Cliffs notes versions of a much longer post, the effort for which this post doesn’t really merit:
The majority of the Obama budget deficits came from the wars and tax cuts Republicans forced on us and the financial disaster he inherited.
Obamacare would be in a much better state if republicans didn’t keep trying to sabotage it; as is, it’s doing fine and is a damn sight better than anything they had proposed.
Obama had both houses for 14 weeks. Everything else was subject to filibuster, which McConnell abused in an utterly unprecedented way.
If the only things you see in Obama’s legacy are the deficit and a “failing” health care plan, you have ignored literally everything else.
Relative to what? To ourselves? Then no. Relative to other countries? I don’t think so…I think there are several other countries who are starting their upward trend and the US is slowing down as it reaches its peak or zenith (or at least leveling out before perhaps starting another upward trend). But in actual decline? I’m not seeing it.
From my observations, the moral decline is the ‘goodnesses’ of 197x vs 1810-1920 freedoms and patriarchal based society, as well as the ‘goodnesses’ of the 1970-1990 era which seems to have irrevocably bankrupted the population by an unseen, unnoticed in daily life debt our descendants will pay for dearly.
I was trying to focus on the part where he was claiming that “the right-wing rich” “control what a substantial segment of the voting public believes”, as that was the part that I was addressing in my response. I put the ellipses in there to denote that I was omitting part of the quote, which is, I believe, the proper way to do so. Do you feel that the omitted portion offers some significant modification that affects the point I was driving at?
It wouldn’t surprise me if Ulfreida also believed that the “right-wing rich” control what a substantial segment of the voting public believes on other topics too, but I wouldn’t want to be presumptive. Would your answer to the above question change if he did?
Well, here’s one (overview of the piece hereif you can’t see the video). Control the information people use to form their beliefs, and you control their beliefs.
As President, he could have pulled out of the expensive wars at** any **time. Obama didn’t fight aggressively enough anyway. The new president has ISIS on the run and giving up ground in far less time.
As President, he could veto bills at any time if he cared about the budget.
He just wasn’t up front and honest either. A few examples:
Obama said, " No more bills with earmarks! " Then he signs one dozen of them.
Close Gitmo he says. And he had the power to do it. Yet it remains open.
Talking about George Bush, the debt he accumulated is unpatriotic! Well Barrack, you had far more.
You can keep your doctor and your insurance for a family of four will go down under my healthcare plan. Very wrong, it did not work out the way.
Just a sample of shall we say non-truths by Obama.
Sorry, he accumulated more debt than all of Presidents combined and its based on his choices.
He is a Chicago tax and spend type who spends far more than he taxes.
You might want to check how the state of Illinois is doing, as Obama’s politics are similar.
Again, a long, drawn-out response is not worth the effort, as clearly no effort was put into the response. So let’s keep it simple by pulling out one characteristic statement:
The budget prohibits the use of defense funding “to construct or modify a facility within the United States to house detainees transferred from the Guantanamo detention facility” or “to transfer, release or assist in the transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees to or within the United States.”
Given the difficulty the US has had finding third countries to take former detainees, even those cleared of wrong-doing, not moving them to a new prison leaves the administration few options.
This left the Obama administration with the following options:
Slowly transfer the prisoners out to other countries
Keep the prisoners in Gitmo
Just let them go
And of those, one requires the cooperation of foreign powers (who are understandably hesitant to take these people on) and one requires granting these people US citizenship. Not that Obama hasn’t constantly tried the first option; he shrunk Gitmo’s population substantially (in fact, in 2016, the house republicans tried to stop him from doing any more than he already did). But treating this like a broken promise is absurd. He did not have the power to unilaterally close down Gitmo, not without potentially serious consequences, and Congress did everything they could to stop him from doing the right thing.
Either stop trying or at least try harder to make a sensible political argument.
Are you under the impression that one can just bring a war to a screeching halt without significant negative consequences? Because this is not a thing that can happen.
According to Trump, yes. According to reality, not even remotely true. ISIS has been losing ground rapidly since 2015, and much of the progress in the last year has been down to Syrian, Turkish, Kurdish and Iraqi military and militia groups (with US support in many cases). Once again Trump is taking credit for things he had little or nothing to do with.
Remind me who was attaching all those earmarks to important bills? Would you prefer that no bills at all were signed? Do you understand the magnitude of the problems this would cause?
He tried pretty much every year, and in fact he didn’t have the power to do in unilaterally as Congress repeatedly stymied his efforts.
And yet it did for many, and many others were able to get insurance they previously could not. Furthermore, insurance companies could no longer sell cheap policies that effectively covered nothing anymore (something which people tended not to realize until they filed a claim). It was neither perfect nor a win for everyone, but the net benefit was positive and would have been moreso had the Republicans not openly worked to sabotage it at every stage.
And yet most of your justifications for this conclusion are based on highly selective or outright false information which you seem to believe are “facts”. Perhaps you’d like to do a little more research and try again.
And yet overall he reduced the deficit year-on-year despite unprecedented obstruction from the Republicans, the same Republicans who happily ran up the deficit (and insisted “deficits don’t matter”) when they were in charge.
It’s funny how many of your criticisms boil down to “Obama wasn’t able to completely stop Congressional Republicans from ruining the country”.
You might want to stop flailing quite so desperately, as this is nonsensical and wrong yet again.
Sixty years ago, the U.S.A. was by far the most powerful country on the planet; it had enormous prestige, a dominant military, and the lion’s share of the world’s gold. Our schools were the best in the world; the U.S. was the technology leader across the board. The U.S. was on the verge of a great Civil Rights Revolution, and programs like War on Poverty, Medicare, and the Voting Rights Act would make the U.S. a better, fairer place. And the U.S. was renowned worldwide as the shining beacon of democracy, freedom and equality.
Naturally, across-the-board first place was unsustainable, but the U.S. still did quite well over the decades. Its military is still by far the world’s most powerful, though wasted in fiascoes like Vietnam and Iraq. Technology is still, overall, best in the world, though more and more niches are now led by other countries. The U.S. still has much financial prestige, though someday the trillions wasted under GWB will be missed.
But the U.S. has suffered huge losses emotionally — Americans are increasingly addicted to mood elevators or opioids —, politically — allegations of electoral fraud are widespread and electoral results reflect FakeNews, — and in world prestige — especially during the present dysfunction.
Rising inequality underlies part of America’s descent. By some measures, America has worse poverty than countries like Chile, Italy or Ireland. This contributes to America’s under-performance economically, socially, emotionally and politically.
When did problems start? The Reagan Era was bad, but politics started its severe downhill slide as Gingrich-Rove-Limbaugh and their ilk became dominant; and accelerated as GWB perfidy became apparent. The attacks of 2001 led to the misreaction in Iraq which led to loss of prestige. Opioid use began skyrocketing after 2001 — coincidence? Yet the U.S. still retained great economic and military strength and prestige on the international stage.
The U.S. was a highly respected and dominant superpower during the Clinton years, notwithstanding your peculiar elevation of Lewinsky to world-changing event. :smack:
The rise of China was predictable: during the 1990’s people were calling the next century the “Chinese century,” not sue to any fault of the U.S., but just due to demographics.
I agree with this, but find you underestimate the decline. Being in the upper third of G20 isn’t saying much: this group includes Turkey, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. Within the prosperous Western democracies, the U.S. places last by many measures.
Let’s hope you are too pessimistic. The U.S. is certainly at a great cross-roads. I’ll wait till at least the 2018 House elections before proclaiming this Great Experiment in Democracy to be a failure.
This may be key. When I was 5 years old, I went with my sister on long walks by ourselves. Thirty-five years later my much older nieces and nephews weren’t allowed to walk around the corner. Now I live in Thailand where corruption and greed are common-place and real criminal threats lurk, yet relationships are still mainly trusting and friendly compared with the U.S.: a U.S. where amygdalar responses seem all-too-often to have replaced cerebration and compassion.