Some more refutations of the “Obama lacks experience” meme that despite all contradictory evidence refuses to die.

Goon miss_chaos brings us this:

Obama has spent more time in elected public office than either Edwards or Hillary, and has made more productive use of his short time in the Senate than most career politicians.

editors note: Obama sponsored 152 bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and cosponsored another 427.

Goon drscience says:

I’ve been wondering why the hell Obama gets pinned as the ‘inexperienced’ candidate compared to other politicians.

Republicans:
Rudy “my city was attacked by terrorists and I screwed up the response” Giuliani?
Mitt “former governor of Mass and admittedly competent CEO” Romney?
Fred “former senator and TV actor” Thompson?
How about the guy who used to be a baptist minister?

Democrats:
Clinton “I spent a lot of time physically inside the white house” Clinton? Why aren’t the Republicans nominating Laura Bush?
John “I ran for VP last term and lost” Edwards?

Now, Biden and Richardson have experience but the men both own 50% shares in a fucking gaffe factory.

I don’t exactly get why the community organizer/constitutional law professor/state senator/U.S. senator is painted as such a helpless child.

but whatever. If vast experience is what it took for Cheney and Rumsfeld to engineer the Iraq War, and Clinton and Edwards to vote for it, than whatever the barometer for experience is I’m relieved Obama doesn’t have any.

Goon Fix mentions:

My encounters on this question usually go along these lines:

“He seems inexperienced in Congress.”

“Do you trust congress?”

“Not really. They’re corrupt.”

“He’s inexperienced at that.”

Why people don’t view inexperience and a wish to change a system you already don’t like and don’t trust as a good thing is beyond me.

All of these are valid and awesome and ought to be spread around.

Mark Ambinder of the Atlantic brings us this:

With the headline “Democrats Play Dirty In Charleston,” the Palmetto Scoop blog published what it said was a flier found affixed to fence posts near the Citadel, the location of Monday night’s Democratic debate.

The pamphlet, suggestive of an appeal to racial prejudice, visually links Barack Obama to Michael Dukakis and to Willie Horton, the convicted rapist whose furlough in Massachusetts became a controversial television ad during the 1988 presidential race, and it goes on to accuse Obama of favoring early release for sex offenders.

The charge in the flyer is a distortion of a 1999 state senate vote in Illinois that grant “good time” credits for convicts (i.e., those who are good prisoners are eligible to shave time off of their sentence for their good behaviour.
                           

For Mark’s report, click here.

In 2004, Joe Anthony started an unofficial fan page for Obama at http://myspace.com/barackobama . By the time Obama announced for president, there were 30,000 “friends” attached to the MySpace page. By April, it had 160,000 friends.

However, sometime in late April, Obama’s campaign took control of the site. They had tried to work with Anthony, and it was a good relationship for a while, but by accounts, the work load became too much for him, and he asked to be compensated. In addition, Obama’s team was concerned about minor factual errors on the site, and about having the candidate’s name in the hands of someone unaffiliated with the Senator.

The whole story is here. Obama’s campaign responds here.

I’m not sure where the controversy is here. More or less, even though he had good intentions, Anthony was domain squatting. Courts have routinely upheld that the owner of the name gets the domain. It sucks that he feels gilted, and I personally feel he should have been compensated in some way, but them’s the breaks.

Actually, he said “I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground.”

Fox News: We report half of the quote, you decide.

One of the most bandied about myths is that while he’s a great communicator and seems like a person of integrity, that Obama hasn’t done much while in office. However, Obama has an impressive record that he doesn’t get credit for, as this post over at a Obsidian Wings outlines. You really need to go and read the whole thing, but here’s a brief rundown:

• Nonproliferation
• Infectious Disease
• Regulating Genetic Testing
• Reducing medical malpractice suits the right way
• Energy Security
• Reforming and Saving the Auto Industry
• A Public Database of All Federal Spending and Contracts
• Katrina Aid and Relief
• Raising CAFE standards
• Lobbying Reform
• Ethics Oversight
• Veterans Healthcare
• Voter Intimidation

hilzoy made that post back on October 24, and it outlines some unattractive but incredibly important legislation Obama authored, sponsored, or co-sponsored in just two short years in the Senate. Obama sponsored 152 bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and cosponsored another 427.

Here’s an excellent point fellow Goon danno brought up all the way back in October:

I have a new counter for the “Obama is too inexperienced” angle.

List of the 10 presidents generally regarded as greatest by historians, and the prior legislative/executive political experience of each:

1. George Washington - First Continental Congress
2. Abraham Lincoln - 4 terms, Ill. House; 1 term, U.S. House
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt - 1 term, N.Y. State Senate; 1 term, N.Y. Governor
4. Thomas Jefferson - Va. House; Continental Congress; Va. Governor; Secretary of State
5. Theodore Roosevelt - 2 terms, N.Y. State Assembly; 1/2 term, N.Y. Governor; 6 mo. V.P.
6. Woodrow Wilson - 1/2 term, N.J. Governor
7. Andrew Jackson - 1 term, U.S. House; 1 yr., U.S. Senate
8. James Polk - 7 terms, U.S. House incl. 2 terms Speaker; 1 term Tenn. Governor
9. Harry Truman - 3 terms Mo. county administrator; 2 terms, U.S. Senate; 82 days V.P.
10. Dwight Eisenhower - none

Barack Obama - 2 terms, Ill. Senate; 1 term, U.S. Senate

Not to imply that I think Obama would automatically rank among the greatest Presidents, but there’s no strong bias for lengthy prior high-level political experience among them.

The Associated Press ran this story yesterday asking:

The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.

No policy speeches? What about this one on March 21? Or this one on March 2? Those are both specific foregin policy speeches. There’s this one from January 25, right after he started his exploratory committee, calling for universal health care.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Associated Freakin’ Press couldn’t look at his issues page and see the specifics of what he’s proposed thus far.

Goon TiCK found an anti-Obama facebook page entitled “Anybody that would support Barack Obama for President is a Moronic Liberal.” Just for fun, Goon Digital Disease ran down the list debunking the “claims.”

1. Republicans are Racists:” Are there people who would not vote for an African American because of race? Yes. Those same people would not vote for me because of my politics”-Barack. Hmmm. Would these be the same Republicans who nominated the first African American woman to head the state department, the same ones who stood by Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Michael Steele, Lynn Swann, and Ken Blackwell?

Nope, they aren’t the same republicans. When most of those people were chosen it was a different party. Now it’s being headed by hard core evangelicals and quite a few of them aren’t what people would call racially friendly.

2. Barack and wife Michelle make in the $500,000s each year. To be true Democrats, they should donate all but 40,000 of it to the poor in order to provide for their living wage.

This is tripe, if all Republicans did as their faith claims, they should be giving a lot more to charity and actually helping the poor.

3. Michelle Obama sits on the board of a company who has Wal Mart as its number one customer. Wal-Mart is supposed to be the biggest capitalist nemisis to libs.

So she serves on the board of TreeHouse Foods. They sell food to LOTS OF COMPANIES. Sorry this is just a stupid arguement. It’s like saying “Because he drives a car that runs on gasoline he must be in the pocket of big oil”.

4. Barack used the money that he got from you schlubs who bought his book to purchase a costly Illinois mansion in a scandalous land deal with a lobbyist.

Already addressed. From the article:

In June 2005, in what Obama now describes as a “boneheaded” mistake, Obama and Rezko’s wife bought adjacent properties on Chicago’s South Side, closing the deals on the same day. Seven months later, wanting a bigger yard for his $1.65 million house, Obama bought a slice of the Rezko property for $104,500.

“There’s no doubt that this was a mistake on my part. ‘Boneheaded’ would be accurate,” Obama said in a telephone interview Friday. “There’s no doubt I should have seen some red flags in terms of me purchasing a piece of property from him.”

5. Barack is a flip-flopp on many issues and stays in the middle on such matters as gay marriage and Iraq.

Provide sources or else it’s more bullshit.

6. Michelle Obama feels as though she does not make enough money.

Does anyone feel they make enough money? Do you know what all her job involves and her exact pay, as well as how much time she has to invest? Do you know what the pay scale is for someone of her position at various other hospitals? If it’s below that rate of pay then yes, she doesn’t make enough money.

7. Barack is half-white. He chose to be black and unfairly taps himself as being African American, something that is a fraud. He chose to be black because that is the half of him that he could exploit for personal and political gain.

What sort of retarded comment is this? He chose to look black?! what the fuck, is he Micheal Jackson with some wierd skin disorder and is putting on makeup to appear more black?

8. Barack’s wife slipped on Oprah by saying something along the lines “now that we have more resources because of the book deal”

Ummm this is true, the book sells, they make extra cash. He doesn’t have nearly the kinds of funds any of the other candidates have. He talks about how little he was able to raise in one of his races being only around $250,000 when they needed at least a million to compete with the guy he was running against who had over $300 million.

9. Barack is an admitted cocaine user.

Former cocaine user. So was Bush, so were a lot of people in the 70’s and 80’s. Before that there were tons of cocaine users back before the FDA was created as well. He made a mistake, he talks about it and is freely open about it.

10. Barack’s voting record and phony image of centrism are contradictory to one another. He voted against John Roberts to be on the Supreme Court, against an “English as the National Language” bill, and against the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

And there is fault in any of this?! Roberts is a right wing judge appointed to Chief Justice, I’d side with Obama. “English as the National Language” bill is just retarded flag burning strawman crap; we’re a fucking melting pot, get over it. Anyone against the Patriot Act has a 99.9% chance of getting my vote due to the fact that it’s not constitutional.

11. Barack is an undercover cigarette-smoker who seeks to hide his disgusting habit so it won’t tear down his godly-saviour image.

His wife said she outed him to the media to get him to stop. He knows it’s bad, and he’s trying to quit… OMG JUST LIKE A BUNCH OF OTHER AMERICANS!?! OH NOES WHAT WILL WE DO!

12. Barack was educated at a radical muslim school in Indonesia during four years of his early life.

This is such a lie and so full of bullshit. This wasn’t fact checked at all.