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If the YouTube embed doesn’t work for you, here’s the official White House livestream link.
President Obama’s Farewell Address: LivestreamPost + Comments (320)
This post is in: Best President Ever, Don't Mourn, Organize, Proud to Be A Democrat
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If the YouTube embed doesn’t work for you, here’s the official White House livestream link.
President Obama’s Farewell Address: LivestreamPost + Comments (320)
by Betty Cracker| 251 Comments
This post is in: Best President Ever, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Some of y’all mentioned this in earlier threads, but additional details about the Obama-on-Issa smack-down make it all the more delicious. Via Jezebel:
California Rep. and wheezing obstructionist Rep. Darrell Issa (R), locked in the closest race of his congressional career thanks to the half-melted pile of candy corn from Halloween ‘83 that he endorsed for president, has proven himself rather immune to irony; most recently, Issa tried to praise President Obama, the man he’s spent 8 years demonizing, in a campaign mailer. Unfortunately for Issa, Obama is about to leave office and has nothing to lose.
Last week, Issa sent out a mailer that included, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a nice photo of Obama at his desk” and a quote from Issa saying he was “very pleased” that Obama signed the Survivors Bill of Rights into law. At a fundraiser on Sunday night for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Obama praised Issa’s opponent, retired Marine Col. Doug Applegate, and called Issa “shameless.”
“Let me just point out that as far as I can tell, Issa’s primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped up investigations that have led nowhere,” Obama said, referring to Issa’s use of his image as “the definition of chutzpah.”
THWACK! I hadn’t realized the smarmy car thief was trying to hide behind PBO’s coattails. Yeah, “chutzpah” is the word, alright.
Issa was reduced to bleating about Benghazi in a follow-up statement, a sure sign that President Obama’s haymaker floored the slimy congressman. It would be great to see that sanctimonious, hypocritical prick Issa hit the bricks. C’mon California!
This post is in: Best President Ever, Election 2016, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
Now on the PA at the Philly Tim Kaine rally https://t.co/LwPuZdMf99
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) October 5, 2016
Only Tim Kaine, harmonica enthusiast, would consider this song liable to inspire people. I chose to find Kaine’s choice endearing, because there’s a lot of ‘basic‘ in my genome too.
For Obama-maniacs, NYMag devoted most of its Oct.3-16 issue to “Hope, And What Came After“:
All presidencies are historic. But no president since at least LBJ, and probably FDR, has arrived in Washington at a moment of greater historic urgency than Barack Obama. The man who took that oath of office seemed cut from American folklore — a neophyte politician elected senator only four years before, a prodigious and preacherly orator from the “Land of Lincoln” and the South Side of Chicago of the Great Migration. An embodiment not just of the American Dream as it had been imagined by the Greatest Generation of his own maternal grandparents but of a new version, too, one that might be embraced by his daughters — global, utopian-ish, post-boomer, “post-racial.”
More than “hope,” Obama’s candidacy promised “one America.” It is the deep irony of his presidency, and for Obama himself probably the tragedy, that the past eight years saw the country fiercely divided against itself. The president still managed to get a ridiculous amount done, advancing an unusually progressive agenda. But however Americans end up remembering the Obama years decades from now, one thing we can say for sure is that it did not feel, at the time, like an unmitigated liberal triumph. It felt like a cold civil war….
As an online supplement, they’ve posted Jon Chait’s “Five Days That Shaped a Presidency“:
On August 25, after a short trip to Baton Rouge to assess flooding in Louisiana and before what will likely be his last visit to China on Air Force One, Barack Obama sat down at the White House to reflect on the past eight years. He led America through a period of dramatic, convulsive change — an era that New York Magazine explores this week in its cover story. Before his conversation with Jonathan Chait, he chose five moments that, he believes, will have outsized historical impact…
… which I’m not even going to try to extract, but trust me, you’ll want to bookmark this and read it later.
Apart from ongoing GOTV efforts, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Stay ProudPost + Comments (89)
by Betty Cracker| 186 Comments
This post is in: Best President Ever, Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity
President Obama gave a lengthy statement to the media in which he excoriated the idiot Trump without mentioning his name once and hung that bloated orange albatross around the necks of Republican officials. The section on the idiotic “radical Islam” controversy begins at approximately 1:05:
The whole thing is worth hearing; PBO also provides updates on the fight against ISIS and calls for reinstating the ban on assault weapons, framing it as a way to get tough on terrorism. Choice excerpts on the “Radical Islam” thing via Buzzfeed [full transcript here — thanks, Tractarian]:
“What exactly will using this label [radical Islam] accomplish?” Obama said. “What will it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring us more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above.”
He went on to say that there has never been a moment in his time as president that he has not been able to pursue a strategy because he did not use the label “radical Islam.”
“Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we really used that phrase, would we turn this around,’” Obama said. “Not once.”
President Obama blasted Trump’s proposal of barring all Muslims from coming to the United States.
“Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently?” Obama said. “Do Republican officials actually agree with this?”
Obama concluded that history has shown “when we acted out of fear … we came to regret it.”
“We’ve seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens and it has been a shameful part of our history,” he said.
Boom. Grenade’s in your court, Combover Caligula.
Obama’s Statement on “Radical Islam” and “Politicians Who Tweet”Post + Comments (186)
by Betty Cracker| 273 Comments
This post is in: Best President Ever, Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Fuck Yeah!, General Stupidity, Sweet Fancy Moses!
I’m so proud to be a Democrat today. We elected and then reelected President Barack Obama, a man whose vision, steadiness, wisdom and genuine human decency have inspired millions of people around the world (and personally restored my faith in politics and America). And now we’ve nominated and will work our asses off to elect Hillary Clinton, an incredibly intelligent, diligent, dedicated and supremely qualified woman who understands the nature of our opponents and knows how to keep us moving forward.
And as if that weren’t exciting enough, the combined forces of stupidity and hubris have bestowed upon us a comic book villain of an opponent in GOP nominee Donald J. Trump. A preening narcissist, vile racist, odious sexist, sleazy con man, bully and braggart — is Trump not the Platonic Ideal of the modern Republican Party, a hideous bastard born of an unholy, unspeakable three-way between David Duke, Bernie Madoff and Phyllis Schlafly? Plutocracy lickspittles like Paul Ryan and debauched patricians such as the Bushes may recoil in horror, but they built that.
But you know what? Democrats are always tasked with cleaning up Republicans’ messes, and who better than hardworking Hillary to take on the Herculean task of sweeping all that nasty Trump out the door? But damn it, people, we’ve got to help her get it done. Volunteer. Donate. Knock on doors. Persuade friends. Placate frenemies. Register voters. Enter data. Lick envelopes. Attend rallies. Above all, support Democratic candidates at the local, state and federal level.
Because Trump does not deserve to merely lose. He must be pantsed before all the world to wipe away the embarrassing stain of his nomination. When he takes the stage after the polls close in 152 days and does his Mussolini jaw-jut, I want to see his protruding lower lip tremble with incipient tears. I want to watch his insufferably smug sons sobbing into each other’s Armani lapels as they contemplate the extinction-level hit to the Trump brand. I want to see mascara streaks staining the cheeks of the Robert Palmer video-like female entourage assembled behind the humiliated candidate.
The Republicans embarrassed this great nation by nominating a clueless, vulgar buffoon to lead it. It’s up to us to make it right. So it’s on, people. We can do this. We must do this. We will do this.
This post is in: Best President Ever, Don't Mourn, Organize, Election 2016, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
So this morning I’m reading a diary on the Great Orange Satan about political doings over in Bagdad By The Bay. Though I grew up in the San Francisco area, I’m not really current on what’s happening, aside from the fact that I couldn’t afford a shack in SF itself anymore — notamidst all those Twitter-, Apple-, and Google-erati. So I gobble down the story, assume/accept the big-city, big-money corruption narrative, and move on.
Sucker!
I do have friends and relatives back by the Bay, as it turns out, and one of them has worked in city government for a long time.
He’s got first hand knowledge of San Francisco’s allegedly lost progressive mindset as it works within local government, and he weighed in.
I’ll excerpt his comment below, but first I just want to say this was an object lesson for me, a reminder of how easy it is trip up in the way that I’ve criticized some of the most extreme of the Bernie camp for doing.
That is: there’s a ton wrong with our politics, our society, and our engagement with each other. It’s so tempting to leap from a clear problem — the impact on middle and low income residents of the gentrification of San Francisco (and elsewhere!) driven by extreme income inequality — and assume that political actors are obviously complicit.
The reality? Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t, and it takes some effort to figure out the five Ws and the H in each case. Worse yet — if the problem is truly complex, then political action is at best an incomplete tool to deal with the issue.
Which is why, in the end, I think Obama is a truly great president: he gets all of that. The need for policy and politics; the insufficiency of politics on its own; the agonizing difficulty of addressing any truly major problem — which translates into rage-inducing slowness to see the change take shape; and the need to keep plugging away.
I feel that rage often enough, and I know that I don’t have the qualities of character our president does, the off-the-charts focus and persistence required to make sh*t happen, and to wait — years if necessary, decades — to see the results.
I have high hopes for Hillary on this score. Not that I’ll agree with her on everything — I don’t and won’t, just as I haven’t always with Barack Hussein Obama. But I trust her (yes, that word) to pay attention, to know her stuff, to hire good, smart folks, and to soldier on and on and on — as the job and the world requires.
Here the sermon endeth…and an excerpt from my old Bay Area companion’s comment takes over:
I’ve worked on the financial administration side for the City of San Francisco for many years, and the truth is that under successive mayors and Boards, San Francisco has put more money behind progressive goals than almost any other city in the country.
The City spends billions of dollars a year on its amazing public health programs, including a universal health access program for City residents that predates and goes well beyond Obamacare, and many hundreds of millions of dollars on programs to help the poor and homeless, including thousands of units of housing for the poorest of the poor and people with severe mental illness and other health problems. The City spends hundreds of millions a year subsidizing its transit system and setting aside funds for children. The City spends hundreds of millions a year subsidizing its transit system and setting aside funds for children.
Mayor Lee …supported not just measures to attract and keep higher-paying tech jobs but also continued one of the largest and best City subsidized jobs programs in the country…
These are great progressive achievements….
You can read more at the link. The writer goes on to acknowledge that despite all this, the reality is that San Francisco’s housing costs put enormous stress on too many, and argues that the drivers of that are at best barely subject to direct political control — and that policy responses offer very tricky alternatives. The challenge for progressives, among whom he numbers himself is thus to..
examine what housing policies we should we be pushing for that can help the most people of different income levels that need housing (not just the poorest of the poor).
TL:DR: electioneering — and definitely punditizing — is easy. Governating is damn hard, which is something to be mindful of at this and every season.
Over to y’all.
Image: J. W. M. Turner, Dido Building Carthage, 1815.
Some Mostly Stolen Thoughts On That Old Politics Vs. Revolution ThangPost + Comments (56)
This post is in: Best President Ever, Black Jimmy Carter, Election 2016
Obama gave a magnificent speech to the graduating class at Howard today, and I have embedded it so you can watch it. It’s everything I love about Obama- it’s smart, it’s witty, it’s hopeful, it’s realistic, it’s based in historical reality, it’s optimistic, and it’s a challenge to the audience to do better while convincing them that they can. Watching it made my heart ache, because even though he is just a man and he has obviously done some things that I really disagree with, I just love him and wish he would be our President forever.
It’s why even on the issues I strongly disagree with him, I don’t lose my shit, because maybe he has a bigger picture view of things that I do, and he has earned my trust. Plus, for a politician, he’s just so goddamned cool. It’s like a mad scientist said let’s take FDR and Lincoln, add in some Jay-Z and Idris Elba, a little MLK and and Ali and Poitier, and see what happens- Presto- Obama!
At any rate, enough of the gushing. The best part of this speech today is how it does all the things that should be done at a commencement speech, but also sends a clear message to the youth about the current political realities taking place within the Democratic party. To wit:
And finally, change requires more than just speaking out — it requires listening, as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise. When I was a state senator, I helped pass Illinois’s first racial profiling law, and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law enforcement. I didn’t say to them, oh, you guys are so racist, you need to do something. I understood, as many of you do, that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good, and honest, and courageous, and fair, and love the communities they serve.
And we knew there were some bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best of intentions — including, by the way, African American police officers — might have unconscious biases, as we all do. So we engaged and we listened, and we kept working until we built consensus. And because we took the time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good for the police — because it improved the trust and cooperation of the community — and it was good for the communities, who were less likely to be treated unfairly. And I can say this unequivocally: Without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have blocked them.
The point is, you need allies in a democracy. That’s just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse. That’s not just true in this country. It’s not a black or white thing. Go to any country where the give and take of democracy has been repealed by one-party rule, and I will show you a country that does not work.
And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.
We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills were not perfect — just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some clarion call for freedom. Those mileposts of our progress were not perfect. They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. And you know what, I will take better every time. I always tell my staff — better is good, because you consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.
***So that’s my advice. That’s how you change things. Change isn’t something that happens every four years or eight years; change is not placing your faith in any particular politician and then just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day.
That’s what Thurgood Marshall understood — a man who once walked this year, graduated from Howard Law; went home to Baltimore, started his own law practice. He and his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, rolled up their sleeves and they set out to overturn segregation. They worked through the NAACP. Filed dozens of lawsuits, fought dozens of cases. And after nearly 20 years of effort — 20 years — Thurgood Marshall ultimately succeeded in bringing his righteous cause before the Supreme Court, and securing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal. (Applause.) Twenty years.
Marshall, Houston — they knew it would not be easy. They knew it would not be quick. They knew all sorts of obstacles would stand in their way. They knew that even if they won, that would just be the beginning of a longer march to equality. But they had discipline. They had persistence. They had faith — and a sense of humor. And they made life better for all Americans.
That’s as clear a message as Obama can give to Democrats without endorsing one candidate or the other, and it is a clear message to the Bernie or Bust folks who subscribe to the asinine notion that sitting out the election if Sanders does not win (he can’t win the nomination- why is that not clear? Oh, yeah. Because we’re too busy harassing math teachers for being swarthy than we are listening to them) will somehow help. There’s something to this Dylan Matthews piece.
God damnit. Just repeal the 22 amendment already. At least we will still have Obama campaigning for Hills this year and hammering Trump. We still got that.