Dallas says:

In the future, two term President Obama will also be remembered as one of the greatest of all presidents of the United States of America.

bobbo, one Real Liberal making Obama a Moderate Conservative by comparison says:

I also find myself often thinking Obama has not been very effective in office and I can list what he hasn’t done.

Then, we have all seen the lists of what he has done.

And with all his failures and spineless lack of confronting the TeaPublicans…. still…. he did address THE BIGGEST structural challenge the USA was facing and is still facing: the double the inflation rate of healthcare spending. something no one else after Johnson was able to do. Lots more to do of course. Slippery slope or cracking the egg… the omelet is not finished yet but hopefully on its way.

Lack of financial reform/enforcement/continuing placement of Wall Street Toadies in government revolving door does more than negate that effort.

Still room for hope and change.

Glenn E. says:

Slavery, in the US, represented free or extremely cheap labor. So any move to end slavery, threatened the South, economically. And mostly the wealthy plantation owners. Because very few poorer southerners owned any slaves. And the northern wealthy mainly objected to the “unfair” economic advantage, the South had to produce cheap goods. The South was basically a kind of China, in America, as far as goods they produced.

And every time a new State was officially minted, above the Mason-Dixon line, it threatened the voting power of the South, in Congress, to keep slavery alive. So at some point, the South just had enough, or saw the vote about to go against them. So they declared Separation. And the Civil war was really about this act of separation. Caused by the economic value of maintaining slavery, for the southern rich.

As opposed to the textile production of the northern rich. Who just happen to not benefit quite so much from the institution of slavery. Basically because black slaves were better suited to the southern climate. Their agriculture, and unskilled labor.

So the South wanted to be a Chinar, and Lincoln said no. And the war prevented a split nation. Kind of like has happened to Korea.

Uncle Patso says:

Glenn E. said, in part:

“… We don’t see tobacco sales, surcharged for all the cancer it causes. Or alcohol, for all the liver disease it causes. …”

Actually, both these things are taxed like crazy — more than half the retail cost is taxes. I remember once at the local bowling alley my father gave me a quarter to get him a pack of smokes from the machine and inside the cellophane wrapper on the pack were two shiny new pennies in change. Now they are more than five dollars, almost eight in some states. Some of that difference is inflation, but a lot of it is increased taxes. Alcohol is taxed similarly.

Guess my OCD is showing a little bit. Sorry.