Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most 
> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard 
> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be 
> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea 
> which one to believe.

  I think that the major problem is that he promised to do a lot of things
to make Americans' lives better, but in the end he didn't. Instead of
standing firm and pushing his original agenda no matter what, seemingly
he started making compromises and caving in. (Sure, the president cannot
pass laws, but in the US the president, AFAIK, has quite a lot of influence
which he can use to influence law making.)

  Most prominently, he promised to bring the health care system to the
same level as the western European ones, but in the end he failed.
I haven't really followed that lately, but I get the impression that he
simply gave up or something. Also, he promised to close Guantanamo, but
he didn't. On the contrary, during his term even more egregious laws were
passed than during Bush's.

  But that's not all. Apparently big companies have had a big influence
on his policies. For example, he has appointed several members of the
RIAA to high governmental positions, and he is a proponent of ridiculously
harsh and disproportionate penalties for minor copyright infractions (such
as fining people 110000 dollars for each illegally downloaded song).

  There's a hypothesis that he was a big corporation puppet all along
(just like Reagan was), and that his initial "let's make America better"
policies were all just an act to get elected. Now that his term is coming
to an end, he isn't even pretending anymore. We'll probably never know if
that was the case.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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