After (almost) 8 years of Obama...

http://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/for-the-record.109661/

That was a Dayton thread.

@God Almighty should smite @Faceman.

I don't have to try hard at all. Any mention of my family sends you into a deep dark depression.

Shit. Your biological clock ticks louder than a 40 year old woman. You two are a bunch of pussies.

When he came into office we were experiencing the greatest financial meltdown of our lifetime. He saved the country. The economy is not the greatest but if you had asked me how well it would be in the year 2016, I would have never had guessed it would be as good as it is.

Why? Because we're not rushing for approval that we can shoot a load in a woman and churn out a sprog? Can't speak for the boy, but this is not an achievement I need to compete with.

Point is, I learned long about not to disclose certain things in earshot of folks here, especially in the Red Room. You've mocked others. Take the heat.

I guess its all from our point of view.

I think the ACA is a good thing personally. At least a step in the right direction.

Domestic spying started with Bush, but yeah Obama should have worked harder to dismantle it. Civil rights have deteriorated since 9/11 and Obama has not done much to change that.

Iraq, again a horrific blunder from the Bush term that would have been difficult for anyone to salvage IMO.

I don't think staying longer or spending more troops would have made a bit of difference. Saddam kept all these fundamentalist forces in check and taking him out was like taking the lid off a boiling pot. We would pretty much have to keep permanent presence and install our own puppet government to keep things in check there... and that would still not solve the underlying problems.

I think forging new relationship with Iran is a good thing. They need not be an enemy and they could be a valuable ally in the future. I'm not one of those who thinks we should take Israel's side on every issue to the exclusion of other potential diplomatic opportunies in the region.

I agree his foreign policy has been a mixed bag. We should not have gotten involved in Syria and Libya. I'd prefer less intervention in foreign affairs actually. For whatever its worth Obama does have high approval ratings and is looked upon favorably by many people around the world, so I'm not sure the Republican talking point about lessened respect for America around the world is accurate.

Unemployment has gone down since he took office but a lot of those jobs have been leaving American shores for decades and they are never coming back, I don't know if it is fair to blame that on Obama. Overall, I think the economy is in much better shape than when he took office.

Similarly, race relations have not gotten worse because of Obama. From my point of view, social media, cellphone cameras, and the internet have only revealed how much racism still exists in this country. All this birther nonsense was not caused by Obama, it was a reaction to Obama... from older generations of white Americans who got a rude awakening in 2008 and realized the country's demographics were changing faster than they realized.

If anything, I think the Obama years will turn out to be a good thing for race relations in this country... its out in the open and we are talking about it. I think most Americans in previous decades were content to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the problem because it didn't directly affect them.

But again our points of view make this a highly subjective topic. It will probably be a few decades before history can judge the impact of Obama's presidency.
I did vote for him both times and despite his mistakes and missteps I don't regret voting for him. I don't feel like McCain or Romney would have done any better in the areas mentioned. I would support Republicans in the future, if they were more like John Kasich or Nikki Haley. But the likes of Trump and Cruz are total turn offs for me.

What heat?

I have a lot of respect for him as a person. He has been able to withstand the daily barrage of right wing garbage with strength and dignity.

As far as his accomplishments, the major things have already been mentioned. I would also add that he repealed "Don't ask, don't tell", increased CAFE standards, got two highly qualified jurists on the Supreme Court, and pushed for strong net neutrality rules.

Anyone pointed that Obama has ordered military operations in twice as many countries as Bush II did?

fixed

He told federal prosecutors not to charge people for marijuana and just pardoned a bunch of people in prison for drugs...

You type too much to pay attention.

I'd bet Obama is judged by history as a so-so President, nothing special aside from being the first black person to hold the post. The ACA remains a grossly unconstitutional over-reach of federal power, his foreign policy has mostly been ill-conceived, and on the domestic side his economy (which in any case has a lot more to do with Congress than the President) has been unimpressive. But on the other hand nothing too bad has happened on his watch and there's been some good accomplished

"She will probably go down in 2020" - damn I sure pity the man/woman/assorted species that experiences that sexual undertaking.
as for telling Federal prosecutors not to charge people for marijuana? I assume you mean in states where it's legal to begin with. Here in Georgia turn your peanut farm into a weed farm and you will be placed underneath the nearest state penitentiary - so why would it matter if the feds don't prosecute you when the state of Georgia/New Jersey/Ohio/Florida/ etc. etc. will most certainly will prosecute you?

It's baby steps, much like we had to take for gay rights. Massachusetts allowed gays to be married well ahead of the SCOTUS ruling...well before any other state.

We now have five states with legal MJ and I've heard rumbling of it being an issue on CA's ballot as well. I sure hope so, since there's nothing else worth being excited for this year

NOBODY GAVE DAYTON A REACH AROUND LIKE OBAMA DID!!!!!

/me kicks Faceman to reboot him.

Dayton having more sex than he wants, plus the return of baba really did a number.

Well...I'm way better off now than I was in 2009, but I think that has more to do with me than Prez Obama.

Bill Clinton's WIA helped out a lot though.

So we're all agreed then
Obama is a miracle from Heaven, and needs two more terms to work his sexy chocolate magic on this wonderful country.

Two more terms? It figures, "they" are always running late.

Oldfella would make a great president. When I am president I will make Oldfella a air force academy professor.

Sounds good! Work is getting kind of slow anyway. As for my take on Obama I don't know him personally so I don't know what kind of guy he is behind closed doors, but there's no reason to believe he falls short in that area (looking at you Bill Clinton!) As for his presidency he's no better or worse than any other president. Actually with our system of checks & balances no president can ever fuck things up too badly on their own, and I have no real complaints. If he influenced any things that directly affected me in a positive way (I'd have to research it I guess) than that's pretty good.

The magazine GQ did a (rather speculative) piece on how Obama will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time. I could hear the GOP scoffing as I read the title.

It cites his poise and calmness in an era when so many of our politicians act like children. That's all well and good, but I feel like it's a minimum for what a president should be, not an indicator of exceptionalism.

Great presidents require great accomplishments, and I'm at a loss. There's the ACA, yes, but I feel he could have done more to work with the GOP congress and pass better legislation, the way Clinton did.

As for Obama the man, yes, no doubt he's a great guy. But so what?

lincoln and fdr are the greastest presidents,

When he was running I was thinking "this guy is building up the image of a really great guy who is capable of great things, he wants you to think of him as a 21st century Kennedy and it's too bad it's all a show" - and I bought into the disrespect that Michelle was getting as people tried to pour her into the "angry black woman" mold. I didn't have many illusions about his policies as I was still, at that point, coasting on the momentum of "30 years a conservative" so If I thought he was likely to succeed at something, it was mostly things I wasn't hoping to see success on.

in the eight years since, my point of view has changed on a lot of things so it's made things difficult in terms of a then/now comparison but...

As a person, he actually turned out to be, in my view, every bit as impressive as he seemed to be in 2008. The way he comports himself, the right amount of dignity, the right amount of sternness and the right amount of humor has raised the bar and makes Trump look that much worse by comparison. Moreover, his family has been essentially spotless and Michele Obama has proven herself, aside from a couple of comments that right wingers seized upon, the very model of a first lady, comparable to her predecessors.

On policy, particularly in the second term, he's been the most influential president in terms of civil equality since LBJ. One can debate the methodology (but to be fair would also have to note that the expansion of direct executive action is a trend that started well before he took office) in some instances but the end results to this point are remarkable and note finished yet.

On pretty much every other count, he's been just middling, mixing poor choices which often reflected the habitual behavior of the country (throwing weight around in foreign conflicts, facilitating crony capitalism in domestic economics) with occasional minor advancements. Nothing that history will remember him for other than the Bin Laden raid.
Except
The ACA.

My feelings here have to separate the results of the law from the long term accomplishment of passing it

On the former, it has been far too much a vessel to please the private insurance companies, and far too complicated a bureaucracy to be considered good governance, and it's done far too little to actually drive down costs in that it embraced what should have been rejected and rejected what should have been embraced. For the very poor - those making too much for Medicaid previously but too little to afford private insurance, it did what it set out to do somewhat (notwithstanding the states which opted out of expanding medicaid fucked even that up) but for more well off families, it seems to have made many things worse.

On balance, it's not yet a disaster, but also not a real solution, just substituting one set of problems for the previous set.

BUT

I remain convinced of my initial view - Obama does not and never did WANT to end up with THIS bill. What he wanted was universal single payer. But he knew he'd never get that past the Republicans (and some of the Democrats) in Congress. Se he accepted a bill he knew was a mess under the thesis that when things went south again, there would already be such a huge superstructure of government involvement (which, due to Medicare and Medicaid was already pretty extensive) that the only practical way to fix the new set of problems will be single payer. That will be his lasting legacy (other than civil equality) and one he'll likely never get positive credit for...his signature accomplishment was making it necessary to approach the health care system again in 10 years or so at which time he'll get what he wanted in the first place.

Now, I'm not entirely sold on single payer, there are good and bad examples in other countries and in a non-croney capitalistic government, wonks could sort out the best practices and make a reasonably good system, but chances are pretty good that a SPS would be better than the results of the ACA. All that to say this - I can't really say whether or not the ACA was an accomplishment in and of itself because I'm not sure whether or not it was intended to be.

The only unqualified major positive has been on gay rights.

I'll give him some credit for ACA, which is a seriously compromised but minor improvement in healthcare, and for his stimulus programs which although too small and too beholden to elites is at least based on some form of economics, unlike the deficit fetishism of his opponents and that we've seen in Europe.

His record on foreign policy and on civil liberties, while not reaching the lows of his predecessor, has been very poor. He's also failed to do anything on guns.

That just goes to show how far people have lowered the bar in their expectations of the office. It's really sad.