Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Let me file that under fuck it.

Books are my comfort food!

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

People are weird.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

White supremacy is terrorism.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

You are here: Home / Politics / America / President Obama’s Speech On Behalf of Ralph Northam

President Obama’s Speech On Behalf of Ralph Northam

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Figured it made sense to bookend my blogging day with President Obama’s speech on behalf of Ralph Northam from earlier this evening. The video is all teed up for President Obama’s remarks.

https://youtu.be/pimDqrG6DuY?t=1h3m30s

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  4. 4.

    Elizabelle

    Thank you tremendously. I didn’t get tickets, but so excited to have PBO in the house.

    CNN/Anderson Cooper with clip of RVA speech just a moment ago. Segues into W’s speech.

    Good on both former presidents speaking up. The one we have now is a shit show’s shit show.

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    @lamh36: Yeah. The Jefferson Davis quote is the headline in the Richmond Times Disgrace at the moment.

    Take that, confederates.

  9. 9.

    Trentrunner

    Funny, I know many here can’t (and don’t) watch Trump. Just too painful.

    That’s how I feel about watching Obama. Just can’t. Too painful.

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    @Elizabelle: Ummm, I uhh hate to break this to you. But if you challenged me to name a “slim, trim” animal…Seal would not be in the top 10.

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Haven’t watched this yet (saving it for “dessert,” as it were) but am totally pumped about seeing POTUS44 again.

  16. 16.

    Jeffro

    Great speech – wish there had been the shout-outs to Herring as well as Fairfax and Northam, but still…

    I am almost willing to go back in a time loop from 2008 to 2016, and never emerge, just because having a highly competent progressive president who worked for all of us was such a blessing.

    Almost

  17. 17.

    lamh36

    @Trentrunner: I totally understand, but as I said it the last thread…it’s puts my feels in a great place to hear “Signed Sealed Delivered” played after a campaign rally again!

  18. 18.

    Corner Stone

    Damn, Julia Ioffe. Shut up for one fucking minute.

    Another example of Hayes getting rolled.

  20. 20.

    lamh36

    @Trentrunner: Also too, it was great to see PBO dinging Trump without EVER saying his name. And knowing that Trump can’t manage to NOT bring up and say Obama’s name DIRECTLY…even when what’s he’s supposed to be talking about has NOTHING to do with Obama

    I’m sure he’ll be choking on his twitter rage once he’s told what Obama said and about Obama’s crowd comparison

  23. 23.

    efgoldman

    As a Certified Old Fart (COF) I don’t know how I feel about the Beatles’ Come Together as trailer music.

  25. 25.

    efgoldman

    @lamh36:

    Trump can’t manage to NOT bring up and say Obama’s name DIRECTLY…even when what’s he’s supposed to be talking about has NOTHING to do with Obama

    Yet, deep down, Obama must be seething that Amber Asshole is governing (so to speak) by spite, undoing anything he can with Obama’s name associated with it.

  26. 26.

    mai naem mobile

    @Elizabelle: it’s a pity they can’t play a day surreptitiously starting with Carter,followed by HW,WJC,Dubbya and Obama all taking different level digs at Douchebag Dolt45. Preferably on Dolt’s birthday or something similar .

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Patricia Kayden: I love Obama so much. He helps me be a better person. He always appeals to our better angels.

    This is how we win our country back. Candidate by candidate. Race by race.. By fuciking voting and helping others to vote.

    edited.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    @amygdala: I know. Heard that in real time, and relished it.

    Compare and contrast. “strains credulity” vs. sending your rent-a-general out because you’ve dug yourself a hole.

    And then said general proceeds to dig deeper.

    There is no bottom with this administration, is there?

  34. 34.

    amygdala

    @Elizabelle: I’m afraid not. I would have thought they’d be nearing the earth’s core by now.

    I’m at least a little amused that he and W were slagging the vulgar yam without saying his name. I’d fall off my chair laughing if it were ever proven they, er, colluded with their speeches today.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    I want to know what kind of a person you have to be in order to disagree with anything Barack Obama said in his speech tonight.

    I truly cannot imagine any decent person disagreeing. I guess I’ll see by the reactions tomorrow.

    I wish they had this speech available on the C-SPAN tv channel. I’d like to be able to record it on Tivo and go back and watch it. Barack is so real and brilliant and passionate. And then he’s followed by this piece of shit. We need to wake up now and take some action. I just don’t know how we do it.

  36. 36.

    mike in dc

    Maddow is reporting and suggesting that the addition of Chad to the travel ban may have indirectly led to the deaths of American troops in Niger. Chad withdrew its troops from Niger shortly before the troops were ambushed and killed.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    In honor of PBO’s speech in Richmond tonight, a prescient blog post from before 11/9, a hinge in history.

    Not a Tea Party, A Confederate Party

    … Confederates need guns. The South is a place, but the Confederacy is a worldview. To this day, that worldview is strongest in the South, but it can be found all over the country (as are other products of Southern culture, like NASCAR and country music). A state as far north as Maine has a Tea Party governor.

    Gun ownership is sometimes viewed as a part of Southern culture, but more than that, it plays a irreplaceable role in the Confederate worldview. Tea Partiers will tell you that the Second Amendment is our protection against “tyranny”. But in practice tyranny simply means a change in the established social order, even if that change happens — maybe especially if it happens — through the democratic processes defined in the Constitution. If the established social order cannot be defended by votes and laws, then it will be defended by intimidation and violence. How are We the People going to shoot abortion doctors and civil rights activists if we don’t have guns?

    and, from the endnotes:

    [1] The other clear evidence stands in front of nearly every courthouse in the South: statues of Confederate heroes. You have to be blind not to recognize them as victory monuments. In the Jim Crow era, these stone sentries guarded the centers of civic power against Negroes foolish enough to try to register to vote or claim their other constitutional rights.

    James C. Cobb elaborates:

    “African Americans understood full well what monuments to the antebellum white regime were all about. When Charleston officials erected a statue of proslavery champion John C. Calhoun, “blacks took that statue personally,” Mamie Garvin Fields recalled. After all, “here was Calhoun looking you in the face and telling you, ‘Nigger, you may not be a slave but I’m back to see you stay in your places.’ ” In response, Fields explained, “we used to carry something with us, if we knew we would be passing that way, in order to deface that statue — scratch up the coat, break up the watch chain, try to knock off the nose. … [C]hildren and adults beat up John C. Calhoun so badly that the whites had to come back and put him way up high, so we couldn’t get to him.”

    History is never past, until we make it past.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle: No bottom. No bottom. Maybe the earth can just swallow them whole.

    And on that chipper note, I am going to put the computer away.

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    @Feebog:

    And that Trump manages to knock them both off the front page by sending his general out to be “emotional.”

    But the rubes in the press corpse didn’t fall for it as hard, this time.

  44. 44.

    Jacel

    @mike in dc: That was an amazing report from Rachel tonight. I look forward to hearing what Adam and other experienced Juicers have to say about this.

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    @amygdala:
    They would be at the earth’s core by now if it weren’t for the incompetence. drumpf can’t do anything right. Even digging himself a hole to fall into. Given a normal person, digging that much they would have reached the core but drumpf’s problem is he has to keep digging new holes. He gets others to dig the old ones deeper. Maybe he thinks he’s building a new golf course.

  47. 47.

    raven

    @Elizabelle: So you think his description of how a dead military person comes home and what it was like when he was informed of the death of his son is just made up to prop up Trump?

  50. 50.

    Bobby Thomson

    @lamh36: I’m old enough to remember when that was an arrogant display that cost him the NH primary.

    When you’re #2, you reach harder.

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: No. Not in the least. That part rang true.

    But Kelly did a lot of punching down too. I tuned in expecting to see a more dignified and intelligent press conference than I saw. Had never watched Kelly on TV before, so it was an education.

    I do not doubt that Kelly loves and misses his son, every day of his life.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mike in dc: @raven: @Jacel: Haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ve got her on the DVR. I was watching the Cubs-Dodgers game, but got disgusted. I’m about 3/4 through Melber.

    The Chad thing just stinks. Apparently they may have been placed on the banned list because they ran out of official passport paper:
    theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/18/trump-travel-ban-chad-passport-paper

    US officials say an office supply issue was a major reason the African country of Chad was hit with travel restrictions by the United States.

    Donald Trump’s administration added Chad in an order last month that a judge put on hold this week. Chad’s inclusion was perplexing because the country cooperates closely with the US on counter-terrorism.

    It turns out a seemingly pedestrian issue was to blame: Chad ran out of passport paper.

    All countries had been given 50 days to take several steps that included providing a recent passport sample. Chad couldn’t comply, and its offer to provide a pre-existing sample wasn’t sufficient.

    The homeland security department says there were other reasons Chad was added, too. The department says the US is working with Chad to resolve them.

  57. 57.

    amygdala

    @Ruckus: Oh, God, you’re right… of course he’s incapable of digging a damn hole.

    I’m sorry about your coworker. Much too young.

  60. 60.

    rikyrah

    THREAD
    twitter.com/laurasessions10/status/921111532662075392

    Laura Sessions‏ @laurasessions10

    THREAD 1. What happened in Niger.
    1:31 PM – 19 Oct 2017

    2/ While everyone is so busy talking about the president’s handling of his call to the widow of the soldier killed in Niger….
    3.you ‘re all missing the important part of that story…the part about what happened that night in Niger.

    4. The story that is emerging is so much worse than anything that happened in Benghazi

    5. but the same GOP Congress that investigated Benghazi with a fury seems to have little or no interest in this story.

    6. Here’s what we know so far… .These soldiers went to a meeting in an area near the border with Mali a well known hot spot for ISIS

    7 Our soldiers were not backed up by US Military air support- backed up by the French, who were not authorized to intervene or even fire

    8 Our soldiers did not have armored vehicles. They traveled in pickup trucks. . Our soldiers were given faulty intel… that said

    9 “it was unlikely that they would meet any hostile forces.” Of course, they walked into an ISIS ambush-chaotic and they took three lives

    10 It took the French 30 minutes to arrive. When they did they were not authorized to help.

    11. So, a dozen of our Green Berets fought a battle with more than 50 Isis fighters, without help, for 30 minutes.

    12 Finally, a rescue helicopter arrived, but it was not a US military helicopter.

    13 No, we apparently outsourced that job to “private contractors.”

    14 So, these contractors landed and loaded the remaining troops, the injured and the dead. . Here’s where this gets really bad…

    15 Because they were not military, they never did a head count. That is how Sgt. La David Johnson was left behind.

    16 That’s right…they left him behind.

    17According to the Pentagon, his locator beacon was activated on battlefield, which indicates that he was alive when they left him there

    18 They recovered his body 48 hours later but are refusing to say where.

    19 According to his widow, she could not have an open casket. This means that he was mutilated after being left behind on the battlefield.

    20 This is what led to the nonsense we’re obsessing over. This is the real story.

    21 As usual, you’re allowing it to be about Trump’s distraction, but this is Benghazi on steroids.

    22 The Trump Pentagon gave these men bad intel, no support, outsourced rescue people and then,,,

    23 tried for more than a week to pretend it never happened. In that time, Trump spoke on many occasions and never mentioned it.

    24 He tweeted attacks on many but never mentioned this Only after pressure from the media did he acknowledge these men and their service..

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Russian energy major Rosneft has agreed to take control of the main oil pipeline in Iraq’s Kurdistan, further boosting its role as the main international investor in the semi-autonomous region.

    The move is an apparent part of a broader strategy by President Vladimir Putin to ratchet up Moscow’s political and economic influence in the Middle East.…
    [snip]
    Rosneft will be investing in expanding Erbil’s independent pipeline, which Baghdad has targeted, hoping to boost its capacity by a third to 950,000 barrels per day. That is the equivalent of about 1 percent of total global supply. Source

  65. 65.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: Is this true?
    According to the Pentagon, his locator beacon was activated on battlefield, which indicates that he was alive when they left him there comment 60

    I’m sick

  66. 66.

    Mike J

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Apparently they may have been placed on the banned list because they ran out of official passport paper:

    Which is something that could be worked out between the countries, but having a key ally abandon the fight against Boko Haram because Trump is a fucking moron is unfortunate.

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: Very honestly:

    I had Law & Order SVU on in background; getting ready to go out to do some stuff; Corner Stone mentioned on a thread that Kelly was giving a press conference.

    I tuned in to CNN, which I so rarely watch, and i’ve probably not watched 1 minute of Kelly previously. I was surprised and alarmed by what I saw from Kelly. Mind you, I had missed his remarks about soldiers being returned “on ice” and mortuary services. Probably came in at the half way point.

    But Kelly said a lot of stuff that appalled me. I felt he was using status in the military to divide us; and when he talked about “the one percent” — I am tired of all these sub-groups. Knock it the fuck off.

    We are Americans. The handsome and too soon dead La David Johnson is an American, who died serving us.

    He is not “the one percent” and a tool to be used for outrage. He just wanted to do his job, come home, and welcome his new baby — they’re expecting a girl — and see his family again.

    It’s something none of us have mentioned, but he was such a handsome and appealing young man. All that promise. Gone.

    WaPost: The private life of Sgt. La David Johnson, the slain soldier ensnared in a Trump controversy

    He was highly regarded by his military peers.

    Bohler, the friend who said he was also Johnson’s supervisor at Fort Bragg, said Johnson rose through the ranks rapidly — from a private to a sergeant in less than three years.

    “He caught on quickly. You tell him once, and it’s complete, any task,” Bohler said Wednesday. “He was just that one soldier that always wanted to better himself every day. Every day, he wanted to do better than he did yesterday.”

    …. Johnson loved to talk about his family, particularly about the woman who raised him, Bohler said. His biological mother, Samara, died when he was a child, according to the slain soldier’s obituary. Cowanda Jones-Johnson and her husband, Richard Johnson, were entrusted with his care after his mother died.

    Jones-Johnson is an aunt who raised Johnson as her own son.

    “He’s very thankful for having somebody like his Mom, Cowanda, in his life,” Bohler said. “She wasn’t really his mom, but you couldn’t tell.”

    Johnson attended Dade County Public Schools and graduated from Miami Carol City Senior High School in 2010, according to his obituary.

    In August 2014, he married his best friend, Myeshia Manual.

    John Kelly used his press conference to attack the veracity of the congresswoman and friend of the family who was riding with Sgt. Johnson’s survivors. Kelly demeaned himself. He cried “politicization” — aiming it at Cong. Wilson — but it is his own ridiculous shambling POTUS who opened that can of worms.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: I do not know. This is the first I’ve seen that. I clicked through to the actual twitter thread and she doesn’t provide a link or source.

  73. 73.

    Crashman

    @rikyrah: This situation is utterly horrific and awful, but where did this person get her source. A browsed her thread and saw her cite a “Facebook post.” That doesn’t really sound credible to me.

  75. 75.

    billcoop4

    @Elizabelle:

    I do not doubt that Kelly loves and misses his son, every day of his life.

    People who sell their souls do not deserve such sympathy; when offered, it is an act of grace. It’s an offer I cannot give him because of his subservience to his Power Top.

    WMC

  78. 78.

    dogwood

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Kelly’s grief is genuine. So is his disregard for the grief and insult that the people who were in Mrs. Johnson’s car experienced. As a white fancy pants general, he is the arbiter of how his inferiors must behave. His self-regard is as immense as Trump’s.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: The DOD will do a full scrub. How much of that will be made public, however, is a good question. I know that when similar high profile type of things have happened in the CENTCOM AOR that they post the after action reviews and the reports of the outside investigations on their outward facing portal. I don’t know what will happen given the current administration.

    But this all comes back to what I wrote about last week: we have a policy regarding our military and its use that cannot be supported with the resources at our disposal. The problem was not that we had Green Berets doing Foreign Internal Defense in Niger. Ultimately it isn’t that someone at either 3rd SF Group or Special Operations Command Africa or AFRICOM or JSOC got the intel wrong – though that is certainly a problem. Rather it is we didn’t have the resources in theater in proximity to our personnel to be able to provide combat support and casualty evac when necessary.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    He used that description to bash a pregnant war widow as well as the Khans. He implied that his grief was bigger and more important than their grief.

    That’s what makes him a piece of shit — he used his dead son as a weapon against other grieving families just because they’re not servicemembers themselves.

  84. 84.

    Corner Stone

    @Mnemosyne:

    he used his dead son as a weapon against other grieving families just because they’re not servicemembers themselves.

    He used it in the service of defending the Dignity Wraith.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    @Immanentize
    Minor correction.

    Roseannadanna. One word. Playing off the name and brash ‘Noo Yawk’ delivery style of local NYC news person Roseanne Scamardella.

  89. 89.

    Corner Stone

    Yikes. Lawrence just spent 20 minutes wiping the floor with whatever might be left of John Kelly’s reputation.

  92. 92.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @lamh36:

    Here’s one thing I know, if you have to win a campaign by DIVIDING people, you won’t be able to GOVERN them. You won’t be able to unite them later, if that’s how you start..

    Well, not unless you establish an authoritarian state capable of both terrorizing and indoctrinating the majority of the population.

  93. 93.

    Immanentize

    @Mnemosyne: on another topic, friend. Did you see Bernie is pulling out of the Women’s Conference? Your voice (and those of hundreds/thousands of others) was heard.

  98. 98.

    Immanentize

    @Mnemosyne:
    Or maybe that was a graceful retreat negotiated from a disinvitation once the “leaders” of the conference got a clue by four across the head

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Michael Cohen‏ @ speechboy71
    4) By Kelly’s telling Trump was trying to console Sgt. Johnson’s widow – but it seems that somehow that was lost translation 5) Apparently Myeshia Johnson broke down crying when Trump called. Others in the car felt POTUS had disrespected Sgt. Johnson 6) One could certainly give Trump the benefit of the doubt here. That his attempt at consoling Myeshia Johnson went awry 7) But here’s the ugly part: at no point today did Kelly or the WH apologize to Myeshia Johnson or the family of Sgt. Johnson 8) Putting everything else aside, POTUS made a Gold Star widow cry. Even if unintentionally that should bother John Kelly 9) And yet, once again, John Kelly made no public statement about Myeshia Johnson’s reaction to Trump’s words. 10) Instead he savagely attacked Cong. Frederica Wilson for publicizing what happened when Trump called Myeshia Johnson 11) A White House & a Chief of Staff w/ even a sliver of human decency would feel terrible about Myeshia Johnson’s reaction to Trump’s words 12) They would make it a priority to apologize to Myeshia Johnson and to soothe her pain 13) Instead Kelly used his appearance today to defend Trump, attack Cong. Wilson and say not a word about Myeshia Johnson 15) But John Kelly didn’t do that. He defended Trump & said nothing about the unimaginable grief of Myeshia Johnson. That is ugly 16) And if anyone should understand the pain of a Gold Star wife it’s John Kelly. 17) So we learned a lot about what John Kelly today and none of it is good

  100. 100.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tom Nichols‏Verified account @ RadioFreeTom
    I agree with Cohen about almost nothing on most days, but imo this is a pretty clear-eyed look at what happened today.Tom Nichols added,

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    You’d think that Trump’s spokesbot could have said something like, “We are so sorry that this has become an issue and once again extend our sincerest condolences to Sgt. Johnson’s widow, family, and friends” AT A FUCKING MINIMUM.

    But, no, they had to go to war against a grieving family because nobody was thinking about Trump’s pain.

  104. 104.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Donald J. TrumpVerified account @ realDonaldTrump
    The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!

    Again, Kelly basically confirmed Wilson’s account of what trump said, as did the Sargent’s mother

    also, too

    Daniel W. Drezner‏Verified account @ dandrezner 1m1 minute ago
    So, wait, did you inform the widow that your chief of staff was listening in on the very personal call?

  105. 105.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!

    Who writes shit like this? It’s like a mash-up of a LaRouchie and an emo teen.

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mike in dc: @raven: @Jacel: Okay I’ve gotten through the Maddow segment. What she’s positing – that the violent extremists planned and carried out the ambush or, at least, took their planning operational when they did because Chad had withdrawn its forces because of inclusion on the travel ban – is plausible. I’m not sure, however, that we have enough information now to make that conclusion. I’m also not sure we ever will. It is almost a counterfactual type of argument.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Which is strange because since midway through Operation Iraqi Freedom there have been standing separation of medical care in theater for military personnel and civil servants who get their care from military sources and contractors who have to arrange their own medical care. For the big companies like KBR this wasn’t a big deal in Iraq. They sent their own medical sheds and personnel. For my small team with five civilian contractors, two who were retirees, it made getting even routine care for say a cold or stomach bug a pain. They basically ignored the rules and treated us at the FOB medical shed.

  108. 108.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: I don’t think that’s the case. The SF bubbas have a very detailed, deliberate, and thorough way of doing the planning and decision making processes.

  109. 109.

    Mike in NC

    @Omnes Omnibus: Maybe if you have an elderly shut-in uncle who watches several hours of Fox News every night and forwards you emails with lots of upper case words and exclamation points, then you can appreciate Fat Bastard’s Twitter style.

  112. 112.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike in NC: I don’t.

    @Adam L Silverman: It wasn’t a knock on you. I’ve been out of the active army for over 25 years. I am still appalled that people were sent someplace that we could not get them out of if shit went bad. One can order troops into that if it is necessary, but it must be necessary and you have to tell them about the situation. This was not necessary.

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve seen a lot of whacked planning over the past decade. I’ve seen strange decisions. I’ve never seen an ongoing FID mission with almost a battalion’s worth of personnel and no Apache or Kiowas for close air support or Blackhawks for CASEVAC. We’re talking maybe a dozen rotary wing total across those platforms for support. I just don’t see how you don’t allocate that for this mission. Hell two Apaches and three or four Blackhawks would have been all you needed to first push back the hostiles and then get everyone out.

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