Obama to address "schoochildren" [sic]

Story here

Quote :

When President Obama delivers his controversial speech to the nation's school kids on Tuesday, he might tell them to always double check their spelling.
That would be good advice for the U.S. Department of Education, which put out a press release hailing the event, at an Arlington, Va., high school, containing the headline, "President Obama Delivers National Address to America's Schoochildren." That's right, "schoo-children"

You'd think they would have a word processing package with a spellchecker in it. Or at least use a free spellchecking site.

Quote :

The speech to a captive audience of kids has drawn fire from conservatives, who say the president is trying to indoctrinate young students. In the Sept. 8 speech, Obama will challenge kids to work hard and set goals , Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a letter to principals.

You mean indoctrinate them into believing that we need hard work and everyone working together to solve the problems that you, the Republicans created? Oh, heaven forbid!
Further info

Quote :

"I'm going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country about the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country. So I hope everybody tunes in."

I don't see how is this brainwashing kids. Well, we need to keep them stupid so someone besides illegal aliens can clean toilets, right?

Quote :

In an ironic twist, one Missouri school won't be airing the speech because of a lack of funding. Michelle Baumstark, spokeswoman for Columbia public schools, told the Columbia Daily Tribune, "We don’t have the funding or the equipment to support that type of broadcasting.”

A sign that it may be too late.

Given the presidents record for honesty, I'm a tad doubtful as to his true purpose corresponding to his stated one. I wonder if conservatives could claim that Obamania is a religion, and that religious displays are not allowed at public schools (or that they don't want to expose their children specifically to it)

Also, wasn't Clinton who made it easier to get higher mortages, allowing people to get houses they couldn't otherwise afford?

unskilled78 wrote:

Given the presidents record for honesty, I'm a tad doubtful as to his true purpose corresponding to his stated one. I wonder if conservatives could claim that Obamania is a religion, and that religious displays are not allowed at public schools (or that they don't want to expose their children specifically to it)

Also, wasn't Clinton who made it easier to get higher mortages, allowing people to get houses they couldn't otherwise afford?

Bush, Clinton, and Bush all talked to schoolchildren all the time. As did, I imagine, just about every other US president since at least 1861. I'm still not an Obama fan, but can we at least dislike him for legitimate political reasons rather than utter nonsense?

OMG A TYPO ALERT THE PRESS

I think you missed the point, Kelinci.

I meant the obamania comment tongue-in-cheek.

Also, do you think it would have been normal if LBJ had taken time off his busy schedule to have an address before schoolchildren at the height of the Tet Offensive?

unskilled78 wrote:

I think you missed the point, Kelinci.

I meant the obamania comment tongue-in-cheek.

Also, do you think it would have been normal if LBJ had taken time off his busy schedule to have an address before schoolchildren at the height of the Tet Offensive?

Johnson was president from '63 to '69. I'm sure he found time to visit a few kids in there somewhere.

My apologies for missing the joke. I suppose I'm just irritated at seeing so many people jump at shadows, which has in turn got me jumpy.

*wanders off to go find her Zen*

Unsk, are you saying there's going to be a Tet-level series of attacks in the coming week? How do you know about this?



As for the rest of the thread...

The irony of the typo is mildly amusing, but nothing more.

The Republican protest is just part of politics these days. The Democrats did the same thing every time Bush blinked, and now the Republicans are taking their turn.

And yes, visiting schools has been part of the SOP for, well, just about every politician (and politician's spouse) for decades. It's not a break from the schedule; it's part of the busy schedule.

Also, presidents do get time off, just like every other job. they probably even need it more than any other job. Of course, some presidents take more time off than others. I won't name names.

This vacation time can range from staying home to watch the playoffs, to visiting Camp David, to spending literally weeks at a time lounging around a fuckin' Texas ranch while you're supposed to be fighting two wars at the same time.

It was the Clinton administration that weakened the separation between commercial and investment banking, but bear in mind that the Republicans were in control of congress for most of that time. Chalk it up to "it seemed like a good idea at the time-" we were having both high growth and low inflation due to the blossoming technology industry, and any politician who opposed money-making measures would have been tarred and feathered as the resident party pooper. "Stop having fun, guys" isn't really a productive attitude when you're due up for re-election soon.

Long story short: freedom includes enough rope. Oops.

Lysander wrote:

Also, presidents do get time off, just like every other job. they probably even need it more than any other job. Of course, some presidents take more time off than others. I won't name names.

This vacation time can range from staying home to watch the playoffs, to visiting Camp David, to spending literally weeks at a time lounging around a fuckin' Texas ranch while you're supposed to be fighting two wars at the same time.

There is the argument that the President is never really "on vacation" - even when Bush was out there clearing brush from his farm (you need livestock to call it a ranch), he was getting regular daily briefings and if something did happen most Presidential "vacation spots" have a built-in helipad with Marine One standing by to get them either to Air Force One or directly back to D.C.

KelinciHutan wrote:

Bush, Clinton, and Bush all talked to schoolchildren all the time. As did, I imagine, just about every other US president since at least 1861. I'm still not an Obama fan, but can we at least dislike him for legitimate political reasons rather than utter nonsense?

Yay! Common sense!

Seriously, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to fault Obama in order to twist this into something devious. Since when was encouraging kids to work hard in school a bad thing?

DeeDee wrote:

Since when was encouraging kids to work hard in school a bad thing?

Well, if the kids work hard in school, they are likely to come to understand these things called 'facts'. And since facts have a well-known liberal bias...

I would like to apologize. I was attempting to create a comparison to the drop in popularity of president Johnson 2, caused by the Tet offensive, not the actual campaign itself.

I also assumed that this speech was merely to children (ie, not teenagers.)

Also, given that the president does not say much of anything of any import without a written speech in front of him, or a teleprompter, surely the complete text (or at least a significant draft thereof) can be provided ahead of time. If the conservatives look it over and complain about minutea, then Mr. Obama and his liberals look better by comparison. If it's wholly reasonable and worth the time taken from actual learning, then the presidents speechwriter looks better. What do the liberals have to worry about? This was the candidate who promised more openness, right? [Yes, I did hear that idea on the Rush Limbaugh show. It's not all rabid hatred.]

Dee-Dee wrote:

Seriously, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to fault Obama in order to twist this into something devious. Since when was encouraging kids to work hard in school a bad thing?

If, in his lame duck period, president Bush had demanded to preach to a bunch of children, would you not have been at least slightly suspiscious?

unskilled78 wrote:

Also, given that the president does not say much of anything of any import without a written speech in front of him, or a teleprompter, surely the complete text (or at least a significant draft thereof) can be provided ahead of time. If the conservatives look it over and complain about minutea, then Mr. Obama and his liberals look better by comparison. If it's wholly reasonable and worth the time taken from actual learning, then the presidents speechwriter looks better. What do the liberals have to worry about? This was the candidate who promised more openness, right? [Yes, I did hear that idea on the Rush Limbaugh show. It's not all rabid hatred.]

Because clearly, "transparency" doesn't mean "disclosure of money flow etc." (independent of whether this happens or not, that's a whole 'nother can of beans), it means that the conservatives must be able to look over his shoulder in absolutely everything and ensure that it's "appropriate", even if it's a speech stating "Stay in school, kids." Yeah, entitlement much? If liberals had asked that from Bush, there would have been all kinds of hissyfits about them being unpatriotic, and "how dare they assume the president is going to say something that wouldn't fit into a school's regular curriculum!"

*shakes head* This place is a fucking madhouse.

I haven't listened to the Republicans ranting about the speech; rants about the rants are easier to find. As I hinted at before, complaints that the president (whichever side he's on) will slip politics into what should be a non-political speech are perennial and, frankly, justified, since they usually do. After all, they're politicians.

Part of the criticism seems to be less about the speech itself than about the associated lesson plans that the Department of Education sent out to schools. They didn't approach "All hail the great leader!" levels of propaganda, but they do seem just a tad... obsequious.

Quote :

Create a "concept web." Teachers may ask students to think of the following:
* Why does President Obama want to speak with us today?
* How will he inspire us?
* How will he challenge us?
* What might he say?
* Do you remember any other historic moments when the president spoke to the nation?
* What was the impact?

And those lesson plans have been dropped because of the outcry.

As for the actual speech, it will be available on Monday.

What kills me is that one school district here is requiring parental permission to watch the speech (by comparison, most school districts are offering the opportunity for parents to have their kids "opt-out" of watching the speech).

Actually, the lesson plans weren't dropped; I'd grabbed them from the department's website right before I started composing that post. One question on the PreK-6 lesson (which originally read "What can you do to help the president?") was changed to something less controversial, but the rest remained the same. Like I said, they're not "Name three miracles Obama has performed!" bad, but they do take a couple things for granted.

unskilled78 wrote:

Dee-Dee wrote:

Seriously, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to fault Obama in order to twist this into something devious. Since when was encouraging kids to work hard in school a bad thing?

If, in his lame duck period, president Bush had demanded to preach to a bunch of children, would you not have been at least slightly suspiscious?

If he were going to talk about the importance of education? No, probably not. I would take it at face value unless there was something in particular that I found problematic about it. I don't have to hate every single thing Bush does in order to disagree strongly with his politics.

I'm not a big fan of these sorts of things, myself, but, as they say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Oh Unskilled, you must have missed the countless MADtv/SNL skits where Bush was reading picture books upside down and children were correcting his pronunciation. Seriously it happened so much I think viewers kind of got numb to the idea of having an easily-mocked president.

Nihilist wrote:

Oh Unskilled, you must have missed the countless MADtv/SNL skits where Bush was reading picture books upside down and children were correcting his pronunciation. Seriously it happened so much I think viewers kind of got numb to the idea of having an easily-mocked president.

He also missed Bush's 9/11/2001 plan to visit with some schoolkids in Florida and the lack of liberal outrage concerning it. 

As Kelin said, Reagan did it multiple times (the most famous being shortly after the Challenger disaster) and both Bush 41 and W did a lot of similar speeches.

Believe it or not, I'm with Joe Scarborough on this (and Scarborough is no fan of Obama, or liberals in general):

"Seriously, why don’t we want the president of the United States, any president of the United States, delivering the message to kids: work hard, stay in school, succeed...get your ratings if you want, you’re just screwing your political party."

If I were them, I'd be like LOL GAIZ THAT WAS THE POINT GET IT... >_>;

DeeDee, the DoE lesson plans & their content are the reason I don't trust the president to stay on his stated objective. (see Drabblers post.)

As promised, the full text of Obama's planned remarks

Ok, I suppose I have no problems with the actual speech. (Not that my objections would have meant anything)

also, it sounds like a graduation speech, IMHO.