Pelosi wrong when they told the country about a year ago or more that the war in Iraq was lost.

You will not find anywhere in Obama’s list of accomplishments where he has ever actually fought in combat to preserve liberty and freedom. (John McCain has accomplished that.) You will not find anywhere in Obama’s list of accomplishments any testimony to his having suffered for the sake of defending our nation. (John McCain suffered greatly for our nation and still bears the scars of torture and privation during his stay at the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’.

But there is one accomplishment that Obama has on his resumee that no one else has ever claimed. He visited 57 states in the Union.

The liberal press during the 2000 election said that George W. Bush was unfit to be president because Bush could not remember the name of a specific foriegn head of state. Now they tell us that Obama can lead our nation…in spite of the fact that he doesn’t even know or misremembers how many states there are in the Union.

Is there anything noteworthy about Obama’s past? Anything REAL that is?

Ronald P. Reitz

His brain is shriveled and this is the effect and symptoms that are becoming apparent.

Only when the spontaneous question(s) are presented does the damaged circuitry in his brain show up…but Obamamama is not aware of it as it all appears to Obamamama that what he says makes sense.

The delusion continues in the DNC…

At any rate, this article displays a major weakness of Obama and Biden on foreign policy.

Iran would love to control Iraq and it’s vast oil reserves… it is considered to be the largest in the world by many. There is also historical and ethnic resentments that go back decades if not centuries.

Old Persia is the seat of civilization. Many scholars believe that the Garden of Eden is in Iraq. The first written language and history came from Persia. It was the first great Empire in the world. Many people do not know this. The history and long held tribal resentments run deep in the Middle East. Our leaders do not respect the history or amazing cultural gifts that come from that area.

This history needs to be realized and respected if we are going to find a solution here. Do not pander to Iraq though, they think they are the only ones in the Middle East the deserve to be called Persians. Many want their Empire back. That elitist thinking is dangerous, IMHO.

What a fraud!

McCain/Palin ‘08
Hillary ‘12
McPUMA member # 11 of 12
Alleged right wing troll and faux Democrat