When did that happen.

didn't even wait before piling on. Expected.

a "domestic issue".

All of his successes come with caveats, especially health care reform, which was sold out to the insurance companies from the start.

Are we better off today that under Bush? Yes, absolutely, but that is a VERY low bar to jump over. It also ignores the fact that in many ways we are worse off.

For the first time in decades.

I'd call that a major accomplishment.

Hint: This means profits (you know, premiums that aren't spent on healthcare) are soaring. We went from a model where they can steal billions to one where they're guaranteed billions by law. Explain to me how this is "trending in the right direction". Unless by "right" you mean corporate.

This is a reversal of the trend of more people losing their health insurance every year. It's also a reversal of the trend to 'deregulate' since at its core Obamacare is health insurance regulation.

I agree that it's not all that it could be, but the country is like a big ship and it takes a while to turn. Many people have pointed out that in countries that have universal health care - they started with a system similar to Obamacare. The next step is a public option.

It took Roosevelt a long time to get his programs in place. It's unrealistic to expect its going to happen overnight.

and the compromises were unnecessary.

But I will concede that for the moment, things are "trending" in the right direction.

With the opposition that Obamacare has received from the group of people whose plan he adopted, the democrats might as well have done something really radical - that's the way they make it sound anyway.

Explain please.

lies 100% squarely on the laps of Congress. They have refused to allow the detainees in Gitmo to be relocated into the US, even into supermax federal prisons. And, they have refused to provide funding to make that happen.

What then, should Obama do? Should he just let them free? Suppose one comes back and does some terrorist stuff. He'd be branded as letting a terrorist free to do some terrorism once again.

He can't move them to the US, he can't move them to other countries (who'd want them?) and he can't let them go. So they stay. But their stay is strictly due to Congress's recalcitrance.

Didn't Obama just reach in and release five prisoners without consulting Congress?

What should Obama do? He should bring them back to this country and put them on trial. If they are convicted they get a bus ride to a Supermax. If they are acquitted they go free. That is how the criminal justice system is supposed to work.

They got themselves in this mess by creating bullshit interpretations of the law, they can get themselves out by cutting the bullshit.

since around 2010.

Just used his power as, what do you call it, oh yeah, "commander and chief".

and give grandiose speeches about the need to impeach Obama. In other words the same things that happens every day with the word "day" in it.

do "Commander in Chief" while black. That's not appropriate to some people in Congress, apparently.

We are talking about doing what is right. It is also legal. People keep making the argument that Obama can't close Guantanamo because of Congress. He can, and he hasn't. He has complete legal authority to do so as the chief of the executive branch and the C-i-C.

What is lacking is the political will. I am guessing this will be proven if he closes our concentration camp down right before he leaves office, when he will be immune to the politics and opinion polls.

Obama's legacy will be sound in that he accomplished great things in spite of all the obstruction thrown at him by the Repubs. This will make him look even stronger. And he ain't done yet. He still has 2 more years.

or his commitment to fracking and offshore drilling.

getting worse, not better.

I don't think educational outcomes are getting worse. Maybe marginally worse or no change or maybe even slightly better. But considering that there's been no major changes to educational reform, other than how to pay for it, how could there be any bad outcome.

He'll be remembered as the (Dem) president who signed over health care to Big Insurance forever, and joined the Bush family in profitizing our once-model public schools. Then there's that pesky fracking issue. If these were really the things he promised to accomplish, it's a small wonder the voters have a "meh" attitude.

I will give him props for reversing the Bushonomic slide.

is not what it offers, which is clearly something better than nothing, but way less than what we could get.

The thing to understand is that we enabled change to occur in healthcare. For the prior 40+ years, healthcare was rock solid unmovable. Now, it has moved. This give the next progressive president the precedent to make further changes should ACA prove lacking in some areas (and there are many such areas).

If you don't like Big Insurance getting bigger and more breaks -- and neither do I -- that outcome will show up eventually and people can make changes because they've seen their power to make such changes.

That, to me, is the disruptive power of having ACA passed.

Big Insurance now has 315 million paying customers, guaranteed, to a tune of a half trillion dollars profit, every single year, forever. It will take decades to get them out, if ever. Here are two things you should understand

1. If we wanted Heritage Care, we could have had it back when Gingrich was trying to pass it

2. It was a major retreat from Obama's campaign promise. Listing it as an accomplishment is a joke.

then change will occur.

Clinton helped to create the system we now have in place of a monopoly control over the economy by a handful of mega-banks that are "too big to fail." We saw in 2008 how totally entrenched they are, and how awaful the resuts of that are. But since then we have come to the collective assumption that we are stuck with these monsters, despite the horrific damage they have done.

Same thing with Telecommunications Deform. Clinton gave all of the airwaves and our information infrastructure over to a handful of Media Monopolies like Clear Channel to a truly awful extent, and they are now free to exercise fascistic level of control over radio, Television and Cable....(And now they want the Internet.)

I see absolutely no reason to think it will be any different when people see how stupid it was to force us to buy the products of Insurance Monopolies, instead of taking even modest steps to move towards public alternatives and accountability of prices and service.

When it gets to the break point, then there will be changes.

Look at the Clean Air Act. It really took until the sky was rust colored, every day, day in, day out, before movement occurred. Same with Voting Rights/Civil Rights Act: you had to have blacks hung on trees and black churches bombed before action took place.

With the banks, as long as crumbs as divvied out to the public, and there's no massive disenfranchisement, nothing will be done. But one day, it will happen and then changes will occur.

Insurance executives are getting rich, claims are being denied, contested, and delayed, millions are still without health care, the profiteers are using "in-plan" scheme to boost their profits, and some with employee-provided coverage are getting clobbered. Notice that all of the calls to "improve it" have ceased.

What's worse, the Fan Club, who originally boasted that this will "lead to single payer" (absurd on its face), have now changed their tune to where Gingrinchcare is just fine the way it is. They don't even want SP any more - claim it's "anti-capitalist". They want this travesty to live on forever with the president's name on it. They've now officially abandoned the American people in favor of President BlueCross.

since you assume single payer means benevolent people will handle your claims. Would you trust me with your Medicare claims?

Oy.

yup

fracking, TPP, etc. These are now officially part of "the list"

There's really not much more to add to that list.

Secretary, Department of Education – Arne Duncan

Secretary of Commerce - Penny Pritzker

Secretary of The Treasury - Timothy F. Geithner (Wall St.)

Meet Monsanto’s prime lobbyist, Barack Obama:

After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

. . . I think public education is going in the exact opposite direction I would have wanted. Premises are wrong and republican and the programs are wrongheaded (performance-based nonsense)

challenge with unprecedented Obstruction.

Thank you, President Obama.. got your back.

Have you noticed the numbers of posters who continue to pile on him although he's worked his ass off trying to help us but has been obstructed by republiCONs from day one.
Sometimes I wonder just where I'm being redirected too when I log on to DU, cause it sure doesn't seem like a democratic supporting website anymore.
Mostly I just stay away, find other places to spend my time.

it is, madokie. But, they'll be left in the dust while we're moving our country forward no matter how much work it takes.

Not just "Four Things Accomplished"..

President Obama is Progressive. Here Are 245 Accomplishments So Far.. With Citations..

http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

I'm happiest with the three votes I cast for President Obama as all the rest put together.
I liked my votes for President Carter too but not like I do for Obama.

nt.

Thanks.

....while the usual suspects round themselves up for a whinefest. (I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you.)

Sid

Do we have to applaud fracking too? Help me out here. Bush accomplished all of his "major objectives" too. Did you consider him a success?

But Charles Krauthammer, the undisputed voice of conservative sobriety, thinks he is more of a social democrat than FDR or LBJ so I can only

Imagine during campaign 2008 if he had promised, "Every single American will be required by law to pay their fair share of private health insurance companies' half trillion dollar annual profits". "We are going to turn our public schools into profit centers and test-taking centers, and teachers will be graded and paid according to their students standardized test scores, regardless of class size, class profile, and the socio-economic background of their schools". "I am going to re-visit NAFTA by pushing for the largest free trade agreement in history - think NAFTA on steroids. Basically the large multinational corporations will have their own set of laws which will supercede our constitution". "Our economy depends on fossil fuel, so I will support fracking and increased offshore drilling to whatever extent is needed".

Then the actual train wreck would not have been so painful to sit through.

A response to climate change? Education?

You are touting these two items as success and progress?

"To the justifiable dismay of immigration advocates, Obama did not call for immigration reform at the time, and immigration reform is now the only possible remaining area for significant domestic reform." This is where the bar is now set? You have to be kidding. I have said some pretty nasty things to some members who have done nothing but attack the president here. But this is laughable. I gives better understanding to why they do nothing but attack. His most ardent supporters will back an extremely flawed article like this.

Immigration reform is sooooooooooo far from done, it's not funny.

Hell, the ONLY thing he's done is the Dreamers by executive action and the kids are terrified of it. They REFUSE to sign up.

You know why?

Because all it does is give the Republicans a list, including name and address of the entire family of illegals.

Who the hell do you think those jerks will deport first when they get in the majority or White House?

Do you REALLY think these kids are that stupid? Or that their parents are?