Obama's Inspirational Speech to America's Children

Here are prepared remarks that President Obama is to deliver at noon ET Tuesday at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. This is the speech that the right wingnuts have insisted their children not have to hear in fear that President Obama is trying to indoctrinate their children.  Fear, racism, hatred, bigotry -- call it what you will.  I call it disrespect for the office of the Presidency.  Read for yourself:

Source: The White House

Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class.

Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class.

Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment.

You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.

You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork. I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community.

Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.

Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.

If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation.

Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.

So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.









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Please Tell the Republicans to Just SHUT UP

The Faces of Dissent in America

When the Bush administration came to power, we were facing budget surpluses so large that we were within paying off the entire deficit in about 10 years. Budget surplus projections went far into the future. Bush immediately cut taxes and gave the money to his base and his donors, increased spending by massive amounts, and started a war based upon lies that was and still is funded entirely with borrowed money. He intentionally left our borders unprotected and encouraged corporations to outsource their high paying jobs through tax incentives. He cut taxes during time of war (something no President has ever done) and did everything he could to eliminate the middle class and achieve the goal of his grandfather Prescott that was to establish a global economy by making the U.S. the equivalent of a third world country. He was wildly successful.

In my opinion, it was a calculated decision to bankrupt the economy and to destroy the very social programs that President Obama is trying so hard to grow. The banking fiasco has it's roots in the deregulation craze of the overrated and overhyped Reagan Administration, then took off under George W. Bush. To blame the current administration for this mess is not only unbelievable, but disingenuous and untrue. American taxpayers became part owners of the banking system in the last months of the Bush administration---BEFORE Obama had ever made a decision--and now these Republican so-called patriots are calling Obama's proposal to get us out of this mess "Socialist". The mess is real, the deficit of the last 8 years tragic, and the challenges before our new President are enormous.

To deal with our economy, two wars, failing education, healthcare, an energy system that is bound to fail without real change, a job market that claims 12% unemployment but that all knowledgeable people realize may well be double that if the government would ever get around to counting those whose benefits have run out, will take someone who has an enormous ability to multi-task, a word that is foreign to Republicans who for eight years, followed their single syllable President like sheep, a man who was unable to think and chew gum at the same time; a man who embarrassed this country at home and abroad with his stupidity and lack of grace.

You guys know who you are. You are Rush "Oxycontin" Limbaugh, the hypocritical radio personality with an ego the size of Jupiter and a heart that has yet to be discovered. This glorified disc jockey has told his fervent Republican followers that he "wants Obama to fail", yet he tries to color his hate-filled words with a desire to improve this country. B.S., Rush. You want to improve your ratings, period.

Then there is the Emperor of Evil, John Boehner, who sports a voting record just to the right of Attila the Hun and whose glare and negative persona reveal a walking, talking right wing Zombie.

Finally, there is the Ancient One, John McCain, the losing candidate for the Presidency who demonstrated his standing of 894 from a class of 899, by running a comical campaign and his decision making abilities by selecting the worldly Sarah the Mayor, and insisting that "the principles of our economy are strong".

The American people can be thankful for one thing. The Republican Party has earned its way into obscurity and with "leaders" like these, will soon be there.

In President Obama we have a man capable of handling many important issues at once. If there was only one or two critical problems to deal with it would be different, but with the war, economy, jobs, education, healthcare, energy, etc., as all problems that MUST be handled effectively immediately, he is the answer to the prayers of America. He explained it through his press secretary this way:

If your house is on fire, all the rooms are important. Do you just save the living room and perhaps the kitchen? That seems to be the Republican plan. They are scared to death to act. Obama instead intends to gather all his forces and attack the fire all at once in an attempt to save the entire house, or NATION.

As the greatest drug dealer of all time once said: "READ MY LIPS". To all Republicans. If you can't participate as co-partners in this effort to restore America's greatness, then SHUT UP and stay the hell out of his way. Your type of patriotism makes me sick.




















Copyright @ 1998-2009
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Scary Proof that America Has Been Dumbed Down

America's Activist Youth

Activism among students reached its apex in America in the 1960s and 1970s as the campuses bristled with political activity. The Vietnam War and Civil Rights were first and foremost on both high school and college campuses as the Peace Movement emerged.

Unfortunately, since the late 1980s, many will argue that America has been intentionally dumbed down in order to bring its people more in line with the global economy. There is nothing more healthy for a global economy than an uniformed massive working class ready to be sent to fight on foreign shores at a moment's notice. Here is an example of today's active youth:

The following is a sad but unfortunately true story that occurred in a Government class at a Santa Fe, New Mexico High School . . .

In one civics class, the young adults were discussing the qualifications to be president of the United States. It was pretty simple.

The candidate must be a natural born citizen, and at least 35 years of age.

One outraged girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair was the requirement to be a natural born citizen. In short, her opinion was this requirement prevented many capable individuals from becoming president.

The class was just taking it in and letting her rant, but everyone's jaw hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating...

"What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?"

They walk among us and they vote! Scary!

















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