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You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / President Biden Delivers Remarks on the Release of Hostages from Gaza (Open Thread)

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    Remarks will begin shortly!  (Maybe even shortly, for real, this time!)

    I always open these speeches in a new tab so that I don’t lose my place in the video when I refresh the comments.

  4. 4.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: Yes. He keeps quietly fixing things that needed fixing. The tinkering with bankruptcy admin rules to make more student loans eligible for chapter 13 was a big one that I never expected. Didn’t affect me but I know many people that might help.

  6. 6.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @sab: wow, I always understood student loans basically had to be paid unless you died or were permanently disabled with basically no chance of ever getting back to work.

  7. 7.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Great presser. Clear statement from POTUS, with decent questions from the press.

    I liked the repetition: two-state solution… two-state solution… two-state solution… two-state solution…

    Bibi, we’ll gladly make that happen without you.

    Separately, I wonder what type of pressure POTUS/US is bringing to bear on Hamas. I got the impression that it’s pressure that’s separate from Israel leveling Gaza.

  10. 10.

    Tom Levenson

    @Alison Rose: Anecdata: just got back from dim sum with out of town relatives for my part.

    So, yeah–this was when Biden had to do this presser, but Black Friday afternoon is not exactly a high-media-traffic slot.

  11. 11.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @WaterGirl: I am always surprised that more people aren’t interested in seeing Biden when he makes an important speech.

    And then they complain that he doesn’t hold enough press conferences.

  12. 12.

    sab

    @Mai Naem mobile: I don’t know the details, since didn’t affect me. But Kay our morning legal jackal was very excited.

    In my misspent early adulthood I was a lawyer who did bankruptcies among other things. Then they changed the rules. Meanwhile I had gone elsewhere professionally.

    Like you I thought any change required an unwilling Congress.  But I got out of the field and stopped following. Kay didn’t.

  16. 16.

    Jay C

    @WaterGirl:

    Well, as noted, Black Friday mid-afternoon isn’t exactly Prime Time: more important, IMO, will be how the media will cover (or not cover) the issue when it’s recapped for the evening news.

    It’s pretty much a BFD (to quote Joe), so I’m guessing that the “MSM” will have to devote some airtime to it: though probably reluctantly….

  17. 17.

    Alison Rose

    @sab: If you’re seeing the “we will begin shortly” screen, you can just skip ahead to when he comes on, which was at about 46:32. It was brief and ended a little bit ago.

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    @sab: This might sound snarky, but I don’t mean it that way, because I have done this myself.

    Did you press play?  (I forgot to press play once.)

    Are you on a computer?  You should be able to click on the YouTube embed up top and see the speech even though it’s over. You might have to pull the slider over until the part where he starts to speak, but you should be able to see it.

    (It may be different on phones, I don’t know.)

  21. 21.

    Lyrebird

    @Chief Oshkosh: Separately, I wonder what type of pressure POTUS/US is bringing to bear on Hamas.

    I also wonder abotu that, though mostly I just ask FSM to keep some noodly appendages over all the negotiators, I don’t know how they do it without just throwing up from the stress.  And yes I do mean ALL the negotiators.

     

    To your question, I don’t know if it goes beyond indirect pressure through other countries, like keeping sympathetic nations from jummping in to make this the next axis of WWIII or IV or whatever.

  22. 22.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: Yes I did. My Nook and your posts often have problems, for Biden not Trump. I don’t blame you. I blame someone in Nookworld. Who else could it be?

  30. 30.

    bbleh

    Well but why hasn’t the war ended yet?!?  What is he doing?!?!?  And he’s on vacation, not at the White House!!!11!!  And what about gas prices?!?!??!  [narrator: they’re way down]  Yeah but for how long?!?!??!  Why doesn’t he doooo sommmmethinnng about it?!??!?

    I admit to being a Bad Person, but I do love laughing overtly in the face of anyone who actually says it would be better under TIFG.  And there are a lot fewer of them today, at least who are willing to say it.

  31. 31.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    So, I’ve lived about 2 long blocks from a big mall for the past 13 years.  Pre-COVID, you could not find a parking space on my street on Black Friday.  Today, it looks like a normal Friday.  Did COVID kill Black Frilday?

  32. 32.

    sab

    Seriously, everyone coming through here not on a Nook thinks they are entitled to a connection.

    Makes me doubt Balloon Juice. Connect only if your web guys’ masters’ want you to? Not Cole. Somebody else.

    Whatever. I don’t care what you think. I am not a nutjob, and if I cannot even post on your site or see webpostings then something is up and I want no part of it. I am done.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    It’s just as well the President’s address is not on prime time, I think. This is a bright spot after 7 dark weeks, and hopefully there will be a few more in coming days. But by this time next week, Israel will likely have resumed its offensive against Hamas and rightly or wrongly, Biden will catch some of the blame.

    Sooner or later-hopefully sooner- there will be a more durable cease-fire. If and when that takes hold, there will be a right time for the President to make a prime-time address.

  42. 42.

    Freemark

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: ​
      Marketing has changed, The deals start two weeks before Black Friday and there are far fewer Friday only deals. My understanding it works better for the retailers especially about staffing issues. COVID had at least one good effect.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    @Tom Levenson: I was out getting my first oil change at the dealer.  While waiting, I heard a guy talking on his phone trying to get a 6th pall bearer for his mom.  :-(  We talked a tiny bit, I gave him my condolences, but he was quite busy trying to coordinate everything with all the people visiting from out out town, etc.  It’s always hard, but this is an especially bad time of year for it.

    :-(

    I then went to Lowe’s and looked around for new toilet seats.  All they have is white.  We have yellow, blue, and grey toilets – it was the style at the time [/grandpa-Simpson] – so I get to take a chance on something ordered on the web, or just get white, or decide to start over with 21st century toilets.

    [/first-world-problems]

    The store was less busy than a usual 3 PM on a weekend, so maybe the rush is over (if there was one).

    Now to watch Biden’s comments…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @WaterGirl: ​
     The site still has bugs. I read sab to say that he is using a Nook and his user experience is therefore degraded to the point of exasperation.

    I use Firefox on Android and I still have to manually delete the data-mce-fragment attribute in the Text tab of the comment form in order to be able to comment.

  47. 47.

    MomSense

    Meeting cousins for pizza tonight.  I think I’ve posted before here that close family who were with Biden at a fundraiser over the summer watched him give a 45 minute extemporaneous talk with enough meat in it that Heather Cox Richardson quoted large sections of it for one of her daily letters.
    He is brilliant and decent and man has his experience benefitted all of us.  That having been said, I do think that normies seeing him, not paying attention to his accomplishments, see someone who looks and sounds the dreaded O word.  I don’t know how we deal with this but I’m already experimenting.
    Sometimes I just respond to the O complaint with thank goodness.  He has so much government experience and life experience that he is able to accomplish what others cannot and then I give some examples.  It seems to work pretty well in the moment but I don’t know if it sticks or not.

    My son told me that JP Morgan sent around a market update last month and one of their observations was that party affiliation seems to be the biggest determinant for whether you think the economy is great or terrible.
    I do not understand why real world, measurable data are not more persuasive but I think I’m at least partially on the reality based side of things.

    Unfortunately I think most people are not data driven in their decision making.

  49. 49.

    Miss Bianca

    OK, nice briefing. And reasonable questions from the reporters, quelle surprise!

    Is it just me that gets totally hypnotized watching Biden’s ASL interpreter, btw? She’s so incredibly expressive.

    On a completely irrelevant ASL note, how does ASL deal with people’s names? Are they spelled out phonetically?

  51. 51.

    Geminid

    Reports are that one Filipino and 10 (or 12?) Thai farmworkers kidnapped by Hamas were released today. Estimates are that Hamas captured 25 Thai citizens October 7. Hopefully the rest will be released in the next few days.

    Over 30 Thai farmworkers were killed on October 7. Evidently not all of the dead were accurately identified, because the BBC has a story about a young woman who’d been told her fiance was killed, but saw him a few hours ago in one of the cars carrying hostages out of Gaza. They had planned to marry when he finished his work contract so I guess they get to move the date up.

  52. 52.

    Alison Rose

    @Frank Wilhoit: It’s not necessarily the blog’s issue if a YT video won’t play properly on a Nook tablet. I still can’t get videos in tweets to play in the embed half the time, even though others say they all work. I’m not going to blame the FPers for that.

    ETA: Also how did we go from “I don’t blame you. I blame someone in Nookworld” to “Makes me doubt Balloon Juice” and “if I cannot even post on your site or see webpostings then something is up and I want no part of it. I am done”? Unless the last comment was meant to be a joke.

  54. 54.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Separately, I wonder what type of pressure POTUS/US is bringing to bear on Hamas.

    MSNBC had an expert on talking about that, and it fascinated me.  Apparently negotiations in the Middle East are very complicated, and the US and Biden actually were instrumental, even central drivers of this ceasefire.  The weirdness is, neither Hamas nor Israel’s government particularly want the ceasefire, and they will not negotiate with each other directly.  So how things work over there is that the US leans on countries who have influence over Hamas (like Qatar) to lean on Hamas, while the US leans on Israel directly, and other international players lean on Iran to lean on Hamas, and… you get the picture.  It’s a huge net of proxy influence with the US throwing the most weight this time.

    EDIT – Oh, and the Israeli people think this ceasefire and hostage exchange was Biden’s doing.  Don’t know what other countries think.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    I think an important aspect of this four day truce is the opportunity to set up relief infrastructure in Gaza’s south. There are over a million displaced Gazans and they have a lot of unmet needs in the areas of shelter, food, water and medical care. Turkiye has sent 8 field hospitals and the UAE and others have sent more; those can begin to meet the medical needs.

    The truce agreement allows for 300 (I think) truckloads of relief supplies to enter Gaza each day. These efforts will likely be impaired if and when fighting resumes, though.

  57. 57.

    Miss Bianca

    @Frankensteinbeck: I really hope this news gets out to certain American citizens who have been so loudly decrying America’s and Biden’s efforts.

    Oh, who am I kidding. Fuck it, tho – I’m taking the win. Go, Biden!

  58. 58.

    SteveinPHX

    @WaterGirl: I have heard from library friends that Nooks are a pain in the heinie when it comes to accessing digital book services and the public keeps bringing them in to get help.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @Frankensteinbeck: The US and others have put a lot of diplomatic effort into keeping a full-scale war breaking out in the north, between Israel and Hezbollah.

    Our leverage over Hamas is limited in that we basically support Israel’s war aim of ending Hamas’s 17 year rule in Gaza. Hamas’s leadership still seems to think they can withstand the IDF and frustrate that goal, but I think they really needed this ceasefire to reorganize their defenses.

    Also, they hope that international pressure will force Israel to turn this truce into a longer ceasefire. I do not think Israel will go along with this and its leaders say they won’t.

  61. 61.

    Chief Oshkosh

     

    @Frankensteinbeck

    EDIT – Oh, and the Israeli people think this ceasefire and hostage exchange was Biden’s doing. Don’t know what other countries think.

    Glad to hear that Unka Joe is getting some credit.

    Thanks for the follow-up — very edumacational.

  66. 66.

    sab

    @Alison Rose: I go overboard sometimes when I am very very frustrated. Thanks for pointing that out. ( Seriously. Thanks. BJ made my tablet not work?  Neither sensible nor accurate.)

  68. 68.

    sab

    @Geminid: Two million Gazans, 1 million plus displaced, 46% of housing destroyed. Yep, it will take a while to get them settled again.

    Not being snarky. Just agreeing with the obvious.

    I have been both sides on this for fifty years, but it is being increasingly difficult not to be simply outraged.

  69. 69.

    stinger

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    the US leans on countries who have influence over Hamas (like Qatar) to lean on Hamas

    Kinda makes you glad we don’t have a President who wants to ban Muslim visitors, doesn’t it? We’d have NO friends in the Middle East except Israel and NO leverage in negotiations.

  70. 70.

    sab

    @JaySinWA: Nook doesn’t allow sophistication. All that stuff you suggest my Nook doesn’t even let me do. That used to be the appeal. “Be a luddite. We will do the tech.” I can’t do anything, even block quotes as a commenter. I was okay when I was limited commenting but open to reading. Apparently that is also  extremely limited.

  72. 72.

    sab

    @JaySinWA: I am on a Nook. What are embed codes? ( I know, theoretically, but I can’t, nor have I ever seen them.)

    ETA Three hours later I could see it like a normal person on the internet, but I have no idea what the holdup was.

    I changed nothing at my end, Doubt watergirl changed anything at her end. I don’t believe in gremlins. Maybe I should.

  74. 74.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Frankensteinbeck: From here it’s clear that the ceasefire and hostage exchange was indeed Biden’s doing. It doesn’t bear thinking about if trump was still President.

    Biden does present as old, but in the current global and domestic circumstances I don’t know why that can’t be presented as a ‘plus’. You know, been around long enough to know how the world works, with a kind and ‘grandfatherly’ affect that reassures rather than terrifies.

    In any case it is something that the terrible bombardment of Gaza has ceased for a while at least and that hostages are beginning to be released. May Biden and his team continue to pressure all and sundry till they are all home and the rebuilding of the wreck that is Gaza can begin.

  75. 75.

    JaySinWA

    @sab: The post above uses embed codes from YouTube to show the YouTube video on this site with an option to go to YouTube to view it there. If I understand your issue, you don’t see the embedded video or the link.

    If you can click on my link and see the video then the problem is with the Nook parsing embed codes and perhaps the front pagers could add a direct link for problem browsers in the future.

  76. 76.

    JaySinWA

    @sab: Ah, I was looking at a Nook 10 review and they showed definite lags in bringing up embedded videos. They were several seconds, not hours, but perhaps your Nook is short on memory, or the browser cache and history needs clearing.

    The browser settings menu should have an option for clearing cache, cookies and history.

  77. 77.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA: The Nook video test they ran was loading the ESPN website and scrolling down through a list of videos, and it took much longer than the Fire tablet they were comparing it to.  The difference was by several seconds, It sounds like your delays are more severe.

  78. 78.

    laura

    @sab: i was worried I’d pissed you off- and that was not my intention. I still blame Bill Gates for my ongoing losing tussle with all things “cyber.”

  79. 79.

    Ramalama

    @Jay: Yeah I was going to say the same thing.

    One thing that gave me chills was CTV reporting that the children hostages would be given noise-cancelling headphones when taken from Gaza to be reunited with their families because they likely didn’t know what happened or what happened to the families they were with. And that they’d likely been underground for the ~50 days. It would be too much of a shock with sound along with broad daylight…and the horrible news of whatever happened.

  80. 80.

    Gvg

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: No, it was sick before Covid. Covid didn’t help. This is part of the malls are dying talk you hear sometimes. My local mall looks awful. Dillard is filling 2 anchor spaces, and the old sears is now a branch of the local university hospital system. Lots of covered up spaces with no stores, not even a full food court. Run down, tiles missing, usually not populated. No movie theater. And no permanent toy store or book store. I need to try on clothes, on line really is not great for that. A lot of times, they don’t even have things I want to bother trying.

  83. 83.

    Gvg

    @Ksmiami: internet. All of it. If Amazon never existed, it would be blamed on some other company. It was going to happen. There were things I never could find in my small town. There were things I could not find when I lived in a big city even.

    However, I don’t really get clothes and shoes on line. I can buy repeat purchases that way, but most of them I have to try on. Even sheets and such I prefer to touch. Furniture I am sceptical of, especially with upholstry and construction quality.

    Amazon did the reviews best. That helped a bunch. But it’s tiresome not to be able to sort for lots of reviews going back years instead of just high reviews. eBay did that better. Sears missed so many obvious chances and killed itself.

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