And I agree completely, sadly. But for all that, the saddest thing is everyday I find myself defending the man. I have a laundry list of complaints with Obama, but I almost find myself having a higher opinion of him merely because the people I find criticizing him do so for reasons that range from “not well informed” to “batshit fucking crazy.”

I know its wrong for me to have my opinions altered because of others uninformed opinions, but when you have people like Glenn Beck calling everyone and everything a Communist plot in a manner that would make Joey McCarthy blush, Tea Party protesters claiming his highly-centrist, pure-vanilla policies are 100% socialist plots to destroy America, and people who still think he’s some kind of Kenyan Manchurian candidate, I find it difficult at times to essentially jump on-board his ship. If a man is measured by the quality of his enemies, what does it say when your enemies are like this?

This is probably somewhat contrary to what you intended, but I find that it also brings the point across that not every issue can be fixed in a single legislative period.

But it has to get there first, and it hasn’t. I blame the Senate for that.

The sheet titled “Words” is elaborate and well-developed; contrasting is the sheet titled “Actions” filled without exception by rests. At the end, all it’s doing is repeating the meme that ‘Barack Obama hasn’t done anything in his presidency.’

That’s why I linked the “Obameter” above – it quickly and easily shows all the promises President Obama has made over his campaign and presidency and exactly how much progress he’s made on each. They’re all neatly sourced and elaborated on, so if you want to see exactly when and how he kept his promise to expand hate crime legislature to cover sexual orientation you can.

If you’re interested, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/290/push-for-enactment-of-matthew-shepard-act-which-e/

(And, for the record, they *have* changed their position on whether a promise was actually kept several times, so issues you have with the legitimacy of a kept promise might be worth contacting them about).

Really, I’m just going over this because the Democratic meme of “Obama hasn’t done anything!!” is almost nearing Republican levels of destructiveness and shows about the same level of research on the part of the speaker. He _has_ done quite a few things, even if he hasn’t fixed everything he can possibly do. After all, he’s been in office about four hundred days so far? He has a massive amount of presidency left in him and by all objective accounts he’s certainly on his way to completing more promises.

So chill.

They didn’t have to force him, because he’s been at least complicit with a lack of progress when it comes to these and other important issues. I would rather Obama fight hard to accomplish the things he was elected to do and which he claims to support, directly against Congress if necessary, and ultimately fail entirely than compromise those goals to the point of meaninglessness.

Congress should not be his scapegoat. The buck stops in the Oval Office.