Courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhY9Zxv1-oo

By Emily Boyer

President Barack Obama has been sarcastically thanked for just about everything that’s gone wrong in the past eight years, from the creation of ISIS to high gas prices to that time I stubbed my toe. The man himself has even gotten in on the joke; there’s a YouTube video of him being unable to fit a cookie into a glass of milk and saying, “Thanks, Obama.” I suggest you look it up immediately.

But it’s the end of his term, and the guy deserves a little credit for once. So I’d like to say, without a hint of irony, thanks, Obama.

Thanks for giving us the Affordable Care Act. The ACA guaranteed no one could be denied insurance based on preexisting conditions, required insurance agencies to expand coverage of dependents on family plans up to age 26, and has slashed the number of uninsured Americans.

Twenty million people are insured today who would not be otherwise.

Thanks for your $787 billion dollar stimulus package, which helped end the Great Recession. Four months after the stimulus was implemented, the GDP started growing again.

Thanks for brokering a nuclear deal with Iran that didn’t end in mushroom clouds. The deal hobbled Iran’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons while allowing the U.S. to keep several of its key sanctions.

Thanks for bringing the U.S. into the Paris Agreement, a global deal to work toward limiting climate change. Goals of the deal include keeping global temperature increase to below two-degrees celsius, limiting harmful emissions and meeting every five years to reassess the agreement’s aims.

Thanks for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. DADT was the policy that prohibited gay or bisexual members of the military from disclosing their sexuality, on pain of being discharged.

Thanks for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Dodd-Frank created several new regulations and oversight agencies to reign in big banks, improve our financial system’s transparency and prevent bailouts.

Thanks for putting up with unprecedented amounts of vitriol and thinly-veiled racist nonsense.

Thanks for somehow clinging to your sanity throughout the birther controversy. Especially thanks for presenting a clip from Lion King as your birth video and then clarifying (for Fox News) that it was a joke.

Thanks, Obama, for being a pretty good president all around. He wasn’t perfect, but he accomplished a lot with very little support. And with a new president stepping into office, I have to say, I think I’ll miss the old one.