Vicariously I

Ok I'm not sure where to put this but I have a few people emailing me to send them the accomplishments of the Obamas. An old friend who now lives in Texas sent me this email showing all the things the McCains have "done" either political or not, including stuff from school, Cindy being the chairwoman of her fathers beer distributing firm, pretty much anything that could be construed as "good".

Now, my friend has come along way from his "Obama is evil" crap and he wants to hear about what they have done because he admits he has only heard negative things. (I wonder where he gets his news from. )

Anyway I was hoping people could direct me to any articles or sites that have listed things the Obamas have done. I can gather things here and there myself but I'd love to compile a complete list if I could.

If this shouldn't be in this thread move it to where it should be.

Thanks

__________________
"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

anhailla

You can start here...I can also post more in detail about his legislative accomplishments/experience



PolitiFact | Obama's 20 years of experience


Obama's 20 years of experience
By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 12:31 p.m.



SUMMARY: Though often described as an upstart or newcomer, Barack Obama has a solid resume in public service work — 20 years' worth, in fact.

In a race where his opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton has touted "35 years of experience" over and over, Sen. Barack Obama has begun to cite his own experience of 20 years. At a debate in Cleveland, moderator Brian Williams asked Obama to respond to Clinton's charges that he was heavy on oratory and light on action. Obama said:

"You know, she characterizes it typically as speeches, not solutions, or talk versus action. And as I said in the last debate, I've spent 20 years devoted to working on behalf of families who are having a tough time and they're seeking out the American dream. That's how I started my career in public service."

The voters will decide if the gap between 20 and 35 years is significant, but we find Obama's claim of two decades of experience to be accurate. We also find that just about all of his experience is in the field of public service, education or civil rights law.

For our examination, we looked at Obama's official congressional biography, his professional resume and news articles chronicling his political rise in Illinois.

If Obama wins election and takes office in January 2009, he will have served four years in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois.

Before that, he was a state senator in Illinois for eight years. He was also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School during that time.

His schedule from the school shows him teaching two or three classes in the fall and winter terms — usually Constitutional Law III: Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process; Voting Rights and the Democratic Process; and Current Issues in Racism and the Law. In the spring, he would attend the Illinois legislative sessions. It seems a fairly safe bet that, like most legislators, his constituent work — fielding phone calls and helping people in his district — went on year-round. Press reports indicate he would do a small amount of private law practice during the summer. So that's eight years as a public official in Illinois, bringing our total to 12 years.

To get to 20 years of experience, we still need eight years from Obama's career prior to holding public office. Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He worked for a year as a financial analyst; in his memoir he said he spent his days behind a computer terminal, "checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages across the globe" and feeling like "a spy behind enemy lines." He gave up that job to go into community organizing, work he felt was more important politically. He worked three years as a community organizer in Chicago before going to Harvard Law School. We won't count the junior-level business experience as working "on behalf of families who are having a hard time," but the community organizing work does seem to fit the bill. That brings his work experience to 15 years.

At Harvard, Obama began to receive national attention. He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and was recruited heavily by law firms around the country. (He met his future wife, Michelle Robinson, as a summer associate at the Chicago firm Sidley Austin.)

He graduated in 1991. He ran Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive, for much of 1992, and then accepted a position with the Chicago firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland. The firm specialized in political and civil rights work and neighborhood economic development work. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago in 1993. He was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996 and took office in 1997, so his full-time work after law school comprises five years. That gets us to 20 years.

(During these years, Obama also worked on his career as an author. His memoir Dreams from my Father was published in 1994 and reprinted after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. A follow-up, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, was published in 2006. His personal financial disclosure statements show that those books earned him $1.8-million in 2005 and 2006, the majority of his income.)

The other part of Obama's claim is that his experience is "on behalf of families who are having a tough time and are seeking out the American dream." We take that to mean his experience is broadly in the field of public service, and that too is an accurate claim. The bulk of Obama's professional experience is either in elected office or working for a nonprofit, a university or a civil rights law firm

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...either I go, or that wallpaper does.

Oscar Wilde

Vicariously I

[quote=anhailla;254703]You can start here...I can also post more in detail about his legislative accomplishments/experience


Thx and if you could post that, that would be great. I was also hoping to get information on Michelle.

__________________
"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

anhailla

Michelle will be easy...I am trying to get the most objective source I can about his legislative stuff...so you can send your source to your friend.

I'm trying to get it off the Library of Congress site, but also trying to do something else...so I am a little pokey

__________________
...either I go, or that wallpaper does.

Oscar Wilde

HarperLee

I know it is important to be positive here if there is a chance your friend might change his mind, but you could be generous and point out Cindy McCain's "accomplishment" in overcoming her
addition to prescription drugs -- without serving hard time:

A Tangled Tale of Addiction, Washington Post
September 12, 2008

washingtonpost.com

__________________
Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

Vicariously I

He doesn't really support McCain either and to be honest I'm starting to think this is a lost either way but I will keep at it with him and see what happens.

__________________
"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

poetrychic

here are a couple of threads from back in january that have some interesting items in them:

some interesting obama facts, you know, for that personal touch

obama's so-called inexperience...

hope that helps...and since your friend doesn't really support mccain, perhaps he'll ultimately vote for obama, it's definitely worth the try...good luck

__________________
"it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation, yes we can!"

Vicariously I

Thanks and.....thanks.

__________________
"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

HarperLee

Good luck! I may have to curtail all interaction with other humans here in Bible City for a few months.

This morning my gay hair stylest told me he is 51% for McCain.

He hates Obama because he is arrogant -- the out-of-context "bitter" quote. I told him the quote was taken out of context and that Obama's entire remark was actually very compassionate.
He said he had read the entire quote and that Obama is arrogant and condescending.

O.K.

I told him that Sarah Palin goes to a church that believes gays can be "cured." He told me that his gay websites say that is not true.

I told him the Republicans are going to take care of the very wealthy, which did not include either of us. He said that the economy is so bad we might need "to take care of the very wealthy" for awhile.
Jesus Christ! (When I am angry my nostrils flare, and I had to look at my nostril-flaring face in the mirror -- and avoid provoking him to do something mean with my hair.)

He did not argue that McCain had voted with Bush
90% of the time, but informed me that the 10%
of the time he voted against Bush was about
issues important in this election.

He was a Hillary Clinton supporter and is absolutely sure that she was a victim of sexism. By then I was feigning deafness. So what the fuck was this about? Is Hillary Clinton a gay icon like Judy
Garland?

__________________
Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

Quirkygal

Holy cow! Is he aware of McCain's stance on gay adoption?

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“My greatest weakness? It's possible I am a little too awesome.”
~ Barack Obama