@jobu
Was he forced to something against his will, or was it his character to not actually want to deliver what he sold as hope and change?

I think here in Germany nobody has even started to understand that facts about "nope and same" and even less that may be he was 'not in power of his own political decisions'.

I am biased and prejudiced. And it were some Africans who taught me that people of African descent are the best liars and con artists around and they rhemselves do it often without realizing the morality or danger it entails. You have to find people who feel safe and desperate enough to admit it, albeit mostly in a joking, teasing manner. They can laugh about their own masterful kabuki lying theater.

I think that it's a bit on the arrogant side to believe one can for sure judge or blame someone on what they achieved in their lives and on what basis.

Literally the textbook definition:

Definition of Bait and Switch
1 : a sales tactic in which a customer is attracted by the advertisement of a low-priced item but is then encouraged to buy a higher-priced one
2 : the ploy of offering a person something desirable to gain favor (such as political support) then thwarting expectations with something less desirable

Way back in Marketing classes we were taught that bait and switch was something that was illegal. That along with the Robinson Patman Act. (Think Prescription drug pricing)

The thing is, if you continually offer low prices on goods in a Big Sale and then jack up the prices on everything else while not offering the product you advertised, it doesn't take long for your customers to find out and get pissed.

In Obama's case, he offered Hope and Change and delivered Nope and Same. The Democratic Establishment found out the hard way in 2015-16 that their customers, both Dems and Dem leaning Indies, were righteously pissed.

Now the Democratic Party Leadership is preparing to sell Russia/Putin like Cabbage Patch Kids. The hope is that folks with be fighting each other to buy this crap. Base on stories like this, they will probably get stuck with a lot of inventory.

[video:https://youtu.be/VaQuxCWWTaI]

@Wink but I will give him some credit for helping me to wake the fuck up, and after what He and Her did to Bernie it was all crystal clear.

in to the eleven dimensional chess horse$h!t and stayed way too long.
The cave to the RW's astroturf Tea Party should have been a clue.
But instead I hung around waiting for hope & change right thru the 2014 midterms. And by Christmas 2014 it was clear that he had sold us out. That whatever horse$h!t he had been shoveling was indeed just that. I of course had a clue before the midterms that he was d!cking us around, but I held out hope that after the midterms he was going to sprint to the finish line with all kinds of hope & change. But nope. And by xmas 2014 I was done with the slacker. He had everything going in to his first term and squandered it to better serve his Massrs, the Oligarchy. He will Not be remembered fondly in the history books.

@Big Al @snoopydawg @Big Al (added something at the end of the comment)
Like Clinton, GWBush, HWBush or Reagan or Ford or Nixon?

The propaganda machine of the US goes way back and Obama was not a worse serf to the master deep state's and corporate and MIC players than the others. But he seems to get a little bit more hated for his betrayals than other Presidents for theirs. I think these documentaries show in a way that Obama is just one of them and not an exception of having been used.
Hollywood DC Part 1
[video:https://youtu.be/JRHYAffaFXM]
and
Hollywood DC Part 2
[video:https://youtu.be/nqADZa2BeLE]

I understand that the Afro-Americans may feel more anger and frustration over Obama's betrayals, but I think they seemed to not have understood that Obama was a child of an African father and not of an Afro-American father and mother, who were burned and pained by racial and socio-economic policies during all white US President's times in the White House.

It was his white grandmother, who pulled the family through by making a modest career in a bank (so I guess that means that Obama couldn't have been especially conscious about the banks and Wall Streets role as a damaging factor to the poor Afro-American communities and his own African father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr a failed as an African influential politician, but willingly accepted the offers of colonial and corporate powers in Kenya as a young man. (like all African students did during those times) I don't think that did promote any compassion or understanding for his African father by his son, Barack Obama, in his early years. Obama tried to see his African father's positive sides, but couldn't find anything that would allow more critical thinking about his father's experiences. Aside from the fact that this was sad, if not tragic, here some info about Barack Obama's father:

Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students.[17][18][19] President Obama said of his father's scholarship, "The Kennedys decided: 'We're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country.'"[20] An article by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post, however, states that the Kennedy family did not become associated with the educational airlift until 1960, a year after Obama Sr. was studying in the United States. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya archives at Stanford University.[17] ...

Obama Sr. completed his degree. He graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962 (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa[23]), leaving shortly thereafter to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard University in the fall.[22] Later that summer, Dunham and year-old baby Barack stopped to visit her friends in Mercer Island, Washington, the Seattle suburb where she had grown up,[22][24][25] before joining Obama Sr. in Cambridge. However, mother and son soon returned to Seattle, where she enrolled at the University of Washington.[22][24] Dunham, missing her family, then moved back to Hawaii[24] and filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted on March 20, 1964.[21] He visited his son only once, in 1971, when Barack was 10 years old.[22] ...

I would think Obama's thoughts about his African missing father were more prevalent in his childhood and teenage years than thoughts about the injustice and unfairness an Afro-American kid would go through, when they are exposed to several generations of Afro-American experiences of their Afro-American parents and grandparents.

Barack Obama's white grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham biography presents little that could have increased an understanding of Obama's 'troubles' by his white grandfather and grandmother. Aside from feeling safe under their roof as long as he 'behaved', there was nothing much, Barack Obama could look at and be guided by. Obama did behave and went off to college Occidental college near Los Angeles to become independent.

... Obama’s Oxy story begins in 1979, when the mixed-race son of a single mother enrolled at the College from Punahou School in Honolulu to be near his girlfriend. “I had graduated without mis­hap, was accepted into several respectable schools, and settled on Occidental College near Los Angeles mainly because I’d met a girl from Brentwood while she was vacationing in Hawai'i with her family,” Obama wrote in his 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father. “But I was still just going through the motions, as indifferent toward college as toward most everything else.”

If he was - in his own words - indifferent to most everything else, he certainly discovered his gift as a writer and the advantages his color could and would be to a future political career. He became a community organizer in Chicago, the first time, I assume, he sensed a social justice urge to help the Afro-American poor community as a future civil rights lawyer.

I don't know in how far these activities were "formative". Obama's bio here doesn't seem to express that the concerns for social justice for Afro-Americans were dominating over potential political activities, but that he could very well use those beliefs of others about him and his engagement for social justice issues for his own political advancement.

I also think that all of it was unconscious to him and to most Americans. Obama had no chance to understand his own African father's and African grandfather's life. Who could judge him for this negatively? I believe, that most Americans couldn't understand what Obama was not, namely a typical Afro-American child. How could I blame anyone for that?

When you remember the questions about "Is Obama black enough" and how that may have been met with silent consternation by Obama himself, I can post the question, if those, who hate Obama today for his betrayals apparently more than the other Presidents, are too white to not hate him less?

That question would be met with fury and consternation by most, and rightfully so. Because it's an open racist question. But so were the "not black enough" question back in the days.

I now posted that sort of question, so that you can question yourself a little bit more deeply as well. Heh, I did that for your own good ... don't you love me for that /s

I hope you can give me some slack for it. I would appreciate it.
Peace.

PS Rereading the comments here, I just want to say that Obama's life didn't start in 2004, when he was 'groomed' as the next President. It started out at age eight to ten. And then he had to "behave" and was not considered someone "special" by his classmates. Interviews with classmates of him were made by German TV who reflect clearly judgments that were not like the official versions of teachers who said he was exceptionally bright and curious.

"The roots of the regressive conservative Republican-Trump agenda we see today are the product of Obama’s failures and what he did not do. Obama was a horrible president who simply failed to lead a progressive agenda, setting up America for many of the problems today."

No way, the roots of this started way back, maybe 1789 when this oligarchic political system was instituted. What about Clinton, what if he had done this or that?

Calling Obama a horrible president who failed to lead a progressive agenda assumes we have a political system capable of delivering a progressive agenda, whatever that is (I know it doesn't include antiwar or anti-imperialism), and that the democratic party isn't an oligarchy tool. If one looks at the overall situation since the 70's, it's pretty easy to see the pattern. Obama did what he was supposed to do, like Clinton before him and Bush and Trump after him.

We need to abolish the presidency and establish a new political system.

#5

How else can you explain how people are upset with Trump for not passing the TPP? This was one of the worst bills ever and if it was passed it would have taken away our sovereignty. We are already letting foreign companies use eminent domain on our citizens which is unconstitutional unless. it's used for the betterment of the community. This law was passed by Bush. As others have stated, Obama spent 7 years working on it.

He lowered the restrictions on Malaysia so that they could sign on to it. What has Malaysia been accused of? Human trafficking and slavery. That's right. The first black American president seemed to have no problem with slavery just so he could sell us out. Add in the slavery that is happening in Libya after he destroyed the country.

One more thing to add to his legacy. It's not looking good for your history, Barry.

@coloradoblue Still, it's a nice thought anyway.

of presidents? To me he is likely #1. His failures of omission and commission are simply staggering in total. I spent a few days about a year ago trying to list as many as I could remember or look up and got to about 4 pages. I too bought into his bull until the FISA vote but still had hope he would or could do good. It didn't take me long to realize he NEVER fucking cared. I left the party in 2009.

And let's never forget - he is guilty of: war crimes; crimes against humanity, mass murder, the murder of American citizens without due process. He is complicit in the crimes of the Bush II admin including torture and "Aggressive War". Aggressive War was defined as the greatest war crime at the Nuremberg trials. It's why the Nazis and Japanese ended up with a rope around their neck.

Hell of a job Barry.

@ggersh

https://www.facebook.com/notes/ian-berman/when-you-say-you-miss-presiden...

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal  
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-just...

ADAMSON: . . . It’s an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he’s underage. He’s a minor.

GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an Al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.

After all, it was under his auspices that the lovely "you're a terrorist if you hang out with people we don't like" section of the 2011 NDAA got signed into law.

And then there's the five extra wars he started, the miles of pipeline he boasted about laying, a gag order on the EPA regarding fracking, a government mandate requiring us to enter into contracts with private sector insurance companies, an insurance company bailout, and the firm establishment of the fact that the rich don't have to obey the law.

And those are just the policy changes! The political changes are even more exciting!