President Obama's Speech to the Schools

The full text of President Obama's upcoming speech is below, taken directly from whitehouse.gov. It was released early to hopefully quiet the .... I'm sorry, I don't know what to call the rambles of the illiterate; the shrieks of the insane; the fake outrage of the right wing media; the obvious bigotry; the clear cut hatred; the lack of respect; the pathetic fears of the ignorant; the sinister fake fears of the hateful.

Indoctrinate our children. That's what many of these hysterics say. Indoctrinate them into what? Learning? Self-esteem? Responsibility?

Then there are the ones who say that the President shouldn't talk to their children without them present. What is he? A crack dealer? A pedophile?

I'd love to know how many of these righteous parents ever watched a Presidential address with their children. Any President.

These "parents" - and it saddens me that they are parents - are teaching their children that if you disagree with someone you shouldn't listen to them; if someone is different from you then you should fear them.

Shame on every single parent who forces their child to ignore current events. Shame on every asshat who whipped up the frenzy. Shame on every self serving politician and pundit who further polarizes our country.

It is a sweet and friendly and benign speech.

I wonder how many of these "parents" will read it? I wonder how many of them can read it.

Shameful. This is the kind of single minded, fearful, dark, oppressive crap that happens in countries the USA invades in order to set them free.

One more painful reminder of how much work needs to be done here before we dare act as though we are morally superior to any other country.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: 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.

Teach Your Children Well

I have always felt that the way we behave around children is exceptionally important. Actions, far more than lectures and rules, shape how our children see themselves and the world.

I was disgusted and dismayed by a story I saw on today’s The Early Show on CBS.

Having been in this position myself this is how I envisioned the scene as the victims described it.

A group of dark skinned children runs down the hill toward the pool. A dozen or so lily white pillars of society are watching their children swim in the pristine waters of their swim club’s pool. Dark children enter pool. All but 3 parents pull their children out.

Got the scene?

It gets worse. These “parents” are being quoted by many sources as saying “they don’t belong here” – “they might hurt my child” – “they’re just here to steal” – and worse.

Once the story became known some of the offensive “offended parents” claim they were merely concerned about the safety of a pool that was about to become overcrowded. I’ve seen photos of the pool – the entire Osmond Family couldn’t overcrowd that pool.

And even if that was the issue – how the hell does pulling your children out of the pool and acting like a pack of wild asshats make the moment safer?

Is this how they want their children to react to situations. Overly entitled and overly enraged.

Everything about the way the parents at The Valley Swim Club in suburban Philadelphia behaved is wrong. And in my opinion it is also racist and demonstrates unfit parenting. I’d love to go there and do some remedial work with them.

The insulted children were with a day camp that paid to use the pool. They have since been told they can’t. The good news is that based on media reports of the incident the children have been invited to another pool.

You can read about all that here and here.

The club put up a statement that basically blames its own members. If they had any balls they would investigate who said and did what and cancel some memberships. I hope the Pennsylvania state authorities look into this.

And, as much as I hate our litigious society, I hope the parents of the insulted children sue the crap out of these fuckers.

When my son was 7 we were invited to a BBQ at the home of one of his little league coaches. My son was playing with another boy his age when the mother of one of the other children told my son to go back to the kitchen and stay with his mother. Now, years later, the look of total bewilderment on my son’s face is comic.

It wasn’t so funny that day.

Seems this woman assumed my dark skinned child must belong to one of the caterers as they were the only black people around and she decided that since he was dark and a servant he could be spoken to in any tone she pleased.

To make matters worse the hostess of the party thought she was salvaging the situation by exclaiming at the top of her lungs. “Oh No! Jeffrey’s not with them. Dianne is his mom, it’s OK”.

Guess we wouldn’t have been invited if I was black.

I took Jeffrey aside and asked him if he wanted me to “make a scene”, which was our code for Mom will tell people how the world is supposed to work. He did not and I respected that. We left. Through the kitchen.

I kicked some major ass at the next parent’s meeting though. And I insisted his little league invite other leagues to play on our field so that the children would all get to know each other. And I insisted the league invite the other parents to BBQ with us on the public field we rented. Otherwise Dianne was going to make a few phone calls.

The parents of The Valley Swim Club should beg the forgiveness of both the day camp children and their own children.

But as always, there is Hope …

Excuse Me! May I Shove Your Cell Phone Up Your ...

I went out between downpours to do a few errands and decided to drive through the town park.

On my way out of the park I got stuck behind the hayride thingie - they were moving it back to storage since the farm was closed due to rain.

I was half assed shooting a few shots of being stuck behind the too big for the road vehicle ...





when ...



I literally had to throw my camera down and jump out of my car to try and grab a little boy who was about to run into the main road. You can kinda see that the car in front of me braked but then moved on.

Why would the car move on? Well the little boy was with 3 adults. 3 grown ass women, parents I assume, with a gaggle of kids attached to them and all 3 of them on the phone. All 3!!

I saw them while I was waiting for the hayride truck to make the tight turn. I saw the kids get excited at seeing the hayride. Then they moved back under the trees since it had started to drizzle. When we got to the main entrance to the park, which leads out to a busy road, I saw them again. One child was falling over the fence, another was sitting in a puddle and well ... I went back to trying to get a decent shot of the hayride.

Then I let the red car in and, at a full stop, went back to adjusting my camera. I saw the boy dart out and the red car's brakes squealed and the driver shouted out and the little boy darted back in and the red car took off. Just as the little boy decided to run into the main road to see where the hayride had turned.

I was frozen for a second. All I remember is seeing the back of his head - a sweet little head with a marine buzz cut. I shouted, I think I said "Stop", I looked toward the cell phone addicts and they all had their back to me and him.

In one motion I put the car in park, threw the camera on the seat, and jumped out. I didn't even feel my ankle, knee, back or whatever else hurts at any given moment. I was transfixed by the back of his head and I heard, rather than saw, the rush of traffic.

He was too far to grab but I screamed at the top of my lungs - "Freeze! Right there! Do not move!"

And he froze. And he turned and looked at me. And he burst into tears.

And finally the adults noticed.

All the other children were stunned into silence. The little boy and I were in some kind of eye lock. I walked toward him saying I was sorry I had frightened him while his Mom rushed toward him screaming "are you OK? are you OK?"

He didn't stop looking at me until she picked him up.

I was blocking the lane and the car behind me, unaware of what had just happened, started honking. I gave him a look that literally caused him to shrink back in his seat. Ha! He backed out and went the long way out. Ha! It's about a mile off of any main road. Ha!

Mom tries to tell me she told him not to move, other Moms all cluck and start telling their children how dangerous traffic is and how they always have to listen.

I wanted so badly to hit her. I felt my fist clench. I saw myself punch her really hard in the face. I stared at the cell phone, still in her hand, because I just couldn't look at her. And because I really wanted to take it away from her.

"They never listen" she tells me. I say nothing.
"You have to have eyes in the back of your head" she tells me.
Well No, I think to myself, you just have to be facing your eyes in the right direction and you have to get off the phone.

All I said was - "I can't breathe thinking of what could have just happened."

She thanked me. She told her son to thank me. He cringed. I smiled at him and apologized again for frightening him.

She set him down and he ran to his friends. I turned to go back to my car and I just had to - I grabbed the Mom's arm and whispered in my best Brooklyn Gangsta I Can Kill With The Sheer Force of My Will Voice - "stay off the fucking phone and pay attention, if anything happened to him today it would have been all on you. You. Just you."

Then I went home and had a drink.

I'm a Mom. I know how impossible it is to be everywhere at the same time. I know how quick they are. I dropped Jeffrey because I fell asleep holding him. I lost him in a department store. My sister lost him in Rockefeller Center during the tree lighting. I know parents are just people. I know things happen.

All the more reason to pay attention.

I hate cell phones.