Effluvia Within’s Weblog

For those of you who watched Sarah Palin’s speech Wendensday night witnessesed a most telling bit of diatribe about her views. It showed us that she can distort the facts and deliver bitter, sharply abusive, and critical attacks with the rest of her ilk. Her speech contained absolutely nothing of substance on the conditions, and resolutions needed in this country and the world. Not one serious word was mentioned about the state of the economy, not one serious word about where they would lead our country, her speech focused entirely on bashing the Left and convincinging her minions to join in unison. It was very reminiscent of a bitter prom queen trying to belittle her rivals.

Her vitriolic speech touted her administrative experience was superior than that of the Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Lets do some serious camparisons of Obama’s Legislative Record  to Sarah Palin’s Record.

Obama’s accomplishments since 1991, when he graduated from Harvard Law School second in his class. Senator Obama fought for universal children’s health care in Illinois. Uninsured low to mid-income working families/single parents can now get medical coverage for their kids at low monthly payment.
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.

Sarah Palin’s Record when it comes to matters like trade, immigration, Social Security and Medicare, her record is mostly a blank slate as opposed to Obama’s.

GOV. SARAH PALIN, Republican vice presidential nominee

Palin, 44, was elected governor of Alaska in 2006 and will have served two years by the end of 2008.

Prior to that, Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, for six years, from 1996 to 2002. She was on the city council for four years before that.

Wasilla has a strong-mayor form of government. The mayor breaks ties on the city council and acts as the city administrator. When Palin took office in 1996, the pay was $68,000. In 2000, Wasilla had a population of 5,469, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. It is located near the city of Anchorage.

During her tenure as mayor, Palin focused on increasing funding for basic infrastructure.

During her bid for re-election in 1999, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Palin “counts among her successes the recently opened Fred Meyer store, the passage of a $5.5 million road and sewer bond, and the near halving of property taxes from 2 mills to 1.2 mills, the equivalent of an $80-a-year drop in taxes on a $100,000 home.” Palin also cut the budget of the city’s museum, and all three of the museum’s employees quit in protest.

Terms limits prevented her from running for mayor again in 2002. Instead, she ran for Alaska lieutenant governor and lost. In 2003, Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed her to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served about a year before leaving the commission and blowing the whistle on fellow Republicans for conflicts of interest and conducting campaign work on public time.

In 2006, she ran for governor, defeating the incumbent Murkowski in a primary and then winning the general. She took office on Dec. 4, 2006, and will have held office for two years a month after Election Day.

When she was in her 20s, Palin spent about two years as a TV sports reporter from 1987 to 1989. She has also been part-time small business owner with her husband while she held office in Wasilla, according to the Almanac of American Politics. The Palins had a commercial fishing operation and a snow machine, watercraft, and all-terrain vehicle business.

TV reporter: Two years.

Small business owner: Nine years, includes part-time work.

Municipal legislative experience: Four years.

Municipal executive experience: Six years.

State commission experience: One year.

State executive experience: Two years.

From Politifact.com