Top 50 Things Accomplished by President Barack Obama

I guess I am the Paulbot and Janforgore is the environmental wing nut, but I am trying to figure out who the Tea Party ding-dong is? :-))

I'm asking people who are saying people like me are extreme to explain why specifically. Childish ad hominems aren't going to cut it. I'm seeing supposed liberals/progressives arguing in the same exact way that right-wingers argue when they need to try to rationalize their ridiculous political beliefs -- they mock, call names. I'd like to see supposed liberals/progressives actually put forth an argument better than that. I don't see one thing that is extreme about the things I've stated here. I want to know why you think liberals who are against Obama are extreme. Be specific and try to base your arguments in plain fact. Keep your insults for some other time. This time I just want an explanation as to why I am extreme. Nobody here has adequately been able to demonstrate why my views are extreme. Most of the pro-Obama people here are arguing at a much lower level of maturity than they are capable (I assume).

Specifically, what makes my views extreme?

I'd be the left wing extremist I guess

Wingnut? Tree hugging extremist? Unimatrix sounds like a RW Republican to me with talk like that. So much for who everyone is "snuggling" up with. And as usual, it's namecalling rather than substance regarding the reality of the police state we have come to live in here. Even Progressive commentators have called Obama to task for his bending over backwards to Wall St and bankers as well as the erosion of civil liberties and his environmental stances, particularly regarding his turnaround on tarsands. Some people just love wearing their blinders I suppose. It makes them feel so superior.

I agree with basically everything you say. It's what it always is realistically in america, the lesser evil. He is without sane doubt the far lesser evil!

But Jan, you are the one joining the Right Wing Republicans in constantly bashing Obama. Every time you speak out against Obama you help the Republicans, and in so doing you work against the very causes you claim to support. For shame!

Whatever complaints you have with Obama, it will be far worse with Romney and the Republicans. Your political naivety is astonishing and disappointing. You would cut off our collective nose to spite our collective face. Your position is fundamentally irrational, and seems to be motivated by a childish impulse to throw a tantrum if everything does not go your way.

Ultimately it will be up to the grownups to do the right thing. Petulant children unable to discern political realities only hinder the slow march towards justice.

LOL

CRITICIZING based on policy is not BASHING. Please get a dictionary and look up those words. Until then, you will not be able to have an adult conversation here.

It's such a shame you spend so much time bashing and criticizing Obama instead of trying to support the only rational option for progressive causes. Oh, well, for every Obamaphobic there are 20 people who have a true understanding political realities and will act accordingly. It's encouraging to know President Obama retains a 92% approval rating with liberals.

The Lesser Of Two Evils Is Still Evil! I often see people such as yourself and Unimastrix frame the argument as though there are two, and only two, choices. There are any number of third party candidates who would be far better than either of the two major party clowns!

Show me a -real- 3rd party candidate who can actually WIN. I'm all for the breaking of the 2 party system, it's a broken corrupt joke. I'd vote Social Democrat party if there was a Social Democratic party that had a chance in hell of actually winning. (at this point I'd happily vote pretty much any good progressive 3rd party who could WIN regardless of details)

WHY are you a Paulbot? What is it that you think he offers that we need?

Are you really opposed to Social Security? Medicare?

Have you spoken to people who were alive before SS and Medicare and asked them what life was like - people in their 80's only had a life expectancy of 48 back then - if you could't afford medical care, you died. If you were old and poor, tough luck.

I do agree Nixon taking us off the gold standard was a disaster. How does Paul propose we undo that without creating chaos?

I'm with you. I'm not opposed to SS or Medicare. I actually think we should have national socialized medicine. I do not support Ron Paul. I am not a Libertarian. I think we need more and better social programs. I think we need more and better protections for labor. I'm a social democrat (small-d).

Thank you - I can now breathe again!

I think you did a GREAT job at summing up Barry O!

I suspect you did not bother to either read or process the article that I referenced.

"the greater the disparity in power between dominant and subordinate and the more arbitrarily it is exercised, the more the public transcript of subordinates will take on a stereotyped, ritualistic cast. In other words, the more menacing the power, the thicker the mask. We might imagine, in this context, situations ranging all the way from a dialogue among friends of equal status and power on the one hand, to the concentration camp on the other, in which the public transcript of the victim bears the mark of mortal fear. "
"Domination and the Arts of Resistance"
James C. Scott

It would seem that your above rant against Obama actually validates the argument that much of what you document is based more in a substitution of fear, than it is in any real event that has generated a disparity in power from the policies and decisions cited above. You are quite free to rant, in a very public forum, exactly how you feel about these presidential decisions and policies, and OWS is alive and well, in spite of the fact that they are incurring varied institutionalized resistance.

I don't know about you, but I distinctly remember the actual fear people experienced after 9/11. Much of what you cited above does not contain the same reality we faced after 9/11, and the fear you incite is based more upon projection of outcomes than actual events. Don't get me wrong, the wars this nation is engaged in have had very real, very morbid consequences, but then, we don't live in a nation where a bomb being tossed through the window of a cafe is a regular occurrence either. Your attempt to credit Obama with everything from the encroaching conflict with Iran, to the corruption of Goldman Sachs, conveniently ignores the fact that none of these things began with his presidency, but certainly were either exposed or opened up for public debate during his term.

Your suspicion is correct. I stopped reading your comment after "Obama is one of the most intelligent human beings to have ever graced the office of POTUS. Does that matter? I think it does." No offense.

My comment was not a response to yours. Regardless of whether or not the ball got rolling on some of these thing prior to our ever intelligent president's term is irrelevant. What is relevant is Obama's positions and actions on these issues, with which I am most disgusted. However, assassinations of citizens without due process is unprecedented and outrageously sick.

My comment is a presentation of facts. You may feel to interpret them as you wish as far as your opinion of Obama goes. My interpretation was made clear.

Yeah after 9/11 they played the fear card so well I actually supported Bush (until I really started paying attention to that prick). They (politicians on both sides of the isle) used 9/11 as a tool of fear to strip us of our rights.

In principle, I agree with much of what you state. I think it is worth noting, however, that Obama has been criticized for attempting to negotiate first, and shore up our ability to defend ourselves, second. It is an important distinction, in that he has not led, in terms of Foreign Policy, with the war drums. In fact, the war drums, and a lot of the MOST oppressive legislation has been sponsored by a GOP-led Congress, and oppression at home has been largely validated by a hugely right-wing leaning SCOTUS. The fact that Obama can and does think his way through very demanding situations stands in stark opposition to the president who had an Iraqi journalist hurling a shoe at his over-large, but pitifully empty head.

"Iraqi journalists hurling shoes at his over-large, but pitifully empty head."

haha I remember that! I kind of wished that shoe hit him.

You were by no means alone in that....my father used to throw the TV remote at the TV every time Bush came on and opened his mouth to speak.....

Your caustic diatribe is precisely what is WRONG with News Opinion Blogs. You spew hate, anger, and venom like a Puff Adder without offering any constructive suggestions to extremely complex problems. Your resentment towards this President is straight out of planet wingnuttia.

Wow; you can read? Who knew.

I'm telling the truth. You're spewing the hate. How in the world can you seriously think of being against assassinations without due process as being a wing-nut position? You can't be serious. Please explain why the things I complained about are OK and how being against them is crazy. Give me specific examples. I know you can't. The reason I'm asking is to prove that point.

There is nothing outrageous about being against some of the things Obama does. I do not have to solve all the country's problems in order to know that our elite-serving, child-bombing president is doing it wrong. Solution: Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans... but what kind of solution is that in a world where not voting for the elite is equivalent to pissing in the wind because our non-thinking drooling public is going to vote one of those bastards in no matter what (prediction: Obama's going to win, as planned).

I do my part. I'm not voting for either major party. Will it make a difference? No. Is that a good enough reason for me to be like everybody else. Shit no.

What are your solutions?

Who's spewing hate again? I forget.

President Obama is a certified genius, was the first Black President of Harvard Law Review and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. I would put that in the extremely smart category. Please don't fall for the dumb propaganda. The Right Wing has spent hundreds of millions to discredit his image. He is already scheduled to go down in history as one of the smartest/greatest presidents.
You must be brainwashed if you think for one minute that President Obama is anything other than brilliant.

There is no comparison between President Obama and Bush. Bush got into Harvard because he was the son of a rich man. Bush can't even speak fluent English, and was an average student. You don't become the president of Harvard Law Review, or graduate cum laude by being average. Bush is already classified as one of the worse presidents in history.
No one stole the nomination from Hillary, she made an agreement and then wanted to change the agreement in mid-stream. She wouldn't be a part of his Administration if that was the case.
No matter what the Supreme Court does concerning the Affordable Care Act, it won't take away from the fact that President Obama has been more effective as president than most.
The John Roberts Republican/Corporate Supreme Court will most likely rule it unconstitutional, because they are anti-American. They always rule in favor of corporations, and Conservatives. Just like they did with Bush vs Gore.

Agreed 100%

Thanks, llip!

He would still be the only person who knows what it is like to be the current President.

^'d, amen.

You can say that again!

Hope springs eternal. :-)

I didn't realize that one was required to be a Paul apologist or an ultra left-wing,Obama hating extremist to make a comment here. If you cannot tolerate having the simplistic libertarian rhetoric you submit contradicted by those who disagree with it, then why lay it bare to public scrutiny? If it's any consolation, I don't exactly find your contributions here to be indicative of any great, scintillating brilliance either. Repetitive Paul propoganda is not intellectualy stimulating to most people, it's just more propoganda.

I do , all the time. But it drives the Paulbots insane with rage. I can feel the loathing eminating off the page. Excuse me, I have to shut the computer down now, it's burning my skin.

Please don't let them get you down. You are an asset to the community. You contribute facts plus humor, a winning combination!

The resident Queen of Current doesn't believe so, she has been flagging my comments for the past few minutes in an attempt to silence any criticism. As we all know the Queen always wins .

In spite of any effort to silence you, you have a lot of support here at Current. I can tell by the number of up votes that you get.

Where would you get the idea I'm going anywhere? I'll be here to poke sticks in the eyes of Obamaphobes for as long as I want ,no matter how much you hate him or me.

Same here...yet he still doesn't think the LGBT community should be allowed to marry those they love. I'm sure the sheep here will find a way to defend him on it while calling Ron Paul a homophobe for voting for the DADT repeal and thinking government should stay out of marriage.

So, you base his supposed support of gay marriage on the "subtleties of politics" and not on his own words?

I gave him credit for DADT in my original reply to artemis. I'll agree with you that he has done more for the gay community than any other President as well. But, as you point out, he himself has not gone on the record in support of gay marriage. Politics aside, actions speak louder than words. So, if marriage equality is achieved under his watch then I will give him credit where credit is due. But until then I'm not going to pretend that he is something he is not. For many reasons, he is just another hypocritical corporate-owned politician just like the majority of the rest of them. It's not whining to hold politicians' feet to the fire. It's rather pie in the sky to think of this President as any better than the rest when you look at his financiers. By the way, I don't support Ron Paul because I believe in his strict, pie in the sky ideology of a completely Libertarian society. I support him based on the reality of what he would actually be able to accomplish in office like changing our foreign policy, holding the Federal Reserve accountable, and repealing things like the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of American citizens. There's nothing pie in the sky about supporting someone who has the best civil liberties record of the entire field and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

I've occupied in three different cities and have been actively supporting the movement online since before it began. In college, I volunteered with Power Vote and helped register young people to vote while promoting clean energy solutions and most recently I have been canvassing for Ron Paul delegates in my home state. I'm far from sitting on my butt and not trying to do anything about it. Try to avoid personal attacks like that online. It makes you look dumb and presumptuous.

I wasn't referring to Paulbot nonesense. I was referring to the actual lobbying of ,and the passing of, REAL legislation. You know , laws that make peoples lives better. Not the spreading of Paul propoganda, which is literally of no value to anyone but Paul and his idiot son.

Fix Congress? Decades ago, Walter Karp wrote the book "Indespensible Enemies," describing the relationship between the Republican and Democratic Parties. Folks forget that for the 1%, Congress ain't broke. The one-percenters, the banksters, and the Wall Streeters are doing really fine, as is the nation. Unemployment? Great: competition for jobs means lower salaries and benefits. Health Care costs? Don't matter to the wealthy, and keeps competition for expensive life-saving medical care at a minimum.

No one's trying to fix anything - not the economy, not the ongoing wars, not the environment - unless you count as "fixing" rightwing efforts to neutralize dissent and keep the voters' minds on red herrings.

B ( . )( . )Bies !

Bailey , you've been paying attention again ! That is against their rules .

Indefinite detention and assassination of American citizen is a very practical, reasonable approach.

Blown out of proportion? What part of that is blown out of proportion? Ask the occupiers who have been arrested if these new state powers are abused against Americans.

It is illegal . All U.S. citizens have a right to due process . Without this safeguard , there is Chaos .

Not when they are trying to kill you from within. I live in Israel, your ideology sounds good untill the first bomb is thrown through a cafe window killing innocents.

That is a choice based on fear . It does not lead to a just peaceful world . I am sorry for you .

True, but fearrmongering and instilling paranoia amongst the masses to make them think they need protection from Obama, Bush or whoever because they won't be safe unless they vote for them is one of the most used election tactics. Bush did it all the time. There was always a terror alert in an election year that came to nothing. The Politics of Fear.

Amen.

from a Daniel Kahneman class hosted on Edge, worth the read:

Some ten or fifteen years ago, when there were terrorism scares in Europe but not in the States, people who were about to travel to Europe were asked questions like, How much would you pay for insurance that would return a hundred thousand dollars if during your trip you died for any reason. Alternatively, other people were asked, how much would you pay for insurance that could pay a hundred thousand dollars if you died in a terrorist incident during your trip. People pay a lot more for the second policy than for the first. What is happening here is exactly what was happening with prolonging, the colonoscopy. And in fact, psychologically – I won't have the time to go into the psychology unless you press me —but psychologically, the same mechanism produces those violations of dominance, and basically what you're doing there, is substituting fear.

You are asked how much insurance you would pay, and you don't know—it's a very hard thing to do. You do know how afraid you are, and you're more afraid of dying in a terrorist accident than you're afraid of dying. So you end up paying more because you map your fear into dollars and that's what you get.

Now if you ask people the two questions next to each other, you may get a different answer, because they see that one contains the other. A post-doc had a very nice idea. You ask people, How many murders are there every year in Michigan, and the median answer is about a hundred. You ask people how many murders are there every year in Detroit, and the median estimate is about two hundred. And again, you can see what is happening. The people who notice that, "oh, Michigan: Detroit is there" will not make that mistake. Or if asked the two questions next to each other, many people will understand and will do it right.

The point is, that life serves us problems one at a time; we're not served with problems where the logic of the comparison is immediately evident, so that we'll be spared the mistake. We're served with problems one at a time, and then, as a result, we answer in ways that do not correspond to logic.

http://edge.org/event/master-classes/the-edge-master-class-2007-a-short-course-i...

Hitler did it too , it is an old , old story .... it usually helps if the population is ignorant of this historical use ....

You need to look up the word " moderate." You are no moderate.

You always claim you voted for Clinton but everything you post here indicates you are a life long Republican. You are not a moderate by any means on this website. You have always been an Obama hating conservative. Who are you trying to kid, and why?

So you are one of those who joined the rethugs to deny single payer and every other progressive idea of the first two years? Remove the word blue and you have an accurate description.

Excellent ideas in your post. Actuarial figures: the risk in dying by terrorism vs. something like trying to cross the street in Naples. Even if terrorism increased manyfold, for people who think instead of feel, it's more risky to cross the street. But there's a nice sunny cafe over there on the other side of the street and they have great mocha. Of course I'm going.

But we have become tools wrought by fear. So we keep on pushing the envelope, Corporate grasping for the stuff of others, thus begging the use of correspondingly greater pushback in the forms of improvised weaponry - such as freshly fueled big jets just taking off. But even then, it's much safer out there than in crossing the street in Naples, etc. Though there's many,many places we Americans ought not to go, of course. Thankfully we can still get into that cafe across the street and feel safe basking in the sun, thankful to escape for the moment, and forgetting the horsesh*t of politics one's countrymen are buried in, forcefully.

But if we keep on going in the direction we're going, there's a risk that looms much larger: someone'll find a way to drop the big one in on one of our metropolises. We all know that, and there was even a movie. If the Neanderthal Republicans - joined now by a cadre of Democrats as if deer in the headlights - keep on pushing in the Mideast - the levee's going to break. Have no place to stay.

"blue dogs" are what's wrong with the democrats, nothing but d.i.n.o's democrat-in-name-only. They're wanna-be right wingers.

No idea what stupidity you're spouting, I've always despised them.

Good , Christ get a clue. There is no single payer..... it's a mandate that is up for consideration by the court. If you can't even keep that straight , I can just imagine how confused you are by the other important issues you know nothing about.

History will be the judge of that, not you.

I hear the empty suit Romney has 10 thou he'd like to wager.

Imagine what he coulda done with some HELP from the repubs. That he accomplished all he has virtually single-handed....is extraordinary. No wonder the KOCH bros fear him!

I agree with you, look at the cards he was dealt, and we must also stand up and be counted. Too many were so lazy during the 2010 election and did not vote. We can all see now how bad that was. If we don't get off our butts and go to the polls and get rid of as many teabaggers as possible, all we can look forward to is the republicans changing the constitution to "Just some people". The bill of rights will be destroyed under them.

They weren't "lazy." That's not why they didn't vote. What a fantasy!

LOL....so...you prefer a Wall Street MASTER, like Romney? Good one!

Obama is the one who loaded his administration with wall street pigs!
Get real!
I wouldn't vote for either of these corrupt parties. I guess your still under the "party' spell, well good luck with that. Do you have any clue what this President has signed into law ?
Looks like there is a bit too much thunder in the heart and not enough gray matter in the head!