Not Hillary bashing....

[not_too_L8]

- Obama passed legislation with Republican Senator Jim Talent to give gas stations a tax credit for installing E85 ethanol refueling pumps. The tax credit covers 30 percent of the costs of switching one or more traditional petroleum pumps to E85, which is an 85 percent ethanol/15 percent gasoline blend.

- 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.

- 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 is spent.

- Obama created the Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families in 2000 and successfully sponsored a measure to make the credit permanent in 2003. The law offered about $105 million in tax relief over three years.

- Obama joined forces with former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL) to pass the toughest campaign finance law in Illinois history. The legislation banned the personal use of campaign money by Illinois legislators and banned gifts from lobbyists. Before the law was passed, one organization ranked Illinois worst among 50 states for its campaign finance regulations.

- 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.

- 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.

- Obama has been a leading advocate for protecting the right to vote, helping to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and leading the opposition against discriminatory barriers to voting.

- In the U.S. Senate, Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act to increase penalties for mortgage fraud and provide more protections for low-income homebuyers, well before the current subprime crisis began.

- Obama sponsored legislation to combat predatory payday loans, and he also was credited with lobbied the state to more closely regulate some of the most egregious predatory lending practices.

- Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 to provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.

- Obama worked to pass a number of laws in Illinois and Washington to improve the health of women. His accomplishments include creating a task force on cervical cancer, providing greater access to breast and cervical cancer screenings, and helping improve prenatal and premature birth services.

- Obama has introduced and helped pass bipartisan legislation to limit the abuse of no-bid federal contracts.

- Obama and Senator Feingold (D-WI) took on both parties and proposed ethics legislation that was described as the "gold standard" for reform. It was because of their leadership that ending subsidized corporate jet travel, mandating disclosure of lobbyists' bundling of contributions, and enacting strong new restrictions of lobbyist-sponsored trips became part of the final ethics bill that was signed into law.

[Apollo11]

1. We all know Obama likes to take credit for stuff

Washington Post - March 24, 2008

After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.

As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.

"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.

To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301706.html

[not_too_L8]

15. stuff

56. S.3475 : A bill to provide housing assistance for very low-income veterans.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 6/7/2006) Cosponsors (3)
Committees: Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Latest Major Action: 6/7/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.


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57. S.3554 : A bill to establish an alternative diesel standard, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 6/21/2006) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Environment and Public Works
Latest Major Action: 6/21/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.


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58. S.3627 : A bill to prohibit the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy from selling, distributing, or transferring elemental mercury, to prohibit the export of elemental mercury, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 6/29/2006) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: Senate Environment and Public Works
Latest Major Action: 6/29/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

[easy_b94]

2. Obama is the man.....Also easy_b is the man :)

[papau]

3. Obama is dead in any debate on bipartisan accomplishment - unlike Hillary he does not

actually have much to claim as his for his US Senate time.

But perhaps we're just electing a Illinois Legislato (which is the vast bulk of your post).


http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/gqeditors/2008/04/karl-rove-likes.html

What did you think of the red-phone 3 a.m. ad?
It was a gutsy, dangerous move. She figured out that she had to do something to raise the issue of: Is he fit to be president? And this was a way to do it. I happened to be in Texas a week before the ad popped, and all of her surrogates were hitting him pretty hard on the thinness of his experience. They were pretty brutal. And this ad sort of fed into that.

Isn't that the kind of ad you would have done?

Uh, look, that's the problem. She can't run an ad—you know, the more powerful ads she can't run against him, because she's afraid of looking too moderate. He's got essentially… His argument is twofold. "Vote for me because I'll bring Republicans and Democrats together; we're not red states, blue states, we're the United States." And second of all—and he said this most passionately in the Wisconsin victory speech: "There are big issues facing the country, and it requires leadership and energy to solve them." Well, the two best counters to those are Hillary saying, "I've actually worked with Republicans and Democrats to get things done." Or McCain saying, even more pointedly, "On all the big issues where Republicans and Democrats have come together, I've been in the middle of bringing them together, and you've been way out there on the fringe. When we pulled together the Gang of Fourteen, you were out on the fringe. When we pulled together a bipartisan answer on the terrorist-surveillance program, you were way out there on the fringe. When Democrats and Republicans, regardless of where they were on the war, came together to give our troops everything they needed while they were in combat, you were way out there on the fringe." Now, she can do some of that, because she's actually tried to work with Republicans over the years. He has not since he got there. He's been coolly detached and sitting on the side. His fingerprints are on, at most, a couple of small items. And then, on the leadership issue, she can say, "Look, I've been in the middle of these big battles. I've been providing the leadership. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. But at least I've been involved." And McCain will be able to sharpen that even more.

[not_too_L8]

6. Bosnia, Kosovo

Like she negotiated the opening of Kosovo borders that where opened 2 days before she went there...and we all know about her experience with sniper fire.

[papau]

8. 2 weeks later Ron Brown's plane shot down at same Bosnia airport - and one can negociate w/o being

on site

[not_too_L8]

11. Her meetings with officials appear to have been brief.

"After visiting refugees and gaining a first-hand assessment of the situation, the first lady had intense talks with President Gligorov and Prime Minister Georgievski,” Holbrooke said in a written statement. “In these talks, one in the Presidential Palace, another in the residence of the American Ambassador, Christopher Hill, Mrs. Clinton pressed the Macedonian government to fully open the border so that Kosovar Albanian refugees could flee the war zone to safety.”

The trip seemed more designed to gain media coverage than to conduct substantive diplomacy, however. Clinton visited the area for less than 12 hours, arriving at 9:20 a.m. and leaving at 5:45 p.m. According to the itinerary provided to news organizations, she arrived at the camp and was briefed on relief efforts at 10 a.m., toured the camp at 11 a.m., and met with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at 1:30 p.m.

Her meetings with officials appear to have been brief. Holbrooke is correct on some of the details he mentions, but the meetings all took place within the space of a single afternoon. The itinerary shows photo opportunities for the traveling press at 2:20 p.m. with Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence; at 2:50 p.m. with President Kiro Gligorov at the president's residence; and at 3:30 p.m. with first lady Gligorov at the president’s residence.

The New York Times reported that her visit to the camp was “so carefully scripted that administration officials chose which refugees Mrs. Clinton would speak with.”


Clinton was concerned about the plight of the people of Kosovo, but almost nothing to indicate she was a major player in border negotiations. We'll give her the benefit of the doubt for traveling to Macedonia and meeting with officials, but the way her statement is phrased, it makes her sound primarily responsible for the United States' efforts in the region.

[not_too_L8]

13. Sorry to all for getting off track...back to the positive

1. S.CON.RES.42 : A concurrent resolution recognizing the historical significance of the Juneteenth Independence Day, and expressing the sense of Congress that history should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 6/15/2005) Cosponsors (2)
Committees: Senate Judiciary
Latest Major Action: 6/15/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
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2. S.CON.RES.53 : A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that any effort to impose photo identification requirements for voting should be rejected.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 9/20/2005) Cosponsors (23)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 9/20/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

[H2O Man]

4. Nominated.

Very good.

[liberaldem4ever]

5. K & R!!

[PA Democrat]

7. K & R

[Voice for Peace]

9. K&R He's a good man.

[not_too_L8]

18. stay positive..thanks

[Marrah_G]

10. K & R from a Cinton supporter.

Thank you for a positive thread !

[bigtree]

12. kick for Not Hillary bashing....

:kick:

[not_too_L8]

14. more +++

S.697 : A bill to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to improve higher education, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 4/5/2005) Cosponsors (2)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Latest Major Action: 4/5/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.


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. S.1180 : A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to reauthorize various programs servicing the needs of homeless veterans for fiscal years 2007 through 2011, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 6/7/2005) Cosponsors (6)
Committees: Senate Veterans' Affairs
Latest Major Action: 6/9/2005 Senate committee/subcommittee actions. Status: Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Hearings held.



S.1426 : A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to reauthorize and extend provisions relating to contaminant prevention detection, and response.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 7/19/2005) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: Senate Environment and Public Works
Latest Major Action: 7/19/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. Good, positive post. Thanks from a HRC supporter.

Let's drown all the crap by floating positive posts to the top.

[not_too_L8]

17. thanks...n/t