Was Obama a good president?

1. 60

   Ryan Wendlingposted 8 years ago

   Was Obama a good president?
   
   In the past eight years:
   1. Unemployment dropped from 8.3% to 4.9%
   2. GDP annual growth increased from -2.8% to 2.4%
   3. The DOW went up from about 7,000 to about 19,000
   4. The annual deficit decreased from -$1.39 trillion to -$534 billion
   5. Number of uninsured American dropped from 16.1% to 9.1%
   6. Consumer confidence grew from 25.3 to 101.1
   
   So objectively, hearing from both sides of the aisle, was Obama a good president?

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2. 45

   Ashish Dadgaaposted 8 years ago

   Hello Ryan,
   
   I reckon Obama was a good president

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3. 82

   tamarawilhiteposted 8 years ago

   The unemployment numbers you cite are a lie, due to the redefinition of not including people who gave up looking for work. Include them per the old definition, and unemployment rates are 15%. You can see this in part from the workforce participation rate that is now at the level it was in the 1970s - before many women joined the workforce.
   The uninsured numbers only dropped due to increased numbers on Medicaid - more people on welfare is not good.
   DOW is irrelevant except that it is propped up with money the feds printed and gave to banks to try to keep the economy up. The inflation rate is kept low so federal interest payments are low, so they invested in stocks instead.
   GDP and consumer confidence numbers are not valid, since you're looking at numbers from the 2007-2008 crash to a society only a little better.
   He was elected to heal the racial divide and now we have blacks assaulting whites because they are white while the DoJ and local police mostly don't care, while BLM riots without any controls because the feds endorse the violence. Oh, and they don't care about police brutality, since they don't march when whites or hispanics are killed by cops, and they don't care about black murder victims who are 100x the number killed by cops, many of those dead children killed in drive by shootings.
   He was elected to be a transparent administration in contrast to Bush's bailouts of businesses and some other questionable decisions. Then we get more business bailouts based on cronyism (especially Green businesses like a billion to Solyndra that went kaput), a Secretary of State who engaged in 500 million in bribes and ignored government security guidelines to hide the illegal actions, many decisions issued by executive order to go around Congress, several of which were struck down by the Supreme Court.
   He's among the most corrupt Presidents with the worst record of abuse of power ever. Add in race-baiting, incitement to violence by his supporters of his opponent's base, and it is only bad.

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4. 60

   Ryan Wendlingposted 8 years ago

   @tamarawilhite.
   First off, discouraged workers cannot be counted in any legitimate unemployment statistic. Discouraged workers, stay at home parents, and anyone else not actively seeking employment is not considered part of the labour force, because they are voluntarily unemployed. Even if they aren't choosing to be unemployed, they are choosing to not be a part of the active working force. The fact that unemployment rates are the lowest they've been in this country since Bush is a unanimously agreed upon fact among any economist conservative or liberal, it's really not something you can argue.
   The increase in insured Americans is due entirely to the Affordable Care Act, not welfare. The Act has provided coverage to millions of Americans that have long been left out of the healthcare system. Obamacare has allowed America to finally fulfill its obligation to the American people to provide adequate healthcare to everyone as mandated in article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
   GDP is relevant for precisely the reason you say it is not. When Obama took office, you're right, it was low, that's why it's so impressive it's grown so much while he's been in office. Obama took office during the worst economic recession since FDR and the great depression. He managed to get us out of that without any of the burdensome programs FDR implemented that had negative long term effects. While at the time controversial, the way Obama got us out of the recession has in hindsight been deemed an irrefutable success.
   The BLM movement is a legitimate movement, and is recognized as such by leaders of both major parties not just Obama. Sure white people get killed by cops too, but being black makes you twice as likely to be killed by a police officer, according to statistics from conservative talk show host Shawn Hannity. No one in our government other than president elect donald trump has endorsed the use of violence.
   Obama has run what has been agreed upon as one of the most uncorrupt administrations in history, remarkablely scandal free. Be careful not to confuse political differences for corruption.

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