I wasn't mandated to give up anything and neither were you. I was in healthcare finance for 6 years before I switched to IT, so please don't spew ignorance like this at me again.

Being absurd and mocking doesn't help your point.

The premise of the thread doesn't mean people can't comment in general on the President as I have done. It doesn't mean people can't say he hasn't set the entire country back which is also what I have done. It doesn't mean people can't question why a group who have been so economically harmed by him gave him 93% of their votes.

As for expectations put upon other groups, that is just nonsense. People try to paint groups with claims about their leaders or their own history all the time. Why one of the claims about President Obama is that he would make America more respected around the world after Bush. Why would the entire world judge the U.S. based off one man? Sounds like a group being judged by one person in that group does it not?

Do white people have to live down George W. Bush? In a way yes because there is continual talk of white privilege not just with George Bush but with George Washington as well. We are told the very foundations of the country are racist and that any achievement isn't really our own. Are white males judged when a serial killer shows up? Maybe not but all legal gun owners are whenever there is a mass shooting.

Also it goes two ways. President Obama wrote two books and in them he spoke of reconciliation. In his first book he reconciled his two racial identities. In his second book he declared he could reconcile the two parties and the broken process in Washington. He has solidly failed in both regards. The groups that have bought into those solutions suffer first and worst. I posted statistics that have shown that to be true for the African-American community who have suffered tremendous economic loss under President Obama all while holding on and hoping he will bring the change he promised.

If you went to a financial advisor and gave him the last five years of your savings, say $10,000. They you stuck with him as it became $8,000 then $5,000 and finally $2,000 and never fired the man or sought other solutions. Then he has indeed set you back years because it took time to save and make that money.

People like yourself make this about stereotyping. I have made it about money. Black unemployment was 10.6% in the middle of a recession. Now it is 12.9% in the middle of a recovery five years later. For the country as a whole the unemployment rate has gone down (though not really because participation levels are way down.) However for the black community, unemployment is way UP. That is a set back for that group as a whole. It doesn't mean people are calling them names or saying stereotypes about them. It is a true by the numbers economic set back and this is true in almost every economic measure for that group under President Obama.

If Romney or McCain or anyone else were president unemployment would still be 12.9% for african americans because unemployment has always been high in that particular minority group. 

So fix the claimed ignorance. Health care is now a mandated purchase. See when the Montgomery Bus Boycott occurred, people could choose to forgo the institution that was treating them badly. If someone wanted to make you ride in the back of the bus, easy, you don't give them your business until they treat you right.

However that option doesn't exist with health care now. It is a mandated purchase. So if the government doesn't treat you right, no boycott. You will be fined. They have not ruled out anything for progressive punishment including jail. It doesn't matter what you were in before either. The rules have all changed now due to ACA.

Not personally a fan of Obama as I was disgusted at how appallingly he handed the Deep Horizon crisis a few years back. Scapegoating a 49% US owned company (who was contracting 100% US companies) as being all an evil non US company breaking rules and as a direct result causing share prices (which a LOT of people's pensions are invested in) just to look like "the big man" during a crisis does not sit well with me and is certainly not something I would expect from someone in office as high as the US president.

However, as a politician, I think he has been let down by the US electorate who basically crippled him from making any real changes by putting Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives who then throw their toys out of the pram at anything and anything they possibly could trying to gain leverage and destabilize the government.

Deficit ceiling nonsense leading most recently to the federal shutdown and also all this pushing back at "Obamacare" despite the fact that it has been passed into legislation.

If they were going to be constructive against "Obamacare", they should be running their next election on the pledge to revoke it and let the population give them a clear answer as to whether that's what they want. That's what a real democracy is about.

I also think medicare although it doesn't go far enough, is better than nothing at all. Though obviously my preference of a universal health care system is skewed by the fact that I live in the UK.

You forgot that he hasn't cured cancer yet. Because Romney surely would have. 

Broke thread woohoo

Are you fucking serious?

To me, Obama is nothing more than a wonderful piece of marketing material. If you were to invent someone to be the perfect public image for President of the United States, it would be him. In fact, that's really what the 2012 elections were about. Both Romney and Obama looked like people you would cast as President of the United States in a Hollywood sci-fi movie while people like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson were seen as crazy radicals who are out of touch with the mainstream even though it's the mainstream who keeps getting people like Bush and Obama elected and then bitches about it afterwards. Who's really crazy?

if only people would have looked Obama's past political decisions and voting records rather than listen to all those wonderfully made campaign ads in 2008, things would have been different. I mean after all, calling yourself a politician who's made a career in Illinois (one of the most corrupt states in the union) would not get you elected, but promising "change" and a break from mainstream politics even though your as mainstream and as formal as they get will. Also, if only people would stop choosing somebody because they're either a Democrat or Republican would help to. Why do people do this? We've been screwed over by both parties who have made empty promises. It's a couple getting back together again even after repeated spousal abuse.