Barack Obama: 4 Years In Review

[Divair]

You'd like to think so, but in all actually, everything will flip around in the coming years as Obama's policies begin to really eat away at this country.

I forsee a Republican wave coming...

Won't happen, just like it didn't happen last november. I foresee Republicans losing in a landslide in 2014, honestly.

I doubt it.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/0 ... the-house/

[Enadail]

while the U.S. deficit continues to grow out of control at a current amount of 16.47 Trillion United States dollars

I'm going to let others dissect the crap out of this, but this is too hilarious to pass up.

I'll give my hand at it.

Unemployment remains relatively high

Compared to what? Its far lower then the problem he was given. There is no magical unemployment pill, specially when its companies that are sending jobs over seas, not the government...

while the U.S. deficit continues to grow out of control at a current amount of 16.47 Trillion United States dollars

I agree Divir, that's some funny shit. If I remember correctly, the current deficit is about 1 trillion?

and the government stimulus was seen as an abject failure by most of the U.S. media

Because the media is absolutely the guide on economic policies. Reminds me, I need to talk to my plumber about my toothache.

and had very little effect on the economy

Except for the part where it prevented a 1930's era depression.

while economic growth continues to be very little

And yet higher then the problem Obama inherited.

leaving some to believe that the nation is still out the recession they were in four years ago.

Which economists are saying this?

[Divair]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Not his friend. I would.

[Mavorpen]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world.

Except, you kind of need workers to...work. You also need consumers to...consume. You didn't take basic economics in High School, did you?

[Laerod]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Most of NSG.

[Divair]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world.

Except, you kind of need workers to...work. You also need consumers to...consume. You didn't take basic economics in High School, did you?

Objectivism, AWAY!

[Howdoyoudoland]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Most of NSG.

Heartwarming, truly.

The world would go on without a care, however, and so would I.

[New England and The Maritimes]

Won't happen, just like it didn't happen last november. I foresee Republicans losing in a landslide in 2014, honestly.

I doubt it.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/0 ... the-house/

2012 was meant to be a "Republican Wave Year" and they got crushed. The big problem was that not enough Republican seats were up for contention in congress.

[Howdoyoudoland]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world.

Except, you kind of need workers to...work. You also need consumers to...consume. You didn't take basic economics in High School, did you?

Eh, we've got enough people who work hard, play by the rules, and are rewarded because of it. We don't need the undesirables, tbh.

[Laerod]

Most of NSG.

Heartwarming, truly.

The world would go on without a care, however, and so would I.

If you're trying to convince us that you're a bad person, it's working.

[Divair]

2012 was meant to be a "Republican Wave Year" and they got crushed. The big problem was that not enough Republican seats were up for contention in congress.

Look, I hope for a huge defeat on their part in 2014, but I'm skeptical. We shall see how it turns out.

[New England and The Maritimes]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Most of NSG.

Honestly, if you don't care about someone being raped and murdered you're a pretty shit person and you should rethink your life. I don't see how this kind of thing is considered "normal" by these people. It's kind of an important insight into their beliefs.

[Divair]

Most of NSG.

Honestly, if you don't care about someone being raped and murdered you're a pretty shit person and you should rethink your life. I don't see how this kind of thing is considered "normal" by these people. It's kind of an important insight into their beliefs.

Social Darwinism is quite disgusting.

[Mavorpen]

Except, you kind of need workers to...work. You also need consumers to...consume. You didn't take basic economics in High School, did you?

Eh, we've got enough people who work hard, play by the rules, and are rewarded because of it. We don't need the undesirables, tbh.

Again, you should probably learn basic economics before you say stuff that is economically destructive.

[Enadail]

And that's among the biggest loads of bullshit EVER.

We're hardly in a world where "whatever happens happens". Companies pollute the waters, frack the land, poison the air. Yet people need to pay for their own healthcare to get past these.

If you get hit by someone else in a car accident, the payout from the insurance doesn't always cover the medical costs you may incur, specially if its a serious accident. If you work hard for a company for 20 years, and they outsource/downsize, and you lose your insurance and your savings can't cover it, that's somehow your fault?

We don't live in some disconnected world (ironic, given your comment about neighborly). Its an interconnected world, we're an interconnected people. Nothing is just "my problem" or "your problem".

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world.

Well, given first I'd end up in the hospital where they'd work on me, if I didn't have insurance, the hospital would have to cover the costs. Because they do, they'll have to raise prices for everyone, meaning those with insurance will also have to pay more. Then may family and friends may end up taking some time off work, which means those companies aren't making money. They'll have to spend their money on things to buy for me, which focuses the economy of that community down one path for a short while, etc.

Then multiply this tiny effect by a million for others without insurance and suddenly your insurance rates are up by 10%.

Again, essentially, you're full of shit. Everything people do has an effect on everyone else. I didn't say that people had to care about each others problems, I said they affect everyone else. The healthier and happier I am, the more I'm putting into the economy, which benefits you. The worse off I am, the less I put into the economy, which negative affects you. Pretending we're unconnected shows you know nothing about how the economy works.

[New England and The Maritimes]

Eh, we've got enough people who work hard, play by the rules, and are rewarded because of it. We don't need the undesirables, tbh.

Again, you should probably learn basic economics before you say stuff that is economically destructive.

It's kind of funny, like how Republicans rant and rave about insurance companies being "forced" to provide contraception when most of them just pay for it anyway because it's a good investment compared to having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a birth and pre-and-postnatal care.

[Valtakuntia]

He was stupid.

[Divair]

He was stupid.

What a deep, insightful post.

[Desperate Measures]

He was stupid.

I never thought of it this way before.

[Farnhamia]

If someone robbed, raped, and shot you tonight, how many people outside of your immediate family and friends would give a fuck tomorrow?

Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world.

Well, given first I'd end up in the hospital where they'd work on me, if I didn't have insurance, the hospital would have to cover the costs. Because they do, they'll have to raise prices for everyone, meaning those with insurance will also have to pay more. Then may family and friends may end up taking some time off work, which means those companies aren't making money. They'll have to spend their money on things to buy for me, which focuses the economy of that community down one path for a short while, etc.

Then multiply this tiny effect by a million for others without insurance and suddenly your insurance rates are up by 10%.

Again, essentially, you're full of shit. Everything people do has an effect on everyone else. I didn't say that people had to care about each others problems, I said they affect everyone else. The healthier and happier I am, the more I'm putting into the economy, which benefits you. The worse off I am, the less I put into the economy, which negative affects you. Pretending we're unconnected shows you know nothing about how the economy works.

Ah, but you're forgetting the basic principle of internet toughness, which is not caring about anyone else. To the ITG, no one is real except him. This allows him to say all manner of things, some of which we've seen here, like "Your problems really are just your problems, they have nothing to do with me and the rest of the world." The ITG always speaks for the world, too, and pretends to a deep understand of how it works.

[Toronina]

He's okay, 7/10, better if he stops the witch hunt against Julian Assange

[Alien Space Bats]

Seeing as this country was founded on the right to "life, liberty, and property", I rather think not.

You misunderstand the meaning of those words — a fact which is obvious, given that you also take them out of context.

That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts ... are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.

— Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress (1774)

No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...

— 5th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

... [N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...

— 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

At every turn, these three terms are not only used together, but are used within the broader context of either a declaration of rights or an injunction against the removal of those rights without "due process of law" (or, in State Constitutions where they appear contemporaneously, references to their forfeiture in accordance with the ''law of the land".

This means that what these ideas really express is something much more fundamental — a kind of legal idiom. And what might that legal idion be? Why, the concept that free men have certain basic rights, going back to the Magna Carta that:

NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

— Clause 29, Magna Carta

This makes the phrase "life, liberty, and property" not some Randian endorsement of capitalism, but rather something far more basic and foundational: An expression that free people have a fundamental bundle of rights that cannot arbitrarily or randomly be taken away from them without some sound and solid basis in the law — in essence, a justified, compelling, and unavoidable need that outweighs any intrinsic right, to the point of near-universal agreement.

[Laerod]

He's okay, 7/10, better if he stops the witch hunt against Julian Assange

What witch hunt?

[Radiatia]

As an international observer I think Barack Obama's first four years were decidedly average.

He's certainly not a bad President, unlike his predecessor, but he's fallen into the common trap of being all rhetoric and no action.

He's a Moderate at best, and a Right-wing President at worst and someone who undoubtedly sees fit compromise with Republicans*. As such, I don't feel that campaigning on "hope" and "change" was a very good idea from a man who clearly has no major qualms with the status quo.

*Of course this compromise is apparently part of the American political system, as I have discovered since 2008 so I at no points claim this willingness to compromise as being a bad thing. Merely I wish to comment on the fact that he's a Moderate pretending to be a Radical.

One can definitely lay blame at the Republican controlled House of Representatives, but I think that Obama's main problem is that he over-promised and under-delivered and never had any concrete or credible policies from the beginning.

I'd still take him over Mitt Romney or any of the Republican nutters any day, but if he turned up in my country I would consider him too far to the right, and too weak, to ever want to vote for him.

[Radiatia]

He's okay, 7/10, better if he stops the witch hunt against Julian Assange

What witch hunt?

They're planning to burn Julian Assange at the stake for witchcraft. Assange uses the internet, which isn't in the Bible, so Obama is supporting a plan backed by religious conservatives to have Assange tried and burned.

If I recall correctly....