January 20, 2017

Rachel Maddow delivered a long litany of the things President Obama has accomplished, and she didn't even get to all of them. All of them would have taken up the whole show.

It seemed appropriate to put this on the front page as the "peaceful transfer of power" is happening.

She also had a call to action at the end.

The transcript follows, but I urge you to watch it, because her emotion was part of what makes this so compelling.

Under President Obama the high school graduation rate in this country hit 83%. That's the highest it has ever been in the history of this country.

When President Obama took office in 2009, the country was in an economic freefall, plunging into an economic abyss, unemployment hit 10%. Unemployment is now at 4.7%.

Under President Obama, we have had 82 straight months of private-sector job growth. That's the longest streak ever in the history of our country of consecutive months in which there have been job growth and not job losses.

Under President Obama, we put a rover on Mars.

Under President Obama we have had the first drop in the federal prison population in decades.

Under President Obama, after a concerted effort by his administration, homelessness among American veterans dropped by half.

Under President Obama, 16 countries around the globe gave up every last ounce of their highly enriched uranium, taking away the risk that it could be stolen or used to assemble the core of a nuclear weapon or to make a dirty bomb. President Obama convened biannual nuclear security summits for the first time in our country to convince other nations to get rid of their loose nuclear material and 16 of them did that completely.

Under President Obama. your credit card company is no longer allowed to raise your interest rates without notifying you.

Under President Obama, if you work for a federal contractor, that company that you work for can no longer fire you just because you're gay or trans.

Under President Obama, our country's dependence on foreign oil plummeted. Today, on the last day of the Obama administration, the CIA published the final update to its online document file that it calls "Bin Laden's bookshelf," images that they took out of his bookshelf in Pakistan. Navy SEALS took them out. We have access to the contents in Bin Laden's bookshelf because President Obama in 2011 ordered the Navy SEALS into Pakistan on that mission that killed Bin Laden.

Under President Obama, we got our nation's first chief technology officer.

Under a deal engineered by President Obama, Syria got rid of its chemical weapons. For everything else wrong in Syria, Bashar al Assad had a huge chemical weapons arsenal. Under Barack Obama it was handed over and destroyed. Certified destroyed by international observers.

Under President Obama, the U.S. Government banned torture by U.S. personnel in all circumstances.

Under President Obama a U.S. Embassy opened in Cuba. He started to normalize relations between our two countries after a half century of the frozen failed cold war standoff.

President Obama overturned the ban on scientific research using stem cells.

President Obama upped by billions of dollars the resources available for mental health care in the VA.

The Obama administration was the first administration ever to voluntarily release the lists of people who visited the White House. First presidency to ever do that.

On marriage equality, President Obama did a miraculous thing among politicians, he changed his mind and under this president gay couples finally got all the same options as straight couples. You can date, you can get married, you can get divorced, you can live in sin. No more excuses, you guys.

Under this president, the FDA started regulating tobacco meaning cigarette companies for the first time have to tell you what they put in their cigarettes.

When President Obama took office, the deficit was 10% of our GDP, it's now 3% of our GDP.

Under President Obama, banks have to face stress tests so they can no longer take the whole economy down with them when they collapse because of their own risky practices.

Under President Obama banks can no longer use your money that you deposit in that bank to make risky bets for their own profits.

After 9/11, the previous administration built a government registry that targeted Muslim men. Under President Obama, that registry was scrapped amid fears that the next administration might reup it.

President Obama cracked down on the scam for-profit colleges that happily took the money you borrowed with your student loan bucks then didn't give you an education in exchange for that money. The Obama administration shut down the creditor that said those colleges were real colleges when they were not.

Under President Obama, solitary confinement was banned for juveniles serving time in federal prison.

Under President Obama, our secret overseas prisons got shut down.

Under the previous administration, when the remains of U.S. Service members were flown in flag-draped caskets to the air base at Dover, that was a secret and there were no cameras allowed. Under President Obama that secrecy order was undone. And now, under President Obama the government will pay travel expenses for the families of fallen soldiers to be there when their loved one's remains arrive on that tarmac.

Under President Obama, the "don't ask, don't tell" ban was repealed in the military, as was the ban on transgender soldiers serving openly and all combat positions were open to women.

President Obama, arguably, saved Medicare. He made Medicare solvent for years to come because he slowed down the growth of health care costs, that was eating that program.

President Obama also inarguably saved the U.S. auto industry. He saved the U.S. Auto industry, reorganized GM that paid back their bailout money and American automakers are now among the largest most profitable car companies in the world and millions of American jobs tell that tale.

Tens of billions of dollars that used to get paid to the banks for writing student loan programs go to Pell grants to help people go to college who otherwise wouldn't afford it.

Oh, and you can't be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition and you can't be charged more for your health insurance because you're a woman and your health insurance can't put a lifetime cap on what you're allowed to need because of your health care.

And 20 million Americans got health insurance because of President Obama and for the first time ever, the number of uninsured people in our country in single digits, more than 90% of the country has health insurance now.

And quietly along the way, yes, he did appoint the most diverse cabinet ever and he a pointed a record number of women judges and minority judges and they will stay there after he is gone -- including the first Latina Supreme Court justice. Daughter of Selena and Juan who came from Puerto Rico.

And so this is the last day of President Obama's two terms in office.

He's being replaced by someone who said that President Obama was secretly foreign, not really American, fake, unqualified to be president. The incoming president called President Obama "stupid." called him a disaster.

He also fought to have a federal judge removed from a fraud case against him on the sheer basis of the fact that the judge was Latino. "He's a Mexican," he said. He's a Mexican, as that is the sole reason why that judge should not be allowed to hear his case.

Everybody who supported what President Obama was able to accomplish during his two terms in office now overnight moves into a different position as American citizens. And in this part of your life. If you like what President Obama was able to do in his eight years in office, all those things I just mentioned, this is the part of your life now where you will become somebody who doesn't support those things, you will become someone who defends those things.

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