Discriminations

John Rosenberg writes:

>>>"No one except a racist, of course, could oppose Obama because he’s inexperienced; because he accomplished little as a state senator except blocking passage of legislation to protect babies accidentally born alive after a botched abortion;"

Categorically FALSE.

Senator Barack Obama wrote, sponsored or co-sponsored over 823...

that's...

EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE bills during his time at the Illinois State Legislature.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

>>>"People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability...

...Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it...

...Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

Now mind you, Illinois was a state that had to have a moratorium on the death penalty based upon coerced or false confessions. Why was the Obama Bill significant?

>>>"A group of 46 human rights organizations, lawyers and community activists asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate accusations that 135 black criminal suspects were tortured by the police on the South Side of Chicago from 1971 to 1992 in an effort to extract confessions. The torture was said to include electric shocks and burns. A special prosecutor who reviewed the cases in 2002 has not issued any findings or filed criminal charges. Jon Burge, the police commander accused of overseeing the torture, was fired in 1993. In 2001, Gov. George Ryan pardoned four black death row inmates after it was revealed that their confessions had been coerced. Gretchen Ruethling (NYT)"

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E2D91631F933A0575BC0A9639C8B63

John, I know you don't like Barack Obama. I know you don't agree with his platforms, politics or philosophy. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion about whether any of the 823 bills in the IL. State Legislature, or the 570 bills in the US Senate amount to anything you would consider "accomplishing little."

Of course, you'd just be painting yourself as another baseless, right winged Obama-hater. You'd have plenty of company on that bus.

Falsehoods and mythology often take the place of facts in today's right winged circles, so I see how you would get chuckles and guffaws from many Republicans.

If that's your goal....

--Cobra

> Senator Barack Obama wrote, sponsored or
> co-sponsored over 823 bills during his time at the
> Illinois State Legislature.

Yeah, but almost all of his legislative activity was centered around helping the black community - at the expense of whites - through social welfare/income redistribution and through lessened sentencing/consequences for criminal acts. See http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/386abhgm.asp for details. Far from being racist for voting against Obama, true fidelity to race-blind equality actually calls upon one to vote against him.

I have one that trumps all the others, Barack Obama is simply incompetent.

If elected, Barack Obama is going to do what he has thus far spent his entire life doing: spending money.

Don't ask what we get for it. That's above his pay grade.

John writes:

>>>" because of a sense that he’s all talk; or, as has just been revealed, because he has attempted to delay the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq because such a delay is in his personal political interest."

And the SOURCE for this "just been revealed" trinket?

>>>"In the New York Post, conservative Iranian-born columnist Amir Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying the Democrat made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July, while publicly demanding an early withdrawal."

http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/024417.php

The New York Post (conservative paper owned by conservative Rupert Murdoch of conservative News Corp.) has a conservative "collumnist" (not a reporter) named Amir Taheri:

>>>" A story authored by a prominent U.S. neo-conservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive colour badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was exposed as false. The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in Friday's edition of the National Post, which ran alongside a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi legislation at the time. The Post acknowledged today that the story was not true and it apologized in a lengthy statement explaining how it happened.

Taheri's story, however, was reprinted by the New York Post, which is owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Another neo-conservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted the story Monday, claiming that the specific report that special badges were required by the legislation had been "incorrect."

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/3510616p-4056384c.html

Sourcewatch has this information out on Taheri:

>>>"Taheri's 1989 book, Nest of Spies, was debunked for citing "nonexistent sources," fabricating "nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed," and distorting the facts "beyond recognition," wrote Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. The book described the rule and fall of the Shah in Iran. [6]

In 2005, Taheri claimed that Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, had taken part in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. "This allegation is false," San Francisco State University professor Dwight Simpson wrote to the New York Post (which had published a Taheri column making the claim). "On November 4, 1979 [the day of the seizure], Javad Zarif was in San Francisco. He was then a graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University. He was my student, and he served also as my teaching assistant." [7]"

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Amir_Taheri

Oh boy. I guess it could be worse, John. You could've quoted the Limbaugh Letter, or something.

--Cobra

But since the Obama campaign admitted the story is substantially true none of the obfuscations promoted by our resident troll have any bearing on the issue at hand.

MJ writes:

>>>"But since the Obama campaign admitted the story is substantially true none of the obfuscations promoted by our resident troll have any bearing on the issue at hand."

LOL. This is 2008, MJ.

Lies can be instantly fact-checked now. With apologies to John for the length...

>>>" The charge -- that Obama asked the Iraqis to delay signing off on a "Status of Forces Agreement," thus delaying US troop withdrawal and interfering in U.S. foreign policy -- has been picked up on the internet, talk radio and by Republicans including the McCain campaign, which seized on the story as possible evidence of duplicity.

The Obama campaign said that the Post report consisted of "outright distortions."

Lending significant credence to Obama's response is the fact that -- though it's absent from the Post story and other retellings -- in addition to Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, this July meeting was also attended by Bush administration officials such as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the Baghdad embassy's Legislative Affairs advisor Rich Haughton, as well as a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Attendees of the meeting back Obama's account, including not just Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, but Hagel, Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers from both parties. Officials of the Bush administration who were briefed on the meeting by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad also support Obama's account and dispute the Post story and McCain attack.

The Post story is "absolutely not true," Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry told ABC News.

"Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations," said Obama campaign national security spokesperson Wendy Morigi, "nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades."

Buttry said that Hagel agrees with Obama's account of the meeting: Obama began the meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by asserting that the United States speaks with one foreign policy voice, and that voice belongs to the Bush administration.

A Bush administration official with knowledge of the meeting says that during the meeting Obama stressed to Maliki that he would not interfere with President Bush's negotiations concerning the US troop presence in Iraq, and that he supports the Bush administration's position on the need to negotiate as soon as possible the Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with among other matters US troops having immunity from local prosecution.

Obama did assert at the meeting with the Iraqis that he agrees with those – including Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- who advocate congressional review of the Strategic Framework Agreement being worked out between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, including the Iraqi parliament.

The Strategic Framework Agreement is a document that generally describes what the relationship between the two countries should look like over time.

According one person present at the meeting, Obama told Maliki that the American people wouldn't understand why the Iraqi Parliament would get to have a say on the Strategic Framework Agreement but the U.S. Congress would not, especially since the President Bush is only months from leaving the White House, regardless of whether Obama or McCain succeeds him.

Morigi said in a statement that "Barack Obama has consistently called for any Strategic Framework Agreement to be submitted to the U.S. Congress so that the American people have the same opportunity for review as the Iraqi Parliament."

It’s possible, Obama advisers believe, that either Zebari or columnist Taheri confused the Strategic Framework Agreement, which Obama feels should be reviewed by Congress, with the Status of Forces Agreement, which Obama says the Bush administration should negotiate with the Iraqis as soon as possible.

Two officials of the Bush administration say that if Obama had done what the Post story asserted – which they believe to be untrue – U.S. Ambassador Crocker and embassy officials attending the meeting would have ensured that the Bush administration heard about it immediately. If such an incident occurred in front of officials of the Bush administration, it would have constituted a foreign policy breach and would have been front-page huge news; it would not have leaked out two months later in an op-ed column."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/undermining-mcc.html

MJ, this "resident troll" may not be your favorite poster here, but I sure source what I post, and have evidence behind my claims. Many readers might not agree with my conclusions, but they can't rationally dispute the facts I present.

--Cobra

Cobra -

Here is how Obama explained the events to NBC: "The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made, but I think the only way to assure that is to make sure that there is strong bipartisan support, that Congress is involved, that the American people know the outlines of this agreement.

"And my concern is that if the Bush administration negotiates, as it currently has, and given that we're entering into the heat of political season, that we're probably better off not trying to complete a hard-and-fast agreement before the next administration takes office..."

So he's explaining why it is better not to negotiate an agreement now. He is not denying that he suggested delaying the negotiations. His campaign later tried to make a distinction between the two agreements, but such a distinction makes no sense since the agreements are interdependent. The claim's purpose is simply to confuse the issue enough that the less politically interested will decide it's not worth the effort to unravel. I presume you're also attempting to add to the noise since that appears to be the purpose of virtually all of your posts.

Cobra said: Senator Barack Obama wrote, sponsored or co-sponsored over 823...
that's...EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE bills during his time at the Illinois State Legislature.

Here’s some background on how Barack Obama managed to get his name on so many bills in the Illinois legislature:

Todd Spivak, who was a reporter for two small South Side Chicago community papers during Obama's stint representing the 13th District, is someone who knew Obama when, all things considered, he was a nobody.

Writing now for the Houston Press, Spivak recalls that Emil Jones, president of the State Senate, was Obama's starmaker.
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

Read the whole thing at http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2008/03/obamas-state-legislative-record-he-got.html

Boots

MJ writes:

>>>"So he's explaining why it is better not to negotiate an agreement now. He is not denying that he suggested delaying the negotiations. His campaign later tried to make a distinction between the two agreements, but such a distinction makes no sense since the agreements are interdependent."

Oh really? What does the Bush Administration say about the "intedenpendcy" of the SOFA and SFA?

>>>" Two questions. Are you going to get a SOFA, or is it going to be something along the lines of a memorandum of understanding, something less comprehensive than what you initially started out negotiating?

MS. PERINO: I think that there's two acronyms that are very similar; there is the SOFA and there's the SFA. One is a status of forces agreement; the other one is a strategic framework agreement. What we're working on is a strategic framework agreement, which would have some aspect of an outline of diplomatic, economic and political ties as well."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/07/20080722-3.html

Two DISTINCT, seperate Agreements, from the lips of Dana Perino, Press Secretary of the Bush Administration.

Consitutionality?

>>>"I would like to thank the Subcommittee for inviting me to speak today about the proposed U.S. Agreement with Iraq.

I begin with the basic principle from which the rest of my remarks flow: The President cannot make an international agreement that exceeds his own constitutional authority without Congress’s assent. As Justice Jackson explained in Youngstown Sheet & Tube, when the President acts pursuant to an “express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum.”[1] When the President instead “acts in absence of either a constitutional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers.”[2] That means that if a President seeks to conclude an agreement on his own he is severely limited in what he can agree to.[3]

There are two separate proposed bilateral agreements between the United States and Iraq before the Subcommittee today: the proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the proposed Strategic Framework Agreement. Based on the principle articulated above, the first may be concluded as an executive agreement without the consent of Congress (if it is limited to the issues concluded in a typical SOFA). The second, however, cannot."

Professor Oona Hathaway, Yale Law School--addressing Congress on March 4, 2008
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/hat030408.htm

The testimony continues:

>>>"The Constitution requires that any binding Strategic Framework Agreement of the type that appears to be contemplated by the Administration be approved by Congress, either as an Article II treaty or through legislation passed by both Houses of Congress. That is because an agreement that would provide authority to engage in military action in Iraq would exceed the President’s own constitutional authority and thus must be approved by Congress."

So the scorecard, MJ--

1. Barack Obama and the Bush Administration state that there are TWO SEPERATE Agreements in discussion: The Strategic Framework Agreement, and the Status Of Forces Agreement.

2. Barack Obama, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School, believes that the Strategic Framework Agreement with Iraq must be submitted to the US Congress.

3. That position is supported by Yale Law Professor Oona Hathaway, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, and the US Constitution.

4. Bush Adminstration officials, as indicated in my above post, that Barack Obama did NOT breach any protocols in his meeting with Maliki, and support the OBAMA account of the story.

5. The author of the story that you and John pounced upon, neo-conservative "Iran-regime changer" Amir Taheri has been discredited time and time again.

MJ, it's almost embarrassing for you to keep arguing this one.

It really is.

Boots, I got a question for you...

If we're to believe the Rickey Hendon account--that his experience in the Illinois State Legislature was full of--

"beatings and insults and (I)endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen"

--Then the fact that Barack Obama got that bill passed unanimously is a testimony to the pure political talent and "CHARISMA" that he possesses.

The hatred of Barack Obama on this blog is stupifying.

--Cobra

Cobra,

Go back and read the linked article again, Ricky Hendon's complaint was that he (Ricky Hendon) spent years working on that legislation, only to have the President of the Illinois Senate (Emil Jones) take the bill away from him (Hendon) in order to give it to Barack Obama.

Reporter Todd Spivak relates how Barack Obama screamed at him over the phone in 2004, in an article in the Houston Press. He had been assigned to write about Obama for the Springfield based Illinois Times.....

The resulting article had Obama ranting that his legislative colleagues couldn't have done anything without him. And why did so many Democrat legislators in 2004 express a hearty dislike for Obama? It seems that in 2003, Emil Jones, the new majority leader of the Illinois State Senate, made Barack Obama the sponsor of virtually every high profile piece of legislation on his agenda.....

Why did Jones make Obama the star of the 2003 legislative session? As he told local black radio talk show host and former alderman Cliff Kelly at the time.

'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"

"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"

"Barack Obama."

In true Chicago fashion, Obama has repaid Jones for the favor with taxpayer money.

When Obama released his list of earmark requests for fiscal year 2008, it comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/03/the_man_who_made_obama.html

Back here in Illinois your hero is just another politician, the Rev. Wright even said so!

Boots

Boots,

Then how do you explain the 35-0 vote for the bill?

"Just another politician" doesn't get a unanimous vote.

Boots, you also refuse to acknowlege the Hendon account of racial animosity in the Illinois State Legislature. That there are people in Obama's own party that were against him flies in the face of the RNC rhetoric that Obama never broke from his party.

This naked, unsavory hatred towards Obama knows no bounds here at Discriminations.

--Cobra

Cobra,

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Illinois in general, and Chicago in particular, oozes bi-partisan corruption that the rest of the country cannot comprehend. Our sitting governor, a Democrat, is currently under investigation by the feds. He was named in Tony Rezko's trial as "Official A". Remember Mr. Rezko, major fundraiser for many here in Illinois including Gov Blagoyovitch (D) and Barack Obama. Mr. Rezko was indicted, convicted of 16 counts, and is serving his sentence. Gov Blagoyovitch's immediate predecessor was a Republican, George Ryan. He too is currently in prison, convicted for crimes committed while he was Illinois Secretary of State (among his crimes, selling drivers licenses to illegal aliens). Another recent former governor, Dan Walker (D) also served time in jail. As did Dan Rostenkowski (D) former U.S. congressman from Chicago who chaired the Ways & Means Committee. There was a HUGE federal probe of the court system here a few years back (Operation Greylord).....many sitting judges were convicted of taking bribes to acquit criminals. It never stops....

The corruption here is blatant, bi-partisan, multi-racial, and omnipresent. Columnist John Kass of the Chicago Tribune covers it evenhandedly, he calls the practitioners of it "The Combine" http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-johnkass,0,5724822.columnist

Practically every other year in Illinois, ethics bills get passed (and ignored). Another one passed just this week. The bill taken away from Ricky Hendon & given to Barack Obama by Senate President Emil Jones (an ethical cloud has recently formed over him, now he's retiring and putting his son Emil on the November ballot in his spot - sweet!)was passed in November 2003. If it was so great why do we need another one so soon? Another ethics bill was passed back in 1998, a lot of good that one did.

You are misinterpreting what actually went on between Hendon & Obama & Jones in 2003. Hendon (a democrat) had been working on his bill for years while the republicans controlled the state senate. When democrats took over the state senate in 2003, Jones became senate president. Jones then took bills away from many democrats, including Hendon, and gave them to Obama to raise Obama's profile. This was not breaking with his party, it was the exact opposite, it was backroom dealing within his party. Obama didn't use his great charisma to get those bills passed, Emil Jones the old fashioned wheeler dealer played hardball and got those bills passed. Obama was the front man, Jones did the arm twisting and gave Obama the credit.

Nobody here "hates" Obama, we just like looking at our politicians with our eyes wide open. If you want to be president of his fan club, that is of course your right.

Boots

Boots writes:

>>>"Nobody here "hates" Obama, we just like looking at our politicians with our eyes wide open. If you want to be president of his fan club, that is of course your right."

Nobody here with the slightest grip on honesty can sift through all of these posts for the past year and half, with all the responses and say "Nobody here hates Obama."

If you don't believe me, and want me to cut and paste examples, I would be happy to, though I doubt John would appreciate it.

Boots writes:

>>>"You are misinterpreting what actually went on between Hendon & Obama & Jones in 2003. Hendon (a democrat) had been working on his bill for years while the republicans controlled the state senate. When democrats took over the state senate in 2003, Jones became senate president. Jones then took bills away from many democrats, including Hendon, and gave them to Obama to raise Obama's profile. This was not breaking with his party, it was the exact opposite, it was backroom dealing within his party. Obama didn't use his great charisma to get those bills passed, Emil Jones the old fashioned wheeler dealer played hardball and got those bills passed. Obama was the front man, Jones did the arm twisting and gave Obama the credit."

Politics ain't bean bag, Boots.

There are policy wonks, hatchet men, whips and closers. Senator Obama is a "closer." He gets the deals done. What do you think happens in the US Congress? What was the job of Tom Delay or Stenny Hoyer?

People amaze me. There are constant complaints about "do-nothing Congresses" and "political grid-lock", but then claim shock when they see how deals get done.

The much needed bill providing oversight and video taping of confessions in lieu of police TORTURE, couldn't get through with Hendon.

It got passed UNANIMOUSLY with Obama.

He got the job done. I want that in a politician.

Now if you want to discuss John McCain and his tactics, tantrums and theatrics and associations in his political career let's compare and contrast, Boots. Trust me, I have plenty of material.

--Cobra