This has nothing to do with Obama. STS was planned for decommission in the Bush era. Blaming it on Obama is reactionary tripe. Also, Soyuz is STILL the most

This has nothing to do with Obama. STS was planned for decommission in the Bush era. Blaming it on Obama is reactionary tripe. Also, Soyuz is STILL the most reliable launch system on the planet after Delta II, and the most reliable manned system. In addition this was a failure of a Soyuz-U, not a Soyuz-FG which is used for crew rotation. The QA process on the two is quite different, and it appears (still too early to tell, but it is likely) that this error was a QA failure. Shuttle needed to be retired to move forward with anything else, as the program costs were too high to realistically move forward with any other development work with the current NASA budget.