Watch: President Obama sings “Amazing Grace” at funeral for Rev. Pinckney, in Charleston

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Those eyebrows going up in delighted surprise!

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Boy, he’s in really deep cover for that sekrit muslim thing.

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Much better than I expected. A little training and he could quit his day job!

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Much more enjoyable than “Let the Eagle Soar”

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man, what a DAY he is having.

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Man, Obama’s raised the stakes for national leaders there. Can’t wait for Cameron, Merkel, Abe, and Putin to find their voices and treat their electorates to their delicate tones.

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Obama was backed by an organ. I can only hope Putin would have a balalaika band on his person were this to become a thing.

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Man… say what you will about Obama’s accomplishments/foibles in office (and I could go on for hours) this is some shit that is fucking remarkable. Has any other president gotten a whole huge room full of people to stand up and sing along with him like that? And make people (including me) across the world overcome with emotion? Dude made me fucking cry. He’s got some “it” thing and he is going to be legendary.

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The full speech is definitely worth watching… I suspect it’ll be historically noteworthy.

Obama may have been near-total let-down on so many fronts, but there’s never been a POTUS who combines high-calibre gravitas with so much soul. The dude is pretty damn hip. And it’s starting to look like under Obama, the US is at least making some real progress on race and LGBT issues, and maybe even gun control… nothing to sneeze at.

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Putin is way ahead on this. From 2010:

(disclaimer: I am not liable for any cringe-related injuries sustained while watching or thinking about the above video)

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A shame they cut the clip just before the dubstep breakout.

When Obama’s not bullshitting and just being honest and speaking from the heart he’s an amazing speaker. Unfortunately we haven’t seen this Obama in about 5 years… he submerged not long after he got elected. An obvious tell is he gets into this really stilted dah DAH dah DAH dah cadence when he’s full of shit. Hard to describe, but I’m pretty sure you recognize it. I have to shut the radio/tv off when that kicks in.

But suddenly honest Obama’s been popping up again. I like it. I’m not religious, but I can watch the whole 30 minutes without turning it off in disgust and even feel genuinely moved. Time to go hog wild, man. Maybe even rein in your giant police state surveillance machine? Okay, that’s probably too much, since he genuinely seems to like that, but we’ll take what we can get.

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At least it wasn’t the ‘Trolololo’ song.

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Somewhat tangential:

Didn’t realize how much horrible, terrible, god-awful shit the President was subjected to when he joined Twitter. I am hesitant to bring it up because it’s so bad, but it is a backdrop to the events of the last two weeks. Warning: racist, terrorist, confederate flag-wavers in this link.

I can scarcely imagine how such constant hate affects him and his family. I, too, am glad to see him preach from the heart.

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Yeesh.

Hey, caveman hillbilly dipshits: FUCK all y’all.

If you want to give Obama a hard time he actually deserves, you kinda need to be in favour of civil rights.

BTW, I’ve been trying to find some sort of in-depth opinion/analysis on the eulogy, but all I can dig up is a bunch of crap going, then he said this, then he said that.

Can anyone point me to a worthwhile bit of writing about this?

yes, but can he ride a horse bareback? and by bareback i mean his back being bare because he is shirtless.
some leaders have entirely different bars…

oh gawd…can’t unsee that…

YOU really want to set the bar high, try being Dear Leader. He scored 18 holes in one on his first golf game, invented everything, is the best at everything, and eats all the food.

There’s some insightful analysis of O’s rhetorical strategies in the eulogy here:

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Not to be giving Vlad ideas, please.