From the desk of Lewis Blain:
Some of you might not care….Let’s take a closer look at who’s really qualified and or who’s really working for the good of all of us in the Senate. Obama or Clinton.
Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term – 6yrs. – and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law – 20 – twenty pieces of legislation in her first six years.
These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress but to save you the trouble, they are posted here for you.
1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.
2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.
3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.
5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.
6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.
7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death.
10. Congratulate the Syracuse Univ. Orange Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
11. Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
12. Establish the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Commemorative Program.
13. Name post office after Sergeant Riayan A. Tejeda.
14. Honor Shirley Chisholm for her service to the nation and express
condolences on her death.
15. Honor John J. Downing, Brian Fahey, and Harry Ford, firefighters who lost their lives on duty. Only five of Clinton’s bills are, more substantive.
16. Extend period of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11..
17. Pay for city projects in response to 9/11
18. Assist landmine victims in other countries.
19. Assist family caregivers in accessing affordable respite care.
20. Designate part of the National Forest System in Puerto Rico as protected in the wilderness preservation system.
There you have it, the fact’s straight from the Senate Record.
The following are those of Obama. The list is too substantive, so they are categorized.
During the first – 8 – eight years of his elected service he sponsored over 820 bills. He introduced
233 regarding healthcare reform,
125 on poverty and public assistance,
112 crime fighting bills,
97 economic bills,
60 human rights and anti-discrimination bills,
21 ethics reform bills,
15 gun control,
6 veterans affairs and many others.
His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427. These inculded **the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 – became law, **The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, – became law, **The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate, **The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, – became law, **The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, In committee, and many more.
In all, since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Obama has written 890 bills and co-sponsored another 1096.
An impressive record, for someone who supposedly has no record according to some who would prefer that this comparison not be made public.
He’s not just a talker.
He’s a doer.
Obama is the HYPE!
Pass it on….people need to know.
Transcript:
“It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
But there’ s a phone in the White House and it is ringing.
something is happening in the world
your vote will decide who answers that call.
whether it is someone who already knows the world’s leaders,
knows the military
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
its 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
Who do you want answering that phone?”
This is inadvertent but former Pres. Bill Clinton just showed why his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), is not only not the person you want answering the phone, she might not even answer it if she gets the opportunity.
Mrs. Clinton has mentioned often in this campaign her “35 years of experience,” which she says has put her “across the threshold” to be commander-in-chief. Well, the phone rang in 1994 regarding Rwanda. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. No one answered.
Bill Clinton spared no effort trying to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia republics. This was admirable. But close to a million people were killed in the genocide when Hutus decided to kill Tutsis in that African nation.
Bill Clinton said his wife had urged him to take military action to stop that genocide. History will record that, even if it is true that Mrs. Clinton did offer that advice, and there is no record whatsoever to prove she did, she was in ineffectual. Mrs. Clinton was just as ineffectual trying to ram a health care overhaul through the U.S. Congress.
That was when she became a full-time touring first lady. She visited many countries. This is part of the experience that she says qualifies her to be president and commander-in-chief. It is the lifetime of experiences that she says qualifies her and Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), to be president but not Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL).
If we know anything at all about Bill Clinton, besides the fact that he’s a political animal, it is that he is an inveterate and pathological liar. This advice that he remembers Mrs. Clinton giving him is clearly a political memory that he’s fantasizing now to help his wife’s candidacy.
Sen. Clinton, in her many statements lately, is also showing herself to be power-hungry.Not only did Sen. Clinton cross a threshold that qualifies her to be president, whatever that means, but she broke a golden rule of politics when she gave Republicans ammunition to use against Sen. Obama, should he be the party’s nominee.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), scored comprehensive wins in Ohio and Texas. She also won in Rhode Island. Her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), won in Vermont. The wins helped stanch Mrs. Clinton’
s string of 11 straight losses since her big night on Super Tuesday.
The next ‘fight of the century’
figures to be in Pennsylvania in late April. And, as she did before last night, she may have to sustain another string of losses to Sen. Obama in the race to be the Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States before that primary.
Thus it always is with the Clintons, drama, emotions, whether real or cooked up.
There can be no doubt anymore that the Clintons will do whatever it takes, including damaging the eventual Democratic Party nominee, to win this nomination. For Sen. Clinton, the nomination is destiny. For former Pres. Bill Clinton, it is redemption.They are not about to stand by and let Sen. Obama, soaring rhetoric or not, get in the way of that. What Mr. Obama has to show now is how he fights.
This kind of infallible logic is exactly how you become a big city newspaper columnist.
Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), has won 11 straight Democratic Party primaries and caucuses in the contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), for the presidential nomination. During the past month, Mr. Obama has won states big and small, won some of them by landslide. He has won so-called ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states. In other words, he has won in every way imaginable.
This puts Sen. Obama exactly where Sen. Clinton wants him, according to New York Daily News political columnist Michael Goodwin:
You hear it everywhere: Tuesday is Hillary Clinton‘s last stand. If she can’t win Ohio and Texas, she’s history.
True, mostly. But it’s not the whole story. The rest goes like this: This is Barack Obama‘s third chance to knock her out. If he can’t close the deal this time, maybe he can’t close the deal, period.
Either the third time is the charm for him, or it could be strike three against him. Any result tomorrow that doesn’t finish her off lets her argue that Democratic voters’ love affair with Obama was just one of those flings. She’ll say buyer’s remorse has set in, and it’s time to get serious about winning the White House.
This must be a natural extension of the Clinton campaign’s weekend argument that Obama not only has win all contests on Tuesday because he spent more money than she did, but that he has to win all contests by comfortable margins. Why? Because she’s the underdog and he’s spent more money than she did.
Talk about turning weaknesses into strength.
Alex Moni of New Jersey was working for the Obama campaign in Corpus Christi.
Photo: Michael Stravato for The New York Times
At the end of the day, I like the profile of the Obama Democratic Party. It is young, diverse, resourceful, and self-generating. That bodes well for the future of the party. If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), ends up the party’s nominee, she is going to have to harness the energy of the primary to govern.
The fear, of course, is that we’re going to be so busy fighting old Clinton wars, including whatever Bill is up to this time around, that we won’t have time to address and of the issues facing the nation.
Anna Scott of Montana, the Bowie County campaign field coordinator for Barack Obama, helped Ruth Blackwell, 83, with her e-mail address last week in Texarkana, Tex.
I have to give Mrs. Clinton props for how well she has fought back in the last few days. It has not been an easy campaign for her and people are so quick to see fault and write her off. Many of the problems are of her making. She seems to be coming back from them, however.
I hope she puts some of the lessons learned to good use if she ends up the nominee.
It has come to this.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), needs to throw in the towel before she causes any more mayhem. The Smoking Gun tells us that a supporter of hers viciously stabbed his brother-in-law, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the stomach during an argument over their respective candidacies.
Come on now, can’t we all get along?
Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton debating in Texas on Thursday. (Photo by Deborah Cannon)
Washington Post Columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote a column on Wednesday questioning the Barack Obama phenomenon. We will see more pieces like this, especially if Sen. Obama, (D-IL), becomes the Democratic Party nominee.
Let me attempt to refute some of his more salient points.
I don’t want to say Samuelson’s column is ridiculous. He does raise some interesting questions about Obama. He says in The Obama Delusion that he came away from an encounter with Obama at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention “deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship.”
Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.
As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I’m dealing with known quantities. They’ve been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.
By Samuelson’s standard, only people who have held national office and are well known should put themselves forward as candidates for President of the United States. Although George W. Bush came from a prominent family and was governor of a state, not much was known about him (we still don’t know about his going AWOL from his Air National Guard units during the Vietnam War; his drug use during much of his adult life; and other criminal behavior and activities before he allegedly found religion). His entire adult life (besides drinking and drugging) was spent as his father’s enforcer in the deep background.
Hillary Clinton is known to the whole world, which is both her strength and weakness. Many voters are rejecting her precisely because they know her so well. Obama, besides being a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, was a state legislator for eight years.
Samuelson criticized the plans that Obama has put forth about what he would like to do in office.
If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.
He is right. Obama’s ideas are quite pedestrian. But Mrs. Clinton’s plans are only slightly less so. Obama’s supporters either cannot see, or refuse to see, the conventional politician right before them. They think it’s a revolution when, in fact, all it is is an election and a man running as hard as he can to win an office.
But, that said, I don’t believe it’s Obama’s job to lay out a plan on what he intends to do as president. That’s not part of the job description. I think most people trot out these plans because they think it’s required of them.
Did Bush talk about ‘unitary executive’ doctrine when he ran for President? No. He talked about being a ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘a uniter, not a divider.’ We know now that both tropes are blatant lies.
A lot of people remember now Bill Clinton’s presidency fondly (willingly forgetting the impeachment and other assorted sordid goings on during those eight years) but what plans did he run on and did he implement them?
One of the things that a leader has to do is inspire and any other year I would have been inspired by Mrs. Clinton. Next to Obama, however, she depresses me.
I think Obama will be a better president and part of the reason is that he’s new and fresh and does not carry the scars and baggage of two decades of warring with Republicans. With Mrs. Clinton, we’re going to have to refight all the old fights.
And it helps that Obama is an inspirational leader.
Please, don’t get me started on McCain. As you all know by now, I think Sen. John McCain is a corrupt and immoral hypocrite.
Senator Barack Obama at a rally in Houston on Tuesday night. Photo (From nytimes.com is by Rick Bowmer/Associated Press
An impressive tenth straight victory for Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He cut across every demographic in Wisconsin and bested his opponent in areas that were once weaknesses.
The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), hasn’t thrown in the towel. Not Yet. Remember the Alamo! She said. See you in Texas, she said. She’ll work the night shift, she said. It’s about deeds, not words, she said. Besides, don’t listen to those sweet words because Obama plagiarized some of them, she said.
Hmmnn.
An argument could be made that all these victories suddenly put Ohio in play and Texas may even be winnable for Sen. Obama.