What's a Synonym for "Terrorist?"

The Venezuelan Satan, Hugo Chávez, and Lockerbie Bomber-lover turned U.N. Pariah, Muammar Gaddafi, are asking for a redefinition of ‘terrorism.’

This is like asking Roman Polanski to redefine “decency.”
This is like asking Brett Favre to redefine “retirement.”
This is like asking Bill Clinton to redefine “is.”
(Sorry, Bubba, you earned that one for life.)

According to a story published in the Financial Times Online this morning, these two partners in thugdom attended a weekend summit for for African and South American leaders on the Venezuelan island of Margarita, where they signed a document rejecting attempts to link terrorism to "the legitimate struggle of the people for liberty and self-determination,” and called for an international conference to establish a new definition for the concept of terrorism."

Is this so the terror training camps in the middle east with have a clearer idea of their purpose? Is this so wannabe jihadists will be able to sharpen their skills with a better-defined goal in mind?

Remember, Wacky Gaddafi last week referred to the U.N. Security Council as the “Terror Council” at the UN General Assembly.
Let’s keep it classy, Tripoli.

Sr. Chávez managed to dampen the mood during the summit when one of his henchmen, er…ministers said that Iran was helping Venezuela in the detection and testing of uranium deposits in remote areas near the Brazilian border. Another henchman, er…minister subsequently denied that this was the case, stating that Venezuela was only working with Russia to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Uh huh.
That’s a marriage made in what ring of Dante’s inferno?

Gaddafi and Chávez now want to establish a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to rival NATO. Perhaps their redefinition of terrorism will include their own brand of SATO-masochism.
The really sad thing is, were these two clowns the characters in a American Prime-time TV show, it would be classified as a comedic farce.

“We are changing history, we are standing up to imperialism, to the bourgeoisie and backwardness, to 500 years of colonialism that has assaulted our people,” the FT quoted Chávez.

Then he gave Gaddafi a sword, and Gaddafi gave Chavez a hand-made set of silver armor.
So much for moving past the backwardness…
Here, mister Uberthug, let me help you with that Coat of Mail.

The Zazi Effect

I guess we’re going to have to start going through security checks and taking off our shoes in order to buy shampoo and hair color. Thanks for this latest alteration of American culture and lifestyle goes to Najibulla Zazi, the most recent nimrod arrested for trying to blow up stuff in America.

Zazi allegedly bought hair care and beauty products containing peroxide and acetone, and boiled the contents down to concentrate their chemical components in order to manufacture an explosive device.

Let’s see—we already cannot get on an airplane without a virtual strip search and partially-disrobing…you can’t go to a freaking high school football game without being scrutinized by the local constabulary like you’re some kind of axe murderer.

Now, with the arrest of Najibulla Zazi, I predict the grooming standards in America will begin to fall. No longer will we feel safe to browse the beauty and hair care aisle without looking over our shoulder. And now that products containing peroxide and acetone are sure to be put on some kind of list of items restricted for sale, thus becoming more difficult to obtain, beauty shops and barber shops are going to be shuttered across the land, and we’ll all look like wooly-mammoths by next Spring.

Maybe this is part of a larger plot to help radical Jihadists blend-in with our population: They all look unkempt…and now, we the people will look unkempt…how will you tell us apart?

All the News (we think) Is Fit to Print

Incredibly, President Barak Obama seems to be mulling over yet another bailout of a special category of business which is currently floundering as it fails to come to grips with changes in technology and how its product is consumed.

What’s most ironic: News of this next potential business bailout comes after the President’s record round of Sunday News Show visits yesterday...and a much-heralded appearance tonight with David Letterman.

According to a piece in The Hill.com, Mr. Obama is now open to a newspaper bailout bill, saying he’d be "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses. Which is a pretty interesting concept, because, if the news organizations’ balance sheets are to be believed, many of them already are non-profit organiztions, bleeding money and mostly red ink.

According to The Hill's report, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations.

Two questions immediately spring to mind: Why do newspapers need to be bailed out...and why should your tax dollars so be expended? How objective do you believe a news gathering organization would be if its livelihood depended upon tax dollars for survival? And if you think it’s too far-fetched to believe the Government would play favorites, consider that of all the network news shows on which Mr. Obama appeared yesterday, the only one that did not score a guest slot with the Leader of the Free World was the FOX News Network—the same network that chose to air “So You Think You Can Dance” instead of the president’s address to a joint session of Congress.

Paybacks, perhaps?

As that network likes to challenge, "you decide."

How comfortable are you that the Government now owns or controls most of the banks in America, has its own automobile manufacturer, and would now be a controlling factor in the fifth estate of America—the one which is charged with disseminating truthful accounts of what’s going in this country? Not that all news companies are lilly-white in their pursuit of journalistic integrity; but they are doing so without the yoke of federal funding suggesting how deeply to dig on stories that could be revealing of Administration policies that are less than popular with the public.

Mr. Obama has said that good journalism is "critical to the health of our democracy…" He’s also uneasy about perceived tends in reporting -- especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

The President said he is “concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding…"

A valid point. But how much serious fact-checking or proper contextual balance do you think you’re going to achieve when those groups are reticent to bite the Federal hand that’s feeding them? Implicit with the right to pursue happiness is the right to fail.

There is a Darwinian balance in the universe that mandates survival of the most-economically fit, and if the public’s not buying what’s being sold, no amount of government support is going to change it. In fact, bailouts of newspapers could make things worse, if the perception becomes the government is pulling the strings behind the scenes.

General Motor’s acquisition by the government is no guarantee of its success—a car company that was losing market share because no one wanted what it was making. Now, there is a level of public resentment that the government is enabling the company to continue to make what no one is wanting.

Repeating the mistake does not mean the outcome will be different. And isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Discriminating Tastes in America

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
--Martin Luther King Jr

Dr. King's comments make up an interesting, chiasmic thought, which should not be mis-interpreted to mean that the radicals are always right…nor that conservatives are constantly wrong. And that’s the rub—the ability to know where things stand is the challenge of life.

I received a phone call yesterday from Jon Friedman at CBS MarketWatch who is working on a story that will be published tomorrow about “How the Media should be covering the “Race Question” in light of recent episodes…like the Joe Wilson outburst during the President’s recent address to Congress…the Serena Williams meltdown last weekend, etc. Then you’ve got the remarks by former President Jimmy Carter, suggesting that Wilson’s outburst was an indication of racism against President Obama.

I agree with Mr. Carter that comments about “burying Obama with Kennedy,” and shouting “you lie” during a congressional address should have no place in public discourse. Disrespecting the President of the United States in this way is a waste of time and energy, and demeans the American people on the public stage.

And on this thought, consider—where was the outrage, where was the indignance when former President George Bush was being pilloried in public by cartoonists and people with rough manners?

Is there a level of racism behind the vitriol being hurled at President Obama?
Certainly there is.
Was Racism the motivation behind Joe Wilson’s bad behavior?
Ask the Representative; I don’t think that it was.
Was Serena Williams being racist in verbally abusing an Asian line judge?
Hardly. She was just being a bully, and bullies come in all sizes and colors.

Here’s a question I’ve heard no one else raise: Was Kanye West’s regrettable interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video awards racially-motivated? Their skin colors are not the same. So why didn’t we hear howls of “racism” screamed from the rooftops after that fiasco?

Reverse discrimination comes to mind, until you consider what an assinine, oxymoronic word pairing that is: Reverse discrimination is still discrimination. It’s like differentiating between murder and a “hate crime:” the victim is still dead. Does that kind of killing make the victim more-dead because it was a hate crime?
Doesn’t the commission of murder pre-suppose hatred?

Here is what I told Jon Friedman: The Racism component of these stories is a smoke screen; the race angle is a cop-out for lazy reporters and copy writers seeking to fill space and increase consumption of their content, whether in the papers, on TV, or on line. It’s sensationalism with the worst timing, because it refracts our focus on the real issues: Healthcare insurance reform, economic recovery, domestic and foreign policy review.

Is there racial discrimination in the way healthcare is being distributed in America?
Certainly.

Do some Americans still harbor racist proclivities that color their judgement (pardon the pun)? I believe there are some who still do…and it’s wrong headed, counter-productive, and continues to sow seeds of hatred for which we the people have no time or energy.

Joe Wilson’s rudeness was bad behavior regardless of skin color. Serena Williams’ brutish behavior was unsportsmanlike for anyone from any corner of the planet. Kanye West’ interruption was boorish to the nth-degree.

Skin color had nothing to do with the primary problem in any of these examples, and trying to inject the Racism element into the controversy only clouds the issue.

America has a sad history of allowing such prejudices to distract us from the most-pressing issues at hand, and only by opening our eyes, and our hearts, and recognizing this flaw in our character can we confront racism.

Only when we purge the element of racism from the process will we be able to effectively consider the problems that are affecting all of us--regardless of the color of our skin, or the direction of our leaning.

Nine-Eleven 2009

Today is the date which continues to live in Infamy: Nine-Eleven.

Today is the 8th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on civilized society…a date which was over-shadowed last year in Houston by Hurricane Ike, and this year, as thousands here continue to grapple with the after-effects of that storm, our nation continues to come to grips with attacks in two cities, and a hole in the ground in Pennsylvania, that remind us that freedom is not free, and we must be ever vigilant against enemies within and without.

Eight years ago at this moment (8:46a CDT), our world was changed forever. As we watched in disbelief, jets piloted by Islamic fanatics plowed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and a farm field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, plunging themselves and their victims into the hereafter, and altering the lives of Americans forever.

Two wars have been spawned by those acts of cowardice; America is now an armed fortress, our citizens now herded onto aircraft after extreme scrutiny, and swarthy-complected males with exotic surnames are subjected to an extra measure of suspicion.

Through it all the American Spirit has remained dauntless, we have proven our resilience, and shown the world that even in our darkest hours, the American people know how to pull together, rebuild, and move on.

We will never forget.

We will never back down.

While the legacy of terror has given us pat-down searches, long lines at airports, and those stupid color-coded terror alerts, America’s legacy to world is an enduring devotion to freedom for all peoples, all faiths, all colors, and all nations.

A Call to Brains: Obama's Education Address

(Time setting: This is the text of my Editorial during Tuesday morning's Radio show, which aired prior to the President's address.)

Never before have so many had so much to say about which we know so little: the text of President Obama’s educational address was released only yesterday, so all of the hand wringing and cold sweats over the President’s brain washing of our Youts was pure political speculation. I didn’t know what the President was going to say; you didn’t know, and none of the nattering naybobs of negativity quoted in the media knew. It was much ado about nothing.

Today we know.

In a few hours, we will hear.

Tonight we’ll be awash in analysis of these solid points:

• To get a good job, get a good education.
• 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.
• A good education is a responsibility of citizenship in America; if you quit on school, you’re quitting on your Country.
• Set your goals: whatever you resolve to do, commit to it.
• Being successful is not easy—there are no guarantees. People succeed because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you.
• 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 the curiosity and passion to learn something new.
• Don't ever give up on yourself…when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

I don't know what is so radical about those points.

I don't understand what is so dangerous about those ideas.

From the looks of some of our "social failures:" deadbeat dads, unwed teen mothers with several kids from multiple fathers, and people wondering when the "gov'ment" is going to help them with a hand-out, I'd say we need to brainwash more kids into this line of thinking.

The President is going to remind our kids—and us—that 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.”

If you are among the parents who thought you’d keep your kids home from school today so they wouldn’t be indoctrinated by Barak Obama, I dare you to present a better argument for staying in school. In fact, how could anything you could possibly say about “staying in school” have any credibility whatsoever if you keep your kids home today?

I am not a fan ofBarak Obama.

But I applaud the points he will be making today—as reflected in the text released yesterday.

I am a fan of America, warts and all. It’s not perfect, but I defy you to show me a better system.

Barak Obama’s challenge to the Yout’s today is one that each of us should take to heart: 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?

Questions posed to kids; answers to which we should all be trying to solve, whether we’re in the 7th grade, or in our 70’s.

Barack Obama's Address to American Students

MSNBC.com

Text of President Obama's school speech

Obama's prepared remarks for his back-to-school event Tuesday

EDITOR'S NOTE: THE WHITE HOUSE ON MONDAY RELEASED THE FULL TEXT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S PREPARED TEXT FOR HIS PLANNED BACK-TO-SCHOOL SPEECH.

updated 11:44 a.m. CT, Mon., Sept . 7, 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.

‘Put in the hard work’
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.

'We need every single one of you'
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.

‘I got a lot of second chances’
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.

‘They refused to give up’
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.

‘Being successful is hard’
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.

‘Don't ever give up on yourself’
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.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32723584/ns/politics-white_house/page/3/

Teachable Moments from The White House

Here’s the lead-sentence from a Houston Chronicle story about President Barak Obama’s scheduled speech to school kids next week: “Some Texas parents are asking school principals to excuse their children from listening to a speech that President Obama will make to schools next week on the grounds that it smacks of political indoctrination.”

I am so grateful that we have adults right here in Texas who have the prescience and foreknowledge about the text of the President’s address--a week before the event!

Gadzooks, can I get these people to buy me a few Super Lotto tickets, please??

According to the official White House Press Briefing, Mr. Obama will deliver an address directly to students on the importance of education beginning at 11 a.m. (CST) Tuesday.

Secretaryof Education Arne Duncan sent a letter to school principals last week, giving them all a proper heads-up about the Presidential Challenge to the kiddos to “work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning…”

Boy, am I glad they were warned ahead of time.

No telling how a message like that might be interpretted by these kids with skulls full of mush.

Right on time, the cerebrally-myopic and hyper-politically-sensitive began slithering out from under the rocks and crevasses they inhabit, proclaiming The Obamarator was going to indoctrinate the kids. Lordy, Lordy, wouldn’t want those kids to be overly influenced to study hard and learn to think critically for themselves!

One hayseed was quoted in the paper calling the speech inappropriate, “because it smacks of political indoctrination of the worst kind.”

Has he heard the speech yet?

Is he privvy to the text before the rest of us?

Wow--what connections!!

Would he be having the same vitriolic reaction were say, President John McCain to be lecturing the kiddos about things like hard work, and commitment, and dedication to country—familiar themes during the McCain presidential campaign.

At what point do we begin to teach our kids about the American system of government, the real differences between political philosophies, and how the course of history has been influenced by the sides that people chose to support?

Do our kids learn that from us, their impartial, politically ambient parents?

Hardly.

I have a video clip of my then-5-year old daughter, playing “political armchair quarterback” with her dolls one afternoon on the porch, discussing with her babies the recent election of Bill Clinton to the Presidency following George H. W. Bush. I believe her remarks included several exclamations of “what a crock! WHAT. A. CROCK!!”

I can’t imagine where she might have picked up that kind of thinking…

Speaking of head-starts on next week's presentation: the schools have been provided a “menu” of suggested classroom activities for students, "to stimulate discussion on the importance of education now and later in life." Apparently, some superintendants and school boards are a little bent they didn’t get to provide input for developing those activities. Guess they should have been asked, too, since they all know what the President is going to say, already.

Same hayseed parent, same newspaper story: “It just seems to me that the federal government should not have that kind of influence on our school districts and the education of our children…”

Really?

And where were you when they were adopting the school books your kids are now being taught from that express varying ideas about the origin of the universe and blurring of gender roles? That’s okay...but you’ve got a problem with the President encouraging your kids to learn and think for themselves??

Please.

Some parents are complaining about the speech taking up valuable and precious instruction time. I believe these parents and their nattering naybobs of negativity-spewing cousins need to stand down, and embrace next Tuesday’s Presidential address as a “teachable moment.”

Here is an opportunity to “compare and contrast” the ways in which the President’s remarks might differ from other belief systems: Work hard vs slack-off; set educational goals vs doing just enough in school to straggled across the stage at high school commencement—if you make it that far; take responsibility for learning vs taking someone else’s word for it,and becoming a mindless “ditto head” parrot of the current pop trend.

There are some parents who honestly believe Mr. Obama's speech will not allow for healthy debate, instead obligating younger students “to agree with Obama's initiatives or be ostracized by their teachers and classmates.”

Bunk.

If your kids are going to be in a classroom televising the Presidential address, and you have those kinds of unfounded fears, I’m pretty sure your child’s teacher wouldn’t mind you visiting the classroom to watch the event with the class. Might be a logistic challenge for some schools…but, hey, if it will put your suspicious mind at ease, more power to you. You might even learn something YOU missed in school.

Here are some other “teachable moment” opportunities that shouldn’t be missed next week:

Grammar and sentence structure: Have the class identify the main topic of each paragraph the President reads from his teleprompter; more advanced students can later be asked to diagram actual sentances uttered, to make sure there are no dangling Democratic participles, or Republican prepositions out of place.

Math Skills: if the President should mention things like spending, or what it costs to educate a child in America through the 12th Grade, have the kiddos do computational excercises to determine what their earning abilities will be, and how those numbers might be altered, should they choose to ditch school in the 9th grade, or continue through a public university’s Masters program.

Logic and Rhetoric: Does it make sense that there is a causal relationship between the President’s comments on education and success in life? If not, why not, and cite examples of other successful Americans who used their education as a springboard to greatness.

Methinks that those who protesteth too much are more concerned about the political implications of a Presidential address to their offspring, and are missing a more important point: This is the Leader of the Free World telling your kids to stay in school.

This may also be a good example of how not to jump to conclusions until you’ve heard the man say his peace, which no one has.

Yet.