Why does the far left and far right hate Former President Obama?

He is one of the greatest Presidents of all time and definitely one of the best modern Presidents.

He gave orders to kill Osama.

He saved us from a depression

He tried to push many changes that republicans blocked but was willing to work with them and try to compromise when need be.

I like Trump and everything and appreciate the economy atm but can’t fathom how people can belittle Former President Obama’s successes.

Then you have the far left who will not be satisfied until everyone puts a baby tree in their rear walking around naked hugging each other.

By save us from depression you mean save the elites by making the middle class foot the bill. He continued the destruction of the middle class and transferred wealth from them to the 1%.

He also continued American Empire by engaging in covert wars around the world.

In all honesty he was just a puppet who did what the people who got him elected told him to do.

Literally the slowest and most lopsided post war recovery, from both a GDP and employment perception. Some manufacturing fields were better off at the height of the recession than when Obama left office. Thank God for offshore drilling and fracking or else it would've been worse.

4 out of the 5 previous recessions have been the most lopsided recoveries on record.

since ~1980 there seems to have been a shift in how the nation recovers. this coincides with other divergences from "normal" that occurred starting then, such as the rise in income inequality, the flattening of wages, etc.

whatever we did in the 80's, we seem to have broke something...

@comp_atkins: "whatever we did in the 80's, we seem to have broke something..."

What do you think that something is?

@comp_atkins said:

@vl4d_l3nin said:

Literally the slowest and most lopsided post war recovery, from both a GDP and employment perception. Some manufacturing fields were better off at the height of the recession than when Obama left office. Thank God for offshore drilling and fracking or else it would've been worse.

4 out of the 5 previous recessions have been the most lopsided recoveries on record.

since ~1980 there seems to have been a shift in how the nation recovers. this coincides with other divergences from "normal" that occurred starting then, such as the rise in income inequality, the flattening of wages, etc.

whatever we did in the 80's, we seem to have broke something...

Your ruling class turned on you.

@Damedius said:

@comp_atkins said:

@vl4d_l3nin said:

Literally the slowest and most lopsided post war recovery, from both a GDP and employment perception. Some manufacturing fields were better off at the height of the recession than when Obama left office. Thank God for offshore drilling and fracking or else it would've been worse.

4 out of the 5 previous recessions have been the most lopsided recoveries on record.

since ~1980 there seems to have been a shift in how the nation recovers. this coincides with other divergences from "normal" that occurred starting then, such as the rise in income inequality, the flattening of wages, etc.

whatever we did in the 80's, we seem to have broke something...

Your ruling class turned on you.

Also, our recovery was faster than most of the rest of the world's. Part of the reason the US economy really kicked into gear around 2016 is Europe finally caught up and started buying more stuff.

Far left were expecting Obama to be one of them, but he turned out to be more pragmatic than progressive.

As for far right, they were always going to hate him. Do they really hate him more than they hated Clinton? Maybe a little.

And Trump is following that same trend on average. Only worse on jobs, and doing worse for the deficit. That kind of increase during a growth period is nuts.

I'm glad economists overall gave Obama a good score, and that they recognize he helped pull us out of the great recession.

@judaspete said:

@Damedius said:

@comp_atkins said:

@vl4d_l3nin said:

Literally the slowest and most lopsided post war recovery, from both a GDP and employment perception. Some manufacturing fields were better off at the height of the recession than when Obama left office. Thank God for offshore drilling and fracking or else it would've been worse.

4 out of the 5 previous recessions have been the most lopsided recoveries on record.

since ~1980 there seems to have been a shift in how the nation recovers. this coincides with other divergences from "normal" that occurred starting then, such as the rise in income inequality, the flattening of wages, etc.

whatever we did in the 80's, we seem to have broke something...

Your ruling class turned on you.

Also, our recovery was faster than most of the rest of the world's. Part of the reason the US economy really kicked into gear around 2016 is Europe finally caught up and started buying more stuff.

Yup.

@tomalevine: Obama did not save the US from a depression at all. His main policy was monetary easing by slashing interest rates and quantitative easing (QE). As a result the USD weakened considerably.

Cutting interest rates is the right move but his QE saved the rich but did nothing for the poor. They printed money to boost the US stock markets and these shares are primarily held by the elite, banks, insurers and other financial institutions.

Many of the borrowers simply parked their money back into the US Federal Reserve rather than invest it back into the real economy to create jobs! (In contrast the European Central Bank reduces the rate to negative so this could not happen).

Then the US government used taxation revenue to pay back the debt.

Effectively the QE was a blatant transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich!!!! That’s why the 1% became richer under Obama’s two terms.

However, Obama did try his best to close Guantanamo Bay and he did try to end the Iraq war. He was also very pro-environment. He had a great healthcare plan and he also increased regulation of banks and financial institutions.

On the whole, I think Obama did well for America but in my opinion he was not so good on the economy. He wasted too much money on QE and there were three rounds of QE. The first was completely wasted and the third QE-infinity was simply ineffective.

But Obama was highly respected around the world. I could only think of Putin and Nethanayu disliking him.

Trump is simply a disaster for the US. He backed out of the Paris treaty, he backed out of the TPP, he backed out of the JCPOA treaty with Iran.

He screwed over US farmers with his trade war with China, he continues to waste tax payers money on the ineffective border wall. He gave himself a permanent tax cut while only temporarily cutting taxes for the middle class and the poor.

Trump has also weakened US ties with its traditional allies such as Canada, The European Union, Japan and South Korea by raising tariffs.

Meanwhile he continues to kowtow to its traditional enemy, Russia while belittling US’s own intelligence services the NSA and the FBI.

It weakened considerably compared to what?

Thought he was pretty good. I consider myself to be somewhere inbetween Obama and Bernie politically.

Disliked how long it took him to support LGBT rights but it happened eventually. Yes, he guided us through the recession but it really was on the backs of middle class tax payers. He tried to get everyone covered under healthcare and also made steps towards helping the environment. He was respected around the world and when he spoke I genuinely believed he was trying to help US citizens. Attempted to close Guan Bay and end Middle east conflict.

He was elected at a really rough time and I think he guided us through it well enough.

I think at that time we were just getting out of very difficult times. So...as much likable as Obama was, people equate the struggles they went through with who’s in office.

IMO that’s a false comparison, but certainly an understandable one.

He's a fucking war criminal that carried on the status quo of the military industrial complex for 8 years despite "promising" to end it and had a hand in killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East in the name of "fighting terrorism".

I don't know why anyone could "like" him as a President. But then again, people liked the Bush's, so that explains a lot.

@foxhound_fox: ending the military industrial complex?? 😂. That’s precious. He doesn’t even have the capacity to do that.

I remember Obama on the 2008 campaign trail promising to get us out of the Middle East in 18 months

He (well, him and congress) did reduce the overall funding of the military by a couple hundred billion dollars annually. Republicans were mad about that and increased the spending by a large amount once Trump was in power.

@vl4d_l3nin: that’s right. He also promised to recognize the Armenian genocide as what it truly was: a genocide. That never materialized.

What? You wanted Obama to focus on something that ended back in *checks wikipedia* 1923? Why?

@Serraph105: I’m actually half Armenian. It’s been recognized by France and many European countries so far.

Okay, I get the idea of feeling connected to it, either from your grandparents or perhaps other family, but what does recognizing it as a genocide really do for anyone aside from a symbolic thing? I get why people learn about a big horrible event and get upset about it, I just don't get what's gained from changing the label of it, or why a president is needed for that task/goal.

I'm not saying you're wrong for feeling that way, I just think I'm missing something here. I'd also say that if I were a republican and saw that there was a group of people who really wanted Trump to re-define the Armenian genocide and was mad that he didn't focus on it, I would be similarly confused about that group of people. People elect presidents largely to tackle the problems of the day, not ones that occurred a hundred years ago.

Because Between 8 years of Dubya, and now 3 years of Trump. The 8 years of Obama sure felt like a respite.

It's more than possible, it just requires more than a figurehead for them to be in office. If rich white men didn't completely control the US government, they'd stop spending so much money on imperialist conflicts, and focusing law-making on generating uneducated chattel to run into battle fighting for "freedom" while the war pigs sit back and count their profits.

But it's been the goal of HW Bush since he left college after WWII to make as much money as possible on war, he learned best from his dad and taught his sons well. Between working for the CIA before getting into office, and all his "battles for freedom" while in office, their family has more than made a mark on the world in the 20th century.

FFS, the Bush's had sugar plantations in Cuba around the time Castro took over, and HW was involved in training anti-Castro Cuban defectors to go in an raid the country and destabilize their economy. Because hey, "Communism" is the big bad guy, and their "godlessness", not you know, our family financial interests on the island.

And then Dubya conveniently removed the US from the World Criminal Court mere months before his family was being taken to a multi-billion dollar trial by Holocaust survivors over Prescott Bush's war profiteering during WWII.

I hate the fact the more I learn and the more frustrated I get with the world stage/politics, the more I begin to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but everything the US has done from Panama to Vietnam to Iraq has been solely about making people money, and doing so while the American public turns a blind eye to it "because the economy is doing great!".

If this was a few hundred years ago, US would probably do just the same as Great Britain(and other countries in Europe) did. Colonise the world.

I don't doubt there's a bunch of them that have that as an end goal. American Exceptionalism is a disease that pervades every level of society in the US from the top-tier government and business elites all the way down to the poor in rural communities. They've been programmed to think Capitalism is the only way to succeed, and success is only measured by how big one's bank account is.

Could be, but today it seems more like pillaging for resources so a few private citizens get filthy rich is the goal. Any problem that arises happens in another country, so the tax payer there has to foot the bill.

@foxhound_fox: I’m in complete agreement. But may I just say...the military industrial complex is...way too powerful. Are you aware that there are 177 global US American bases??

I served in the US military. I was part of the military, so I have a first hand view of how it works. It’s gonna be very hard for the military industrial complex to go away. The deep state is ever so present too.

@Serraph105: sorry for the double post mods. But I use an iPhone and I couldn’t edit the post.

You know, I really respect your opinion. In fact, I agree with 90% of your views. But I really disagree with you on this one. The Armenian genocide was the first modern genocide, and a prelude to what happened with the holocaust. Hitler specifically said, (I’m paraphrasing) “after all, who remembers what happened with the Armenian genocide”.

What I’m saying is it’s a matter of principle. That way no more genocides will happen.

But I think I know why it won’t happen. It all

Comes down to $$. Are you aware if Turkey were to outright admit the error of their ways, they are legally required to pay Armenians money?? And they don’t want to. So yeah. It’s just not a fair equation to not recognize there Armenian genocide in my view.

No, I had no idea. That does, or would, make a tangible difference to people alive today. That changes my understanding of this conversation considerably.

And you shouldn't respect my opinion on this, it's an uneducated one made from the confusion of an initial reaction at this issue that I hadn't even heard of before. Specifically, the issue of being upset at a president for not recognizing this event as a genocide.

I tried to make my confusion clear when I said there was something that I was missing, or in this case more likely several things. So yeah, it was just me trying to figure this out, perhaps not in the nicest way that I could.

It'll take a lot of work, but a mobilized working class will help a lot. Installing someone who isn't a puppet of the wealthy elite is the first major step towards bringing American imperialism to an end.

It'll be a hard fought battle, but well worth it. Lots of military folks are already disgruntled by the fact they aren't fighting for anything anymore, even they can't be convinced it's "for freedom" at this point.

At least the US is starting to generate a strong anti-rich political movement now. As a Canadian myself, I'm stuck with a laughable government that's been playing this game of "spend 8 years reversing what the last party did while doing nothing to push the country towards balanced books or a stimulated economy" and the majority of the politically motivated in this country are on the right and only seem to care about turning back the clock on abortion rights and installing some sort of theocratic institution.

@foxhound_fox:

Anti rich is stupid. Should we start an anti pretty and anti intellectual movement next?

Why is it stupid? In a true meritocracy like the right is always saying we should have, there would be a 100% inheritance tax, making everyone have to start from scratch and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

@foxhound_fox: WTF are you talking about?!?

@foxhound_fox:

People should have to earn their talent, beauty, and/or intelligence if you have to earn your wealth

There should be a 0% inheritance tax

Still a false equivalence, since most of things you mentioned are largely either genetic or derive from privilege (ability to go to school for generation of skills and talent, money for plastic surgery, etc).

So, if someone's family generated wealth from something that is now illegal (i.e. the slave trade) that wealth shouldn't be seized and redistributed to the victims of the crime? If people aren't "working" for their wealth, then why do they "deserve" it just by being born into the right circumstance?

Why do people born into wealth deserve to go to more prestigious universities, while those not born with that privilege deserve to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to achieve the same result?

If wanting to improve the lives of the average people is being anti rich...

"fighting to ensure the growing EPS targets of multinational corporations" just doesn't have the same appeal, does it?

Depends on who you are, lol.

if raytheon were smart, they'd pitch in a bit to raise soldiers' pay...

@foxhound_fox: Blacks had Jewish slaves in Egypt... I guess we should seize property of all descendants of Egyptians and give it to the Jewish people

Jews were never enslaved in Egypt. I know, I know, the Bible says so...but it's not true. The Jewish community in Egypt sprang up under the Greeks in Alexandria, and the Jews held many positions in government.

Even if that were the case, sure, why not? But you'd have to prove descent before being able to pay reparations. And you wouldn't seize all the property of all the descendants, just those involved in the enslavement.

But hey, that's a nice red herring you have there (hint: that's a logical fallacy). Not exactly the best attempt to dismiss my argument.

@br0kenrabbit:

Okay so Torah is full of lies.

White man bad

Orange man bad...

Any other dialogue options you have?

/rubs hands together

Yeah, the Torah is full of lies. And half-truths. You really have to read the Hebrew to catch it all, though. A lot of it is just straight-up screwed up in translation. Nephesh, for instance, is the word usually translated as 'soul', but it actually means 'to breathe', as an aspect of being alive (dead things don't breath, they are not nephesh).

In fact, the first four uses of Nephesh in Genesis 1 are translated as 'living things', 'living creatures', etc. It's only when you get to man (God BREATHED THE BREATH OF LIFE into Adam, and he BECAME a Nephesh) that it's translated as 'soul'.

Then there's Ruach, usually translated as 'spirit'. It actually means 'personality' as in the conscious ego.

But the real kicker is Elohim, plural of El. Plural because El, the father God, had 70 sons. Among those 70 sons are two you are probably familiar with: Yahweh and Ba'al. Look at Deuteronomy 32:8 (using the Hebrew proper nouns, everything else translated to English) When El Elyon apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the people's according to the number of the Gods, Yahwehs portion was his people, Jacob his INHERITANCE.

Judaism is well documented (EVEN IN THE TORAH) as being a polytheistic religion that, while in captivity in Babalyon, adopted the Canaanite pantheon and only after the Deuteronomic reform they became monotheistic. (about the time of Josiah, see Josiah removing from the temple and burning the effigy of Yahwehs female consort Asherah 2Kings 23:6).

You really want to get into this? You better brush up on your Hebrew. Let's roll, I haven't had a chance to pull this knowledge out on GS forums in a few years. I miss it.

off topic is dead. no more religion debates.

Off Topic catches all the spam now, that's all it's good for.

And I'm doing my best to purge them all on sight.