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Obama could have been special. The symbol, the icon for an America forgiven of its past and now authoring hope for future people of all races. Perhaps it was po

• rjsw 13y ago
  The lesson should be not to elect slippery lawyers in future, the UK made that mistake with Tony Blair too.
  • northwest 13y ago
    The lesson IMO is to rebuild the whole political system, on a foundation made of sane rules. (And that should obviously include all government agencies, especially those which have been corrupting democracy for a few decades now.) EDIT: Don't forget that one of the earlier whistle blowers said (a few months back) that Obama had been put under surveillance by the NSA as well [0], which means a) you should expect him to have been vetted by the powers in place before being admitted as a presidential candidate by that 1 of the 2 parties available, b) "they" have stuff on him and can handle him like a puppet that he seems to have become. Ergo, it's not about which puppet you elect, it's about the system. [0] http://www.peterbcollins.com/2013/06/19/boiling-frogs-blockbuster-nsa-whistleblower-russell-tice-reveals-that-obama-many-top-officials-were-targets-of-nsa-surveillance/ http://www.peterbcollins.com/2013/06/19/boiling-frogs-blockb...
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    And not Cameron? Blair had a plan, he managed to execute a fair amount of it, then fell apart. Exactly like Thatcher. Cameron has none. Oh yeah, "austerity", which I think the US has now shown to be not the way to go. Heh, Cameron even nicked that idea off Brown. Like Obama, he just continued with the previous leader's polices. Sorry, both sides are full of crap. UK, US, its all the same. Its that old thing, "no matter who you vote for, the government always get in."
    • rjsw 13y ago
      I was discounting Cameron as he hasn't won an election and isn't very good at getting people to believe in stuff.
• danenania 13y ago
  Another explanation that I sadly believe to be much more realistic is that Obama never had pure motives. He was just playing the game (as any candidate must to win the support of either establishment party), and he took many millions of hopeful people along for the ride. It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...
  • johnchristopher 13y ago
    If by rhetoric you refer to Obama's campaign: The fact he didn't act as he said he would doesn't lessen the values of the rhetoric he held. The arguments, the conviction, the ideology developed during his campaign holds the same values today as it did yesterday. The earth is round and it isn't less so if crooks say it.
    • snowden 13y ago
      It does reduce the faith in the hope and change that was promised by our president. After all he does not walk the talk. He is the do as I say president not as I do. After all he does send his children to private school while preaching the virtues of public education. He is no different than any other politician in that regard, a hypocrite. Past performance or lack there of is an indicator of future performance. Obama has not been able to deliver on most of his promises from closing Gitmo to bringing this nation together. Does anyone believe he is capable of doing the right thing? Just talking about it does not count.
      • johnchristopher 13y ago
        I am not defending Obama and I am not saying he's going to change.
        • dalek_cannes 13y ago
          I never thought I'd see the day when I'll see a sentence with both "Obama" and "change" in it with a "not" in between.
• icecreampain 13y ago
  Your mistake was believing that (1) there was a choice and (2) the _two_ choices actually differed in any meaningful way. Both parties have the same masters.
  • acgourley 13y ago
    I hear that a lot, but I'm curious who these masters are. And if you say "corporations" I'd like to know which ones you suspect.
    • icecreampain 13y ago
      I am unable to say. The name of the group, or groups, controlling both the government and corporations is unimportant. Call it the illuminati or the jews or whatever. All I know is that money is an extremely good reason for the super rich to create groups that help them continue be super rich. The idealist in me died when he realized that even large, powerful governments can be undermined and destroyed by this controlling group (or the group's controlling group). If they can topple countries, like they have done several times in the past, then what kind of resistance can a lowly normal pose offer? None. I've learned to just keep my nose to the grindstone, make money for myself and ignore the rest of the world. It's easiest that way.
• crusso 13y ago
  I'm all for welcoming more people to the Don't Trust Obama club, but let's be honest here. Many of us saw his flaws long before this NSA scandal, which he and his minions now lump in with the set of "phony scandals". Voting for someone because of their race is every damned bit as bad as voting against someone because of their race. Maybe you folks who are surprised by the recent change in your attitude toward our President should stop voting for candidates who consistently hold positions against individual liberty?
  • zzzeek 13y ago
    the alternative was mccain/palin. In the primaries, Hillary was the alternative. Second time around it was Romney. None of these candidates would have had any substantive differences on these particular issues and on almost every other issue would have been far worse. Single issue voting is just as naive as believing rhetoric at face value. we absolutely need to protest Obama's actions in this area but as far as voting differently at the presidential level, unless we can radically change our voting system to realistically support 3rd party candidates, presidential politics isn't going to change much.
    • crusso 13y ago
      Of that entire group you just mentioned, the most divisive class warfare big government statist was Obama. At least if McCain had been elected then we would have had opposition party contention between the executive and legislative branches. At least with a Republican in office, the media would have been more likely to do its job by asking tougher questions and analyzing rather than fawning and adulating. Before all that, though, maybe people should get involved earlier in the process and not let the media, the party leaders, and Saturday Night Live pick their candidates for them?
      • zzzeek 13y ago
        right, because when we had republicans like Bush/Cheney in office, everything went far better than they are now. Feel free to be a Republican just as I feel free to be a Democrat, but that's not really relevant to this issue. The majority of Obama's support on these issues comes from Republicans.
• kailuowang 13y ago
  It's all in comparison. Obama is surely no saint but please name a president (or even a recent president candidate) with better record than Obama. Clinton? Bush? Reagan? Romney?
• eplanit 13y ago
  "Perhaps it was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied his original purer motives." ...so, his purity, innocence, and honesty was corrupted from the outside, by others? Did he not choose and hire his own advisors? Isn't this like blaming Cheney for everything Bush did? "he could understand what was wrong with the world ... and maybe fix it." Obama the Messiah? What U.S. President could ever 'fix' the problems of the world? "...perhaps the best course of action maybe for him to take a seat at the back of the bus." So, let's revert back to racist treatment? This statement of yours is what drove me to the keyboard this early in the morning. Your arguments are _bizarre_. It is amazing what the Left projected onto Obama in terms of hopes and aspirations. His _only_ career has been that of a politician, yet the Left expected him to be something else? He never ran a city, a state, a company, or ever made/produced anything. His career is an extreme example of Affirmative Action, if anything. For goodness sake, he was awarded a Nobel Prize for simply having been elected. That seems quite premature and misguided in hindsight now, doesn't it? I admit, I voted for him in '08 and was proud to do so. I've never been more regretful of any of my votes in my 32 years of casting ballots.
  • pekk 13y ago
    To understand that Nobel, you have to understand two things: 1. The awarding of the Nobel peace prize is ALWAYS political, not just in this case. The committee is wielding a tool, that is all. It is no use getting upset by the assumption that this committee is a moral authority and Obama got unfair special treatment. They give these prizes as a political tool or signal. 2. This prize was given in the context of a bounty of needless new wars/colonial projects, especially Iraq. You can figure out what the intended signal was from this. Now you have to admit that our involvement in Iraq has reduced dramatically, and now at least we have a timetable for Afghanistan. But that's actually beside the point. The peace prize is given as a tool by a certain European set to exert influence. It's not a justly-given award for moral perfection. Unless you understand these things, you are going to keep scratching your head about that Nobel prize forever.
  • pcunite 13y ago
    Quote: "So, let's revert back to racist treatment? This statement of yours is what drove me to the keyboard this early in the morning." Forgive me, I only meant to say that he was supposed to help injustice, a world he claims to have come from. Now, he "sits in the front seat" so to speak and makes a mockery of what Rosa Parks endured. She really created change.
• Datsundere 13y ago
  I suggest you watch lesterland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• jup 13y ago
  > For reasons he only knows, he choose to side with abuse. Obama is a vain, stupid man who believes that he is the president of the United States. In reality he is manipulated by a small inner group of people who have the real power and who play him like a puppet. Do you really believe that a man of such limited capabilities can stage a successful campaign to become president? Obama is the biggest con ever played on the American people.
  • walid 13y ago
    > Obama is a vain, stupid man who believes that he is the president of the United States. I will intentionally ignore this line above because what you later said would apply to every elected person in any country, not limited to the USA: > In reality he is manipulated by a small inner group of people who have the real power and who play him like a puppet. Do you really believe that a man of such limited capabilities can stage a successful campaign to become president? Obama is the biggest con ever played on the American people. Taking that into consideration, I was still hoping that the president's role was something more positive and not completely covering up the NSA's blunders when they got caught with their pants down.
• protomyth 13y ago
  "Obama could have been special." I have a honest question, did you read his voting record, see what bills he had wrote / sponsored / co-sponsored, or listen to his podcast[1] before deciding he was worth your hope for that symbol? The media narrative for both sides is smoke and mirrors. The only real truth is what the do in legislation. 1) Yes, he had one as a US Senator.
  • superuser2 13y ago
    What they do in legislation isn't the full story, either. People vote against bills that sound like good ideas because there's something nasty subtly buried inside them. People vote for bad bills to collect votes for good ones. Someone who kept a pristine voting record would not actually get anything done.
    • protomyth 13y ago
      Yes, the legislative system is has its game, but sponsorship and co-sponsorship tells a lot. Most legislators tell folks what their vote meant and most bill titles are fantasy. You need to look deeper than the soundbite to determine what the legislative record means.
• pekk 13y ago
  Did you really need to say that Obama should sit at the back of the bus? What does that add to the political discourse? It is needlessly inflammatory. Say that you want him out of politics, not something that sounds racist for no reason.
  • pcunite 13y ago
    Forgive me, I only meant to say that he was supposed to help injustice, a world he claims to have come from. Now, he "sits in the front seat" so to speak and makes a mockery of what Rosa Parks endured. She really created change
• phaus 13y ago
  Why would you be proud to have a black president? If his race ever entered into the equation for you, that's a data point in favor of establishing a screening process for voting eligibility. (I'm against such a thing but I often feel that most people are making completely arbitrary decisions.) Race is just one of many things that is "wrong" with the world. The two biggest things seem to be the tendency of humans to want to kill or convert anyone who follows a different ideology, and poverty. If I had to guess, in many cases the former is keeping many parts of the world from escaping the latter.
• SkyMarshal 13y ago
  >Perhaps it was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied his original purer motives. I think it's more likely that the Federal bureaucracy is simply more powerful than our elected officials, at least some ways. They provide a great deal of the information Congress and the President use to inform their worldviews and decisions, and probably have well developed methods of getting what they want from the two. The bureaucracy has a real advantage by simply having less turnover, more continuous time in the system, hence more institutional knowledge of how to work the system, than the average politician.