Has Barrack Obama set African American's back 20-50 years?

[NightDragon83]

Machiavellian said:

NightDragon83 said:

Figgycal said:
Lol no. Republicans in Congress has kept us int he Bush era.

Uh, Obama extending many of the Bush-era policies, including the Patriot Act, keeping Gitmo open, and keeping those  tax cuts for "the rich" that turned out to actually be mostly geared towards the middle class, among plenty of other things, has kept us in "the Bush era."

Why did Obama extend Bush polices, why is Gitmo still open and why is there tax cuts for the rich still in existance.  Its one thing to make a list, its totally different to research and find out why that list exist.  So saying that Obama has still kept us in the Bush era demands that you understand why those polices still exist and who voted for what and why.  Maybe before you throw a list together on something like this, it might help if you understood exactly what the President can do and not do.

I understand plenty.  During the Bush administration, Obama and the Democrats railed against The Patriot Act, Gitmo, and "tax cuts for the rich", and when he was campaigning, Obama vowed to end all of these.

As President, the first thing Obama did was sign a symbolic order to "close" Gitmo, but then quickly realised that oh shit, no other country wants to take these guys back, and we can't bring them to the US and put them in with the general polulation, so here we are 5 years later and Gitmo is still open after Obama got hit with a cold hard splash of reality.

Second, many of the key provisions in the Patriot Act that Bush signed into law had "sunset" expiration dates.  As President, Obama signed the "Patriot Sunset Extension Act" in 2011 which extended wiretapping, business record searching, and expanded surveilance on "lone wolves" and other suspected operatives in the US.

And third, the so-called "Bush tax cuts", which also had sunset provisions built into them, were extended TWICE by Obama, and are now permanent for anyone making under $400,000 or couples making $450,000 per year, which is 98% of the country.