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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / President Obama’s Address at MacDill Air Force Base Earlier Today

President Obama’s Address at MacDill Air Force Base Earlier Today

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Anybody still here? This blog on? Anyhow, I’ve been both busy on a project and still dragging tuchas from whatever bug I caught, so instead of something thoughtful as I just don’t have it in me, here’s President Obama’s address at MacDill Air Force Base* from earlier today.

* Technically MacDill Air Force Base is now Joint Base MacDill, but no one calls it that.

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mai.naem.mobile: Try to imagine the new, and only permitted, military haircut is going to be an orange creamsicle combover into a duck’s tail. It’ll be yooge! Bigly!

  3. 3.

    raven

    Tomorrow is 75 years since Pearl Harbor, imagine how people felt then. My old man was already in the Navy and was in front of the San Diego Y when the word came to get their asses back to their ships. There were guys who had been in the Navy ONE Day and they got on board and went to sea. No one knew what was going to happen.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike J: No because they didn’t combine two bases into one at (ETA:) MacDill. The Joint part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord is because it contains both the US Army’s I Corps, 7th Infantry Division, and several other Army elements, but also a couple of commands from the other services and (ETA:) they combined elements from two different bases. MacDill now contains CENTCOM and SOCOM, two different Geographic Combatant Commands, is overseen by the Air Force, and contains some other service elements as well. The Joint portion refers to more than one service.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: I thought I was going out there as the cultural advisor, but the sequester made it impossible no matter what the Corps Commander wanted.

  11. 11.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: I spent about 3 months in an Honest John outfit between Korea and the Nam in the summer of 68. What a fucking shitty assignment. Bad enough that I payed a guy to het me orders to go back to asia.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: Your thoughts on the $125 billion waste, fraud and abuse the Pentagon is alleged to be covering up? Kevin Drum says it’s a typical McKinsey Consulting job:

    My big problem is that this is a McKinsey report, and I have a fairly cynical view of McKinsey-driven “process improvement” blather. For example, the report suggests that the Pentagon can save loads of money by increasing its back-office productivity by 4-8 percent per year. “Private sector industries commonly show similar gains,” they say merrily, so why not the Pentagon?

    This is exactly the kind of thing that gives business consultants a bad name.

    McKinsey came to the company I worked for back in the day, talked to a million people, including me that gave them four or five of what I considered were very good ideas to save time and money, and agreed with me. They were all about 12 years old (OK, recent college graduates) with no actual work experience at all. The company paid them a metric fuckton of money and the only thing that changed was that they took our company cars away, and I think that was the new CEO’s idea, not McKinsey’s.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: Saw some reporting on it, and Charles Pierce’s commentary on it at Esquire. Haven’t seen the actual report. The excerpts I’ve seen about saving money on contracting make sense. At the higher level, say bringing someone like me in on a contract, it costs about three times (minimum) with all the fees and other charges than it would if I was hired on a civil servant line. For up to a year, this is worth it because you don’t wind up with a lot of long term costs, but for anything beyond that these contracts just cost far, far too much and we’d be better off using other hiring flexibilities such as term Title 5 appointments, as well as Intergovernmental Personnel Appointments/IPA (my term appointment from 2010 to 2014 was as an IPA).

    The other stuff they supposedly found that was wasteful, I have no idea.

  16. 16.

    Ohio Mom

    Obama looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. He’s giving it his all but if you look at his face, it is full of grief. It made me so sad to see that I could only watch a few minutes of the speech.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As I mentioned to Raven in downstairs thread, I had an uncle who was in the Army stationed at Pearl on the day of the attacks. I’ve asked my cousin (his son) for whatever details he can recall, and if appropriate will share on your dedicated, curated thread tomorrow. Thanks for doing this. I was born not quite eight months after the attacks, and as far back as I can remember, my family and my school acknowledged the date. There was nothing morbid, there were no special ceremonies or anything (unlike 9/11), but merely a nod to the date and the anniversary. Can’t remember when it ceased being A Thing.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ohio Mom:

    I did watch the whole thing, but you are right, he looked sad and grim. How much of that is a painful awareness of the POTUS who will succeed him in office? That has to sting.

    Even the kind-of obligatory self-deprecating joke about his grey hair seemed forced. It is heartbreaking.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Can’t remember when it ceased being A Thing.

    In 1991, I pointed out to my boss, the Brigade XO that holding the annual St. Barbara’s Day Ball on Dec. 7 might be inappropriate. St Barbara is the patron saint of the artillery and her saint’s day is December 3. The St. Barbara’s Day Ball is the gunner’s prom. My boss didn’t think it was a big deal; it got referenced in the some of the toasts and senior officers’ remarks.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I suppose it’s impossible to avoid every sensitive date in the calendar, but there are some that should merit special attention. I remember one of the LBJ daughters (waves to Raven) set her wedding day for August 6, and there was a bit of kerfuffle about the fact that it was only 20-something years since the Hiroshima bomb and therefore insensitive.

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Cousin has commented here once or twice in the dim recesses of the past. I reminded him of that and invited him to come play with us tomorrow when you put up your curated thread.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Not to be that guy, but Wikipedia disagrees:

    BRAC 2005 joint bases[edit]

    The joint basing program, established by recommendation 146 of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, represents the department’s efforts to optimize the delivery of installation support across the services. The BRAC Report created 12 joint bases from 26 service installations that were in close proximity or shared a boundary. As of 1 October 2010, all 12 joint bases achieved full operational capability.[4]

    […]

    Joint Base Lewis–McChord (US Army–controlled) – consolidation of Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base in Washington

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: You misread or misunderstood what I wrote. Lewis-McChord did consolidate two basis that were in proximity. MacDill did not. There was no other base in the greater Tampa area. Also, I could’ve probably written that first sentence a bit more carefully…

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: I was addressing Adam’s explanation for what a Joint Base is. JBLM was mentioned earlier in the thread as an example.

    HTH.

    [edit:] And I see that my comments were probably unwarranted anyway. Sorry about the noise.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who seems to post things that get on your nerves. Sorry about that.)

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My little corner of the Giant Evil Corporation has figured out that it’s easier to hire our own part-timers rather than get them through a temp agency. That way, we know we’re getting people who understand how our place runs and they can have a steady gig while also doing side projects. (Of our current 2 regulars, one is an art director for independent films and the other is an assistant producer on a documentary.) I think they may also be able to buy into our health insurance on a prorated basis, but I’m not sure. Since they’re only available part-time right now anyway, it makes more sense for all of us.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Another Scott:

    I remember that now that I’m reminded, thanks, but I had totally forgotten and would never have remembered it.

    At the time I was quite upset and angry.

  42. 42.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: Again, I was not clear in my explanation. Lewis-McChord is Joint for two reasons: 1) It combined the elements at two actual bases when one was BRACed and 2) those elements are from more than one of the services. MacDill only qualifies under the second. So some of the Joint Bases are the result of both. However, and this is important for understanding DOD jargon: Joint refers solely to multi-service activity. For something to be a Joint military activity it means that it has to have components from at least two, and more usually all four, of the uniformed services under DOD involved.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: The other problem at the Federal level, that I’ve seen within DOD and the Services, is that positions that required PhDs five years ago now only require, because the contracts have been shaved so thin as a result of the sequester that they can’t pay for that level of expertise, bachelors degrees. Its amazing when you see an expert level position advertised that only requires a BA. And there are some longtime practitioners that fit that bill – plenty of experience and a BA, but that’s not always the case.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I guess I’d have to add 9/11, although I am regularly offended by the over-the-top super-patriot theatrics. Still, I don’t think I’d schedule a ball or other party on that date, at least not for the next few decades.

    And I have a lot of sympathy for the August 6th sensitivities. (Although in all candor, and I hope this is not TMI, it is a memorable date for me.)

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    I know PBO is trying in his own way to get the word across to Trump & Co: your stupid ideas about MOAR WATERBOARDINGZ and pulling us out of multi-national agreements and cooperation won’t work well. But man did he bang on Congress for its cowardice as well, and good for him.

  48. 48.

    GTC

    Great speech, but the YouTube account it’s posted under is dodgy. Suggested videos in an incognito window are “Senators Hammer Down On President Obama Failures In …” and “SNL : Saturday Night Live Butt-Hurt Show / Illuminati Signs …”. Is it available under another account?

  51. 51.

    Jim

    Technically, Washington National Airport is Reagan something or other, but I still use its proper name.

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