I found this extensive and useful comment on Digg today, in response to one of the many conservative posters there who deride Obama for his supposed lack of accomplishments.

[added later:] PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS:
Obama holds assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Veterans’ Affairs, and he is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

————————-

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In August 2005, he traveled to Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. The trip focused on strategies to control the world’s supply of conventional weapons, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction as a first defense against potential terrorist attacks.

Following meetings with U.S. military in Kuwait and Iraq in January 2006, Obama visited Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories.

He left for his third official trip in August 2006, traveling to South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. In a nationally televised speech at the University of Nairobi, he spoke forcefully on the influence of ethnic rivalries and corruption in Kenya.

Obama worked with Russ Feingold (D–WI) to eliminate gifts of travel on corporate jets by lobbyists to members of Congress and require disclosure of bundled campaign contributions under the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act”, which was signed into law in September 2007.

He joined Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in sponsoring S. 453, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, including fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls, as witnessed in the 2006 midterm elections.

Obama also introduced the “Iraq War De-Escalation Act”, a bill to cap troop levels in Iraq, begin phased redeployment, and remove all combat brigades from Iraq before April 2008.<68>

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored with Kit Bond (R-MO) an amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges, and calling for a review by the Government Accountability Office following reports that the procedure had been used inappropriately to reduce government costs.

joined Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in introducing legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.A provision from the Obama-Hagel bill was passed by Congress in December 2007 as an amendment to the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill.

Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to provide one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries. After passing both houses of Congress with bipartisan majorities, SCHIP was vetoed by President Bush in early October 2007, a move Obama said “shows a callousness of priorities that is offensive to the ideals we hold as Americans.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

THESE ARE BARACK’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE U.S. SENATE TO DATE:

** First legislation, the HOPE Act, which increased Pell Grants to $5100, and later joined Senator Kennedy on the Higher Education legislation that passed July 20, by a vote of 78-18. That legislation also included funding for Predominantly Black Colleges to assist with counseling, tutoring and other needs of low income students. It also creates the Teaching Residency Act which will create a school-based teacher preparation program in high needs schools to provide each teacher with a mentor, content instruction, classroom management skills, a master’s degree and state certification, and a 2 year follow-up program.

**The Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006
is an act that requires the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007 on a website maintained by the Office of Management and Budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006

**The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act
Authored by U.S. Sens. Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Barack Obama (D-IL), the Lugar-Obama initiative expands U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons. It also expands the State Department’s ability to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction.
Signed into Law on January 11, 2007.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/chrisblask/gGCPsK

**The 2007 Government Ethics Bill
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/53_17/news/19664-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS
http://www.commonblog.com/story/2007/9/14/164837/331

** The “Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-2125

** S116 - Summer Learning demonstration project to provide summer learning grants and encourage new teaching methods.
http://www.pasesetter.org/demonstrationPrograms/nasd.html

and this one, moved out of committee just a few days ago:
Obama’s Global Poverty Act of 2007, passed out of committee just a few days ago
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA) today hailed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s passage of the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), which requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive policy to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief, and coordination with the international community, businesses and NGOs. This legislation was introduced in December. Smith and Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) sponsored the House version of the bill (H.R. 1302), which passed the House last September.
http://obama.senate.gov/

Amendments, that have all passed:

S.Amdt.159 to S.Con.Res.18 - To prevent and, if necessary, respond to an international outbreak of the avian flu.

S.Amdt.390 to H.R.1268 - To provide meal and telephone benefits for members of the Armed Forces who are recuperating from injuries incurred on active duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom.

S.Amdt.670 to H.R.3 - To provide for Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) refueling capability at new and existing refueling station facilities to promote energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

S.Amdt.808 to H.R.6 - To establish a program to develop Fischer-Tropsch transportation fuels from Illinois basin coal.

S.Amdt.851 to H.R.6 - To require the Secretary to establish a Joint Flexible Fuel/Hybrid Vehicle Commercialization Initiative, and for other purposes.

S.Amdt.1362 to S.1042 - To require a report on the Department of Defense Composite Health Care System II.

S.Amdt.1453 to S.1402 - To ensure the protection of military and civilian personnel in the Department of Defense from an influenza pandemic, including an avian influenza pandemic.

S.Amdt.2301 to H.R.3010 - To increase funds to the Thurgood Marshall Legal Educational Opportunity Program and to the Office of Special Education Programs of the Department of Education for the purposes of expanding positive behavioral interventions and supports.

S.Amdt.2605 to S.2020 - Expressing the sense of the Senate that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should immediately address issues relating to no-bid contracting.

S.Amdt.2930 to S.2349 - To clarify that availability of legislation does not include nonbusiness days.
S.Amdt.3144 to S.Con.Res.83 - To provide a $40 million increase in FY 2007 for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program and to improve job services for hard-to-place veterans

S. Amdt 41 to S. 1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

———————————————-

Barack has Written a total of 890 Bills and Co-sponsored Another 1096 since he started serving in the U.S. Senate.

[added later:] PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”

The original list comes from here.

Actuarial tables suggest that John McCain has between a 14.2% and 15.1% chance of dying in his first term of office should he be elected president. The chances rise to 1 in 3 of him dying before the end of a second term.

“And that doesn’t factor in individual medical history, such as McCain’s battles with potentially lethal skin cancer,” as the article points out.

Why is it that Jon Stewart seems to be the few people in the media doing what journalists are supposed to do — speak truth to power? And he’s a comedian.

Despite John McCain’s ongoing assurances that Sarah Palin was thoroughly vetted (and this is rather at odds with the fact that the vetters didn’t head up to Alaska until after he’d announced Palin as his running mate) interesting and disturbing news continues to emerge.

This is from the New York Times:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support … In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”

She also had an, um, interesting management style for the mayor of a teeny-weeny town of 5,000:

Anchorage Daily News (AK) - October 26, 1996

NEW WASILLA MAYOR ASKS CITY’S MANAGERS TO RESIGN IN LOYALTY TEST
The newly elected mayor of Wasilla has asked all of the city’s top managers to resign in order to test their loyalty to her administration. Mayor Sarah Palin sent the resignation requests Thursday to Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, public works director Jack Felton, finance director Duane Dvorak and Mary Ellen Emmons, the head of libraries. A fifth director — John Cooper, who oversaw the city museum — resigned earlier this month after Palin eliminated his position. Palin also…

Sarah Barracuda indeed.

As an avid devotee of Battlestar Galactica, the story of the last remnants of humankind voyaging through the galaxy, pursued by their nemesis, the Cylons, in search of the “13th colony” — Earth — I often found myself thinking “Laura Roslin for President!”

Roslin was the education secretary and the last surviving member of the cabinet when the Cylons nuked humanity’s home worlds, and so was thrust unprepared into the role of President of the Twelve Colonies, where, it must be said, she proved to be a wily and resourceful leader. Similarly, Palin (note the similarity of the names Palin and Roslin is a woman with no political experience on a national level, who may end up being thrust into the position of Vice President, or even President, should McCain be elected and should anything befall him in his term of office.

The comparison with Roslin makes me like her more (funny how the associative mind works) although I’m vastly more comfortable with the idea of Roslin as president in a scripted TV show than I am with the possibility of Palin being President or even VP in real life. The possibility in fact makes my mind reel.

We already know that Tighe is one of the eleven humanoid Cylon models that we know about — might this mean that Palin is the twelfth?

So, the rumors are rife that Sarah Palin is not actually the mother of her fifth child, and that she’s covering up for her oldest daughter’s pregnancy. The mainstream news outlets don’t seem to have taken this up yet, but various blogs detail the “revelations.”

Of course everything is conjecture at present, although some of the facts (if they are indeed facts — they simply get repeated over and over without any source being given) are most peculiar. One of the most balanced accounts is here.

There’s nothing conclusive about Palin not “looking pregnant” at seven or eight months, or that she didn’t announce her pregnancy publicly until her eighth month, although in a photograph dated six weeks before the birth (Superbowl, Feb 3) she looks utterly non-gravid. Some say that a slim woman would not be able to hide a pregnancy, while others say that she’s so fit a pregnancy wouldn’t show. In any event, if she was faking a pregnancy wouldn’t she fake a bulge? Nor is there anything conclusive about her daughter having vanished from sight for five months with mono. Maybe she just doesn’t like school.

And it’s much less likely (although not impossible) that a young woman would give birth to a child with Down’s syndrome.

But what is very peculiar — and potentially very damaging damaging — is the behavior attributed to Palin on the day she gave birth. This is an account that so far has gone unchallenged.

According to the story doing the rounds, she was in Texas when she claimed her water broke. Instead of heading straight to a hospital to give birth, she took an eight hour flight back to Alaska, without informing the flight crew that she was in labor, and without them noticing that she was in labor. Once she reached Alaska, instead of going to a hospital in Anchorage, she went to a clinic in her home town. Generally births get quicker and easier with repeated deliveries, and it’s extraordinary that she managed to make this journey while in labor, without giving birth in some awkward location such as the aisle of a plane.

It’s also peculiar that she would even be flying in her third trimester, although she’s a very fit woman and who knows what her doctor advised. But to be on a flight, in labor, without alerting the flight crew to her condition, would be grossly irresponsible — if that’s indeed what happened.

In the account I linked to, which was a good one because it resisted jumping to conclusions, I don’t recall there being any concern expressed for Palin’s daughter. This news, if it has reached her, must be painfully distressing whether it is true or not.

Part of me suspects that this is all a plot by Carl Rove along the following lines.

1. Choose a grossly underqualified candidate for VP who is going to be instantly attacked for her gossamer-thin resume.
2. Put a highly damaging but untrue allegation into circulation.
3. Watch critics take the bait and run with it.
4. Pull out the absolute proof that the allegations are untrue.
5. Watch popular support surge for the tortured heroine.
6. Never allow any criticism to pass thereafter without saying “Hasn’t she been through enough already!”

I will accept Amazon gift vouchers or cold, hard cash as a reward if I turn out to be correct.

Sarah and Bristol, I wish you well.

It’s really fascinating to observe how two people can have two very different views of the same third party. The human mind is very good at being selective by focusing on some things and ignoring others. Two letters about Obama in today’s New York Times are a good illustration of that.

The immediate cause of the letters was David Brooks saying that Obama’s accomplishments lie in the future. He’s a conservative, and Obama’s a liberal, so of course this was not meant as a compliment about Obama’s potential, but as a criticism of Obama’s alleged lack of accomplishments in the past.

One writer responded as follows (I’ve changed the format for the sake of clarity, but the words are unchanged):

Mr. Obama’s accomplishments include

• overcoming the challenges of growing up with a single mother
• on a small income,
• heading The Harvard Law Review,
• doing community organizing instead of taking a lucrative job,
• writing two best sellers at a young age (before running for president)
• and inspiring an apathetic, disaffected generation not only to vote but also to truly feel part of the democratic process.

Of course one could have added that he became a law professor, beat an extraordinary field of Democratic candidates for president, became a member of the Illinois State Senate, sponsored 233 health care and health bills, 125 poverty and public assistance bills, and 112 crimes, corrections, and death penalty bills — to name but a few — and did all this despite being black in a country where skin color can be a major impediment to progress. But letters have to be kept short, I guess.

To any unbiased person, I would have thought that the son of an immigrant achieving all this in the face of financial and cultural handicaps is the epitome of the American Dream. But bias is a powerful thing. A second writer ignores, is unaware of, or simply doesn’t care about those accomplishments, and writes:

As did his wife, Michelle, Senator Obama tried to take an otherwise ordinary life and turn it into something exceptional. Does Senator Obama’s going to college, getting married, raising a family and, generally, reaching the age of 47 really represent an outstanding accomplishment? I think not.

Being the first black major-party nominee for president is Senator Obama’s only real accomplishment.

According to this writer, Senator Obama has done little but grow up and be a normal adult. He’s had an “ordinary life.” Oh, and got nominated as president, which is at least a “real accomplishment.” But the rest simply didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. If you’re a certain kind of Republican.

It’s a difficult practice, and one not much encouraged in these partisan times, to praise one’s opponents. It’s not something I do much myself, and that I should do more. I know I’m at least capable of it. But it’s astonishing to me that someone would go so far in dismissing real accomplishments in what I could only call an extraordinary life.

I’d heard Sarah Palin* put forward as a possible running mate for McCain, but hadn’t heard anything about her or given her much thought (I’d guessed it would be Romney or Lieberman), but as soon as McCain’s pick was announced I realized that he’d almost certainly chosen her in an attempt to woo some of Hillary’s disaffected supporters (some of whom, to be frank, strike me as being batshit-crazy).

Sure, she’s an evangelical Christian who wants creationism taught in schools, and she’s pro-life, but so are Brownback and Huckabee. And she has zero experience of national politics and only a two-year track-record as governor of the third-smallest state in the Union (by population, if you exclude reindeer).

That’s an extraordinarily thin resume for someone who would become president if anything happened to McCain, a 72-year-old man with a history of cancer. McCain thus makes any argument for Obama’s alleged lack of experience more difficult to sustain without appearing hypocritical. This woman would be, as the phrase has it, one heartbeat away from the presidency.

So it would seem she’s been chosen entirely because she’s a woman. Now choosing amongst a field of candidates for VP on the basis of gender is entirely valid — all other things being equal. But here they’re absolutely not equal. There were far more qualified candidates.

This choice strikes me as being the same kind of short-term tactical thinking that got “Brownie” — a man with a resume heavy on arranging show-jumping contests — running a vital government agency into the ground and causing the deaths of many people through his incompetence. It’s the same kind of thinking that almost got Harriet Miers (a woman with a paper-thin resume but a devotion to W) onto the supreme court. In other words this is a choice straight from the George W. Bush playbook.

By the way, now that Miers is in contempt of court and possible implicated in illegal hiring practices in the justice department, it’s interesting to note that Palin has her own legal problems. This makes fascinating reading.

(* Seriously, what’s with the 1968 beehive hairdo?)

Update: McCain has only met her once!

Cindy McCain on life’s basic necessity — a private jet:

“In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.”

Average per capita income in Arizona: $20,275.

I’m glad Biden’s on board with Obama:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is no ordinary time. This is no ordinary election. And this may be our last chance to reclaim the America we love, to restore America’s soul.

That, for me, hits the nail right on the head. As does this:

But the harsh truth is, ladies and gentlemen, you can’t change America when you boast, and these are John’s words, quote, “The most important issues of our day, I’ve been totally in agreement and support of President Bush.” Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what he said.

You can’t change America when you supported George Bush’s policies 95% of the time.

You can’t change America when you believe, and these are his own words, that “In the Bush administration we’ve made great progress economically.”

You can’t change America and make things better for our senior citizens when you signed on to Bush’s scheme of privatizing social security.

You can’t change America and give our workers a fighting chance when after 3 million manufacturing jobs disappear, you continue to support tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas.

You can’t change America and end this war in Iraq when you declare and, again, these are John’s words, “No one has supported President Bush in Iraq more than I have,” end of quote.

Ladies and gentlemen, you can’t change America, you can’t change America when you know your first four years as president will look exactly like the last eight years of George Bush’s presidency.

John McCain apparently has a special nay, magic, free pass that means he can do anything he wants and it simply doesn’t count against him — at least if you’re a Republican. See if you can figure out what it is from the following examples:

EXAMPLE 1

COLMES: Excuse me Sean. You’ve had your chance to speak, I’m up. John McCain cheated on his wife, right. Amanda? So how do we trust John McCain? He cheated on his wife, why do you have a double standard and John McCain’s running for President? John Edwards is not. John McCain’s wife was in a car accident. John McCain’s running for President, what about his affair?

HANNITY: After five and a half years in a POW camp.
(Source)

EXAMPLE 2

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”
– McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, on McCain not knowing how many homes he owns.
(Source)

EXAMPLE 3

McCain spokeperson Nicolle Wallace, a former CBS News consultant, told the Times last night that “[t]he insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”
(source)

Did you spot it?

Yes, if you’ve been a prisoner of war it simply doesn’t matter if you’ve had an affair and divorced your wife because she’s been in a car accident and is no longer as pretty as she once was.

If you’ve been a prisoner of war it’s excusable that you have to get your aides to do research before you can say how many houses you own.

If you’ve been a prisoner of war you can :

1. Not, as agreed, remain in a cone of silence while your opponent is being questioned,
2. Lie about it,
3. Claim it’s outrageous to suggest that there’s anything wrong with all this because a former prisoner of war couldn’t possibly cheat.

Presumable if McCain becomes president and does something foolish — let’s see, like launching an unnecessary war under false pretenses, trashing the economy, or dismantling the Constitution — his supporters will be saying “Yes, but remember he was a prisoner of war!“

McCain unsure how many houses he owns - Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen - Politico.com

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you.”

Hey, so a woman has found a loophole that allows her the right to ask a judge and jury to decide whether her inclusion on the no-fly list violates her rights.

A federal judge in San Francisco had dismissed the suit, citing a law that requires all challenges to TSA orders to be filed directly in an appeals court, with no right to present evidence or convene a jury. But the appeals court majority, led by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, said the no-fly list, though maintained by the TSA, is actually compiled by a branch of the FBI, which can be sued in a trial court like most other federal agencies.

Let’s take a look at that again: “with no right to present evidence or convene a jury.”

Why this half-hearted approach to violating civil rights and demolishing the constitution? Why not just hold military tribunals and have done with it?

SF Chronicle

A brilliantly logical piece in The Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan.

According to the logic that follows from the Bush administration’s claim that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques they use do not constitute torture:

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Hilariously Kafkaesque posting from Nick Kristof today in “Malcontents Need Not Apply” in the NYT, in which he explains the workings of Beijing’s new system whereby those intending to hold protests must apply to Public Security. As Kristof points out, this saves a lot of time: where once the police had to hunt down dissenters, now they can simply arrest them when they turn up for an application form. Except that it’s not as simple as filling in a form:

Three police officers sat across from me, and the police videographer continued to film us from every angle. The officers were all cordial and professional, although one seemed to be daydreaming about pulling out my fingernails.

Then they spent nearly an hour going over the myriad rules for demonstrations. These were detailed and complex, and, most daunting, I would have to submit a list of every single person attending my demonstration. The list had to include names and identity document numbers.

jackson Browne is suing the McCain campaign because they illegally used his song “Running On Empty” without permission on an ad. The ad itself was a deliberate distortion of Obama’s perfectly accurate point that properly inflating our tires would save more oil than could be gained from McCain’s proposed policy of offshore drilling. McCain’s campaign was suggesting that a tire gauge was the sum total Obama’s energy policy, when in fact it was an illustration of the absurdity of McCain’s energy policy.

Browne, a lifelong Democrat, is seeking unspecified damages as well as a permanent injunction prohibiting the use of “Running on Empty” in any form by the McCain campaign.

So we have a deliberately deceptive ad, accompanied by stolen music. Way to go, John McCain!

This video really blows apart the myth of John McCain as a “maverick.”

Georgia is the United States’ ally.

Prime Minister Putin of Russia is not only an ally of the US but is George Bush’s friend:

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue … I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

President Sarkozy of France is not only an ally of the US but is George Bush’s “friend.”

Putin is masterminding the Russian invasion of Georgia. Sarkozy triumphantly announces that he’s helped broker peace — but discovers instead that he’s helped the Russians to justify expanding the invasion: Peace Plan Offers Russia a Rationale to Advance.

Of the three, only Putin shows any competence whatsoever. Sadly his main competence is ruthlessly advancing his own power. Sarkozy reveals himself clueless about diplomacy. Bush, as usual, was clueless about everything. He touted Sarkozy’s “good brain” but one wonders what basis a man like Bush has for judging another’s capacity for thought.

This is a rather powerful little film:

McCain’s campaigning has gone negative very quickly.

This seems like a good style of response — simple fact-checking.