I appreciate the thoughtful response. Thank you. Above all else, congrats on outlasting your competition. I can imagine how that feels. So the real question is whether you feel like making some nice pastries on site? That said: - Barack Obama Your complaints basically boil down to "Obama didn't stem the tide" or "Trump is going to destroy everything he did. In some cases you're complaining that he didn't do enough and he did too much at the same time. Line by line: - Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush II overthrew the secular power center of the Middle East and Reagan created the Taliban. You're mad that Obama didn't solve a problem 30 years in the making? And then you're upset that we didn't get any regime change out of the Arab Spring. The last time the US got involved in something like that we ended up with Mossadeq under house arrest and a talentless despot on a puppet throne. Israel? Israel is being run by the guy who incited a crazy man to shoot Rabin. You're putting that on Obama? - Health care costs. Aren't going down. But find the inflection point: The fact that 20 million people have health insurance that didn't should count for something. Yeah - the Republicans are likely to tear it apart but I mean, Reagan stopped stem cell research for 8 years. Bush II piled millions into the Office of Faith-based Initiatives. Nixon created HMOs which got us here in the first place. Infamy? - "Saved" the economy. "Most presidents would have done the same thing." - "Bush got things started but the Obama administration really ran with it." In this case, "really ran with it" means "didn't immediately reverse the September 11 police state." You're griping about Stingrays which are state-level, not federal level. You're griping about the border patrol and lemme tell ya - both the north and south borders are hella chiller under Obama than they were under Bush. You've got a lot of nebulous examples of things that are bad - and they're bad. Don't get me wrong. But the "oh shit you're idiots" moment for the Obama administration was Holder's Fast & Furious in which 1300 street-legal guns disappeared into the cartels. Let's get real: - Bush: $12bln in unmarked cash pallets vanishing into Iraq. Which only happened because, well, we invaded Iraq. Which only happened because, well, September 11. - Clinton: 76 dead cult members in Waco. Plus Ruby Ridge. Plus Oklahoma City Bombing. Plus the first WTO bomb. - Bush I: Desert Shield. Desert Storm. Somalia. Panama. - Reagan: El Salvador. Lebanon bombings. Grenada. Iran Contra. - Carter: Iran Hostage Crisis. - Ford: Pardoning Nixon. - Nixon: Doing shit he needed pardoning for. - LBJ: Winding up the Vietnam War. - Kennedy: Getting us into the Vietnam War. Bay of Pigs. Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean... Obama doesn't so much as have an Elian Gonzalez to explain. ________________________________________________________ I get it. He's no knight in shining armor. I get it. People far less cynical than myself expected unicorns and rainbows out of this administration. I get it. Fuckin' Guantanamo Bay is still open. But we're talking about a Kenyan-born secret muslim that half the country loses their shit over because he's black and a Republican congress that decided "fuck you, you've got slightly less than a year left in office, we're not going to vote on a single Supreme Court nominee." Even FDR wasn't cool with that shit. There's a whole lot I would have liked to have been different about 2008-2016. But holy fuck, dude, compared to where we've been? ..."one of the worst presidents of modern times" is a titch hyperbolic, no?...the federal government is an aircraft carrier, it’s not a speedboat. And, if you need any evidence of that, think about how hard we worked over the last eight years with a very clear progressive agenda, with a majority in the House and in the Senate, and we accomplished as much domestically as any President since Lyndon Johnson in those first two years. But it was really hard.”
Thanks kb. I went the wrong way with my response because I didn't want to bring all this shit up again, and so I was a dick to cgod. Glad you laid it out for me. I just don't have the patience to fight willfully ignorant blanket statements about how "bad" Obama was. On top of everything, all the problem people associate with the ACA are due to the parts that the Republicans stripped out of the plan! If the original plan had been enacted as written, the checks and balances would still be in place, and the whole program would've worked better. Now the Republicans are whining about how poorly the ACA works, after they took three of the wheels off, the clutch, and poured sugar in the gas tank!! Obama should get credit for how well it works despite Republican shenanigans! And on top of that: This is what everybody fails to understand. There are twenty million more people insured today than have ever been insured before, solely because of the ACA. And prices are going up, on average, 2-3% this year. (Except in Trump's cherry-picked state of AZ, because they started below market value, didn't have any increases to account for inflation, and are making ALL the increases this year to catch up with everyone else's rate structure.) In what program, anywhere in the world, can you add 20 million of the sickest and uninsured people to a healthcare plan, and have the rate adjustments two years later be 2-3%?!? That is a FUCKING WIN right there, my friends. ... health care costs aren't going down, but ... The fact that 20 million people have health insurance that didn't should count for something.
If your measure of the greatness of Obama is that he brought the United States from having just about the worst health care system in the developed world all the way to still having just about the worst health care in the developed world than I guess that's fair. I don't look upon it as a great success. It's not why I think he was a terrible president but it doesn't go in his triumph column. No, it doesn't become a triumph because it would have been awesome if Republicans weren't such big meanies. There are so many problems with health care. There are so many people that still can't afford the care they need to lead productive comfortable lives even after the current round of reforms. I know so many people who get their kids medical care but won't go to the doctors for their own problems because they really can't afford it, even with insurance. I think pretending something great happened is a fantasy. Did some people get access to care that they really needed but could never have afforded before? Yes. Is that a good thing? Of course. Does our system work, is it affordable for vast segments of society? Not so much. And no, I don't fail to understand that more people are insured than were before, or that people can't be denied for existing conditions or that you can keep your kids on your health care for longer. These are all good things but they don't add up to quality health care that is affordable many people. Costs went up 5% last year here. Most the plans that cover the recently insured are getting big hikes this year and some companies are pulling out of the market. Having expensive insurance so that you know your kids will be safe but that you won't use because you just can't afford it doesn't seem all that fantastic in my book. Each of us has different values and a different perspective. I really don't understand why Obama's health care reform is looked at with such a glow. It's better than nothing but I don't think it's a profound change in a system that needs profound change.
Look at it this way. Obama increased the number of Americans with insurance by a little over one half of a percentage point, not exactly sweeping change. A lot of that isn't very affordable or very good coverage but it's a win. It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that defines a great presidency.