Obama's Work Claim

This strory is over a year old so I don't know why Newsweek is running it. My understanding is that both Obama and his wife received extensive scholarships to attend Harvard. there was little cost to them.

Well, some assertions may have been a bit of a stretch; this is an election year, after all.
There were, however, real bills passed, and real results realized;
--- this was no imaginary sniper fire incident --- thanks to God that part is over... hopefully forever.

All I am waiting is for the Democratic Convention, as by the time that happens, Obama will be losing even more to McCain. Then we need Hillary to step in and be the Democratic Nominee.!! That is my sincere wish and hope.

Oh please. Worked his way through college? Many of us really worked our way through college, holding down full time jobs while going to school full time at night. For Obama to claim that he worked his way through college with 2 summer jobs is disingenuous at best and an insult to those of us who really worked our way through college. As for taking credit for the passage of bills that he had little or no part in, well that just shows that he???s a typical politician, willing to spin the truth to his advantage. Though I do not plan to support Obama (or Senator McCain either for that matter) I do not have a problem with him and think he will probably do just as well as any other candidate running this election cycle (should he win the presidency.) What I have a problem with is his claim that he's a different politician and an agent of change, when all I've seen so far is more of the same.

ivote for change ! be a real man tell it to america like you were telling it to god.

Whether or not Senator Barack Obama worked his way through college, will not impress a student now. Now students want some new policies on college loans in post-Obama college year. Senator Obama has promised some financial assistance to students in exchange for community service. Your research would be helpful if you focus on how this will impact America and why he is attracting students, especially young people. If your focus is to find fault, then you are for the old politics in a time of change. Goodluck Diigbo, New York

Thank You, that was wonderful investigative reporting. I really appreciate that you are presenting the "truth" to us.

The other ads are better, he's really getting to his target market: http://www.236.com/blog/w/jake_goldman/barack_obama_currently_has_som_7479.php

Comment: I would not consider two people who graduate from Harvard Law School with over $100,000 in student loans that they just finished paying back last year people who went to school free. I also don't see how anyone would think that you become editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduate first in the class if you only got into law shool because you were there to integrate the school.

Here's a nice account of Obama's support for labor. In a campaign influenced by Walmart, instead of backing the pro-labor candidate, Obama backed a "Walmart tool."

There was little surprising about Obama's endorsement given his self-interested allegiances to the politically powerful City Hall regime of Chicago's Mayor Daley, with whom Obama shares the same big money campaign super-consultant (David Axlerod) and numerous big money sponsors.

For the first time Mayor Daley had vetoed an ordinance by his normally obedient City Council, a measure widely supported by citizens, community organizations, and labor unions in Chicago's black, Latino, and working-class wards, and he did not want the council to bring the measure up again. It was originally passed by the council under pressure from a remarkable grassroots campaign, and would have required giant retail corporations like Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, and Home Depot to pay workers a modest minimum wage of ten dollars an hour by 2010.

Wal-Mart and Target announced that they were putting a number of "big box" retail developments on hold in Chicago, and launched a preemptive public relations strike, threatening to disinvest in the city unless a "favorable business climate" was restored. Daley made a special point of wrapping his veto in the flag of racial justice, claiming it was required to permit the flowering of economic development in the city's abandoned ghetto neighborhoods.

Pat Dowell, the recipient of significant support from the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU), was running against Tillman, and Dowell had strongly criticized Tillman for siding with Daley and Wal-Mart.

Obama needed the support of the powerful campaign finance magnet Daley, and endorsed Tillman, over labor-backed Dowell.

Obama's wife Michelle then received $51,200 in 2006 for attending a few board meetings of TreeHouse Foods, a giant firm that relied heavily on its close business relationship with Wal-Mart. The granting of high-pay/do-little board posts to the spouses of politicians is a longstanding tool of the "old," corporate-dominated politics that Senator Obama claims to reject. This is not like Clinton's placement on the board of Walmart as the result of an effort to address sex discrimination in Walmart's employment practices.



Mrs. Obama resigned from her position with TreeHouse in the summer of 2007, citing "increased demands on her time" in connection with her husband's presidential campaign.



It isn't surprising that she cut her politically damaging ties to a notoriously anti-labor company that her husband was attacking Clinton about in his speeches.

One of Obama's top supporters, James Crown, serves on the board of General Dynamics, a military contractor. Crown is a member of Obama's campaign finance committee and a big superbundler for Obama. He is also on Obama's Illinois campaign committee.

Obama secured $1.3 million of an $8 million earmark request in 2006 for a program that was overseen by General Dynamics.Obama also secured $750,000 of a $3 million request for renovation of a space center named for Crown's grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Obama also secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois State Senate and an early and powerful political benefactor of Obama's, has been a dogged champion of Chicago State, and one of Senator Obama's closest friends.

Although it was not approved, Obama also requested a million dollar earmark for the hospital where his wife works and which gave his wife a huge raise.

This only tells half the story. When asked about his experience, Obama typically points to his legislative record in Illinois and rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker. The problem is that he was assigned credit for this legislation by Emil Jones, Jr., who had decided to make Obama a U.S. Senator, even though he hadn't worked on the bills before.

From www.dallasobserver.com/2008-02-28/news/obama-and-me/

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio program.

"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. senator.'"

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

"Barack Obama."

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 1-yard line and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."

Dodd called him on using the same tactics in the Senate. Apparently it's typical for Obama to take credit for work done by others.

YET ANOTHER FLIP FLOP THIS TIME ABOUT ABORTION Refer to these votes by Obama if you are looking for proof...
2001 IL Senate Bill 1095, Born Alive Infant Protection Act --Obama voted NO

2002 IL Senate Bill 1662, Born Alive Infant Protection Act --Obama voted NO

2003 IL Senate Bill 1082, Born Alive Infant Protection Act --Obama finally got the bill from the senate as he was the chaired of the health and human services committee. He held on the Bill and make sure it would not come up for a comittee vote.

This is the sort of radical ultra left stands he takes that frightens me.....who would vote against ensuriing life saving protocols for infants borned alive even...if it was during and abort process gone wrong. Who? who would do this? Why would you kill a child who have made it alive into the world against all odds.....what is the humane justification?
HE'S FLIPPED AGAIN GEEZE MAKE UP YOUR MIND !!