Matthew Yglesias, writing for Vox, made a point about President Obama that demonstrates why it is that right-wingers hate him so much. Despite what they have tried to do to him, he is still doing stuff for the country:
On November 26, the Obama administration put forward new anti-smog regulations that should prevent thousands of premature deaths and heart attacks every year. About two weeks later, Obama’s appointees at the Federal Reserve implemented new rules curbing reckless borrowing by giant banks that will reduce profits and shareholder earnings but increase the safety of the financial system. Yet both of these were minor stories compared to normalizing relations with Cuba after decades and his sweeping plan to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Somewhere in the meantime, Democrats broke the congressional logjam and got a whole boatload of nominees confirmed.
And that is just what O has done since his second mid-term shellacking. Yglesias offers more pre-shellacking O-complishments, including,
♦ the Affordable Care Act (“an expansion of the welfare state rivaled by only the New Deal and the Great Society”)
♦ the remaking of student-loan programs (“that’s made it possible for the government to offer more help with college tuition”)
♦ the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (“a safer banking system”)
♦ the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“a major goal worth fighting for separately from questions of macro-level financial stability”)
♦ Yglesias also includes “smaller measures from the 111th Congress like a food safety bill, a child nutrition bill, a Children’s Health Insurance expansion, and a public lands bill the Sierra Club hailed as “a historic day for conservation.”
To all that, I will add more O-complishments:
♦ became the first African-American POTUS
♦ rescued the country from the losing-800,000-jobs-a-month, Bush-era Great Recession, which people seem to have forgotten, now that job growth is pretty damned good (“the best private sector jobs creation performance in American history” says Forbes) and the stock market is soaring (the Dow just had its best day since 2011)
♦ rescued the auto industry, which God only knows how many jobs that saved
♦ oversaw a reduction in the budget deficit from almost 10% of GDP in 2009 (mostly George Bush’s doing) to just under 3% this fiscal year
♦ gave “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a dishonorable discharge from the military, and helped create an environment in which LGBT people are steadily becoming first-class citizens all over the country
♦ appointed worker-friendly members of the National Labor Relations Board
♦ appointed the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve; appointed the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court
♦ banned torture of detainees
♦ made fish bait out of bin Laden and killed a number of high-ranking leaders of al-Qaeda
♦ raised taxes on rich folks, after Bush had cut them
♦ appointed two women to the Supreme Court, only the third and fourth females to serve there in history
♦ signed a new arms control treaty with Russia, reducing the number of nukes in the world
♦ made FEMA a real emergency management agency (just ask people in tornado-ravaged Joplin)
♦ made “science and the scientific process” part of decision making in the executive branch and officially acknowledged that climate change is real
♦ established tougher fuel economy standards for vehicles, which will reduce carbon pollution
♦ made a “landmark agreement” with China, the world’s worst carbon polluter, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
♦ has appointed 307 federal judges, and has increased the number of federal appeals courts that have Democratic-appointed majorities from 1 to 9—out of 13!
♦ has pissed off, and will continue to piss off, a whole lot of white right-wingers just by showing up to work each and every day with this face:
Thank you, O.
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The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
ansonburlingame
/ December 19, 2014And Duane,
Ran up our debt to historic highs with no end in sight, received a less than 40% public approval rating and his party “mooned” by the voters in the mid-term elections from two months ago. Oh, yes, just how are we doing in the War on Terror, the American people wonder, and vote accordingly.
Your list is a good one and Hillary or Elizabeth (I hope) will use it over the next two years. Then again the people will decide.
Anson
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King Beauregard
/ December 19, 2014Don’t forget how much the Left hates Obama; if willingness to lie about a public figure can be taken as any measure of how irrational one’s animosity is, the Left gives the Right a run for their money.
In other news, America’s drone strikes have largely been suspended in Pakistan, and Pakistan has taking to going after militants directly. So what did I just see in the news the other day … ? al Qaeda shot up a Pakistani school and killed 141 people (mostly children), to send a message to the Pakistani government to lay off (which is to say, a threat to kill more). Which makes me start remembering the good old days of drone strikes: we kept al Qaeda from being able to organize and act in Pakistan, and they didn’t have any easy way to strike back at us. But now the pressure’s off, and in a single outing al Qaeda kills nearly as many children as the US has in the entirety of its decade-long campaign. (Sixty-nine of those children killed by the US were killed in a single strike at a madrassa in 2006. al Qaeda just more than doubled our high score.)
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Ben Field
/ December 25, 2014Duane,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We can be thankful this holiday season not only for the points you addressed above, but that gas prices are the lowest in ten years. US oil production has doubled since Bush left office. The right wing credited Reagan for the Soviet downfall in 1991, although it was on Clinton’s watch when oil prices tumbled, and resulted in the financial collapse. I doubt Obama will get any credit for the benefits we are seeing as a result of current prices, although due. Russia is facing economic collapse, Iran is in a poor position to negotiate nuclear ambition or assist Russian contributions to Syria, and Venezuela is also reeling. Obama’s America has successfully put the screws to our enemies and not fired a single shot. I say Bravo to Obama, and hope the radical right can begin to see that we are far better off today as a result of his efforts. My Christmas wish is the right would not act as obstructive reactionaries in the new Congress and let our country enjoy further progress.
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R. Duane Graham
/ January 8, 2015Ben,
Just got to the comment section, after a long vacation. Post-holiday greetings to you!
By the way, you wrote, “I say Bravo to Obama, and hope the radical right can begin to see that we are far better off today as a result of his efforts.” Hope springs eternal, I suppose, but after the attacks on Obama yesterday, which continue to day, for not properly labeling the Paris killers as “Islamic” or “Muslim” terrorists, I don’t hold out much hope myself that the radical right will stop hating Obama with a pathological fervor. There is nothing this man can do, short of a skin bleach, that will appease such haters.
Duane
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