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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Best President Ever / President Obama’s Farewell Address: Livestream

Reader Interactions

320Comments

  3. 3.

    JPL

    Obama is going to talk about how we need to come together and then he’ll sing Kumbaya. At that point, you will hear my primal screams.

    It is who he is.

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    I’m still holding out hope that he declares martial law, but it’s the optimist in me.

    I have to go to a dance class tonight, jackals, so let me know if anything big happens.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m still holding out hope that he declares martial law

    I would like to be able to perform a citizen’s arrest on anyone I come across who identifies as a Trump voter.

  11. 11.

    Larkspur

    Darn. Here I am, house-sitting in a beautiful condo with a beautiful dog, and a very fine television machine, and we are having such a violent wind and rain storm that the satellite is flaking in and out. First World Problems, but I wanna see my President. Got picture again. Crossing fingers now, can’t type.

  12. 12.

    Hildebrand

    @JPL: You know what? Tomorrow you can once again bitch about how Obama has let you down. Tonight can’t we just watch the President be the dignified adult that he always has been without carping about it? Jeez. In just a very short number of days, this country is going to have a serious gravitas et constantia deficit, and I am going to miss this man and his devotion to what unites us in ways I can’t even articulate. Give it a bloody rest.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    For people looking at the White House livestream link, the photo of the Obamas was taken in their home neighborhood of Hyde Park, looking north along the lake towards downtown,.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @dmsilev:

    Can’t we keep him for another 4 years? Please?

    You know very well our lease doesn’t allow that, unfortunately.

  28. 28.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    We were waiting in the weeds for you.
    You could never back down
    You always had to speak your mind.

  30. 30.

    Yarrow

    I can’t watch. I’m DVRing it. I’ll check it later. Just not emotionally up for it. Too sad.

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    “The beating heart of our American idea. Our bold experiment in self-government.”

    Ugh. I can’t bear.

    He’s more chipper than any of us.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    I got home just in time.

    I cannot wrap my head around today.

    I fall in love (not romantic, but genuine love) more with POTUS Obama every day.

  41. 41.

    dmsilev

    Refugees coming from across the Rio Grande.

    Maybe Obama is planning on goading Trump into stroking out.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    I don’t know how he and Hillary are going to maintain their composure as the Grifter-Elect is sworn in.

    I shall not be watching.

  44. 44.

    Smiling Mortician

    He’s doing a great job. Subtle, but on point. And he always works his way up in his speeches.

  46. 46.

    Larkspur

    I’ll have to watch it on line after. Darn. I was so looking forward to this; I wanted to hear this, even if it hurt. I was out with the dog a few hours ago and gusts of wind nearly blew me over, and I am not modelicious, I am sturdy peasant woman. I’m lucky we still have power. Probably just jinxed that. Guess I’ll go find some retrospective pix to look at.

  47. 47.

    Ella in New Mexico

    As big of a bunch of a pain in the asses some of you guys can be, it’s kinda cool to be here during this address. It’s like we’re all sitting in the same recliner chairs in my living room together.

    THIS guy is the reason I keep on having hope. A decent, thoughtful, generous person actually won the Presidency not once, but twice. He wasn’t perfect, but he is someone we can all be proud of, an example for generations to come of a leader with conviction and grace who actually made it.

    Like I told my youngest who’s 19, “Someday, when you’re grandchildren ask you what it was like when you were a kid, tell them about This Guy.”

    Sadly, I’m guessing they won’t believe him.

  49. 49.

    mai naem mobile

    I’m DVRing it. Cannot deAL with it. Sad that Lumpys golden showers are overshadowing O’s farewell speech

  50. 50.

    LAC

    @Hildebrand: Thank you! For me, it’s shut the fuck up, you whiny bitches. Goddamn, let him speak. Then tomorrow we are are all hear to listen to BJ’ers drone on about how you would do the job better because you watched the West Wing or Dave.

  54. 54.

    Larkspur

    @Smiling Mortician: Cheer him on my behalf. Damn I love him and his family (and of course the dogs). I will be looking forward to what he and Michelle have to say for years and years.

  58. 58.

    Mike J

    WeRateDogs™ ‏@dog_rates 1 minute ago
    This is Bo. He was a very good First Doggo. 14/10 would be an absolute honor to pet

  59. 59.

    hovercraft

    He is being classy but still jabbing the rethugs, the crowd is expressing my feelings. Now he is getting serious, and trying to tell the shitgibbon how to be president.

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    @Elizabelle:

    He’s more chipper than any of us.

    If you had his job, wouldn’t you be happy to give up that burden?

    No matter how much you privately regretted what your replacement would do with it?

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    It’s hard to listen to this and realize that the shittiest in America voted in the worst president-elect in over a century. Someone who is indebted to a foreign adversary.

  76. 76.

    hovercraft

    Yes you fucking “economically anxious” pieces of shit, the economy by any measure you want to look at, is better than it’s been in a very long time. He did that with democrats while you all did everything you could to sabotage him. He’s giving you all this and your response is to elect someone who is nominating the wealthiest cabinet in history to come and destroy all he built all over again.

  77. 77.

    Elizabelle

    “Workers fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw into their private enclaves.”

    “The economy doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.” Biggest diff between him and the GOP.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    Workers will be fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw farther into their private enclaves. Preach Potus.

  82. 82.

    donnah

    I wasn’t going to watch, but I couldn’t bear to miss him speaking one last time. He was the best President of my lifetime and I’m glad my adult sons had him as a political figure they could look up to.

    Beyond that, I feel a desperate sense of dread and an underlying panic over what lies ahead. It cannot be overstated: Trump and the Republicans are going to run our country into the ground. And the people who voted for Trump are not going to regret it, because the destruction of our government is what they’ve been craving for years. Trump just makes it possible.

    So Farewell to our best, and hoping we can survive what lies ahead.

  85. 85.

    Mary G

    We have to pay attention to the middle aged white guy who’s seen his world upended. Such grace.

  86. 86.

    Suzanne

    “The equal treatment that our founders promised.”
    Preach.
    Identity politics forever. Or at least until it’s not a problem.

  89. 89.

    Elizabelle

    “The effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t just vanish in the 1960s.

    … Not special treatment, the equal treatment that our founders promised.”

    Thank you, thank you for addressing that.

    And a plug for embracing immigrants and newcomers.

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    @hovercraft:

    stop pitting us against each other while you rob us blind.

    That would make a bumpersticker. Well said, hovercraft.

    And he takes up bubbles and social media feeds. Naked partisanship.

    Makes this great sorting seem natural and inevitable.

  99. 99.

    dmsilev

    @Larkspur: Maybe we should put some “Miss me yet?” billboards up around the country, just like conservatives did for Bush in 2009.

  108. 108.

    Elizabelle

    “Without a willingness to admit new information … and that science and reason matter ….”

    It’s a slap at the ignorance that voted in an awful successor.

    “Reality has a way of catching up with you.”

    This is an incredibly blunt speech.

  111. 111.

    JMG

    There’s about 25 percent of the electorate that can’t stand that Obama was a black President. Then there’s 20 percent more who can’t stand that he was a black President who did a good job and worse, that helped THEM. It’s too humiliating to be borne.

  112. 112.

    Drunkenhausfrau

    Essential spirit of problem solving and innovation… he’s killing me.

    We are about to enter a new dark age of dumbassery…

  113. 113.

    hovercraft

    @Baud:
    Especially you if you are going to lead us out of this dark period we are entering. It is up to you to lead us back out of these gold showers now contaminating the land, we need clean clear air and water to breath and live free.

  115. 115.

    Suzanne

    I hope President Obama takes a bold stand in favor of eating food or not hitting oneself in the head with a hammer.

  116. 116.

    dmsilev

    Climate change is real.

    This whole speech reminds me of what Richard Feynman wrote in his report on the Challenger explosion: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

  121. 121.

    Mike J

    @JMG:

    There’s about 25 percent of the electorate that can’t stand that Obama was a black President. Then there’s 20 percent more who can’t stand that he was a black President who did a good job and worse, that helped THEM.

    And then there are the ones who hate him so much they pay hookers to piss on a bed he once slept in.

  122. 122.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: I remain deeply disappointed that he never made any PSAs about the dangers of drinking bleach and licking live power outlets.

  132. 132.

    lamh36

    @keithboykin 21s22 seconds ago
    “Democracy can buckle when it gives into fear.” #ObamaFarewell

  133. 133.

    Elizabelle

    “Democracy can buckle when it gives in to fear. …. Guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are.”

    Although, I don’t see the problem as external and due to Muslim extremists. Our problem is within, with those who polarize us and lie, on purpose.

  135. 135.

    dm

    This is going to be one of those farewell speeches that goes into the history books alongside Washington’s.

    Assuming there are history books, I guess.

  136. 136.

    Patricia Kayden

    Republican heads exploding en masse when POTUS just spoke out against anti-Muslim discrimination.

  137. 137.

    hovercraft

    Shit just got real, fear of change, difference, autocrats, authoritarians, theses are the biggest threats to our democracy. I think that’s a twofer, Shitgibbon and Putin.

  138. 138.

    Spanky

    Going down a checklist, rejecting things Trump’s for. Gitmo, surveillance, Muslim registry …

  140. 140.

    p.a.

    We better hope Bamz wasn’t a once-in-a-generation leader because we’re gonna need Franklin Delano Barack Truman Lincoln as next Pres to have a shot at fixing what these fuckwits are going to do soon.

  142. 142.

    Elizabelle

    “We should reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics …… when congress is dysfunctional” — and he brings up gerrymandering. That’s got to go.

  145. 145.

    hovercraft

    I loved this line.

    “Guard against the weakening of the values that make us who we are.”

  148. 148.

    JPL

    There will be tweets…

    I am so glad that I was wrong.. It is a come together speech, but for all citizens to come together.

    suck on that Trump..

  149. 149.

    Elizabelle

    Quoting from George Washington.

    But I would say that our “sacred ties” are pretty damn broken.

  158. 158.

    lamh36

    The Constitution is a gift but just a piece of parchment. We give it power. We give it meaning.” – POTUS #ObamaFarewell

  164. 164.

    lamh36

    @DavidCornDC 35s36 seconds ago
    Obama: “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life.” #AdviceForTrump

  166. 166.

    Elizabelle

    “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with them in real life.”

    Applause line of the night.

    “Lace up your shoes and do some organizing” …. and then, “Run for office yourself. Show up. Dive in. Stay at it.”

    “Presuming a reservoir of goodwill in other people” … and I lost the rest of the quote.

    Talks about faith in America and in Americans being confirmed. That’s rather sunny.

    Of course, Hillary did get 3 million more votes.

  167. 167.

    Larkspur

    @Elizabelle: We got broke in the Civil War and in Jim Crow and in all the times when we fucked things up nearly beyond recognition, and we still got Obama, so we have to keep going. I think I believe this.

  170. 170.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lamh36: Obama: “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life.” #AdviceForTrump

    I resemble that remark!

  172. 172.

    Schlemazel

    @danielx:
    A Key and Peele bit where one does a dead on impression of Obama while Luther (his anger interrupter since as a black man he is not allowed to show anger) says “what he really means”

    Look it up on youtube, well worth the minutes as it is funny and cathartic.

  173. 173.

    lamh36

    @wadnerpierre 2m2 minutes ago
    Don’t blame the leaders we elect but examine our role in electing them to paraphrase @POTUS. #ObamaFaweelSpeech #Chicago

  174. 174.

    slag

    Still not buying this whole “faith in America” schtick. Two words that should never ever be put together: President Trump. Sorry, Mr. President. Will still miss you!

  177. 177.

    WaterGirl

    IF they play city of blinding lights again at the end of this I am not going to be able to stop crying. It takes me back as if it were yesterday.

  186. 186.

    Elizabelle

    Malia’s wiping her eyes.

    This is hard for his family. It’s hard, when you wanted the ebullience of talking happily of how Hillary could build on accomplishments.

  192. 192.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl: Yeah. She realizes how funereal this is.

    Some thank you, you fucked up Americans who voted for a fool as successor. You are going to learn the hard way.

  200. 200.

    wenchacha

    This lovefest won’t go over well in some dark corners. But I fucking love it. Thank you, President Obama. You brought us your very best.

  202. 202.

    lamh36

    I love that unlike some, PBO has never shied away from showing emotion and actually shedding real tears.

  205. 205.

    JPL

    This is Chuck Todd

    Remarkable moment in country’s history that POTUS feels need to use farewell address to remake case for democracy not just for world, for US

    Maybe he’ll now ask the tough questions..

  206. 206.

    Lizzy L

    Yeah, I’m crying. I never cry.

    I cannot believe this amazing, honorable, eloquent man is to be followed by T.

  221. 221.

    Elizabelle

    I think we could see some anger and rage as the transition to someone who does not belong in the White House, and the administration of kleptocrats, continues.

    Strikes me that people could get very angry and strike out as the transition becomes more real. A fine line to walk.

  222. 222.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    I’m not on Twitter, so somebody please tell Chuck Todd to go fuck himself with a big bag of salted dicks. Gosh, Chuck, maybe somebody should have told the American people about this looming disaster for our democracy. Maybe someone in the media with a national platform.

    Nah, you were too busy telling us what a nice person Kellyanne Conway was.

  224. 224.

    Emma

    I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry. But dammit. What is wrong with people that look at this man and see an enemy?

  227. 227.

    Larkspur

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, things have gotten ugly before, and our progress has been distorted and set back, but like fake-Hills said on SNL, I’m not giving up and neither should you. If Bamz is out there, I have to go out there too.

  233. 233.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    Unfortunately, I think we will, and I don’t think it will be traced in an easy line to one side or the other, because disturbed people don’t usually hew exactly to one side. Think of Jared Loughner, who was not specifically on the right or left, but who was moved to violence by the violent atmosphere around him (and all of us).

  236. 236.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    @JPL:

    About what eas expected. My only disappointment was they didn’t play
    the “whitey tape”.

  237. 237.

    WaterGirl

    I’m guess that Sasha thought she would be too emotional and didn’t want to be on display publicly. Assuming I am right, I love that they let it be her choice.

  239. 239.

    Elizabelle

    I just want Barack and Michelle to have long, full lives.

    He threw down the challenges tonight. Did not mince words.

    Suspect redstate is spluttering and going Yosemite Sam as we speak.

  241. 241.

    GregB

    Breaking news: Pizza-gate conspiracy investigators declare insufficient evidence to prove Putingate.

  242. 242.

    JPL

    @Elizabelle: He’s going to keep up the good fight..

    I guess this will be on Seth Myers tonight

    Kellyanne Conway says that Donald Trump “is not aware” that he was briefed about Russian allegations.

  243. 243.

    Larkspur

    @WaterGirl: If I was Sasha, I’d be in bed surrounded by snoring Portuguese water dogs, Good night, Sasha. Oh, I’m gonna lose power any second now. Lights are blinking. Wind is as fierce as it has been all day and all evening.

  244. 244.

    patroclus

    That was so epic! And so was the speech! The longest uninterrupted period of job growth ever! Saved the country and the world from another Great Depression. Health care! Same-sex marriage! Rapproachment with Cuba and Iran! Stock markets at record highs! Wall street reform with Dodd-Frank! Saved the auto industry! Expanded national wilderness and national park areas. Two really good USSC Justices. Ended DADT. Energy independence and and irreversible move towards green energy. Ended (sort of) two wars. Regained world respect for America! A Nobel Peace prize! Brought OBL to justice. Excited and energized young Americans the most since JFK. And so much more.

  245. 245.

    Ksmiami

    I want to decimate the GOP and make them so tainted that they are thoroughly destroyed forever. Start now- they represent everything wrong with the country.

  248. 248.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Suzanne:

    He so clearly genuinely adores his wife. It is just lovely to watch.

    It is. As is his genuine deep friendship with Joe Biden (“brother”).

  249. 249.

    WaterGirl

    I came across something I wrote on the Obama blog in March of 2008.

    Dear Barack,

    I am writing to let you know that you have been upsetting my dog and my cat.

    When I watch a video of you making a speech, the crowd will often cheer wildly at one point or another during your speech. When this happens, my dog inevitably jumps off the couch and looks at me nervously, and my cat darts to safety in some corner of the room.

    I explain to both of them, each time, that everything is okay, that we are listening to our next president speak about things of great importance, and that what they are hearing is the sound of HOPE coming from people all across America.

    This calms them considerably.

    With love and thanks,
    WaterGirl, Bailey and Quiver

    edit: I love this man so much. Michelle, too.

  250. 250.

    ChrisB

    Just can’t believe that Obama’s presidency is being followed by . . . Donald Trump’s. How completely f’ ed up is that.

  252. 252.

    Elizabelle

    I am not crying.

    I am angry. That we have to trade this president for someone not fit, with a staff of paid liars. Liars. Liars. Liars.

  254. 254.

    geg6

    @Suzanne:

    I had mine framed on acid-free backing. It hangs in my sunroom alongside a collage with tickets from rallies and my pro-Obamacare protest sign, bumper stickers, car magnets, fliers and door hangers from canvassing, every Christmas card from all eight years and the photo from the day I met him and Uncle Joe right after the 2008 DNC. I’m never taking them down and I’ve left them to my youngest niece in my will. For real.

  255. 255.

    CaseyL

    I cannot process this, cannot get over the soaring decency of the man. That he can come out of the last 8 years, and especially the last 2 months, and still have such faith in American and in Americans … it floors me and it makes me ashamed of my own cynicism.

  259. 259.

    Larkspur

    @Elizabelle: Yep, just north of San Francisco. Still have lights, despite flickering, but I’m safe and anyway, losing power is good practice for a possible future world lit only by fire. I kid. I hope. And anyway I have flashlights, not matches.

  260. 260.

    JPL

    @ChrisB: You and Josh Marshall

    Under almost any interpretation of the facts, the country enters this new presidency in a very fucked up and possibly fucked state.

  261. 261.

    japa21

    Sure, there were a lot of platitudes, but there were also a lot of statements which were straight forward challenges of Trump. And believe me, Trump won’t resist reacting.

    And basically, he acknowledged the last election did not go well, and he specifically singled out Russia, without mentioning names, for its threat to our democracy. But his basic message was, “we accomplished a lot this past 8 years and if you don’t want to see it go up in smoke, get your ass in gear and get working. Don’t moan about the past, do something about the future.”

  264. 264.

    Timurid

    Very good speech. I was skeptical earlier today, worried that this would be as tame as his Russia speech.
    It’s academic, anyway. He could have stood there for an hour reading from the DC phone book. There’s nothing he can say that will mess with Trump more than the pain train that ran over the Donald this evening…

  268. 268.

    dmsilev

    Finally, and with total sincerity and absolutely no snark: Thanks, Obama. Thanks for everything.

  269. 269.

    Cacti

    Barack H. Obama is the only man I have ever thought of as “my President” rather than “the President”.

    I can’t imagine I’ll see his like again in my lifetime.

  276. 276.

    Jeffro

    @Cacti:

    Barack H. Obama is the only man I have ever thought of as “my President” rather than “the President”.

    I can’t imagine I’ll see his like again in my lifetime.

    Well, let’s hope…

    Oh and seconded, btw.

    A speech for the ages. So many things in there that are hard to argue with, right Republicans?

  277. 277.

    hovercraft

    @JPL:

    Kellyanne Conway says that Donald Trump “is not aware” that he was briefed about Russian allegations.

    So is she saying that her boss is too stupid to understand what he was briefed about, because if so, there is a chance that she accidentally spoke the truth.
    Nah she is full of shit and lying her ass off, she is laying the groundwork for tomorrows presser, which will probably be cancelled.

  278. 278.

    debbie

    Don’t mean to revert to hippie days, but don’t it always seem to go you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.

  279. 279.

    dmsilev

    @catclub: Yeah, about a week or so before Obama took office. I don’t really remember much about it.

    (searches Google). Yep, pretty banal. Lots of stuff about 9/11 and the War on Terrah, and some anecdotes of people who he thought did good things, but needless to say, nothing like what we just heard.

  282. 282.

    Mary G

    @geg6: That is a brilliant. My Republican-from-1944-to-2008 mom let our neighbor put a “Hope” sign in our yard and saved it in the garage. I’m going to get it framed and hang it on the wall.

    The C-SPAN feed is awesome. They are still working the crowd and PBO was holding a sleeping infant maybe six weeks old so tenderly. I’m still crying.

  284. 284.

    Larkspur

    @Baud: True, but we still had it and no one can disappear it. They’re trying but they’ll fail. We had it, it happened, it was a real thing that happened for eight years.

  285. 285.

    JPL

    @debbie: If that is true, the only thing I can imagine is that they used big boy words
    Maybe Flynn was busy and couldn’t translate for him.

  288. 288.

    Another Scott

    @Larkspur: I recently got a bunch of these bumper stickers. I’m thinking of trying to pass some out at the Women’s March on the 21st.

    Great speech. It’s mind boggling that so many people hate him so much that they refuse to even to listen to such a moving address. :-( Unfortunately, Hillary is in that boat, too…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  292. 292.

    Anne Laurie

    @catclub:

    Did George W Bush even give a farewell address?

    IIRC, at a DC-area military academy, where he knew the audience was forbidden to heckle him.

    What’s the military version of ‘side eye’?

  301. 301.

    debbie

    @AdamWeinstein:

    As a person of faith I’m amazed so many Christians spurned a POTUS who invokes grace accurately and vibrantly to elect a burlap sack of id

  303. 303.

    WaterGirl

    From the link above at #300:

    I was really overwhelmed as I was telling him that because it was such a moment of pride, a beginning of a long path to him getting to the White House and, now it was over. He put his arm on my shoulder and looked at me intensely, saying, “We aren’t done yet.”

    I wish I could have bottled the look in his eyes so all the people I know, and don’t, who feel dishearten now, who are so fearful of what comes next, and who feel a sense of loss, know he is absolutely not, under any circumstances, going to stop fighting for what we believe in.

    “I’m going to take a little vacation,” he said, “get a little sun, but then we are right back at it. ”

    He told me about the work he will be doing on youth and families, on getting more people engaged in voting, on protecting liberties. Then he said the words that meant the most to me: “The best is yet to come.”

    I believe Barack Obama was the greatest President of my lifetime, but as I heard him talk, I remembered he is about more than political office. At so many times—his amazing speech about race in the first campaign, his powerful words after Sandy Hook, his second inaugural when laid out the imperative of attacking climate change—he has moved us beyond politics to elevate our values. This is his great opportunity now; just as America faces a crisis of values, a great debate about who we really are at our core, he will be speaking not as just a politician, but as a moral leader. In many ways we need that even more today than great politicians.

  304. 304.

    Yarrow

    You guys are so brave to watch it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it today. Recorded it. Will watch it when I’m able. Might be months. I don’t know…

    President Obama is the first and only president I have ever thought of as “my” president. He’s our president. The President of all of us. Whether we agree with him or not, he took that responsibility seriously. I will miss him more than I can say.

  305. 305.

    Elizabelle

    @pepper: So glad daughterpepper got to go. Life-changing is the word.

    I know we sound like cultists. LOL. But this was the best and most inspiring president. I guess JFK was inspiring for his grace and intelligence and humor too. (I was too little to catch his speeches in real time.)

  307. 307.

    Omnes Omnibus

    So I watched the Farewell speech and Denial this evening. I am in kind of a weird place at the moment.

  310. 310.

    zhena gogolia

    @Darkrose:

    I’ll have to read this thread tomorrow. And maybe some day, if we’ve survived Trump, I’ll watch the speech. Just can’t right now.

  311. 311.

    pepper

    @Spanky: i will pass that on to her. she will want to know that for sure. :-) i know she was inspired by what she heard tonight, and i suspect that with time, it becomes more meaningful to her.

  313. 313.

    Tazj

    @Spanky:”Anonymous old farts on the internet”. That mad me laugh. Yes, I’m one of them. @pepper: How cool! What a beautiful speech. I didn’t want to watch but I’m very glad I did.

  314. 314.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle: Thanks! I actually got to that link from this at the Washington Monthly: Same title, but different article: I liked this quote from Michelle:

    For years now I’ve thought that one of the most fascinating descriptions of Barack Obama came from his wife Michelle.

    Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.

    In eleven days, that exploration will be over. Then we get to find out what he means when he says, “The best is yet to come.”

  315. 315.

    pepper

    @debbie: no doubt this is seared into her memory. since the quality of presidential oratory is about to drop like a stone, i am glad she got to hear the best.

  316. 316.

    pepper

    @Elizabelle: i was too young to hear kennedy, too. daughterpepper knows i was on the obama train from very early on, and i would like to (very selfishly) think that i had a small hand in shaping her desire to hang out in 0 degree weather to try to get a ticket.

  318. 318.

    Ingressus Sum

    Never have I felt so “Lucky to Live Hawaii” than after watching President Obama’s Farewell Address!!!!!

  319. 319.

    Gemina13

    Even as my heart breaks, I know none of us have seen the last of Barack Obama. And that’s a good thing. He’s needed, and for now he needs some time to rest, recover from the constant beatings he’s taken over the last 8 years. I daresay we’re going to see a lot more of NoFucksGiven Obama when he does come back.

    By contrast, people can’t wait to see the back of Trump. And I know it’s killing him. Good.

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