the best that America has to offer

1/10/2017 11:35:16 PM

Good article, and cartoon too

http://www.cleveland.com/darcy/index.ssf/2017/01/obama_farewell_address_darcy_c.html

[Edited on January 11, 2017 at 9:21 AM. Reason : ]

1/11/2017 9:20:30 AM

Trump said that he had investigators researching the birth certificate, he also said he had evidence Obama was born in Kenya

Now we know that Trump was receiving intelligence from Russia, so obviously these researchers were the KGB

Conclusion: Obama is actually from Kenya

1/11/2017 9:36:56 AM

As a wrap, I'll say history will judge him kindly but he left a Democrat party in rubble and handed full control to a group of the worst people imaginable -- and he will own that in large part.

1/12/2017 9:19:22 AM

That's like saying LBJ left the party in ruins.

The dawn ballot looks bad for democrats, but this is a reaction to advancing civil rights, similar to the southern strategy. I'm not sure what Obama could have done to halt this, except to resist change and push for the status quo.

Nationally, the democratic candidate, despite being the 2nd most unpopular presidential nominee ever, still won 3M more votes. Loss by less than 1% in the upset states.

How history looks at obama historically will depend on how badly the Trump GOP does.

1/12/2017 10:04:16 AM

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html?_r=0

credibility -10

1/12/2017 11:53:40 AM

I read that PBO was the only president, since like ever, to not have at least one year of >3% GDP growth.

Once ACA is repealed next week, I am not sure he will have any real accomplishment to point to.

But he does seem like a pretty nice guy, other than his affinity for UNC-CH basketball. So maybe history will just remember that aspect.

1/12/2017 12:03:06 PM

That's a pretty meaningless stat to be honest. Wouldn't cumulative net growth by better?

[Edited on January 12, 2017 at 12:08 PM. Reason : And frankly, the president gets way too much credit and blame for that]

1/12/2017 12:08:06 PM

That's such a stupid and arbitrary measure. He also has had the longest consecutive streak of job growth in US history. He lowered the unemployment rate from nearly 9% to below 5%. The stock market nearly tripled in value during his terms. His total average GDP growth is on par with H.W.'s and better than W's. while outpacing them both in jobs. He saved the US auto industry along with around a million jobs. Along with killing Bin Laden, if he was a Republican, they'd be currently drafting plans to add him to Mt. Rushmore.

1/12/2017 12:10:35 PM

1/12/2017 12:14:21 PM

^^ I am not discounting those measurements, as it all provides a good view of the health of an economy. I would argue that he was given such a low performing economy that only an imbecile couldn't make it better. However, the recovery he was able to take advantage of was never strong (hence the low GDP growth). And GDP growth has been a standard measure for all Presidents, and will continue to be so. If you want to ignore it just to deify a politician, I dont know what to tell you.

Quote :

"Along with killing Bin Laden"

LOL!!!

1/12/2017 1:38:10 PM

Quote :

"I would argue that he was given such a low performing economy that only an imbecile couldn't make it better"

You can't make a statement like this without proving it and then try and build further arguments on it

1/12/2017 1:50:31 PM

^^Why the lol? He gave the order to execute a highly risky operation, based on an intelligence assessment on Bin Laden's whereabouts that was no better than 50/50. You can "lol" all you want but it was a ballsy call that was 100% on him. You better believe that if it ended in failure, like Carter's choppers in the sand, you and every other GOP mouthbreather would be pinning all the blame on him.

And yes, GDP growth is a standard measure, but that's not what you're talking about. You're cherry picking a very specific constraint on that measure, GDP growth over a single calendar year, to make a blanket statement on his economic performance. We've had >3% GDP growth during several quarters over the last 8 years.

1/12/2017 1:54:35 PM

I'm not the only one making the statement. People a lot smarter than you or I agree that our recovery has been slow. It's a widely accepted fact.

Also, I provided evidence of the muted recovery in a post above.

Quote :

"^^Why the lol? "

The biggest disaster of his presidency has been the middle east (and his foreign policy in general).

Quote :

" if it ended in failure, like Carter's choppers in the sand,"

Or... Benghazi?

[Edited on January 12, 2017 at 1:59 PM. Reason : 1]

1/12/2017 1:55:27 PM

If Obummer woulda just cut taxes on teh rich our dadgum economy woulda been growing by 10% bout now.


*wipes slobber from slack jaw*

1/12/2017 2:29:10 PM

Yeah, poor Benjamin Ghazi, how could I forget about him

It's funny, you've got Obama saying we should try to "engage" more with people who don't agree with us, instead of just calling them out for being stupid and evil. Yet, when you do, they generally respond with the most ignorant and vile shit imaginable. If anything, his biggest failure was being too optimistic and naive about the intentions of his detractors. The arc of the moral universe does not bend towards justice, but to whomever pulls the hardest.

[Edited on January 12, 2017 at 2:34 PM. Reason : .]

1/12/2017 2:29:29 PM

You're right, maybe if we get more Lena Dunham it will help

1/12/2017 4:02:46 PM

Quote :

"I am not discounting those measurements, as it all provides a good view of the health of an economy. I would argue that he was given such a low performing economy that only an imbecile couldn't make it better. However, the recovery he was able to take advantage of was never strong (hence the low GDP growth). And GDP growth has been a standard measure for all Presidents, and will continue to be so. If you want to ignore it just to deify a politician, I dont know what to tell you."

How do we compare to other advanced economies?

(hint: we're either the best or 2nd best depending)

The recovery was huge, you can't discount the longest streak of job growth of any president, the big rebound in stocks, the stabilization of the housing market, record manufacturing output, biggest single-year increase in wages for decades, maintained the trend in dropping crime rate, record low HS dropout rates for blacks/hispanics, and a lot of other accomplishments.

The biggest negative indicator for Obama domestically is the growth in inequality (partially due to more middle class entering upper class). He did dedicate an entire SOTU to this only to be accused of class warfare/communism/whatever, but as a metric we're worse off.

[Edited on January 12, 2017 at 4:45 PM. Reason : ]

1/12/2017 4:43:13 PM

https://news.google.com/news/amp?caurl=http%3A%2F%2Fm.huffpost.com%2Fus%2Fentry%2Fus_58792554e4b09281d0eab299%2Famp#pt0-911977

Wouldn't have Obama known more about this? Seems like he should have been doing more behind the scenes to avoid these problems. Trusting the system and his people let him get taken advantage of, even 8 years in. Seems really sad.

1/14/2017 1:48:17 AM

Obama Opens NSA’s Vast Trove of Warrantless Data to Entire Intelligence Community, Just in Time for Trump
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-trove-of-warrantless-data-to-entire-intelligence-community-just-in-time-for-trump/

Quote :

"the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that gives the NSA virtually unlimited authority to intercept communications abroad. Previously, NSA analysts would filter out information they deemed irrelevant and mask the names of innocent Americans before passing it along. The change was in the works long before there was any expectation that someone like Trump might become president. The last-minute adoption of the procedures is one of many examples of the Obama administration making new executive powers established by the Bush administration permanent, on the assumption that the executive branch could be trusted to police itself."

fuck Obama

1/15/2017 6:11:37 PM

Quote :

"The recovery was huge"

Sure, if you ignore GDP (you know, the best measurement of economic health).

Actually, if you ignore enough of reality, the economy is great, the ACA isn't a disaster, and Hilldawg wasn't a terrible candidate choice. I think I finally understand how leftists think now.

1/15/2017 6:25:05 PM

^^ I've said it many times, but he's been horrifically bad on civil rights in unprecedented ways. Now he's handing control of all the power of an enhanced surveillance state and capabilities for extra judicial killings over to a petty and vindictive man. Nice job, Obama.

1/15/2017 6:28:02 PM

1/15/2017 6:29:15 PM

Quote :

"fuck Obama"

This times 1000. Maybe Trump can lay off tens of thousands of FBI/DEA/IRS/ATF agents now, since they don't need to be bothered with warrants and surveillance anymore with the NSA bypassing all of that for them.

1/16/2017 10:52:17 AM

Quote :

"The arc of the moral universe does not bend towards justice, but to whomever pulls the hardest."

Funny you should quote MLK in order to disparage his message. Because he also said this:

Quote :

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. … A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. … It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." … We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action …Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world."

He was far more radical than you or your democratic brothers ever would dream to be. And he would have stood against both Obama and the Democrats on a number of issues, and he would:

Quote :

""remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.""

People like to remember MLK as this soft, kumbaya, wishy-washy orator, without remembering that he was a VERY outspoken critic of American capitalism, imperialism, military adventurism, and Western arrogance.


He advocated FIERCELY the need to pull the arc of the moral universe hard to the side of justice.

Yet, that seems to elude you, time and time again, as you constantly prefer the silent allure of do-nothing gradualism in lieu of decisive action.

[Edited on January 16, 2017 at 6:42 PM. Reason : ]

1/16/2017 6:40:42 PM

Shrike is the white moderate that MLK said was worse than the KKK

1/16/2017 9:29:15 PM

^^Yes, that's exactly what I said, Obama's been misusing that term as sort of a blind faith that things will improve if we just follow the process.

^I wonder what he'd say about "liberals" who spent 8 years calling the first black President a sellout while being unwitting tools of his political opponents.....

[Edited on January 17, 2017 at 9:18 AM. Reason : .]

1/17/2017 9:09:16 AM

he'd probably laugh at you for being a capitalist stooge

1/17/2017 9:24:28 AM

Quote :

"^Yes, that's exactly what I said, Obama's been misusing that term as sort of a blind faith that things will improve if we just follow the process. "

It blows my mind that you understand that "the arc of the moral universe bends toward whomever pulls the hardest," yet seem incapable of pulling it harder than the radical right.

Quote :

"I wonder what he'd say about "liberals" who spent 8 years calling the first black President a sellout while being unwitting tools of his political opponents....."

Dude, you seriously need to read up on MLKs outspoken stance on Vietnam, which he viewed as tools for western capitalists at the expense of the people of those countries. He would have opposed Obama's drone policy, just as he did LBJ's use of Napalm. He would have opposed Obama's policy of "gradualism," just as he often spoke of the "fierce urgency of NOW." And he definitely would have been irritated with you and other "white moderates," whom he described as being more "devoted to 'order' than justice."


He absolutely would NOT have given him a pass solely based on his blackness, as you seem to suggest.


God, we desperately need moral radicals of conviction right now, rather than these milquetoast democrats (such as yourself) who simply want the title of "reformer" without actually putting in the work to earn your keep.

1/17/2017 12:36:15 PM

I don't really disagree with any of that, but again, I think you're misattributing a bunch of positions to me because I happened to be an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton, whom I sincerely believed would be an agent of the reform you desperately seek. Also, Obama, like MLK, said a lot of things that would be considered "radical" before he entered the national political stage. A political activist and President are two entirely different jobs.

1/17/2017 12:43:01 PM

It is not your job, as a progressive, to get good people in power and to support them blindly.

It is your job to pull those in power to the moral center. You cannot achieve that without significant and consistent criticism, even when it is difficult to do so

1/17/2017 12:48:58 PM

I just never thought it was terribly constructive to attack him from the left when he was already facing an unprecedented level of opposition from the right. Especially once it became clear that "divide and conquer" was part of the GOP's plan to oppose him. It would be playing directly into their hand.

1/17/2017 12:57:56 PM

Yeah, but think about it. If nobody is opposing him from the left, then his only meaningful opposition will come from the right. It's strategically in your best interest to prevent him from only compromising with the far right.

1/17/2017 3:23:55 PM

Activists don't have to compromise with opponents in order to get anything done, in fact being more radical often helps the message spread. Politicians do have to compromise so it's done to hold them to the same standard.

1/17/2017 4:29:06 PM

Quote :

"Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence"

So, liberals can no longer complain about wikileaks ever again.

1/17/2017 4:36:21 PM

^ Manning doesn't run WikiLeaks, what are you even talking about?

1/17/2017 4:39:37 PM

Are you serious, Clark?

[Edited on January 17, 2017 at 5:04 PM. Reason : https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-commutes-bulk-of-chelsea-mannings-sentence.html]

1/17/2017 5:00:28 PM

Yeah, Manning committed a crime and was justly punished for it (She definitely doesn't deserve a pardon and din't get one), but she doesn't have anything to do with Wikileaks in its current state, which is basically the social media branch of the Kremlin.

Just because Manning gave files to Wikileaks a decade ago doesn't make her a part of Wikileaks.

1/17/2017 5:46:49 PM

64.25 hours

1/17/2017 7:46:27 PM

Jesus Christ, who let ^ this guy escape the nitwit school?

1/17/2017 8:46:56 PM

Seriously? He pardoned Manning for releasing a trove of documents that he never read through for no fucking reason and with absolutely no rationale, but he does nothing for Snowden, who released targeted documents which documented the exact gov't abuse and allegations that he said was going on? What in the literal fuck?

1/17/2017 9:39:45 PM

So to be clear, damage the DNC with leaks, and our democracy is at stake. Damage national security, and the democrats want you pardoned.

Fucking hypocrite

1/17/2017 11:47:12 PM

Well, I mean, what really matters now is that Bradley is now Chelsea. She's so strong and brave, you know?

1/18/2017 12:32:25 AM

He didn't pardon manning, he commuted the sentence to 7 years instead of 35, which was the longest sentence for a similar crime ever given.


[Edited on January 18, 2017 at 1:03 AM. Reason : Also Snowden hasn't been convicted of anything]

1/18/2017 1:01:31 AM

You mean besides execution?

1/18/2017 7:05:13 AM

He's taking an absolute beating from the left and right on this Manning commute.

Odd about-face for a guy who was harsher on whistleblowers than anyone preceding him though I do understand the nuance of this situation (classified leaks that out military members in danger)

1/18/2017 10:12:33 AM

i've seen a few left groups praising manning, are they just confusing manning and snowden or do parts of the left think she is a hero?

i'm okay with the commuted sentence, but i don't understand her being praised. are those just fringe groups or is it a popular opinion?

1/18/2017 10:36:18 AM

^^ is he really though?

Seems to me that beyond the initial headline it's been pretty just "ho hum" talk

1/18/2017 10:55:12 AM

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/in-defense-of-the-chelsea-manning-commutation/513455/?utm_source=atltw

I agree with this piece

1/18/2017 11:06:16 AM

Quote :

"Also Snowden hasn't been convicted of anything"

I wonder why that is...

1/18/2017 11:23:59 AM