14
Sep
15

President Obama’s College Access/Affordability Town Hall

4:40 EDT: President Obama Holds a Town Hall to Discuss College Access and Affordability, Des Moines, Iowa


70 Responses to “President Obama’s College Access/Affordability Town Hall”


  1. 1 No Child Left Behind
    September 14, 2025 at 4:23 pm

    Can’t believe it!

  2. 6 No Child Left Behind
    September 14, 2025 at 4:24 pm

    Indeed!

    Well, thank you Chipstick for the new post.

    Good Afternoon TODVille!

  3. 9 Jeff
    September 14, 2025 at 4:27 pm

    Am I reading this correctly… Bernie Sanders is trying to get the Evangelical vote when he’s so heavily struggling with African Americans?

  4. September 14, 2025 at 4:31 pm

    Good grief:

    • 12 MadameSoph
      September 14, 2025 at 4:43 pm

      Damn, how “holier than thou” can you be, BS?

      I’ve noticed in reading comments sections of various articles recently, that Bernie Supporters (at least the ones who comment) seem to be particularly mean-spirited, thin-skinned, angry and troll-like - much like the old Greenwald/Snowden fanboys.

    • 13 Jeff
      September 14, 2025 at 4:49 pm

      Finding myself getting more and more annoyed with Sanders and his supporters. A lot of media has shown obvious favoritism towards him such as Huffington Post and it’s disgusting. I’m probably going to have to vote for Hillary in the primary if Biden doesn’t run and the whole email scandal hasn’t hurt her in my book because it looks to me that the media is trying to bully her like they’ve done to PBO. She’s not my favorite candidate but I prefer her way more than Sanders at this point.

      • 14 hopefruit2
        September 14, 2025 at 5:23 pm

        The media has *tried* to bully PBO - but they haven’t succeeded. PBO won BOTH elections AND has had a successful 2 terms so far. HRC, because she relies so heavily on the same media for validation and publicity - will be far more vulnerable to their shenanigans than PBO ever was.

      • 16 57andfemale
        September 14, 2025 at 5:35 pm

        Sanders can’t work with anyone who doesn’t agree with him. He’s never tried to build a more progressive Democratic party or get decent Dems elected. It really is all about him, all the time. He’s Ralph Nader and he’s dangerous to our chances in 2016. Bernie is even more divisive and holier-than-thou than Nader, and that’s saying a lot. He has a narrow prism through which he sees everything, and becomes as small-minded as the tea party if he can’t shoe horn everything through his narrow view.

  5. 19 rikyrah
    September 14, 2025 at 4:34 pm

    For your reading list:

    Review: ‘Negroland,’ by Margo Jefferson, on Growing Up Black and Privileged
    SEPT. 10, 2015

    Margo Jefferson’s memoir, “Negroland,” possesses a refrain, a series of sentences that are repeated, as if out of a Duke Ellington composition, so the author can hang onto them and so can we.

    “I think it’s too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself,” Ms. Jefferson comments. “You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.”

    This refrain, which appears three times in “Negroland,” performs several duties. It suggests the author’s unease with the lurid state of the American memoir.

    It reminds you that you’re reading a critic — Ms. Jefferson won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her book reviews in The New York Times — who didn’t pander to her audience and won’t begin to do so now. (Her tenure at the paper was mostly before mine, by the way, and I have not met her.)

    Finally, it speaks to what is perhaps this powerful and complicated memoir’s central subject: the lessons of Ms. Jefferson’s childhood in a upper-middle-class black family in Chicago. Her father was the head of pediatrics at Provident, America’s oldest black hospital. Her mother was a social worker turned socialite.

    The author was taught that “you don’t tell your secrets to strangers — certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure.” In her family, and in black families like hers, the strictly observed motto was “Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/books/review-negroland-by-margo-jefferson-on-growing-up-black-and-privileged.html?_r=0

  6. 20 MadameSoph
    September 14, 2025 at 4:46 pm

    Happy New Year to all TODers celebrating 5776 :-) Have a sweet year!

  7. 21 arapaho415
    September 14, 2025 at 4:58 pm

    GA TODville,

    Love this GIF (remember McCain in front of background of similar hue?):

    • 22 MadameSoph
      September 14, 2025 at 5:45 pm

      A friend of mine (she’s of Japanese ancestry - a second generation American) sent me this. I laughed out loud because, although I don’t have Asian ancestry, as someone who looks ethnically ambiguous, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten the “What are you?” question. To be fair, I remember a cable guy coming over a couple of years ago and I asked if he was Persian. He said, “Do I look Persian?” Turns out he was Russian Armenian. Guess I’m guilty of the same s#!t :-)

  8. 23 Niliathiel
    September 14, 2025 at 4:59 pm

    As wonderful as the idea of college affordability is, german me has always had an issue making sense from the words “college” and “affordablity” being used in the same sentence.

  9. 24 meta
    September 14, 2025 at 5:04 pm

    GOOOOOO Rashawn!!

  10. 25 hopefruit2
    September 14, 2025 at 5:20 pm

    I see that Randi Rhodes is very impressed by Sanders’ Liberty U speech? Am I seeing/imagining things? :(

    • 26 Nena20409
      September 14, 2025 at 5:32 pm

      Randi Rhodes will be impressed……why?
      She was Suspended and she later quit the Air America for she made a joke at an event about HRC and she has held that in. She was never a supporter of HRC. She and Stephanie Miller were early supporters of then Sen Obama.
      I have no objections to Sen Sanders speaking at any place.
      The 50 state strategy is to get people everywhere. Sen Sanders in my opinion did this for partly attention, party showing off his independence and party wanting to show them that he wants inclusion…….whatever that means.
      Thank Goodness, Sen Sanders is NEVER going to be POTUS.

      • 27 hopefruit2
        September 14, 2025 at 5:40 pm

        You don’t have to be a supporter of HRC, or O’Malley to know that Sanders is a nasty, disgusting piece of work. And if she ever was a true supporter of PBO (at any time) she should find the Sanders’ campaign revolting.

      • 28 COS
        September 14, 2025 at 5:41 pm

        I agree Nena. Randi Rhodes being impressed by Sanders speech is very suspect. She use to have Sanders on her show often. Free Speech TV is also very partial to Sanders.

    • 29 57andfemale
      September 14, 2025 at 5:36 pm

      Where did you hear Randi Rhodes?

  11. 33 Nena20409
    September 14, 2025 at 5:32 pm

    Congrats NCLB on your Gold :star:

  12. 34 Bobfr (@Our4thEstate)
    September 14, 2025 at 5:33 pm

    Congrats NCLB on 1st!!

    One thing you can say about the GOP since 20 Jan 2025 is that they are amazingly consistent - consistent in the amount of damage they risk and actually do cuz they hate the black guy in the White House.

    #TrustBarack

    • 35 Nena20409
      September 14, 2025 at 5:44 pm

      They have done and continues to for there is Not a DNC orchestrated push back.
      That is the problem.
      They sit idly by and allow the News Media to continue to slant Righward.

  13. 36 Liberal Librarian
    September 14, 2025 at 5:38 pm

  14. 41 Nena20409
    September 14, 2025 at 6:07 pm

  15. 45 Nena20409
    September 14, 2025 at 6:13 pm

    I am always amazed with stories like this one.

  16. 46 hopefruit2
    September 14, 2025 at 6:17 pm

    • 49 GGail
      September 14, 2025 at 6:44 pm

      So true HF, thanks for tweeting that!

    • 51 Lovepolitics2008
      September 14, 2025 at 7:23 pm

      Race plays a role no doubt. I would also say that the disconnect may be explained in good part by a media who always puts a negative spin on everything. The media is biased towards drama, controversy, problems.

      Another factor is the presidential campaign. First, republicans have a lot of exposure and they bash the president and spout nonsense 24/7. ANd on the democratic side, candidates are not much better…

      Politicians who want to make a name for themselves, more often than not, identify the “problems” to solve and pledge that they will solve them.

      In the case of the Barack Obama campaign of 2008, he was JUSTIFIED in criticizing the Bush administration. The problems were REAL, and BIG.

      While in 2015, after 6 and a half years of a good administration and a fantastic president, aspirants to the WH should be more nuanced. America is doing a lot better than in 2008.

      One of the numerous reasons I wish Joe Biden enters the race: he will push back against all the nonsense, the negativity. He will proudly defend the Obama years, and bring back optimism into the campaign. Hillary’s campaign is all about “problems” and she is sniping at the president in order to make a name for herself. Bernie Sanders’s speeches are all about how everything is awful and how people should be angry. Sanders makes a lot of good points, points that President Obama agrees with ( income inequality, need for a better tax code, etc.) but the problem is his tone and his attitude. He’s an ideologue who only sees what’s not working. He is good at indignation, good at identifying the “ideal” solution, but like every emoprog out there, he lacks realism and humility, and most of all, doesn’t have enough respect for the president who has had to work in the real world.

      • 52 hopefruit2
        September 14, 2025 at 9:47 pm

        Indeed LP2008. You have characterized the GOP-owned and GOP-loving media and the current Dem candidates quite well. The field is still lacking, and I assure you that if VP Biden decides to run, coalitions will gravitate towards him.

    • 53 amk for obama
      September 14, 2025 at 9:04 pm

      boom.

  17. 54 desertflower
    September 14, 2025 at 6:18 pm

    http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/13/kansas-secretary-state-fired-state-employee-attending-church.html

    A former Kansas state employee has filed a federal wrongful termination lawsuit targeting Kansas’ Secretary of State and assistant secretary of state, Eric Rucker. The lawsuit alleges that the employee’s dismissal was founded on her refusal to attend bible and prayer services in Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office. It is important to note that the evangelical church services in Secretary of State Kobach’s office were officiated by, a voluntary minister with Capitol Commission, David DePue, whose ministry focuses solely on evangelizing Kansas’ government leaders.

    Kobach needs to be disbarred and recalled. Why was he holding prayer services in his state govt office?? Hope she wins more than her job back…

    • 55 MadameSoph
      September 14, 2025 at 6:38 pm

      Desertflower, I saw your link the other day to the definition of “Trumpery” and got the biggest kick out of the fact that it is an actual word and means “showy, but worthless” among other things :-) Shared this with F&F; thanks!

      Hope the Colbert writers do something on this!

      https://encrypted.google.com/#q=trumpery

      • 56 desertflower
        September 14, 2025 at 6:50 pm

        HA! Wasn’t that the most perfect thing ever:) I would LOVE to see the Colbert writers do something with that…shouldn’t be too hard!

  18. 57 Vicki
    September 14, 2025 at 6:35 pm

    Hi TOD
    Just a quick possible answer as to why Martin O’Malley might be quiet and VP Biden’s people are saying he may not decide until Thanksgiving-

    Could the answer to both questions be that Bernie Sanders is doing the job of clearing the field of the major competitor to VPB and MO’M?
    While at the same time registering new (D) voters?
    Bernie is entirely alienating the millions of Americans who think that PBO is the best President ever? And many of us resent BS and HRC saying that we need to get on a better track or in Bernie’s case never giving credit where credit is due. While Bernie, EXACTLY like The Donald, is promising to “make the USA great again?”

    The field may be cleared by Bernie of both himself and HRC. While expanding the electorate a bit.
    If you think this is a plausible view, maybe.
    Or if Martin O’Malley and VP Biden see the current events as I do, it might explain a part of what is going on. or not.

  19. 58 Nena20409
    September 14, 2025 at 6:39 pm

    REO Speed Wagon…….I liked some of their Music.
    RIP…..GR

  20. 59 meta
    September 14, 2025 at 6:46 pm

    The White House has a nice page up:

  21. 65 JER
    September 14, 2025 at 7:08 pm

  22. 68 Bobfr (@Our4thEstate)
    September 14, 2025 at 7:19 pm

    I see that d*ck Matt is #damonsplaning ….

    • 69 Bobfr (@Our4thEstate)
      September 14, 2025 at 7:20 pm

      Thought I’d make a contribution to #damonspaining to keep it trending, globally ……

      Urge all of you to do the same :)

  23. 70 FoxfireTX
    September 14, 2025 at 7:20 pm

    Just watched the town hall in Des Moines. God I love this man. So thrilled he called out the anti immigrant rhetoric as unAmerican. It makes me sick. This is the kind of passion we need to see from HRC.


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


@POTUS

@BarackObama

@WhiteHouse

@FLOTUS

@blog44

@PeteSouza

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

@TheObamaDiary

@NerdyWonka

@Lib_Librarian

@Our4thEstate

@DaRiverZkind

@zizii2

RSS White House.gov

  • Follow Along: Our 2015 Back-to-School Tour
  • New Tools to Help Students Make Informed Decisions About Higher Education
  • Arrival of the Holy See: His Holiness Pope Francis Makes His First Trip to the United States
  • Weekly Address: A New College Scorecard
  • West Wing Week: 09/11/2025 or, “Heads Up America”

RSS WH Tumblr

  • I just started my first year of college:
  • CHALLENGE: “FAFSA” might be hard to say, but it can...
  • “In remembrance of the innocent victims who lost their...
  • letterstopresidentobama: “When he is redeployed, this is one...
  • Question: What is it about the Iran nuclear deal that keeps them from getting nuclear...

RSS The People’s View

  • Open thread - Today's GOP Liberal Librarian
  • The President holds a townhall with servicemembers Liberal Librarian
  • Toontastic Weekend Liberal Librarian
  • Open thread - VP Biden on Colbert Liberal Librarian
  • >> House GOP's Latest Plan To Stop Obama's Iran Deal: Sue Him! @TPM http://t.co/eLr4cIqO6J— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 10, 2025 C […]">Open thread - Done and dusted Liberal Librarian

RSS Smartypants

  • A Tale of Two Primaries
  • The New York Times Blows It...Again
  • Democrats and Black Voters
  • In the Era of Big Data, GOP Prefers to Keep Us in the Dark
  • Rumors vs Facts on Hillary Clinton's Email

RSS A Writing Corner (LL)

  • #Pixels: A sign of the Apocalypse?
  • Annals in “WTH Were You Thinking??” – Potty Training
  • For the young lady and her love of Seamus Heaney
  • On compassion
  • A Mass for the Dead

RSS Greg Sargent

  • Happy Hour Roundup
  • Republicans think Donald Trump is trustworthy, empathetic, and well suited to presidency
  • Scott Walker’s race to the bottom
  • Morning Plum: GOP presidential candidates are well to the right of their hero Ronald Reagan
  • Sunday Open Thread

RSS Steve Benen

  • Citations for the September 14, 2025 TRMS
  • Ferguson takes another step forward with commission's report
  • Trump's intemperate blurting offers advantage to Fiorina, Carson
  • Bernie Sanders talks Christian political values at Evangelical university
  • Monday's Mini-Report, 9.14.15

Categories

Archives

Blog Stats

  • 32,411,920 hits
September 2015
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930  

WH Flickr

P022114PS-0888

P010615PS-0373

P010615PS-0599

P010715PS-0718

P010715LJ-0309

P010815PS-0008

P010815PS-0171

P010815CK-0068

P010915PS-0040

P010915PS-0103

More Photos

%d bloggers like this: