Thanks Obama!

Not the worst and not the best. Think at the end of the day he will be regarded a bit in the middle of the pack maybe lower, probably around the same tier as George W Bush

Still cringe seeing the amount of debt this country is in.... Spending is pretty bad and something that might take future generations to help get us out of

Meanwhile in Chicago and Baltimore...

We have been in debt since Andrew Jackson. It hasn't kept us from having good times.

I appreciate the Democrats trying to untangle the US from those two wars. But, I also expected them to be more analytical about the situation on the ground in Iraq before sending all US troops home. There were those who wished a more gradual withdrawal and leave a US security force large and capable enough to keep insurgents at bay. I wish the current administration heeded them.

@samusbeliskner said:

@bmanva said:

@samusbeliskner said:

@bmanva said:

@samusbeliskner said:

@bmanva said:

I think the video make some excellent points. I don't necessary agree with every one of his decisions or positions but I think he is a good president. He oversaw some progressive and monumental milestones in American history. First and foremost, the first black president as the video mentioned. I didn't agree with his focus on obamacare in lieu of economical recovery, but it turned out he was right and if he waited the proposal wouldn't have went through after they lost Democrat controlled house. Gay right was another important step that he played a role in.

And he really didn't swoop in and take your guns and bibles, so I guess that's a good thing; although he still has almost two years left, so be ever vigilant for the "gubment" is always hiding in wait somewhere...

There you go making an ass out of yourself by assuming again. I'm not a religious individual, never have been. So I couldn't care less about Obama "taking [MY] bibles". And to be completely honest, Obama's half ass attempts at "taking [MY] guns" have been the best things for the firearm industry since ever, so yeah, that is a good thing.

1. Obama has never attempted to take anyone's guns. That's just stupid.

2. I never claimed you were religious.

3. We have seen a small uptick in sales the first quarter of this year, but nothing close to covering last year's losses and overall Firearms industry sales are down over a three year period Colt is bankrupt. S&W is down 35% in sales over a three year period. Yes, a bunch of irrationally paranoid racists ran out a bought a few guns after a black man was elected president, but only really needs to do a simple web search for something like "gun sales down" to see the truth.

1)Hence the quote.

2)Yet you just happened to mention the bible out of nowhere.

3)Nope you are just plain wrong on that account. Colt is bankrupt because they haven't made a single notable firearm since the 60s and the fact that everyone and their mothers are getting into the AR business. Pretty much all of the articles you find about gun sales being down is actually just the market normalizing after the 2013 spike. If you look at the overall trend, Obama is responsible for an estimated 9 billion boost to the gun industry (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/11/barack-obama-may-have-been-at-least-a-9-billion-boon-to-the-gun-industry-so-far/)

Also FBI data supports this: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/general-information/fact-sheet

Gun ownership is at all-time lows. Time to accept it. The government is buying up all the ammunition.

Wrong again. According to gallup poll, gun ownership is the lowest in 1999 at 34%, currently it's around 40%. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

And there's absolutely nothing factual to substantiate that gun ownership even declining. Surveys and polls are notoriously inaccurate in that regard; gun owners aren't likely to answer truthfully to a complete stranger about whether they own guns. In fact, everything is pointing to the exact opposite. Background check for gun purchases have skyrocketed. http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2015/01/adjusting-nics-checks-for-background-checks-for-concealed-handgun-permits/ Conceal carry license went from 2.7 million in 1999 to 11 million in 2011. http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Concealed-Carry-Permit-Holders-Across-the-United-States.pdf And in states that register handgun owners saw increase in licensed gun owners, in particular Illinois. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/chicago-gun-owner-id-card_n_1237788.html

Government purchases don't go through NCIS so your suggestion that it's the Federal munition procurement doesn't collaborate with the proportional increase in NCIS checks for private firearm transfers.

Of course they would hinder the president Obama at every turn, they don't want a black president doing a good job do they. Amirite?

The fallacy of false equivalence. STATES.

I don't think he or any president since the 80's has done anything 'good.'

Pretty much from Reagan to now shit has been full blown attacks on living conditions (Quantitative Easing is all I need to say), dictatorship (NDAA, 1033 program, violations of separation of powers etc.) and war (no explanation needed here).

For me, Obama tops Reagan as the top 3 worst presidents in recent US history.

1.Obama
2.Reagan
3. Bush Jr./Clinton (roughly tied in my eyes)

I guess it depends on how you define "surge". Looks like less than 20% more people applied for those cards than in 2010.

lol. You cite a poll as evidence, then claim that polls are untrustworthy and inaccurate. Even funnier, you cite Gallop, the same ones who told us in 2012 that Romney was leading Obama by a big margin...lol.

http://www.newsweek.com/us-gun-ownership-declines-312822

I'll go with the other one, which is right in line with PEW research as well.

Nothing to substantiate that gun ownership is declining? I guess if one were a gun "enthusiast", it would make sense to delude yourself into thinking that.

More analytical. Such as? Bush signed the Status of Forces agreement. We had to leave, brah.

........... The fact of the matter is this, businesses are literally demanding you to sign over your facebook account so they can snoop around in it before they hire you.. Yet again I am merely stating the fact that businesses don't like to hire most felons period.. It doesn't matter if you had something on your record 20 years ago, that has absolutely nothing to do with the job at hand.. And I would be more in favor of the government deciding what to show and what not to show during a background check if it has absolutely nothing to do with the job at hand.. It's no ones fucking business to a drug felony charge that happened 15 years ago in which they met the courts demands in serving their time, getting clean and changing a new leaf.. These kind of things are merely further punishment down the road that solves absolutely nothing but promote the revolving door of crime..

I would be in favor on letting the individual making the decision. No need for the government to decide what I do or do not chose to disclose to my potential employer. My potential employer can ask and I can decide whether or not to answer and if is letter found out that I lied on my job applicant said employer has the option to fire me or not.

You have to be joking

@sSubZerOo: I actually set up a fake Facebook account several years ago for the sole fact that businesses had begun to monitor such activities. Luckily I have never run into trouble from any company requesting direct access to my Facebook. Still it's disconcerting to feel the need to do this sort of thing in the first place.

..... What the hell does that even mean? Your against what I said but are for people willfully lying? How does that change or solve anything? It doesn't..

Just demonstrating that survey and polling data can swing either way. Gallop is the biggest and most trustworthy survey company in the world, but it doesn't mean they are infallible. Again that goes with the nature of polls and surveys. If you are trying to say that Gallop has a conservative bias then you are a bigger idiot than I previously gave you credit for. Pretty much all sides cite Gallop regardless of political leaning.

Again the newsweek article is citing the same survey that almost all articles that make mention of decline of gun ownership.

I'm deluding myself with factual evidences like massive spike in gun sales, increase in applications for conceal carry and registrations for firearm ownership? But your opinion is based on what? Single limited survey that people aren't likely to respond truthfully with?

Better than the US who chose not send any ship and plane whatsoever to evac its own citizens. As someone who travels abroad from time to time, that's not the kind of response I want to see from my own government.

It is not an opinion. I get that you are a gun "enthusiast", but real data is never opinion.

Massive spike in gun sales.......... Gun stocks are up an average of 15% the first half of 2015 after being down more than 50% in 2014 from 2013. Over a 3 year period they are still down 35% from 2012. This is your "massive spike in gun sales"? Com on, dude, math.

I get that when you're a fan of something it's comforting to assume that everyone else is as well, but that just doesn't reflect reality. We don't have complete open carry numbers, but we do have CCW numbers, and only about 11 million people nationwide have one. Assume that there are just as many open carriers and at any given time we have maybe 22 million people walking, probably legally, around outside with guns, not even 10% of the population.

I think we can agree on one thing, however - gun stocks are going to be just fine in the crazy gun country. It's no wonder we have the highest rate of gun violence in the developed world.

On Gallup, I am just saying that they have been demonstrated to be quite wrong in the past, while both the NORC and Pew research have both have done studies on gun ownership which have results that match, around 22% owning and 32% of Americans living with someone who does. Again, math. 2 > 1.

Until you can demonstrate that people have not to respond truthfully to anonymous surveys and polls, there is no reason to conclude otherwise. You are engaging in wishful thinking.

It IS your opinion. Don't act like you are not extremely biased on the matter. And what real data? I saw one linked source from you.

Which company stocks are you talking about? Again no link only shit you are pulling out of your ass. FN Herstal, arguably most successful gun company currently, isn't even publicly traded.

Pew research themselves cite Gallup polls frequently. Also according to Pew, for the first time since 1993, more American support gun rights than they do support gun control. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/09/a-public-opinion-trend-that-matters-priorities-for-gun-policy/ That indirectly support that gun ownership is on the rise not decline.

Again you're ignoring many correlating evidences that contradict that one single survey.

What I am seeing here from you is just complete denial. lol. I already referenced two studies, the PEW

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/

and the GSS

http://www.newsweek.com/us-gun-ownership-declines-312822

Both come to the same conclusion. So, we can either believe that people told gallup the truth, and lied on the other two, or gallup got it wrong....again. The preponderance of the evidence leads to the conclusion that gallup is not correct.

In the end, however, it really doesn't matter what you believe. Your personal beliefs do not change that which is most likely to be true, the results of the GSS and Pew studies.

Domestically his performance was above satisfactory considering the legacy he inherited from the two preceding administrations. Even though he failed to steer the nation in a radically different economic direction, he managed to achieve more than one paradigmatic change on the social front.

Foreign policy, however, is a different story; he was simply appalling. I understand - but am unsympathetic to - the Republican outrage at a less than jingoistic president. In his attempt to spare the U.S unnecessary wars, he reached out to every stratagem of foreign and security policies, which ended up stripping the U.S of whatever integrity it'd left after the Bush administrations while resulting in a reality that is infinitely more precarious. The point being is that Obama didn't abandon American imperialism; he only held a different ideology about how to achieve it. In an unexpected turn of events, I find myself preferring Republican jingoism over Democratic duplicity. At the very least you can anticipate, and to an extent, deal with the consequences of the former; the latter is amorphous, and as reality attests, it results in a far more malignant reality.

But we know both GSS and Pew are emphatically wrong, since states that do track gun owners saw increase in the same time duration those poll and survey data are showing decrease.

No, in the end they are surveys and polls of limited pool (Pew sample size is around 3k and GSS is only at 2k). So you can choose to believe that 3~2k people can accurately represent entire population of 300 millions, or you can look at the verifiable facts that applies across the entire population, application for conceal carry and NCIS background check have been increasing not to mention that in states that register gun owners, registration have also saw substantial increase.

No, we don't know that they are wrong; we know that they represent what the survey participants said. How did you determine that both studies are wrong? Background check numbers are not an indicator of how many completed a gun sale.

As far as sample sizes, that's how things are done. It's statistically accurate representation of random areas of the country. It's the same method that two University of FL criminologists used in the 90s when they conducted their "How many time per year are guns used in self defense" study that concluded that they are used up to 2.5 million times per year. These two called 5,000 people, asked each if they used a gun in the past year for self defense, got 66 out of 5,000 positive responses, then extrapolated that data for the size of the population at that time. Do you doubt that study as well? I mean, come on. You're just not making sense now.

The possibility is high since the states that implement any firearm registrations are gun unfriendly states, if the gun ownership is increase EVEN in gun unfriendly states, it's logical to assume gun ownership is at least maintaining if not also increasing in the states where guns are more accepted.

Now who thinking wishfully? I don't care if the survey says 100% of the people own and use guns, they are wrong. 3k people isn't large enough sample size to accurately reflect the personal habits of 300 million.

If, if, if. It is quite clear that you do not understand how scientific polling is done. Until you can demonstrate that you claim is even likely to be true with real data, you are just pissing in the wind, brah.

Except there's absolutely nothing scientific about polling. And what I provided (conceal carry applications, firearm owner registrations and NCIS checks) are REAL data, unlike your polls which isn't real data, only representation of it (inaccurate ones at that).

And we're still back at you not understanding how scientific polling works and denying fact. lol.

If there's anyone lacking in understanding, it's you. Polling is a pseudo science and the results are hardly factual. Claiming them as such is ignoring the complexity of human inter and intra personal psychology. It as dumb as saying that just because you live in the same neighborhood as another and is of same sex and race, have similar incomes, then it's a FACT that you and the other person will have the same thing for dinner on Friday nights.

You seem not to be comprehending my entire point.. Nothing is being dictated, no where did I say that a business should be forced to hire those people.. More specifically pointing out that things not pertinent to the job or have happened over a decade ago should not show up on a job search background check if it has nothing to do with the job at hand.. Such as a drug offense felony that happened 10 years ago with a person that has followed everything the court rulings..

NO business is being forced or dictated over, the fact of the matter is businesses are getting entirely too personal with the people they employ.. Who exactly is dictating here? Because last I checked it's businesses demanding peoples log ins to facebook, it's businesses who are actually looking into a person's credit history that can bar them..

Quit it with that "I am for freedom" horse shit fallacy.. No one here is talking about gay marriage or other such things, your trying to create a red herring and not understanding the point what so ever. There can be middle ground here that does not force businesses what so ever, while still giving the businesses enough information to make a decision on who to hire or not..

Of course, nothing better than lying on your resume.

On a serious note:

So you said that "I would be more in favor of the government deciding what to show and what not to show during a background check".

As far as I'm concerned if a potential employer requires a criminal background check I don't see why any part of it should be shielded from the potential employer. Who the hell is the government to decide whether all or some part of someone's criminal record isn't relevant to the job application at hand?

As a potential employee it is my decision whether or not to apply for the job (and to submit to the background requirements that might entail).

... Yep that's exactly how North Korea operates... You better start stocking up on weapons buddy, I hear the government dictates numerous things.. Like our taxes, worker conditions, healthcode etc etc.. I also hear that the government has the gull that you can't bar people from being hired because their black too.. What the hell is this dictatorship coming to. IF you refuse to pay your taxes they may even imprison you.. I hear too if you don't follow the law for your business, the government can CLOSE You down.. I mean if that isn't dictatorship what is?

I don't think any president could have gotten much more done with a Congress that is either outright against you personally at a level that goes beyond political or full of people that are too cowardly to actually stand for anything.

I don't know how long I am willing to go on with you about this. You remind me of those Christian creationists who claim that evolution is "just a theory" and that there are no transitional fossils, etc.

There is a huge difference between opinion polling and scientific polling, a big difference.

Feel free to go back to Russia or China then
Humanitarian beacons they are

So if you criticize your country you automatically lose your right of citizenship? You're awfully authoritarian for someone living in a humanitarian beacon.

Not at all
But using Russia and China as examples for how to treat ones citizens
I find the height of irony

Believe it or not, Russia and China might have good things that beacons of humanitarianism don't. It's valid to cite them vis-a-vis these things, just like jun did, assuming what he said is true of course. The point being is that saying Russia in an argument doesn't automatically invalidate it.

Well said
And I see your point

And you are one of those morons can't think beyond party propaganda and ideologies, so in many ways you have more in common with those "Christian creationists" than me.

You claim there's a BIG difference but no explanation as to what the difference is. Your so called "scientific" poll is an opinion poll. All polls are opinion polls because respondents give just that, their opinion. It's not a fact nor factual. I can't believe I actually have to explain this lol

Sure, there might be certain benefits living in China or Russia, but in terms of quality of life and civil liberties for vast majority Chinese and Russian citizens, that hardly compare to those in more liberal and progressive countries.

Unless you care to go into specifics examples on how China or Russia are more humanitarian than those "beacons of humanitarianism"?

He's done a remarkable job of righting the ship. Best President in the last 50 years easily. He's reduced the deficit from George W Bush's massive 1.4 TRILLION dollars down to just over 500 Billion dollars. That's a remarkable reduction. So much for Obamacare piling the nation with debt.....doesn't look like that's happened or will happen. Sorry @JimB . Them there is the facts. You must accept them or be ruined by your own hate.

I love seeing him crack jokes about and fire back at some of the ridiculous accusations that he's faced. So awesome.

Both of the studies did not use opinion polls. "Do you own a gun or live in a house with someone who does?" is not an opinion. Every single one of your replies has demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of the topic at hand. I won't call you a moron because there is no need. You have quite well demonstrated yourself to be one. lol. "Do you own a gun?" Uhhh, I don't have an opinion that............ lol. Wow.

GSS is run by NORC. You know what NORC stands for? National OPINION Research Center.

It's still not factual, because it's only an extremely limited sample size and there's no margin of error since there's no data to validate polling result against. Not to mention that there's absolutely no proof that people will answer truthfully. As a gun owner, I certainly would not.

I'll humor you even though your post leaves the context of the argument out of consideration.

Human happiness isn't one immutable thing; different people have different conceptions of what happiness is, and it's the case that certain conceptions of happiness are above others. Liberal and progressive countries offer the happiness of substance in abundance and the license to do everything. That's happiness I concur, but it's one version of it. In fact, it's among the lowest forms of happiness, but it remains happiness.

For instance, I'm positive that some present-day Christian Americans are willing to give up some substance and liberty for the sake of living in a less secular society. Others may feel that happiness and tradition are inseparable. Different conceptions of happiness can be scrutinized to reveal which happiness is superior to which other.

Taking that into account, it's entirely possible that people in less affluent and democratic countries are genuinely happier than their counterparts of social democracies. The point being is that contrary to the mantra of social democracies, there's no consensus about what happiness is and where it exists abundantly. As such, citing Russia or China or any other country that's not a social democracy doesn't automatically invalidate whatever argument being made with respect to happiness or humanitarianism.

That isn't true.

How so?

Is that so.

Is the context not China and Russia treat their citizens as well (or better) than the liberal/progressive western countries?

Also you didn't really answer my question. Let me ask it in another way: what form of happiness do you think Russia and China offer to their citizens?